#Since he's not officially labeled and it's all based on his behavior i went with a spec and aro spec rather than just ace and aro

[do-you-know-this-queer-character]

Do you know this queer character?

Saiki is A-spec, Aro-spec, and Transgender, and uses he/him pronouns!

[jpegjade]

Take Care - Spencer

diana has made an appearance for something! i have rewritten this 3 times and i feel like this time is the one. 

Request: I’ve never seen this story anywhere written but like Spencer x reader where the reader is a caretaker of Diana’s and Diana is always talking about Reid and reading y/n the letters he sends and Diana always talks about how good spencer + the reader would be together and then they meet and fall in love ugh 🥺

Warnings: none that i can think of. 

_______________________

“You look bright today, Diana.” You said, bringing her mail for the day. 

“I’m getting a letter from Spencer today.” She said, opening the letter for the day. 

“Yeah, that’s great!” You said, handing out the other residents letters from their loved ones. 

Diana was the only one who got something everyday because her son was some kind of big shot fbi guy, according to her, so he was able to tell her all this cool stuff. She reads the letters to you very formally, as you were letting her believe she was still a professor and she was just holding office hours. That always made her happy, when you played into the delusion. You weren’t on her detailed staff so you didn’t know everything but you knew enough. 

One day, a letter came in the mail, addressed to you. Your relatives didn’t write letters so you didn’t know who it could be from until you opened it. 

“Dear y/n, 

My name is Spencer Reid. I am Diana Reid’s son. I assume she has told you about me as she mentions how cute you and I would be together when I actually have the chance to talk to her on rare occasions. She speaks highly of your service to her. I wanted to thank you for that. I can not do so in person at the moment but I figured a letter is a personal way to thank someone for their service.

Sincerely, 

Spencer W. Reid”

Standing in the lobby, you read the letter a couple of times. What in the world? Why would he thank you? Why you? You must not have been special. He must have hand written a letter to all of the people who help his mom. But… You’re the one person who hangs out with his mom and isn’t on the official staff list assigned to her. You were obviously perplexed but you figured that you should write one back. 

You got out a piece of paper and started writing. Then scratching out. Then writing again. Then scratching out again. Finally, you got something solid and closed the envelope, dropping it in the building’s outgoing mailbox. 

You pushed it to the back of your mind and moved on with your day. You couldn’t wait to hear about Spencer’s “adventures,” as Diana calls them. Sure, they weren’t the most interesting things but he told her secrets that no one else knew. It was like you were in on something special without prying. 

Diana read you her letter and then you got her up and moving for lunch. After that, your morning shift was over and it was time for you to return home. You bid Diana goodbye for the day, although she wasn’t going to recognize that you were leaving. She had been in a weird space lately so it was harder for her to really know what was happening. 

Life went on, going through the motions of bringing Diana her mail of the day for a few days in a row. As suspected, she was the only one with mail today until you saw your name in the same handwriting as the last one. As you rushed to open it, something fell out. A piece of paper labeled, “read me to diana.” 

“Dear y/n, 

Yes, I am an FBI profiler with the Behavioral Analysis Unit (or BAU). Yes, I know you aren’t in my mother’s healthcare worker detail but I also know that you spend time with her every day. I may not see my mother but I might stop by every now and then to check in on her, even if she doesn’t know I’m there. And if she doesn’t know, you don’t know. But I know you. I know you were nervous to write to me, your handwriting was shaky and wouldn’t stay on a line. The way you gripped the pen was probably tighter than normal. You slant down, meaning something is weighing on you, but not low enough that you aren’t on a relatively straight line. I suspect you’re a little younger than me, based on the way you dot your i’s and cross your double t’s. It suggests that you still believe in impossible things. And of course, you’re curious because you asked me to profile your handwriting. I’ve also seen you before so I know we’re about the same age and yes, you are very cute. My mother is a schizophrenic but she’s not completely delusional. 

How did the letter reading go? 

Sincerely, 

Spencer W. Reid”

How had you never seen him? How did you never see him, as long as his mother has been here. Maybe you did see him but he was unremarkable? Diana was hardly unremarkable so her son must be of similar construct, right? 

You thought about this before you wrote him back. It was a quick message, nothing too intricate. You were a little bit more careful about how you held the pen, since he knew you were nervous last time. You wrote to him about how the letter reading went: she loved the poem. You guessed that Spencer would know that but sent it anyway to make her happy. But that still doesn’t answer the question, “why you?” 

Another few days passed but you couldn’t stop thinking of Spencer. You tried looking him up on the internet and found out he was just as brilliant as his mother. That was a plus. Negative was he was not on any social media unless it was an article about him. Eventually you gave up and just went back to trying to imagine him in your head. Was he tall? Was he short? What did he like to do in his free time? He has seen you but you haven’t seen him… That wasn’t fair. 

When you opened his next letter, you were sitting outside in the grass, across from Diana sitting on the bench. She was having a particularly tough day so she wasn’t up to reading you her letter. You told her you would still keep her company until your shift ended and she seemed to like that. 

“Dear y/n, 

You ask a lot of questions. Are you sure you’re not profiling me? And yes, I have witnessed your connection with my mother before but you wouldn’t recognize me in a crowd. I’m average, nothing special. You care for her in a way I never could… That’s why I wrote to you. I’ll see you on Friday.

Sincerely, 

Spencer W. Reid”

You didn’t think about how you interacted with Diana that made a difference. You just thought about why Spencer would want to talk to you… He said Friday. Which was today. Today was Friday… He could be anywhere! You had to find him and get some questions answered up close. 

