#so so much lore

[bananapopsicies]

MEET MY THE BEAR OC ౨ৎ MAIREAD ERICKSON

BASICS

Full Name: Mairead Linnea Erickson (Berzatto)

Age: 28 (beginning of SEASON 1)

DOB: February 29th, 1994

Gender: Female (She/Her)

Sexuality: Demisexual

Occupation: Assistant Patissier @ The Bear (Chicago, IL)

Faceclaim: Cailee Spaeny, Madeleine McGraw (child flashbacks)

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CHILDHOOD / PRE-ACCIDENT

Mairead was born on February 29th, 1994 in Chicago, IL. She is the younger twin between herself & her identical twin brother, Charlemagne “Charlie” Erickson. Mairead & Charlie are the only children of James Beard award-winning chefs, Nicolette “Lettie” Erickson & Arthur Erickson. At the time of the twins’ birth, Lettie was working as a Stagiare at Ever under the guidance of Andrea Terry, while Arthur was working as a Saucier at Sepia. They currently serve as the Executive Chef (Lettie) & Chef de Cuisine (Arthur) at Alinea in Chicago, IL.

Through the Chicago food industry, the Ericksons met the Berzattos, with the two families quickly becoming close and even going on several trips and vacations together. The Erickson twins spent a large portion of their childhood at the Berzattos due to their own parents’ busy work schedules, often being babysat by Uncle Jimmy or Mikey & Richie once they were old enough.

While they always made sure to provide their children’s basic needs, Lettie & Art were definitely more focused on their growing careers vs being present in their children’s lives, which led to an estrangement that is still very present in adulthood. Charlie, who is trans FTM, transitioned in early adolescence, which caused their parents to begin favoring Mairead, as she was the “picture-perfect child” out of the two & the only one who they did not think would tarnish the image that they’d created for themselves in the culinary industry. This caused Mairead’s relationship with her brother to become strained, because — although she was too young to be aware of her parents’ favoritism — it made him subconsciously resent her.

Mairead & Carmy, who had already been close in childhood, developed a strong bond due to mutual feelings of loneliness and isolation in their home environments, finding company in one another instead. Neither of them have many other friends at school, because Carmy gets bullied for being shy & having a stutter, so Mairead is also bullied by proxy, but she doesn’t care. She enjoys spending time with all of the Berzattos, but considers Carmy her best friend. They discover that they share a goal of becoming chefs & enjoy talking about what their future will be like, dreaming of opening neighboring spots and staying present in each other’s lives into adulthood. After Carmy graduates, he even comes back to be her date for junior prom <3

During this time, Mikey begins working as a line cook at his father’s sandwich shop, The Beef. On afternoon, he catches a stray kitten in the alley while he’s on his lunch break and sneaks it home. Carmy gives the kitten to Mairead for her sixteenth birthday. She names him Cheese. :-)

ACCIDENT

When Mairead is 16, Cheese escapes through the front door of the Erickson home. In the process of trying to get him out of the road, she is hit by an oncoming (empty) school bus. Their parents are at work, but Charlie — who is home — follows her out the door and attempts to alert her that the bus is coming, but he is too late. He is the only person (besides the bus driver) to see her get hit. After catching Cheese (because he knew that’s what she would’ve wanted), Charlie calls 9-1-1 & an unresponsive Mairead is tended to by paramedics. Charlie then calls Carmy, who is in Malibu working at Fairest Creatures, to tell him that Mairead has been in an accident & he isn’t sure if she is going to make it. In California, Carmy tells his boss that he needs to go home for a family emergency & gets on a red-eye flight to Chicago. Mairead is resuscitated, intubated, and life-flighted to RUSH Medical Center in Chicago.

