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noodlecupcakeswritings · 4 years

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Now or Never - Chapter 5 (A NeganxRoxy fic)

The Saviours are about to go to war with Alexandria and tensions are high. Negan wants what’s best for his people but wants as little casualties as possible but it almost seems impossible. Roxy is struggling to admit her feelings to Negan not wanting to make the situation worse and give him more to worry about. Will there be a good outcome for both of them?

This is the third and final instalment in the canon NeganxRoxy series.

Please leave comments, kudos and reblogs if you like it. It really helps me out as a writer, lemme know if you wanna be on the taglist as well :)

Warnings: Language, Gore, Suicide (dont read if it triggers you), Drinking

Chapter 5

Roxy’s P.O.V

Negan and I had barely slept last night because we were both trying to come up with a plan to lead the walkers away from this place. And we'd done that downstairs by the main entrance, we wanted to make sure it was reinforced. If anything had come inside, we would have dealt with it. Negan felt mostly responsible for this situation, these people inside depended on him to keep them safe and alive. I wanted to take some of that burden from him. Rationing had come into effect and I'd made sure I was doing my part with that too. I'd only eaten a granola bar the whole day. And the lack of food and sleep was already taking a toll on me, I had a headache that I was doing my best to ignore. It’s times like these I missed coffee.

Negan placed his hand on my shoulder in a comforting manner. I smiled softly, kissing the back of his hand. “You need to get some sleep,” he spoke. “I’m okay.” “Baby girl your running on fumes. Just take a few hours to rest. I can hold the fort for that time.” “You need sleep as much as I do. So perhaps you should nap with me.” “As much as I would like too, I can't. This was a round the clock job before shit hit the fan.” “And what use will you be to these people when your too tired to defend them?” Negan recoiled as if I’d bitten him. I hadnt meant what I’d said to come across so bitchy. “You’re a bit of a bitch when you don’t get any sleep,” he spoke. “But I’m right.”

“Yeah. We’ll take it in shifts. Will that get you off my back?” My shoulders slumped, I hadnt meant to make him feel like that. Now I really felt awful. Perhaps we both got cranky with a lack of sleep and food. Negan sighed, knowing he shouldn’t have snapped at me. “Looks like I turn into an ass too,” he explained. “I get it, theres a lot of pressure on you at the moment. If me taking a nap will give you less to worry about, then I’ll go and take a nap.” “Your one of the best when it comes to taking out walkers, I need you sharp.” “Yes sir,” I said with a wink. This got him to smile. I kissed his cheek before heading upstairs towards our room. I passed the wives living space on the way, debating whether or not I should check up on them. I continued past the door, I would after my nap. Before I could turn the corner, I heard screaming.

I spun on my heel, bolting to the door. I burst in finding none of the wives in the living room area. Had someone come in that wasn’t allowed entry? A walker couldn’t have gotten in, that was impossible. I found the wives in the hallway, outside one of the bedrooms. Sabrina, Frankie and Grace were unharmed. They were comforting one another. That’s when I realized Amber wasn’t with them. My blood ran cold as horrible situations ran through my head. Frankie glanced at me and pulled the other two aside. “Where’s Amber?” I asked, afraid of the answer. Grace choked on a sob, she was almost hysterical. Frankie was the one who seemed to have it together the most. “Frankie, I need you to take Sabrina and Grace into the lounge and then I need you to go and get Negan okay, he’s downstairs on the bottom floor,” I explained. Frankie nodded, kicking off her heels so she’d be able to move faster. She led the others away and I braced myself for what awaited me inside.

I opened the door, my free hand on the hilt of my machete. I didn’t want to know what was on the other side of that door but I had to protect the others. I pushed it open and felt my blood run cold at the sight before me. Amber was swaying slightly, with a noose tied around her neck. Her wrists had been slashed, deep red marks across her skin. There was blood across the room, two larger stains gathered on the white rug bellow her. She'd written ‘sorry’ in her blood across the mirror at her dressing table. It was a sight worthy of a horror movie. I even spied an empty bottle of pills and an empty wine bottle too. But what was worse, as if this wasn’t enough, Amber had turned. She was desperately reaching out to me, her groans weak and breathy. I didn’t know what to do, scream and cry or cut her down and put her to rest?

I didn’t realize how long I had stood there gawking until Negan made his presence known with a string of profanities. I turned to him, tears in my eyes. This would be the third wife he'd lost. “I’m sorry,” I managed. Negans expression was unreadable but I could only imagine what he was feeling right now. I knew he was blaming himself. I was blaming myself too, I felt somewhat responsible for this. That I should have done more to reassure Amber and make her feel safe. I should have gotten someone to keep an eye on her. “I need to cut her down,” Negan spoke. He up righted the knocked over stool by her dangling feet before climbing it. Amber attempted to turn to grab him but she couldn’t swing herself round. Negan took out a small knife and drove it through Ambers temple, killing her instantly.

I wrapped my arms around her waist as Negan began cutting the rope. The more rope that gave, the more of her weight I took. I wasn’t going to let her just drop as if she didn’t matter. I let her body down gently, laying her on the floor. As if the walker’s situation couldn’t get any worse outside, now we had a body on our hands. Whilst we wanted to give her a proper burial, we wouldn’t be able too until the walkers were gone. I felt useless, frustrated that I hadn't found a way to get us out of this situation by now. None of this would have happened if we’d just fucking killed Rick and his group in the first place. Amber would still be here, as well as Sherry and countless of others. Negan would be sleeping fucking peacefully at night without any added worry. Any anger I had felt before was now explicitly directed at Alexandria. I forced myself to my feet and headed to the bathroom. I wet a cloth and stormed back into the bedroom, beginning to clean the bloodied mirror. “You don’t need to do that,” Negan spoke. “I need to do something.”

Negan took the towel from me, using it to cover the weapons of Ambers destruction on her dressing table. “The sooner we get out of here the better,” I grumbled. “Why so you can go around to Rick's place and get yourself killed?” “Someone's gotta take him out, he deserves it after how many we’ve lost.” “Your letting your anger do the talking.” “It’s either that or I blame myself for not doing more to make Amber feel safe!” Negan placed his hands on my shoulders, clearly unhappy with my statement. I avoided his gaze, knowing it would just piss me off more and the last thing I needed to do was take this out on him. “That’s not on you, Ambers on me. That’s all my fault. It was my job to protect her and make her feel safe, not yours,” Negan explained.

I shook my head; she came to me almost hysterical when Negan had been outside. I should have done more; I should have at least put someone on guard duty to make her feel safer. “I should have come here sooner, I could have done something,” I insisted. “And then if something had happened downstairs you would have beaten yourself up for not being there. You can’t save everyone baby girl.” “It’s not fair,” my voice wavered as I struggled to fight back tears. Negan pulled me into a tight hug, stroking my hair, “I know, none of this shit is ever fair.” We stayed like this for a while, offering comfort to each other. But we couldn’t stay like this forever, now we had more work to do. “I’ll go and make sure the others are okay, you want me to radio for someone to clean this up?” I asked. “No. I can do that. You’ve done more than you should have too.”

I headed out to the living room and made myself a drink. Frankie was doing her best to take Grace and Sabrina’s mind off the current situation, but it wasn’t going as well as she had planned. Grace was still sobbing into Sabrina’s shoulder whilst Sabrina was attempting to keep it together and offer comfort. I sat down opposite them, racking my brain for anything to say that would make this situation better. “Did she show any signs, last night?” I asked. “No. We would have done something otherwise,” Frankie insisted. I nodded, of course they would have. That was a stupid question. I downed my drink, placing the glass on the coffee table. “I don’t know what I can do to make this better,” I confessed. Sabrina reached over with the hand that wasn’t wrapped around Grace, placing it on my knee in a comforting manner. “There isn't anything, anybody could do. But it’s not anybody’s fault. We can’t be sitting around here blaming each other,” Sabrina spoke softly.

I didn’t know about that; I was finding it pretty easy to point the blame at Rick. “We all could have done more, hell one of us should have fucking checked on her last night,” Frankie snapped. “Like we could have done for Sherry?” I asked. Frankie avoided my gaze, keeping quiet now. She knew there was nothing any of us could have done to stop Amber killing herself and Sherry running away. Its times like this I wish Sherry were here, that I realized how much I missed her. She would know what to do, she’d know what to say to keep the girls calm. She would have held them all together, Amber would still be here. “We are getting out of here, I promise. I don’t care what it takes, I will get rid of those fuckers outside,” I spoke, “when I do, we can have a proper funeral for Amber. I want you to start thinking of a spot outside where we can bury her.”

The door opened and Simon and Dwight stepped inside looking a little uncomfortable. It’s not often another man got to step foot here and considering the circumstances it just made it worse. Simon offered me a sympathetic smile before following Dwight to the bedrooms. A little while later they carried out Ambers body that had been wrapped in bedsheets. I waited for Negan to follow them out, but he was still in Ambers room. I got up and refilled my drink before going to look for him. He stood with his back to me, looking out of her window. “Hey,” I spoke softly, “you okay?” “Oh you know me baby girl, I’ll be okay so long as you are.” “And what if I’m not okay.” “Then I guess we’re both fucked,” he chuckled. I managed a small giggle before my eyes filled with tears again. I took a deep breath to try and compose myself. I handed him the drink, which he too downed. I laced my fingers with his, squeezing his hand. So long as we had each other and this place, I knew that eventually things would be okay again.

Taglist: @sweetfictionalworld, @belathora, @cltex84, @sarahlee8793, @negans-network, @collette04, @themagikat409, @ninavantastisch, @emoryhemsworth, @jdmslut-red

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edales-drabbles · 4 years

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Green Thumb 2

He wasn’t going to have to pretend to be ill that day. Walter hadn’t even opened his good eye before it felt like someone was slamming his head with a jackhammer. He groaned, pressing his face against Alec’s side. His face pressed into flesh so Alec had clearly made himself comfortable. Unless Barrow had taken him somewhere else? All he could smell at the moment was Alec’s aftershave and scent.

Alec chuckled and fingers combed through his hair gently. “Awake bae?”

“Fuck you,” Walter muttered, batting Alec half-heartedly with a hand before pulling back and letting himself take in the situation. Alec only laughed, finger tracing something on Walter’s shoulder. He wasn’t together enough to read what had been drawn. Still, more importantly, he was at home. Alec was tangled up with him in his single bed, a laptop over Alec’s lap as he tapped idly. His laptop to be exact. Walter tried not to groan again, closing his eyes and counting backwards again.

“I’ll let uncle know you are back to the real world again,”

There was nothing Walter could argue about with that statement. Alec wasn’t Barrow’s blood nephew but any of his side who he sponsored or employed were under strict rules to refer to him as uncle. “My head kills,” Walter twisted and stretched out before collapsing back down and burying his face in a pillow. “Will you stop breaking into my laptop?”

“No,” Alec singsonged before humming. “You’re probably dehydrated now more than unwell. Here.”

Walter cracked open his eye again and found a glass water bottle being offered to him. He took it and frowned at Alec as something about Alec’s appearance hit him. “Were you performing last night?” He sniffed the water before drinking. Barrow had left Alec to look after him but the exacts of that had a habit of being a touch vague at times.

“Yes,” Alec nodded. The man had midnight green eyeliner and lipstick on, not to mention specks of golden glitter were dotted on him. Alex had showered but it hadn’t completely come off. The eye and lip makeup had clearly been topped up though. His nails were painted black too. If Walter ignored the fact he was only wearing boxers, it was clear Alec had been partying. “I was hoping you would be there. You always enjoy it when I perform.” He snapped the laptop shut and gave Walter a look.

“Next time,” Walter offered, his voice was weak. It was a bad sign when Alec was annoyed at him. “Alec…”

“You had better,” Alec crossed his arms before clambering over Walter to dump the laptop on top of the chest of drawers. “Swallow these,” he ordered, passing some painkillers over. “And shift. The wall is cold. I want to sleep.”

Walter obeyed. Not much point arguing with him. Lord Barrow favoured Alec greatly. What Alec wanted, he got. Which included Walter’s time and attention. It was early if Walter could guess right. When the light off switched off there was no light drifting in through the window. Alec cuddled into Walter’s chest. His skin was cold. Walter shifted around him, pulling him closer to warm him up. The shorter man fit well in his arms. It was just a shame they disagreed on too many things for Walter to pretend this was anything more than Alec’s current fancy. A little longer than most of them but… Walter exhaled and kissed curls under his chin.

“Wearing makeup to bed is bad for your skin,” Walter yawned, surprised to find most of his headache fleeing. Drugs didn’t work that fast normally. Maybe the light had been making it worse.

“How would you know?”

“I have sisters,” Walter smiled. “Lots of sisters and female cousins who were taught to be pristine little dolls. I know about makeup.”

Alec scowled at him, Walter feeling it more than seeing it. There was a bubble of magic and Walter knew the makeup was gone now. Alec’s arms wormed around him and held tight. “You have a secret.”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“Uncle was looking at you strangely.”

Walter hadn’t quite got away with claiming illness then. Or possibly the potless bonsai or the new pattern of bending roots on his table, or the sheer wildness of the flowers in the apartment had clued the fae that something had occurred. “I appreciate the warning.”

“Walter…”

“Alec, sleep. I got unlucky. Lord Barrow hasn’t asked any questions yet. If he asks, I’ll tell the truth. Don’t worry. I’ve got no plans to go like Rick,” Walter stated firmly. Rick had told too many lies for Barrow to stand. Maybe if Rick had been more honest some mercy would have been given. As it was, Barrow had made sure anyone who wasn’t being wholly open with him knew the consequences. Secrets were one thing but when they got too close and you didn’t come clean? That was when Barrow went from being an eccentric uncle to the monster in your nightmares.

“Can’t you just tell him?” Or me.

“Not yet. When the term is over. Or danger comes, whichever happens first.”

“Please,” Alec begged.

“Do you have a secret to trade?” Something Walter would be able to use to protect himself if Alec betrayed him. It was unlikely. If Barrow didn’t like his wards lying to him, the ones he named as family were under much closer watch. Some whispers spoke of interviews consisting of questions like ‘what is the thing you least want me to know’ or ‘what have you done recently that would make me angry with you?’ If he was that invasive with his human charges, most likely he’d lose the ability to gain new souls. As it was, Barrow was very careful.

Alec’s muscles slumped. “That’s … Not what you want it for. Uncle inspected my conscience today after I was unhappy with your lack of appearance. He was concerned I’d done something to endanger you.”

“Can’t think why.” Walter smiled as Alec elbowed him. “You can be dramatic sometimes. Was it Charles? Or Peter? You threw someone to the lions before,”

“I’d never get you in danger,” Alec muttered. “And Peter was a cheating skank,”

“If you never make it official Alec, you can’t be that surprised when your fancies step out on you.” Or flat out leave the city to a fresh start. “How many do you have running at the moment? Tris, Reggie, Charles and …” Well, me, went unsaid.

The fae’s grip on him tightened. “Reggie asked to leave. Tris is making eyes at someone so he will soon,”

“And I didn’t show up,” No wonder Barrow had come personally. Alec was bound to be panicking about how many people were leaving again. Walter had been through this before. He’d find new ones. Just in the interim, he was going to be more clingy to the ones he had left. “Let Reggie leave. Tris… Do you want to let him go?” Alec shook his head. “Then spend more time with him. I’m not going anywhere. I barely have enough time for you. Forget someone new.”

“Something happened and Uncle is looking at you,”

“Something he will be pleased with provided I take the right steps and he keeps me claimed and safe. It’s a pleasant surprise for him, not so much for me,” Walter half-revealed, half-reassured. Walter was almost entirely sure that Barrow was going to be over the moon if not a little miffed that Walter hadn’t warned him this could happen. Secrets were respected. Danger was not.

“One of those,”

“Exactly,”

“If I said I loved you, would you believe me?”

“Of course. In your own way.”

“I love you.”

Walter kissed Alec’s hair. He really was a troublesome, spoilt brat. “Spend more time with Tris before you panic that he is leaving too. And Charles for that matter. Lord Barrow has my door always open to you. It's safe here.”

a/n So... to make this polygamous or not. Decisions, decisions.

#drabbles #slash fiction #slash #mxm #my writing #fae #green thumb

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henrik-von-schneeplestein · 5 years

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For the fanfic prompts/requests, maybe 41 or 43 for Chase x Henrik?

Oh HELL YEAH, anon, my motherfucking OTP. I have another prompt in my inbox rn, but if I have time later I might try and do 41 for you as well. This ended up being about 900 words so I’m gonna put it under a Read More - hope that’s ok!

43. “She’s my best friend. That hasn’t changed.”//“It’s clear your feelings for her have.”

“I brought beer,” Henrik said as his only greeting when Chase swung the door open.

Chase took one look at him and moved aside to let him in. “I’ll order some food.”

Henrik sat on his friend’s couch and looked around. He’d been here plenty of times - hell, he’d helped Chase move in. But tonight he noticed things he never did before. The way that even though the apartment was tiny, it seemed empty somehow. The way the bright children’s drawings taped everywhere weren’t quite enough to compensate for the gloom of an unhappy home.

He heard Chase thank the person on the phone and come to sit with him. “How’d it go?”

He sighed. “She officially told me. We are getting divorced.”

Instantly, Chase’s arms were around his neck. “I’m so sorry, Henrik! Are you alright?”

“Yes, yes, I am fine,” he said, although he couldn’t help but lean his head down to rest on top of Chase’s for a second. “She offered a very fair custody deal, and she has no interest in the house; she wants to move in with Rick. I do not know about money yet, but I am not too worried. She is a reasonable woman; we will work something out.”

He pulled away from Henrik to look at him incredulously. “‘Reasonable?!’ She’s running off with her tennis instructor!”

“She is in love with him; that is not her fault.”

“The hell it isn’t! She chose to let a relationship develop, and he knew she was married. They’re both fucked up! I don’t know why you aren’t furious!”