You looked for anyone who might look remotely like Diana, frantically searching while looking nonchalant. Of course, he knows what you look like so you can’t seem desperate and like you’ve lost it. You also didn’t want to worry any of the residents. 

“Excuse me.” You said, trying to get past a guy who was standing in the doorway. He turned slightly and looked at you. He had a sad smile on his face and his hands in his pockets. He looked like someone who didn’t fit into the sea of people visiting their family members. Fridays were busier than the rest of the week so he could be anyone but you had a hunch by the way the guy was staring in the direction where Diana was sitting. 

“Spencer W. Reid?” You said, watching the sad smile get a little bigger. 

“You figured me out? How did you do it?” He said, scooting over so he wasn’t standing directly next to you. 

You didn’t take that as an offensive action. His mom did the same thing. They both had a thing about people touching them. 

“You were standoff-ish. And you’re dressed like you’re important.” You said, confidently. 

You had been googling what a profiler was and how to do it since the second letter. You thought it was the coolest job in the world but you liked where you were at, caring for people close to home. 

“So you profiled me.” Spencer turned towards you a little more.

“Yes, Dr. Reid, I did.” You triumphantly put your hands on your hips. 

“I never told you I was a doctor.” He said, knowing your nonchalant facade was going to fall apart that minute. 

“Well… Okay, I googled you.” You sighed. 

“The internet has its uses... “ He said, looking over at his mom again. 

He looked like he was getting cold feet of some sort. You saw him moving a little bit more and his eyes becoming a little flighty. 

“Do you want to step outside, into the lobby?” You asked, to which he nodded. He almost looked relieved not to be forced to go over there. 

“You don’t have to go over there. I don’t have to tell her you were here.” You said, sitting on the opposite side of the lobby bench to you. 

“No, she should know I came for her birthday.” He said, looking down at his hands. 

It wasn’t very often that the visitors got anything special on their birthdays. Unless their family did something within set guidelines, there was no celebration that happened here because it could set off one of the other residents in the facility. 

“That’s sweet. She would enjoy that.” You said smiling a little bit. 

“She’ll get her wish.” He said, wanting to chuckle. 

“And what’s that?” You wondered what he could possibly be talking about. 

“Seeing us together. I mentioned it in a letter previously, that she occasionally mentions that you and I would look cute together.” He said, finally looking up at you. 

“Oh, yeah. She has said that I needed to meet you once or twice before. We talk about you a lot. I feel like I know you.” You said, breaking eye contact. You were embarrassed that you told him that you talk about him when this is the first time you’ve ever met him. 

“Well, I don’t know much about you.” He paused. “Do you think you would want to tell me more?” 

“Oh well sure. Where do you want to start? My whole backstory is wild.” You looked up at him. 

It took a second for you to recognize what he was saying. 

“oh , you mean. Yes, that would be fun.” You said, attempting to remain calm. You just scored yourself a date and you didn’t do anything but write letters. Maybe you should be a pen-pal more often.

[scandalousfemale]

Falling

Y/N x Rafe Cameron

Basically a relationship timeline of y/n not expecting to fall in love with Rafe

WC: 2,670

Warnings: Cussing, falling in love, fluff, writing this made me feel v single

A/N: This is pretty much based on me listening to Queen of the Night by Hey Violet and thinking about @tomfreakinghollandneedsaoscar being fluffy and nice bf feelings. Oh, very important, in this fic (in my fictional universe) Rafe does not kill anyone, beat up pogues, nor does he snort the yayo. 

You’ve been dating Rafe for a little over a year now, it started off casual, because back then you couldn’t be bothered to put any emotion into anything that could get you hurt. As for him, well, he had his own daddy issues he had to work through. You met him through mutual friends though they didn’t exactly mean for you to start seeing him.

“That’s him?” You inquired, looking at the boy in the long sleeve and the backward snap back, tilting your head as if that would help you examine him better, “he doesn’t look scary,” you finally said.

“Didn’t say he was scary,” your friend, Ashlee, said beside you.

“Yeah,” Henrietta seconded, “we said he was dangerous,” she spoke very softly as if this man would have supersonic hearing from across the golf course.

“I heard him and his friends beat up pogues for fun,” Ashlee whispered, “and that he’s super tight with a drug dealer or whatever. I know he’s eye candy but I would steer very, very far away from all three of them.” She motioned to the other two, whose name was supposedly Topper and Kelce. Rafe was the name of the boy they were speaking about, and you can’t help but think to yourself how strange their names were.

“Yeah, right. You know the rumors on the eight runs like we’re on a middle school playground,” you said as you rolled your eyes. It’s true, you had your fair share of rumors that definitely were not true. “So, are one of you going to introduce me?” You asked as you looked back to the tall beauty, laughing with his friends.

“Oh no, no way, we don’t know him. We just know of him. Come on, y/n, even if he’s not a guy with a super bad temper, interrupting a game is a major no for literally every golf player ever,” Henrietta said, already stepping back to walk away, taking Ashlee with her, expecting you to follow but you don’t.

You understood the risk of walking up to a group of guys who may or may not be drug addicts and harassers but you valued yourself in having pretty good judgement and the consequences of walking up to them seemed slim to none. So, that’s exactly what you did, despite your friends whispering curses at you. You allowed your feet to take you right up to the boys.

Keeping the smile on your face, that truly only grows when you noticed Kelce nudge Topper to look your way before whispering something to Rafe who only shook his head before taking his shot.

“Hey,” you announced your presence before waving at Kelce and Topper, making sure to single the taller boy out. Which, as you assumed it would, caught his attention. The two boys couldn’t help but smile back at you as their friend gave you a once over, as if assessing the threat and you let him. You stood there boldly until his eyes met yours, “hey you,” you finally said with a smile and raised eyebrow as if asking if you passed the inspection. Apparently, you did.

