#AFTER CLAIRE IT JUST GETS A WHOLE LOT WORSE

[mostlysignssomeportents]

What the fuck is a PBM?

TOMORROW (Sept 24), I'll be speaking IN PERSON at the BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY!

Terminal-stage capitalism owes its long senescence to its many defensive mechanisms, and it's only by defeating these that we can put it out of its misery. "The Shield of Boringness" is one of the necrocapitalist's most effective defenses, so it behooves us to attack it head-on.

The Shield of Boringness is Dana Claire's extremely useful term for anything so dull that you simply can't hold any conception of it in your mind for any length of time. In the finance sector, they call this "MEGO," which stands for "My Eyes Glaze Over," a term of art for financial arrangements made so performatively complex that only the most exquisitely melted brain-geniuses can hope to unravel their spaghetti logic. The rest of us are meant to simply heft those thick, dense prospectuses in two hands, shrug, and assume, "a pile of shit this big must have a pony under it."

MEGO and its Shield of Boringness are key to all of terminal-stage capitalism's stupidest scams. Cloaking obvious swindles in a lot of complex language and Byzantine payment schemes can make them seem respectable just long enough for the scammers to relieve you of all your inconvenient cash and assets, though, eventually, you're bound to notice that something is missing.

If you spent the years leading up to the Great Financial Crisis baffled by "CDOs," "synthetic CDOs," "ARMs" and other swindler nonsense, you experienced the Shield of Boringness. If you bet your house and/or your retirement savings on these things, you experienced MEGO. If, after the bubble popped, you finally came to understand that these "exotic financial instruments" were just scams, you experienced Stein's Law ("anything that can't go forever eventually stops"). If today you no longer remember what a CDO is, you are once again experiencing the Shield of Boringness.

As bad as 2008 was, it wasn't even close to the end of terminal stage capitalism. The market has soldiered on, with complex swindles like carbon offset trading, metaverse, cryptocurrency, financialized solar installation, and (of course) AI. In addition to these new swindles, we're still playing the hits, finding new ways to make the worst scams of the 2000s even worse.

That brings me to the American health industry, and the absurdly complex, ridiculously corrupt Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs), a pathology that has only metastasized since 2008.

On at least 20 separate occasions, I have taken it upon myself to figure out how the PBM swindle works, and nevertheless, every time they come up, I have to go back and figure it out again, because PBMs have the most powerful Shield of Boringness out of the whole Monster Manual of terminal-stage capitalism's trash mobs.

PBMs are back in the news because the FTC is now suing the largest of these for their role in ripping off diabetics with sky-high insulin prices. This has kicked off a fresh round of "what the fuck is a PBM, anyway?" explainers of extremely variable quality. Unsurprisingly, the best of these comes from Matt Stoller:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-lina-khan-pharma

Stoller starts by pointing out that Americans have a proud tradition of getting phucked by pharma companies. As far back as the 1950s, Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver was holding hearings on the scams that pharma companies were using to ensure that Americans paid more for their pills than virtually anyone else in the world.

But since the 2010s, Americans have found themselves paying eye-popping, sky-high, ridiculous drug prices. Eli Lilly's Humolog insulin sold for $21 in 1999; by 2017, the price was $274 – a 1,200% increase! This isn't your grampa's price gouging!

Where do these absurd prices come from? The story starts in the 2000s, when the GW Bush administration encouraged health insurers to create "high deductible" plans, where patients were expected to pay out of pocket for receiving care, until they hit a multi-thousand-dollar threshold, and then their insurance would kick in. Along with "co-pays" and other junk fees, these deductibles were called "cost sharing," and they were sold as a way to prevent the "abuse" of the health care system.

The economists who crafted terminal-stage capitalism's intellectual rationalizations claimed the reason Americans paid so much more for health care than their socialized-medicine using cousins in the rest of the world had nothing to do with the fact that America treats health as a source of profits, while the rest of the world treats health as a human right.

No, the actual root of America's health industry's problems was the moral defects of Americans. Because insured Americans could just go see the doctor whenever they felt like it, they had no incentive to minimize their use of the system. Any time one of these unhinged hypochondriacs got a little sniffle, they could treat themselves to a doctor's visit, enjoying those waiting-room magazines and the pleasure of arranging a sick day with HR, without bearing any of the true costs:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/27/the-doctrine-of-moral-hazard/

"Cost sharing" was supposed to create "skin in the game" for every insured American, creating a little pain-point that stung you every time you thought about treating yourself to a luxurious doctor's visit. Now, these payments bit hardest on the poorest workers, because if you're making minimum wage, at $10 co-pay hurts a lot more than it does if you're making six figures. What's more, VPs and the C-suite were offered "gold-plated" plans with low/no deductibles or co-pays, because executives understand the value of a dollar in the way that mere working slobs can't ever hope to comprehend. They can be trusted to only use the doctor when it's truly warranted.

So now you have these high-deductible plans creeping into every workplace. Then along comes Obama and the Affordable Care Act, a compromise that maintains health care as a for-profit enterprise (still not a human right!) but seeks to create universal coverage by requiring every American to buy a plan, requiring insurers to offer plans to every American, and uses public money to subsidize the for-profit health industry to glue it together.

Predictably, the cheapest insurance offered on the Obamacare exchanges – and ultimately, by employers – had sky-high deductibles and co-pays. That way, insurers could pocket a fat public subsidy, offer an "insurance" plan that was cheap enough for even the most marginally employed people to afford, but still offer no coverage until their customers had spent thousands of dollars out-of-pocket in a given year.

That's the background: GWB created high-deductible plans, Obama supercharged them. Keep that in your mind as we go through the MEGO procedures of the PBM sector.

Your insurer has a list of drugs they'll cover, called the "formulary." The formulary also specifies how much the insurance company is willing to pay your pharmacist for these drugs. Creating the formulary and paying pharmacies for dispensing drugs is a lot of tedious work, and insurance outsources this to third parties, called – wait for it – Pharmacy Benefits Managers.

The prices in the formulary the PBM prepares for your insurance company are called the "list prices." These are meant to represent the "sticker price" of the drug, what a pharmacist would charge you if you wandered in off the street with no insurance, but somehow in possession of a valid prescription.

But, as Stoller writes, these "list prices" aren't actually ever charged to anyone. The list price is like the "full price" on the pricetags at a discount furniture place where everything is always "on sale" at 50% off – and whose semi-disposable sofas and balsa-wood dining room chairs are never actually sold at full price.

One theoretical advantage of a PBM is that it can get lower prices because it bargains for all the people in a given insurer's plan. If you're the pharma giant Sanofi and you want your Lantus insulin to be available to any of the people who must use OptumRX's formulary, you have to convince OptumRX to include you in that formulary.

OptumRX – like all PBMs – demands "rebates" from pharma companies if they want to be included in the formulary. On its face, this is similar to the practices of, say, NICE – the UK agency that bargains for medicine on behalf of the NHS, which also bargains with pharma companies for access to everyone in the UK and gets very good deals as a result.

But OptumRX doesn't bargain for a lower list price. They bargain for a bigger rebate. That means that the "price" is still very high, but OptumRX ends up paying a tiny fraction of it, thanks to that rebate. In the OptumRX formulary, Lantus insulin lists for $403. But Sanofi, who make Lantus, rebate $339 of that to OptumRX, leaving just $64 for Lantus.

Here's where the scam hits. Your insurer charges you a deductible based on the list price – $404 – not on the $64 that OptumRX actually pays for your insulin. If you're in a high-deductible plan and you haven't met your cap yet, you're going to pay $404 for your insulin, even though the actual price for it is $64.

Now, you'd think that your insurer would put a stop to this. They chose the PBM, the PBM is ripping off their customers, so it's their job to smack the PBM around and make it cut this shit out. So why would the insurers tolerate this nonsense?

Here's why: the PBMs are divisions of the big health insurance companies. Unitedhealth owns OptumRx; Aetna owns Caremark, and Cigna owns Expressscripts. So it's not the PBM that's ripping you off, it's your own insurance company. They're not just making you pay for drugs that you're supposedly covered for – they're pocketing the deductible you pay for those drugs.

Now, there's one more entity with power over the PBM that you'd hope would step in on your behalf: your boss. After all, your employer is the entity that actually chooses the insurer and negotiates with them on your behalf. Your boss is in the driver's seat; you're just along for the ride.

It would be pretty funny if the answer to this was that the health insurance company bought your employer, too, and so your boss, the PBM and the insurer were all the same guy, busily swapping hats, paying for a call center full of tormented drones who each have three phones on their desks: one labeled "insurer"; the second, "PBM" and the final one "HR."

But no, the insurers haven't bought out the company you work for (yet). Rather, they've bought off your boss – they're sharing kickbacks with your employer for all the deductibles and co-pays you're being suckered into paying. There's so much money (your money) sloshing around in the PBM scamoverse that anytime someone might get in the way of you being ripped off, they just get cut in for a share of the loot.

That is how the PBM scam works: they're fronts for health insurers who exploit the existence of high-deductible plans in order to get huge kickbacks from pharma makers, and massive fees from you. They split the loot with your boss, whose payout goes up when you get screwed harder.

But wait, there's more! After all, Big Pharma isn't some kind of easily pushed-around weakling. They're big. Why don't they push back against these massive rebates? Because they can afford to pay bribes and smaller companies making cheaper drugs can't. Whether it's a little biotech upstart with a cheaper molecule, or a generics maker who's producing drugs at a fraction of the list price, they just don't have the giant cash reserves it takes to buy their way into the PBMs' formularies. Doubtless, the Big Pharma companies would prefer to pay smaller kickbacks, but from Big Pharma's perspective, the optimum amount of bribes extracted by a PBM isn't zero – far from it. For Big Pharma, the optimal number is one cent higher than "the maximum amount of bribes that a smaller company can afford."

The purpose of a system is what it does. The PBM system makes sure that Americans only have access to the most expensive drugs, and that they pay the highest possible prices for them, and this enriches both insurance companies and employers, while protecting the Big Pharma cartel from upstarts.

Which is why the FTC is suing the PBMs for price-fixing. As Stoller points out, they're using their powers under Section 5 of the FTC Act here, which allows them to shut down "unfair methods of competition":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

The case will be adjudicated by an administrative law judge, in a process that's much faster than a federal court case. Once the FTC proves that the PBM scam is illegal when applied to insulin, they'll have a much easier time attacking the scam when it comes to every other drug (the insulin scam has just about run its course, with federally mandated $35 insulin coming online, just as a generation of post-insulin diabetes treatments hit the market).

Obviously the PBMs aren't taking this lying down. Cigna/Expressscripts has actually sued the FTC for libel over the market study it conducted, in which the agency described in pitiless, factual detail how Cigna was ripping us all off. The case is being fought by a low-level Reagan-era monster named Rick Rule, whom Stoller characterizes as a guy who "hangs around in bars and picks up lonely multi-national corporations" (!!).

The libel claim is a nonstarter, but it's still wild. It's like one of those movies where they want to show you how bad the cockroaches are, so there's a bit where the exterminator shows up and the roaches form a chorus line and do a kind of Busby Berkeley number:

https://www.46brooklyn.com/news/2024-09-20-the-carlton-report

So here we are: the FTC has set out to euthanize some rentiers, ridding the world of a layer of useless economic middlemen whose sole reason for existing is to make pharmaceuticals as expensive as possible, by colluding with the pharma cartel, the insurance cartel and your boss. This conspiracy exists in plain sight, hidden by the Shield of Boringness. If I've done my job, you now understand how this MEGO scam works – and if you forget all that ten minutes later (as is likely, given the nature of MEGO), that's OK: just remember that this thing is a giant fucking scam, and if you ever need to refresh yourself on the details, you can always re-read this post.

The paperback edition of The Lost Cause, my nationally bestselling, hopeful solarpunk novel is out this month!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/23/shield-of-boringness/#some-men-rob-you-with-a-fountain-pen

Image: Flying Logos (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Over_$1,000,000_dollars_in_USD_$100_bill_stacks.png

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[chansoooo1-blog]

The interactions between Sydney and Carmy in Pop are so awkward that it's actually so fucking hilarious 😭😭 like where did all this passive aggressiveness come from babes 😭😭 why y'all low-key acting like y'all hate each other?? I'm so confused..

[pumpkinandcoat]

My TUA4 thoughts

Its been a week now since the final season premiered and I have finally been able to compile all my thought together

This is an essay.

Spoilers for season 4 of The Umbrella Academy

(obviously)

With the fourth and final installment of The Umbrella Academy finally released, brings the long awaited conclusion of the Hargreeves family. And suffice to say… people hated it.

Even when this show is at its weakest with its plot, the thing that makes the show so good and what many people love about the show are its characters. They are all very distinct and memorable. And in TUA3, while it's riddled with plot holes and frustrating choices, is still a lot of fun to watch because of the character moments and the relationships between the different siblings.

That is why TUA4 is so infuriating, because it takes these special and memorable characters and it morphs them into these weird versions of themselves. Every single main character falls victim to this. They regress as characters into these versions of themselves that shouldn’t exist anymore.

Luther has become a stripper. His arc has almost no dignity from the get go. This only very loosely connects with his arc in TUA2 where he works at a bar, but as a bodyman and not as a ‘professional dancer’ so as to why the writers chose to make him a stripper is weird. He has returned to live in a run down version of the academy. There is no follow up on Sloane and he mentions her only one or twice in the whole season.