At the hospital, Mairead is put into a medically induced coma & diagnosed with traumatic optic neuropathy due to a ruptured aneurysm on her optic nerve, which has been completely severed in the accident. Her parents arrive from their jobs & the neurosurgeon tells them that, based on the nature of her injury, Mairead will likely be totally blind for the rest of her life. Later, it is discovered through an old, routine CT scan which Mairead received after a minor concussion that the aneurysm was on her optic nerve prior to the accident, but was missed by doctors, & the accident was just what caused it to rupture. She would’ve eventually gone blind whether the accident happened or not. Did someone say doomed by the narrative? :D

Mairead is brought out of her medically induced coma right after Christmas, about 3 weeks after her accident. When she is stable, she confides in Carmy that she had heard them talking about how she would never regain her sight & also planning her funeral while she was in the coma. She does not tell him this part (yet), but she didn’t really have a motivation to live (because she knew she probably wouldn’t be able to be a chef after going blind) until she heard Carmy protest the funeral plans and realized that he was there for her. My bears <3

Carmy goes back to California after Christmas, Mairead is discharged from the hospital in early February & admitted to a pediatric neurorehabilitation hospital to continue gaining strength and learn how to re-enter into society as someone who is newly blind. Carmy flies in to celebrate Mairead’s 17th birthday in rehab by baking cupcakes in occupational therapy. After he goes back to California, she begins a casual relationship with a fellow patient, Elaine, who is in rehab for hemiplegic paralysis.

Mairead is discharged from rehab in April 2012. While she is adjusting to life outside of the hospital as someone who is newly disabled, Charlie receives a full-ride scholarship to Juilliard for Piano Performance and is preparing to move to New York. The relationship between the siblings remains strained due to not only the tension between them caused by their parents as young children, but Charlie’s unresolved trauma and grief from being the sole witness of Mairead’s accident.

During this time, Mairead meets Claire — who she’d known in passing from hearing Carmy talk about her & seeing her in class — when her parents enroll her in Claire’s “tutoring for differently-abled children.” Because of her disability, Claire tends to treat Mairead like a child & the girls often butt heads because of that. This is important for later! Shortly after getting out of rehab, Mairead finishes her GED, takes up boxing as a physical outlet for all of the big emotions/feelings that accompany the adjustment to her new lifestyle, and begins to focus on re-learning how to cook in order to continue pursuing her dream of becoming a chef. However, her mother tells her that she will never become a chef because she won’t be able to survive the fast-paced nature of a fine dining kitchen and to keep away from Alinea, because — once again — she is afraid of tarnishing her own culinary reputation. When Mairead is persistent, her mother drops her off at The Beef, tells her to apply for a job, and instructs Mikey to bring her home when she can’t handle it anymore.

POST-ACCIDENT

Mikey gives Mairead a job as a dishwasher at The Beef, where she works up until his death in 2022. He also lets her use the kitchen in the evenings & on weekends to practice re-learning how to cook, as well as rents out a loft above the restaurant for her to live in so that she can get away from her parents. She develops a close relationship with all of the staff, finding a pseudo-mom in Tina and becoming close friends with Manny, Angel, and Sweeps. She also immediately takes to Marcus, bonding over their mutual appreciation for pastry arts. In New York, Charlie graduates from Juilliard & takes a job as a Piano Instructor/Tuner at a renowned music studio, while contributing to perform freelance jazz piano gigs around the city. Carmy comes home from California, wants to come work at The Beef with Mairead, but Mikey says no (because he does not want to make his pain Carmy’s pain, keep that in mind for later!) so he goes to work at Ever with Chef Terry. When they’re not at their respective restaurant jobs, Mairead and Carmy spend all their time together, still each other’s very best friend. <3

Chef Terry sends Carmy to Copenhagen, while Mairead continues to work at The Beef. Seven Fishes happens. Carmy prepares his Christmas gift to Mairead - a homemade braille cookbook of their favorite recipes. Mairead prepares hers as well - his chef’s knife engraved with CB. Charlie flies home from New York to attend. Mikey gives Mairead a Christmas present — a stack of bills wrapped in a recommendation letter for her application to culinary school. They decorate the Christmas tree together & she cannot tell that he is using because she can’t see it. Stevie and Michelle propose New York to Carmy. Mikey and Richie encourage Carmy to pursue Claire, because she is “one of their kind,” meaning that she is not differently-abled like Mairead. Mairead overhears this and becomes briefly upset, but quickly forgets about it when she reunites with Carmy & he tells her about a mayflower tattoo that he got in Copenhagen, both to commemorate the crop of mayflowers that he raised at Noma’s greenhouse & the nickname that he coined for her, May. Then, in a rush of mutual unresolved feelings, he kisses her and asks her to go to New York with him so that they can finally pursue their dream together. Mairead tells him that she wants to, but she is afraid that her disability will hold him back. He insists that it won’t, but they are interrupted by Fak & don’t get to take the conversation further. Mairead and Charlie fulfill their holiday tradition of breaking the wishbone, with her getting the short end — unlucky. Donna crashes the car through the house. Mairead is sitting on the front step with Carmy, smoking cigarettes while Donna is being assessed by the paramedics, when she tells him that she has decided she wants to go to New York with him. Carmy sees Claire watching and tells Mairead that the plan isn’t feasible, because he was only dreaming.

