this has probably been covered by you before but! idc. sports night characters in the west wing AU!
here we go! also tysm to @thxngam for her golden additions and amazing ideas for this au also this got very long im sorry
1. isaac is the president; he's got a phd in political science and a pulitzer prize in nonfiction for a book he wrote on the topic and taught at columbia before he ran for political office. dana convinces him to run for president -- she literally gets the idea in the middle of the night at 3 AM when she realizes that luther sachs, the current frontrunner, isn't cut out to be president. isaac is really, really brilliant, but he's also deeply caring and relatable and sensible. the senior staff meetings are always some organized chaos, but it's great. isaac also loves his staff but also, when they end up in arguments/conversations about something (especially if it's something ridiculous -> the celebrities game that no one speaks of, the frozen turkey that ended up in the policy bullpen's minifridge one time, jeremy's secret plan to fight inflation, the time casey and dan literally spent an entire week passively aggressively sending stuff to each other for their first meeting "anniversary" that neither of them can agree on), he's just wearing his glasses, waiting for it to cool down so they can actually get some work done. he's empathetic both as a person and and as a politician and has the ability to approach politics in a way that's tactical but also very personal. also he gives the best speeches. (and the best advice too. also he quizzes people on show tune lyrics because it's fun.)
2. dana is chief of staff. she went to yale for law school and graduated summa cum laude but never actually practices law; she gets right into politics from the beginning and everyone in dc/political circles knows of her because she knows how to get things done; she knows how to follow through. she flew with a post-it in the middle of the night to new york and got a president in the white house; she will negotiate with congresspeople for every last vote to get legislation passed. i think on the surface, one could get the idea that dana loves the process of politics, but it's really more about how all the pieces fit together and interlock to contribute to actual change. also, she has a really, really nice couch in her office, that during senior staff, no one is allowed to use. case in point, dan did once and it did not end well. she and isaac have a very interesting dynamic that's half like, paternal/daughter(ish)/mentorship, half classic cos-president. i would say they're both fairly pragmatic so they tend to agree on a lot of things and they have a very implicit trust in each other that translates to the work that they do. i definitely think there's probably a "let bartlet be bartlet"-esque plot that expands on this but i think it's more about dana being willing to take chances and risk with policy, rather than isaac—i think for isaac, it'd be about gauging and finding a balance between what he wants to achieve, what he can actually achieve, and what he thinks should be achieved and things are explored a little more there
3. natalie is deputy chief of staff; she took intro to political science because she was considering being a political journalist but ended up in politics instead. i think she loves the part of politics that is the passion behind it, and how that passion can push people to do great things together, or to make great things happen. dana and nat i think have a really interesting relationship as cos and dcos that sort of blurs the line between friendship and mentorship; it’s more like they interlock pretty well. like they can be talking about movies in one breath and how to implement a policy agenda in the next no sweat. i think in this au, they probably met on the presidential campaign. freshman house representatives routinely underestimate natalie because she’s young(ish) (comparatively) and quirky but she’ll just sit back and basically dissect their career and tack on her own criticisms in the same breath ("so how's that bill that no one but you cares about doing?"). i also think that she throws the best election day parties (?), both the first time and when they get reelected -- there is lots of bad dancing and champagne and music and it's generally insane and chaotic but it’s fun. natalie knows how to get people to band together, i think, whether it’s in a personal or a professional light. she's the one you go to if you need to negotiate a rider or get people to work together on something or if the senior staff are just not gelling on something. if dana is the captain, natalie is her second in command and everyone knows it.
4. casey is the director of communications. this is a combination of casey just, like, canonically being a secret giant english nerd that probably has five thesauruses sorted by edition and also because i think he’s the one that probably thinks about base principles and ideas in politics the most, as opposed to the whole process of it all. i think he’s opinionated in the same way that toby and sticks to the idea of what politics can and should be; i don’t think he’s a optimist in the strictest sense, but i think he chooses to believe in the ideas behind politics and the people that can make it happen. also, when casey writes speeches he gets in the weeds. he drinks like ten cups of coffee and has like six word drafts open on his computer in order chronologically with all of his edits. this gets way way worse during the times when they have to write the state of the union because it starts very organized and put together but then just descends into organized chaos and then just plain old chaos. his hair always looks insane after the sotu speeches. also in the equivalent of the pilot episode, charlie and his class are getting a tour of the white house by some intern. charlie accidentally-on-purpose ends up telling everyone his dad works in the white house (and his mom's in congress!) so you have like. a whole corral of fifth graders running through the west wing to check out casey's office with an intern chasing after them being like "mr. mccall is — he's busy —" casey is in the middle of writing something with a whole thermos of coffee and on 3 hours of sleep and then he looks up for a sip and finds all these fifth graders running around the comms bullpen with jeremy and the intern attempting to coordinate (and failing) and thinks oh. huh. that's what that permission slip was for.