Diego is somewhat resentful of fatherhood, and he misses his old life of excitement when he was a vigilante. He is unhappy with his life and he seeks the higher purpose that he thinks being a criminal deterrent will give him.

Allison yearns again to be a star and neglects her relationship with Claire in the pursuit to regain her fame. 

Klaus, as soon as he regains his power, turns back to drugs. There is no attempt for him to hold onto his sobriety, even though as we see in TUA2 and TUA3 he is (mostly) sober for three years with his powers fully intact. We don’t even get a scene of him struggling with the ghosts coming back to haunt him before he is off to go buy drugs, and then he becomes a victim to sex trafficking. 

Five’s working at the CIA. After a lifetime of hardship and struggle, after he is forced into organizations where he has to complete different missions - first as a child with Reginald in the academy, and later as an adult with the commission - and after he is ready to retire at the end of TUA3, he joins into another organization instead.

Viktor moves away to Canada and is again isolated from his siblings and alone. Shown to have no lasting and meaningful relationships in his personal life.

Every single character is reverted back to an old version of themselves that they have grown from by now. The writers strip them of all of their character growth and substance and reset them to their base characteristics. Worse than that they write them as stereotypes that they are portrayed as at the beginning of the show, in which they are shown to be more than just those stereotypes and have at this point for a lot of them grown from them all together. They are now reduced back to them but without any of the nuance or layers that they had before, and again stripping them of all of their character growth and personality. 

The writers absolutely refuse to let these characters grow in meaningful and satisfying ways.

The relationships between these characters as well are also poorly written. Many of the strong relationships we see in the past seasons barely have interactions with each other, such as Klaus and Five, Diego and Klaus, Allison and Viktor to name a few. With Allison and Viktor we only really have one meaningful scene between them where they talk about how they aren’t close anymore and then there is no further discussion or resolution between the two. And with many others at best they get fleeting minor interactions where they maybe exchange one line or comment. Then there’s the characters who we’ve been waiting to interact for a long time, like Five and Claire, where in the first season Five expresses his desire to live long enough to meet his niece but in season 4 we don’t see them interact even once.

But by far the most insulting relationship is the one between Lila and Five and Diego. 

Two fucking words: Character Assassination.

The way that they wrote Five in this season is so completely baffling. Because the writers felt the need to give Five a love interest this season they decided to pair Lila and Five up and in doing so they destroy both Five and Lilas character, and the dynamic between Five and Lila, Five and Diego, and Diego and Lila.

There are two faucets as to why this relationship doesn’t work: the in-show context and the real life implications of the pairing.

In-show: Five and Lilas relationship hinges on the fact that they are stranded together on the subway for 7 years, unable to get back to their families. In the second to last episode of the entire show they are taken away from the rest of the characters to be put in this pocket dimension for the sole purpose to develop a romantic relationship between the two of them. 

For Lila as well, but especially for Five this makes no sense for their characters and butchers everything they represent and everything they stand for. Fives' driving force for his whole character is his family. Everything that Five does, every action that he takes, everything that he endures and pushes himself though, is for his family. His family's safety and survival matter more to him than his own physical, mental and emotional well being. They are the only people in the whole world that Five cares about.

Five survives 40 years in the apocalypse, with abysmal chances to get out, where any normal person would kill themselves, Five endures for the miniscule chance to get back and save his family. He spends years working for the commission, killing hundreds of people, after being the only surviving person on earth for 4 decades, to buy time so he can get back to his family. Five spends 45 years trying to claw his way back to his family. And when he does make it back to them, Five spends 28 straight days trying to prevent three different apocalypses across three different timelines so his family would live.

After 7 years on the subway Five gives up on getting back his family, and when he discovers a way back he keeps it a secret, even when he knows they are facing the apocalypse and certain death again? It doesn’t make sense for his character at all. Yes, he was tired at the end of TUA3 and was ready to lay down and die with his family by his side, but that was again after three failed attempts at preventing the apocalypse in a very short period of time. He also isn’t with his family, separated and isolated once again.

In terms of Five and Lilas relationship - It doesn’t make sense for Five, whose sole driving force throughout the entire show is his family, to turn around and betray his brother by engaging in a relationship with his wife. 

The dynamic between Five and Lila throughout the seasons has progressed from enemies to begrudging allies to a close friendship between the two, a progression that could not have happened without Diego. At the end of TUA2 and the start of TUA3 these two hate each other's guts, but because they both love Diego they are willing to put their shit aside and be somewhat amicable. Then, because they also both have a connection through the commission they team up and to go back and investigate and it's here where they can move past their past and are able to slowly form a friendship.

Yes, they are very similar characters and they have a unique bond. They can understand each other in a way none of the others can, because of their unique experiences at the commission and as being used as tools of The Handler. But this doesn’t mean they are suited for each other romantically and in fact is exactly why they aren’t. They both have deep trust issues, paranoia, and a kind of bitterness towards the world because of their experiences. With Lila and Diego, the reason that they work so well is because Diego's trusting nature and goodwill in people shows Lila that she can open herself up to people and to trust and love.

And the showrunners take all of this characterization, all of the love and devotion and the deep bonds between these characters and they throw it away because they wanted to give Five a love story. In the second to last episode of the entire series we see a three minute montage of Five and Lila on the subway for 7 years, and then three scenes of them in the greenhouse before they return back to the main time.

The writers destroy these characters and destroy these relationships for 15 minutes of screentime.

There is no resolution to this plotline. There is no reconciliation or understanding about what happened. Lila dies on dubious terms with both Diego and Five. Five and Diego die hating each other.

In real life: The actor who plays Five, Aidan Gallagher, was a minor during the filming of TUA1/2/3, and this was the first year he filmed where he was legally an adult, being 19 years old when filming TUA4. 

From the first season of the show, when he was 14 years old when filming, he has been heavily sexualised by a certain group of the fanbase. 

And the creators of the show, who have known him since he was a young teenager, at the first opportunity they could, paired him with his 34 year old costar - They met in the filming of the second season of the show, when Aidan was 15.

They waited - literally waited - for him to turn of legal age so that they could make his character have a love story, and then regardless of morals, regardless of plot relevance, regardless of if it even made sense for the characters, proceeded to pair Five and Lila up. Completely uncaring of the story, the established relationships between the characters and the overarching arcs of these characters.

The writers literally had to completely separate and isolate Five and Lila from the rest of the characters in their own timeline for over half a decade in order for it to make sense for them to develop a romantic relationship between them.

The decisions of the creators in this season are just so insane.

In continuation of Fives character this season - he abandons his family twice. Firstly when he finds the cipher to the subway and can return home, but chooses not to. Then secondly while his family are facing a life or death situation and another apocalypse, he physically fights Diego, and when Lila intervenes and implies that their relationship is over, he abandons them in the middle of the fight, to return to the subway.

And finally we get to the finale, where Five - again whose entire character is built on the love and devotion he has for his family - decides to erase himself and his entire family's existence from not just one timeline, but across every single timeline in order to correct the universe.

Five has never cared about the timeline. In fact he has always actively been working against it for his family's survival. They are supposed to die in TUA1 but Five will not allow that to happen and he goes against everything and every one to ensure that they live. He does this in every single season - goes directly against time and the universe to make sure his family makes it out on the other side. Now he is happy to give up and give in and not just to let his family die, but to have them permanently erased as if they hadn’t existed at all.

Even with the Five diner, we see all these Fives who have given up on trying to save their family after trying and failing to save them countless times - over 100,000 times - they resign themselves to a life of solitude with only alternate versions of themselves for company. Surely some of these Five have had to make the same connection that our Five makes, but they won’t sacrifice their families existence for the sake of the main timeline. But our Five, the Five that we follow, the Five we’ve personally seen struggle and fight to make sure his family is safe is the one who does.

I just cannot express how much this season disappoints me. The fundamental misunderstanding the creators have with their own characters and their own show is unbelievable. Even at the show's weakest, what makes it so engaging, what makes it so great, is this dysfunctional ass family who love each other. Their unbreakable bonds even when they are at odds with one another. How in their own weird way they do care deeply for one another. 

And the creators when telling the final story of these dearly beloved characters, destroy the bonds between them and send them off with a big old Fuck You to the audience to boot.

I cannot fathom how the same people who made TUA1 and TUA2, created this. Truly I cannot.

The conclusion from all of this I have come to is that the creators of this show are obsessed with writing perverse storylines. More subtle in the beginning, but now at the expense of the story and the characters themselves. Even since TUA1 there have been very weird romance story lines. Luther and Allison, and though not explicitly stated, the dynamic between Five and The Handler in the first two seasons is extremely uncomfortable.

And in TUA4 it all comes to the forefront where despite all of the complexity and nuance in the previous seasons of the show, they are willing to throw it all away to write these weird creepy storylines that nobody but themselves asked for or wanted. Luther becoming a stripper, Klaus being sex trafficked, Lila and Fives whole relationship.

Again I cannot express how much this season disappoints me. I cannot comprehend the decisions the creators of this show made. I cannot understand why they chose to destroy everything that made this show great. I cannot fathom how they could end this show in such a way and then pat themselves on the back for a job well done.

This has made me so deeply upset in a way that I just can't express. I have completely lost all respect for the creators of this show. I’m glad that it's finally come to an end so the creators can’t keep continuing to ruin this show and its characters.

Goodbye, Hargreeves family. You all deserve so much better.

[bumblebeesfromvenus]

Random Leon headcannons ♡

🩵▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎☁️▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎🩵

Leon listens to 'The Neighborhood' and 'Arctic Monkeys'. He occasionally throws in a little Elvis, too. His favorite songs are Void, Pretty boy (he secretly adores it when you call him that, he will never tell you though) Why'd you only ever call me when you're high, 505 and Devil in Disguise.

He loves, LOVES early 2000s rom coms. Think legally blonde, the proposal, 13 going on 30. It's such a guilty pleasure for him. Luis teases him about it a lot but Leon knows the shit Luis watches is way worse. (Luis is a hallmark movie enthusiast, fight me) 

He is very insistent on a weekly game night with you, Ashley and Luis. Chris and Claire show up too, from time to time. He's such a sucker for boardgames, but if he loses... don't except kisses for the rest of the night. Most of the time he can't help himself though, he just has to kiss you. He seriously crumbles so fast when he's with you.

The biggest snorer out there. He has given you a heart attack or two at night. You gently nudge his leg and usually  he'll roll over and stop, pulling you close. He feels so, so guilty when you walk into the Kitchen with the darkest rings around your eyes because he kept you up with his snores. You assure him that it's fine and you'll just take a nap later. You're just happy that he's getting sleep.

His favorite season is summer. He loves going to the beach and swimming.(it's totally not because you wear skimpy summer clothes) Has played mermaids with you before, may have gotten a little handsy and made it the explicit version of mermaids. Lemon sorbet is his favorite summertime refreshment. He has definitely given you head after he had ice cream and put you on cloud nine. 100% collects shells for you.

He's such a dog person. It has to be a big dog, though. Like a Bernese mountain dog or a Newfoundland. He loves squishing their cute little face. Is the best dog daddy ever, he's so excited when he gets to cuddle with his fluffbuddy, and you of course. Having a dog gives him a feeling of domesticity that he's always longed for. He wouldn't mind a cat, he likes them and never passes on an opportunity to pet one but he's a dog person at heart. If you get him a puppy, he's the happiest man in the world.

Loves to have little kitchen dates with you, aka you cook dinner together and he twirls you around the kitchen and sways with the music. Usually a glass of wine is involved too. You're also wearing matching Pajamas.

Has such a sweet tooth. He looks like a BBQ chips kinda guy but he loooooves sweets. If you like baking and do it frequently he's on his knees. Refuses to eat any other baked good ever again because "they can't compare to yours". Do not leave your baked goods unattended, they will be gone by the end of the day.

Oddly, he enjoys going grocery shopping. He will always push the cart for you and pay. You have tried everything to convince him to let you pay but he straight up refuses and shuts it down immediately. He will spoil you to the high heavens, even if that means just paying for veggies lmao.  Again, there's something so domestic about going grocery shopping with you, it makes him so happy and fulfilled.

Huge Sleeper. Sure, if he has to get up early for his job or run on just a couple hours of sleep he can manage that just fine but he'd sleep for the whole day if you'd let him. On the Weekends, he does not get out of bed before 2 pm so won't you. He will have such an iron grip on you, leaving the warm embrace of the bed is impossible.

🩵▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎☁️▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎🩵

[riverwithoutbanks]

Since we’re doing s16 wish lists, here’s what I wanna see (in no particular order except for the first one):

Reunion episode(s). Can take up to three episodes because I’m okay with suffering. There are several ways this could go and I have a couple fics on the back burner about it so I won’t elaborate.

Beach episode: they planned to spend a few days near the sea, but a case falls on their laps. Dean is in denial and just wants to chill. The universe seems to be on his side as every time something supernatural happens, he barely misses it (think Linda from Phineas and Ferb). Cas, Sam, and Eileen are slowly losing it, being bullied by a giant squid. Dean is in a long chair, reading Vogue, and sipping Piña Coladas. Jack pops by and goes ‘wow, you guys look like shit!!’ (Dean fell asleep and got a massive sunburn).

