#(rather than clipping them like fox!!)

[stagefoureddiediaz]

Me being totally normal and definitely not crying over a post on the 911 Instagram

🥹🥹🥹🩷💜💙

[p0orbaby]

Meet Cute

summary: it was always meant to be

warnings: just fluff for this one

a/n: probably my favourite pairing of mine to write

word count: 1.4k

-

Leah Williamson is not your type. This, you decide the moment you spot her from across the ballroom, swiping a glass of champagne off a passing waiter’s tray.

You’re aware she’s famous, which is typically a red flag for you. Infamous in your world, where all the proper names are whispered behind manicured hands and anything resembling normalcy is held with the same disdain as a counterfeit handbag. Leah Williamson is an athlete, which in your circles is roughly akin to being an overpaid circus act.

But what really gives you pause is her haircut.

Short, blonde, not-quite-pixie. She looks like she’s wandered in here by mistake, a traveler who’s taken the wrong exit on the motorway and ended up in a place where the speed limit is fifty miles under what she’s used to. You half-expect her to pull out a map and ask someone the quickest way back to civilisation. Instead, she tips her head back and downs the champagne like it’s water, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, and you’re immediately in love.

Of course, you won’t admit this, even under threat of being forced to wear last season’s Chanel. Love, in your world, is about as fashionable as pleather.

Your grandmother, God rest her weary soul, once said, “You’ll know it’s love when you’re willing to risk wearing nude tights for them.” Nude tights, in her book, being one of the greatest crimes against humanity. You’re not sure you’re there yet, but the idea doesn’t fill you with as much dread as it would have this morning.

But you digress. You’re here at this godforsaken gala because your father insists on parading you like a prize cow before other old-money families, hoping you’ll marry someone with a suitable lineage. You’re twenty-six and your father has begun to suspect you might have, as he put it, “alternative preferences.” This is his way of reminding you that lineage is everything, and falling for someone without a trust fund is tantamount to treason.

So here you are, in a dress that costs more than most people’s cars, standing next to the dessert table and pretending the caviar blinis don’t taste like expensive regret. Across the room, Leah is now juggling her champagne glass and a miniature beef Wellington, and she seems to be losing.

You decide to rescue her. Or rather, you decide to rescue yourself from having to listen to Lord Farnsworth’s lecture on the importance of preserving the family crest for the fifteenth time this evening.

“Having fun?” you ask when you reach her, which is a stupid question because of course she isn’t. Nobody is having fun here.

She turns to you, and for a moment, you’re convinced she’s going to hand you her beef Wellington like you’re the help. Instead, she gives you a smile so dry you could use it to exfoliate.

“Are you?” she asks, and her voice is lower than you expected, with that clipped accent that tells you she’s from somewhere north of where people have indoor pools.

You shrug, because you don’t really know how to answer that without resorting to a level of honesty that would make your therapist proud but your mother faint.

“I’ve had root canals that were more enjoyable,” you say, and she laughs, a short bark of a sound that seems to surprise even her.

“Fair,” she says, and you feel like you’ve passed some sort of test.

“So what brings you to the seventh circle of hell?” you ask, watching as she abandons her beef Wellington on a passing waiter’s tray like she’s releasing a burden into the wild.

“I was invited,” she says, as though that explains everything, and maybe it does. Maybe she’s been told, like you have, that there are some invitations you just don’t turn down. Even if they come with the risk of being cornered by Lord Farnsworth and his endless tirade about how the current generation is ruining the art of fox hunting.

“Ah,” you say, because you understand that language. “That explains the face”

“What face?”

“The one you’ve been making all night,” you say, trying to demonstrate by contorting your own face into what you hope is an accurate imitation.

She grins again, and it occurs to you that Leah Williamson might be one of those rare people who looks more attractive when they’re amused. Most people, in your experience, become grotesque when they’re laughing, all exposed gums and teeth that are never as straight as they should be. But her face lights up in a way that suggests she doesn’t find the world half as disappointing as you do.

“And what face have you been making?” she asks, leaning in a little closer, and you catch a whiff of her perfume—something that’s probably advertised with shots of people running through fields of lavender, but on her, it smells like trouble.

You gesture vaguely. “It’s somewhere between ‘bored out of my skull’ and ‘I can’t believe I’m not getting paid for this’”

“I’ll have to try that one,” she says, glancing over at Lord Farnsworth, who seems to have set his sights on you again, the poor man. “But I’ll need some pointers”

“First, you need to perfect the art of the disinterested nod,” you say, demonstrating. “Like you’re listening, but you’ve also just remembered you left the oven on”

She mimics you, and it’s terrible, but you applaud her effort anyway.

“Close enough,” you say. “Next, you have to practice the well-timed yawn. Not too obvious, but just enough to suggest you’ve heard all this before”

She pretends to yawn, and it’s so exaggerated that a few people around you turn to look.

“Subtlety is key,” you remind her.

“I’ll work on it,” she says, her grin widening as though she’s actually enjoying herself now, which is against all logic.

“And finally,” you say, feeling suddenly bold, “you have to perfect the getaway”

“The getaway?”

“Yeah,” you say, glancing at Lord Farnsworth, who is now being temporarily distracted by some poor woman in pearls. “Like this”

You grab her by the arm and start walking, weaving your way through the crowd with the precision of someone who has been doing this their whole life. She doesn’t resist, though she does give you a curious look as you lead her past your father, who is deep in conversation with someone equally dull.

You find yourself in the courtyard, where the air is cooler and the moon is doing its best impression of a romantic comedy backdrop. Leah stops and looks up at the sky, as though she’s surprised to find it there.

“Nice,” she says, and you can’t tell if she’s talking about the view or the escape route.

“Much better than listening to Lord Farnsworth,” you say, and she turns to you with that smile again, the one that’s starting to feel dangerously like an invitation.

“So,” she says, as if continuing a conversation you didn’t know you were having, “what’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?”

The question is so cliché it should make you cringe, but it doesn’t. Instead, it feels like the most natural thing in the world, and you find yourself saying, “I’m here because I lost a bet with Satan”

She chuckles, a low rumble in her chest that makes you feel like you’ve won something. “And what did you bet on?”

“That I could get through this evening without wanting to jump into traffic,” you say, and she laughs again, this time a little louder.

“I think you lost that bet the moment you saw the guest list,” she says, and you nod in agreement.

“So what about you?” you ask, genuinely curious now. “Why are you here?”

“Because I was invited,” she repeats, but this time, there’s something else in her tone, something that makes you think she’s not just talking about the gala.

You want to ask her what she means, but you don’t. Instead, you reach out and take her hand, surprising both of you.

“Let’s make another bet,” you say, feeling a strange kind of thrill, like you’re standing on the edge of something.

“What kind of bet?” she asks, her eyes narrowing slightly, but there’s a glint in them that makes you think she’s game.

“That we can get through the rest of this evening without wanting to jump into traffic,” you say, squeezing her hand just a little.

She considers this for a moment, then grins. “You’re on”

And just like that, the evening shifts. The gala, the people, the expectations—they all fade into the background as you and Leah step into something that feels suspiciously like possibility.

You don’t know where this is going, but for the first time in a long time, you’re excited to find out. And maybe, just maybe, you’re willing to risk wearing nude tights for her. But only if you lose the bet.

[fivescocoa]

horribly enough, i'm daydreaming about an aftg!esports/streamer au can you imagine the foxes being an esports team for exy (which is totally valorant adjacent rather than anything like canon exy). i'm picturing them all up on stage in front of their computers w their lil headsets on. oh my goodness.. and i know in my bones exactly what it would be like to sit in each of their streams too. kevin wouldn't stream super often, because streaming takes away from his concentration on improving, but when he does he drags in huge (unreasonably large) numbers and is the picture of charming. he could only keep up his entertainer persona for a couple hours at a time, so his streams are short and sweet. andrew barely interacting with his chat and having a completely inconsistent streaming schedule, but he's just SO good. the clips he gets while live are insanely sharable. people also think it's hilarious that even w facecam on he still has 0 reaction to any of the crazy plays he's pulling off. also, goodness i feel like he'd share social media accounts with aaron and nicky (because you KNOW it wasn't idea to start streaming) and i think guessing if it's aaron or andrew streaming would drive some insane debates between fans. and neil having no experience and little interest in streaming. he just starts showing up to smaller tournaments and a legend starts building around him. since its a team game, he like shuffles around from group to group, playing what ever position they need a spot filled for, but none of them really stick. until hes getting invited to tournaments that are large enough to attract kevin's attention and kevin's like "we need him." and then neil starts showing up on their streams, till eventually he's bullied into streaming himself. i have so many thoughts. my head is so full

[varpusvaras]

Fox was having a very normal day.

It was lunchtime and he had an extra hour before he needed to get to a meeting with his next client, so it meant that he could take a longer lunch break and actually properly sit down to eat. Maybe get some coffee. Which he did, actually, and he had even went to an actual coffee shop to get it and not just got a cup from the self-service line at the store. The air was warm, even if the sky was a bit overcast, which was also perfectly normal was this time of the year.

So, Fox was having a very normal day. A very normal day that was a pretty good day, on top of it.

He took the coffee to go, because the weather was quite nice, and he walked out of the coffee shop and crossed the street to the park avenue between the shopping center and the business center where his office was. He usually got to take a short walk around like this maybe once or twice a week, so this was perfectly normal.