“She is my best friend. That hasn’t changed.”

“It’s clear your feelings for her have. You really don’t care that the woman you love is leaving you for someone else?”

“You are wrong. My feelings for her have not changed at all.”

“You aren’t acting like it! When Stacy left me I did all sorts of crazy shit to try to get her back. You’re acting like this is no big deal!”

“You misunderstood: I mean my feelings for her have not changed because I was never in love with her.”

“You - what? That’s ridiculous. You guys were married forever, you were so happy!”

“Come on, Chase. You have been invited to enough of our family’s celebrations to have done the math by now. Our oldest was born four months after our wedding.”

“Well, yeah, but it’s been twelve years! You had two more kids together!”

“When she got pregnant the first time, we were in a happy but very new relationship, and we figured if we were going to raise a child together, we might as well give marriage a shot. And it was an easy marriage. I like her very much - she is a kind person and a wonderful mother. I was always content when I was with her. And I was young and knew nothing of love, so I figured if I was married to someone, and she was a good person, and I was generally happy, that must be what it was. I believed that until I fell in love with someone else, and experienced how it really felt for the very first time. I would imagine her affair with Rick was very similar. The only difference between us was that she was not a coward like I was. She was honest about how she felt - I wish she had been honest with me a little earlier, but at least she was honest with him. At least she was brave enough to choose her real love.”

Chase evidently didn’t know how to answer, so Henrik continued. “I apologize; I dump all of this on you before we even start drinking.”

This prompted him to open up a bottle for each of them. They drank in silence for a while, Chase still a little lost for words. Finally, he said, “You’re not a coward. You were trying to do the right thing. You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.”

“It is just embarrassing. I did it backwards - I was married to someone I considered a great friend, and I was in love with the person who was supposed to be my best friend.”

“... That’s why you never told me?”

“I could not tell you about the person I was in love with without also telling that person. Maybe I was trying to be faithful. Maybe I was just scared of what you would say. But yes, Chase. It was you.”

“How long?”

“A couple of years now. Not very long after we met.”

“Henrik, I-” And then the doorbell rang, because the universe really was determined to make this the most painful, uncomfortable day of Henrik’s life for some reason. Chase ran off to get their food, leaving Henrik in agonizing suspense.

“I ordered pepperoni for you,” he said, putting the box on the coffee table in front of them, not bothering with plates. It was almost normal, but there was a shyness to his voice that gave away that something had changed between them.

“Thank you.”

They each took a slice, Henrik leaning back into the couch, but when Chase sat back down, he slid closer, until he was pressed up against his side, and leaned his head on the doctor’s shoulder. “Is this okay?”

“Yes, of course. As long as it is okay with you.”

“For now? I think this is perfect.”

#schneeplebro #septic shipping #ego shipping #my fics #prompts #asks #anon

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roses-amet · 5 years

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Star Gazing

It came as a surprise to Xio when she learned that Scarlet had a special key on her at all times. Then again, Scarlet is an entire mystery herself, much like their late husband, so of course there will be secrets.

For today, it seemed that Scarlet wanted to do something for Xio, Smiley, and Nersillia. Once the key clicked into the closet, a light illuminated through the gaps with the sound of the door banging. Good thing Xio emptied that closet, because it’s clear that it will be a gateway for Scarlet’s personal use to other worlds.

As soon as the light dimmed down, Scarlet opened the door to reveal an observatory, with books all around, and a giant telescope in the center, pointed towards the night sky. It took Xio’s breath away as she stepped inside, with Nersillia and Smiley right behind her.

While Smiley eyed the books on the shelves, Xio approached the telescope to trace the large silver body. Nersillia giggled as she sat on the chair to take a peek through the lenses. Scarlet started to tell the young girl about the solar system, the stars, and the mythology behind them, hoping to teach her something valuable for her future.

It definitely made Xio wonder if Nersillia will ever fit into a school, like any other child.

Except, Nersillia really isn’t like any other child, a voice in the back of her head reminded her.

Then she and the rest of the Bones family will be glad to teach her, if they are willing. Even if most of Xio’s education had long been forgotten at this point, there was value in knowledge. Who knows, maybe Nersillia will learn magic if she practices it under Scarlet.

Xio can help teach Nersillia medical information, or at least, some medical information, due to her experience working with Rick.

While Scarlet continued to teach the little one, Smiley wanted to pull Xio away to speak to her in private. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

Smiley twiddled his fingers as he looked away from her. “Do you ever... worry that I will turn back...?”

Xio blinked. “What do you mean? Back into the creature you were before?”

“Y-yes...”

Xio hummed as she inclined her head, then shrugged. “I... honestly don’t know, Smiley. Maybe Scarlet knows if there is a way to turn you back, but I really don’t know anything about... whatever Renny did to make you the way you were. But, why do you ask?”

Smiley looked up at Xio, staring at the glass eye made of amethyst. If it wasn’t for that incident, she wouldn’t had suffered the way she did. She would had still kept both of her eyes, that shine like emeralds.

Something that Renny adored.

The slight pang in his heart, when he felt a hint of Renny’s feelings towards Xio, made Smiley’s breath hitched, and forced himself to look away from her. “I’m... sorry, Xio... I truly am...”

Xio let out a heavy sigh as she planted her hands on his back. “It’s okay, Smiley... Look at where you are now...” She gently took him by his wrist, to turn him around to face Nersillia. “You are a father, to a wonderful child. I may had been married to Renny, but obviously, that didn’t work out too well... So, here we are! Two friends, that happen to be parents! I know you feel conflicted, but Nersillia is happy to have you around, and so am I.” Xio paused as she let go of him. “The moment Renny died, I was... unhappy, to say the least... but when I learned that you were still alive... I fought hard to bring you back. I wanted you to come back. I wanted you to be by Nersillia’s side, Smiley, because, I know how it feels to lose a parent. Just be yourself, okay?”

Smiley inhaled deeply as he watched Nersillia star into the stars above. A small smile then crept on his lips, which surprised Xio. Her hardly ever smiles genuinely!

“Thank you, Xio... I’ll try my best to be the best father for Sillia.”

Xio couldn’t help but smile as well. “You already are, Smiley...” she replied.

#the bones family

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kalinara · 6 years

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I haven’t done my Walking Dead season 6 blogpost yet, but I can't help jumping ahead to rant a little bit about Negan.

I actually like Negan as a villain. I think he's got a dynamic, terrifying presence that really works. (Albeit the monologues could be a bit shorter.) I am afraid for my favorite characters when he's around and I can't wait to see him destroyed (even if that probably won't involve his death. I can live with abject defeat and the dismantling of all of his works.)

But it boggles me when I see Negan defense posts. Not because they, somehow, see Negan as redeemable. I don't, but I acknowledge that this is a show that likes to explore shades of gray more than certain others.

But it boggles me that these fans seem to be missing what I think is clearly the show's main point about Negan: Negan is full of shit.

I mean. Let's take the argument that Negan is anti-rape. Now I admit, I'm still early in season 7 in my watch. I know that there will be a scene coming up where Negan takes offense at a would be rapist. That gets cited a lot. I haven't seen it yet.

What I have seen however is that Negan tried to force a diabetic woman to become one of his wives in exchange for insulin, and hunted her, her sister, and her brother-in-law down when she tried to flee.

I have seen Negan gloat about the fact that once they were back in his power, Sherry ended up marrying him so he wouldn't murder her husband. And Sherry makes it DAMN clear that she is unhappy.

I have seen Negan gloat about his success with widows, after killing their husbands, without any sort of acknowledgment that they might be agreeing out of fear.

I have seen Negan make sexualized comments toward quite a few women who are clearly repulsed.

I have seen how Negan acted toward Rick throughout the entire Alexandria episode. I appreciated how, just in case we missed the very sexualized overtones in Negan's behavior because it’s directed toward a male victim this time, he made it explicit with "I just slid my dick down your throat and you thanked me for it."

He offers women to Dwight with "make sure you pick one that says yes", sure. But given that Negan's entire MO is "say no and die, say yes and survive", do we really think any of these people believe they can say no?

Negan presents his system as egalitarian, with "points" that people earn. But in the same episode, we can see how life in Sanctuary is pretty fucking miserable for anyone who isn't in Negan's inner circles. (And Dwight is pretty fucking miserable too). We got a very nice look through the settlement when Dwight gets the ingredients for his sandwich. Look at the faces of the food producers. Look at the prisoners forced to fight the zombies. Compare these scenes to the scenes we see of Hilltop, the Kingdom, and Alexandria when Negan isn't present. Tell me these people aren't utterly subjugated. We've seen what happens when they try to leave.

And what exactly does Negan and his upper echelon do to warrant their exemption from the point system? He governs, sure, keeps order. But so does Rick, Deanna, Ezekiel and even fucking Gregory, and all of them still contribute.

Negan claims his relationships with the settlements are a quid pro quo deal, but it's clearly not. Supposedly they offer protection, but how does that work?

When Alexandria and Hilltop made their deal, it was clear how it worked. Hilltop provided food and Alexandria struck against Hilltop's enemies. Now, granted, that turned out to be a less than wise decision. But it was an agreement that they freely entered into. A one time exchange for goods and services.

We've yet to see the Saviors do anything like that for any of the settlements. Nor would they be much good at protecting these towns against a zombie herd, considering that they're not there. And Alexandria didn't NEED that protection. At least not until the Saviors took their guns.

The whole point of Negan is that he talks a good game, but his claims are bullshit. Even this whole "I am Negan" claim. Sure, guys. You're Negan. You don't get all the perks, the harem, you still have to follow orders, and you get hunted down if you leave. But you're perfectly equal.

Negan is a totalitarian who rules based on a combination of cult of personality and fear. His followers either buy into his bullshit or they are afraid for their lives. Maybe he believes in his own bullshit, (and if he does, MAYBE there might be some room to inch him toward a slightly lighter shade of grey in the end), but as viewers capable of critical thought, we should know better.

#walking dead #anti negan #Sometimes we're not supposed to take a character's word at face value!

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carolina-bleus · 7 years

Text

One Step at a Time (Richonne Date Night- September)

Michonne sighed in contentment as she snuggled deeper into Rick’s embrace. “I had a great time tonight.”

“Me, too. I hate that I have to cut the evening short on the one night we can actually stay out past ‘curfew’,” Rick joked while tightening his hold on Michonne.

Rick and Michonne had been a couple for four months. They’d started dating towards the end of the previous school year. Since their kids had spent much of the summer away from home either at camps or spending time with family, the pair had been able to spend a lot of time early on really getting to know each other and their relationship grew serious quickly. Now that school was back in session, the single parents tried to spend as much time with each other as their busy work and home schedules allowed.

Tonight would have been a rare date night when they could stay out as long as they wanted. It was the Saturday before Labor Day and their kids were spending the weekend with Rick and Michonne’s former spouses. Unfortunately, the couple wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the night because Rick had an early shift at the King County Sheriff’s Office the next day.

Michonne sat up to look at Rick. “Do you have to leave right this minute? There was something I wanted us to do tonight.”

“What did you have in mind?” Rick asked. His mind and heart started racing at Michonne’s words.

“Well, we’ve been seeing each other for a few months now. I think things have been progressing really well...at least they have from my perspective.”

“Mine, too,” Rick rushed to agree. “They’ve been just about perfect. It would only be better if we got to spend more time together.”

Michonne smiled brightly at Rick’s words. “Exactly! Things have been so amazing that I want us to spend even more time together. I think now is the perfect time for us to take the next step in our relationship. What do you think?” Michonne bit her bottom lip while waiting for Rick’s next words.

But rather than using words, Rick chose to express his thoughts in a different way. He leaned forward and gave Michonne a soft, lingering kiss that quickly moved from sweet to sensual before it ended.

“So, I take it you are in agreement with my thoughts?” a now breathless Michonne asked.

“Absolutely! I’ve wanted to take this step for a while now. And tonight is the perfect night. Actually, if I’m being honest, whenever we took this step was going to be the perfect night.” Rick gave Michonne another deep kiss before he stood up and offered her his hand. “Come on.”

Michonne looked at Rick in confusion. “Where are we going?”

Rick slowly lowered his hand back to his side. “Uh, to your room, right?”

“Oh?” Realization hit Michonne. “OH...no!”

“No?”

Michonne shook her head. “I mean ‘yes’ to that but ‘no’ to that tonight.”

“Michonne, between the confusion, arousal, and embarrassment, I’m not functioning at full mental capacity at the moment,” a blushing Rick admitted. “What exactly were you talking about on the couch? I thought you wanted us to take that next step of commitment to each other by making love tonight.”

“I do, Rick. And we will do that soon...very soon,” Michonne promised. “But before we take that particular step, I think we need to take the step of telling our kids about us.”

While Rick’s two kids and Michonne’s son both knew their parent was seeing someone, they didn’t know much about them beyond a name. By some unspoken early agreement, Rick and Michonne had both decided to wait a while before introducing each other to their children. All involved were still navigating the ins and outs of a post-divorce family life. Neither Rick nor Michonne wanted to risk their kids getting too attached to someone if things didn’t work out. But since it was evident to them both that they were building towards something long-term, their early concerns had vanished.

Libido now sufficiently tamed and embarrassment in check, Rick sat back down beside Michonne.

“You are absolutely right. I temporarily reverted to my teenage self for a moment when you mentioned ‘the next step,’ Rick said with a laugh. “But we do need to officially meet each other’s kids and our kids need to meet each other. We are all going to be spending a lot of time together because I’m in this for the long haul.”

“Me too,” Michonne agreed with a smile. “So, when do you want to make the introductions?”

“I guess the sooner the better.”

Michonne shifted closer to Rick. “Yeah, because the sooner we tell our kids, the sooner we can...”

“See, now you have me wantin’ to round up all the kids so we can get this show on the road tonight.”

“Calm down, cowboy. I assure you that it will be worth the wait.”

“Oh, I have no doubt about that. But how about we all meet next Friday?”

“You’re inviting us to your family night?”

“Yeah,” Rick said softly.

They both understood the significance of Rick inviting Michonne and her son to a family only affair.

Rick and his kids had designated the first Friday night of every month as strictly theirs...no friends, no phones, or any other distractions...just family. They typically had a game night that ended with them all piled up on their massive sectional in the basement watching movies and eating junk food. Since the first Friday of September was the beginning of a long holiday weekend, the Grimes’ had decided to push their night back a week.

“Will your kids be okay with that? Maybe you should see how they feel about that first.” Michonne was extremely happy and touched about the invitation but she didn’t want her first meeting with Rick’s kids to feel like an intrusion for them.

“I plan on talking to them, but I know they’ll be fine with it. Judy will just be glad to have new potential playmates. And Carl will understand what this means. He’s matured a lot since the divorce.”

“Okay, we’ll it’s a date...sort of,” Michonne said with a laugh.

Rick gathered Michonne into his arms once again.

“You know you need to get to bed soon.” Michonne reminded Rick even as she laid her head against his chest.

“I know. I just want to spend a few more minutes with you before I go back to my empty house.”

“You can always stay here tonight. I have a guestroom you could use,” Michonne offered. She wasn’t too keen on being alone tonight either.

“I’d love to but if we are going to follow through on our original plans, then it’s best if I go home tonight.”

“You’re right. Our plans would go out the window and you’d be extremely sleep deprived at work tomorrow,” Michonne joked.

“Sleep deprivation would be a small price to pay to wake up with you in my arms tomorrow morning.”

“Coming from any other man, I’d say that was a line...a very smooth one. But I know you are being sincere which makes sending you home right now even harder than usual.”

Rick gave Michonne a quick kiss on the forehead before he gently set her away from him and sat up. “Well, then that is definitely my cue to leave cause I don’t want you feeling guilty tomorrow morning. No matter how much we’d enjoy tonight, it would be tarnished for you because you’d feel so guilty for not telling the kids about us first.” He stood and helped Michonne from the couch.

Michonne smiled knowing that Rick was exactly right. She reached up and laced her arms around his neck. “How is that you know me so well already?”

“I reckon I could ask you the same thing.”

The couple shared a look with the answer reflected in their eyes. Their eyes held the emotion they had felt for a while but hadn’t yet built up the courage to express to each other. That was yet another step for them to take.

***

Rick and Michonne decided to separately tell their kids about their relationship prior to everyone meeting on Friday. They didn’t want to spring everything on their kids at once. Rick wasn’t sure when Michonne was going to tell Andre, but he was bursting at the seams by the time Carl and Judith returned home early Labor Day evening.

After waving goodbye to Lori and her husband, Rick closed the door and turned to his kids. “Did y’all have fun with your mama and Derek?”

“It was fine. We didn’t do a whole lot cause mom didn’t feel well all weekend,” Carl said on his way to the family room. Rick and Judith followed after him.

“Yeah, I noticed she didn’t get out of the car like usual when they drop y’all off. If my memory serves me correctly, she’s probably completely miserable at this point. Her due date is close, right?” Rick sat down in his recliner and Judith cuddled up next to him.

Carl kicked off his shoes and stretched out on the couch. “Yeah. They said she could deliver any day now.”

Lori was pregnant with her third child. It was her first with her second husband, Derek. The prominent businessman and Lori lived in a posh suburb of Atlanta. She was now living in the type of neighborhood and type of life she’d always secretly dreamed of and Rick didn’t begrudge her one bit of happiness.

He and Lori had made it work until they simply no longer could. When their unhappiness started impacting the kids, the high school sweethearts knew it was time to stop trying to fix something that was beyond repair. Their kids were the one thing about which Rick and Lori had always been completely in sync. So, when the time came, they’d agreed that the kids would continue to live in their hometown with Rick. They visited Lori often and spent part of the summer and alternating holidays with her and Derek in Atlanta.

“Judy, you excited about becoming a big sister?” Rick asked.

“Oh, yes! I can’t wait to play with the baby and have him sleep over here. Can he sleep in my room, Daddy?”