Weekend at Bobby’s but Cas, and more comedic. I want this one to expose the shit out of the brothers. Have them be in a middle of a tiff and make it everyone’s problem. Point of the episode being, Cas loves them (especially Dean) a lot. But sometimes he wants to throttle them.

Bittersweet episode about aging. I’m thinking parallels with a monster/human relationship and hunters who got out. Saileen talking about having/adopting children question mark. Potentially dismissed after hearing Dean and Claire having a row whilst Cas tries to defuse the situation (he makes it worse).

Theee Destiel episode (they’re all more or less destiel but this is the big one. Can take place during the reunion arc). They talk about it ™️. It can last the whole season as long as they end up in a relationship by the end. I’m not particularly into domestic portrayals (nothing against them, just not my cuppa tea) so you can make the drama last. Especially if it’s getting on everyone’s nerves.

Oblivious Sam. ‘He meant as a friend, right? 😀🌸’. Would be especially funny if Dean is trying to talk about it but Sam is just not computing. Especially especially funny if he tries to defend their friendship being all like ‘yeah they’re weird but you’re an arsehole for assuming that there’s something more!!’. Dean and Cas look like they were dragged through a hedge backward and mugged by a pack of clowns. Turns out Sam’s right in the end, they weren’t doing anything YET. But now that he has contemplated the possibility, he can’t unsee it. To be continued

Continuation of the previous episode. Sam is looking for a memory erasing spell because he just CANNOT with those star crossed losers. He find Naomi’s… what the fuck was her lobotomy stuck, anyway? Some kind of sonic screwdriver? Moving on, he realises it’s been used recently (traces of grace or whatever, pick your poison. The magic system doesn’t make any sense anyway). Oops :) looks like someone has been messing with them. Wait. Wasn’t there someone else? Where’s Eileen?

The Big Bad. I love me some Chuck won and possessed Jack so it would go in that direction. The sonic screwdriver was in the bunker because Eileen caught Chuck!Jack’s new creation fucking with their brains. I wish it could be a cool uncanny monster, but let’s be real it will probably be just some dude ™️. She walked in on it lobotomising Cas (because it’s iconic<3) and tries to fight the thing off. Epic and terrifying chase scene through the bunker, especially since Eileen can’t hear the creature. She hides in a room where they keep spell ingredients and finds Sam’s conveniently placed recipe for calling Rowena. You can figure out the rest.

[end of part 1]

[laugtherhyena]

@ninjagirlstar5 YEAH‼️Mary is straight up one of the nicest people in our cast i think? She's outward friendly to most of the characters as you can see in this silly chart.

Ramblings under cut tho maybe check out the cast post so that you know who I'm talking about (made by the same dude that made this chart template, hi avery)

So a thing about Mary is that she's really not that shaken with the whole termina festival thing? The horrors are the horrors but she's been struggling by her whole life to the point that she's desensitized to a lot of things + the insanity of the situation in Prehevil is a little beyond her comprehension, so even tho there are fucked monsters and crazy cultists running around while the moon tries to morph them into twisted versions of themselves she's watching that and sorta just going "Damn that's crazy" before continuing focusing on staying alive herself long enough so that the train passes by and she can leave (1st round survivors leave Prehevil by hopping on a cargo train wagon as it passes by the town)

She is one of the characters that keeps their cool through a majority of the festival and only moonschorches on day 3 morning after some nasty stuff happens. So pair that with her just being a nice person in general and you have Mary!

The worse people get in her chart is neutral + avoidant and that's because she's got a gut feeling that something's off about John and Hilda but she doesn't want to fuck around and find out so she just keeps her distance from them.

The other 3 she avoids are all people Mary does like quite a bit but none of them want to be around her for one reason or another; Damian and Claire are both rather reclusive people who have their minds set on escaping Prehevil alive and their own personal goals while Addison is kinda of a paranoid dude which makes him avoid a lot of people through termina in general. So Mary sees that and steers away not wanting to bother them (she is used to people avoiding her out of being disgusted by her presence seeing her as a filthy, stupid and untrustworthy street rat so this isn't anything new for her. None of these opinions applies to the dudes I just stated tho), which is kinda sad because she does like these people quite a bit. She is impressed by Claire and Addison's professions and would love to know more about those and has never been around a journalistic photographer or actor (She's seen tvs once or twice in random gigs she got over the years and was just absolutely mesmerized on how that little box has people on it), and she's heard a lot of good things about Damien from his brother.

She would have avoided Lola for similar reasons, she's nice to everyone but she's a bit of a cleaning freak so Mary's appearance bothers her quite a bit, but because Lola is not much of a fighter and is terrified of the situation they're in Mary sticks by to help. It's in the same vein as her being around Anatol and Ebba even tho they don't care much for her, she's seeing these 20 year olds with a lot of life ahead of them stuck in this hell on earth and takes upon herself try helping them even if she is aware of what they think of her.

Kit is a buddy tho, they're both people who grew up in the outskirts of society (albeit in wildly different settings) so they had a pretty harsh life which in turn means they got quite a bit in common :] she also chats and hangs around Matyas even tho she can't understand half what he's rambling about.

The 3 people left are the closest to Mary out of the whole cast, so much so that if certain events aren't prevented at least one of these people being alive is a requirement for her to make it out alive.

Mary and Amos both come from the orphanage, while they weren't necessarily friends back then, they did know each other during the time Mary still lived there, tho she can't remember that due to blocking out pretty much all her memories from her time in the orphanage out of trauma. What she can recall is really vague and hard to understand and the thought of setting foot there again terrifies her, this stuff is also the reason why she's afraid of the dark priests but she isn't scared of Amos due to the familiar feeling he evokes even if she can't remember knowing him prior to termina. They grow closer out of shared religious trauma and sorta look out for each other in a way.

As for Catherine and Leslie they're both people she's only met during termina that surprised her a bunch because she's so used to people with big important carrers like them to just ignore her existence entirely, so to see a doctor of sorts and a lawyer not only be unbothered by her presence but straight up like and treat her nicely it's just,, wow! "I never talked to someone so smart before!" Or "I never had someone take care of me before!" And I think she cherishes their company a lot through the festival.

[tonberry-yoda]

Write for Leon Scott Kennedy coward 😳

The End - Leon Scott Kennedy

notes - THIS IS WHAT YOU GET FOR MAKING MY BRAINROT WORSE! You get a long fic now tee hee. This was so satisfying to write tbh. I loved RE2 and love Leon, so I was very happy to write this <333

word count - 2,756

WARNINGS - blood, SPOILERS FOR RE2, not proofread lolol

Wounds from Lickers, Zombies, spare glass shards, and god only knows what covered your body. You looked like a wreck who was tired and a little dead inside, but it was over. You made it out of that hellhole they called Raccoon City and were now onto a new, and hopefully better life.

"I could really use a shower," Claire laughed, picking a stick out of Sherry's hair.

"Tell me about it." You agreed, wiping what you couldn't tell was dirt or sewage off of your shoulder. You felt disgusting, but you knew that whenever you got to a shower that it was going to be the best shower of all time.

You and Claire were lucky you could still be laughing and smiling after everything that happened. And Leon... well, he had been through hell and back with it being his first day as a cop and all. You felt bad for him. He went through loss after loss and you had no clue what to say.

He was sitting in the corner of the train cart, crying. You wanted more than anything to go cheer him up or something, but how on Earth were you supposed to do that.

Apparently though, Claire saw that you were eyeing the crying cop and nudged your arm with her elbow, signaling that you should probably go talk to him. She and Sherry decided to head to another cart to look around a bit.

You took a deep breath and walked over to the blonde boy, putting your hand on his back. "You were very brave out there," you told him in a soft voice, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear.

He looked up at you a little shocked, tears staining his puffy red eyes. "No way. If anything you were the bravest here. Me and Claire were kinda prepared for anything, but you? You were just living life and got sucked into this shit."

"But I'm okay now. And you're okay! We did great out there!"

Leon just nodded and stared off into space, little tears flowing down his cheeks.

"Do you wanna talk about it?" You asked.

Leon turned to you again. Seeing him cry was about to make you cry.

"It's my fault she's gone."

"Who? Ada?" You had stuck with Leon his whole mission helping him through stupid puzzles and beating the shit out of psycho dogs. Ada was someone you met on the mission and immediately got a bad vibe from. You knew she wasn't FBI when you met her, you just didn't have the heart to tell Leon. He really seemed to like that girl. And it didn't matter how jealous you were in the little tram where she kissed him.

Leon nodded, tears welling back up in his eyes. "I could've pulled her up if I didn't get so hurt. She's gone now... because of me."

You put your hand on Leon's back. "Leon, look, she was a crazy mercenary, there's a huge, like GIANT chance that she's okay. She probably had a grappling hook in her bra or something."

That actually made Leon laugh a bit, which surprised you. "How's your arm?" You asked, wanting to quickly change the subject.

"Better." He stretched out his arm, which took some work, but he barely winced.

"Good!" You smiled and gave Leon one more check over to make sure he wasn't in any more need for medical attention. "It looks way better!"

"Yeah, well injuries always look better than they feel." Leon chuckled and sat back to be more comfortable. None of you knew where this train was going to lead, but you were just happy to know that you would be out of that awful town.

"You're really strong, you know that?" Leon told you.

You were shocked to hear that if you were being honest, so you turned to Leon with red cheeks. "Where did that come from?"

"I mean, I already explained it earlier, come on! You've been through a lot with me. Thanks for that."

You just nodded, still thinking about Ada. You were never the jealous type, but all of the sudden you were and it was pissing you off. I mean, you couldn't blame all the ladies around you for liking Leon as much as you did because oh my god, he was perfect. He wanted to protect everyone, was kind, empathetic, and cute as fuck. He was everything anyone wanted in a partner and you were just mad that Ada got her hands on him first.

"I can't wait to get some nice clean clothes." Leon sighed, pulling you out of your mind.

"Right?!" Even thinking about the warm embrace of a blanket was making you cozy, but clean clothes? That sounded like heaven right then.

"I found a crap ton of money at the station and that should be enough to get us a couple of hotel rooms and some clean clothes until we find something better." Leon pulled out wads of cash and your jaw dropped. You knew that some of the zombies would have cash on them and you had to admit, you did take some, but you weren't expecting Leon, the cute cuddly rookie, to take any.

"Leon, did you steal that?!"

His face flushed bright red. "I-I.... They.... I just.... We needed it and uh...."

"I'm just playing with you, Kennedy." You playfully slapped his back and he cleared his throat, a little embarrassed.

"Hey guys?" Claire stuck her head back into the cart with a smile. "Sorry if I'm interrupting your flirting, but it looks like we're about to come to a stop. Looks like we're outside of Raccoon City too!"

You laughed at Claire and turned to fine Leon blushing, which made you blush too. "Alright, we'll get prepared."

"You better," Claire winked. "Because clean clothes and a bed sound like heaven itself."

The train came to a halt in an unknown area, but when you got off of the train, the world looked happy again. It was no longer the dead of night and was now early morning, where the air smelled fresh and you could hear birds chirping. It was fantastic and you didn't mind the tears that were rolling down your cheeks. The train took off behind all of you with a loud whoosh and you were now somewhere new, hoping that you wouldn't hear anymore zombies.

"Come on you guys!!!" Claire ran off to a city that was off in the distance, grabbing Sherry's hand. "Let's go!! Are you seriously gonna wait all day?!"

You and Leon looked at each other with a smile and ran after Claire to the city. Stepping in there any other day would probably be hell, with people cussing each other out and pushing each other around, but when all of you stepped in there, it was amazing. There were living breathing humans just doing their every day normal routines. It was like everything was back to normal.

You clung to Leon's arm and smiled. "Leon, can you believe it?"

He was smiling like an idiot before running into some random Target. People were looking at you like you were crazy, while others whispered about hearing what happened in Raccoon City, surprised there were survivors.

You didn't care either way, it's not like you were paying attention. Instead, you just grabbed everything you needed. Water, food, underwear, shoes, socks, clothes, normal everyday items that would be so regular to everyone, but seemed like jewels and riches to you.

You walked up to Leon with a stacked cart and a smile. "I'm about ready to check out!"

Leon looked at your stack with wide eyes. "Damn, you really went ham down those aisles, huh?"

You nodded. "I'm just thankful I had a crap ton in my savings so you don't have to pay for any of it. Thank god they have an ATM here."

"Oh, awesome!" Leon was looking at a few shirts and you pulled one off of it's hanger, handing it to him.

"You would look good in this. I'll meet you outside, okay? Tell Claire the same!"

Waiting outside in a Target parking lot wasn't ideal, but it felt heavenly out, so you weren't mad in the slightest. Honestly, you didn't care at all that you looked pathetic, you were just happy this wasn't Raccoon City.

Claire quickly ran out of the Target with her arm in Sherry's. "Let's go get that hotel room!!!" She quickly darted off and Leon ran out of the Target, limping.

"Dammit, Claire, hold on!!"

You grabbed onto Leon's arm and chuckled. "She's fine, Leon. We'll catch up. She pointed at the hotel she wants to stay in, and it's not too far off. I'm just glad she has the energy to take care of that kid right now."

Leon nodded. "Same. I can barely walk without feeling like I'm going to pass out."