So, just as a reminder, Fox was having a very normal day.

And then something collided with the back of his knees and sent him stumbling.

He tried to correct himself in order to prevent himself from falling on to his face, which ended up him swinging his upper body backwards, which, in turn, ended up with his hand, that was currently occupied with holding the coffee, to also swing back.

Which ended up him staying upright and with a warm, quickly spreading stain right at the front of his white shirt.

Something was still touching his legs, squeezing them rather tightly, and Fox twisted his head around and looked down, and what he saw was the top of the head of a toddler.

A toddler, that had latched themselves onto Fox's legs, and was hugging them with both of their arms like their life dependent on it.

Now, Fox liked kids. Most of the time. He had more patience for them than many other people he met on a daily basis, at the very least. Kids were just kids. They had been alive just for a couple of years and had no idea what was going on, which was a lot better of an excuse than anything all the shitty adults Fox had the displeasure of dealing with could ever come up with.

Still, Fox could not say that he was exceptionally good with kids. He tried to be nice to them, because, again, they had no idea what was going on, and, quite frankly, neither had Fox, at the moment.

First course of action.

"Hello?" He called, trying his best to ignore the feeling of the coffee spreading more and more onto his shirt.

The kid did lift their head up at his voice, and Fox found himself being stared at by a pair of very big brown eyes.

Very big and very brown, and they were staring at him like Fox was the best thing they had seen the whole day.

Fox found himself feeling a bit off-kilter, all of a sudden.

It was cute kid. Very cute. She was wearing a very nice and very expensive looking dress, that was currently being smushed against the back of Fox's pants, and she had a little hair clip keeping her bangs away from her eyes that were still glued on Fox.

It was...strange. Fox knew that he looked probably really weird, just staring back at this kid, his neck craned rather uncomfortably, but he just couldn't stop looking all of a sudden.

It was like the longer Fox looked at her, the more familiar she looked, and suddenly he just needed to know why.

The girl blinked, and her little mouth turned up into a wide, elated smile.

"Buir", she said, her little voice singing the word. Fox had no idea what it meant, but some part of his brain pinged the word as familiar as well.

Fox opened his mouth again, to say something, when he noticed something approaching them very quickly.

He lifted his eyes away from the girl, just to see a very tall man running towards them.

"Leia!" The man called. He came to a halting stop just behind Fox, and crouched down. "Why did you run off like that? You scared us-"

The girl - Leia - grabbed onto Fox's pants even harder at that point, and latched herself to his legs like she was trying to hide into them.

"Leia", the man said, a little exasperated, and he looked up at Fox. "I am very sorry, she does not usually do anything like this-"

Fox blinked.

"Oh", he managed to say. "It's okay. Kids. Are sometimes like that?"

He tried to tell himself that he was stumbling over his words because he was still reeling a bit from the strange feeling that had come over him, and not from the fact that the man who was crouching down behind him and was looking up right at his face was really handsome. Absolutely not.

The man was really handsome, though. Tall, with slightly tanned skin and chiseled jaw and dark hair and dark eyes with a couple of laugh lines around them. Fox had not thought that he was into slightly older men, in particular, but apparently he had thought wrong, since-

-the man looked really familiar, all of a sudden.

The strange feeling was very much back. Had Fox came across some celebrity that he just couldn't properly place? No, that didn't feel right, it was something entirely else, and Fox didn't know what it was.

He just knew that he had seen the man before. Somewhere.

Fox just didn't know where or when.

He blinked again and realised that the man was just looking at him, not saying a word.

Fox felt a little rude as he cleared his throat. He did not want to be rude to the man. He looked very kind and nice, and Fox knew him from somewhere and he needed to know where.

The man seemed to start a little, and he blinked a few times very rapidly as well.

"Yes, right", he said. "Sometimes they are like that. I've gotten to notice. Leia."

Leia didn't move to let go. Her little hands were still squeezing the fabric of Fox's pants tightly, her face pressed again against the back of Fox's legs.

"Having problems?" Fox raised his head to look towards the new voice.

A woman was walking up to them, her brow raised as she looked at Leia and the man crouched down. She looked at least slightly amused at the situation in front of her, with one corner of her mouth also quirked up. She stood out a little bit from the rest of the people around them, with her nice looking-long dress and the way her dark hair braided was braided to the top of her head like a crown. She looked almost royal, Fox's mind decided as he watched her walk towards them, with her rounded and youthful face and golden skin and midnight eyes.

Then she stepped close enough to them, and she looked up at Fox, and all of a sudden it was like she had walked into the same circle of the strange feeling as the rest of them. Her steps slowed and the amusement faded away from her as she now just looked.

Fox looked back. It didn't surprise him anymore that she looked familiar now, too, standing next to them, and it was like she thought the same. She kept looking, her eyes searching him carefully, like she was trying to place Fox's features to some other point in time of her life.

Fox didn't know where to look anymore, but he couldn't look away, either.

Then Leia moved, and Fox turned to look into her eyes again, which seemed to know exactly what they were looking at.

"Buir", she said, again, happy and certain.

Fox didn't know that to say.

His phone vibrated in his pocket then, and Fox very quickly remembered that he had a client waiting for him.

"I'm sorry", he managed to say without tripping over any syllables this time. "I need to-"

"Oh, no, I'm very sorry", the man said. He put his hands around Leia and started to pry her off of Fox. "Leia, you need to let go, okay?"

Leia dug her little fingers into the fabric and made a noise that very much said no without actually saying the word.

"Leia, now", the woman said. She looked at Fox again, and Fox guessed that he was twisted around enough for her to see the now giant stain on Fox's shirt, because her mouth twitched unhappily. "I am very sorry, Sir, I can pay for that shirt-"

"It's okay-" Fox's phone vibrated again, and he went to fish it out from his pocket. "I have another one in my office-"

"Still, I insist that I-" She paused to look at Leia again. "Leia, let go of the nice man."

"Buir!" Leia protested, and what Fox could now describe as the world's strongest case of déjà-vu returned once again, though this time with instructions, and said instructions were to placate.

"If you have a business card or anything like that, I could take it", he hurried to say. "So we can discuss this later."

"Oh, yes, I do, just a moment", the woman reached into her bag and with an almost practised movement pulled out a very fancy looking card. "Here. Once again, I am very sorry about all of this-"

"It's fine." Fox took the card. "Kids will be kids."

He looked down at Leia, and despite feeling a little stupid, he showed the card to her, like she would understand what it was. She was what, two? Two-year-olds didn't usually know what business cards even were, but Fox showed it to her anyway.

Leia looked at Fox, and then at the card, and then, very slowly, she let go.

The man took the opportunity and immediately scooped her up to his arms. He straightened up, and Fox was reminded of the fact that he was, in fact, very tall. Fox was pretty tall himself, and he still had to look slightly up.

The man was smiling now, maybe a bit flustered, but it was a very nice smile anyway.

"I apologise for this", he said. "She does not usually go around grabbing people."

"It's okay", Fox said, once again. His phone vibrated in his hand. "I will contact you later-"

He glanced down at the card in his other hand.

"Mrs. and Mr. Organa?"

The name felt familiar when Fox spoke it. Warm. Like he had said it before, more than once-

(He looked up at them. Leia was looking at him, like she knew him already. Like she had known him all this time.)

-a long time ago, somewhere far, far away.

[thegreatwizardelwin]

I Won’t Say I’m In Love - Part One

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Joanne Harcourt x Male Reader

F/N L/N is a student in the Sapphire Owl house at Weston College. For some reason, he keeps running into a Scarlet Fox student in his day to day activities. Intrigued, he tries to learn more about him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Compared to other students at Weston College, you were rather neutral when it came to students from other houses. Of course, you were loyal to Sapphire Owl during sports events and exams. However that didn’t seem to matter when it came to your hobby: proofreading. 

In your freetime, you discreetly accepted drafts for essays and research papers from assorted underclassmen. You, well-known for being a well-read literature enthusiast, would do your best to give them revisions. Humbly, you accepted small gifts in return. Extra pencils, saved biscuits, clips, extra notebook papers, you name it. It wasn’t that you charged them, it had just become a custom amongst your more frequent clientele. 

You interacted as infrequently and as inconspicuous as possible, even though your friends found your hobby hilarious. Nobody liked a boy who was too friendly with other houses.

However, some things just can’t be helped. It started as a passing glance in the hallways. He took you by surprise, what with how his eyes were fiery amber and his hair the color of meringue. In your eyes, no one could be more beautiful than that. You reminded yourself that you only admired him, nothing more.

But your fascination grew. Absentmindedly studying his face from across the library and catching him doing the same. You noticed how he sat, walked, and studied alone.

Late one afternoon, you found him browsing the same aisle as you. His hair curtained his face, a small cluster of books in his hands. He saw you out of the corner of his eye and quickly averted his attention to one of the books he had been previously scrutinizing. You noticed the book was one you had been interested in too. Darn.

As aloofly as you could, you made your way over to the boy and the object of your desire. He turned to you, confused as to why you were so close all of a sudden.

“Are you going to read it?” you whispered, reaching for the book. You took it off the shelf and held it loosely in your hands between the both of you.

He sighed, staring down at the novel.

“I don’t know. I have so many other books I’m reading, I don’t want my bedside to become a library of its own.” he replied, almost with disappointment.

You laughed quietly at his response.