“You know it’s incredibly rude to interrupt a game, right?” Rafe’s voice could’ve stunned you right there. Not only was this boy man so attractive, his voice was velvet smooth as humor laced his tone.

“Well, what else was I supposed to do? Stand off to the side and wait for you to make a move?” You said as you crossed your arms in front of your chest, joking back at him and somehow slipping right into a level of comfort with him, even as his friends snicker.

“That’s forward,” Topper stated but your eyes don’t waver from Rafe nor his from yours.

“Who are you?” Rafe asked incredulously as if he never met a girl who knew what she wanted before.

“Your date for tonight,” you said as you stuck your hand into your pocket, fishing out your name and number that you’ve scribbled on a torn piece of paper since your friends showed you who they were talking about on social media platform before dragging you out here to see the real thing and thank goodness they did, “text me if you want to know when and where, or don’t. Ball’s in your court,” you said as you handed him the paper before waving to the stunned boys next to him and walking away.

 He called you about an hour after meeting him and that was the start of figuring out that Rafe didn’t really care to do as he was told. Of course, he took you on a date that night...and every other night that came afterwards.

Before long, it was almost like you were living in each other’s houses. You were able to tell him every secret that not even your closest friends knew about, like the small tattoo you have hidden on your hips that he’s kissed a million times. Suddenly you have traded in your designer dresses for his T-shirts and your jeans, making your parents more and more angry with the arrangement because when they asked you if you were dating Rafe, you’d always say no.

Technically, at the time, you weren’t officially dating him because he never asked. He said he didn’t want to put a label on things because that’s when they disappear and honestly, you didn’t want to call him a boyfriend either because that would make your feelings, yes the feelings you said that you didn’t want to have, that much more real. Yeah, well, that changed the night that the kook kids were throwing a party over at Topper’s house.

 You heard a screaming before a splash as another guy threw his girl into the pool before jumping in, himself. You found yourself sitting on the counter of the outside bar, a drink in your hand as you people watched. Ashlee was laying it on thick for Kelce tonight and you couldn’t help with smile to yourself. On one hand, you were proud that she’s finally had the nerve to talk to him but on the other hand, you’re pretty sure that that boy is completely clueless unless she straight up said that she wanted him.

“Damn,” a voice said close to you but you ignored it. Just another partygoer passing through, you thought to yourself, taking another sip of the liquor in your glass.

“Baby,” a guy appeared in front of you with a wide smile as if you were old friends and you couldn’t help but smile at his confidence. You studied him as he introduced himself; black hair, blue eyes, maybe six feet, and sort of hot. You appreciated his spirit, of course you did because it was textbook you, but you found yourself comparing him to Rafe and that’s when you knew you were screwed.

“So, what’s your name?” This guy, Chris (you think), asked.

“Y/n,” you entertained as you smirked at him, leaning back on the counter with a hand beside you, holding you up as the other brought the drink to your lips. You didn’t even think about how the position elongated your body, not until Chris (or whatever) trailed his eyes down your body. Before you could say anything else, Rafe was beside the two of you, as if suddenly inserting himself in the nonexistent conversation. It was kind of cute.

“Can I help you?” The guy in front of you, obviously annoyed with the added company, asked a looming Rafe, who is just about your height now that you’re sitting on this counter.

“Yeah, I actually just need to grab something that’s mine and I’ll be out of your way,” he said smoothly, causing your eyes to narrow but as the guy stepped back and Rafe stepped in front of you, realization clicked.

Rafe stepped in between your legs and wrapped his arms around your waist as he lifted you up, causing you to tighten your legs around his hips and wrap your arms around his neck. He walked back into the house with you as you laughed. You couldn’t help it as you laughed into his neck, hiding your blushing face from him. Maybe it’s the alcohol or maybe it’s these feelings you can’t seem but have for him, you moved your hands to have one on his face and the other grabbing his hair and before thinking too much, you pulled his hair—hard, causing him to hiss as his attention snapped at you, though he’s still walking you through the crowd. Fuck that, fuck being private, you thought as you pulled his face down to kiss you and that kiss? You felt it for days. The first of many public claims between the two of you started that night.

—

Suddenly a year has passed since that night though it felt like it’s only been a day since you’ve walked up to him at the golf course. You wondered if the dreaded end of the honeymoon stage would ever arrive and that goes without saying that though you two do argue, instead of shutting each other out like the learned behavior from parents and past relationships, somehow you and Rafe were able to swallow each other’s pride and sit down and talk. That’s right, talk. You didn’t rush into make-up sex and ignore the problems or disagreements that you had, though the make-up sex was amazing after the issues were addressed.

You didn’t know what to make of such a healthy relationship, at first you had to admit, and you even told Rafe that you almost ran. You had a tendency of running from things that were too good to be true and he was one of them. Coming from a mentality of leaving before being left, he knew the feeling all too well, and what did he do? He spent all night lying in bed with you, talking about life, the world, his love for you, and how he was scared too. He was terrified of going into this with you and yet he’s still here— you’re still here.

His kiss on your forehead snapped you out of going down memory lane of your relationship as you came back down to reality. You two were at your sister’s wedding, you wore a knee length red dress as Rafe wore a suit and tie. As the night went on and you two kept dancing, he had taken off his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves to his forearms and you almost prayed for the strength not to take him right now on this dance floor.

“Did I tell you how incredible you look tonight? Because you do,” you told him as he held you close to his body, in a more comforting way than a possessiveness that you’re used to with your exes.