You and Leon walked to the hotel, laughing about the memories you had of Mr. X trying to follow you around. Even though those scared the shit out of you in the moment, you couldn't help but laugh now.

The hotel was nice. It was bright white and covered in fancy red carpets. You looked like a bunch of homeless people.... well, you guessed you were now.

"Me and Sherry are gonna share a room," Claire said, grabbing both sides of the girls shoulders.

"Then I guess that means y/n and I will have separate rooms. I'll go pay."

Your heart dropped and immediate panic filled your body.

"W-Wait." You pulled Leon off to the side, your heart pounding for some reason.

"What's wrong?" Leon looked at you with concern and held your shoulders.

"I... Can we share a room?" You looked up at him and he smiled.

"Of course."

"I just don't know if I can sleep alone after all that and we've already been through so mu-"

Leon placed his index finger on your lips and giggled. "I don't need an excuse from you, y/n. I understand."

You waited eagerly and patiently for Leon to get each of your rooms.

"I'm gonna shower so hard, you don't even understand." Claire said, stretching, each of her bones making a small pop sound.

"Me too." You sighed, imagining the warm water running down your back.

"Here's your key, Claire. Don't lose it."

Claire snorted. "As if. Of course I'm not gonna lose it. Let's go Sherry!" They ran up the stairs, getting odd looks from other patrons and staff, but they didn't seem to care.

"You ready, y/n?"

You nodded, taking the elevator with Leon.

"I'm so glad that's over." He smiled, clicking the elevator button.

"Me too."

"I still can't believe how amazing you were back there." Leon gave you a little pat on the back.

"Well, for it being your first day, Kennedy, I'd say you killed it."

"Literally."

You both burst out into laughter. You were surprised you could still do that, but very happy about it.

"You're amazing, Leon." You set down your target bag on the elevator floor and pulled him into your arms.

He sighed, tickling your neck a bit and held you by your waist. "You're amazing."

The elevator dinged, interrupting your hug, but you couldn't help but bolt out of there and down the long hallways.

"You're going the wrong way, y/n!" Leon called out, pointing down the other end of the hall.

"Which room is it?" Before Leon could answer, you glanced at the key and took off, finding the room rather quickly. You waited like an impatient puppy and bobbed up and down as Leon opened the door.

Leon opened the door to a nice clean room that smelled slightly perfumey, but much better than rotting zombie.

As you were searching the room, you were satisfied with everything. It was cozy, roomy, had a TV, a clean bathroom, and...

"Leon?"

"Yeah?" Leon was already quick to unpack his stuff, and stuffed his mouth with chips.

"There's only one bed."

His face flushed pink. "Y-Yeah... I.... I thought it would be nice." He cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck. "Look.... I don't want to be that far from you, okay? I don't know why. I still feel like I have to protect you and-" You interrupted him by placing your index finger on his lips this time.

"I don't need an excuse, Leon. I really don't mind. Now, I'm gonna take a quick shower. Sorry you gotta stay musty for a little while longer."

"Eh, it's fine. It'll make the shower more worth it."

Worth it was definitely the right words to use. When you stepped into the shower, ignoring the dark red that poured off of you and the black water that formed at your feet, it was really heaven. It was the best shower you had ever taken, and you have never felt so clean in your entire life.

When you stepped out, you immediately tossed out your old clothes and put on something fresh and some pajamas that made you feel cute. It didn't really matter since you were about to pass out soon, but feeling nice was something you enjoyed and something you actually needed after all of that.

You stepped out of the bathroom and chugged some water, not even noticing that Leon had run straight past you to take a shower himself. He really deserved it though, so you didn't blame him.

You laid down on the bed and stared at the ceiling for a while. What a goddamn day. You really couldn't believe you survived all of that. It was a shit show, and for a while, before you met Leon, you didn't have anything but a metal pipe to beat the zombies off with. If not for that rookie cop, you wouldn't be here right now.

You were more thankful than he could ever know.

"Holy shit," Leon stepped out of the bathroom, drying off his hair with a little towel, in a giant shirt and a pair of basketball shorts. "That was the best shower ever."

You sat up with a smile. "Wasn't it?!"

Leon smiled when he saw you, throwing down the mini towel on a nearby table before jumping on the bed next to you. "You know," he told you, getting comfortable on the bed. "You're actually really cute not covered in blood. Wait, that came out wrong... You were cute with the blood... but uh.... shit, I messed up, can I restart?"

You giggled. "Go ahead. Restart."

"You know," Leon looked at you with the most loving smile ever. "You're really cute."

You blushed. "Says the cutest guy in the world."

"Aw, shucks, you don't mean that, do you?"

"Of course I mean that, Leon."

He smiled at you and pulled you into his arms, laying back with you on the bed. "I'm glad I found you out there." He said softly.

"I'm glad you found me."

You two sat in silence for a while, just laying in each other's arms. After being through all of that, you didn't realize how sore you were and only now was it kicking in. But thank god you had a bed.

Breaking the silence, Leon wrapped his arms around you tighter. "I never want to let you go, y/n." He whispered in your ear, placing a kiss on the lobe.

"But...." You hated yourself for asking this. "What about Ada?"

"What about her?" Leon sat up a bit, letting go of you.

"I.... You two kissed. It seemed like you really liked her."

"Ada kissed me," Leon reminded you. "We weren't that close. I knew you for longer, even if it was a couple of hours. Plus, Ada betrayed us. She was using me. You, y/n, you really care about me. I just want to protect you.... at all costs. If you'll let me."

You cupped Leon's face in your hands and smiled. "Of course I'll let you. But know I want to protect you every now and again."

Leon couldn't help himself, he pushed forward and planted his lips onto yours, pushing you right down on the bed. You quickly smiled into the kiss and pulled him closer until he was right on top of you.

He placed kiss after kiss after kiss onto you until you both passed out, snoring.

You didn't care what was ahead. As long as you had Leon, you would be fine.

~~~~~

resident evil masterlist | pinned post

2023 @tonberry-yoda – do not repost or claim ANY of my work as your own! likes, reblogs, and comments are not only welcome, but appreciated

~~~~~

[bawnjourno]

Chicago Sparks Rambles!!!

It was so slay to meet Claire @rhythmthlef Eiffel @thedevotionaltour and Sarah @ron-do-i-get-to-sing-my-way and to ofc be with my bff Alissa @taintmansion . Everyone looked so yass and slay and our group pic got on the insta story!

Also shoutout to @churippu who was so sweet and gave us the grooviest stickers in the merch line! I can’t wait to find a place for my sparkly suit Russell.

I NEVER go crazy at merch tables and have spent months not going to the movies, buying records, or eating out, so I got… 3 t-shirts, a tote bag, socks, and the pin set 💪 I love all my swag!

ofc last year in Chicago (same venue) was a bit more subdued all around energy wise bc it was still during COVID but the crowd was great this time. I wish we’d stood earlier (seated venues are like that sometimes) but the people in the front row were up dancing like crazy the whole time and other people were dancing in the aisles!

Those first few opening songs obviously went hard but I was LIVINGGGGGG during Beaver and Ron’s piano/Stevie’s drums in Nothing Is As Good As They Say It Is were fire. And Russell’s vocals in general jesus! How do u do that dude!!!

It Doesn’t Have To Be That Way has meant a lot to me personally for various reasons - mainly, I’ve felt weird and uncool my whole life and I find my passion in meaning in making art and using that art to connect with people who DO understand me - and so Russell was just introducing it and I started crying and cried the whole song 😭

Then cut to Balls when we NEEDED to get our fist pumps on!! ✊🟢

I love that they kept Shopping Mall Of Love bc people were screaming for Ronnie like it was Beatlemania. Love that bridge clapping also!

Toughest Girl In Town had one of the coolest arrangements eva god it was beautiful. And We Go Dancing went crazyyyyyyyy like I will never be that in shape in my LIFE

Eli ate that Bon Voyage solo tf up 🎸

By MTYCTD everyone was standing and dancing and the fire alarm started going off mid song but we all just ignored it 😭😭😭 tfw they are literally hotter than your mama will ever be. And the song ends and Russell just goes [slightly bitchy voice] “okayyyyyyyy. everything’s fine, carry on as you were” fjjfjfjfjfjjd

The 1 2 3 punch of Heaven My Way This Town is always godly. I made sure to scream my lungs out during the shuffle wahhhhh.

I can’t remember at what point but like 2/3 through the set maybe? In between songs Russell just starts singing 🎶My kind of town, Chicago🎶 it was really sweet

I wish they’d done the full Gee That Was Fun but the mini version served well as a final pre encore song 🥹

I had forgotten about the rainbow lights during Baby’s so thank god I was recording wahhhhhh that song goes so hard

All That was worse than IDHTBTW like I started sobbing and couldn’t stop until they left the stage 😭 They just mean so much to me!!! And Ron made a lil speech thanking us and said “I know it sounds hackneyed but at this point in the night I can’t avoid sounding hackneyed” and I mean ofc they’d say this but they said “best Chicago visit yet” which was nice

The standing ovation after All That and the pic was like 3-4 minutes long and Alissa commented on it and Claire just went “I could go all night baby!” which like so true

Russell made 🫶🫰 at the audience during this standing o and Alissa just screamed “KPOP KING !”

I stood on my chair and still didn’t get in the pic but Ron was technically on top of me so 💪😌

Random asides: got so many compliments on my Ron outfit! Sparks fans are the nicest! When our group met in the Dunkin a nice blonde woman walking outside flashed me a thumbs up from the window and then she was front row. We actually chatted after and she said she was considering going to Milwaukee last minute. Girl do it!!!! And when I got to merch and said “okay let’s start with the tote bag bc i’m gonna go a little crazy” the person in the left half of the line laughed and was encouraging lol.

Alissa and I waited outside for about half an hour and I guess the guys had been whisked away long beforehand 😅 but we said hi to Evan and Max and they were super nice!

One of the best shows I’ve ever been to. Once of the most meaningful and profound. So glad I have a favorite band. So glad I have great friends to do it all with. Gee That Was Fun (real)

Sparkle on ✨

[incorrectcoldflashblog]

Sooooo...is it too much to ask for your answers to all of the questions on the ask list about your country?? (I hope you will say no and tell me to select a handful, if that's what you prefer.)

Sorry, sorry, I totally meant to do this faster but that was a lot of questions, haha. Putting this under a read more because it got LONG.

1.) favourite place in your country?

Honestly there are a lot of beautiful places in France, but a personal favorite would be Biarritz, near the Spanish border. My whole extended family used to vacation there when I was a kid.

2.) do you prefer spending your holidays in your country or travel abroad?

Given the choice I’d prefer to travel abroad.

3.) does your country have access to sea?

Yes, via the English channel, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean sea.

4.) favourite dish specific for your country?

La blanquette de veau, a dish that was originally from Normandy :)

5.) favourite song in your native language?

Nooo, don’t do this to me. I hate picking favorites. I’ll just share one that has some personal significance for me and not call it my favorite ;)

6.) most hated song in your native language?

I don’t know that I really hate that many songs, but on a personal level I definitely never wanna hear Jusqu’ici tout va bien by Gims again as long as I live. It’s the theme song to a show my roommate watches every evening (which means I have to hear it Every.Day.) and it irks me that the title is a reference to one of the best scenes from my favorite movie when the song itself is so annoying. But maybe I just feel that way because I have to hear it so, so often.

7.) three words from your native language that you like the most?

Clair-obscur (chiaroscuro), l’engrenage (an ineluctable series of events) and it’s technically two words but l’amitié amoureuse. The literal translation would be ’friendship in love’ but it’s not actually a romantic love, it just describes basically having an intense but platonic crush on your friend. It’s one of my favorite concepts in the French language.

8.) do you get confused with other nationalities? if so, which ones and by whom?

No, we don’t, for better or for worse France is very uniquely French, lol.

9.) which of your neighbouring countries would you like to visit most/know best?

The one I know best is probably Switzerland, just because my great-uncle lived in Lausanne and we visited him a few times when he was still alive. Fun fact, he ran away to Switzerland after having an affair with a married woman because her husband threatened to kill him, lol.

The one I’d like to visit most is Italy, just because that’s where part of my family is from (from Parma) and I’ve never been.

10.) most enjoyable swear word in your native language?

Putain, which I use approximately 500 times a day XD

11.) favourite native writer/poet?

Listen, how am I meant to pick just one when there are so many??

Classic literature: Gustave Flaubert

Contemporary writer: Marie Ndiaye

Favorite poet: maybe Marguerite Yourcenar? Although my favorite poem might be L’Irréparable by Charles Baudelaire.

You didn’t ask but my favorite play is Le Cid by Corneille. Romeo and Juliet wishes XD

12.) what do you think about English translations of your favourite native prose/poem?

I think there’s just always something missing in translation tbh.

13.) does your country (or family) have any specific superstitions or traditions that might seem strange to outsiders?

I mean, I know outsiders often comment on the fact that French people kiss each other on the cheek to say hello (se faire la bise) but I don’t know if that counts as a strange tradition.

14.) do you enjoy your country’s cinema and/or TV?

Ehh, to me French cinema/TV is divided in two categories, really fucking good and really fucking awful, haha, there’s pretty much no in-between. A bad movie is called a navet (a turnip) by the way^^

15.) a saying, joke, or hermetic meme that only people from your country will get?