“In that case would you care if I borrowed it first? I’ll try and read it as fast as possible so I can get it back on the shelf for you.” you offered.

He looked at the book one more time, then looked at the… quite honest looking face you had. He nudged the book back to you, nodding.

“It’s alright. I don’t need it today or anything.” he whispered, turning to leave the aisle. You pulled the book to your chest and reached out to gently grab his shoulder.

“What’s your name?” you asked. “ I see you all around.”

He flinched at your touch, looking at you with a slight rosy tint to his cheeks.

“Joanne Harcourt, second year.” he answered.

“I’m F/N L/N, a ___ year.” you stated in return, your hand falling to your side.

He gave you a shy smile.

“I’ll make sure I remember.” he said, and scurried off.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is my first fanfiction! It will be strictly fluffy and not very romantic (i imagine its hard being gay in an 1889 public school). I tried to keep this chapter short, almost like a pilot 🌺 Part 2:

[berenwrites]

Quiet - Stranger Things - Steddie - G

Rating: G | cw: none | tags: D&D, future fic, Corroded Coffin made it, Eddie lives, fluff

Prompt: Love is sitting in comfortable silence together doing their own thing (@steddieasitgoes)

A/N: Written for @steddielovemonth day 6. I love the idea of Corroded Coffin being a big name, but still being nerds at heart, so this is what I went with.

Also on AO3 | All My Other Stranger Things Fic

Quiet: But Far From Idle

Eddie tapped his pen against his lips as he tried to come up with a dastardly trap for the D&D campaign he was writing. He could use the laptop, but he’s old school and he likes to write things out by hand. It gave him a chance to doodle at the same time.

The fact D&D had made Corroded Coffin relevant to the youth of today rather than finding them via their music was ironic, but he was not arguing with it. It had been Steve’s idea to record one of the band’s campaign sessions and put it on YouTube with clips on TikTok because D&D had become popular again. The band were still touring, still releasing albums, but the social media thing had brought in a whole new generation of fans.

Their new album was nearly ready for release, so Eddie was writing a campaign that incorporated some of the themes from it. Part fun, part advertising. Their record company had been thrilled by the extra attention and had even planned time into their upcoming tour for filmed D&D nights to keep the fans happy. Writing D&D campaigns was now almost as important as writing new music.

Eddie was having a ball.

He glanced over to where Steve had the other end of their dining room table with various large pieces of paper spread everywhere. Steve had a pink hairband pushing his silver-fox hair back to keep it out of his face and his glasses were perched on the edge of his nose. There was a red pen behind his ear and a green one in his hand, and his tongue was poking between his lips as he concentrated.

It was all utterly adorable.

While Eddie planned fantasy, Steve was going over venue security for the beginning of the tour. Steve took the band’s security very seriously. They had a professional team these days to handle everything, and Steve let them do their jobs, but he always insisted on checking. Gone were the days when their only security was Steve in the corner with his baseball bat. However, Steve couldn’t let it go. It was a hang-up from the Upside Down days when they had had no one to rely on but themselves.

They had both almost died, so Eddie could very much understand Steve’s need to make sure those around him were safe.

Steve liked to go old school with paper and a pen as well, and from the looks of it he had found quite a few things wrong with at least one of the venues. The printed plan was covered in red notes. Eddie smiled to himself, knowing that nothing would ever get past Steve.

“Need anything, Sweetheart?” he asked as Steve changed pens while glaring at the venue plan right in front of him.

His husband looked up, blinked, and then smiled.

“No, I’m good, thanks,” Steve said. “How’s the campaign going?”

“They will not know what hit them,” Eddie replied with his best evil grin.

“They never do,” Steve said, glancing back down at the sheet of paper he was currently studying. “You should have a t-shirt made with the old hell-fire logo to make sure everyone knows you’re a demon,” he added as he circled something in red.

Eddie laughed as he lost his husband back to his self-appointed task. He took out his phone and made a quick note to ask Liz, his assistant, about t-shirts before focussing down on his notes again. Steve always had great ideas. It was one of the many reasons Eddie loved him with all his heart. He counted himself one of the luckiest guys on the planet as he went back to quietly planning how to put his best friends into mortal peril.

All My Other Stranger Things Fic

[vodika-vibes]

Hi hi Ive just seen you're bouquet request is coming g go an end I'd LOVE Acica(Secret love) ambrosia (returned affections) for Commander fox (I adore him)

If you need any baseline idea maybe him just refusing to accept his feelings and after some kinda push finally is like shit like them ofc reader loves him back and has the whole time

I'd also be happy with any of the more classicly grumpy fellas eg alpha 17, but who ever is in your brain

A New Love

Summary: Fox is in love with his friend...he just refuses to admit it to anyone, including himself.

Pairing: Commander Fox x F!Reader

Word Count: 2028

Warnings: Mentions of Palpatine physically abusing Fox

Prompts: Acacia - Secret love, Ambrosia - returned affections

Tagging: @trixie2023 @n0vqni @imabeautifulbutterfly

A/N: I don't really know anything about make-up because I'm allergic to almost all of it and so I don't wear it. So I apologize if anything is wrong. Also, I hope this is close to what you're wanting? I was struggling to come up with something good here.

“Will you hold still?” Fox rolls his eyes but stops moving as she carefully applies the makeup to his jaw and cheek, “Do you want me to cover the scars on your neck too?” She asks as she tilts his head to the side so she can see better.

“Probably should.” He replies with a sigh, “Don’t want my brothers to ask any questions that I can’t answer.”

She scowls at him, “Maybe you should let them ask questions, Fox.”

“You said you were willing to help without judgment, sen’ika.” He reminds her with a pointed look.

She sighs, “I am. Of course I am. I’m here, aren’t I?” She pulls away and eyes the covered scar critically, “Alright, open your shirt so I can to your neck and chest.”

Fox rolls his eyes again, and unfastens the clip at his neck, exposing his neck enough that she’s able to get to the scar.

She inhales sharply when she sees just how bad the scarring is, “...Fox-”

“You promised.” He reminds her flatly.

“Yes. I know. I know I did.” Her voice sounds thick with tears, and Fox feels a surge of guilt. If he had anyone else who would help him cover his injuries he would go to them, rather than bothering his one nat-born friend.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap.”

She shakes her head, a weak smile on her painted lips, “It’s okay. I was pushing, and I promised that I wouldn’t.”

“It’s for your own safety.” Fox mutters, his eyes closing as she goes to work.

“I know. So you keep saying.” Her hands are warm against his skin as she gently applies the make-up to cover the scarring. She’s quiet for a moment, and then she sighs, “Sorry, I have to restart. These scars are redder, I need to do some color correction.”

Fox opens his eyes and watches as she pulls a wipe from the table and starts wiping the makeup off his neck, and then she crosses the room to her vanity and digs around for some other make-up.

He really is lucky to have her. 

Fox knows that he’d never be able to explain these scars to his brothers. Or, he doesn’t want to explain these scars to his brothers, rather. He pushes the swell of bitterness away with ease. He loves his brothers, he wouldn’t want any of them to be in his place.

But it would be nice if they noticed that he was suffering.

At least his sen’ika sees it.

She’s a make-up artist, who works at one of the largest and most well respected theaters on Coruscant. She invited herself into his life, and Fox has to admit that his life is all the better for it.

Partly because she keeps his secrets and is able to help him hide his scars and bruises from his brothers. But mostly because she’s a genuinely good person.

It’s not love.

It’s not.

He can’t afford to love anyone, not with the state of the galaxy. Not when his boss throws lightning around like it’s nothing. 

Sure, he thinks about her all of the time. And sure, he worries about her constantly.

But he doesn’t love her. He can’t.

“Ha! Found it!” She hurries back to his side with a tube of something green, “I’ll use some of this first,” She murmurs, “And that’ll help hide the red-”

“You’re the best, you know that?” Fox asks, leaning back as she applies the color corrector to the scar.

“Well, I try.” She takes a step back and sets the tube back on the table, “How are you feeling, by the way? You look like you haven’t been sleeping.”

“I work a lot.”

She sighs, “I’ll cover the dark circles under your eyes too. But, Fox, this isn’t feasible in the long term.”

“I know it isn’t, sen’ika.” Fox replies quietly, “I appreciate the fact that you’re willing to cover my scars as regularly as you do.”

“Yeah, well…” She grabs the concealer and then points it at him, “It’s not like the Republic bothers to pay you, so this is quite literally the least I can do. Normally you’re not this concerned though.”

“Yeah, well. I’m going to 79s with my brothers this afternoon,” Fox says with a sigh, “And I don’t want them to worry.”

“Oh?” She grins at him, “Maybe I’ll join you.”

Fox glances up at her, a small smile on his lips. “Yeah? Looking for a boyfriend among my brothers?” He asks as he ignores the pang of jealousy.

“Maybe I want to dance with you.” She counters.

Fox laughs softly, “That’s a terrible idea.”

Her smile falters, “Right. Of course. I just…I wish you would tell me why it’s such a bad idea for me to spend time with you.”

“It’s complicated.”

She sighs, “Right. You could just say that you’re not interested, Fox. I won’t be mad.”

He sighs, “The more time you spend with me, the more likely it is that you’re going to get hurt.” Fox says, “I’m trying to keep you safe.”

“Yeah, yeah. I get it.” She pulls back slightly to admire her work, “Alright. You’re done, Fox.”