“Judy, your little brother is going to stay with your mama and Derek at their house. But you’ll be able to see him whenever you stay in the city.”

“We can’t have sleepovers?” Judith asked disappointed. “I wanted somebody new to play with.”

That statement gave Rick a perfect segue. “Well, I think I can help with that.”

Judith gasped and her eyes lit up. “Are you having a baby like Mommy?”

“What?! No...I am definitely NOT having a baby.” At least not anytime soon. Who knows what the future holds though, Rick thought with a smile.

“Dad? Dad!”

“Uh, yeah, son?”

“You spaced out there for a minute. What’s this about somebody new for Judith to play with?”

“How would you all like to have some new people over on Friday?”

“This Friday?” Carl asked. “For our family fun night?”

“Yeah.”

“Yaaayyy!!!” Judith roared with approval.

Carl sat up from the couch. “Dad, you never let people come over for that night. You wouldn’t even let Grandma come over when she hinted at it.”

“That’s because Mama has a takeover spirit, Carl. She’d have us eatin’ picnic ham and potato salad and watching Steel Magnolias again. I’ve shed enough tears for Shelby.”

“So who’s so special that they get to come over?”

“It’s Miss Chonne.” Rick had initially told the kids he was going out with “Miss Michonne” as he didn’t feel right calling her by just her first name with the kids. But Miss Michonne was a mouthful for Judith and it eventually got shortened to Miss Chonne.

Carl raised his eyebrows and nodded. “Oh.”

Rick wasn’t sure how to interpret Carl’s response. “Is that a good ‘oh’ or a bad one?”

“It’s not bad. So, I guess you guys are pretty serious if you’re inviting her to family night.”

“Does that bother you?” Rick looked at Carl closely to gauge his honest reaction.

“What...inviting Miss Chonne here on Friday or the two of you getting serious?”

“Both.”

“I’m fine with both, Dad. Mom has moved on with her life and she’s happy. Why shouldn’t you be happy with someone?”

“I am happy, son, but I want to make sure you are okay with all of this. Your and Judith’s happiness comes before mine.”

“It shouldn’t.”

“As a parent, your kids’ happiness will always come first, Carl. That’s just the way it is.”

“Well, your happiness should be just as important as ours. I don’t know Miss Chonne but I already like her. Since you guys have been going out, you smile more than you have in a really long time, Dad. You’re like you used to be before.”

Rick knew Carl meant a time from before the divorce. The last couple of years of his and Lori’s marriage had not given either of them much reason to smile outside of their kids. When they’d finally made the decision to divorce, there had been a profound sense of relief for Rick but also one of profound sadness. It wasn’t sadness over the necessary ending of the marriage but over dreams shattered for the kids, dreams deferred for Lori, and dreams unrealized for himself. The kids and Lori bounced back faster than he did. While it was rough going at times, the kids benefitted from the resiliency of youth and the overwhelming love and support of their parents and family. Meanwhile, Lori took time after the divorce to truly discover herself and found love with Derek in the process. But for Rick, it was harder and it took longer.

In so many ways his life had appeared to be the same. He had the same job. He had the same house. He was there with the kids every day. But he wasn’t the same. The life and the love he’d known for over half his life wasn’t the same and that made him question most everything else he’d known...including himself and the dreams that he’d once had.

Ironically enough, it was through a post-divorce therapy session of Lori’s that he had been asked to participate in that Rick started to heal. He started to understand that all dreams, whether they are the ones we live or the ones we have in the dark of night, were the same in that one dream has to end before another can begin. Once Rick accepted this, he began to live again and dream again. And when Michonne appeared in his life, he knew it was time to open himself up again to a love and happiness that wasn’t strictly connected to his kids. And now Rick was happier than he’d been in a very long time. He finally felt fully like himself again. And that hadn’t gone unnoticed or unappreciated by his son.

“Dad, I really want to meet her,” Carl said sincerely.

“Okay, then.” Rick nodded, relieved and proud of his son. “But it won’t just be Miss Chonne. She has a son a couple of years younger than you. His name is Andre. He’ll be coming as well.”

“Cool.”

“Cool,” Rick agreed with a smile.

Carl grimaced. “Dad, don’t say cool.”

“Why not?”

“Just don’t. It sounds weird coming from you.”

“Can I say it?” Judith asked.

“Yeah,” Carl replied.

“Cool!” Judith exclaimed.

“Hey,” Rick huffed out. “How come she gets to say it?”

“Because Judy was actually born in this century, Dad.”

“Hey, I was born in---” Rick paused. “Well, shit.”

Judith giggled at her father’s language. “Oooh, Daddy, I’m telling Grandma!”

“Sorry, Judy,” Rick apologized to his daughter while glaring at his son who fell back on the couch laughing.

***

“Live?” Andre scrunched up his face in confusion. “Mama, why didn’t you play ‘evil’? The ‘v’ would have been a triple letter score.”

“Huh?” Michonne glanced down at the board. “Oh, you’re right. I guess I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Well, I’m going to need you to pay full attention to what I’m about to drop on you. I have a ‘q’, a ‘u’, a ‘z’ and, thanks to you, a well-placed ‘i’.”

“Dre, you wouldn’t do that to your mother! I was distracted.”

“Mama, what have you been telling me since I was eight? All’s fair in love and Scrabble. So, I gotta do it.” Andre placed the tiles and then sat back and slowly crossed his arms behind his head to admire his triumph. “I have a feeling I’m picking out our activity this weekend.”

Andre was still woefully behind his mother in points, but that didn’t mean he was going to lose. Direct head-to-head competition wasn’t the primary focus of their weekly Wednesday night game of Scrabble. It was more of a competition against self. They kept score but didn’t compare points against each other. They compared their individual results on a week to week basis. Whoever had the most growth in points since their last game won the right to pick their weekend activity or dinner for the night. Whoever showed the least improvement got to choose a book they liked from the library to “expand their vocabulary.” So, really, it was a win no matter what for the book loving mother and son.

“You know there is a new zombie movie coming out on Friday,” Andre began.

“Umm, sweetie, if you win this week, we are going to need to see the movie on Saturday instead.”

Andre put his arms down and sat forward on the couch. “Why? You have a work thing on Friday...or a date?”

“It’s not a work thing and I would never put you off for a date. This is more of a group outing...but at a home...and it does involve the man I’ve been seeing...and you, too,” Michonne finished lamely.

“What’s going on, Mama? You’re rambling and you never ramble.”

Michonne took a fortifying breath. She felt more nervous telling Dre about meeting Rick and his kids than she had when talking to Rick about taking their relationship to the next level.

“Well, you know I’ve been seeing Deputy Grimes. I really want you to meet him and his kids this Friday.”

Andre let the information sink in before speaking. “Does he want to meet me?”

Michonne walked over and sat down beside her son. “Of course, sweetie. That’s why he invited us to their family night on Friday. It will be just the five of us playing games, eating food, and getting to know each other.”

“The five of us? So he has two kids?”

“Yes, a boy named Carl and a little girl named Judith. Carl is actually pretty close to your age.”

Andre thought for a moment. “I don’t think there are any Carl’s in Lower School, so I take it he doesn’t go to the Sacred Academy of the Socially Awkward.”

Michonne sighed. “Dre, we are not going to start that again. You are going to the best private school in the county.”

“Mama, I’m pretty sure it’s the only private school in the county,” Andre countered dryly.

“It is not, Andre Anthony. It is a great school that produces great students who go on to some of the best colleges in the country.”

“Well, they must get in strictly on their grades and not their extracurriculars. I heard there is a D&D club in Upper School. But it’s by invite only. If I’m still there for high school, I hope my invite gets lost in the mail. And, yes, I heard they send actual invitations by mail...with a wax seal and everything.”

“D&D?” Michonne quirked a brow “Is that still a thing?”

Andre shrugged. “Apparently so.”

“Regardless, it’s a great school and not everyone has the opportunity to go. Give it a little longer to see if your feelings change. You haven’t even been there a month yet.”

Michonne was a fairly new resident of King County herself. Eight months ago, she’d moved from Atlanta after she’d received the opportunity to open a firm with an old law school classmate, Andrea Harrison. Michonne had been surprised to find Andrea living so far outside of the city, but she learned that love had been the catalyst. Andrea had fallen in love with a rough around the edges but fun-loving sheriff’s deputy named Shane Walsh and eventually decided to move in with him and start her own firm. Michonne had been at the very top of Andrea’s wish list for a founding partner.

Once Michonne spoke with Andrea, visited the town, and had a discussion with Andre, it didn’t take much more to convince Michonne that it was the right move. A lot of the planning for the firm had already been done. It was just a matter of making the last few crucial decisions and contributing capital. It was a great situation for Michonne and a much-needed change. Since the divorce, Michonne and, to a lesser extent, Andre had both been feeling restless in Atlanta and wanted a change. The move to King County offered them just that. Though she had primary physical custody, it was agreed between parents and child that Andre would finish out the school year in Atlanta (with weekend visits to King County) and spend the summer with his father before moving to join his mother. Thus far things had gone smoothly...with the exception of Andre’s new school. In short, he hated it and made it a mission to convince Michonne to let him go to the local public school.

“I have given the school a chance, Mama, and I just don’t like it. Some of the kids are okay but the others...not so much. I’ve been there long enough to know that it’s just not the place for me.”

“Well, let’s just table this discussion for the moment. I need to know...are you okay with meeting Rick and his kids on Friday, Dre?”

Andre shrugged. “I don’t really have a problem with it. You’ve been seeing him for a while, so you obviously like him. And you’re a pretty good judge of character so I’ll probably like him, too.”

Michonne smiled at her son. “I do like him...a lot. But your feelings are just as important and I want you to feel comfortable. I know it hasn’t been that long since the divorce—”

“Mama,” Andre interrupted. “It’s been long enough for Dad to get a girlfriend.”

Michonne was taken aback by this new information. “Your dad has a girlfriend? When did this happen?”

“I don’t know. I just met her when I went to Atlanta for Labor Day.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Michonne shook her head. “No, it’s not your place. Your father should have told me.”

“Have you told him about Deputy Grimes?” Andre asked wryly.

Michonne pursed her lips. “Touché. But we do need to have that discussion. We aren’t in each other’s live anymore but you are in both of our lives, so we need to know who else is going to be in your life.” Michonne made a mental note to speak with her ex next week before turning her attention back to her son. “So, you are okay with me and your dad moving on with other people?”

“Mama, I know you and Dad aren’t getting back together. I’m not one of those kids who holds onto that fantasy. I just want you to both be happy and you are, so I’m happy, too.”

Michonne gathered Andre into her arms. “You are the absolute best and I’m glad you’re my little peanut.”

Andre hugged his mother tight before ending the embrace. “Okay, emotional moment over. Now it’s time to get back to this game. I want to go on and win this thing so I can look up movie times for Saturday.”

Michonne moved back to her seat across from Andre. “Not so fast. I am now completely focused and ready to play. I’m not a teacher but you are about to get schooled, Peanut.”

“Mama, your bad jokes won’t distract me,” Andre murmured while studying the board and the letters on his tray.

Michonne scoffed. “That joke was quality.”

“If you say so, Mama.”

“Okay, you may not be impressed with the quality of my jokes. But you can’t argue with the quality of my words.”

Michonne used the ‘q’ from Dre’s word to spell out “quagmire.”

“And I do believe that’s a double word score.” Michonne mimicked her son’s earlier move and sat back with her arms behind her head and a smile on her face. “Your turn, Peanut.”

***

Later that night, with phone in hand, Michonne got comfortable in her bed as she settled in for her new favorite nightly ritual. She smiled when Rick picked up on the first ring.

“Hello?”

“Hey. Did you even let the phone finish a first ring before you picked up?”

“Nope. I’ve been waitin’ all day to hear your voice. I couldn’t wait another second.”

Rick and Michonne usually spoke to each other first thing in the morning before their kids got up for school and last thing at night after the kids had gone to sleep. They’d had to forgo their call that morning because Judith had gotten sick in the middle of the night. Rick had texted Michonne to keep her apprised of the situation but they both agreed to hold off on their regular call so Rick could try to get a few hours of sleep.

“I missed talking to you this morning, too, but you needed your rest. How is Judith feeling?”

“She was much better when I got home this evening. Mama stayed with her today. I think she just caught the bug that is going around the elementary school. It happens every year after the kids go back to school.”

“Well, I’m glad she’s feeling better.” Michonne chuckled at a sudden thought. “I’m sure Dre would love for that bug to go around his school so he could stay out a few days.”

“He still doesn’t like it?”

“No.” Michonne sighed. “He keeps trying to convince me to let him transfer to King County Middle.”

“Are you considering it?”

“I just want him to give it a little more time. If I thought he was being picked on, I would have him out of there without question. But he said the kids are nice enough. And the school has such a great academic reputation.”

“Well, sometimes no matter how perfect it may seem on paper, a place may just not be meant for you.” Rick thought of his former marriage. “I know I sound like a broken record at this point and I might be biased because I’m a product of the public schools of King County and my children are there now, but the kids are nice, parents are really involved, and the teachers work hard. It’s not perfect, but I think Andre would like it.”

“I’ll think about it,” Michonne conceded.

“Good. Now, on to tomorrow night. You ready for Grimes Family Fun Night?”

“I think so. I’m not really sure what to expect.”

“It’s going to be a night of games, food, laughter, and maybe a movie or two.”

“A movie or two? How late into the night do these fun nights go?”

“I let the kids stay up past their bedtimes since it’s a Friday but Judith is usually out by ten o’clock...usually before her movie ends. Then Carl and I will watch a movie of his choosing and talk until he falls asleep.”

“Oh. Well, should Dre and I bring anything?”

“Just bring yourselves. I have everything under control.” Rick fell silent for a moment. “Michonne, I’m glad we’re doing this...taking this step with the kids and with us.”

“I’m glad, too.” There was more that Michonne wanted to say but a sudden yawn let her know that now wasn’t the time.

“I’m sorry for yawning, babe. I guess staying up all night is finally catching up with me.”

Michonne waited a beat before speaking. “That’s alright. Get some rest. I don’t want you claiming tiredness as an excuse when I kick your butt in whatever games we play tomorrow night.”

“Oh, we’ll see about that. Goodnight, Michonne. I’ll see you and Andre tomorrow.”

“Goodnight, Rick.”

Michonne ended the call and sank back onto her pillows with a smile. She wondered if Rick even realized he’d called her ‘babe’? She loved how it flowed off of his tongue so naturally. That was the first time either of them had used a term of endearment for the other. Yet another step.

~Friday Night~

“Hey! Y’all come on in.” Rick stepped back to let Michonne and Andre into his home.

“Hey. Thanks again for having us,” Michonne said before turning to her son. “Dre, this is my...friend, Deputy Rick Grimes.”

Andre eyed his mother slyly. “Don’t you mean boyfriend, Mama?”

Michonne turned to Rick. “And this young man with the slick mouth is my son, Andre.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Andre,” Rick said with a chuckle.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, too. And you can call me Dre.” He held out a dish to Rick. “Mama made this for tonight.”

“Thank you, Dre.” Rick took the colorful ceramic dish. It was warm to the touch. “Y’all really didn’t have to bring anything.”

“Oh, that’s kind of my fault that Mama didn’t listen. But you’ll be glad she didn’t,” Andre offered. “That’s her Buffalo Chicken Dip. She doesn’t make it a lot because it’s kind of unhealthy but I convinced her to make it especially for tonight.”

“Well, I appreciate that, Dre.” Rick smiled at Michonne. “And thank you for making it.”

“You’re very welcome, Rick.”

“Let’s go down to the basement so y’all can meet Carl and Judy. Dre, you lead the way. Keep walking till you hear the noise.” Rick instructed.

When Dre was safely ahead of them, Rick leaned down to whisper in Michonne’s ear. “You look beautiful tonight.” He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek before straightening up again.

“Thank you.” Michonne looked Rick up and down. “You look good yourself. You know I love it when you wear that denim button down...babe.”

“You caught that last night?”

Michonne nodded. “I sure did.”

“Good, I meant for you to.”

“I found the noise,” Andre declared from up ahead.

Michonne and Rick joined Andre at the entrance to the Grimes’ finished basement and made their way down the stairs. Rick placed the dip on a table already full of snacks before calling his kids over from the big screen television.

“Carl, Judy, I want you to meet Miss Chonne and her son, Dre.”

Michonne offered the kids a smile. “It’s very nice to meet the two of you. Your dad has told me a lot about you.”

“Hey,” Carl greeted.

“Hey, Miss Chonne!” Judith exclaimed with a wave.

Rick cut in with an explanation to Michonne. “In case you are wondering, Miss Michonne was a bit of a mouthful, so I settled on Miss Chonne.”

“Rick, the kids can just call me, Michonne.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Well, okay.” Rick shrugged. “Just don’t let my mama hear them. She’ll have a fit if she hears them calling an adult by their first name.”

“Ooh, since we are altering names, can I call you Deputy Rick?” Andre asked.

“Uh, sure.” Rick allowed. “But why Deputy Rick?”

“Because I just realized you look a lot like the lead character of my favorite comic, The Walkers. He’s a deputy, too.”

Michonne studied Rick. “You do sort of look like him. I don’t know why I never noticed that before.”

“Uh, should I be offended or...?” Rick asked warily.

“No, you shouldn’t be offended,” Michonne assured him. “I find him quite attractive.”

Rick reached for Michonne’s hand. “So, it was my comic book good looks that won you over?”

Michonne entwined her fingers with Rick’s. “Nah, that was just a bonus.”

Carl and Andre shared a look of adolescent bemusement at their parents’ actions before moving back to the topic at hand.

“You read The Walkers?” Carl asked Andre.

“Yep. Mama introduced me to it.”

“She did?”

“Yeah, she has every issue.”

Carl turned to Michonne. “Seriously?”