“You have but I wouldn’t mind hearing how attractive you think I am over and over again,” he smirked as he softly dipped his head to kiss your lips.

“Never mind,” your words mumbled against his lips, “I take it back. I never want to feed into your already big head,” you said before he surprised you by grabbing your arm and spinning you, causing you to laugh whole heartedly before tucking you back into his arms.

“I, on the other hand, do not mind feeding into your ego one bit because I cannot stand in front of you and not have you know that you’re the most gorgeous girl here tonight,” he said, causing you to blush and rest your face against his chest to hide the stupid smile you have on your face from him. You’re always smiling when you’re around him. Thinking back to the very first day, you couldn’t believe that people even thought he was a drug dealer or someone who beat people up for fun, he’s so far from it all. He’s the most loving, caring, and thoughtful person ever. Not just to you but to his sisters and his friends, his father just never gave him a chance and your heart broke for him in that sense but overall? You’d never change anything about him because then he wouldn’t be this man here tonight.

After the bride and groom did their goodbye ceremony, you told Rafe that you weren’t ready to go home yet. So, he said that he’d drive over to the water, knowing that the sound of the ocean relaxes you.

He draped his wrist over the steering wheel, one hand on your thigh and you couldn’t help but have your heart feel so full. You looked at the boy sitting next to you in this convertible, his hair being pushed back by the wind, his tie loose around his neck. Shit, you thought to yourself, I love him.

I love him. I love him. I love him.

You repeated to yourself and you could almost cry with how happy you are in this moment right now. You didn’t think twice when you pulled off the hair tie and bobby pins, keeping your hair together and letting it flow in the wind. Almost as if shedding the image you’ve been trying to keep for so long and finally being free. You threw your hands up in the air, closing your eyes and feeling the wind wrap around you, letting love finally wrap around you.

“You’re fucking beautiful,” you heard Rafe’s voice shouting over the wind and you smiled, eyes still closed because you swear, you’d cry if you looked at him right now. God, if this is a dream please don’t wake me up. He squeezed your thigh as if to keep you from floating away— too late.

When you feel the car slow down, you finally opened your eyes, looking over to him with the biggest smile. You couldn’t stop yourself, “Rafe,” though he was already looking at you, mesmerized, “I love you,” you declared, not scared of rejection. At this point, the moonlight shining on his face and the way that he’s looking at you, you’re not afraid of anything.

“What?” Rafe’s voice was barely audible that if you weren’t looking at him, you wouldn’t have thought he’d have said anything. Though he asked the question, his body twisted in the driver’s seat, his hand now on your face, his eyes shining and if he cried you know you would, too.

“I love you,” you repeated and you’d keep repeating it for the rest of your life if he’d allow it, “you make me the happiest that I’ve ever been and when I look at you, I feel safe. I feel like I can conquer the world with you by my side and when I look at you, I just want to protect you from all the evil in the world. I don’t even remember what it feels like to be empty anymore because with you, I feel everything. I want to feel everything all the time because if this is what love feels like, oh my God, I’m floating, I love you. I love-,” and before you could say it again, Rafe pulled your face to his, crushing his lips onto yours. You couldn’t tell if the tears you feel on your cheeks are yours or his but you don’t care. It doesn’t matter. The happiness that you feel right now, you want to capture the feeling forever. His hand came up behind your head, keeping you from coming up from air, keeping you in his arms but needing you closer. He pulled his seat back and practically pulled you over the center console as you let out a small squeal, laughing against his lips but wrapping your arms around his neck as you straddled him. He rests his forehead against yours as his eyes remained close, his cheeks stained with tears but he had a smile on his face that looks like it couldn’t be wiped off even if you tried, matching yours.

“I love you, too.”

[vanityloves]

anyways im gonna listen to/read the fuckin...rise of the ogre shit bc ive been putting it off 🪓🥴 im gonna put stuff under the cut bc im gonna be TALKING n dont wanna make a new post everytime

piss

ok he performed for 2 pounds 50. which is basically $3 today i- well it was absolutely a power play on his father behalf that also had the promise of money so.

also lol he said Rejection fueled my ambitions which, yknow,, i already knew but it still hurts and i will continue to talk ab it xoxo

AH HELP. "...if ebay had been invented at the time he would've sold me online there and then,"

"man hands on misery to man, yknow"

THEN PROCEEDS TO CONNECT IT TO MUSIC/HIS CAREER. this man said :) the one thing i truly have a passion for. the one thing i fucking like.

oh yeah. bullied by students AND teachers.

oh god hes 42ish during this interview? ok.

the fuckin school bully saying he wouldve acted differently if he knew what hed become

getting called "faceache", then proceeds to call 2d that. jfc he really does just repeat what everyone says. really "treating others how i was treated/how they treat me"

maybe thats why? hes kinder to fans? bc :] you support me and like me so, ok ill return that energy

MURDOC GETTING HIS ASS BEAT N PARADING HOME LIKE WELL I WON BC 'I PISSED YOU OFF' SJDJD

a real rowdy boy. absolute nasty boy. fraud and arson... shooting ppls windows with his air pistols

black sabbath being a huge inspiration? fucking absolutely.

became a satanist n shit at age 16? "it fitted me like a glove" "heavy metal and devil worshipping became my favorite past times" ajsj funny that ppl in trying times often seek religion or following of some sort

heavy metal being his favorite, n loving the clash, while hannibals was more punk based

hannibal breaking murdocs nose for the 2nd and 3rd time for playing his music on hannibals turntable

he doesnt sound that bitter? ab hannibal? he doesnt sound incredibly fond but he talks ab how he got him into a lot of music. so, i imagine they we're a bit closer than i thought?

international baccalaureate in antisocial? anthropology?