There’s a lot of jokes and memes that originated from the tv show Kaamelott that are going to be hard to decipher for people who haven’t seen it. Here’s one I think you’ll enjoy:

16.) which stereotype about your country you hate the most and which one you somewhat agree with?

The one I agree with is that French people complain all the time because we really, really do, haha. I don’t agree with the stereotype that French people are lazy though, we just don’t live to work but why are we acting like it’s a bad thing?? I don’t know, there are a lot of negative stereotypes about French people but tbh at the end of the day I don’t really care that much.

17.) are you interested in your country’s history?

Sure, it’s definitely interesting, but there’s so much of it it can be a little intimidating.

18.) do you speak with a dialect of your native language?

Nope.

19.) do you like your country’s flag and/or emblem? what about the national anthem?

Our emblem is le coq (the rooster), which you only see on the French team’s shirts, just like you’re most likely to see the flag when there’s a World Cup. It’s fine I guess, I don’t really have an opinion on it.

Our national anthem is kind of problématique but it does go hard. I’ll give it that. Like, if you’ve ever watched that scene from Casablanca where they sing La Marseillaise you’ll understand what I mean by that.

20.) which sport is The Sport in your country?

Mbappé Soccer :)

21.) if you could send two things from your country into space, what would they be?

I’ve been puzzling over this question for weeks, haha, and I’m still not sure what it means, like? Do you mean annoying people I’d launch into space or XD

22.) what makes you proud about your country? what makes you ashamed?

I don’t have a lot of national pride tbh. I’m ashamed about a lot of the public discourse, the islamophobia, the state violence, the way Nicolas Sarkozy and the media brought far-right talking points into the mainstream and now we’re all swimming in their shit.

I’m proud to know that French people are always ready to burn shit down though.

23.) which alcoholic beverage is the favoured one in your country?

According to Google it’s beer. I would’ve probably said wine.

24.) what other nation is joked about most often in your country?

Probably Belgium. There’s lots of belgian jokes.

25.) would you like to come from another place, be born in another country?

I don’t really think about stuff like that. Every country has its own issues, so it is what it is.

26.) does your nationality get portrayed in Hollywood/American media? what do you think about the portrayal?

Oh boy, does it ever. Every time a new season of Emily in Paris comes out you can bet French Twitter is gonna have a field day over this shit XD

27.) favourite national celebrity?

When you say national celebrity my first thought immediately goes to Jean-Jacques Goldman. Amazing songwriter, but also very well-known for his work with the Restos du Cœur, a French charity that was founded by his friend the comedian Coluche and les Restos famously do more for the poor than our own government ever would. Probably why Goldman gets elected personnalité préférée des Français every other year. (He also pays his taxes in France, unlike some people, and we always appreciate that here.)

28.) does your country have a lot of lakes, mountains, rivers? do you have favourites?

It does. I think the most famous are the river Seine, the Mont-Blanc (although that crosses over into Italy) and as far as lakes go I’m sure there are a lot but I can’t think of a really well-known one.

29.) does your region/city have a beef with another place in your country?

My city does have beef with another city, but I won’t say which for privacy reasons ;)

30.) do you have people of different nationalities in your family?

My paternal grandmother was from Laos and my paternal grandfather’s family immigrated from Italy (not him directly, but his mother). I think there’s some German (well, Prussian) and Flemish on my mother’s side. My aunt’s husband is also from Italy, and my eldest brother’s wife is from Madagascar. I think that’s all :)

Thank you so much for asking, friend, I can only hope I didn’t totally bore you to death XD

“Hi, I’m not from the US” ask set

[sapphic-book-tournament]

Some Girls Do by Rachel Lipincott and Alyson Derrick-

Alex Blackwood is a little bit headstrong, with a dash of chaos and a whole lot of flirt. She knows how to get the girl. Keeping her on the other hand…not so much. Molly Parker has everything in her life totally in control, except for her complete awkwardness with just about anyone besides her mom. She knows she’s in love with the impossibly cool Cora Myers. She just…hasn’t actually talked to her yet.

Alex and Molly don’t belong on the same planet, let alone the same college campus. But when Alex, fresh off a bad (but hopefully not permanent) breakup, discovers Molly’s hidden crush as their paths cross the night before classes start, they realize they might have a common interest after all. Because maybe if Alex volunteers to help Molly learn how to get her dream girl to fall for her, she can prove to her ex that she’s not a selfish flirt. That she’s ready for an actual commitment. And while Alex is the last person Molly would ever think she could trust, she can’t deny Alex knows what she’s doing with girls, unlike her.

As the two embark on their five-step plans to get their girls to fall for them, though, they both begin to wonder if maybe they’re the ones falling…for each other.

Some Girls Do by Jennifer Dugan-

Delilah Green swore she would never go back to Bright Falls—nothing is there for her but memories of a lonely childhood where she was little more than a burden to her cold and distant stepfamily. Her life is in New York, with her photography career finally gaining steam and her bed never empty. Sure, it’s a different woman every night, but that’s just fine with her.

When Delilah’s estranged stepsister, Astrid, pressures her into photographing her wedding with a guilt trip and a five-figure check, Delilah finds herself back in the godforsaken town that she used to call home. She plans to breeze in and out, but then she sees Claire Sutherland, one of Astrid’s stuck-up besties, and decides that maybe there’s some fun (and a little retribution) to be had in Bright Falls, after all.

Having raised her eleven-year-old daughter mostly on her own while dealing with her unreliable ex and running a bookstore, Claire Sutherland depends upon a life without surprises. And Delilah Green is an unwelcome surprise…at first. Though they’ve known each other for years, they don’t really know each other—so Claire is unsettled when Delilah figures out exactly what buttons to push. When they’re forced together during a gauntlet of wedding preparations—including a plot to save Astrid from her horrible fiancé—Claire isn’t sure she has the strength to resist Delilah’s charms. Even worse, she’s starting to think she doesn’t want to...

[carmenized-onions]

CHAPTER 9 LETS FUCKING GOOOO (get ready for a yapfest, where most of it will probably be uncomprehensible because language can’t begin to capture the emotions your writing makes me feel) also !! add me to the taglist please and thank you<3

It is t-minus three days, until the worst Friday of your life. - already nervous and the chapter just started but fuck it we ball

you figure it’s probably just the breakfast from yesterday at La Mattina settling in your stomach— the way you scare me but still make me laugh

He does not care this much, he doesn’t even have basic reading comprehension— RICHIE HELL YEAHHHHH (and he calls her cousin🥹)

also big shout out to you author for making it so clear which texts were sent by what person (so how her texts are cursive and richie’s texts are bold) bc some fics make it so hard to differentiate who’s talking/texting!!<3<3

daddy - POR QUE. i know he didn’t mean it like that but shshshdh

See u chip - this is the cutest nickname!! everyone in that poll can fight me idc idc

It’s time to eat a whole freezer cake and lay in your pyjamas all day and interact with not a single soul on this entire planet. - me celebrating doing the bare minimum!! (but it’s still huge to me so i understand chip well)

To the air, more accurately, but, y’know, same thing. - [cries in norwegian]

You’re gonna get dinner, with Richie, this Friday. - OMGGGG HINTS FOR FRIDAY👀👀

THE SWITCH OVER TO CARMEN HELL YEAHHHH - fuckn delicious freezer cake for you author!!

He really needs his sister. - 🫶🏼 i feel like this is layered (like the carmenized onion)

you’re gonna work as a bottle girl for the rest of your life - his worst nightmare fr, worse than the restaurant closing actually

he’s never gonna get his shit together so he’s never gonna get to call you his - SHUT UPPP HOW COULD YOU DROP THIS ON ME😭😭

He’s still gonna be him - BABYBOY THATS NOT A BAD THING😭 LET ME PROTECCCC

Sisyphean nightmare - YOUR WAY WITH WORDS I LOVEEEE IT

He smells your shampoo, in his hair, that helps. - the way your chapters always make me cry from either the fluff or the sad

he has to hide his smile with his hand - THEM

So good to him, too good to him. Too good to anyone - 😭💓🫶🏼😭🫶🏼😭💓

Carmen so, so fucking desperately wants to ask you to come to The Bear, right now. - BALEGDEH

he knows it’d be perfect cannon fodder to be teased into oblivion. - NO BC LIKE IVE BEEN THINKING ABOUT THIS *A LOT* WHAT WILL RICHIE THINK OF CARM AND CHIP. Like thinking of how he and mikey acted at christmas after seeing claire makes me wonder how he’d act when finding out about carm and chip (also carm is only able to date girls with c names apparently <even tho chippy is a nickname but hush>)

looks to his best friend - 🫶🏼🫶🏼🫶🏼

he’s not you. - LMAO

he can’t find your repair expenses anywhere on here. - OOOP CHIPPY IS ABOUT TO GET CAUGHT

“I’m not fuckin’ high, cousin—” - ISBRIFBRIRKR

also bet carmen doesn’t have a problem with the two hours when it means TWO HOURS OF CHIP IN HIS RESTAURANT WHERE HE CAN SNEAK GLANCES AT HER

“What’s uh— Why d’you call Tony ‘Chip’?” - the way you’re nailing his voice!!

“S’ not dark, kinda, it’s just, y’know. Personal.” - WAY TO BUILD TENSION AUTHOR. it’s very clear you’re a(n amazing) screenwriter

Mikey got to do that first, too, eh? - STAPH

he's willing to admit it, for you. - RICHIE AND CHIP BESTIES YEEEHAWWWW

“You really wanna fuckin know, huh?” Richie tilts down his head, teasing. - i love this

“Oh, fuck, you fuckin’ like her, don’t’chu, cousin? You fuckin’ dog.” - SKJDIDJFKD

Y’have my blessing. - CUTE

“Didn’t ask for it.” - CUTER

“Don’t gimme no talk back, she was my boy first, a’right?” - CUTEST (ok carmy is cutest but im doing a thing here)

“Gone, cousin.” - it’s cute that you think that richie!! have a cookie!!

“Uh, one sec, I just need to finish this fuckin’—” He shakes his hand in the air, “Whatever the fuck this is.” - again nailing his character

If he had a… lapse in behaviour, and it got back to you, would that ruin him? - you forget how she met you carm, having a meltdown in the freezer

He needs to find your invoice. - he’s so cuteee

Maybe he should just ask you, instead. Let Nat thank you for the heating pad she’s been loving, properly. Have dinner, all together, in an actual family home, instead of just each other's apartments. That'd be nice. - that’s so sweet but i fear it won’t happen, at least not YET

He’ll make you something off menu, on Friday. - HES THE SWEETEST

You’re coming before the rush, anyways, he’ll have time to play, on Friday. - 👀👀👀

He’s gonna do right by you, this Friday - he owns my heart

But right now, it’s Thursday night, and you’ve finally finished Carmen’s piece for The Bear - OMG I FORGOT ABOUT THIS MASTERPIECE, THE CUTEST GIFT EVER

You know you told him if he didn��t like it, he didn’t have to put it up, but admittedly, if he doesn’t like it, you will be crushed. - mood

Each square a snippet, a photo transfer. The squares themselves are messy, sun damaged, bleach stained, light flared. All twinged blue and yellowish. But so perfectly cut and curated. - the way you make it so easy to picture it, ugh we stan!!

Mikey. The only transfer completely unbleached, unaltered, unruined. He’s holding two cut outs. One, Food & Wine and the other, a small section in the off off off pages of the New York Times. - SHUT UP THATS THE CUTEST THING EVER TO EXIST

So so proud, silently, just with you— Couldn't look soft. Carmen does not know this photo exists. - Im gonna cry

You can only imagine the stress you could’ve eased, during their fire safety test - chip is such a slay

*the piece* is magnificent and perfect in every way and you did that!!

You took inspiration from the way his brain works - AWWWWW:3

He’s awfully inspiring. - the love that they have for each other is just everything. they are everything

You’re excited, to show this to him tomorrow, on Friday. Hopefully all goes well, on Friday. - EVIL

You’re gonna do right, by Carmen, on Friday. - SOULMATES🫶🏼

I almost briefed over all of these past few chapters to be nothing more than snippets in a chapter - i really really REALLY appreciated that you did in fact not do that

if you made it through this whole ask, god fnkn bless, looking forward to the master’s thesis i’ll write in your askbox after the next chapter

I had no idea people could make asks this long; like i mean on a character count level-- Did anyone know you could do this fr-- ANYWAYS I WANNA YAP BACK BUT I'M GONNA PUT A KEEP READING BUT PLEASE DO OPEN THIS THERE'S GONNA BE A POLL I WANT YOU CUTIES TO ANSWER

First of all, of course I will add you to the taglist, thank you for the gift of an essay everytime, i love u <3

I am ALL about Fear and Laughter. If I ever make business cards, that'll probably be the tagline. We ball.

It did make me laugh that you went RICHIE HELL YEAH after 'he doesn't have reading comprehension. I buried the lead on who the he in question was on purpose, and i was wondering if everyone would clock at that line immediately oh, it's richie. I'm so mean.

As for texting, I did read another person's fic and saw they put like screennames and sending times and i was like ah fuck, shoulda done that, but continuity,,,, so i didn't switch it up. Plus I enjoy thematically that Tony is italics, Carmen is italic/bold, and Richie is bold. I feel like it just kinda makes sense, character wise, that Tony and Richie are on either end of the spectrum and Carmen is inbetween.