“Yes,” Michonne confirmed with a nod. “I was in the bookstore looking for some magna for Dre and myself and I happened to stumble upon The Walkers. I loved it from the first page and I’ve been a devotee ever since. If it’s alright with your dad, you can come over and read them and my other comics whenever you like.”

“How big is your collection?” Carl prided himself on having the biggest collection of anyone in town...outside of Eugene Porter.

“We have a whole room full of nothing but Mama’s comics. She’s been collecting them since she was a kid,” Andre answered.

And that was the moment when Michonne completely won Carl over.

“If Carl is done drooling over comics, why don’t you kids have a seat while Michonne and I finish getting the food set up.” Rick motioned to the sitting area where some board games were out and ready to play.

Carl, Andre, and Judith walked over and plopped down on the sectional.

Judith eyed the cast covering Andre’s left wrist. “What happened to your arm?”

“I broke my wrist on a seesaw.” Andre held his cast out for Judith to get a closer look. The cast was wrapped in a bright blue fabric that was covered with the names of Andre’s friends from back home and some classmates from KCA.

“Can I sign it?” Judith asked.

“Sure. You have a marker or something?”

After securing a felt tip pen, both Judith and Carl signed Andre’s cast.

“You hurt it playing on a seesaw?” At Andre’s nod, Judith continued. “You like to seesaw, too?”

“Actually, the monkey bars were always my favorite.”

“The monkey bars are my favorite, too!” Judith exclaimed.

“Wait, how’d you break your wrist playing on a seesaw?” Carl asked.

Michonne turned from the food table to eye her son. “Yes, Andre, tell everyone how you broke your wrist playing on a seesaw,” she said dryly.

“Uh, well, I wasn’t really playing on the seesaw. I was skateboarding off of it.”

“No way!” an impressed Carl uttered.

Andre turned to Carl, eager to finally share his tale with someone who would appreciate it besides his friends back in Atlanta. “It happened about a month ago when I was visiting my dad. I was hanging out with some friends in the park killing some time until we went to see a movie. Well, we got bored so one of my friends who had his skateboard suggested we try some tricks. I saw a seesaw with low handles and thought I could make it work.” Andre sighed at the memory. “I almost made it, but I didn’t quite clear the second set of handles when I came down the other side. I went flying and landed on my wrist.”

“Man,” Carl shook his head in awe. “That would have been awesome if you’d made it.”

“Right?!” Andre agreed.

Rick and Michonne looked at each other and shook their heads.

“We have a skateboard park around here. We should go. I guess you won’t be able to skate but I could introduce you to some kids from school,” Carl suggested.

“Cool. Let’s do it.”

That was the moment that Carl and Andre bonded.

Not happy being left out of the conversation, Judith tapped Andre on his uninjured arm. “We have monkey bars at the park. We can go on them.”

“I’m a little tall for those now,” Andre said apologetically.

Judith looked down in disappointment. “Oh.”

“But we can always go on the swings,” Andre rushed to offer.

“I LOVE the swings! They are my second favorite.”

Happy once again, seven-year-old Judith scooted closer to the Andre, whom she now considered her new best friend.

“Alright, y’all, let’s eat,” Rick announced.

***

The conversation flowed easily during dinner as everyone got to know each other.

“I love your sweater, Judith. The kitten on it is cute.”

“Do you like kitties?”

“I love cats. I have an orange tabby named Garfield.”

Judith gasped at this new information. She immediately dropped her hot dog onto the plate and gave Michonne her undivided attention. “You have Garfield?!”

Michonne chuckled at Judith’s excitement. “Well not the actual Garfield but my cat does look a lot like him.”

“Can I please play with him?”

Michonne looked to Rick for his okay. When he smiled his approval, Michonne continued. “Sure, you can.”

“Tonight?” Judith stood as if she was going to make her way out to Garfield at that very moment.

“Eager like your daddy I see,” Michonne said with a laugh. “How about we set up something for Sunday? If that’s okay with your father.”

Rick, who was never one to turn down more time with Michonne, readily agreed. “We can definitely set something up.”

Judith clapped her hands in delight as she sat back down. She now had two new best friends and a cat named Garfield.

***

“How come I’ve never seen you at school, Dre? You’re in sixth grade, right?” current eight-grader, Carl asked.

Andre sighed. “Yeah, I’m in sixth grade but, unfortunately, I don’t go to King County Middle. I go to the Sacred Academy of the Soc—” Andre cut off his sentence when he received a look from his mother. “King County Academy,” he finished.

“Reject U? Sorry to hear that man,” Carl said in sympathy.

“Reject you?” Michonne asked.

Carl nodded. “Reject U...Reject University. That’s what we call it at KCM...cause that’s what it’s full of.” Carl glanced at Dre. “Uh, no offense, Dre. I don’t mean you.”

“No offense taken, Carl. You can’t get angry over the truth.”

Rick let out a laugh. “When I was in high school we called it the Palace of Perpetual Virg--“ Rick swallowed the rest of his sentence when he received the same look from Michonne that she’d just given Andre. “Sorry, I forgot myself.”

“Is the reputation really that bad for this school?” Michonne asked.

Rick nodded. “Yeah. The kids there are really smart and some come from rich families in the county, but, overall, they are just odd and act like they are better than everybody else. And they don’t grow out of it. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember.”

“But, Rick, Milton Mamet who runs the county crime lab went there. He’s the one who recommended the school to me. He’s extremely intelligent and well-adjusted.”

“Milton is an anomaly, Michonne. His lab assistant, Eugene Porter, also went to KCA.”

That brought Michonne up short. “Eugene with the mullet who speaks in monotone and doesn’t move his arms when he walks...or runs?” Michonne had once witnessed Eugene hurrying to his car to get out of the rain. His stiff arms and black mullet made him look like Frankenstein out on a jog.

“That’s the one. He was voted Head Hobbit or Crypt Keeper or whatever it is they designate as homecoming king over there.”

“Eugene?!” Michonne asked incredulously.

Eugene was extremely intelligent but his social skills were painfully non-existent. And though Milton was just as intelligent and slightly more sociable, Michonne realized that he and Eugene both shared a condescending air that would sometimes show itself in their interactions with others. While Michonne was sure a lot of their demeanor was based on nature, she couldn’t be too sure of how much influence going to the exclusive school had as well. She did not want to risk her sweet child becoming just as arrogant.

Michonne looked at Andre. “We’ll look into you possibly transferring to King County Middle. School hasn’t been in that long.”

“Plus, he’ll already know me and I can show him around,” Carl offered.

“Thank you, Carl.” Michonne smiled at the teenager. “Well, we’ll take a look around the school on Monday, Dre.”

Andre jumped up and hugged his mother. “Thank you, Mama!”

“Thank Rick as well. He’s been advocating your case whenever we talk.”

Rick shrugged bashfully when Andre looked at him. “I just think if you have to go to school anyway, it might as well be at a place you halfway like.”

“Thank you, Deputy Rick.” Andre moved over to Rick and opened his arms. “I don’t know if Mama told you, but we are huggers in our family.”

Rick chuckled as he gave Andre a hug. “Well, that’s something that we have in common.”

And just like that, Rick and Andre bonded.

***

When game time arrived, the kids teamed up against the adults for games like Heads Up. Their shouts and raucous laughter filled every corner of the spacious basement. Before finishing up the games and starting a movie, Judith had one last game request.

“Can we please play Twister?” she asked. It was Judith’s favorite game and she’d never had the chance to play it with this many people at once other than at birthday parties.

“Sweetie, Dre can’t play that on account of his arm,” Rick explained.

“Oh, I don’t mind, Deputy Rick. You need someone to call out the directions. Besides, I’m full of so much of your hot dog chili, I don’t think I need to do a lot of bending over right now,” Dre offered good-naturedly.

“Well, if you’re sure, then I guess we’re playing Twister.” Rick smirked at Michonne. “I hope you stretched before you came over.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Deputy Rick. Mama is really flexible. She can even stand on one leg while she lifts the other one straight up by her head. It’s so cool!”

Rick looked at Michonne. His mouth went dry when she nodded. Our next date night can’t get here fast enough, Rick thought.

“Left hand...Yellow,” Dre called out. Everyone shifted into position.

“Right foot...Red.”

There was a lot of shuffling and then a “bruump” sounded out from the mat.

“Ew! Judith farted right in my face!” Carl yelled.

“Carl, quit yellin’,” Rick yelled back. “And your little sister doesn’t fart, she toots.”

“Really, Rick?” Michonne asked in amusement.

“Yeah, my mama says ladies toot.”

“Well, your daughter just tooted in my face,” Carl complained.

“I’m sorry, Carl. You know I toot sometimes when I get excited,” Judith explained.

“You might want to get that under control. And could you move your butt—”

“Carl,” Rick said in warning.

Carl heaved a sigh before continuing. “Could you move your fanny out of my face?”

“Where am I supposed to put it?” a now annoyed Judith asked.

“How about you—"

“Carl, if you get the smart mouth one more time, I’m going to take your phone away and make you use my old one for two weeks,” Rick bit out.

“But, Dad, that’s a flip phone,” Carl said, horrified.

“I know. And I’ll make sure to call you in front of your little friends so you’ll have to pick it up,” Rick finished.

Carl clamped his lips shut and rolled his eyes.

“And, Judith, you have to learn to control your toots. That’s not nice to be tootin’ all over the place.”

“Okay, Daddy. I’ll try,” Judith promised.

Michonne caught Andre’s eye where he was standing on the sideline. They looked at each other with twin amusement twinkling in their eyes.

“Y’all ready for the next move?” Andre asked.

“Yes!” All agreed.

“Right Hand...Blue!”

When they finished maneuvering around the mat, Rick was nearly entwined with Michonne. When he happened to look down, Rick noticed that Michonne’s face had ended up extremely close to his crotch. Michonne chose that moment to look up at him and smile.

BRUUUMP!!!

“Judith!” Carl yelled.

“It wasn’t me!”

“Sorry, that was me.”

“Dad?”

“I got excited,” Rick explained sheepishly.

“Daddy tooted!” Judith giggled.

The laughter that Andre and Michonne had been holding in bubbled over at that statement. Andre doubled over on the sidelines while Michonne fell to the mat causing a domino effect with Rick, Carl, and Judith all tumbling after her. They all ended up laughing in a heap on the floor. The game was declared a draw.

The game might have been over, but a new family unit had just begun.

“Is everybody all settled in? If you want to bring over some more snacks, get them now cause I’m about to start the movie.”

“We’re good, Dad. You can start,” Carl answered from one of the air mattresses that had been placed on the floor for the kids to lounge.

“Alright.” Rick pressed play. He put his feet up on the reclined section of the couch and pulled Michonne closer into his side.

Not yet wanting to kiss Rick fully with the kids so close by, Michonne kissed the corner of his mouth. “What are we watching?” she asked.

“Moana,” Judith explained to Michonne. “It’s my favorite.”

Michonne beamed down at the little girl. “That is a great choice, Judy.”

Judith glowed at the praise.

Halfway through the movie, Judith asked Rick if she could sit with him and Michonne. Once she received permission, she squeezed her way in between the two and watched the movie contentedly until she fell asleep against Michonne about twenty minutes before it ended.

The other four finished the movie before putting on Carl’s choice, the predecessor of the zombie movie that Michonne and Andre were going to see the following night.

“You going to the sequel?” Andre asked Carl.

“Yeah, I’m going with some friends tomorrow night. You wanna come with us? It won’t just be eighth graders. They’ll be some kids from sixth and seventh grade, too.”

“Well,” Andre hesitated and looked towards his mother.

“It’s fine, Dre. You should go with Carl and meet some of the other kids.”

“You sure, Mama?”

“Absolutely.”

Andre turned back to Carl. “What showing are we going to?”

While Carl and Andre worked out the details for the next night, Rick leaned over Judith to speak with Michonne. “Looks like you are free tomorrow night. You feel like spending some time with an old bearded man and his pooty seven-year-old daughter?”

Michonne laughed. “That sounds like a wonderful way to spend an evening.” She threw caution to the wind and gave Rick a sound kiss on the mouth.

“I’ve been waiting for that all night,” Rick whispered.

“Me, too.”

They pulled apart to finish watching the movie.

***

A sudden slap brought Rick out of his comfortable sleep. He opened his eyes to find a small hand in his face. Rick moved Judith’s hand and marveled at how she had managed to sprawl across him and Michonne like a starfish at some point during the night. During the second movie, Rick had carefully detached Judith from Michonne and stretched the little girl out on the other end of the couch under her favorite blanket. He’d then snuggled with Michonne in his arms under another throw. Judith must have crawled back over after everyone had fallen asleep. Rick smiled at his daughter before looking at the others in the room. The evening had turned into an impromptu sleepover.

Carl and Andre were both asleep on the air mattresses. They’d stayed up for a while discussing their favorite comics and movies before they fell asleep. The boys had become fast friends and that made both Rick and Michonne happy.

Rick looked down at Michonne, who was still asleep in his arms. Last night had gone better than either of them could have hoped for or imagined. There had been an immediate spark the first time Rick and Michonne locked eyes. But he never fathomed that when they met all those months ago at Shane and Andrea’s house that they’d end up here. He never imagined when his first marriage ended that he’d get a second chance at love and happiness...a new love and a new dream. But Rick now knew that every step (the good and the bad) taken in life before this had led all of them to this moment and to each other.

“What are you smiling about so early in the morning?” a now awake Michonne whispered, mindful of the sleeping kids.

“You.” Rick looked at Michonne smiling softly up at him in the early morning light and knew he wanted to wake up to that face every morning. “I’m smiling about us. I’m smiling about our kids. I’m smiling about last night. I’m just...really happy.”

“So am I.”

Rick hesitated before his next words. “I hope you don’t think it’s too soon and this may not be the best place to tell you...but I love you, Michonne.”

“I don’t think it’s too soon because I love you, too.” Michonne laughed softly as she dodged one of Judith’s hands as the little girl turned over in her sleep. “And I couldn’t think of a better time or place for you to tell me.”

Unable to maneuver around Judith, Rick settled for a kiss on Michonne’s palm.

Michonne’s sleepy smile got bigger before it morphed into a small yawn.

“It’s still early yet. Why don’t you go back to sleep? I’ll wake you up in a couple of hours and we can make breakfast for the kids,” Rick suggested.

“That sounds like a great plan because I was in the middle of the best dream.”

Looking at everyone around him before once again focusing on Michonne, Rick smiled. “Me, too.”

#Richonne Date Night #Richonne #Richonnefics #rendevous

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redheadedwhat · 7 years

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Visitation pt III

Thanks to everyone that has been reading/replying/reblogging/etc both here and on Ao3! It really means a lot to me. And a super extra special thanks to @kijilinn for beta-ing and helping me out so much. In case you need a refresher: Part I and Part II. And here’s the last chapter: Part IV.

Title: Visitation

Pairing: Negan x OFC

Rating: SFW (Major Negan language in this chapter. Cursing, discussions of sex and violence.)

*Spoilers for TWD comics post All Out War*

A few days later Tallulah was finally headed to her first visit with Negan. She was escorted to his basement cell by Rick and Michonne, both of whom were carrying guns, and was surprised to see two more armed guards already down there. Apparently, they weren’t taking any chances. “To what do I owe the fucking pleasure, Rick?” Negan asked with a grin. Tallulah was still hidden in the shadows behind Rick, so she got to see Negan before he saw her.