5. dan is the press secretary — which is weird if you think of dan as the josh of sports night, because i think he shares josh's general archetype but also has the ability to — i guess be able to sand away his edges to present a persona to the public and is generally better at communicating (at least on a public level) than josh is. plus i think he finds spinning events, headlines, and bantering with the press interesting and dynamic. he interned into congress as an undergrad, where he met casey, dana, and lisa. eventually i think he also goes to grad school in dc but ultimately decides to try for a more high profile pr job (ala triton day or gage whitney) because he isn't sure if politics is really it for him. i think he eventually gets recruited for the campaign — in my head casey showed up and dan fell into the pool (bc parallel and i just love that itsotg flashback sm) but @thxngam presented the golden image of casey showing up and accidentally stumbling and falling in the pool and dan being like "...yeah, i think you need a press person. desperately." anyway i think dan has a lot of fun with being press secretary but also realizes that persona and communications is a big part of politics as well as well and tries to reconcile the two in his work. i think this also comes into play between his issues between the person who puts on and the person he actually is. i think dan, at the end of it, also has a lot of faith in the people behind politics, and people in general. if i had to pick one who ran more along the side of sam's idealism in this au, i'd say it be dan. also i have this image of an intro for dan as a character if this was a show: he's on the podium, generally being articulate and witty and you know, dan rydell, press secretary to the potus, and then he leaves, right into a walk and talk with casey. you expect it to be a serious conversation because they are serious professionals, but instead it's something endearing and dumb like this:
"so... you want snickers? i got you snickers!" "wow, the vending machine finally worked for you!" "we work at the white house danny, there's gotta be at least ONE vending machine that works." "no, vending machines just hate you case." "hey, i could eat the snickers --" "give me the snickers!"
6. jeremy is deputy director of communications. this is a little meta bc josh malina but shhhhhh. jeremy is a writer and he loves politics — he read politico cover to cover in high school and has a subscription all through hs and college, was president of the young democrats, secretary of jsa, and copy editor for his school's newspaper, and volunteered and interned for campaigns and the senate when he was in college. he is passionate about politics but i think he has a tendency to think about all the small details as well, which can be a strength and weakness. i think it makes his working relationship with casey as his deputy interesting as i see casey as more big picture and more focused on generalities than the minute details. i think this can put them at odds but also helps them work together. but i also see jeremy has a scene where he finds like a technicality or knows some kind of small detail that has kind of a domino effect and makes something happen. additional things but jeremy is responsible for the show's secret plan to fight inflation. he — panics and basically talks at length at a secret intiative to reduce inflation that the national economic council has when he needs to fill in for dan one day and when he goes in for senior staff isaac's like "...good plan." pause. "did you make that up?" and jeremy's like "on the spot sir" also he falls into a ficus plant during the first inagural ball during the dancing
7. ok, here's some additional headcanons! lisa is the congresswoman for the maryland 4th (i guess she's the equivalent to andy in this au? — i see casey, dan, and lisa as the toby, cj, and andy of this au — half because it's interesting and the dynamics/relationships are very fascinating to think about and parallels and half because lisa gets such a raw deal in the original sports night. i think that she needs to be more fleshed out bc she literally never shows up in the show and is just mentioned even though she logically has had a past in casey, dana, and dan's lives and must have played more of a role than what is seen. so!) she met casey in undegrad and dana was her college roommate all four years. she went to law school with dana and met dan when he was an intern under a congressional office casey was working for. she practiced law for one or two years before she runs for congress. she and casey get married pretty young and their marriage worked (or least it... functioned... ish) until it didn't due to a combination of stress and throwing themselves in their respective fields of work and not having a solid place in each other's lives or at least one that wasn't already or became filled by someone else — dana and dan, respectively — and not i guess really meshing that well. they get divorced before the first campaign and are... meh/rocky(ish) for the first year but i think once isaac gets elected they try to make it work — first it's for charlie but i think eventually they find they actually work as friends (albeit sort of gradually) and roll with it. also lisa's funny and her humor also runs the gamut of also being the deeply sarcastic kind. she's also very nerdy in a law/legal history/political philosophy sense — like she really loved being a lawyer and fell in love with law just as much as she did with politics.
8. and some final ideas: sam donovan is white house counsel, rebecca wells is associate, later deputy white house counsel, sally sasser is the chief of staff to the vice president, bobbi bernstein is the chief of staff to the first lady, kim is deputy press secretary, and elliot, will, chris, and dave are congressional liasons or they work in speechwriting
