#kind of a downer despite starting as a funny tweet

[thalialunacy]

[for the @calaisreno Prompts May-hem (get it?!); cw for more violence than I usually do, ymmv. Also I have a feeling this one shows my American-ness more than most, so uh, sorry? ^^;]

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'This,' John mutters to himself as he eyes the flashing red on the departures board, 'is a bloody nightmare.'

Sherlock frowns beside him. 'We're being shunted to a less direct route. Inconvenient, but hardly the stuff to disturb one's sleep.' 

John closes his eyes momentarily. By and large, he's a good fit for Sherlock's behaviours, even when they're--especially when they're?--somewhat off the beaten path. But sometimes he doesn't have the energy. He just doesn't.

They've been on a literally cold case in Nowhereton, Bumfuckshire, and although the jewellery was found and no one was hurt John could absolutely murder a home-brewed cup of tea. And he would very much like to hold his daughter.

'Don't worry, John, you'll be home to her soon,' Sherlock says to him as they board the overstuffed train. They're not the only ones whose night has been sidetracked, literally, but John's empathy is thin on the ground as he jostles his way to two open seats, fantasising about going for a rugby tackle if someone else gets their first.

Sherlock ends up doing the tackling, though, because he gives not one damn about how train passengers view him. And it's not really a tackle, just a Very Cold Look. And maybe a thrown elbow.

Amused, at least a little, John takes his seat.

They manage to get an hour in before it all goes to hell.

---

The sound of the train car sliding over something besides tracks is the first thing that happens -- and really it's more of a feeling than a sound, somehow.

At first.

'Sherlock,' John says quietly, his stomach twisting. 'What was that?'

'Likely just--'

But Sherlock is interrupted by a great dirty shake, like the train is a snake trying to shed its skin in a big ugly hurry.

'Shit,' John mutters, feeling adrenaline flood his system. 'Hang on to something.'

---

John doesn't wait until the dust clears; he's out of his seat and beating his way through the door at the end of the car the second there's stillness beneath him. Their coach is still on the tracks, but he somehow knows that those ahead of them are not so lucky.

The emergency lights are on, but they're flickering and John has to squint as he makes his way through. His gaze sweeps around and he listens hard, but everyone in the car seems to be suffering from merely shock, bumps and bruises, minor things.

The next car is where shit gets real. The angles are all wrong, and he can see several people tangled in an awful unnatural embrace with metal pieces popped out from seats and side rails.

'Jesus,' he hears himself mutter. 'This is not ideal.'

Sherlock is right behind him, which he'd known but not paid any attention to. 'Triaging a hoard of exhausted people in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere with no avenues of immediate escalation?'

'Yeah, like I said. Not ideal.' 

Sherlock opens his mouth, but John has no time for whatever witticism is about to be gifted upon the world, so he steps away from the detective and further into the chaos.

He raises his voice, but tries to keep it calm. 'Hello, everyone. My name is John, I'm a medical doctor, and I'm here to help.'

---

It's a long fucking night. Four dead, a couple dozen injured. One cannot save them all.

---

Hours later, the sun peeking over the horizon and Molly sacked out on the couch, he's about to pivot onto the staircase to his room when Sherlock puts a hand on his elbow. 'Let's wash up first,' he says, voice low and firm. 'Your daughter doesn't need to see you covered in blood, even if it's someone else's.'

'God damn it,' John mutters, knowing Sherlock is right but hating it; his skin itches with the need to see his little girl. 'Fine, but quick-like.'

He sheds his jacket and button down, which had got the brunt of it, on the way to the toilet, then barely looks at himself in the mirror as he runs a flannel over his face and scrubs at his hands. Sherlock is quiet beside him, handing him soap and cloth when needed, without prompting.

John finishes, then looks up at him. 'Aren't you coming?'

Sherlock's face-- well, It does something very complicated before smoothing out into a small smile. 'All right, let's.'

---

Anticlimactically, Rosie barely stirs when John picks her up. His limbs are finally able to shake out the events of the last twelve hours, and he feels Sherlock's arms around him and beneath her like a bridge truss, supporting them both.

John breathes in deeply, taking in the scent of his daughter and his flatmate. His-- his family, he thinks, trying the word out.

'Stay,' he says quietly, not looking away from Rosie. 'Just-- Stay?'

Sherlock hums for a moment, then answers like it was never in question. 'Of course.'

They don't consider pyjamas, instead curling around each other's dusty skin in pants and vests while murmuring about inconsequential things, domestic things that send warmth spiralling through John to replace the chill that had settled in somewhere during the journey they've just finished.