“You’ve got a visitor.” Rick told him coldly. He still felt a bit iffy about this, but after a lot of discussion and debate it had been decided that there would be no harm in letting Negan get supervised visits with Tallulah and their eventual child as long as he behaved himself. As much as Negan could possibly behave himself. That didn’t mean Rick trusted the guy. Hence the armed guards that would be in attendance even though Negan wouldn’t even be exiting his cell. Tallulah knew that was her cue to step into the light and get this visit on the road, but she was surprisingly nervous. She hadn’t seen him in months and now here she was, about to give him life-changing and personal news in front of an audience of his enemies. He was not going to like that. He was a loud mouth, but he liked to keep personal shit personal especially anything that could be perceived as a weakness and used against him. Taking a deep breath she stepped into his line of sight. “Lulu!” Negan greeted her, surprised, but not unhappy. “Did you come to fucking visit me?” “Hi, Negan.” She smiled, stepping closer to his cell. She decided to give him a few moments to notice that she was pregnant before saying anything, knowing that his eyes always lingered on her breasts for a good while before taking in the rest of her. “Holy shit!” There it was. “You look like you swallowed a fucking basketball!” he laughed. “And you look like the Brawny paper towel guy, but you don’t see me making fun of you, do you, Grizzly Adams?” She replied tartly. Of course he’d make a fucking joke. “I’m just fucking with you, darlin’, don’t get your panties in a bunch.” He smiled at her somewhat apologetically. “You look good, really. Who’s the lucky fucker?” Tallulah was taken aback slightly. Did he really just ask her that? He noticed her confusion, “What? I’m happy for you! I’m glad you were able to move on and while I’m sure your new man is nowhere near as fucking badass as me, he’s probably alright in his own way.” “Negan, you’ve only been gone for five months.” She said simply. “Yeah, so?” He shrugged. “I’m seven months pregnant.” She pointed out. Negans eyes widened. “Oh.” “Yeah. Oh.” Tallulah shook her head. How could he be so dense? “Fuck no.” he suddenly exclaimed, almost looking like a trapped rat. “That ain’t mine.” “What?!” Tallulah gasped as Rick stepped forward to intervene. “You’re denying that this is your child?” Rick asked. “Fuck yes I am!” Negan responded forcefully. “There is no possible fucking way that I’m the father!” Rick was confused to say the least. “Wasn’t Tallulah one of your wives?” “Yeah, she was.” Negan confirmed, crossing his arms over his broad chest defensively. “And the two of you were, um…” Rick searched for the least embarrassing way to put it. He so did not want to be having this conversation. “Intimate?” Negan smirked a bit while he watched Rick squirm. He may have been in a shitty situation, but seeing Rick so uncomfortable made it all a little better. “Yeah, we fucked.” he shot a wink over at one of the female guards who also looked extremely uncomfortable. “But I also fucked the rest of my wives and none of them turned up here fucking pregnant. Besides, I was always careful.” “Oh like fuck you were!” Tallulah exclaimed, marching up to the bars now more pissed than hurt. “Have you forgotten all the times you’d conveniently forget to put on a condom until I was too distracted to care? Not to mention that every time I did bring it up I’d get, ‘Aw come on Lulu, I’ll remember next time’ or ‘Sorry baby, my dicks too hard for me to think straight’?” Negan couldn’t really deny that, so he decided to deflect instead. “Ok, so what? Did any of the other fucking wives get pregnant? No. If I’m dropping fucking loads into half a dozen women, I would have gotten more than one knocked up.” “How very eloquent.” Rick muttered, stepping closer to Michonne. He really didn’t want to be here anymore. “Sure, let’s talk about the other wives shall we?” Tallulah countered, a wild glint in her eyes that made Negan a bit nervous. “You do know that women talk, don’t you? Compare notes?” she was right in front of him now, staring him down without fear. “I know for a fact that you were usually a pain in the ass about contraception with most of the other girls. Amber told me that you went so far as to wrap your dick in saran wrap once when you ran out of condoms.” “That’s just because I knew that bitch was cheating on me!” Negan exclaimed. “AHA!” Tallulah stood before him with her hands on her hips, her smile triumphant. “So you wouldn’t have sex with her without protection because you knew she cheated, but you constantly had unprotected sex with me, meaning you knew I wasn’t fucking around on you.” She kind of had him there, not that he was going to admit it. “It’s not fuckin mine, Tallulah! Stop trying to pin this shit on me!” “What possible reason could I have for lying to you?” she asked incredulously. “There’s no such thing as child support anymore and even if there were, you’re in fucking prison! You aren’t the big bad leader of The Sanctuary right now. I’m not going to get any perks. I won’t even get any help with childcare! How is pinning my pregnancy on a man that’s imprisoned for life going to help me out at all?” Tallulah knew she’d said the wrong thing the moment the words left her mouth. She also immediately understood why Negan was acting the way he was. He wasn’t the nicest guy in the world and he loved to portray himself as a vicious motherfucker, but he did actually care about people and he secretly loved to be needed. Having a woman out in the world carrying his child all by herself while he was locked away and unable to do anything to help or protect her must be a huge fucking blow to his ego. It’s probably one of his worst nightmares, actually. And she had just ripped open that wound for a room full of people. Great job, Tallulah. Negan looked pretty pissed and maybe even a bit hurt, but he didn’t want to act out on it in front of their current audience. “Just go back to the Sanctuary, Tallulah.” he gritted out. “I can’t.” She replied softly. She may have understood his motivations and even felt a bit bad, but she wasn’t going to back down. “They don’t want me there. No matter where I go, there’s going to be someone that knows me and knows whose baby this is.” “Allegedly.” Negan grunted. “Well I’m sorry Negan, I tried to call Maury so we could get a paternity test, but it turns out that his schedule is chock full of eating peoples faces.” Negan reluctantly chuckled, apparently finished with the yelling for now. “This is not the place for you, Lulu. The people fucking hate me here. You are not gonna have an easy time making fucking friends.” “So? I’m in reality-tv villain mode. I am not here to make friends.” She smiled, walking up to the cell and putting one hand on the bars while the other rested on her belly. She felt a little better now that he was showing a bit of concern for her. “This is not America’s Next Top Best Friend.” “I forgot how fucking weird you are.” Negan shook his head and walked up to place his hand on top of hers on the cell bars. “I missed that about you.” “I miss that about you, too.” She told him, looking into his eyes and allowing herself to have this little moment. She had been telling the truth when she told Rick that she and Negan weren’t in love, but they were fond of one another. “So,” Rick coughed, once again feeling extremely uncomfortable, “You’re admitting this child is yours?” “Fuck no.” Negan responded immediately, dropping his hand and moving back from the bars. “Oh for fucks sake, Negan!” Tallulah exclaimed. “What do I have to do to make you admit that this baby is yours?!” “I don’t fucking know!” he groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Maybe if the kid fucking looks like me or acts like me or some shit?” “So unless this baby comes out wearing a leather jacket and trying to bash the doctors brains in with its umbilical cord, you won’t admit that you’re the father?” Negan only shrugged, completely done with this conversation for now. Tallulah sighed and looked back at Rick to let him know that she was ready to leave. “Fine, but this isn’t over.” Rick escorted her back upstairs with Michonne taking the rear. Before Michonne reached the staircase she turned to look at Negan in his cell. “You’re an even bigger asshole than I thought.” Michonne told him. “Yeah,” he grumbled, sinking down onto his cot. “I know.”

----------

Once again, feel free to send me comments/questions/critiques! This is the first story I’ve written in awhile and I’d love some feedback.

@blueco16 is the first person to ask to be tagged for this fic! Thank you so much!

@negans-network

#negan x ofc #negan x reader #negan's thirst squad #negan fanfiction #negan's network #the walking dead fanfiction #twd negan

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poipoi1912 · 7 years

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Stabler-centric thoughts on Ep 18x13

Transformation complete. From Nu Munch to Nu Stabler, in just 13 episodes!

Seriously though, surprisingly long post ahead: (I would cut it down, but I don’t have the time or the patience)

Carisi-centric thoughts on Ep 18x13

First things first: what the fuck happened to Barba's chocolates? Biggest disappointment of the night. The official SVU account is not to be trusted.

Overall thoughts

Decent episode. It had some issues*, but it was reasonably, well, not terrible. Probably a little above average for Season 18’s standards.

*starting with the issues, to get them out of the way: too much rapist(s), not enough victim. We got to see if the rapist (the first rapist) was “okay” with a plea for rape 2, and he “admirably” said he deserved that punishment, but we never got to see if the victim was okay with that. We never got to see the victim again, period. We don’t know if and how she is coping. She was a total afterthought. We did see the other victims, during the trial, but that was just to poke holes in their stories. It seems that’s the only reason we ever see a victim, in S18. Not to see how they can overcome their rape as survivors, but to make them appear unreliable for the sake of plot twists.

Anyway.

Barba thoughts

I joke about Sonny going from Munch to Stabler, but I’m not joking when I say that Barba is going from Cabot to Novak. Seriously, Barba went from fierce and flawless Ice Queen Alexandra Cabot, who won every case and didn’t give a shit, to earnest but messy Casey Novak, a half-decent lawyer who loses every other case but it's okay because we love her. and i do love her :’)

Barba doesn’t really lose cases, but he never wins them on his own merits (with the sole exception of Making a Rapist, when he got the mother’s testimony on the stand, about 7 years ago, when that episode aired). It’s always Liv, saving the day. Even in episodes which are spent mostly in the courtroom, there are no legal victories. No big moment in which Barba argues the fuck out of a case. He just utters a few snarky tidbits like “Bunny,” so we can all admire Raul’s sass, and then he loses (like he lost the motion about confidentiality) or he wins because of something Liv did.

Has Barba gone soft, not to mention less competent, on purpose, or is this poor characterization? that’s a rhetorical question btw

The Legal Side of SVU

Why does this season waste all these semi-interesting cases? Why did we spend the entire rape trial debunking the victim statements, instead of watching Barba argue the law? I was expecting the “rape gene” theory to figure more heavily into the trial, but it never did. Why not? Why waste that opportunity?

The earlier scene with the minister on the stand, that was way more fun to watch (mostly because it didn’t involve victim-blaming). Why do all these cases, which could be considered vague (and therefore exciting) from a legal standpoint, get reduced to arguing the boring facts, like a suspect’s height? Same thing happened with Imposter, an episode which could have been a million times more interesting, if only it had focused on the law.

For instance, Sonny suggested another case offscreen, and Barba dismissed it offscreen, and we never got to find out what it was. Why bother introducing legally murky cases if you're not going to bother presenting the arguments? Rick Eid is a lawyer, but I can barely tell from watching. He only scrapes the surface. I'm a much younger lawyer, and totally inexperienced when it comes to criminal law, and I still routinely come up with, like, three more things Barba could have done or said in each episode.

But, in fairness, I do have to say the minister/confidentiality theory, as well as the AA comparison, that was actually smart. It was the only unique touch in terms of plot, and they even set it up well, with the prayer, or whatever that was, as Rollins and Carisi were surveilling the group on that earlier scene. That raised my expectations, as did Barba’s argument that the guy was a only being a minister as a hobby (now that’s a fun argument to make!), so the return to mundane victim blaming later on disappointed me even more.

On to Sonny:

Sonny’s Temper

I've said it before (and used the SpongeBob gifs to illustrate it), but there is nothing in Sonny's characterization this season that could be viewed as an organic progression of the Sonny from Seasons 16 and 17. Nor has there been anything plot- or character-related which would justify such a stark change (please no one mention Dodds unless you want to make me laugh).

When is the last time Sonny cracked a smile that wasn’t sarcastic? Remember when Amaro was the angry stereotype, and he'd argue with Barba or Amanda, and Sonny would try to defuse the situation with a joke? Now Sonny has picked up the mantle of Angry Cop. Which, I mean... Sonny, gurl, if Amanda freakin’ Rollins has to scold you about being insubordinate to your superiors, that means you’ve taken it about eighteen steps too far (wait, do the writers remember how she used to talk back to Liv and Dodds? Probably not.)

Sonny and Empathy

Where? 👀 Shouldn’t Sonny have talked to that Will kid more gently? Instead of saying “I’m not a priest or a shrink, just gimme the information, goddammit”? Sonny usually cozies up to perps. This kid wasn’t even a criminal, and Sonny was treating him aggressively, when it was obvious he was fragile and would probably respond better to a milder approach. Which brings me to:

Sonny and Continuity

Sonny told Will (still in a very pointed way, when I was expecting a more casual, if not cordial approach) that the “next” rape “will be on him,” if he didn’t testify. Might that be a callback to Sonny’s own guilt, since he believes the fact his bully murdered someone is “on him”? Even though that’s wrong? And it was extra wrong to lay that kind of a guilt trip on this Will kid? Or did the writers forget about Sonny’s past already?

The Barisi Corner

Barba gave Sonny a sassy look! Because Sonny over-explained a legal matter to show off! And then he sarcastically thanked Sonny! Classic S16 material. We are blessed!

“I don’t care about Barba”

Seriously though, Sonny said "I don't care about Barba", meaning he cares about the case more, or about the victim, even if that means making a colleague mad. And that’s fair, especially in the heat of the moment. But this is coming a week after Barba's secret is (almost?) revealed, at least according to the original production order. What can we deduce from that?

I'd like to think (the old) Sonny would be more considerate when talking to a colleague who had recently been compromised, or gone through some type of emotional hardship. So, maybe Barba's secret never actually comes out? Maybe we learn it, as the audience, but it doesn't go public, so Barba ends up worrying over nothing?

Barba obviously doesn't lose his job, so maybe no one finds out (other than Liv, of course, because from that promo we know she tells Barba about the hacker). What if Sonny doesn't find out at all, and he doesn't even get to learn Barba has a secret to begin with? Could Barba's storyline run in parallel to the "main" case, with no other characters (other than Liv, of course) involved? That would be both disappointing (because the writers would be wasting yet another opportunity to integrate Barba and show he is a valued member of the team) and unsurprising (because, S18).

Of course there’s another option; maybe continuity is a non-factor and the writers just never bothered to write anything to further the “Barba’s secret” storyline past that one episode :D

Sonny’s Temper, Vol. 2

As Amanda noted, Sonny totally overreacted during that argument. Why would that be? Does he really think he knows better than Barba, on whether or not jurisprudence from another state is applicable or relevant? Like, that’s not an “opinion,” Sonny. And, even if it were, it’s Barba’s opinion which defines the prosecution’s strategy. If Sonny wants to make these decisions, he should quit the force and start prosecuting perps himself.

Which brings me to:

Sonny and the Law

Dare I hope that’s what the argument was about? Is Sonny getting increasingly frustrated with the fact his job ends when he arrests a perp? That would be a great way to bring back his dilemma about becoming a prosecutor. This type of long-running professional frustration would perfectly explain why he snapped like that. It wasn’t about him knowing better than Barba, it was about him wishing he could be doing Barba’s job. Or even thinking he should be doing it.

Apparently, Sonny researched the case, and he came up with an idea which he presented to Barba offscreen, thinking it could save the day. That’s going above and beyond, from a cop’s perspective. And then Barba rejected his idea without a single word, also offscreen, and that pissed him off. Maybe Sonny felt underappreciated, in terms of his legal skills. He is a licensed attorney, but he is not treated as such. Problem is, he is not a prosecutor, he is a cop, and that’s how he should be treated.

So, what if Sonny’s constant sour mood is because he’s unhappy where he is? Because he wants to do more, from a different position? Maybe that’s the reason for his changed demeanor, and it will be explicitly dealt with near the end of the season. lol yes I’m reaching for the stars, Sonny’s law aspirations will probably never be mentioned again

Stray Thoughts

Greg Germann was awesome! So evil and hot. Strauss gave Buchanan a run for his money. By the way, remember when he was an ADA? lol neither do the SVU writers. Why didn’t Barba at least tease him, for switching sides? Like he did to Calhoon (except for her it was the other way around, when she advocated for that victim in that one episode). It would have taken three seconds, and it would have added context.

What's that? Barba also had an abusive father? lol no one cares or remembers :D

Okay but, when Liv just popped up on that roof, out of fuckin’ nowhere, to deliver some angst and sell her backstory, totally overshadowing that kid? Classic Liv! (srsly tho she was great in this episode :D)

Speaking of, why didn’t we get a close-up of Sonny on that roof, after he found out about Liv’s history? He was right there! And that, too, would have taken three seconds. I was craning my neck to see his reaction, even though it was off-camera, lol. What a wasted opportunity to show how much he cares about Liv. Oh, and Amanda apparently found out offscreen (as if Liv would ever tell her, lol). This season does not give a single fuck about the squad dynamics.

Peter needs to do that botox thing people do between their eyebrows for their “11” lines, he’ll get wrinkles if he keeps frowning like that in every single one of his close-ups.

Amanda’s coats keep slaying me.

What a waste of Bill Irwin.

That first defense attorney is my fave! I wish he’d been in more scenes!

#sonny carisi #rafael barba #svu #barisi #not really lol but #episode thoughts #long post #this is huge #sorry i'm not sorry #i typed it on my phone #and now i'm posting it with minimal editing #no time to polish it #i get verbose when i'm stressed #well #more verbose than normal lol #i love you all

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onemoreepitaph · 4 years

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The Saga of the Swamp Thing and the trouble of writing comic book reviews.

So, I recently finished finished reading The Saga of the Swamp Thing (or as it’s known in more modern terms, Swamp Thing volume 2). As with every comic (and most things) I finish, I want to review it. This poses a problem, as Swamp Thing is 171 issues covered by a massive amount of different staff members with low cohesion beyond canon. Pasko’s Swamp Thing is vastly different from Moore’s from Collin’s from Millar’s and so forth. This makes it difficult to review as one piece even if I can define it with a beginning, middle, and end. I’ve reviewed comics before without problem. Even comics with multiple directions (such as Miracleman) but not on such a massive scale.

Really, the writing isn’t even the thing that makes it hard to review. I can cover disjointed writing. It’s the disjointedness of everything. In visual mediums, I like to review the visual design, and swamp thing has passed through the hands of so many artists that even recalling all of them is incredibly difficult. I can give kudos to Tatjana Wood’s coloring for by far being the most consistent thing in this comic book. So rather than formatting this like I like to on my other blog, I’m going to give this a more messy crazy whirl.

(If you’re here after Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing and just want to know if you should read the rest jump down to the very bottom (past issue 171))

To start off, let me acknowledge that this is a sequel, and should be treated as such. Since the end of the first volume, Alec Holland is Swamp Thing again (this happens in Challengers of the Unknown, but for all intents and purposes treat the last 2 issues of volume 1 as non-canon, life will be better that way.) Swamp Thing finds a peculiar situation, a man trying to kill his daughter whilst declaring her the anti-christ. Swamp Thing saves her, and thus starts on his next great arc. Unlike the individual stories of volume 1, volume 2 is more arc based. This is for better and for worse, the stories have more character, more plot, and more impact, but also this can lead to dragging and near filler. Generally I’d say it’s just alright in the first few arcs, they’re interesting but unmemorable. The story really picks up in issue 16 with a few character reintroductions, and we’re off to the races from there. Swamp Thing is a famous comic book, and for good reason. The next arcs are a work of brilliance, taking the horror hero concept through some truly interesting reconstructions with absolutely brilliant writing and amazing visual design.

While it’s no painting, the cohesion between writing and visuals is near perfect. You can tell the team was skilled and in alignment. The Love and Death arc of this series is both an amazing story, and the arc that broke the comics code. This marked the evolution of swamp thing from the newspaper stand kids’ content to the saga of respectable storytelling we now hold comic books to be (at their best at least). But no gold rush lasts forever, and the other side of the 50 mark the series begins to cool down into an interesting but only somewhat above average niche it slides into by 100. After that, the series gets turbulent in some interesting ways, which each consecutive writer having drastically different visions and some moments that changed the story almost as much as The Anatomy Lesson did. Your mileage on the post-100 side of swamp thing will probably vary a LOT, with different tones both thematically and visually throughout the rest of the series. If you were to show me issue 166 and tell me it’s the same comic as issue 66, I would find it incredibly difficult to believe you (assuming I weren’t accustomed to these massive changes.) I can say however, that the final ending of the series is a true highlight. It pulls from the legacy of the character into quite a unique finale.