“Awesome. Thanks, sen’ika.” He refastens his shirt and stands, only for her to press his helmet into his hands, “I don’t deserve you.” Fox says with a fond smile.

“Nonsense.” She shakes her head, “You deserve everything in the galaxy and then some.” She favors him with a small, adoring smile. “I’m still planning on going to 79s tonight, Fox. I’ll just…keep my distance and find someone else to dance with. Promise.”

Fox’s fingers flex against his helmet. He’s not jealous. He’s not.

“Sounds like a plan.”

She smiles at him and hugs him quickly, “Be careful, as careful as you can be, at work today. There’s only so much I can hide.”

He folds his arm around her, “It’s not up to me, but I’ll be as careful as possible. Promise.” He drops a light kiss to the top of her head, and then pulls himself out of her grip, and heads out of the apartment.

Fox genuinely didn’t think that his sen’ika was going to come to 79s. He knows her, pretty well by this point, and he knows that she’s not really into the club scene.

She doesn’t like loud music, or the scent of stale beer, or the press of strangers against her.

So when he sees her enter the club, he nearly chokes on his drink.

She looks…great. Wearing a miniskirt and a crop top, and leather boots that make her legs look amazing.

Fox isn’t surprised to see that she’s drawing attention from his brothers. She’s already stunning, after all.

His gaze lingers on her as she heads to the bar, and his grip tightens around his bottle when he sees several of his brothers crowding around her. She probably hates that, Fox can’t help but think with a small smile. 

“She’s pretty,” Wolffe notes lightly, his gaze following his twins, “You should go dance with her.”

“Pass.” Fox replies, though he keeps his dark gaze on her, “Besides, she’s got enough admirers as it is.”

“Yeah. But they’re shinies and you’re Marshal Commander.” Wolffe replies with a small smirk, “You should feel honor bound to save her from their drooling.”

“I’m trying to get drunk, vod.”

“Maybe I’ll go and ask her to dance.” Wolffe muses, as he leans to the side to get a good look at her legs.

“Maybe you should leave her alone.” Fox bites out. 

Wolffe pauses and leans back in his seat, his eyes locked on his twin. “Huh. You know her, don’t you?”

Fox doesn’t answer him, he just takes a sip of his drink, though a small smile crosses his face when his sen’ika meets his gaze from across the room. Though she’s quick to look away, likely remembering her promise to not bother him.

“You know her well,” Wolffe continues, his eyes narrowing accusingly, “I saw that look. You’re friends with her.”

“Wolffe-”

“No, no. Why didn’t you tell me you had a pretty natborn friend? Are you sleeping with her?”

“What? No!”

“Why not?” Wolffe demands.

“Our friendship isn’t like that.” Fox bites out.

“Bullshit. I saw that look. You want her.” Wolffe says, “I’m going to get her and bring her over here.”

“I…no-” but there’s no point, Wolffe is already up from the table and crossing to the bar.

Fox watches as Wolffe talks to his sen’ika, and he watches as she glances at Fox, and then back at Wolffe and shakes her head with a small smile. He can practically hear her telling Wolffe that she promised to keep her distance tonight.

And then one of the shinies flings his arm over her shoulder and she cringes.

Fox sets his bottle down on the table as the shiny presses himself right against his sen’ika and twines some of her hair around his fingers. He watches as the shiny rubs his cheek against hers, and he’s on his feet and crossing the bar before he really thinks about it.

She’s his, damn it.

He firmly pries the shiny off of her, “Did you ask the lady if you could touch her?” Fox asks his voice flat.

The Shiny blinks at him hazily, and then he straightens, “Marshal Commander-”

“I suggest you go and clear your head.” Fox says, his voice very unamused, and then his gaze lingers on his Sen’ika once the shiny leaves. “Are you okay?”

She smiles sheepishly, “I guess I shouldn’t have even bothered trying to come here.” 

“It’s not really your scene, sen’ika.” Fox points out, gently.

“Yeah, I know.” She pushes her hand through her hair, “I guess I’ll just go home then.” She smiles up at him, “Sorry for ruining your night, Fox. I didn’t mean to.”

“You didn’t ruin anything.” Fox replies, “I’m always happy to see you, you know that.” Her smile grows and Fox releases an internal sigh, he’s so karked. Why did he have to realize that he loved her now, of all times?

Fox glances at his twin, who has a wide grin on his face, “I’m going to walk her out. Please don’t make this a thing.”

“Oh. Too late. It’s a thing.” Wolffe puts out his comm, “I’m telling…everyone?”

Fox just sighs and lightly nudges his sen’ika towards the door.

Once they’re outside, he turns to face her while she waits for her taxi to arrive, “Sorry, again. It seems I made things difficult for you.” She says sheepishly.

“Wolffe is my twin, he’s always going to be difficult.” Fox admits, “It’s not your fault.” He hesitates and then he lightly reaches out and brushes his fingers against her cheek. “I am glad that I got to see you tonight.”

“But…you said-”

“I know what I said. I’m an idiot.” Fox interrupts, he lightly brushes his thumb against her cheek, “I want, no need, you to know that I’m not uninterested.”

She blinks at him. “What?”

“Earlier, at your apartment. You said that you wanted me to let you know if I wasn’t interested.” Fox clarifies, “And that’s not the case. At all.”

“Oh,” She breathes the word out.

“I’m just…terrified that someone will hurt you to get to me.”

“I know. I’ve known that for a while.” She admits, “But, Fox, I don’t care.”

He stares at her, “You don’t?”

“I love you enough that it doesn’t bother me.” She speaks so lightly, so nonchalantly, as if she’s not admitting something huge.

Fox sighs and lightly cups her cheek, and he smiles when she leans into his touch, “I think we need to have a long chat.” He finally says, “Tomorrow. In the morning.”

“Yeah. Definitely. I’ll make breakfast.” She beams at him, and then turns as her cab pulls up. She flashes a quick smile and kisses his cheek, “I’ll see you in the morning, Fox.”

“Yeah. Good night, Sen’ika.”

And then she is gone, and Fox realizes that he has to deal with his overly excitable brothers for the remainder of the night. Tonight’s going to suck.

[dd-is-my-guiltypleasure]

David Duchovny: ‘The X-Files took up my life, but it was a miracle’

It's behind a paywall so if somebody has access I would love to read the article

Update : got it, thanks @aimsies-mctaymellburg

David Duchovny: ‘The X-Files took up my life, but it was a miracle’

As Fox Mulder in the hit sci-fi show, the actor and singer peddled fringe conspiracy theories. Now the 63-year-old says Mulder’s paranoia is everywhere.

In hindsight it wasn’t a great idea for me to kick off an interview with David Duchovny by suggesting that he was a musical dilettante. You’re most likely to know Duchovny, of course, as Fox Mulder, the conspiracy-theory-guzzling FBI agent in The X Files, one of the biggest shows of the Nineties, watched at its peak by 30 million in America alone. Perhaps you saw him as the womanising writer Hank Moody in Californication or the 1960s detective Sam Hodiak in Aquarius. You may even have read some of his five books.

Duchovny, a New Yorker living in Los Angeles, is less known for music, although he’s been making rather decent folk-rock for a decade — songwriting, playing guitar and singing in a honeyed drawl. His 2015 songHell or Highwater has been streamed more than a million times while Layin’ on the Tracks, from 2020, has pointed lyrics about a certain politician (“It’s a killing joke that no one laughs at/ A stupid orange man in a cheap red hat”). He has released three albums, with a fourth due next year, and this month plays Latitude festival in Suffolk and the 2,000-capacity Shepherds Bush Empire in London.

So does the 63-year-old feel that he should no longer be seen as just a musical dabbler? “That’s part of a lazy person’s perception,” he says, bristling slightly. “It’s a lens through which people want to see me. I think music is an innocent art form — you listen to it and you have a response. To bring any kind of baggage to bear on it in the beginning seems to me to be dishonest, but that’s the way things go.”

YouTube clips of recent shows suggest people were having a lovely time, I say. This doesn’t have the soothing effect intended. YouTube footage lingers “because of the horror of the cell phone”, Duchovny says. “It’s a pet peeve of mine.” Is he tempted to ban them at his shows, as artists from Prince to Bob Dylan have? “I don’t know that I can enforce that view on anybody.”

For Duchovny, it’s as much about phones limiting his performance as it is about the audience not living in the moment. “To do something unique or for the first time, to reach for a note or play a different melody — all these are chances you might take if you weren’t inhibited by the fact that somebody is [recording] it,” he says. “You’ve got to be able to fail and the ubiquity of cell phones makes failure scarier than it needs to be.”

Failure is the key to another of his jobs: podcasting. In his series Fail Better, he adroitly interviews guests including Bette Midler, Ben Stiller and Sean Penn about their failures. “I feel like I’ve been failing my entire life,” Duchovny said on launching it in May. That may sound strange from a man with English degrees from Princeton and Yale, who has won a Golden Globe for The X Files and another for Californication.

Is he familiar with Elizabeth Day, the British journalist who has hosted a successful podcast called How to Fail since 2018? When Duchovny announced Fail Better, Day tweeted: “I might invite David Duchovny on @howtofail to discuss his failure to be original.”

“This is the first I’ve heard of it,” he says. “If she wants to be rigorous in her thinking, she would investigate what my approach to failure is. I don’t know what her approach to it is. My sense, since failure is universal, is that there’s room out there for more than one discussion.” This is a rather po-faced response to what seemed like a playful comment from Day, and surprising because Duchovny has a wicked sense of humour. He can also afford to be more magnanimous, given that his podcast is at No 12 in the UK chart and hers is at 54.