'I do have one question,' Sherlock says finally, the words warming the skin at John's neck.

'Go on.'

'As you know, many common understandings about the English language, particularly when it comes to colloquialisms, are not part of my… erm, base worldview.'

'Right, I am aware.'

'So I'd like to confirm: When you called the train delay a nightmare, you were exaggerating for humour, and when you called the derailment "not ideal," you were…'

John chuckles tiredly. 'Being English.'

'Being facetious.'

'Yes.' He pauses, fingers in Sherlock's mildly tangled hair. 'Sometimes, it's all that gets you from one moment to the next. One body to the next.'

Sherlock murmurs a noise, and John feels his embrace tighten. 

'Well,' the detective finally says, voice deep and sleepy. 'Besides all that, I really must say that watching you in action was quite... informative.'

'Oh? In what way?'

'Informing me that I find your medical competency viscerally pleasing.'

John huffs a surprised breath. 'Yeah?'

'Mm-hmm. You're very good, and it's very attractive.'

'Noted,' John murmurs, eyes closed. 'Next time.'

'Mm-hmm.' Sherlock's palm is warm on his solar plexus, and John doesn't think twice as he succumbs to a deep, quiet sleep.

[❤️]

[a/n- I have not been in a derailment, but I have been in a train car when it ran over a live human being going 70mph, so forgive me for not being keen to research the former for the sake of accuracy.]

ETA OH GOD I forgot the best part! My inspiration for this piece:

#BBC Sherlock #May Prompts 2024 #mayprompts2024 #It's gonna be MAY 2024 #kind of a downer despite starting as a funny tweet #Very British Problems

[adambstingus]

We’re Ending The ‘Covfefe’ Thing Right Now. You’re Welcome.

On Tuesday night, a beautiful new meme came into this world. At 12:06 a.m. EST, President Trump twote:

And that was it. There was no follow-up, no explanation, no blaming Hillary Clinton for using witchcraft to make him tweet something to distract from her losing the election over six months ago. There was just the unintelligible tweet and the unfathomably long period of time before it was deleted.

Like that, a glorious new meme was born. Twitter had a field day playing with its brand-new toy, like a bunch of five-year-olds getting their first NERF guns after snorting mountains of cocaine. But a sad fact about the world is that memes get old and die, and sometimes the LED displays that burn brightest burn out fastest. Covfefe won’t last forever. In fact, it’s already starting to show some serious signs of age. Rather than drag out the inevitable, I suggest we live out its entire meme cycle with the precious little time it has left, kind of like a reverse Benjamin Buttons.

1

Actually Funny Shit On Twitter

This already happened, and it was glorious. Watching Twitter was like watching children, in the middle of a cold and dark winter, going out to play on a sunny snow day. After months of being chilled to the bone, people got to frolic in the pure, unadulterated nonsense. Scrolling through #covfefe was a joy, as twitterists joked about everything from Russia ties …

… to other recent political memes …

… to Trump’s most recent spat with a celebrity …

… to just the plain old assurance that everything The Donald does is right:

If you could put the feeling of those first few hours into a pill, you’d have a drug problem worse than the opioid epidemic that the Trump administration is currently exacerbating. Sorry to be a downer there. Back to the covfefes.

2

People Hawking Merch

And what good is a cultural phenomenon without a way to monetize it? Within 94 seconds of the meme taking off, people were posting covfefe-branded merch. It’s incredibly easy to do with sites that print and ship your designs for you, so all you need to do is come up with an object to slap “covfefe” on. Obviously, there was a covfefe mug:

Someone made a hat that says “Covfefe AF” which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but maybe that’s not the most relevant criticism when you’re starting with “covfefe.”

And of course there were T-shirts in every lettering and design you could ask for, so that your chest may proudly proclaim, “Bow to me, for I am aware of this thing that was an international media sensation. And you shall know it by the letters on my shirt.”

The low-hanging fruit has already been plucked, but to really drive this thing into the ground, we need to put it on every conceivable piece of joke merchandise. I haven’t yet seen “Kveep Coflm and Covfefe Onv” posters, so someone should get on that. You could make red T-shirts that say “#Covfefe2012” and become an overnight millionaire. The point is, we’ve just scratched the surface here. The sooner we get a beer koozie that says “I’m not drunk, I can spell ‘covfefe'” on it, the sooner we can put this sweet, sweet meme out of its misery.

