Fic - Ticking Boxes (1/1)
Nov. 7th, 2014 08:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
redfiona99Title: Ticking Boxes
Fandom: Queer As Folk (UK)
Disclaimer: The characters aren't mine, they're Channel 4/Russell T. Davies's. No money is being made from this.
Characters: Vince, Alex, Hazel, Lisa and Stuart.
Rating: 15
Notes: Written for the 2010 lgbtfest prompt "Any fandom, any characters, Just because they're both queer, doesn't mean they agree about politics. At all." This was the fic I was talking about here. It never did quite resolve itself into a proper fic, so this is more 5 character pieces in search of a plot.
Even more so than usual, several character opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the author.
Summary: It's election day, 2001. Voting's a simple matter of ticking boxes, right?
~~~~
Vince meant to vote. He really did. He'd even had an argument with Stuart about it. Or what passed for an argument. Vince had said his bit and then Stuart went off on one.
"They're all the same. They'll all fuck us over for a sniff of power." Stuart was just warming up. "I've had MPs from all three of them and they're all lousy shags. Do you really want to vote for people who can't even get it up?"
He could sort of see Stuart's point, the one underneath the complaints about MPs's bedroom talent; it wasn't like there was that much of a difference between the parties. Except it was his mother that brought Vince up and she'd brought him up to vote when he could.
Always Labour, of course. He wasn't stupid. The Tories really would fuck everyone over. He was from Manchester; you learnt that from experience up here. He'd always remember '97, the look on his mother's face when the Tories got booted out, and just how happy she'd been.
So he'd meant to go to the polling station, only he was opening up the shop so he couldn't go before work, and it had been such a busy day that he was out on his feet when he eventually got home (Eileen was off sick so he'd had to cover for her because they couldn't get anyone else in at the last minute) and he just forgot.
~~~~
Alex said he voted Labour because they were the party whose colour went best with his complexion.
If anyone asked any more questions than that, he told them to get him a drink, something fruity, and changed the topic of conversation.
He really doesn't put much thought into voting. It's sort of a reflex reaction. His father had a friend who was a Tory councillor and well, he was a friend of his father's, and they were all wankers, in lots of different ways. They'd all hate it if Labour got in, and Alex couldn't think of a better reason than that.
Not that he talks about it, because politics is a boring thing to waste your time on.
~~~~
It wasn't the party she'd been brought up with. It wasn't even the party it was pretending to be. And she'd learnt to live with that. Mostly. Sort of. Hazel could see why they'd done it, even if she herself had never seen what was wrong with Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock.
The trouble was there were Labour ministers, and what they were saying was hard to tell apart from what their Tory shadows were saying. And Hazel hadn't been brought up and hadn't lived her life to support anyone that sounded like that. It was a pathetic sort of meanness and she wasn't having any of it.
She'd stood for five minutes at the polling booth, her hand was wanting to put a cross in the Labour box, because that's what it had always done, and her head was saying "they're Tories in red overcoats", but she didn't want to give the Tories anything, even accidentally, not that they were likely to win this seat.
She put a cross in the box and hoped it was the right thing to do.
~~~~
There were things that were important to her. Things like human rights and looking after the people in society who had less. And education. Alfred was going to go to university someday. She'd been able to get a grant to go, and nowadays, students were having to take a loan to study. What was it going to be like when Alfred was old enough?
And the Lib Dems were the only ones who seemed to have anything like a plan. And the economics appeared to be sound. They weren't pretending that they could pull money out of thin air like Labour were, they were willing to tell the truth, that they'd have to put taxes up to pay for things. And they weren't the Tories, who'd cut everything to the bone and only reduce taxes for the rich.
She knew there were people who point out that that kind of talk was all well and good coming from her, since she'd do well out of it either way, because she and Romy were both solicitors, and that a vote for the Lib Dems was a wasted one, because they'd never get in, and all it was doing was increasing the chances that the Tories would get in, but that wasn't the point. She was voting with her conscience and her brain, and that was what you were supposed to do, right?
~~~~
Of course, he knows it's all lies. He works in advertising, he can see every little trick that the parties, and all of them are at it, are using. He can tell which ministers have been given public speaking lessons and which spin doctors wrote what press release and who worked on what advert from each agency.
And he knows him voting or not voting won't change anything, because they're all liars and they're all the same, they're just wearing different coloured ties.
Vince is soft in the head if he thinks it matters who gets in. He blames Hazel for that, she lives in some sort of dreamland that died with Saatchi and Saatchi.
Except, except, except.
He tells himself it wouldn't make any difference if he didn't vote, because Labour could put up a cheese sandwich where he lives and still get in, but he still finds himself putting his suit jacket on and telling everyone that's he having lunch out. He does that often enough that no-one even looks up. He's hoping that there'll be no-one at the polling station, there never normally is, but he can't stand the idea of someone seeing him and thinking he cares. Because he doesn't, they're all the same flavour of bastard, but he's too Irish and too gay to ever let those fucking Tory gobshites get in without at least trying to stop them.