MURDOC IS ACTUALLY SMART HE WAS JUST. NOT INTERESTED IN THE SUBJECTS? I GUESS? (also,,, he literally Built cyborg noodle and i think he had a PhD too lol. but its always nice to hear hes actually...yknow, interested or good at other things)

alright but murdoc having a fascination w/ other cultures - or at least some interests, that lead him to actually study the damn subject and "pass with flying colors"

'fuck college though. im gonna be a rockstar'

he sold his soul at 18ish? whenever the fuck he got kicked out but college was mentioned so my brain goes to 18ish idk

he lived with his father still and paid rent via low paying jobs one including 'part time dressing as santa'

help he was ab to take a Personal Job for quick cash and uhh well, "still made me call him sir though" he really said 20 dollars is 20 dollars, huh "that story was totally true"

alright, 1997,,,

2d stuff

loves zombie stuff? thats really cute, and is freaked out by the way they move. god he rambles

both he and murdoc are horses in the chinese zodiac

[[jfc ok if the official shit compares them a lot i understand why ppl ship them but Dont. its a narrative foil and that doesnt always mean Romance jfc.]]

SUMTHINK.

truly... a lil stinker. super cute bouncing baby and a "bit thick" which is stull so endearing to me. hes just a happy man!

excitable 10 year old and would dance around his room

jfc the fact he has normal/caring parents. i kinda forget how opposite hes supposed to be from murdoc but i think thats another thing jsjsysg (murdoc said why isnt my tragic story making me famous why does he get to be the Star. no wonder he acts like a loon)

i still dont get how gettin bonked by a tree branch made him go bald and also turn his hair blue

big tiddy nurse mommy,,,

went to the same school as The Cure and got decent grades despite hittin the noggin quite hard. WANTED TO BE A STORM CHASER... OMG??

oh thats really cute, hed bond with his dad by building keyboards toegther 🥺💕

messed around with paints and graffiti? artistic king

MURDOC AGAIN: QHDJ 'VILLANOUS' GANG HELP

oh yeah d day...new instruments, new band, new singer - and 'had to be the best or no dice' and absolutely CONFIDENT that his songs were bangers ajsjd

but on that same note, had absolute faith (or desperate) in 2d which i love

ransacked the fucking music shop jdjdj and 2d said he was Just Standing There behind the counter the whole shift hdhdh

"thats when your eye came out, yeah" "yeah!-" HELP WHY DOES HE SOUND SO HAPPY AB IT ?? yes he said ut hurt but he sounds...ok

jfc murdoc ragdolling this poor mf around. dunking him and slapping him around. actually? so incredibly terrible and abusive and i hate him for that 🔫 im sorry 2d stans. we dont condone that behavior here ong.

how and why the FUCK did 2d's parents allow that fucker near their child after that i??? help. wtf. his moms a nurse why didnt she just have murdoc sit in plain view of other people. god damn.

2d flying out the window n hitting the curb "whoops"

"just two black holes...[ah] it looked great...a blue hair, blacked eyed GOD- the girls would go wild-" "pretty boy looks" ???? HELP. HE DOESNT GO LIGHT ON THE COMPLIMENTS, HUH

RUSS TIME

oh yeah, he straight up kiddnapped this man help. idk how he managed that, russ is a Big Man??

AND MURDOCS MUSIC WAS SO FUCKING SEXY GOOD that russel said hm alright ill stay, :] out ifbhis owm free will im screaming.

"oh this is one of them febreeze commercials" "uh . yeah sure. *murdoc turning on his Sick Tunes*" but that either means? it was just his guitar playing the convinced russ? unless he and 2d recorded sumn?

"2d was the looks, murdoc the brains, then russel truly was the heart"

'while 2d and murdoc liked music, this man was a MUSICIAN' god fucking bless this book holy shit ny man russ getting some respect. he said back hurts from carrying this band.

murdoc basically heard this guy had big trauma that gave him So Many Skills n said "thats what i want" ok idk thats actually really? inch rest ting to me. seems that murdocs fine handing out compliments but i guess that where his charisma really helps out yeah?

"he was going to be in my band whether he liked it or not" ...murdoc-

HELP. 2D IS LIKE BRO GO ON IM LISTENING 🥺 despite hearing the story 50-60 times and murdoc said fuck off you lil shit.

ok irrelevant but i love his voice! its super comforting n nice to listen to 🥺

HELP MURDOCS SO BITTER. "NOTHING THAT HAPPENS TO US IS NORMAL" WELL YEAH. THIS IS TRAUMA CENTRAL.

idk how/why he sucked up all his friends souls though ... how are they all possessing the same person. they said "its my turn on The Russ"

DELL IS HIS ACTUAL, LITERAL SOULMATE...KING...😭

went to a private school,,, and was already possessed? and the thing where he gets bigger and smaller is a reoccurring thing?

was in a coma for 4 years?

hiphop machine...time and history...the ultimate set i guess.

his knowledge was infinite and hes a "Renaissance man" hes so fucking smart our king. jack of all trades but a master of drums. he said i know im good and what of it

PAULA.

HELP. HE RMBRS THE STALL: CUBICAL NUMBER 3 🥴 IF I DO RECALL 🤤

yes russel our king. fuck up his nose 5 more times. probably stunted his growth too. he shrunk after russ gave him a wallop im sure

why dies paula sound like tracer overwatch

also only dated 2d for 2 months before joining the band?