After Carmy goes to New York, he temporarily breaks contact with Mairead BECAUSE he is actively being traumatized & does not want to make his pain her pain (it’s a foil!). He begins to hook up with Charlie, who is still in New York working as a piano instructor, in hopes of filling the void that cutting off Mairead has left. Meanwhile, Mairead begins a romantic relationship with Marcus and continues to look forward to Mikey’s promise to send her to Kendall College for culinary school in the new year.

Mairead‘s story ~officially~ begins with Mikey’s death, so instead of blabbing, I’ll just highlight her most important moments from the seasons:

SEASON 1

Mikey dies approximately one week before Mairead’s 28th birthday. He leaves behind a birthday cake for her in the freezer of The Beef, as well as her recommendation letter & savings for culinary school.

In New York, Charlie puts Carmy on a plane home to Chicago, knowing that both Mairead & Natalie will need him in Mikey’s absence. He quits his job, sublets his apartment, and follows Carmy home.

Mairead attends Mikey’s funeral with Charlie, where she reads a poem in braille. Charlie tells Mairead that he knows Carmy is back in Chicago, but he didn’t show up to the funeral. Afterwards, Mairead goes home with Natalie. Charlie finds Carmy in the parking lot, where they hook up, then Carmy gives Charlie a letter written in braille that he explains is an apology to Mairead about why he cut her off in New York. Charlie does not give her the letter, rather lets it fall between the seats in his car.

Mairead finds out that Carmy is back by bumping into him on the street outside The Beef. Subsequently, Richie finds out that Carmy is back by tracking her on Life360 to make sure that she made it home okay, which he took over from Mikey after he died.

Tension rises between Mairead and Carmy when he comes back and starts making changes to The Beef! She loves him and is so happy that he is home, but she is not afraid to get in his face and tell him when he’s acting like a baby.

Ravaged by grief of Mikey & unresolved feelings that have risen to the surface upon Carmy’s arrival home, Mairead breaks up with Marcus. Marcus, who is also grieving, is hurt, but understanding. They remain close friends.

Mairead meets Sydney, who she is instantly in awe of because Sydney is also a woman who is a minority in the kitchen and has achieved culinary success. They become fast friends and develop a tradition of going to the jazz club to watch Charlie perform after work with Tina & (occasionally) Marcus or Richie. Their relationship is very special to me. <3

Charlie moves in to the spare bedroom of Mairead’s loft and starts his jazz band, Dial 773, which is fronted by another OC, Finley Lancaster — Sydney’s eventual girlfriend! He also works at the jazz club and as a freelance piano tuner.

Mairead donates her culinary school fund to go towards the opening of The Bear.

When everyone finds the money in the tomato cans, Charlie visits The Beef for family dinner & drives Mairead home afterwards. She finds the note in Charlie’s car and all of the progress that they’ve made in rebuilding their relationship goes BOOM! :D She then takes a taxi to Carmy’s apartment where they have a very teary argument, which turns into a reconciliation.

SEASON 2

While The Bear prepares for opening, Mairead begins applying to stagiare positions in order to once again try to pursue her dream of becoming a chef. She is rejected by all of the restaurants except for Izola, a bakery in San Diego. She spends two months there, where she aides in establishing a limited-time pastry & cake menu.

Carmy begins seeing Claire. He confides in Mairead about their relationship and seeks her blessing, because she is the closest person to him after his family, whose judgement he is trying to avoid. She puts her feelings about Claire — as well as her unresolved feelings for Carmy — aside and encourages it as long as he is happy, continuing to focus on her own culinary journey instead.