Fandom: Queer As Folk (UK)
Disclaimer: The characters aren't mine, they're Channel 4/Russell T. Davies's. No money is being made from this.
Characters: Vince, Alex, Hazel, Lisa and Stuart.
Rating: 15
Notes: Written for the 2010 lgbtfest prompt "Any fandom, any characters, Just because they're both queer, doesn't mean they agree about politics. At all." This was the fic I was talking about here. It never did quite resolve itself into a proper fic, so this is more 5 character pieces in search of a plot.
Even more so than usual, several character opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the author.
Summary: It's election day, 2001. Voting's a simple matter of ticking boxes, right?
~~~~
Vince meant to vote. He really did. He'd even had an argument with Stuart about it. Or what passed for an argument. Vince had said his bit and then Stuart went off on one.
"They're all the same. They'll all fuck us over for a sniff of power." Stuart was just warming up. "I've had MPs from all three of them and they're all lousy shags. Do you really want to vote for people who can't even get it up?"
He could sort of see Stuart's point, the one underneath the complaints about MPs's bedroom talent; it wasn't like there was that much of a difference between the parties. Except it was his mother that brought Vince up and she'd brought him up to vote when he could.
Always Labour, of course. He wasn't stupid. The Tories really would fuck everyone over. He was from Manchester; you learnt that from experience up here. He'd always remember '97, the look on his mother's face when the Tories got booted out, and just how happy she'd been.
So he'd meant to go to the polling station, only he was opening up the shop so he couldn't go before work, and it had been such a busy day that he was out on his feet when he eventually got home (Eileen was off sick so he'd had to cover for her because they couldn't get anyone else in at the last minute) and he just forgot.
~~~~
Alex said he voted Labour because they were the party whose colour went best with his complexion.
If anyone asked any more questions than that, he told them to get him a drink, something fruity, and changed the topic of conversation.
He really doesn't put much thought into voting. It's sort of a reflex reaction. His father had a friend who was a Tory councillor and well, he was a friend of his father's, and they were all wankers, in lots of different ways. They'd all hate it if Labour got in, and Alex couldn't think of a better reason than that.
Not that he talks about it, because politics is a boring thing to waste your time on.
~~~~
It wasn't the party she'd been brought up with. It wasn't even the party it was pretending to be. And she'd learnt to live with that. Mostly. Sort of. Hazel could see why they'd done it, even if she herself had never seen what was wrong with Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock.
The trouble was there were Labour ministers, and what they were saying was hard to tell apart from what their Tory shadows were saying. And Hazel hadn't been brought up and hadn't lived her life to support anyone that sounded like that. It was a pathetic sort of meanness and she wasn't having any of it.
She'd stood for five minutes at the polling booth, her hand was wanting to put a cross in the Labour box, because that's what it had always done, and her head was saying "they're Tories in red overcoats", but she didn't want to give the Tories anything, even accidentally, not that they were likely to win this seat.
She put a cross in the box and hoped it was the right thing to do.
~~~~
There were things that were important to her. Things like human rights and looking after the people in society who had less. And education. Alfred was going to go to university someday. She'd been able to get a grant to go, and nowadays, students were having to take a loan to study. What was it going to be like when Alfred was old enough?
And the Lib Dems were the only ones who seemed to have anything like a plan. And the economics appeared to be sound. They weren't pretending that they could pull money out of thin air like Labour were, they were willing to tell the truth, that they'd have to put taxes up to pay for things. And they weren't the Tories, who'd cut everything to the bone and only reduce taxes for the rich.
She knew there were people who point out that that kind of talk was all well and good coming from her, since she'd do well out of it either way, because she and Romy were both solicitors, and that a vote for the Lib Dems was a wasted one, because they'd never get in, and all it was doing was increasing the chances that the Tories would get in, but that wasn't the point. She was voting with her conscience and her brain, and that was what you were supposed to do, right?
~~~~
Of course, he knows it's all lies. He works in advertising, he can see every little trick that the parties, and all of them are at it, are using. He can tell which ministers have been given public speaking lessons and which spin doctors wrote what press release and who worked on what advert from each agency.
And he knows him voting or not voting won't change anything, because they're all liars and they're all the same, they're just wearing different coloured ties.
Vince is soft in the head if he thinks it matters who gets in. He blames Hazel for that, she lives in some sort of dreamland that died with Saatchi and Saatchi.
Except, except, except.
He tells himself it wouldn't make any difference if he didn't vote, because Labour could put up a cheese sandwich where he lives and still get in, but he still finds himself putting his suit jacket on and telling everyone that's he having lunch out. He does that often enough that no-one even looks up. He's hoping that there'll be no-one at the polling station, there never normally is, but he can't stand the idea of someone seeing him and thinking he cares. Because he doesn't, they're all the same flavour of bastard, but he's too Irish and too gay to ever let those fucking Tory gobshites get in without at least trying to stop them.