They've gotta get an HR if Richie says daddy to anyone's face besides Tony frfr,

And THIS is where the new poll comes in, because you all SAY YOU WANNA FUCKIN KISS MIKEY, SO

Personally I do like Chippy a lot, not to colour your opinions. You'll see why i like it, eventually. And I'm sure when that happens we'll talk about it ad fuckin nauseam (and I'll eat it up, I will)

I love doing Carmen's perspective, it's like free therapy, realizing the way he and I both think is fucking crazy and I need to relax. He really does need his sister, poor bug. I genuinely do wonder how that's gonna be handled, in season 3.

HIS LITTLE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS PANIC YESSIRRR, Bottle Girl Tony = Hell, Never gonna actually date Tony = Mega Hell, He's Still Gonna Be Him = Super Awful Ultra Hell

So many (2) people enjoyed Sisyphean nightmare, I think I just have tumblr accent, honestly.

I'm so glad, that the shampoo thing happened honestly. I know that's crazy to say it like that, as the writer, as I planned it, but i didn't think I'd be able to call back to it all that much-- But I get to call back to it so fucking much, and it's always either heartbreaking or adorable, or both, and I lovveee both.

The idea that anyone has been thinking about a plot line that has yet to arise alot is like-- Like my brain melted. Like that's so. I'm a puddle. Puddle in your hands. BUT YES, I did have to think on that absolutely. It's a weird line to tow, right? Because Richie's gotten more respectful since then, and he's actual friends with Tony-- But like,,, bro is still a bro, at the end of the day.

CHIPPY IS ABOUT TO GET CAUUGGHTTTT, thank god someone laughed at the I'm not fuckin high line, I was worried.

“What’s uh— Why d’you call Tony ‘Chip’?” - the way you’re nailing his voice!! Did you see my ask saying i'm never sure about Carmen's dialogue and are now trying to reassure me? It's working, if you are.

WAY TO BUILD TENSION AUTHOR. it’s very clear you’re a(n amazing) screenwriter Daww, too nice to me, it IS really how I think Richie would navigate this Chip story, though, you'll see why there's,,,, pause about it, eventually.

“Gone, cousin.” - it’s cute that you think that richie!! have a cookie!! Listen, we don't KNOW how many times Tony's listened to Wannabe by the Spice Girls. Probably would need more than a single word though, Rich. A touch dramatic, cousin.

All Tony and Carmen wanna do this Friday is impress each other, and that's totally exactly what's gonna happen idk what y'all are buggin abouttttttt

I'm so glad folks like the piece, i was worried I explained it bad/it's just kinda stupid-- I just felt like, Carmen doesn't give abstract art vibes. I felt like photography worked a lot better for him. It also gave me the opportunity to slip in more Mikey, of which I think he is mentioned literally at least once every chapter. Bro is the phantom in the pages. i adore him.

I am also very glad that I didn't end up doing just snippets from the Consultation chapter to now. I was worried they'd give off filler vibes, when turned into full on chapters, but looking at them all now, i'm like it would've been an insane injustice to not give them all full breathing room. And now i think there's a lot more to sink into and give a fuck about!! Which is gonna make Friday hurt all the more <3

Anyways, thank you thank you for yapping, and i seriously need to go the fuck to sleep fuck i'm gonna be so groggy for work i'm gonna NAP ON THE BUS AND NO ONE CAN STOP ME!!!

[himebushou]

S4 of The Umbrella Academy was so garbage.

Geez. Why limit the season to 6 eps when every other season has had 10... even a runtime of 8 eps would have probably helped with the pacing issues, at least a bit.

It felt like nothing had any payoff. The CIA turning out to be Keepers? Shrug emoji. Nothing of consequence. The whole subway system came out of nowhere — it turns out that there were other ways to travel through time after all. The whole Gene and Jean thing was stretched out for so long and we got zero insight into why Sy knew so much — unless he was Abigail in disguise the whole time? But who cares?

There were some nice moments between the siblings: Allison and Klaus were mostly pretty sweet (except WHAT the heck were Allison's powers supposed to be? Also, Klaus didn't get to do anything except get locked up and buried alive) and I like that Luther and Diego got some time to bond (though, again, their skills were wasted).

Ben was. Odd. Poor kid just gets to die multiple times. And props to Viktor for actually trying to reason with Reginald and finally getting some validation from him.

The whole Lila and Five thing was so gross and completely unnecessary... I've always had issues with the way Lila was written (those 'kooky for the sake of kooky' characters can get pretty boring and I felt the same way about Klaus throughout a lot of the show). Five was my favourite from the start and just. Eurgh. #noonewantedthat

And the dialogue was so BAD. Some of the lines made me cringe so much. "To be honest I can't stop thinking about her" like. Okay Ben.

And even worse were these poignant moments happening in front of audiences and all the other characters on set just standing around completely wooden... like. What? Lila's family are in the background hearing that her marriage has fallen apart and they don't even act remotely shocked? What?

Claire was definitely one of the best parts of this season. She was a sweetheart.

Urgh. Overall, the whole thing just felt incredibly sloppy, poorly explained (WHY did Jennifer get the durango?) and as though the creative team had run out of ideas. There were so many moments where the Umbrellas acted with no urgency at all (like sitting around enjoying a Christmas party when they were supposed to be looking for Ben, or going to work as normal when they'd promised some random guy that they'd find his daughter within 24 hours). Powers morphed at the drop of a hat for plot convenience. Everyone got on board with the idea of being erased from existence without much fuss (apart from the whole thing about where the kids would end up). What was the significance of the giant squid? How were there so many Keepers? And what exactly were they keeping?

Also, I'm annoyed that they used 'Map of the Problematique' (a song I adore) to no effect; the lyrics didn't match the scenes of the Keepers arming themselves and it didn't fit the mood and just!

Anyway, two of the biggest issues I have:

If this version of Reginald is as callous as the others (after all, he did have Ben shot), then why did he waste all that time creating a fake world for Jennifer to live in?

Presumably, the only reason the Cleanse worked is because the creature eventually found the other kids that had marigold in them? Or, in this timeline, did only the Umbrellas have marigold? And in 150,000 timelines, are we supposed to believe that the Cleanse only happened once?

It's so stupid, oh man. The show's refusal to bring in the other marigold children outside of the Umbrellas was always so stinky — I thought we'd get something interesting when the Sparrows were introduced last season, but half of them died within a few episodes and geez, so much wasted potential.

Pretty glad the show is done now if that was the trajectory, lol.

[rescuefield-arch1]

one thing that doesn't really make sense to me ( or better it does but also seems dumb to point out ) is that claire is blamed for... offering aid in the aftermath of bioterrorism instead of preventing it. but the thing is that it seems at first terrasave was born after the tragedy of raccoon city with the aim to uncover the dirt that the governments ( mainly the us ) and corporations ( mainly umbrella ) were hiding, and that's it. i genuinely believe that before becoming THE designated ngo for these sort of events, the whole thing was really just a group of nerds putting in their time and skills to investigate into what went wrong with RC.

then things kept getting worse and their voice becomes louder, terragrigia panic probably elevates them and turns that group into a real organisation because by that time there's more people siding with them, willing to help. they're new but they got the support of professionals from all over the world and hence it gives them enough credibility to be backed up at harvardville, have doors opened for what concerns monitoring the development of vaccines / drugs and whatnot. but as i said they're new, they put their trust into professionals and end up with curtis miller becoming a problem for their image. and then it turns out that was the tip of the iceberg and there were even bigger problems because of the vaccine distribution and whose fault it was for that outbreak in india.

( keep in mind this is 2005, neil joined around this time much to everybody's disappointment )

now, from what we see once the harvardville situation is cleared out the gen pop's opinion of terrasave remains positive - claire lowkey ditches leon to go to the protests that are still happening so at least about that we know that they're still demanding for ron davis to not be an asshole ( because beside having beef with claire specifically he also did a whole lot of heinous things ). now why am i mentioning this guy? he was involved with tricell. FOLLOW ME ON THIS ONE. a year later we see that terrasave has branched out in penamstan, where allegedly they're dealing with war related issues and it seems like nobody is aware that there's been an outbreak until claire sees the drawing.

the thing is, i think that once they got bigger terrasave forgot their initial aim and went a little political despite not wanting to be involved with any government. the way they are portrayed in infinite darkness is very white saviour-y too, which i believe despite their good intentions it's true ( look at that god awful commercial from 2011 ). unless she went back after getting her projects approved by potus, claire ends up spending more time in DC than in penamstan and is once again involved with a senator who is working with tricell. this is 2006.

i mentioned our beloved ( ... ) neil earlier in this wall of text and i believe in the end he is the missing piece ( shocking i know ) to understand what is going on. fbc gets dismantled in 2004 after an investigation that led to lansdale being arrested for the terragrigia outbreak and passing the torch to neil. now, we don't know for how long he's been the director of terrasave, but we do know that once again they saw a professional and decided he was their best shot ( wrong... again ).

neil is interested on getting info from claire about a new virus spreading, to which claire simply says that tricell is dead and gone, there's nothing to worry about ( she's a liar and a girlboss but since infinite darkness wasn't even a thought yet i will give her benefit of doubt ). as we know neil already knows about uroboros AND a new virus because of his involvement with alex w. but the thing is... neil was planning to bring back the fbc in the same way lansdale thought he was giving the organisation such a good name - create outbreaks and go on and on about how they need that commission to be reopened. ( ALSO, as moira / movemnt made me notice, alex has a tricell box in her lab. what a coincidence !! )

funny story, lansdale engineered the t-abyss virus, and through death island we find out that terrasave has chips inside orcas to monitor them... which apparently claire is not aware of since she doesn't comment anything about the guy who called her being perplexed, she just says that they deal with bioterrorism WHICH OF COURSE HE FINDS WEIRD because it's just an orca bitten by a shark. but dylan has all kinds of aquatic monsters lurking around alcatraz and he must have taken inspiration from somewhere right? in fact he was connected to arias, who was connected to the black market and pretty much took tricell's place what concerns sales, and on and on we go.

dylan straight up tells claire that she's out there handing over bandages instead of stopping outbreaks, that she essentially sits back and watches as shit hits the fan instead of stopping it. so this leaves a question. what kind of dirt is still lurking at terrasave hqs? because neil has been dead since 2011, we could assume that things have been fixed and instead there might be a chance that there's still so much clean up to do. bottom line is... tricell is probably still around in some capacity, someone at terrasave is carrying on what neil was trying to finish and possibly cooperating with the next bad guy, and once again claire has absolutely no idea of all that.

[leopoldainter]

Claire Danes bitch why won't you die!

Ah. I thought you sent her.

He said did that.

I

Who

Your, uncle

That's, he's a family friend ... just let her sweat it out.

I want her out of my life.

Think about the tingtings

For the level Head!

Thanks, o

Well I guess if your uncles driving I might as well strap my self to ... actually I can fly that one.

Nice, it's a senna.

O for fuck sakes.

I've cats do this in mirrors before. Did we really need a third movie.

Your unlce wants to know if you do or don't want to see some of the post apocalyptic version..

Maybe, how's the music

Hes fucking her in the washroom.

I think she's just testing the faucets. She's basically bender. But with some static electricity your in a snow globe didn't you know that

John, your a drop out I found in a cage.

How close to the glass did you get when you came by, your mixing me up with hercule

Yeah you wish

Can someone please check to see if Dyson is dead or not.

I'll do it out of my next!

Oh alright all the dundee de didi

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The moment you've all been waiting for.

DMV

ITSA REST VIKT DEVE LOPY

L.A. ; bu then even though she didn't say it. Honest you some how right before you speak hear hollywoo

Moral I thinkdan guns don't do much these days

Are you calling somebody over or did you still want a machiato

Machiato, I make faces it's nothing.

This is fucked, that's politics for ya

Nancy boy Inc. Let's go nana

Fuck I am right. I'll need some hair dye and some bleach Holyoke jeesi I just can't decide between the tutu and the steloto

I don't

Haha. Ask the pilot

She made a lot of people feel like they needed to become paralegals nice pin stripe CC

Thanks but after the whole oj thing I felt it would be appreciated to go with the jenny Craig crowd but after nine eleven nothing was ever the same.

I saw that to he took a bullet to the chest, says but hey pretty boy I tender golfers, poorly.

He's unionized

They all are

....

Now listen to what he says when he exits the vehicle

I should have stayed on the bench. The FRENCH!

Would you take our picture please.

EarlyAdmission for the winner

And then

Out of nowhere

Cuz she's just been begging for it

Nancy fucks Andy in someone's front lawn. GooNero!

I forget that I already had that by mistake, fucking kids am I right

About a whole while back.

There was a new world to reach by vessel and th

.

.

An Implosion ooooAhh

Who cares

Hindi accent no fwce

That one looks like saturn

Lac leamy casino, turn around to find a hill across the river you crossed to get here to find a nice place to lay blanket and listen to anthems of rebellion album by arch enemy.

Wow! Yeah, they are not Canadian

Hordes of politicians enter.

It's one of those things.