Using Mikey’s recommendation, as well as letters from the staff at Izola, Mairead applies to the Culinary Institute of America and is accepted!! She secures plans to live with a friend while she is there & books a red-eye flight so that she can still be around for the opening of The Bear.

After Marcus fires Josh on Family & Friends night, Sydney gives Mairead her old chef whites and puts her on the line in his place. This is the first time that she gets to be a real chef in a culinary kitchen, aaaaand Carmy is in the freezer, so he doesn’t get to see it. <3

After Mairead hears Carmy say that he doesn’t deserve amusement or enjoyment and cannot provide it to anyone, she waits for him to be cut out of the freezer. Then — queen of bad timing <3 — she tells him that she’s been in love with him since they were kids and finally lets him know that hearing him protest her funeral plans in the rehab hospital was actually what willed her out of the coma, ultimately saving her life. If no one else, he has been able to bring amusement & enjoyment to her. :,)

SEASON 3 & BEYOND

Mairead starts culinary school in April 2023. While she is there, she works as a Dishwasher & Line Cook at Daniel. She also briefly stages at Crown Shy & completes her senior externship as a Commis at Sixty Three Clinton. She is so excited to finally get to establish herself as her own person in the culinary world, not just an extension of her parents!!

Mairead and Carmy talk sparingly while he gets himself — and The Bear — figured out. Things are a little awkward post-love confessional, but they are still best friends and are ~pretty much~ unable to exist without each other at this point.

Since February 2024 is an actual leap year, Carmy flies up to surprise Mairead for her birthday. While he’s there, they finally talk about what she said while he was in the freezer and he tells her that it’s always been obvious how he feels about her, that he realized he loved her while she was in rehab but never really knew how to say it, and once he’d had a chance, they were always with other people. While they essentially get together here, Mairead tells him that she doesn’t want to be with anyone while she’s in school so that she’s not distracted, but if he is willing to wait until after she graduates, then she’d love to be with him. They get together officially, finally, at her graduation.

Mairead graduates in February 2025. Her final project is a rainbow pastry menu titled Cecity Flavored Technicolor, that is themed around how she perceives colors as a blind person.

She gets job offers all over the country, but of course, chooses to come back home to her family and work as Marcus’ pastry sous chef at The Bear :,)

1-2ish years later, Carmy proposes (with Sydney’s help) by telling Mairead that he needs her to check out some new braille menus that he ordered for The Bear and make sure the menu is translated accurately, but instead of listing dishes, the menu actually says, Will you marry me?

They have a small courthouse ceremony with around 8-10 people in attendance, then a big reception at The Bear with all the culinary legends.

In addition to working at The Bear, Mairead runs a catering business called Cecity out of her home kitchen. This gives her an opportunity to continue to use the fine dining techniques and skills that she learned in culinary school. Sydney also helps!

Besides being a chef, Mairead’s ultimate dream is to be a mom. Because I believe he would be a great dad and I am a girldad Carmy truther, Mairead and Carmy have three daughters! She tells him she’s pregnant by putting the test in a tomato can. <3 They adopt Chris Kovalenko, who belongs to @dearpyramus, as well as their two biological children, Natalia “Tully” Sydney-May Berzatto & Collette “Lettie” Michaela-Rose Berzatto. I am currently working on a character study about Carmy’s journey through fatherhood with Tully. I love my family <3

Cheese lives a long, happy life and is the perfect family pet!

In her adulthood, Mairead becomes passionate about disability advocacy & positive representation of disabled individuals in culinary spaces. She runs a cooking camp for differently-abled children called Anyone Can Cook! out of The Bear every summer & establishes a scholarship that funds adaptive equipment in culinary school classrooms. She also publishes a cookbook titled Blind Taste Test that details her favorite recipes in the way that she learned to cook them after going blind.

She is also the first differently-abled chef to be featured as one of Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs & win the James Beard Award for Outstanding Pastry Chef. Yay for positive disability representation!