Gillian Anderson, his X Files co-star, certainly likes his podcast, writing this week on Instagram that she had listened to all of the episodes and found them “intimate and vulnerable … very smart questions, although I wouldn’t expect anything else from you [David]”.

“It’s very sweet,” Duchovny says. “I will email her and thank her. I’m sure somebody running my social media is … I don’t really like to be on social media.” Later that day his Instagram account replies to Anderson’s post: “Thank you for listening, you have an open invite [to appear on his podcast]!”

That encounter would be worth hearing because his relationship with Anderson is fascinating. Despite their chemistry in The X Files there were rumours of friction — although they looked to be getting on swimmingly when they appeared on Jimmy Kimmel’s talk show in 2016 to publicise the return of the show, which ran for two more seasons.

When asked by Kimmel about frostiness between her and Duchovny in the Nineties, Anderson collapsed into giggles, laid her head in Duchovny’s lap and put any froideur down to the dampness of Vancouver, where the series was shot. Her hair kept going frizzy, she explained, and “for every single take we’d have to stand there and blow dry my hair again”.

“And I got pissed at that?” Duchovny asked.

“Well, I think it added to the tension,” Anderson said.

“It kinda makes me sound like an asshole,” Duchovny replied.

Anderson had nothing to do with him leaving The X Files in 2002, he says now. “That was just me wanting to have a family, but also to try other things. It had kind of taken up my life. There was no animosity with the actual show and the people that I worked with. I am proud of the show — it was culturally central in a way that it’s very hard to do these days in a fragmented landscape. There’s so many lightning-strike aspects to it that I can’t help but think of it as some kind of a miracle.”

The X Files gave conspiracy theories a kind of nobility — “the truth is out there”, as its tagline ran. Now they are more widespread and pernicious. “Mulder’s way of looking at the world was through conspiracy and that was the fringe at that point,” Duchovny says. “It doesn’t seem to be so fringe any more. It’s really the world that [The X Files creator] Chris Carter foresaw happening almost 30 years ago. He’s almost clairvoyant in that case.” Is Duchovny more evidence-based than Mulder? “Not at all. I’m an artist — I am associative-based and I see poetry as science and science as poetry.” So are there some conspiracy theories that he buys into? “No, I’m talking about art. I think conspiracies are mostly just lazy thinking.”

One failure that has shaped Duchovny is that of his marriage to the actress Téa Leoni, who starred in Bad Boys and Deep Impact. They married in 1997 and have a daughter, West, 25, and a son, Kyd, 22, but divorced in 2014. “That darkness does deepen you. It makes you more empathetic and humble,” Duchovny says. One of the themes of his podcast is “the difference between humiliating and humbling. Often we focus on humiliation in our culture. I don’t see any positives coming from humiliation, but I see a lot of them coming from humility.”

One wonders if the reference to humiliation has something to do with Duchovny checking into rehab for sex addiction in 2008. Could him playing the bed-hopping Hank in Californication be a case of art imitating life? “People never tire of trying to figure that out,” he says with a sigh. “But to me, that’s not what acting is about. I don’t look for things that are mirroring my life in any way.”

Well, there are parallels in Reverse the Curse, the 2023 film that Duchovny directed, starred in and adapted from his book Bucky F***ing Dent. He plays a would-be novelist who has “sacrificed his artistic dream to put food on the table”. His father, a publicist, did the same, publishing his debut at 75, the year before he died. The film has some really funny scenes, including one where Marty and his son have a farting competition in a motel room that ends up smelling like “an aquarium that fed a sock”. That may have come from a line in Aquarius where someone says something similar about a police station. “I might have ripped it off, I’m not sure,” Duchovny says. “ You can ask Elizabeth Day about that.”

David Duchovny will perform at Latitude festival, near Southwold on July 25 and 02 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, W12 on July 27

[ninjigma]

QuinFox Week Part 4/7 - First / Previous / Next

Day 4: Keeping the Other Alive + Fox find's Quin's Lightsaber Track: 'Escape From East Berlin' - Daniel Pemberton (Spotify / YouTube)

"You have to stay with me Vos, come on!"

He really was trying, promise.

"I know, just... focus on keeping up. I'll do the rest, okay?"

Quinlan took a slow breath, focusing on just putting one fast-paced foot in front of the other. His awareness was muted in his attempt to mask his pain, and at this point, all the energy he had was being expended in keeping ahead of whatever droids were left on their tail.

Suddenly he was being hauled up and forward, aware of the ladder only when its rungs were suddenly beneath his hands.

"Up!" Fox barked, shots ringing out after his words. 

Quinlan obeyed the sharp order without hesitation. He was around three floors up when his awareness flared and he wrenched backward, a hand flailing wildly as he lost his hold on the wet durasteel. A new slew of blaster fire came from the end of the alleyway, backup arriving and causing further chaos. Moving purely on instinct he reached for where his saber was clipped to his belt-

And found nothing.

The sound of his saber igniting drew his gaze downward, the green flashing and lighting up across the red of Fox's armor. The clone must have picked it up earlier when Quinlan had nearly collapsed, no time to do much more than grab the saber in one hand and pull Quinlan back to his feet with the other. Now Fox was moving with deadly accuracy, cloak fanning out around him, and Quinlan noted how even without Force sensitivity Fox was plenty skilled with the blade. He was precise and sly in his movements, expertly incorporating the blaster to dispatch another droid with a bullseye to the head, the sight inspiring some rather unique feelings in the base of Quinlan’s stomach.

"I said up Vos!"

Right, he was supposed to be climbing. Without another thought he continued moving, easily trusting Fox to cover him. That simple piece of knowledge that Fox was with him was enough to assure him they had a chance in all of this mess, was enough to motivate him forward.

He made it to the roof without further incident, slipping over the edge and sliding across the wet surface. The way it momentarily muffled the sound of the alleyway and how the rain thrummed against Quinlan's skin brought the Jedi a moment's respite, a second of clarity in the fog where he tried to parse out what they needed to do next.

He wasn't dead, not yet anyhow. But now they were on a rooftop and rather exposed to any air support the Separatists may have in the area. They needed cover, Quinlan needed medical attention, and most of all they had to get back to the ship and out of this damned sector.

All too soon Fox was joining him, Quinlan only having a few moments to breathe before Fox had grabbed his hand and yanked them both across slick metal and tile. Fox was still holding his saber, playing their escape purely on the defensive, and Quinlan was again truly impressed with how well Fox was handling the blade, continuous sweeps that blocked blaster bolts out of the sheer speed of the weapon's arc. 

Though Quinlan knew this wouldn't last long. Already he could see the end of the street coming up with a gap they definitely couldn't jump across. Fox had been guiding them as best he could, but they would be stuck with nowhere to go now, and would end up surrounded and outnumbered in seconds. They wouldn’t last long.

Unless...

Fox had begun to slow, head whipping around in search of some way out of this besides fighting straight back through the droids. Thus he was a bit surprised when Quinlan somehow found an extra burst of speed and began pulling Fox along after him instead.

Fox wasn’t dying like this, for something Quinlan had done, not while he was still drawing air.

"General?!" Quinlan managed a rather unhinged smile at the surprise in Fox's tone, though the commander followed without any other complaint. If anything he sped up, keeping pace directly toward the edge of the building, even when it became clear that was exactly what Quinlan was aiming for.

Trust me.

It may have been a trick of his mind, his single focus on getting them both out of this alive, but Quinlan could swear Fox squeezed his hand before leaping off that roof with him.

Always.

The feeling of free falling wasn’t unknown to Quinlan, but the struggle not to succumb to dizziness as he stretched out a hand and slowed them was an interesting first. He gave all of his attention to the presence of Fox, adding it to his own awareness and willing the Force up to meet them. In a rather graceless move the Force answered, just before they reached the street, and they were suspended perfectly in the air a moment before falling the last foot to safety. 

Quinlan staggered, would’ve fallen if not for Fox immediately tucking into his side and pushing them ever onward. Now the Jedi really was stumbling, his energy burning up faster than he could think.

Then they were stopped, hands were on his shoulders. Black spots dotted his vision, but things were quiet finally and Quinlan could swear he wasn’t standing any longer. All that really mattered was how he could still sense Fox, reaching out and focusing on that steady and clever soul in order to find the motivation to keep moving. 

Well, they must be safe if Fox had stopped them, had begun pressing something against where Quinlan knew his shoulder should hurt but only felt the dull sensation of Fox’s hands.

He always thought Fox had nice hands, strong and sleek with a small scar on his right palm.

Maybe Fox would let him kiss it, just once.

“Don’t- Quinlan!”

[adobe-outdesign]

could you review some of the neopets as animals outfits, like the fennec kacheek, red panda vandagyre, and cockatiel pteri? (those are examples, choose whichever you like!) thank you <3

(Note: I included a random selection of outfits in this post, but feel free to send in asks if anyone wants to see a specific outfit I didn't cover.)

I'll be honest, I'm personally not super big on the "outfit that resembles a real-world animal" trend. First, I play Neopets for the cool fantasy creatures; even the most true-to-life Neopets species have some pretty fantastical colors. I feel like making pets just look exactly like actual animals kind of defeats the purpose of them being Neopets. I get why people would like it and I'm not saying it's bad; it's just not my thing.