So, here’s the question. Do I recommend Swamp Thing volume 2? Short answer, yes. Long Answer, maybe? It’s status as an un-cohesive story makes it hard to recommend. Most people would recommend issues 21-64, but I’m not sure I agree. I do recommend it from the start, knowing that it will get better. Issue 64 is a great ending, and the only good drop off point until the very end. I can with little doubt recommend up to there. Beyond that is less of a solid go. I firmly believe if you carry on past that point, you will at some point grow distaste with the series. It can be all over the place, and at times I thought to myself “I’d enjoy this story if it were it’s own thing and not Swamp Thing” but I found the experience to be worth it in the end. The transition from 64 to beyond is a bit rough, as 64 feels like a good point to end end the series, but it continues on with a writer who’s clearly not as good as the writer before him. When Nancy A. Collins comes along in the early 100s, she drastically changes the tone, and with Millar starting work on the series it becomes almost unrecognizable as anything before it. I do think, despite all of this, it comes together as one good piece. I think most people will grow to dislike the series at some point, but only temporarily. So if you find yourself at issue 64 and want more, I advise you to carry on, but know it will be a crazy and imperfect experience.

Rating this series in final is difficult, at any point it was somewhere between a 6 and a 9, but usually floated around 7. Overall I think I’ll give it a 7.5, albeit a very interesting 7.5

So, here’s the gloves off spoilers in section. If you’ve never read any of swamp thing volume 2, I implore you to take your leave here. This is mostly for those who have read Moore’s run. I’m going to do a run by run break down. Martin Pasko’s run (1-19) is fine. I found it enjoyable, mostly towards the very end, and it lays the groundwork for some stuff that will pay off later. Really, throw issue 20 into this as well, as it’s just an ending piece for this run. I think it’s a fine enough lead up to the Moore run, but if it existed in isolation I wouldn’t remember it one bit. I recommend it for first time readers, but if you’ve already read beyond it there’s no real point in going back to it. The Moore run (20-64) explains itself. It’s famous. It’s pretty awesome. I generally liked it, even if I didn’t love it. It’s not my favorite Moore work because I don’t think it builds on itself all that well, but the good parts are damn good and art and prose are excellent. I really feel like the space arc was definitely in the territory of “more neat than interesting” but it was a good read nonetheless. oh god my cat wants attention he’s so adorable aaaaaaaa Everytime i type he paws at me for attention ok he went to go do something else. Okay so, Rick Veitch (65-87). Veitch worked as an artist with Moore, so he and Moore are very much on the same page. Despite Moore closing the book in 64, Veitch reopens it with something that feels consistent. The nearly logical next step, the problem is Veitch is not Moore. Veitch had a shitty job, of following that up. He did it the best he could, but he just wasn’t as skilled. If you want more Swamp Thing, it will give you that, but if you want more ground-breaking comics kino, you’re out of luck. It’s a fine read, but the gap is noticeable. The other problem with Veitch is that due to the issue 88 fiasco, his plot didn’t finish by his own hands. Some people read just Veitch, but his ending isn’t an ending. He was supposed to be followed up by Gaiman (who wrote the excellent annual 5), but the issue 88 fiasco made Gaiman also back out. While this was a pretty damn respectable move on Gaiman’s part, it makes me sad wondering what that run could have been. Doug Wheeler (88-109) came in and finished up the arc and then wrote his own war epic, Quest of the Elementals. While Wheeler is a lot of the times criticized as being the bottom of the barrel for Swamp Thing, I found him to be about on par with Veitch. Interesting, but not remarkable. I do give him credit for having an actual ending to his run, which I suppose could be used as an ending point for the series but it’s clearly an arc ending and not a story ending. Then Nancy A. Collins comes in (110-138). Her Swamp Thing is tonally quite different. It’s a much slower, toned down Swamp Thing. A lot of times people describe it as being closer in tone to the pre-Moore era. I liked how it spent more time developing the supporting cast and actually giving Swamp Thing time to be at home with his family. The run was almost comfy until right after the move to Vertigo, it stopped being so. I don’t know why, but on the way out Collins decided to break the status quo, leaving a really unhappy ending. The early parts of her run were some of my favorite parts of Swamp Thing in awhile, but the ending was just upsetting. This is followed up by a one issue Black Orchid crossover, which is neat I suppose. Then we get to Millar (140-171). He starts out his run working with Grant Morrison in this 4 issue story that’s almost pure insanity. It was interesting, but really was a prologue to Millar’s greater run to come. At first I did not like Millar’s run at all. A fuckload had changed. The art was in this simplified, dynamic style that contrasted abrasively with the prior style. The story had become lonely and quite a dark downer, but it picks up. The first real arc, Parliament of Stones, is the biggest offender of being both a downer and not very good. I think from here, it really starts to improve. It still is pretty dirty and down, but it’s got a bit more humanity to it rather than just being shitty for shitty’s sake. The last stretch, Trial by Fire, was quite fantastic. It makes real good on the size of the Swamp Thing legacy, running this clearly Alan Moore like story, and just keeps pulling brilliance out until it ends on an ultimately upbeat note.I see why Millar’s run is the most recommended past Veitch, but it really is rough getting used to. Ultimately though, it justifies both itself and a lot of the weight that the series has gained.

#dc #dc comics #swamp thing #alan moore #mark millar

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amtushinfosolutionspage · 6 years

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DGB Grab Bag: Bench Pressing 300 Lbs., Fixing the Refs, and Enjoy Great Hockey

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: Rick Dudley – The latest Carolina Hurricanes president of player development held a conference call to discuss his new role, and he said this:

Yes, there’s context to that quote. No, I’m not going to tell you what it is. It’s way better if you just imagine that he said it out of nowhere. I like to imagine that it was the only thing he said, and he just repeated it as the answer to every question he was asked, but you make your own artistic choices.

The second star: Football players at hockey games – I thought we’d kind of played this one out last year, but nope—they’re back, and they’re getting creative.

I bet those dudes can bench-press 300 pounds.

The first star: Dustin Byfuglien – He has a new goal celebration: just straight-up punching his teammates in the face.

I know what you’re thinking: Can he also bench press 300 pounds? Probably, although we’ll have to wait for him to take a front office job to find out for sure. But we do know he can deadlift two Nashville Predators at once, so I’m going to lean towards yes.

Outrage of the Week

The issue: The officiating in this year’s playoffs.

The outrage: It’s been awful.

Is it justified: Sure it is. This is the time of year when every play counts. One bad call can lead to a goal, which might determine the game that decides the series. In a league where all the teams are so close, good enough isn’t going to be good enough. Mistakes will happen and nobody expects perfection, but the officials need to be at their very best. They haven’t been. They’ve been nowhere near good enough. I know it, you know it, we all know it.

Great. So now that we’re all nodding, what do we do about it?

That’s the harder question. It’s one thing to point at the officiating and say “it’s bad.” Identifying a problem is half the battle. But the second half is the hard part. How do we fix this?

There are a few possible answers. The most common is to mumble something about consistency. But that doesn’t really apply this year—the officiating has been consistent. It’s been bad just about everywhere. So consistency is a copout.

The other popular option is to argue that we just need to call the rulebook as written. NHL referees are notoriously reluctant to call penalties in the playoffs, operating under the credo that they shouldn’t decide the game. That doesn’t always work, since letting a play go can decide a game too—just ask Flyers or Bruins fans. And it’s flawed logic anyway; if a player commits a penalty that costs his team the game, that’s his fault, not the ref’s.

But there’s a problem here too: You don’t actually want the referees to strictly call the rulebook. You say you do, but you don’t, because they’d be calling penalties constantly and you’d lose your mind. We’ve been down this road before—remember the first few weeks of the 2005-06 season?—and we all hated it. And those were meaningless October games. Try giving out 15 power plays in a Game 7 and see what fans think.

Maybe there’s a middle ground somewhere, but the fact is that we won’t be able to agree on where it is. You’ll always want the referees to be more strict when it comes to the other side, and to “just let them play” when it’s your guys.

So what else? Do we rewrite the rulebook to remove some of the subjectivity? Maybe, but that just gets you more puck-over-glass type calls, and not many of us like those. More replay review? No thanks. Better referees? These are the best we’ve got. More referees? The ice is crowded enough. Better training? Maybe that could help a little, but only a little.

Or maybe we’re working our way towards what I’m worried might be the real answer: We really can’t fix it. This is just the best we can do, or at least reasonably close to it. Maybe today’s version of the NHL is just so fast that officiating it during the season is tough enough; get us into the playoffs when the intensity is through the roof and everyone is going all out all the time, and it becomes just about impossible.

Maybe you really do have to call everything, even though you know fans will hate that even more than what we have now. Or maybe you just accept that nobody will ever be happy, and just hope that everybody’s unhappy at the same time and in roughly equal measure. At least that will feel like it’s fair.

That’s a depressing thought, and I’d love to be talked out of holding it. In the meantime, I’m going to be over here mumbling about consistency and pretending that will be enough.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

Lou Lamoriello lost his job as Maple Leafs’ GM this week. He wasn’t quite fired, or even really relieved of his duties. Instead, the team decided that it would stick to the plan of having Lamoriello move to an advisor’s role after three years as GM, despite speculation that he wanted to stay on the job. We’ll have to see if Lamoriello bothers to stick around or looks to head elsewhere, especially since he was reportedly disappointed when the decision was made by Leafs’ president Brendan Shanahan.

If this is the end of Lamoriello’s legendary career as an NHL GM, it will be ironic that Shanahan was the one to deliver the news. Almost 31 years ago, Lamoriello made Shanahan his first ever NHL draft pick. The two have been close ever since. We’ll see if that’s still the case.

In the meantime, let’s use the news to find this week’s obscure player. Everyone knows that Shanahan was Lamoriello’s first ever draft pick, but who was his second? As it turns out, it’s another name that ends up having an impact with the Maple Leafs, so to speak: Swedish defenseman Ricard Persson.

Persson was an 18-year-old prospect when the Devils grabbed him with the 23rd overall pick in that 1987 draft; he went two picks ahead of future Rangers playoff hero Stephane Matteau. But rather than head to New Jersey, he stayed home and began a career in the Swedish Elite League. He wouldn’t arrive in North American until 1995, playing a few games with the Devils that year before being traded to the Blues and finally settling in to a full-time NHL role for the 1996-97 season.

He was mostly a depth guy in St. Louis, but he did have one memorable moment. With the Blues and Coyotes embroiled in a Game 7 overtime classic in 1999, Persson took the harmless looking shot that was tipped in by Pierre Turgeon for the series winner.

By 2000, Persson was a free agent and signed with Ottawa. He was hurt for most of his time there, but was healthy enough to dress for a few games in the 2002 playoffs. That turned out to be bad news for the Senators; with the team leading 2-0 in Game 6 and looking to wrap up their series with the Maple Leafs, Persson delivered the fateful shove from behind that split open Tie Domi’s head. (Domi later admitted he drove his own head into the boards in an attempt to draw blood.) Persson was ejected, the Leafs scored twice on the ensuing major, and went on to win both the game and the series. As Daniel Alfredsson memorably put it, “If Tie Domi had better balance, we would have won the series.”

Persson played in the Game 7 loss; it would be his last appearance in the NHL. He’d play in Europe and later Japan before retiring in 2009. There’s no word on whether Lamoriello and Shanahan keep in touch with him, but maybe they should—at least Persson has some experience with getting the Leafs to the second round.

Be It Resolved

Heading into the second round of the playoffs, plenty of us expected that this could be the best two weeks of the season. The first round had admittedly been a bit of a dud. But surely, we all thought, the second round would deliver something good.

We were wrong. So far, it’s been far better than that.

The Jets/Predators series has been awesome. The Bruins and Lightning have been almost as good. The Penguins and Capitals are doing that old familiar setup where the Caps build some hope and then get crushed. And even the Knights and Sharks are delivering some top-notch entertainment. Forget being the best round of this year’s playoffs. This may end up being one of the best rounds in recent history.

And yet, somehow, some fans are still finding a way to complain about it.

Sure, the argument goes, the Jets and Preds are putting on an amazing show. But they shouldn’t be. At least not yet. They’re the two best teams in the league, and they shouldn’t be facing each other in the second round at all. That should be a conference final matchup at least, if not a Stanley Cup final.

Same for the Lightning and Bruins, who were the top teams in the East. Surely they should be playing the Penguins and Capitals, setting up a higher stakes meeting a round later.

The playoff format just doesn’t make much sense. Isn’t there a better way we could be doing this?

The short answer: Yes, of course there is. The slightly longer answer: Hey, could you stop whining about this long enough to enjoy the completely amazing matchups we’re seeing right now?

Look, we’ve got all summer to argue about the playoff format. Then we’ve got all of next season too, since the league isn’t going to actually change anything. Heck, let’s agree to argue about it in two weeks, when the third round is here and we’re not getting the absolute best possible matchups each conference could deliver.

But right now, a lot of you sound like the kid who got absolutely every item from his letter to Santa, but is throwing a fit because he had to open the presents on Christmas Eve instead of the next morning.

And by the way, there’s no guarantee that the Jets and Predators would be meeting in the conference final, because having the two best regular season teams cross path in the playoffs is incredibly rare. From 1989 through 2016 it had only happened four times in 27 postseasons; twice in the Cup final and twice in the conference final. Then it happened last year and again this year, all because of the new playoff format. That seems like a feature, not a bug.

That’s not to say the division format is perfect. It’s not even to say that it’s better than the alternatives. If you’d prefer a conference-based system, sure, maybe you’re right. If you want to advocate for a 1-through-16 format, OK, I’m ready to listen.

But just not right now. Be it resolved that we all just shut up about the playoff format for a few more days while we enjoy the very best hockey this league has served up in a long time. Once we’re all exhausted and hoarse from cheering it on, then you can feel free to tell us how it was all somehow a terrible idea.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

Today marks an important milestone in Nashville Predators history. It was 20 years ago this day that the league formally granted the franchise, making the Predators the league’s 27th team. That announcement was a little bit anti-climactic, given that the team had been conditionally awarded a year earlier and already had a name, logo, GM, and head coach. But this was the day that it all became official.

While the Predators are one of the best teams in the league today, there weren’t a lot of highlights in the first decade or so of the team’s existence; they didn’t even win a playoff round until 2011. That much losing will wear on a team, and the Predators were no different. In their case, that meant spending much of the 2007-08 season airing increasingly ridiculous intros before games, like this masterpiece of modern animation.

So we start off with the riff from “Enter Sandman,” because that’s the sort of music you associate with Nashville, and a flying collection of blue things that are either meteorites, UFOs, or an unfortunate family of Smurfs that tried to make a home inside of the Blue Jackets goal cannon. Whatever they are, they’re flying all over what I assume is supposed to be the Nashville skyline while dark clouds and lightning erupt around them.

Our mysterious blue objects eventually crash land, and reveal themselves to be the 2007-08 Central Division. Specifically, they’re four generic 3D models wearing the jerseys of Central Division teams, but I guess that’s close enough.

A subsequent shot reveals that the four players are also giants, which seems like an important detail. Who can save the city of Nashville from these monsters?

Oh good, a giant saber-tooth cat has arrived, and is running loose through the town. This makes things… better? I guess it’s better.

I’m not sure whether or not this is supposed to be Predators’ mascot Gnash. He doesn’t really look like the happy-go-lucky fellow we’re used to, but maybe Gnash was into the performance-enhancing drugs back in his younger days. That would explain his body breaking down years later. Somebody in Nashville please let me know if this is canon.

Alternate theory: This is just a lost and confused Olli Jokinen looking for more teammates.

Uh, the cat just destroyed a bridge. Meanwhile, the players are just standing around. Wait, are we sure they’re the bad guys here? They honestly just kind of look like they want to hang out and play some pond hockey.

We never do find out, though, because the cat leaps down, lunges towards the Red Wings player, and… uh… murders him. Yeah, he just straight up ate that dude’s throat. I guess we should be glad that he didn’t suffer, but damn, that man probably had a family.

The Blues guy doesn’t last much longer, as he’s sent flying into a building. That’s two victims and millions of dollars in infrastructure damage, if you’re keeping track. Man, I hope this ends with this thing being euthanized. Aren’t there any superheroes who could show up to save the day. (Remembers what that would look like.) You know what, never mind, we’re good.

That leaves us with the Blue Jackets and Blackhawks players. Both are wearing reflective wraparound visors, the way hockey players do. Our cat-beast is apparently tired of physically mauling his opponents, and decides to drown them instead. He cracks the ice open and sends both of them to an icy doom, which is still only the second worst thing involving the Blue Jackets that’s ever happened to the Blackhawks.

By the way, we all noticed the two players switch sides and back between shots, right? Nice continuity editing. I’m starting to think this whole thing might be fake.

Having finished killing everyone, the cat dabbles in a little more light property damage before mounting a building. We then cut away to a live action shot of that same cat vomiting Predators’ players onto the ice, at which point the game presumably begins. I’m sure the fans were fired up, at least once they comforted their hysterical, sobbing children.

Epilogue: The giant predator-cat is now retired, and spends its days bench-pressing 300 pounds.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you’d like to see included in this column? Email Sean at [email protected] .

DGB Grab Bag: Bench Pressing 300 Lbs., Fixing the Refs, and Enjoy Great Hockey syndicated from https://australiahoverboards.wordpress.com

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flauntpage · 6 years

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DGB Grab Bag: Bench Pressing 300 Lbs., Fixing the Refs, and Enjoy Great Hockey

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: Rick Dudley – The latest Carolina Hurricanes president of player development held a conference call to discuss his new role, and he said this:

Yes, there's context to that quote. No, I'm not going to tell you what it is. It's way better if you just imagine that he said it out of nowhere. I like to imagine that it was the only thing he said, and he just repeated it as the answer to every question he was asked, but you make your own artistic choices.

The second star: Football players at hockey games – I thought we'd kind of played this one out last year, but nope—they're back, and they're getting creative.

I bet those dudes can bench-press 300 pounds.

The first star: Dustin Byfuglien – He has a new goal celebration: just straight-up punching his teammates in the face.