3

“Hot Takes”

Among all the joking, there will be people who are pissed that we’re putting this much energy into a meme, rather than things that actually matter.

And they absolutely have a point. There are far more serious and important things going on. Trump is rumored to be pulling out of the Paris climate accords, saber-rattling with North Korea continues, and we continue to learn that high-ranking members of our government lied about … No. We have to stop this. The actually important issues are the distraction here. A distraction from running this meme into the ground so hard that it’s buried under a mile of solid Pets.com sock puppets. All that matters is covfefe.

4

‘Shop Jokes

As the (completely justified) haters squawk on about “things that could literally kill us all” or whatevs, the rest of us are still hard at work squeezing every drop of comedy from covfefe that we possibly can. Kicking it up a notch from the text-based jokes, people made some dope photoshops. Because liking pictures more than words is what got us into this, and liking pictures more than words is what’s going to get us out.

KISS 92.5 retweeted the one I couldn’t get out of my head but didn’t have the photoshop skills to make:

Those photoshops are a great start, but they aren’t nearly enough. We aren’t done until we get to stretches like “Tina Covfefe.” If that was painful to read, good. That means it’s working and we’ll all be sick of it soon enough. I’m sorry and you’re welcome.

5

Novelty Accounts

So far, there only have been a couple of novelty accounts worth mentioning, and they’re both nicely summed up in a single screengrab:

And if you don’t think that’s a problem, then you’re the problem. We don’t want to see replies from @Carsvfefe when Cars 3 comes out in a couple weeks, so we have to be making @AlienCovfefanent accounts now. We want to reach a level of saturation well past the point of people just rolling their eyes, where more covfefe gets an angry response of “Enough already!” Like when someone makes a parody account of a 1992 animated feature called @CovfefesKids. If that just made you roll your eyes, we still have work to do.

6

Roundup Articles

Naturally, following anything actually creative happening, some talentless, brain-dead writer will publish a roundup article of the best examples of it. We’ve already seen dozens of pieces about the funniest covfefe tweets, shamelessly republishing other people’s clever jokes because the writer lacks the imagination to do anything comparable on their own. Sure, they might try to embed them into a larger framework that is making some other point, but don’t be fooled; what’s actually entertaining about the article is just the collection of the work of other, better writers. I’m so glad I’m not a total piece of shit like that.

Anyways, these are surely the death knell for anything creative. With no fresh takes to feed the meme, it will slowly start to eat itself and waste away. It’s important that we don’t let up now, because the most difficult stages are still to come.

7

An Annoying Guy Named Geoff Using It At Work

As wonderful a gift as covfefe was, if we don’t stop it now, it will become a “my wife”-sized annoyance. It could be repeated for months to come by everyone in your office who thinks he’s funny and is almost certainly named Geoff. To stop this, it’s important that for the next few days, you exhaust every possible reference to covfefe in casual conversation. Any time someone can’t think of a word for something, helpfully offer up, “Covfefe?” If something in the printer is broken, tell your office manager to order a new covfefe. When your sales numbers are down, tell your boss, “Despite the constant negative growth, covfefe.”

As you pack up your cubicle and everyone wonders why you threw your career away for a bunch of annoying, played-out jokes, shake your head and say to yourself, “No. I’m doing the Lord’s covfefe.”

8

Your Parents Telling You About It As Though You Might Not Have Heard About It

Finally, as covfefe is on its last legs, begging to be put out of its misery, it will suffer one last indignity: being completely mangled or misused by one of or both your parents. On the one hand, it will break your heart to see something so beloved be so misunderstood. On the other hand, it will be a merciful end to a beautiful meme. On the third hand, a video of your parents misusing covfefe could get you a few more likes, because misusing covfefe should literally be impossible and yet they’re doing it. And on the fourth hand, I’m bad at metaphors.

So smile when your dad asks, “Do you like your fefe warm? Or do you prefer … coldfefe.” Not because it will be funny. It really very much won’t. Smile because it’s being released from this world and you can remember it for the beautiful meme it was. Because despite the constant negative overuse, covfefe.

Wait, never mind, it already happened:

Aaron Kheifets is a nice young man with a Twitter he wishes you’d follow.

For more, check out 7 Memes That Went Viral Before The Internet Existed and The 9 Most Obnoxious Memes to Ever Escape the Web.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out Why Donald Trump Is The New Bad Guy From Back To The Future, and watch other videos you won’t see on the site!

Also follow us on Facebook. Covfefe and chill.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/were-ending-the-covfefe-thing-right-now-youre-welcome/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/176069243667