Also, the other reason I'm not always big on these outfits is that a lot of Neopets have colours that already resemble real animal patterns. Not only do the outfits blur the colour/customization line quite a bit, but usually I like the colour ones much more, as they keep the actual design of the Neopets in place and just change the patterns and colors, rather than covering up the fun fantasy elements. This also helps them avoid the uncanny valley effect, which I talk about more below.

Also I might be over thinking this but who is making these outfits. None of these animals seem to exist in-universe as far as we're aware. what are the shopkeepers basing these off of. the colours at least have a magic as an excuse

Examples that I think are okay:

Feathery Pteri Outfit: This one's nice! I like the layered patterning on the wings and the high-contrast colors. Most, though, I like that this sticks fairly close to the actual pet, mostly just changing up the tail shape. This almost could've been a paintbrush colour, but then again what colour is up in the air.

(Side note: the eye clipping over the beak is a rendering issue? I think?)

Bouncing Zafara: This one definitely strays farther from the actual pet than the Pteri, but it's a fitting animal choice and it doesn't fall into the uncanny valley, which is all I care about. The body is still somewhat recognizable as a Zafara in terms of shape, and the Miamouse as the joey is super cute.

Freshwater Lenny: Kind of the same case as the Zafara; not super one-to-one with the actual pet, but it's still recognizable as a Lenny and isn't too uncanny. The legs are a particularly nice touch, actually changing the pose to look more heron-like (though they are also the part that strays dangerously into being too detailed).

Please don't:

Adorable Kacheek: Sorry to the fans of this one, but this outfit just resides deep within the uncanny valley to me—like it's a mascot suit instead of just a normal pet. The artstyle is way off from Neopets, looking much more Subeta-ish (except Subeta's art usually isn't so off putting). It's not a bad artstyle, mind you, it's just not very Neopets-ish. I also feel like a fennec fox was also a bad pick for this one, as it's basically unrecognizable as a Kacheek at all.

Feathered Eyrie: Speaking of the uncanny valley, this is another pet that lands squarely there due to having entirely too much detail in the shading and weirdly realistic fur textures. It also just doesn't look very good aesthetically—the beak doesn't fit the face, and the wings are an absolute trainwreck (not only is the perspective wrong, but the left wing is coming from the middle of its back!). On the plus side, you'd be hard pressed to not recognize this as an Eyrie, and it's a fantasy creature instead of a regular animal, so I guess that's something?

Furry Meerca: Hmm... no. This one also suffers from an overly-detailed artstyle and way too much realism, which is especially jarring when placed on top of the Meerca's heavily stylized body shape, resulting in a perfectly round animal with hyper-realistic animal eyes. It's also particularly bothersome because we already had a chipmunk Meerca design in the form of the striped Meerca colour, which is just this but less soul-haunting:

Which is what I meant at the beginning when I was talking about colours vs outfits. The colour is a Meerca that looks like a chipmunk; the outfit is a chipmunk that looks like a Meerca. Big difference.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 16, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 17, 2024

Two Fox News Channel interviews bracketed today: one this morning with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in front of an audience of hand-picked Republican women in Georgia, the other by Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris with host Bret Baier. Together, the two were a performance of dominance. 

FNC billed Trump’s so-called town hall as a chance for female voters, a demographic that is swinging heavily to Harris, to ask Trump about issues they care about. But Hadas Gold and Liam Reilly of CNN reported that FNC had packed the audience with Trump supporters. The first question came from the president of the Fulton County Republican Women, though she was not identified as such. FNC then edited the broadcast to cut out remarks in which the attendees expressed support for Trump. 

It seems unlikely that Trump attracted any new voters by speaking to an audience of loyalists audibly cheering him on.

After Trump refused to debate her again, Harris voluntarily moved into his right-wing territory, agreeing to an interview with FNC host Bret Baier. In that interview, Baier reframed right-wing talking points as questions, essentially giving Trump a second shot at a debate. Baier kept talking over the vice president’s attempts to answer—even putting out a hand to interrupt her—in a stark contrast to FNC’s deference to Trump. Harris asked him to let her reply, and then answered his questions, sometimes testily, usually turning them into opportunities to contrast her own candidacy and record with Trump’s. 

Control of the interview changed abruptly when Harris called out Trump for referring to the “enemy within” and talking about using the American military against those he considers enemies. Baier used that opportunity to show a clip of Trump saying he wasn’t threatening anyone, but the clip was edited to remove his threats against “sick,” “evil,” “dangerous” “Marxists and communists and fascists” including Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) and “the Pelosis”—presumably former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and her husband, who was attacked by a man with a hammer in 2022 by a man who wanted to force Nancy Pelosi to renounce the investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. 

Harris had had enough propaganda.

“Bret, I'm sorry, and with all due respect, that clip was not what he has been saying about the enemy within that he has repeated when he’s speaking about the American people. That's not what you just showed…. You and I both know that he’s talked about turning the American military on the American people. He has talked about going after people who are engaged in peaceful protest. He has talked about locking people up because they disagree with him. This is a democracy. And in a democracy, the president of the United States in the United States of America should be… able to handle criticism without saying he’d lock people up for doing it. And this is what is at stake, which is why you have someone like the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff saying what Mark Milley has said about Donald Trump being a threat to the United States of America.” 

Simply by going on the right-wing network, Harris was demonstrating dominance. Then, by answering as thoroughly as she did, she undercut the right-wing narrative that she is stupid and inarticulate. By calling out the FNC for deliberately misleading its viewers, she took command. Baier, rather than Harris, was the one doing the post-interview spinning.

Writer Peter Wehner, who worked for presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush, wrote: “Bret Baier has rarely looked as bad (or tendentious) as he did in his interview with Kamala Harris. On the flip side, this was one of her best interviews. She dominated Bret. All in all it was quite a bad day for MAGA world's most important media outlet.”

In between the two FNC events were two others that also told a story, this one about how the Republican Party’s descent into MAGA is creating a new political coalition to defend American principles.

Trump held a town hall with undecided Latino voters moderated by Mexican journalist Enrique Acevedo for Univision. Members of the audience asked excellent questions: how would he bring down household costs, who would take the jobs left behind by undocumented workers if Trump deported them and how much would that drive up food costs, why Trump took so long to stop the January 6 rioters, if he had caused deaths during the pandemic by misleading Americans, and if he agrees with his wife, Melania, about protecting abortion rights. 

But Trump did not answer the questions, instead regurgitating his usual talking points. He promised to produce more oil and gas, called undocumented immigrants criminals, repeated the lie about Haitian migrants eating pets, and, after notably referring to the January 6 rioters as “we” and law enforcement officers as “the others,” called January 6 “a day of love.” The audience did not appear convinced.

Meanwhile, Vice President Harris joined more than 100 Republicans in Pennsylvania, near the spot where George Washington and more than 2,000 Continental soldiers crossed the Delaware River on Christmas night 1776 to surprise a garrison of British soldiers at Trenton, New Jersey, where they won a strategic victory. 

Harris noted that those gathered were also near Philadelphia, where in 1787 delegates from across the country gathered to write and sign the U.S. Constitution. 

“That work was not easy. The founders often disagreed. Often quite passionately. But in the end, the Constitution of the United States laid out the foundations of our democracy, including the rule of law, that there would be checks and balances, that we would have free and fair elections and a peaceful transfer of power. And these principles and traditions have sustained our nation for over two centuries, sustained because generations of Americans, from all backgrounds, from all beliefs, have cherished them, upheld them, and defended them. 

“And now, the baton is in our hands,” she said. [A]t stake in this race are the democratic ideals that our founders and generations of Americans before us have fought for. At stake in this election is the Constitution of the United States…its very self.” 

Harris welcomed the Republicans in the crowd, saying that everyone there shared a core belief: “That we must put country before party.” The crowd chanted, “USA, USA, USA.” 

Harris noted that many of the Republicans on stage had taken the same oath to the Constitution that she had. “We here know the Constitution is not a relic from our past, but determines whether we are a country where the people can speak freely, and even criticize the president, without fear of being thrown in jail, or targeted by the military. Where the people can worship as they choose without the government interfering. Where you can vote without fear that your vote will be thrown away. All this and more depends on whether or not our leaders honor their oath to the Constitution.”

Trump, she pointed out, tried to overturn the will of the people expressed in a free and fair election, has vowed to use the military to go after any American who doesn’t support him, and has called for the “termination” of the Constitution. “It is clear,” she said, “Donald Trump is increasingly unstable and unhinged, and he is seeking unchecked power.” Trump, she said, “must never again stand behind the seal of the President of the United States.”

“And to those who are watching,” she said, “if you share that view, no matter your party, no matter who you voted for last time: There is a place for you in this campaign. The coalition we have built has room for everyone who is ready to turn the page on the chaos and instability of Donald Trump.”

“I pledge to you to be a President for all Americans. And I take that pledge seriously.”

She reiterated her promise to appoint a Republican to her cabinet and to establish a Council on Bipartisan Solutions to strengthen the middle class, secure the border, defend our freedoms, and maintain the nation’s leadership in the world. She noted that the country needs a healthy two-party system, and described how the Senate Intelligence Committee left partisanship at the door. It “was “country over party in action,” when she sat on the committee, she said, “[s]o I know it can be done.”