If you found out about the fire works competition from inside, past the sign with the Bienvenue and snuggles on each sidFleecye then you probably paid admission to sit on your own blanket outside in my backyardg

Ghoise an lil juennes. Podticandeiparade

Or, you were polite and have some poket change now that you can't waste the time on church And the simpsons And family guy And american dad And bobs burgers And 60 minutes, but I still prefer to have at least the cigaret buts back, you can use them to kill birds or carefully irrivape nesting with cancerous carcinogens

Yikes, just ignore him he's honestly the worse liar

This lcbo doesn't sell alcohol

No it's a regular office

No way

We do have wifi

I know that

Ok

Please leave it's a weekend go, weed a garden or something

We're getting gas.

Not at this corner.

Are you asking me to take a breath mint.

She runs away, but with one of my bags.

I'm filming!

Oh BTW where's stone henge

...

You bitch

I did say

But then things changed cuz things tanged! Don't believe don't think about. I'm pretending like someone I wouldn't believe, for your viewing pleasure

I think the rule is, it's not funny if you have to explain it.

Dangrubbish from the getgo

Give them some money then they'll leave.

Sirens?

No it's alert, the most northern of all the point of Nunavut.

I can hear them

Sh sh let's watch one where the finish with somethi g cool like homer drunk complaining about rich people.

Ya Yue shush me I'll sushi ya i ll shu Hey I know her. I'll sush yeah wanna sushi lill sushit I swhitxhMuizimk. True but portal ahhh now I'm laughing give it a second, she's saying to a woman the she's worried to upset the man who paid for all that jewelry. That's not stoner it's lesbian were at the wrong theate

It's broadway

Just some gyn

Gym

Gymn

Hug

Uh. No

.

.

I came to the bathroom to do this

First tell me.

Ok Beth and Rob totaly had sex but it was a goi g away presenf

How does lily already know

Ohhh the Korean card counter on the couch. Ok one second ^^claps and relaxes and says

You shut the door in his face, he should know that means lily can never Ever know.

Ok, couldn't Travis have died.

No because he walked her back to her place e

WHAT

Good luck Travis...

Hmmm

Fishing fire

O sorry I'm still not sure if the news is talking about the river or me,

Why wouldnt I tell you

Jason, you took him from the ss

He was airRaid

Never mind we will go to the roof but after that for the rest of the night I have to pretend not to be having the time of my life.

And that's why he dies on the bridge

Wow lily the shot really came out to

I got all them up to r.

Yay

Go lily

Last time you see her Rebudign.

ChugaIthinkI canChugaIthink I did

Peace out

Boo b

B2

?d

Show me where there's room in a Sunday night line up then we'll talk.

Oh Keri Russell fxx yeah

O shit. Your out lay down.

I at least get paid for this. No way he's got a sac in that trunk.

Isn't that making a joke

[all-the-things-2020]

All Our Future Prospects - Chapter Ten

Summary: Ezra, Cee and Claire attend a festival. A co-worker flirts with Ezra and he and Claire have a heart to heart talk.

Rating: PG-13

Ezra rose from his stool as the conveyor belt whirred to a stop. He rolled his head from side to side to get the worst of the kinks out of his neck; Claire would take care of the remaining stiffness when they got into bed. Saturday nights were the highlight of his week.

“Going to the festival tonight?”

He turned to see Kammi, the new hire whose station was closest to his. She’d been chatting him up all week and he found her attempts amusing. She couldn’t be more than nineteen or twenty, but was blatantly uninterested in the other youngsters on their floor.

“Indeed I am,” he replied. “I take it you are as well?”

Kammi nodded. “I never miss it! Been going since I was too little to walk.”

So about five years, Ezra thought. He suppressed a smile and nodded to her. “Then perhaps I will see you there.”

“Yeah! My friend’s family has a food stand you just have to try. Roasted corn with all the trimmings. Butter, cheese, spices … it’s an old Earth delicacy.” She smiled and actually batted her eyelashes at him.

“We will keep an eye out for it,” he said.

“We?” The dismay on her face was touching but comical. Oh, these young folks today, displaying every emotion for all the world to see.

“My niece has been talking of nothing else for over a week,” he said. He was grateful to the festival for knocking the bookbinder’s shop out of Cee’s thoughts, at least temporarily. Ever since her excursion with Claire, the girl had been obsessed with books and apprenticeships and handcrafting. Of course, there were worse things for a fifteen year old girl to obsess about, but he was getting tired of hearing about the wonders of Ms. Goode and her workroom.

“Oh, you’re taking her,” Kammi said brightly. “That’s so sweet of you. Kids love the festival. How old is she?”

“Fifteen,” he said, watching her mentally calculate the difference between her age and Cee’s. From the consternation on her face, Kimmi was not pleased with the smallness of the gap.

“Then she’ll probably spend half the time with her friends,” she said. “If you get bored by yourself, come find me.” She wiggled her fingers at him and walked off.

Ezra bit his lip to stifle a laugh. If they did run into her, he couldn’t wait to see the look on her face when she met Claire.

*******************************************************************

Cee insisted on getting back to the school gates long before Ezra was expected. “I don’t want him to have to wait,” she said.

“He always gets to the school at the same time,” Claire pointed out. “He walks home from work, changes his shirt and walks over here. Every single day.”

“But this is the festival,” Cee said. “He missed it last year and it’s so much fun. I can’t wait to see his face when he sees all the lights and hears the music. It’s definitely his vibe.”

“I didn’t know Ezra had a ‘vibe’,” Claire said. “Do I have a vibe?”

Cee leaned against the iron fence. “Not as much as he does,” she said after a moment. “You’re a lot more low key. Ez is a whole mood by himself.”

“What about you? What’s your vibe?”

“Kind of halfway between the two of you, I guess,” Cee said with a shrug. “Dex says I’m chill but Hester says I’m intense, so I must be a mix of both.”

“And Hester is …?”

“Dex’s girlfriend,” Cee said. “I told you this like three days ago.”

Claire suppressed smile. Keeping track of the relationships amongst Cee’s schoolmates required a scorecard. “That’s right, I forgot,” she said. “Are they going to the festival?”

“Oh, yeah,” Cee said. “He was sweet and asked if I wanted to go with them, but I reminded him I have you and Ez this year. I think Hester was happy to hear that.” She sighed. “I like her, and Dex is crazy about her, but I think she gets a little jealous that Dex and I are friends.”

“And you’re okay with it? With Dex having a girlfriend?”

Cee snorted. “Of course. He and I have no chemistry together, other than friendship. Believe me.”

“In other words, you kissed and it was weird,” Claire guessed.

“Yeah, it was one time, when everyone was teasing us about being a couple and we were like, well, maybe they’re right. But no. They were wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong!” Cee laughed. “It was like kissing my brother … if I had a brother.”

“I know what you mean,” Claire said. “Until I met Ezra …” She trailed off, not sure what she was trying to say. She’d always thought that sex and intimacy were overrated, wondered why people made such a big deal out of it. Then she’d met Ezra and it had all clicked.

“Didn’t you have any boyfriends in school?”

Claire shook her head. “No, my parents were very strict. School, tutoring, home. That was my life. I couldn’t even go over to friends’ houses or have them over for playdates or anything. I had to study all the time.”

“That sucks,” Cee said.

Claire shrugged. “They wanted me to get into university, and the only way to do that was to get top grades and high scores on all the aptitude tests. It wasn’t all that bad.” She bit her lip. “We moved a lot, so it wasn’t like I had the chance to make a lot of friends anyway.”

“Why’d you move so much?”

“My parents weren’t contracted workers, so they could lose their jobs pretty easily,” Claire said. “And rents kept going up, so we moved to cheaper places or to where there was work. I went to a lot of different schools in our colony.”

“You lived in a colony? Space or planetside?”

“Planetside,” Claire said. “A huge bio dome with about a million high rise buildings packed inside. It was like a maze. You’d move two buildings over and be in a different school because the population was so dense.”

“This must be like heaven then,” Cee said, indicating the shady street and birds flitting by.

Claire smiled. “I’ve lived and worked on stations, in colonies, on habitable planets like Galadon, on hostile planets where you have to suit up and hunker down in a capsule to stay alive. When you’re working, it’s pretty much the same no matter where you are. But I have to say, Galadon is my favorite place, so far.”

“Mine, too,” Cee said. “I spent a lot of time in ships and stuff like that, especially after my mom … I really like it here. It feels like home. I’d like to stay here a long time, if I can.” She shuffled her feet. “I don’t think Ezra will stay. I mean, he’ll stay until I’m old enough to be on my own, or at least, he’ll be around. He doesn’t like to stay in one place too long, I think.”

“Is that why he was out prospecting when he met me?”

“That, and we needed the money,” she said. “The aurelac we brought back from the Green was worth a lot but that’s starting to run out. School is expensive, but he wanted me to be somewhere stable, and get my secondary certificate.”

“It all comes down to money, doesn’t it?” Claire mused. “We can’t live without it, so we end up living for it.”

Cee looked up at the sky. “Sometimes, I dream about what I’d do if I had a zillion dollars,” she said. “Like some long-lost relative dies and leaves their fortune to me, and I never have to work or anything. I’d buy a house and read books all day and eat whatever I want.”

“No flashy vehicles? No private starliner? No wild parties?”

Cee shook her head. “That stuff’s all for the holos,” she said. “It’s dumb. None of that will make you happy. I just want to be comfortable and not have to worry about me or Ezra getting sick or hurt.”

“You’re a smart girl,” Claire said. “A lot of kids your age can’t see past the shiny stuff.”

“A lot of kids my age haven’t seen what I’ve seen,” Cee replied.

***********************************************************************

Cee and Claire looked rather somber as Ezra approached them. He wondered what they’d been talking about. When he’d asked once, Claire has mysteriously said they talked about “girl stuff,” which he assumed meant boys and sex and possibly makeup. Women were still as much a conundrum to him as they had been when he was a gawky teenager.

“Are we attending a festival or a funeral?,” he asked when he reached them.

“A festival,” Cee said, rolling her eyes. “Geez, Ez, can’t we have a serious conversation once in a while?”

“Not with me around, apparently,” he replied.

Claire slid her arm around his waist. “That’s because you begin to wax eloquent and go off on a tangent,” she said. “Cee and I are a bit more direct.”

He kissed her temple. “I can be direct, if need be,” he said. “And right now, I say we head directly for that festival!”

Cee groaned. “Not the lame dad jokes again,” she muttered. He reached out and tousled her hair, something she loathed beyond reason. “Aaah, you’re messing up my hair! It took me half an hour to get it the way I like.”

He chuckled. Her hair was cut at shoulder length and she wore it simply, no curls, no braids, no fancy clips or ribbons. It was practical and suited her perfectly. He didn’t see how it could take more than a few minutes to style. He added “hair” to the list of girl stuff.

The festival was held at a large park a few blocks east of the school. It was a pleasant walk, with Claire on his right, her arm still around his waist, and Cee on his left. In the late afternoon light, the trees looked gilded and the smoke from the food stands made a gauzy haze over the park that could be seen long before the rest of the festival.

Lights were hung from every tree, and strung from poles that dotted the open area, weaving a canopy of colors that roofed the festival grounds. Games of chance were set up along one side, with rides for the little ones set up on the other. Food vendors were scattered all around, the enticing smells of fried and smoked and grilled items filling the air. A stage was set up at the far end of the open area and a band was playing retro K-Pop metal fusion, a genre that Ezra had never fully appreciated. It was popular with Cee’s generation, though, and a crowd of teens was dancing wildly in front of the stage.

“What do you think?” Cee asked, squeezing his arm.

“I think it’s … festive,” he replied, which earned him a smack on the arm and another eye roll.

“Come on,” she said, tugging him forward. “You have to see the puppets. And we have to eat some fry bread. It’s amazing.”

She led them into the cacophony of the Founders’ Festival.

******************************************************************

“No, no, no, absolutely not!”

“Come on, Claire, cut loose,” said Cee. “Have some fun.”

“I’m having fun watching everyone else,” she insisted.

“Let her be,” Ezra said. “She’ll come around in time.” He winked at her and held his hand out to Cee, then bowed to her and led her into the clearing with the rest of the dancers.

Claire bit her lower lip. It did look like fun, but there was no way she was going to make a fool of herself trying to dance in front of a crowd of strangers. She’d had very little experience dancing, except for a disastrous attempt by one of her lab mates to teach her a complicated Latin style dance that had ended with two squashed toes (on his part) and one heavily bruised knee (on her part). Thus ended her one and only attempt to participate in the Region Seven Laboratory Talent Contest.

Cee and Ezra were bouncing wildly to a heavy techno dance beat that made Claire’s entire body throb. Ezra was making random arm gestures, his head tilted back toward the sky, eyes closed as he moved to the beat. Cee was a bit more graceful, nodding her head in time with the music and shimmying her shoulders as she jumped up and down. They looked ridiculous but were clearly having a great time.

“Dorks.” She turned to see Dex standing close by, shaking his head.

“Dorks having fun,” said a girl who must have been Hester. She was tugging on Dex’s hand but he stood his ground.

“Nah, I don’t like this junk,” he said. “Let’s wait until they start playing some dank hip hop pumps. Then I’ll show you my moves.” He performed a smooth pop and lock step that was honestly quite impressive for a scrawny boy with glasses.

“You just want to show off,” Hester said. “Can’t stand to share the spotlight with me.” She held out her hand to Claire. “Hi, I’m Hester, since Dex is too busy being undorky to introduce us.”