Phew. If you made it through that, you deserve a cookie. I love making OCs, but I have poured a lot of love & care into her backstory specifically and I hope that came through. Here. 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪

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VISUALS

From L to R: by @darkostudios-blog, @ochrogaster, @orionisaghost on twt

Scar Chart

Tattoo Index

WORLD IN PYREX — Cashing in my Mary Sue card for this one! This was her first tattoo. Got matching with Carmy when she was 16 & he was 18. The design is by Benny Shields. Represents their shared childhood dream of growing up & becoming chefs together. Richie forged her parents’ signature so she could get it. :-)

HOUSEFLY W/8-BALL EYES — Done with a tattoo gun by Richie. The 8-Ball eyes represent her being blind, how her having, then losing her sight predicts & drives her future.

WISHBONE — Got for her identical twin, Charlie. The wishbone is a Seven Fishes tradition that is symbolic between them because, like identical twins, it begins as one thing and then breaks into two separate things.

C — Silly little tattoo that she got for Carmy after they got married. It’s on her hand so that she can always have him with her when she’s cooking. He has a mayflower tattoo in the same spot for her.

BREADSTICK CROSS — This design is not by me, it came from the original draft of Carmy’s tattoos by Benny Shields. It represents her career as a baker and how her lifelong dream was to be a chef, she will do it for the rest of her life. Fak gave her this one with the same shitty tattoo gun.

FLOAT & STING BUGS — Fun little nod to the fact that she’s a boxer! The butterfly was inspired by Cailee Spaeny’s actual butterfly tattoo.

FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT / KNIFE CROSSED WITH BOXING GLOVES — Memorial tattoo for Mikey. “Fight the good fight,” was what he would tell her whenever she got discouraged while trying to re-learn how to cook after going blind. The boxing gloves represent Mairead and the knife represents Mikey. Another one from Richie.

DON’T YOU LOOK WHILE YOU’RE FLEEING — Inspired by Beach Baby by Bon Iver. Yes, I know the quote is lock and not look . . . shhh. I felt like this represented her well.

YOUR NAME — Just a filler. “Bet you don’t have my name tattooed on you.” Ha ha.

CARMY’S NAME IN BRAILLE — Carmy did this one when she was 17 & he was 19. After she went blind, he took family leave from Fairest Creatures & flew home to spend time with her, wanted to brag about his growing braille proficiency so he gave her this tattoo on the night before he flew back to California.

RIOT! - Cute little finger tattoos that she got to cover up all of the scars/burns on her fingers from re-learning how to cook blind.

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Believe it or not, Mairead has even more lore that I didn’t talk about here, so if you have any questions about her, I will be happy to answer them. In the meantime, you can read Mairead’s story here <3

[hollis-art]

ngl im not even a superman fan. i just REALLY like clark kent,,, (thank you, Smallville, for that.)

[slightlyartist]

Tate deserves to punch Ford so I drew it, felt really therapeutic <3

[hinamie]

post-graduation trip airport looks

[paintdoktahwho]

[paperlit]

We as a fandom moved way too fast past this:

And this:

[chloesimaginationthings]

Was dissecting the SOTM trailer and apparently your monty is a mm member comic is now canon

ANOTHER WIN FOR MONTY ENJOYERS!!!

(Original comic)

[reasonsforhope]

"For most people, a rat is at best an unwelcome guest, and at worst, the target of immediate extermination. But in a field clinic in Tanzania, rats are colleagues—heroes even.

Far from a trash bin-dwelling NYC street rat, the African giant pouched rat is docile, intelligent, easier to train than some dogs, and for East Africans, the performer of lifesaving tuberculosis diagnoses every day.

400,000 new cases of tuberculosis (TB) were estimated to have been prevented by these rats, whose sense of smell would make a bloodhound take notice. As [TB is] the number-one killer among infectious diseases worldwide, many of those 400,000 can be translated into lives saved.

“Not only are we saving people’s lives, but we’re also changing these perspectives and raising awareness and appreciation for something as lowly as a rat,” said Cindy Fast, a behavioral neuroscientist who coaches the rodents for the nonprofit APOPO.

“Because our rats are our colleagues, and we really do see them as heroes.”