“[O]ur campaign is not a fight against something,” she said. “It is a fight for something. It is a fight for the fundamental principles upon which we were founded, It is a fight for a new generation of leadership that is optimistic about what we can achieve together—Republicans, Democrats, and independents who want to move past the politics of division and blame and get things done on behalf of the American people.

“[W]e are all here together this beautiful afternoon because we love our country…and we know the deep privilege and pride that comes with being an American and the duty that comes along with it…. Imperfect though we may be, America is still that ‘shining city upon a hill’ that inspires people around the world. And I do believe it is one of the highest forms of patriotism to fight for the ideals of our country.”

“So, to people from across Pennsylvania, and across our nation, let us together stand up for the rule of law, for our democratic ideals, and for the Constitution of the United States. And in twenty days, we have the power to chart a New Way Forward, one that is worthy of this magnificent country that we are all blessed to call home.” 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[herefortarlos]

My main issue with the lack of promo is that I just don't get why they're doing it? Or rather not doing it. Like why is there NOTHING? Yes the show is probably cancelled (I am still in denial) we get it but it's still running on your channel? And also not just any show but one of the most successful ones. And the rationale part of me understands why they do more for the surf show. It has no fanbase yet and never will have bc it fucking sucks and hopefully will be cancelled after this first season so it needs a bit more support right? But there was literally one day where they did FIVE posts about the surf show within 24 hours??? And I was like this is insanely excessive?? So I understand from a marketing perspective that there needs to be done more for that show but fully dropping Lone Star and tbf any other fox show as well just doesn't make any sense. The official Lone Star account has a thick layer of dust covering it at this point and what happened to that one social media manager whose name I unfortunately forgot but who seemed to have been obsessed with Lone Star and who did the Tarlos games with Ronen and Rafael for example? Like she was seen on set a couple of times while they were filming but nothing Lone Star related was ever posted. Was she fired or already appointed another job when the cancellation was official and all the promo material left with her?? I just don't get it. What brings me great joy though is that even though the Lone Star posts are rare they ALWAYS outnumber any other post by the thousands when it comes to likes and comments and I hope it's a slap in the face of whoever is responsible for the social media accounts.

Your guess is as good as mine, anon! FOX and DramaClub really are acting like Lone Star barely exists anymore and it drives me up a wall, seeing the lack of effort they put into things from their awful graphic design to posting previous season episode clips and screenshots, instead of anything actually new for Season 5. And I knowwwww, I see it too, them posting thing after thing for that damn surf show and we're lucky if there is one Lone Star related thing among all of that on their stories at all! I genuinely think part of it is they want their surf show to get higher ratings than LS so they can be like, "see, we made the right choice", but I love how even with their lack of LS promotion, as of last week LS outperformed their shitty surf show! Imagine what Lone Star's rating could have been with a little more promotion 🙃 And I only know so much about what happens BTS and with crew, but I wouldn't be surprised if that social media woman, who I still adore because she has given us so much fun BTS, had to find some other work or was put on to promote another show, because as we have seen, it seems that once Lone Star finished shooting it was no longer cared about after that. And we know there's still something they did with Ronen holding that yes or no sign, that we still haven't gotten the video for, but here's hoping we might get that in the next weeks or so 🤞. Hahaha, and yes, I absolutely feel the same way about the amount of activity on their surf show posts vs the amount of activity that their Lone Star posts get!! I mean, I remember when another Instagram account, thewrap, were the ones that posted Carlos' introduction as a Texas Ranger, and tagged the FOX and 911LS accounts, it has almost 170K watches but for some reason, that account does not have their likes on, but I can only imagine the number of likes that post has! Just goes to show what the fans and even some of the casual viewers want to see more of!

Hope you're having a good weekend/start to your Monday anon, depending on where you are in the world!!

[priincebutt]

Wowza y'all are ON IT today with WIP Wednesday!! Thank you forever and always to @hgejfmw-hgejhsf , @candyspandemonium , @onthewaytosomewhere , @piratefalls , @forever-fixating , @sunnysideprince , @heybuddy-drabbles , @firenati0n and @anincompletelist for the tags!! As I just published my Valentine's day fic (find it here if you wanna read!) I am kinda in the middle of things right now. I need to let some new ideas percolate and hopefully I'll be back on track soon! In the meantime, have a clip from a Halloween au I started and desperately want to finish -- Alex is a museum curator and Henry is a medium brought in for an overnight ghost session! Super goofy and light but so much fun!!

“Are you sure this medium is legit, Raf? I mean we’ve done some weird shit to get our numbers up, but an overnight with a medium on Halloween just seems… well, kitschy.”

It’s not like the museum’s numbers are bad – it’s just that they’re running a rather small historic house museum in Washington D.C. Most tourists would much rather go to the Smithsonian than visit the old, stuffy mansion that belonged to Sofia Castillo Hernandez, a latina suffragist who inherited the building their little museum is nestled in after her rich, and rather old, husband passed. And it’s not that their museum is lacking, it’s just that… well, compared to the grandiose of the National Mall, the Castillo Hernandez museum is well off of the beaten path and nothing but a fleeting memory once the National Monuments capture the attention of visitors from near and far. It’s absolutely disheartening to Alex that they are primarily able to stay in operation because of school groups and senior citizen tours, but he can’t deny revenue so he doesn’t complain.

However, he will be complaining about a Medium waltzing into his museum because ghosts aren’t real and mediums are all money-hungry con artists who think they can push their luck, wave around some incense and set out some crystals, mumble some vague and indirect words and be on their merry way with their pockets a little heavier on money thrown at them by the naive masses.

“This Henry Fox seems to be pretty close to the real deal,” Raf counters. He slides his ipad over to Alex, and it’s opened to an instagram reel. An unfairly gorgeous blond man has his head bowed over a journal, eyes scrunched closed, and his left hand is speeding across the page, writing in beautiful, loopy cursive at an alarming rate. His full lips flutter over words that Alex can’t hear, even with the hush that’s fallen across the room he occupies, and Alex wonders if that’s just something he adds in for dramatic effect.

“Okay, so he can scribble on some paper with his eyes closed and move his lips like he’s conversing with the other side.” Alex wiggles his fingers and hollows his cheeks theatrically. “So spooky. C’mon, this isn’t anything.”

Tagging @firstsprinces , @wordsofhoneydew , @sparklepocalypse , @duchessdepolignaca03 @zwiazdziarka and an open tag for anyone else who'd like to participate!!

[summ3rhead]

Avatrice 1930s AU snippet

Easy, Beatrice thought, kissing Ava. Easy, she thought, tasting Ava’s faintly buttery lips. “Easy,” she said aloud, and ever so gently tugged Ava’s shirt up and out from where it had been tucked into her shorts. Her hands slid easily over Ava’s stomach; both of them were hot and damp with sweat from the humidity. The contact did not make Ava shiver, but rather it made her fall further into Beatrice and sigh.

In a move similar to the one she had done in the morning, Beatrice slipped her fingers between the waistband of Ava’s shorts and the skin of Ava’s stomach. Again, Ava felt the hard press of Beatrice’s ring against her flesh, except now it was warm from their shared body heat, when in the morning it had been startlingly cool.

“Easy,” Ava said back, and she smiled against Beatrice’s mouth.

The deep, verdant peace of the greenhouse was abruptly shattered by a voice yodelling through the greenery. 

“Yoohoo!”

Beatrice and Ava, in their collective shock, leapt apart like two tightly wound springs.

Beatrice dodged the irises behind her by mere centimetres and only slightly clipped her ankle against the table. With that catastrophe avoided, she then promptly stumbled back into a hanging pot of dangling red hot cat’s tails, whose flopping tendrils slapped directly into her open mouth and made her cough. 

Ava did not dodge the irises; she careened back-first into the plant pot behind her, making it rock dangerously on its plate and crumble dirt onto her shirt.

Someone was walking crisply, though cautiously, down the aisle towards them. Ava extracted herself from the plant pot, hastily brushing her shirt free of loose soil and tucking it back in her shorts. She had no time to check on Beatrice because just then Michael appeared, shouldering through the jungle of overhanging flora and smiling broadly.

As soon as she saw him, Ava relaxed her shoulders and practically wheezed out, “Michael. You scared me.” Though Ava realised, belatedly, that it really couldn’t have been anybody else; she didn’t know many people who actually said yoohoo with a serious face –well, apart from Michael, apparently. 

“Did I?” Michael’s brows locked together as he gazed from Ava to Beatrice.

Ava had gotten over her shock significantly faster than Beatrice, and so she turned and began tugging at Beatrice’s sleeve to get her attention. “Bea,” she hissed.

“Yes? What?” Beatrice replied absently. She was in the middle of the arduous task of methodically picking little red bits of flower fluff off of her tongue and hadn’t quite noticed what was going on around her.

Ava shot Michael a quick apologetic smile that seemed to say, Oh, typical Beatrice. You know how she is, always grazing on the Acalyphas. Then she turned her back on him to collar Beatrice. “Michael,” she whispered savagely out of the very confines of her mouth, punctuating the two syllables with icy insinuation.

Beatirce’s eyes widened, and she peered over Ava’s shoulder to smile uneasily at Michael, who, entirely unperturbed, waved back at her with a winsome smile. Beatrice hastily spat out a few more bits of flower and moved to stand beside Ava rather than in front.

“Well!” Michael said. “Beatrice and Miss Silva! I’m glad I caught you both.” 