HELP SHE REALLY WAS THE FIRST MURDOC FUCKER: "but when i saw murdoc with his thick greasy hair, green teeth and yellow skin i thought 'oh this is the ine for me!'" "OH HES SUCH A DANDY-" HELP ME IM HQJDHD

sick in the head...like i want to hurt people help girl. shes fucking Crazy. but she rly said damn i didnt hear back from him again 😭 and my purse is gone JSHHD

MURDOC: SHE WAS DEPRESSINGLY UGLY *still fucked her*

NOODLE TIME

"small japanese person!"

2d: we werent gorillaz until noodle arrived!

im dying the reason he chose gorillaz. 'swinging through the jungle baring my ass'

noodle really said "im just happy to be here" and she balanced everyone out 😭 "she gave off pure love and the fact that she could laugh at murdoc REALLY helped too" RUSS... IS BABY

JFC MURDOCS SO FUCKING CONFIDENT IN THIS BAND IM LIVING FOR THAT. HE SAID YOU WANT US SO BAD IT MAKES YOU LOOK STUPID. THE CHARISMA

2d rambling ab some girl he met and "ssSs" "whats the s stand for hawhaw" "i dont know!".

THE RECORD LABEL GUY.

one song is all it took i ❤ good for them

just murdoc talking ab the party that they threw for thier deal and saying "you dont know how much of a dick i felt like [when carrying one of those huge checks]" like oh thats whatll make you a dick? alright.

A FOOD FIGHT THAT WENT SO HARD THAT IT KNOCKED 2DS TONSILS OUT? WHAT THE FUCK

ahshdj damon and murdoc not getting along bc of Rival Band One Uppery + damon calling murdocs cuban heels crap since ge wore steel ones with gold spurs.

MURDOC FEELIN EMBARRASSED BC HES 'QUITE PROUD OF HIS SHOES'

but the band and damon getting over music and their ambitions and became a "paternal figure"

HELP MURDOC SAID AWIOGA @ RACHEL WHICH MADE HER THROW HER DRINK IN HIS FACE AND SPLIT FROM 2D. kinda sad actually, she said i still like 2d but murdoc kinda ruined it by trying to get it in with me, it put a strain in our relationship :/ oh god murdocs That Dude

nov 31 1998: started recording :]

40 tracks that got cut down to 15 holy shit

KONG STUDIOS 🤲

hooking up cameras in every room ejdjsu

webby artist of the year in 2006? holy shit

noodle learning ab kong studios omfg

JFC. YES I KNEW KONG WAS BUILT ON/IN A CEMETERY BUT I DIDNT KNOW PPL FOR THE FUCKING PLAGUE WHERE THROWN THERE HDJD

built in 1739?

the ghost of the first owners ghost still roams around in the kitchen in the early hours and moans 'aaa glass of water'

theres some rotting bullshit near the studios and in the summer its fucking TERRIBLE

the former owners were a biker gang, and they all died in a fire

murdoc said this place has bad vibes. i want it.

grim weather

the building feels impossible to escape from huHgg

[snowdice]

Gaps in His Files (Part 4) [Relabeled; Refiled Series]

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Relationships: Logan/Patton

Characters:

Main: Logan, Patton

Appear: Remy, Virgil (but only in the epilogue)

Summary:

Logan Berry has learned many things the last 10 years: a lot of math and physics, a bit of humility, and how to be a hero being just a few. Through his education, his experience teaching, and his exploits as the superhero Bluebird, he’s changed in a lot of small and large ways. He has recorded these changes in well-organized documents and files. He’s even had to create two new file designations: a red one for files about his moonlighting at Bluebird, and a light blue one dedicated to his boyfriend, Patton.

When Bluebird is targeted by a memory device and all of those 10 years of progress suddenly disappear, Patton Sanders and Logan’s extensive files are left as his only resource to get those memories back. But what is Patton supposed to do when there are clear gaps in his files? And what does he do when he is one of them?

This is set 25 years before Sometimes Labels Fail though it’s story is completely independent of it and it is not necessary to read that one first.

Notes: Superhero AU, memory loss, past child abuse, past child neglect, unhealthy ideas about ones place in relationships, emotional suppression, self-deprecating thoughts, medical procedures mentioned, very brief unhealthy views of sex

Does anyone see the Easter Egg in here? Probably not. It’s pretty vague...

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Patton did not like driving Logan’s “special car.” It didn’t matter what position he put the seat in, he still either couldn’t reach the pedals or he felt like he was too scrunched up; the radio was (somehow) only set up to receive the local news station as well as some weird station that only ran a program detailing crop growing strategies which Patton thought must be some sort of cover for a channel sending messages in code (at least he really hoped it was because otherwise its existence was an affront to humanity); and he’d accidentally zapped himself with electricity while trying to adjust the temperature twice in the past and he still didn’t know if that was a feature or faulty wiring and Logan had refused to give an argument that convinced him either way. Not to mention, the car didn’t legally exist. If Patton got pulled over in this thing, what was he supposed to tell the police? Sorry, my boyfriend doesn’t have insurance, I’m pretty sure he built this death trap himself out of scrap metal because I can’t even discern the make and model.

“The corn! THE CORN,” the radio spewed.

“Yes, the corn,” Patton spat back. “I know. I heard you the first time.” Unfortunately, today, listening to the corn channel was better than listening to the news. The local news station continued to discuss and theorize what had happened earlier that afternoon over and over until Patton couldn’t take it anymore.

A memory gun had hit Logan. It had been a theory at first considering the things Lightwave and Logan had said along with the fact that Logan hadn’t seemed to remember how to fly, and had been all but confirmed a couple of hours ago when news that the police had investigated the dropped weapon leaked. Which all meant Logan was out there floundering with no idea what was going on or who he was. Patton wondered how much was gone. Had it erased all of his memories? Did he even know his name? He’d known enough to be able to use his powers, but was that instinct and muscle memory?