I know what you're thinking: Can he also bench press 300 pounds? Probably, although we'll have to wait for him to take a front office job to find out for sure. But we do know he can deadlift two Nashville Predators at once, so I'm going to lean towards yes.

Outrage of the Week

The issue: The officiating in this year's playoffs. The outrage: It's been awful. Is it justified: Sure it is. This is the time of year when every play counts. One bad call can lead to a goal, which might determine the game that decides the series. In a league where all the teams are so close, good enough isn't going to be good enough. Mistakes will happen and nobody expects perfection, but the officials need to be at their very best. They haven't been. They've been nowhere near good enough. I know it, you know it, we all know it.

Great. So now that we're all nodding, what do we do about it?

That's the harder question. It's one thing to point at the officiating and say "it's bad." Identifying a problem is half the battle. But the second half is the hard part. How do we fix this?

There are a few possible answers. The most common is to mumble something about consistency. But that doesn't really apply this year—the officiating has been consistent. It's been bad just about everywhere. So consistency is a copout.

The other popular option is to argue that we just need to call the rulebook as written. NHL referees are notoriously reluctant to call penalties in the playoffs, operating under the credo that they shouldn't decide the game. That doesn't always work, since letting a play go can decide a game too—just ask Flyers or Bruins fans. And it's flawed logic anyway; if a player commits a penalty that costs his team the game, that's his fault, not the ref's.

But there's a problem here too: You don't actually want the referees to strictly call the rulebook. You say you do, but you don't, because they'd be calling penalties constantly and you'd lose your mind. We've been down this road before—remember the first few weeks of the 2005-06 season?—and we all hated it. And those were meaningless October games. Try giving out 15 power plays in a Game 7 and see what fans think.

Maybe there's a middle ground somewhere, but the fact is that we won't be able to agree on where it is. You'll always want the referees to be more strict when it comes to the other side, and to "just let them play" when it's your guys.

So what else? Do we rewrite the rulebook to remove some of the subjectivity? Maybe, but that just gets you more puck-over-glass type calls, and not many of us like those. More replay review? No thanks. Better referees? These are the best we've got. More referees? The ice is crowded enough. Better training? Maybe that could help a little, but only a little.

Or maybe we're working our way towards what I'm worried might be the real answer: We really can't fix it. This is just the best we can do, or at least reasonably close to it. Maybe today's version of the NHL is just so fast that officiating it during the season is tough enough; get us into the playoffs when the intensity is through the roof and everyone is going all out all the time, and it becomes just about impossible.

Maybe you really do have to call everything, even though you know fans will hate that even more than what we have now. Or maybe you just accept that nobody will ever be happy, and just hope that everybody's unhappy at the same time and in roughly equal measure. At least that will feel like it's fair.

That's a depressing thought, and I'd love to be talked out of holding it. In the meantime, I'm going to be over here mumbling about consistency and pretending that will be enough.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

Lou Lamoriello lost his job as Maple Leafs' GM this week. He wasn't quite fired, or even really relieved of his duties. Instead, the team decided that it would stick to the plan of having Lamoriello move to an advisor's role after three years as GM, despite speculation that he wanted to stay on the job. We'll have to see if Lamoriello bothers to stick around or looks to head elsewhere, especially since he was reportedly disappointed when the decision was made by Leafs' president Brendan Shanahan.

If this is the end of Lamoriello's legendary career as an NHL GM, it will be ironic that Shanahan was the one to deliver the news. Almost 31 years ago, Lamoriello made Shanahan his first ever NHL draft pick. The two have been close ever since. We'll see if that's still the case.

In the meantime, let's use the news to find this week's obscure player. Everyone knows that Shanahan was Lamoriello's first ever draft pick, but who was his second? As it turns out, it's another name that ends up having an impact with the Maple Leafs, so to speak: Swedish defenseman Ricard Persson.

Persson was an 18-year-old prospect when the Devils grabbed him with the 23rd overall pick in that 1987 draft; he went two picks ahead of future Rangers playoff hero Stephane Matteau. But rather than head to New Jersey, he stayed home and began a career in the Swedish Elite League. He wouldn't arrive in North American until 1995, playing a few games with the Devils that year before being traded to the Blues and finally settling in to a full-time NHL role for the 1996-97 season.

By 2000, Persson was a free agent and signed with Ottawa. He was hurt for most of his time there, but was healthy enough to dress for a few games in the 2002 playoffs. That turned out to be bad news for the Senators; with the team leading 2-0 in Game 6 and looking to wrap up their series with the Maple Leafs, Persson delivered the fateful shove from behind that split open Tie Domi's head. (Domi later admitted he drove his own head into the boards in an attempt to draw blood.) Persson was ejected, the Leafs scored twice on the ensuing major, and went on to win both the game and the series. As Daniel Alfredsson memorably put it, "If Tie Domi had better balance, we would have won the series."

Persson played in the Game 7 loss; it would be his last appearance in the NHL. He'd play in Europe and later Japan before retiring in 2009. There's no word on whether Lamoriello and Shanahan keep in touch with him, but maybe they should—at least Persson has some experience with getting the Leafs to the second round.

Be It Resolved

We were wrong. So far, it's been far better than that.

The Jets/Predators series has been awesome. The Bruins and Lightning have been almost as good. The Penguins and Capitals are doing that old familiar setup where the Caps build some hope and then get crushed. And even the Knights and Sharks are delivering some top-notch entertainment. Forget being the best round of this year's playoffs. This may end up being one of the best rounds in recent history.

And yet, somehow, some fans are still finding a way to complain about it.

Sure, the argument goes, the Jets and Preds are putting on an amazing show. But they shouldn't be. At least not yet. They're the two best teams in the league, and they shouldn't be facing each other in the second round at all. That should be a conference final matchup at least, if not a Stanley Cup final.

Same for the Lightning and Bruins, who were the top teams in the East. Surely they should be playing the Penguins and Capitals, setting up a higher stakes meeting a round later.

The playoff format just doesn't make much sense. Isn't there a better way we could be doing this?

The short answer: Yes, of course there is. The slightly longer answer: Hey, could you stop whining about this long enough to enjoy the completely amazing matchups we're seeing right now?

Look, we've got all summer to argue about the playoff format. Then we've got all of next season too, since the league isn't going to actually change anything. Heck, let's agree to argue about it in two weeks, when the third round is here and we're not getting the absolute best possible matchups each conference could deliver.

And by the way, there's no guarantee that the Jets and Predators would be meeting in the conference final, because having the two best regular season teams cross path in the playoffs is incredibly rare. From 1989 through 2016 it had only happened four times in 27 postseasons; twice in the Cup final and twice in the conference final. Then it happened last year and again this year, all because of the new playoff format. That seems like a feature, not a bug.

That's not to say the division format is perfect. It's not even to say that it's better than the alternatives. If you'd prefer a conference-based system, sure, maybe you're right. If you want to advocate for a 1-through-16 format, OK, I'm ready to listen.

But just not right now. Be it resolved that we all just shut up about the playoff format for a few more days while we enjoy the very best hockey this league has served up in a long time. Once we're all exhausted and hoarse from cheering it on, then you can feel free to tell us how it was all somehow a terrible idea.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

Today marks an important milestone in Nashville Predators history. It was 20 years ago this day that the league formally granted the franchise, making the Predators the league's 27th team. That announcement was a little bit anti-climactic, given that the team had been conditionally awarded a year earlier and already had a name, logo, GM, and head coach. But this was the day that it all became official.

While the Predators are one of the best teams in the league today, there weren't a lot of highlights in the first decade or so of the team's existence; they didn't even win a playoff round until 2011. That much losing will wear on a team, and the Predators were no different. In their case, that meant spending much of the 2007-08 season airing increasingly ridiculous intros before games, like this masterpiece of modern animation.

So we start off with the riff from "Enter Sandman," because that's the sort of music you associate with Nashville, and a flying collection of blue things that are either meteorites, UFOs, or an unfortunate family of Smurfs that tried to make a home inside of the Blue Jackets goal cannon. Whatever they are, they're flying all over what I assume is supposed to be the Nashville skyline while dark clouds and lightning erupt around them.

Our mysterious blue objects eventually crash land, and reveal themselves to be the 2007-08 Central Division. Specifically, they're four generic 3D models wearing the jerseys of Central Division teams, but I guess that's close enough.

A subsequent shot reveals that the four players are also giants, which seems like an important detail. Who can save the city of Nashville from these monsters?

Oh good, a giant saber-tooth cat has arrived, and is running loose through the town. This makes things… better? I guess it's better.

I'm not sure whether or not this is supposed to be Predators' mascot Gnash. He doesn't really look like the happy-go-lucky fellow we're used to, but maybe Gnash was into the performance-enhancing drugs back in his younger days. That would explain his body breaking down years later. Somebody in Nashville please let me know if this is canon.

Alternate theory: This is just a lost and confused Olli Jokinen looking for more teammates.

Uh, the cat just destroyed a bridge. Meanwhile, the players are just standing around. Wait, are we sure they're the bad guys here? They honestly just kind of look like they want to hang out and play some pond hockey.

We never do find out, though, because the cat leaps down, lunges towards the Red Wings player, and… uh… murders him. Yeah, he just straight up ate that dude's throat. I guess we should be glad that he didn't suffer, but damn, that man probably had a family.

The Blues guy doesn't last much longer, as he's sent flying into a building. That's two victims and millions of dollars in infrastructure damage, if you're keeping track. Man, I hope this ends with this thing being euthanized. Aren't there any superheroes who could show up to save the day. (Remembers what that would look like.) You know what, never mind, we're good.

By the way, we all noticed the two players switch sides and back between shots, right? Nice continuity editing. I'm starting to think this whole thing might be fake.

Having finished killing everyone, the cat dabbles in a little more light property damage before mounting a building. We then cut away to a live action shot of that same cat vomiting Predators' players onto the ice, at which point the game presumably begins. I'm sure the fans were fired up, at least once they comforted their hysterical, sobbing children.

Epilogue: The giant predator-cat is now retired, and spends its days bench-pressing 300 pounds.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at [email protected] .

DGB Grab Bag: Bench Pressing 300 Lbs., Fixing the Refs, and Enjoy Great Hockey published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

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flauntpage · 6 years

Text

DGB Grab Bag: Torts Owned, An Actual Trade, And Arguing Over a 27-Year-Old Fight

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: Paul Maurice – He's either unhappy with a call, or he's doing an impression of me every time I check in on the comment section of something I wrote.

The second star: John Tortorella – Speaking of angry coaches, here's the perpetually crusty John Tortorella finding out that his "my way or the highway" approach didn't work as well as he thought on the 2004 Lightning.

The first star: Jonathan Drouin – Uh, Jonathan? What are you doing Jonathan?

(For the curious, an explanation of what was happening can be found here.)

The NHL Actually Got Something Right

Holy crap, you guys, the NHL had a trade this week.

And not just some piddling little move, where some guy you'd never heard of gets shipped out in a contract dump. This was a genuine blockbuster, one involving three teams, two first-line centers and a whole bunch of picks and prospects. Matt Duchene is an Ottawa Senator. Kyle Turris is a Nashville Predator. And the Colorado Avalanche picked up a whole bunch of stuff.

And maybe the best part of the whole story is that all three GMs involved had to think outside the box to make it happen. As regular readers know, I don't have much time for modern-day GMs, most of whom spend more time making excuses than doing their jobs. The NHL has slowly morphed into a league run by risk-averse front offices who are terrified of making a mistake, and would rather ride their loser point-inflated records to a playoff bubble than actually swing for the fences and try to win. Well, fair's fair. If we're going to hammer away GMs who hide under their desks, we have to applaud three guys who didn't.

It's no surprise to see David Poile show up in a major trade. He's always been one of the exceptions to the "timid GMs" rule, having pulled off several blockbusters over the years. He's well into his fourth decade as an NHL GM, and he's not here to screw around. We'll have more on him in a bit, but for now let's just state the obvious: David Poile rules.

Joe Sakic, at least as a GM, has not ruled. He's been ripped pretty much constantly, here and elsewhere, and seemed to have made a mess of the Duchene situation. But he largely salvaged it with this deal, which is getting rave reviews from an Avs perspective. And he did it by getting away from that old GM staple of insisting on a player, a pick and a prospect in every trade. We've had some fun with that whole concept around these parts before, but it's become a crutch for GMs under the gun to make a move. When you hear the guy in charge of your favorite team mindlessly repeating "a player, a pick and a prospect" to friendly media members, there's a good chance you're screwed.

Sakic seemed to be heading down that road. But in the end, he understood that what matters in a trade like this is getting as much value as possible, and that can come in different shapes and sizes. Sakic didn't get a single player back in the deal who comes close to making up for the loss of Duchene today. But that's OK—he got the value where he could, even if that meant veering away from what he'd originally wanted. And now he has assets he can flip in other deals to get better right now, if that's what he chooses to do with them.

That brings us to the real star of the deal, Senators' GM Pierre Dorion. Nobody stuck their neck out further to make this deal than Dorion, who's been kicking around front offices since the 90s but has only been a GM for a little over a year. He doesn't have Poile's resume or Sakic's name value. If things don't go well in Ottawa, there's no guarantee he gets another shot somewhere else. If you could excuse anyone for being more focused on playing it safe and covering their behind instead of taking chances, Dorion's the guy.

But he didn't. Not only was he the driving force behind making the deal happen, but he took on far more immediate risk than anyone else in the move. Strip away the three-team aspect, and this trade is admirably old school in its simplicity for the Senators. They had a guy. They saw some other team's guy. They decided that the other guy was better than their guy. And so they made a trade to get him.

For Ottawa, this wasn't about balancing the present vs. the future. It wasn't even about dealing from a strong position to shore up a weak one. This was them saying "Matt Duchene is better than Kyle Turris, and we'll pay a premium to prove it." We won't really know how well Sakic really did on this deal for years. Poile has a window of a few years to win a Cup to make his end pay off. But Dorion will be judged immediately, because everyone is going to spend the rest of the season comparing Turris and Duchene on a game-by-game basis. If the Senators screwed up, we're going to know about it, and soon.

It took some serious nerve to pull the trigger here, for all three teams but especially Ottawa. Fans of those teams can draw their own conclusions about the deal, and whether they feel better or worse about their outlook going forward. But for the rest of us, it was refreshing to see that somebody out there is still willing to put on their big kid pants and do their job. It will be fascinating to see how it all plays out.

And in the meantime, let this be yet another reminder: When the GM of your favorite team makes a well-rehearsed frowny face into a camera and starts mumbling about how you just can't trade anymore these days, he's lying to you. Blockbuster deals aren't dead in the NHL. They just take some hard work, a little creativity, and some guts.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

The Duchene deal felt like the sort of deal you'd have seen back in the 1990s, when three-team deals were relatively common. So for this week's obscure player, let's go with a guy who was included in quite possibly the biggest three-way trade in NHL history: defenseman Brian Benning.

Benning was taken by the Blues in the second round of the 1984 draft, one pick after legendary Maple Leafs blueliner Todd Gill. In a weird historical quirk, that made Benning the first Blues draft pick in two years—the team had no-showed the 1983 draft, and traded their first-round pick in 1984. Benning got a cup of coffee in St. Louis that year and then spent a season with the Canadian national team before earning a full-time NHL job in 1986. As a rookie, he finished fourth in Calder voting, one point ahead of Pokey Reddick.

He was dealt to the Kings for a draft pick in 1989, and stuck around until 1992, when he was traded again. Twice, technically. Benning was part of a massive three-way trade between the Kings, Penguins and Flyers that saw Paul Coffey come to L.A., Mark Recchi go to the Flyers, and Rick Tocchet head to the Penguins, among many other pieces. It was a jaw-dropping deal, one in which the defending champion Pens shipped out two future Hall-of-Famers in an effort to get tougher, and it saw Benning make a brief stop in Pittsburgh before ending up in Philadelphia. (He'd cross paths with the Penguins again a few months later, when he speared Mario Lemieux.)

He'd spend a year with the Flyers before heading onto Edmonton and later Florida. In all, he played ten NHL seasons for five teams, recording 296 points before retiring in 1995. And yes, the name probably sounds familiar to today's fans. His son Matt is currently a defenseman with the Oilers, and his brother Jim is the GM of the Canucks. Jim has yet to pull off any three-way blockbusters of his own, although if he needs any advice on how to make one work he won't have to look far.

Be It Resolved

This was a tough and divisive week in the world of politics. It's normal and even healthy for two sides to disagree on the issues. But this week, the debate transcended mere right and wrong. Instead, we found one side unable or unwilling to acknowledge even the plain facts sitting right in front of us, leaving the rest of us to wonder if we're still living in a political world where concepts like "facts" and "truth" even matter anymore.

I'm referring, of course, to the debate over whether Troy Crowder won his fight with Bob Probert. Yes, in what has to stand as just about the ultimate "Meanwhile, in Canada" story of our time, Ontario politics was momentarily embroiled in a dispute over a fight from an NHL game in 1990. This really happened.

Here's the backstory: Troy Crowder is running as a candidate for Ontario's Progressive Conservative Party in the Sudbury riding. Crowder is also a former NHL tough guy, one who played 150 games, scored nine goals, and logged 433 penalty minutes. At a speech, PC leader Patrick Brown said this about Crowder: "He actually as a rookie beat up Bob Probert."

That's quite a claim, given that Probert almost never lost. And the province's Liberal Party quickly jumped on it, emailing out an instant fact check. Their conclusion? "Fact: Troy Crowder did not fight Bob Probert in his rookie year. It’s also debatable who won when they actually did fight."

Two problems here.

One, Crowder certainly did fight Probert as a rookie. Three times, in fact. This one's forgivable, because you can see where the confusion comes in. The 1990-91 season wasn't Crowder's first in the NHL, as he'd played a handful of games in previous years. He was still technically a rookie in 1990, but sure, you can imagine someone who's not completely fluent with the ins and outs of Calder Trophy eligibility rules getting this wrong.