Beatrice gulped down a final mouthful of cat's tails and turned a concerning shade of grey. “Caught?” she said waveringly. Her voice had taken on the tremulous quality of an innocent man receiving a guilty sentence.

“I heard noise coming from the greenhouse and noticed that the door was open. I thought the blasted foxes had gotten in again.” Michael, as oblivious and jocular as ever, was bouncing merrily on the balls of his feet, looking pleased to see them.

Beatrice, whose brief fit of terror at the thought of having been caught red-handed spooning behind the curtains had passed, cooled into irony, and she said, dryly, “Our mistake,” which Ava promptly elbowed her in the ribs for.

“Was there anything you needed me for?” Ava asked. “Something about my proposals?”

“Oh, yes,” Michael said, snapping his fingers. “I mean, no. I’ve come to invite you both for drinks this afternoon. We left off so strangely the other day. Besides, you two are jollier company than Koi fish.”

Beatrice blinked aggressively in Michael’s direction, but Ava, taking her to the side again, smiled lopsidedly and said under her breath, “Come on, Bea. Lets.”

Beatrice shot a few more hostile blinks at Michael before inclining her head and saying, “Five O'clock.”

Ava broke out into an irrepressibly glorious smile, and, forgetting herself (or rather, remembering herself and why she liked Beatrice such a tremendous amount), she bounced up and gave Beatrice a smacking kiss on the cheek. 

Michael turned from where he had been inspecting a slightly crooked iris and clapped his hands. “Five O’clock,” he said. “Excellent. I’ll tell Gordon to set up the terrace.”

And so Beatrice was left gulping and blinking amidst the cat’s tails, trailing slack-jawed after Ava and Michael as the two of them discussed what cocktails they would mix.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Andy Craig at The UnPopulist:

While running for the U.S. senate from Ohio three years ago, JD Vance inveighed against “childless cat ladies” during a broadcast of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight, a comment that went viral after he was named Donald Trump’s running mate on the 2024 Republican presidential ticket. These women, who Vance argued have been running the country alongside “corporate oligarchs” and the rest of the Democratic Party, are “miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” Expanding the critique to include childless men, Vance went on: “It's just a basic fact—you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC—the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children.” (Kamala Harris is a stepmom of two, Pete Buttigieg and his husband adopted twins shortly after Vance’s interview aired, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was still years younger than Vance was at the birth of his first child.)

That’s not the only occasion that Vance has exhibited an odd and explicit hostility toward childless Americans. In another resurfaced clip from 2021, this time as a guest on far-right influencer Charlie Kirk’s podcast, Vance pushed the idea that we need to “punish the things we think are bad,” before offering his proposal to tax Americans who don’t have kids at a higher rate than Americans who do. As UnPopulist contributor and law professor Ilya Somin has pointed out, the problem wasn’t necessarily with the underlying policy—the child tax credit—but the needlessly punitive framing Vance gave to it, singling out a particular constituency for a social penalty rather than playing up the pro-family outcomes the provision is supposed to incentivize. But one of the strangest policy proposals motivated by Vance’s contempt for the childless is his contention that parents ought to receive an additional vote for each of their minor children during elections.

Vance isn’t the only one who has endorsed this policy. Notable leftist and independent presidential candidate Cornel West also thinks it’s a good idea (though his professed interest in helping children does not appear to extend to the tens of thousands of dollars he owes in unpaid child support). In a new paper, two law professors, Northwestern University’s Joshua Kleinfeld and Harvard’s Stephen E. Sachs, flesh out the idea in more detail. As they see it, parents “should be able to cast proxy ballots on behalf of their minor children.” Although there’s always some merit to thinking outside the box on structural reforms to our democracy, giving extra votes to parents fundamentally misunderstands the purpose and principles of free elections.

Parents Aren’t the Only Voters Who Care About Kids

The assumption underlying the proposals to give parents extra votes on behalf of their children is that, in American politics, the interests of children are underrepresented. But that’s a dubious premise. Governments at all levels in the United States spend huge sums on education, healthcare, benefits, and tax breaks for children, not to mention on laws and regulations to protect the health and safety of children. In total, these policies amount to public spending well into the six figures for every child from birth until adulthood. If children were indeed an electorally inert constituency, parties and politicians wouldn’t bother devoting so many resources to them. In other words, none of this spending would make sense if politicians and policymakers could ignore children simply because they can’t vote, the supposed problem extra votes for parents is intended to remedy.

The “Proxy” Pretense

More importantly, this proposal is not about giving votes to children. It is about giving extra votes to parents. To say these extra votes are “proxy votes,” as proponents tend to frame the idea, is a fig leaf. The extra votes allocated would be cast by parents or other guardians, however they see fit, as an expression of their own political views. Parents who receive extra votes to cast “for their children” would be under no obligation to cast those votes any differently than they do their own. That’s true even if they’re party-line Republicans and their 17-year old is already a staunch progressive, or—less commonly—vice versa.

One adult person, one vote is not an arbitrary standard—it is a manifestation of legal equality, the core principle from which everything else flows. The franchise represents the equal interest we have as autonomous, equal members of society with an equal interest in the protection of our rights. That construct is only applicable to adults who actually are free agents; adults are free to read what they want, believe what they want, associate with whomever they want, form their own opinions, and freely express them. By aggregating the expression of these freely formed views, we have a kind of collective freedom in deciding how our self-governing society should function.

A genuine proxy vote, such as we sometimes see in legislative bodies, is a consensual arrangement. Individuals who have a vote in their own right delegate that vote to somebody else they have authorized to cast it. No such process plays out under the extra-votes-for-parents plan. That’s because minors do not have a vote in the first place. That means they cannot freely allocate their vote to anybody. It would be absurd to say children could revoke these extra votes if they disapprove of how their parents will use them, in the way actual proxy votes can be revoked. That inherent lack of consent makes it nonsensical to say this is really the child’s vote. The proposed extra votes instead belong to the adults, just as exclusively and absolutely as their own regular individual vote. Rather than proxy voting, the system proposed is more analogous to a number of discredited historical schemes for skewing the electorate by super-powering some class of voters and—as a corollary—either partially or fully disenfranchising others.

[...]

Why Stop At Extra Votes for Parents?

Once you open the door to picking and choosing which voters get more say than others, parenthood is hardly the only possible attribute you could choose to reward. Why not an extra vote for people with college degrees, since we want more educated people to have greater say? How about taxes paid—isn’t that a relevant interest we should accord extra weight to? Land ownership? Number of employees? Or how about age? Should 70-year olds who have a shorter amount of time to live with the consequences only have a fraction of a vote compared to 20-year olds with their whole life ahead of them? If we value religiosity, as many including Vance say they do, should churchgoers get an electoral boost over the irreligious? If you’re skeptical of immigration, as Vance is to a weirdly historical degree, should votes be weighted by the number of generations your ancestors have been in the United States? If these arguments sound familiar, it’s because many of them were once common, alongside the more notorious disenfranchisements based on race and sex. Property requirements, poll taxes, university constituencies, class-based plural voting, and various other efforts to skew the electorate have all been relegated to the dustbin of history for good reason.

JD Vance’s proposal to disenfranchise single women is more proof that he is a weirdo unfit to be the nation’s #2 in charge.

[throne-for-queens]

While I do agree that everything was unserious, it’s the fact that yesterday everyone was clutching their panties for bringing up his relationship with regards to the lyrics of his new Jelly song which it clearly was, but today they seem very comfortable clinging on to the fact that a so called ‘friend’ who probably knows as much or even less than what we do, cast aspersions on their relationship.

Well if you do want to look for believable information from a credible ‘friend’, I would rather believe Jelly when he called Megan his wife during the video promotions for Harley homecoming a month ago or Bunnie who regularly gushes about them as a unit. Bunnie even reposted couple of days back on her ig , that clip from her interview where Colson was speaking about the relationship.

Lastly don’t know what kind of a ‘friend’ talks so casually about another friends relationship, that they are not even sure about. Maybe she’s better off keeping her husbands d*** off everyone’s face 💀Iykwim

Jelly and Bunnie's relationship with Colson is completely different from his relationship with Tommy and Brittany. Also, Jelly said the whole "wife" thing in July - who's to say the relationship hasn't constantly changed since then? Brittany very lightly brushed up on the topic after praising Colson for being a sweet person because her friend asked if he was single. Brittany is not obligated to know every relationship situation of every friend she has. He texts her for random things like a dog psychic, and I highly doubt that she's going to go out of her way to be in his business about Megan. From how she spoke, she doesn't sound like she's met or interacted with Megan, so there is no reason for her to reach out to him about a girl she's most likely never met. Based on Megan's words and interviews, she assumed, like a majority of people, that they are on and off. Jelly and Bunnie most likely are aware of that, but what would they gain from saying that, and where would they mention that to begin with? Bunnie has a pile of interviews to get through, and Jelly is working on a tour - no one's concerned with updating the world on the many breakups of MGK and Megan Fox. Jelly called Megan Colson's wife, but they are not engaged, so unless there was some paperwork filed, how is that credible? Megan won't even call Colson her boyfriend, ex-fiancé, or husband, so what proof do we have that she even sees him that way still? Everything from our perspective is just speculation until proven otherwise. I still think this whole thing was blown way out of proportion, and if Colson really had an issue with it, he could have texted Brittany or Tommy to have the video edited, and since it didn't happen, I'm going to assume he's fine with it.