“Claire,” she replied, shaking the girl’s hand. “I’m …”

“Cee’s uncle’s girlfriend,” Hester finished for her. “He told me all about you. Dex, I mean. Not Cee’s uncle Ezra.”

“Nice to meet you, Hester,” Claire said. “And I thought you didn’t like gossip, Dex.”

“It’s not gossip, it’s just information,” Dex said. “And I just know what Cee’s told me, which isn’t a lot.” He shrugged. “Mostly how much she likes hanging out with you and stuff.”

Cee had spotted them. “Hey, get in here! Come on, Hester! Dex, get your butt on the floor!”

Dex shook his head as Hester dragged him toward Cee. “Nuh uh, I’ve got to stay and keep Claire company,” he protested.

“Then Claire shall join us as well.” Ezra grabbed her hand and pulled her out.

Cee laughed. “Dance party!,” she yelled, throwing her hands in the air and bouncing madly to the beat. Hester and Ezra joined her, deliberately being goofy. Claire shared a look with Dex, who shrugged and started moving to the music. Oh, what the hell. Claire closed her eyes and danced.

********************************************************

Ezra claimed an empty bench while Cee and Claire went in search of sustenance and cold drinks after they had worn themselves out dancing. He was still smiling at the sight of his quiet little owl losing herself in the music and moving with abandon. He was well aware of the extent of her athletic abilities, having spent enough time in bed with her, but it was something else entirely to see her enjoying her body in public.

Someone sat down on the bench to his left. “I’m sorry, that seat is taken,” he said, turning to find Kammi smiling at him.

“Did your niece abandon you already?,” she asked. “I knew she’d run off with her friends.”

He suppressed a small sigh. “Not at all,” he said pleasantly. “She has merely gone to fetch something to eat and drink. I’m not much use with just the one hand.” He gestured at his right arm. “I was delegated as the bench saver.”

“Well, you don’t need an entire bench for just two people,” Kammi said.

“Three,” he corrected her.

Kammi preened. “Why, thank you, don’t mind if I do,” she said, scooting a bit closer.

“I meant, I am saving the bench for both of my companions,” he clarified. “My niece and my girlfriend.”

Before Kammi had fully absorbed the words, Cee bounded up. “Ez, we got you some of those peppers you like,” she said, holding out a paper boat heaping with red and yellow peppers oozing cheese. She skidded to a stop. “Who’s this?”

“Cee, may I introduce one of my new coworkers,” he said. “Kammi, my niece, Cee.” He took the peppers from Cee and balanced the boat on his knee before popping one in his mouth.

“Hey,” Cee said, her eyes narrowed.

“Hey,” Kammi replied weakly.

“And this is Claire,” Cee said, tilting her head. “Ezra’s girlfriend. Hey, Claire, this is one of Ezra’s coworkers.”

Claire was carefully balancing three paper cups on a flimsy cardboard tray. “Nice to meet you,” she said distractedly. “Ez, can you take one of these before I drop them?”

“Of course, sweetheart,” he said, setting his peppers on the bench between himself and Kammi and taking one of the cups of soda off the tray. Claire gave him an odd look, but once he raised an eyebrow and tilted his head slightly in Kammi’s direction, she smiled.

“Excuse me,” Cee said pointedly, staring at Kammi. “I’d like to sit down.”

“Oh, yeah, of course,” the girl stammered. “I was just keeping him company until you got back.” She jumped up and Cee plopped herself down, sprawling out to take up that end of the bench. Claire sat down on his right side, and leaned across him to hand a drink to Cee.

“Here you go, kiddo,” she said.

“Thanks, Aunt Claire,” Cee said sweetly.

“Um, well, I’ll see you at work, I guess, Ezra,” Kammi said.

He nodded at her. “Enjoy the rest of your weekend,” he said. After she’d walked away, Cee elbowed him sharply in the ribs. “Ouch!,” he cried.

“How old is she anyway?”

“Old enough to get a job,” he said, rubbing at the spot where she’d hit him. Her elbows were pointy. “How should I know? I’ve spoken maybe ten words to her.”

“Were any of those words ‘I have a girlfriend?’” Cee pointed a long, crispy fried potato at him.

“Yes,” Claire said from the other side. “Were they?”

He popped another pepper into his mouth and carefully chewed it before he answered, enduring the exasperated looks of both women. “As a matter of fact, yes,” he said after he swallowed. “What kind of a cad do you think I am? I am mortally wounded by this accusation!”

Cee snorted. “Didn’t look like she got the message,” she said.

“Am I responsible for the emotional shortcomings of an immature girl? I can’t control anyone. You of all people should know that, birdie,” Ezra replied. He knew he was overreacting a bit, but he wanted to avoid having to admit he hadn’t mentioned Claire until a few moments before she and Cee had arrived.

“Lay off him,” Claire said, leaning across him to steal some fries from Cee. “From the look on the poor girl’s face, she gets the message now.” Her words were belied by the sudden pinch she gave his side, a signal that they would probably revisit this topic later on.

“Thank you, Aunt Claire,” he said. He nudged Cee. “You laid it on a bit thick, don’t you think?”

“Well, like I said, she seemed to need some help understanding the situation,” Cee said. She stole one of his peppers and popped it into her mouth before he could react.

“I am at a distinct disadvantage, both physically and intellectually, with you two,” he whined. “It’s not fair.”

Claire laid her head on his shoulder. “Aw, poor baby,” she said. “I know it’s hard for your tiny male brain to keep up with us.”

Cee laughed and almost choked on her pepper. Ezra closed his eyes and shook his head. “You’ll only encourage her,” he said. “It’s hard enough dealing with a teenager.”

Claire wrapped her arms around him and kissed his cheek. “Sorry, but you’re such a fun target,” she said. “I’ll make it up to you later,” she added in a whisper that sent a shiver down his spine.

“Get a room,” Cee said.

Ezra leaned into her hard, almost shoving her off the bench. “Hey, look out, you’ll make me spill the food!,” she cried. “Claire, make him stop!”

Claire sat back, sipping her soda. “Stop making smart remarks, and maybe he’ll behave,” she said simply.

“Listen to your auntie,” Ezra said, neatly rescuing his peppers from Cee’s grasp. He sat up primly between the two of them. As both women collapsed into laughter, a thought struck him like a thump on the back of the head. I love them.

It was an unfamiliar feeling, and a bit disconcerting. He’d felt affection for others over the years, but not since he was a child had he felt something this deep, this warm, this all encompassing. It was a solid fact, a piece of metaphysical bedrock which formed the foundation of his life. Every action, every thought, was grounded in this simple truth. He loved Cee. He loved Claire. Their happiness and well-being were as important to him as his own, perhaps even more so. And in a few weeks, Claire would be gone. In a few years, Cee would strike out on her own, build her own life. Which was as it should be, but it made moments like this one all the more precious.

He wished the festival, and this night, would never end.

*************************************************************************

Ezra was quiet as they walked to the hotel, which was a worrisome sign. Even if they walked hand in hand without talking, he was always humming something under his breath, an old song or just a random scatter of notes. But tonight he was silent. She suspected it had something to do with the appearance of Kammi at the festival

“What’s wrong?,” she asked when they reached her room.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just a bit tired, I guess. I’m getting too old for late nights like this.” He yawned for emphasis but she wasn’t buying it. True, it was almost midnight and he’d worked that day, but even on the Saturday nights when he fell asleep almost as soon as he crawled into bed, he was never this quiet.

She let it go while they got undressed and slid under the covers. He tried to kiss her but she shook her head. “I’m going to loosen up those knots in your shoulders first,” she said. “You wake up with a stiff neck if I don’t.” She made him lie face down so she could massage him. He groaned and sighed as she worked on his tight muscles. Once he was sufficiently relaxed, she pinned him down with her full weight and whispered in his ear. “So, what’s the deal with that girl, Kammi?”

Ezra stiffened, then tried to roll onto his side. She held him down. He said something but his voice was muffled by the pillow. She eased up enough for him to turn his head so he could speak clearly. “I … may not have been one hundred percent honest about telling her about you,” he said softly.

“So you didn’t?” Her heart sank as she realized her suspicions had been well founded.

“I did,” he said carefully. “But not until right before you and Cee came back with the food.” He sighed. “I should have made it clear to her earlier. I’m sorry.”

“Damn right you should have,” she said sternly.

He shrugged as best he could with her lying on top of him. “When she asked if I was going to be at the festival, I mentioned I was taking my niece … I thought that would be enough to put her off. To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure she was trying to flirt.”

She shoved him hard in the shoulder. “Yes you were,” she said, “and you were flattered that a young thing like that found you attractive.”

“Perhaps.” She held eye contact until he glanced away. “All right, yes. I did feel flattered. Wouldn’t you, if a young fellow was enamored of you?”

“Honestly? I’d find it a bit creepy,” she said. “ Having someone young enough to be my child thinking about me that way? But I can see how it would make you feel good about yourself. Must be a male ego thing.”

“Must you constantly remind me that I am inferior to you in every way?,” he said, doing that thing with his eyebrow that made her feel funny inside.

“Oh, you are superior in many things, my dear Ezra,” she admitted. She released him, rolled him over onto his back and kissed him. “Now prove it.” And she let him show her all the ways he surpassed her in skill and enthusiasm.

*************************************************************

“Promise me one thing,” she said the next morning as they lay tangled in the sheets.

“Anything, sweet owl,” he said, nuzzling her neck.

“After I leave, don’t take up with that girl,” she said. Ezra’s head popped up.

“I would never,” he protested. “She’s barely older than Cee.”

“But you were flattered,” she said.

He cut her off. “Flattered, yes, but I would never act on it.” He kissed her gently on the forehead. “And I have no plans to take up with anyone after you depart. I fully intend to wallow in my melancholy and write tragic poems and become a recluse once you are gone.”

“I doubt Cee will let you go that far,” she said with a laugh. “A suitable period of moping about will suffice.”

“I will never find anyone to compare to you,” he said, serious this time. “Not if I scour the galaxy for a thousand years. You are more precious to me than all the aurelac and precious gems and metals to be found in the fringe worlds.”

She started to cry and he gently kissed away her tears. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“Don’t apologize,” she whispered back. “Never apologize for baring your soul.” She took a deep breath. “I … I love you, Ezra,” she said, her words barely audible even to herself. “I always will.”

“And I love you, Claire, my sweet little owl,” he said. “Till the universe collapses and all that has ever existed turns to dust.”

[ceterisparibus116]

No one asked for this, but here is Emiliano’s arc via Songs.

Sing

This is the song of Emiliano beginning to want what Matt has. He’s trying to get closer, without fully shedding what Stick has taught him, and in a way, he blames Matt for being too rigid and unaccepting.

Last Train Home

Here’s another song about Matt and Emiliano, and their desire (uncertain on Matt’s part, and sometimes misguided on Emiliano’s part) to help each other.

Wherever You Go

This song shows Emiliano’s tendency to flee and run from change. He’s still haunted by demons, who are looking for a “soldier.” He doesn’t want to be a soldier, but nor does he want to run to those who would accept him. Yet this song also demonstrates the inevitability of his arc: he will find love and acceptance - wherever he goes.

This Beautiful Life

It’s great that Emiliano is coming to step more fully into this new life he’s building - but a lot more of his worldview still needs to change. This song is about the existential struggle to find his new purpose.

Two

If Matt’s a One and Ella’s an Eight per the Enneagram, Emiliano is a Two (wing Three). (Incidentally, Matt’s also a wing Two, and Claire’s a solid Two.) Twos find their own worth in their ability to help others, whatever it costs. Twos must grow to accept help (and love) without feeling the need to earn it first.

Take Me As I Am

As the title suggests, Emiliano is trying to accept that he is who he is, for better or worse, the ugly along with the good. Or more importantly, Emiliano is trying to accept that other people need to accept him as who he is. The chorus just gets me with the honesty that is so hard for Emiliano:

Take me as I am 'Cause I'm going I was too scared to start Now I'm too scared to let go

Take me as I am 'Cause I'm growing But it's so hard to tell When I'm not used to this, so

Work

Just in case I will leave my things packed So I can run away

He’s testing out this new life, but afraid to fully commit to it.

I have no fear of drowning It's the breathing That's taking all this work

He wasn’t afraid to die, but he’s afraid to live this new life with connections and relationships.

But ultimately, he’s more afraid of being alone.

Perfect, Here With You,  and Look at Love

Claire and Emiliano’s songs - except he’s still putting her on a pedestal, and he’s still too focused on his own inadequacies. She’s not perfect, much as he might wish she were. He’s still tempted to hide, and has to trust that he has something to offer her.

Sonda-Me, Usa-Me

Emiliano is able to embrace that he can be a force of good in the world - but do so not to earn love, but because he is loved.

Three

Emiliano’s wing Three drives him to achieve and perform to earn the admiration (and love) of others. He spent his life chasing Stick’s approval; not long after he met Matt, he began to chase Matt’s acceptance; and his relationship with Claire is fraught with his fear of her rejection and disapproval. This song showcases his journey of believing that he’s worthy of love just because of who he is. This also gives him the new freedom to truly know himself, including the thoughts and feelings that might seem “soft,” which he would otherwise have repressed.

I’d quote this whole song if I could. Just do yourself a favor and watch the lyric video!

Moving Forward

This song shows where I intend all the characters, including Emiliano, to end up in the Ella series.