The theorizing on the local news station just made Patton’s blood pressure spike more with every passing second. Not that turning off the radio and being left alone with his own thoughts was much better. So…

“Crop rotation!”

Patton was the only person who knew Bluebird’s secret identity (at least, as far as Logan had told him.) Well… Remy might have guessed, but he hadn’t been officially told, and Patton doubted he’d be any help anyway. So, Patton was the only person who could really look for him. Sure, he was certain the police were searching (as well as some doubtlessly more dangerous people), but Patton was the only one who knew Logan.

You don’t know this Logan.

His Logan would have gone back to his apartment or maybe Patton’s if he were injured.

Patton gripped the steering wheel tighter. Okay. Maybe this Logan didn’t know where his apartment was. Maybe he didn’t know who Patton was. But he was still Logan, and Logan was rational and, more importantly, predictable. Patton would bet that in a circumstance where he knew nothing about what was going on, he would default to general survival tactics and what had he ranted and ranted to Patton about when they’d watched that one survival movie? Follow the water. Water is where you find food and shelter and almost certainly civilization if you follow it downstream. Sure, that was for when someone was lost in a forest or something, not already in a city, but Patton hoped he’d fallen into that strategy despite that, at least until he thought up something else better.

That’s why Patton had been driving up and down the river for the past few hours looking for anything suspicious and listening to someone blather on about corn. He pulled up underneath a bridge. It was a little bit away from the hustle and bustle of the city, but near enough to get to a more populated area quicklym and it had some good shelter around because there were trees. Patton bit his lip. If he thought like Logan, this would be a good place to stop. He decided to get out of the car and go out on foot for a bit.

Before exiting the car, he checked to make sure the mask was still in place. It felt strange on his face; he never really wore one. He clicked the locking mechanism which made the lights flash once but didn’t beep. He turned and froze when he met eyes under the bridge. The stranger didn’t speak but watched Patton intently from what looked like a makeshift house under the corner of the bridge. Patton edged out from beneath the bridge and headed toward the riverbanks. His shoes sunk into the mud a bit. It was starting to get dark which made it hard for him to search for things that looked out of place, especially when he was unfamiliar with the area. He was just running on blind Logan behavior instinct at this point. It was also starting to get cold. Patton hoped Logan had chosen to wear the winter super suit or he’d found a coat or something.

He wandered, looking into dark places and listening for any sounds beyond the river crashing into the banks. Around 15 minutes into his walk, his eyes caught on a large rock in front of a drainage pipe. Perfect, Logan’s voice said in his head. Patton crept over to check it out. No one was there, but it looked like someone had been recently by a smear of mud near the base of the rock that looked like someone’s foot had slipped there. Okay. He peered around him carefully, walking back toward the river. He had the sudden feeling of being watched. Up. He looked up at a small ledge along the bank and sighed in relief. “Thank god.”

Logan stumbled back a step when he realized Patton had seen him and turned tail to run again.

“Wait, L-” he cut himself off. He couldn’t risk it just in case someone was listening. There was a reason he had the mask and the car after all. Patton was the only one who knew his identity and Logan wanted to keep it that way. He thought quickly, head latching onto a story he’d been told one night curled up against a half-asleep Logan. “I’m Devora the Mood Goddess?” he tried.

Logan paused and turned to face him. “You know me,” he said peering at him from behind the mask still on his face.

Patton nodded, shoulders dropping in relief. “I do.” He offered a hand. “Come with me?”

He looked at the offered hand and then at Patton’s face. There was a moment of silence and then he nodded slowly and took a few steps down toward Patton. Patton grabbed hold of his arm when he got close enough, loosely so as not to startle him even though he wanted to latch on and never let go. Something loosed in Patton’s chest at the contact.

“Who are you?” Logan asked, accepting the touch, though he looked at Patton’s hand on his arm in confusion.

“In the car okay,” Patton requested. He nodded after a moment. “Are you okay?”

“I have body aches and from context clues, I assume memory loss,” he said, “but otherwise I feel well enough.”

“Good. Let’s get back to the car.”

They picked their way back toward the bridge through the muddy riverside. Patton groaned softly when there was an unmarked police car parked next to Logan’s car.

“What?” Logan asked at normal volume.

“Shh,” Patton scolded, but it was too late. A flashlight flared to light and turned to them the next second. “Hello Detective,” Patton said wryly. Patton had met Detective Silvia a couple of times, but of course she didn’t know that since Patton was wearing a mask. Logan knew her a bit more as Bluebird. She gave him a very suspicious look that grew almost hostile when she saw Logan was with him.

“Bluebird,” she said.

“So, I’ve come to understand,” Logan replied.

“I’m his friend. I’m here to help,” Patton said.

“Every villain in the city is looking for him, excuse me for not believing your word.” Patton sighed.

“He knows the code word,” Logan said.

She considered him and then shook her head. “I’d still be more comfortable if you came down to the station.”

Logan tilted his head at her. “No,” he said firmly. Then the detective yelped as her feet left the ground.

“Bluebird no!” Patton hissed. “The detective is our friend.”

“She is not my friend,” Logan replied with a frown. “I don’t know her.”

Patton rubbed his temples. “Just get in the car and put her down gently when you do.”

He went without compliant and Patton rounded the car. His eyes fell on the man he’d seen earlier, backed up against the wall with wide eyes. “Thanks for being concerned for him buddy,” Patton said.