But as for whether Crowder beat Probert…well, just watch.

That's a clear win, almost certainly the most decisive defeat of Probert's career. And it was big news at the time, since Probert was the undisputed heavyweight champion of the league. It was one of two high-profile defeats Probert would suffer to young challengers of the era, coming a few years before the better-remembered loss to Tie Domi.

As with Domi, Probert won the eventual rematch handily to regain his title. But that doesn't change the fact that Crowder absolutely won the first bout. (He also won a big free agent deal to join the Red Wings and team with Probert a year later.) So be it resolved: Crowder did beat Probert, and the Liberal fact checkers were dead wrong here.

So how did all this end? In the most Canadian way possible: With an apology.

See? That wasn't so hard. If there are any other countries out there that may be struggling with the whole "telling the truth" thing, there's probably some sort of lesson here. So smarten up and learn it, before we send Troy Crowder down there to start smacking people in the head.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

So yeah, David Poile made yet another big trade and is pretty much the best GM in the NHL right now.

Yes, yes, hockey fans around the world are thinking, that may be true. But how can you make this about the Toronto Maple Leafs?

Don’t worry, gentle reader. I've got you covered.

It's the 1997 offseason, and the Maple Leafs need a new GM after firing Cliff Fletcher. Team president Ken Dryden is leading the search, and he's already been turned down by Bob Gainey. Now he reportedly has his sights set on a new target: recently fired Capitals GM David Poile. That seems like a slam dunk. What could go wrong?

"David Poile has apparently pulled out." Oh. Well OK then.

We learn that Gainey himself had recommended Poile, who we get a glimpse of from his Capitals days when he looked exactly the same as he does now. Seriously, it was 20 years ago and he hasn't aged at all. Did he always look like that?

[sees photo of Poile and Cliff Fletcher from 1979] Wow. OK, guess not.

"Poile built the Capitals into a perennial contender, but never won a Stanley Cup." Dude, we heard you says "Capitals," there was no need to fill in the rest of that sentence.

At this point, we get Dryden going into a weird tangent about how he needs to be able to picture the new GM lifting the Stanley Cup. "If we can't imagine that, that's not the right person." Uh, he does know that GMs don't actually get to do a lap with the Cup, right? Somebody should let him know, because otherwise he's never going to hire anyone.

[Yes, that was ironic foreshadowing, thank you for catching that.]

The whole Cup angle seems designed to make it seem like the Leafs didn't want Poile. The real story is apparently that they offered him the job, pending some final contract details. But as he explained this summer, the expansion Predators called with a last-minute offer. His father, hockey Hall-of-Famer Bud Poile, advised him to take the Nashville job instead, and the Leafs were left hanging.

We end with the suggestion that the Leafs may just give the job to interim GM Bill Watters, based on his strong work signing free agents in the offseason. The Leafs' 1997 free agent haul included Scott Pearson, Tom Pederson, David Cooper, and Daniel Marois, in case you were wondering.

So that's the story of how David Poile turned down the Maple Leafs and wound up in Nashville, where the rest has been history. But as for the Leafs…look, it's against protocol to try to squeeze in a second video around here, but I have to urge you to watch this follow-up, which covers a lot of the same ground but also includes Dryden's, um, interesting view on what it takes to be a Leafs GM.

youtube

I mean…what? Was that how he sold the job to the candidates he was interviewing? "In theory this job can be good, but it will also make you sad and miserable and you will hate it and will regret your decision every day until you die. Oh, and there's a ping pong table in the break room."

Also: "Their standard of excellence, historically a high one." Yeah, I don't know why they cut over to talking about some other franchise either, that was weird.

So after all of that, who do you think Dryden hired at the end of his summer-long search. If you guessed "nobody," you win. After missing out on various choices, Dryden gave up and appointed himself to the job.

Two decades, several big trades, and a Stanley Cup final appearance later, I think it might have all worked out pretty well for the Predators and for Poile. Call me crazy, but I can even picture him taking a lap with the Cup someday.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @DownGoesBrown. DGB Grab Bag: Torts Owned, An Actual Trade, And Arguing Over a 27-Year-Old Fight published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

0 notes

flauntpage · 6 years

Text

DGB Grab Bag: Torts Owned, An Actual Trade, And Arguing Over a 27-Year-Old Fight

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: Paul Maurice – He's either unhappy with a call, or he's doing an impression of me every time I check in on the comment section of something I wrote.

The first star: Jonathan Drouin – Uh, Jonathan? What are you doing Jonathan?

(For the curious, an explanation of what was happening can be found here.)

The NHL Actually Got Something Right

Holy crap, you guys, the NHL had a trade this week.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

Be It Resolved

Two problems here.

But as for whether Crowder beat Probert…well, just watch.

So how did all this end? In the most Canadian way possible: With an apology.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

So yeah, David Poile made yet another big trade and is pretty much the best GM in the NHL right now.

Yes, yes, hockey fans around the world are thinking, that may be true. But how can you make this about the Toronto Maple Leafs?

Don’t worry, gentle reader. I've got you covered.

"David Poile has apparently pulled out." Oh. Well OK then.

[sees photo of Poile and Cliff Fletcher from 1979] Wow. OK, guess not.

"Poile built the Capitals into a perennial contender, but never won a Stanley Cup." Dude, we heard you says "Capitals," there was no need to fill in the rest of that sentence.

[Yes, that was ironic foreshadowing, thank you for catching that.]

youtube

Also: "Their standard of excellence, historically a high one." Yeah, I don't know why they cut over to talking about some other franchise either, that was weird.

0 notes

flauntpage · 6 years

Text

DGB Grab Bag: Torts Owned, An Actual Trade, And Arguing Over a 27-Year-Old Fight

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: Paul Maurice – He's either unhappy with a call, or he's doing an impression of me every time I check in on the comment section of something I wrote.

The first star: Jonathan Drouin – Uh, Jonathan? What are you doing Jonathan?

(For the curious, an explanation of what was happening can be found here.)

The NHL Actually Got Something Right

Holy crap, you guys, the NHL had a trade this week.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

Be It Resolved

Two problems here.

But as for whether Crowder beat Probert…well, just watch.

So how did all this end? In the most Canadian way possible: With an apology.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

So yeah, David Poile made yet another big trade and is pretty much the best GM in the NHL right now.

Yes, yes, hockey fans around the world are thinking, that may be true. But how can you make this about the Toronto Maple Leafs?

Don’t worry, gentle reader. I've got you covered.

"David Poile has apparently pulled out." Oh. Well OK then.

[sees photo of Poile and Cliff Fletcher from 1979] Wow. OK, guess not.

"Poile built the Capitals into a perennial contender, but never won a Stanley Cup." Dude, we heard you says "Capitals," there was no need to fill in the rest of that sentence.

[Yes, that was ironic foreshadowing, thank you for catching that.]

youtube

Also: "Their standard of excellence, historically a high one." Yeah, I don't know why they cut over to talking about some other franchise either, that was weird.

0 notes

amtushinfosolutionspage · 6 years

Text

DGB Grab Bag: Torts Owned, An Actual Trade, And Arguing Over a 27-Year-Old Fight

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: Paul Maurice – He’s either unhappy with a call, or he’s doing an impression of me every time I check in on the comment section of something I wrote.

The second star: John Tortorella – Speaking of angry coaches, here’s the perpetually crusty John Tortorella finding out that his “my way or the highway” approach didn’t work as well as he thought on the 2004 Lightning.

The first star: Jonathan Drouin – Uh, Jonathan? What are you doing Jonathan?

(For the curious, an explanation of what was happening can be found here.)

The NHL Actually Got Something Right

Holy crap, you guys, the NHL had a trade this week.

And not just some piddling little move, where some guy you’d never heard of gets shipped out in a contract dump. This was a genuine blockbuster, one involving three teams, two first-line centers and a whole bunch of picks and prospects. Matt Duchene is an Ottawa Senator. Kyle Turris is a Nashville Predator. And the Colorado Avalanche picked up a whole bunch of stuff.

And maybe the best part of the whole story is that all three GMs involved had to think outside the box to make it happen. As regular readers know, I don’t have much time for modern-day GMs, most of whom spend more time making excuses than doing their jobs. The NHL has slowly morphed into a league run by risk-averse front offices who are terrified of making a mistake, and would rather ride their loser point-inflated records to a playoff bubble than actually swing for the fences and try to win. Well, fair’s fair. If we’re going to hammer away GMs who hide under their desks, we have to applaud three guys who didn’t.

It’s no surprise to see David Poile show up in a major trade. He’s always been one of the exceptions to the “timid GMs” rule, having pulled off several blockbusters over the years. He’s well into his fourth decade as an NHL GM, and he’s not here to screw around. We’ll have more on him in a bit, but for now let’s just state the obvious: David Poile rules.

Joe Sakic, at least as a GM, has not ruled. He’s been ripped pretty much constantly, here and elsewhere, and seemed to have made a mess of the Duchene situation. But he largely salvaged it with this deal, which is getting rave reviews from an Avs perspective. And he did it by getting away from that old GM staple of insisting on a player, a pick and a prospect in every trade. We’ve had some fun with that whole concept around these parts before, but it’s become a crutch for GMs under the gun to make a move. When you hear the guy in charge of your favorite team mindlessly repeating “a player, a pick and a prospect” to friendly media members, there’s a good chance you’re screwed.

Sakic seemed to be heading down that road. But in the end, he understood that what matters in a trade like this is getting as much value as possible, and that can come in different shapes and sizes. Sakic didn’t get a single player back in the deal who comes close to making up for the loss of Duchene today. But that’s OK—he got the value where he could, even if that meant veering away from what he’d originally wanted. And now he has assets he can flip in other deals to get better right now, if that’s what he chooses to do with them.

That brings us to the real star of the deal, Senators’ GM Pierre Dorion. Nobody stuck their neck out further to make this deal than Dorion, who’s been kicking around front offices since the 90s but has only been a GM for a little over a year. He doesn’t have Poile’s resume or Sakic’s name value. If things don’t go well in Ottawa, there’s no guarantee he gets another shot somewhere else. If you could excuse anyone for being more focused on playing it safe and covering their behind instead of taking chances, Dorion’s the guy.

But he didn’t. Not only was he the driving force behind making the deal happen, but he took on far more immediate risk than anyone else in the move. Strip away the three-team aspect, and this trade is admirably old school in its simplicity for the Senators. They had a guy. They saw some other team’s guy. They decided that the other guy was better than their guy. And so they made a trade to get him.

For Ottawa, this wasn’t about balancing the present vs. the future. It wasn’t even about dealing from a strong position to shore up a weak one. This was them saying “Matt Duchene is better than Kyle Turris, and we’ll pay a premium to prove it.” We won’t really know how well Sakic really did on this deal for years. Poile has a window of a few years to win a Cup to make his end pay off. But Dorion will be judged immediately, because everyone is going to spend the rest of the season comparing Turris and Duchene on a game-by-game basis. If the Senators screwed up, we’re going to know about it, and soon.

And in the meantime, let this be yet another reminder: When the GM of your favorite team makes a well-rehearsed frowny face into a camera and starts mumbling about how you just can’t trade anymore these days, he’s lying to you. Blockbuster deals aren’t dead in the NHL. They just take some hard work, a little creativity, and some guts.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

The Duchene deal felt like the sort of deal you’d have seen back in the 1990s, when three-team deals were relatively common. So for this week’s obscure player, let’s go with a guy who was included in quite possibly the biggest three-way trade in NHL history: defenseman Brian Benning.

He was dealt to the Kings for a draft pick in 1989, and stuck around until 1992, when he was traded again. Twice, technically. Benning was part of a massive three-way trade between the Kings, Penguins and Flyers that saw Paul Coffey come to L.A., Mark Recchi go to the Flyers, and Rick Tocchet head to the Penguins, among many other pieces. It was a jaw-dropping deal, one in which the defending champion Pens shipped out two future Hall-of-Famers in an effort to get tougher, and it saw Benning make a brief stop in Pittsburgh before ending up in Philadelphia. (He’d cross paths with the Penguins again a few months later, when he speared Mario Lemieux.)

He’d spend a year with the Flyers before heading onto Edmonton and later Florida. In all, he played ten NHL seasons for five teams, recording 296 points before retiring in 1995. And yes, the name probably sounds familiar to today’s fans. His son Matt is currently a defenseman with the Oilers, and his brother Jim is the GM of the Canucks. Jim has yet to pull off any three-way blockbusters of his own, although if he needs any advice on how to make one work he won’t have to look far.

Be It Resolved

This was a tough and divisive week in the world of politics. It’s normal and even healthy for two sides to disagree on the issues. But this week, the debate transcended mere right and wrong. Instead, we found one side unable or unwilling to acknowledge even the plain facts sitting right in front of us, leaving the rest of us to wonder if we’re still living in a political world where concepts like “facts” and “truth” even matter anymore.

I’m referring, of course, to the debate over whether Troy Crowder won his fight with Bob Probert. Yes, in what has to stand as just about the ultimate “Meanwhile, in Canada” story of our time, Ontario politics was momentarily embroiled in a dispute over a fight from an NHL game in 1990. This really happened.

Here’s the backstory: Troy Crowder is running as a candidate for Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party in the Sudbury riding. Crowder is also a former NHL tough guy, one who played 150 games, scored nine goals, and logged 433 penalty minutes. At a speech, PC leader Patrick Brown said this about Crowder: “He actually as a rookie beat up Bob Probert.”

That’s quite a claim, given that Probert almost never lost. And the province’s Liberal Party quickly jumped on it, emailing out an instant fact check. Their conclusion? “Fact: Troy Crowder did not fight Bob Probert in his rookie year. It’s also debatable who won when they actually did fight.”

Two problems here.

One, Crowder certainly did fight Probert as a rookie. Three times, in fact. This one’s forgivable, because you can see where the confusion comes in. The 1990-91 season wasn’t Crowder’s first in the NHL, as he’d played a handful of games in previous years. He was still technically a rookie in 1990, but sure, you can imagine someone who’s not completely fluent with the ins and outs of Calder Trophy eligibility rules getting this wrong.

But as for whether Crowder beat Probert…well, just watch.

That’s a clear win, almost certainly the most decisive defeat of Probert’s career. And it was big news at the time, since Probert was the undisputed heavyweight champion of the league. It was one of two high-profile defeats Probert would suffer to young challengers of the era, coming a few years before the better-remembered loss to Tie Domi.

As with Domi, Probert won the eventual rematch handily to regain his title. But that doesn’t change the fact that Crowder absolutely won the first bout. (He also won a big free agent deal to join the Red Wings and team with Probert a year later.) So be it resolved: Crowder did beat Probert, and the Liberal fact checkers were dead wrong here.

So how did all this end? In the most Canadian way possible: With an apology.

See? That wasn’t so hard. If there are any other countries out there that may be struggling with the whole “telling the truth” thing, there’s probably some sort of lesson here. So smarten up and learn it, before we send Troy Crowder down there to start smacking people in the head.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

So yeah, David Poile made yet another big trade and is pretty much the best GM in the NHL right now.

Yes, yes, hockey fans around the world are thinking, that may be true. But how can you make this about the Toronto Maple Leafs?

Don’t worry, gentle reader. I’ve got you covered.

It’s the 1997 offseason, and the Maple Leafs need a new GM after firing Cliff Fletcher. Team president Ken Dryden is leading the search, and he’s already been turned down by Bob Gainey. Now he reportedly has his sights set on a new target: recently fired Capitals GM David Poile. That seems like a slam dunk. What could go wrong?

“David Poile has apparently pulled out.” Oh. Well OK then.

[sees photo of Poile and Cliff Fletcher from 1979] Wow. OK, guess not.

“Poile built the Capitals into a perennial contender, but never won a Stanley Cup.” Dude, we heard you says “Capitals,” there was no need to fill in the rest of that sentence.

At this point, we get Dryden going into a weird tangent about how he needs to be able to picture the new GM lifting the Stanley Cup. “If we can’t imagine that, that’s not the right person.” Uh, he does know that GMs don’t actually get to do a lap with the Cup, right? Somebody should let him know, because otherwise he’s never going to hire anyone.

[Yes, that was ironic foreshadowing, thank you for catching that.]

The whole Cup angle seems designed to make it seem like the Leafs didn’t want Poile. The real story is apparently that they offered him the job, pending some final contract details. But as he explained this summer, the expansion Predators called with a last-minute offer. His father, hockey Hall-of-Famer Bud Poile, advised him to take the Nashville job instead, and the Leafs were left hanging.

We end with the suggestion that the Leafs may just give the job to interim GM Bill Watters, based on his strong work signing free agents in the offseason. The Leafs’ 1997 free agent haul included Scott Pearson, Tom Pederson, David Cooper, and Daniel Marois, in case you were wondering.

So that’s the story of how David Poile turned down the Maple Leafs and wound up in Nashville, where the rest has been history. But as for the Leafs…look, it’s against protocol to try to squeeze in a second video around here, but I have to urge you to watch this follow-up, which covers a lot of the same ground but also includes Dryden’s, um, interesting view on what it takes to be a Leafs GM.

youtube

I mean…what? Was that how he sold the job to the candidates he was interviewing? “In theory this job can be good, but it will also make you sad and miserable and you will hate it and will regret your decision every day until you die. Oh, and there’s a ping pong table in the break room.”

Also: “Their standard of excellence, historically a high one.” Yeah, I don’t know why they cut over to talking about some other franchise either, that was weird.

So after all of that, who do you think Dryden hired at the end of his summer-long search. If you guessed “nobody,” you win. After missing out on various choices, Dryden gave up and appointed himself to the job.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you’d like to see included in this column? Email Sean at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @DownGoesBrown. DGB Grab Bag: Torts Owned, An Actual Trade, And Arguing Over a 27-Year-Old Fight syndicated from http://ift.tt/2ug2Ns6

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