APOPO uses giant pouched rats to sniff out traces of TB in the saliva of patients. In parts of Tanzania, a saliva smear test under a microscope by a human may only be 20-40% effective at detecting TB.

By contrast, a giant pouched rat like Ms. Carolina, a now-retired service rat who worked for APOPO for 7 years, raised the rates of detection on TB samples by 40% in the clinic where she worked.

Pictured: An APOPO employee with one of their trained rats

It would take 4 days for scientists to analyze the number of samples that Carolina could screen in 20 minutes. For that reason, when Carolina retired last November, a party was thrown at the clinic in her honor, and she was given a cake.

TB is sometimes thought of as a thing of the past—a disease for which doctors used to prescribe “dry air,” leading a modern sense of humor to muse at the antiquated, pre-antibiotic medical advice.

But it remains the number-one cause of death globally from a single infectious pathogen, and Tefera Agizew, a physician and APOPO’s head of tuberculosis, told National Geographic that once people see what the nonprofit’s rodents can do to slow the spread, they “fall in love with them.”

3,000 times in her career did Carolina detect one of the six volatile compounds that can be used to identify Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and she got a hero’s send-off to a special compound to live out the rest of her days with her closet friend and sniffer colleague Gilbert, in a shaded enclosure dubbed “Rat Florida.”

“We’ve made special little rat-friendly carrot cakes with little peanuts and things on it that the rat would enjoy,” Fast said. “Then we all stand around and we clap, and we give three cheers, hip hip hooray for the hero, and celebrate together. It’s really a touching moment.”

APOPO has made headlines for its use of these rats in other lifesaving tasks as well: landmine clearance.

One of the world’s great underreported scourges (a lot like TB, coincidentally) is landmine contamination. There are 110 million landmines or unexploded bombs in the ground right now in about 67 countries, covering thousands of square miles in potential danger. Thousands of civilians are killed or injured by these weapons every year.

GNN reported on APOPO’s demining efforts using pouched rats back in 2020. One rat named Magawa alone identified 39 landmines and 28 items of unexploded ordnance across an area the size of 20 football fields.

If at the start of this story you didn’t like rats, maybe Magawa and Carolina will have changed your mind."

-via Good News Network, March 31, 2025

[loveyourhate]

Dogged Love

[fluff-e-boy]

Putting @demilypyro in cute outfits to stave off the dread

[awacatto]

i love them

[astarfromsomewhere]

Hey guys, what if it was jane who forgo— *gets shot*

[joejhang]

rereading trk and knowing the things happening behind the scenes in the nest gives everything so much more WEIGHT holy shit wdym grayson was neil's backliner mark in the ravens v foxes match wdym jean was playing defence alongside him wdym in less than a year neil would orchestrate grayson's death wdym jean's "ashen ice" smile as he stared kevin down at the banquet wdym kevin's quiet "jean." when they see each other for the first time in almost a year wdym jean got between riko and neil when they had their fistfight at the christmas banquet wdym drake's attack was direct retribution to andrew "claiming" kevin in front of riko wdym jean spent neil's two weeks in evermore whispering to him in french when riko wasn't looking like he did with kevin for years god i feel like that one clip of jennifer lawrence on hot ones rn.

[anbaisai]

I have a joke with some friends that mayu's the secret third leech sibling therefore I had to make an AU

[olessan]

In light of recent revelations about the ghast life cycle... amphibian?? ghasts in all their ugly majesty

Theories below:

Toughened skin as adult, to retain water in nether climate

larvae hatch with a small amount of buoyancy - from gas?

ghastlings can still land and spend most of their time consuming water, snow, and ice in order to grow

do ghastlings feed on algae and other microbes, and plankton? Do adult ghasts filter them from the nether's congested air?

ghastlings that don't get enough water become ill and go into a semi-dormant stasis, at which point players find them?

9 tentacles - 2 arms, 2 legs, 1 tail, 2 barbels, and 2 gill appendages

highly derived and in order to float, they have very shortened spines and likely have massive gas bladders deep inside their body, which require water (the gas is a digestive biproduct)

species' eyes are highly light-sensitive after adapting to the nether

[wormsical]

completely independent and well adjusted woman