They both got in the car and Patton drove away. He saw the detective being placed back on her feet in the rearview mirror. “Well, I’m going to have to send her a fruit basket,” he mumbled under his breath.

Want to read more? Click below!

AO3 Part 5

[moondustaeil]

efflorescent , Huang Renjun

⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀⋅ʚ♡ɞ⋅ ⋅ efflorescent

⠀  ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀

⠀ about  

⋅  genre : fluff , if renjun was a genre then the genre is renjun

⋅  characters : Renjun x reader

⋅  word count : 1.4k drabble

⋅  hello : this is a weird concept, but idc

⠀ ⠀

⠀ summary

⋅ Through your childhood, you and Renjun would always draw on each other, acting as if the two of you had soulmate tattoos. Even in your young teenage years, when the two of you fell in love, you would draw flowers on each other. Your relationship bloomed like a flower, and the soulmate tattoos you’d always dreamed of, finally become reality.

“Practice on the banana before you do it on me” Renjun shouted the moment he saw you coming closer with the handmade stick ‘n poke ‘machine.’ You sighed deeply and rolled your eyes at the behavior of your boyfriend. “You’re kidding me right?” you asked, giving him a semi-annoyed look. Why did you have to practice on a damn banana?

Renjun shook his head a couple of times, making it very clear that he wasn’t kidding. “No, practice on the banana, I don’t want my flower to look like a dick because of your so-called talent,” He said, although the words sounded harsh, it was Renjun speech: half kidding, half serious, 100% savage and not one spark of innocence. “Oh c’mon, I used to draw that flower when we went to school together, you loved it back then and you’ll love it now,” You said. But seeing Renjun pointing at the banana made you sigh deeply and just go for the practice round first. 

“My soulmate is so sweet” You muttered under your breath as you pretended to only molest the banana more with your tattooing skills, a pout forming onto your lips. The words made Renjun laugh, he moved over to you and rested his head on your shoulder to watch your little surgery on the banana, if a banana lived then it surely would have gone to hell now. “Did I convince you of my skills, sir?” You asked and turned your head slightly to be able to see him.

Renjun pretended to think for a couple of seconds, leaning in to press a kiss to your lips once the debate in his mind was over. “You did, I’ve never seen that kind of talent,” he told you jokingly, speaking against your lips as he didn’t feel like letting your lips drift apart. After a few more short lip kisses, you were the one who withdrew first.

You got your materials and threw the banana somewhere in the corner of the room, too bad that it would rot as it otherwise could have been a reminder to this moment. But reminders would be left on your skin anyway, and that was more than enough already. While you got everything prepared, Renjun got in a comfortable position and made sure his arm was resting on a pillow so that it wouldn’t look like amateurism, even though that was literally what it was. “Hurry up, y/n. My skin is getting wrinkles” He whined.

You laughed at the words and sat down next to him, your eyes on his wrist that was completely ready to get inked for life. It made things easier that the flower you were about to tattoo on each other, was the flower the two of you had been drawing on each other ever since your childhood friendship started. Which was also what the tattoo was based on.

The two of you had met when you were kids and it grew out to friendship. In your young childhood and early teenage years, you’d fantasize about the soulmate life, something that probably was only an alternate universe but when you were so young, you hadn’t even cared about it. So each day, the two of you pretended to be soulmates and would draw an identical flower on each other’s wrist. The alternate universe part of the story seemed to disappear when you two fell in love three years ago. Since then, the two of you labeled yourselves as soulmates. And today, finally was the day that you’d both get your ‘soulmate’ tattoo.

“Ready, Renjunie?” You asked with a hum as you dipped the needly in the ink that you had put in a lid of a bottle of water. A hum left your boyfriend’s lips, a smile present on his lips because even if he had basically said those things before, he wouldn’t care what it looked like, he was sealing the deal to be with you for as long as he could. “Always ready to be forever together with you, y/n” He answered, almost romantically in a way and that feeling only grew when he quickly pecked your cheek.

The sweetness of the moment made you smile but you decided not to waste any time anymore, you didn’t want to screw up because you waited too long to put the needle to his skin. The first contact between the needle and his skin was scarier than he would probably admit at the end of the tattoo session, but he got distracted by the sight of you: gently poking his skin with the needle time after time, starting to create the flower that represented both of you. Whenever you would have to dip the needle in the ink again, Renjun smiled at you or kissed your cheek. 

After a while, the tattoo started to finally come together to the flower it was supposed to see, and it only took both of you one glance to recognize it. “It looks good” Renjun said happily, letting you finish off instead of following his urge to pull away and admire the tattoo from up close. You only hummed in response, taking the last few needed seconds of focus before your eyes finally met his. “Done,” you said, putting the little poking machine down.

Renjun brought his arm up to his face to see the tattoo up close, he could barely get to the realization that it really was on his skin. The two of you were almost officially soulmates. “Do you like it?” You asked, slightly nervous in case he would say no in a non-joking way. He nodded his head almost immediately and showed you a genuine smile “this is the most beautiful tattoo ever” he said. He didn’t care about all other pieces of art that people had on their skin, he had the most precious one out of all of them. “I do, it’s perfect” he said and leaned forward, connecting your lips a sweet kiss.

“Let me do yours now” Renjun said against your lips as he pulled away already, his hands going to the self-made tattoo creator and lifted it up. He gave you a playful smile “do you want me to practice on the banana?” He asked although he knew that you would say no. You had seen the pieces of art he painted or drew, you trusted him with his talent and simply didn’t even care if it wouldn’t look as perfect as when a professional did it. “Nah” you answered as you laid your arm on the pillow to get your tattoo done.

Renjun carefully dipped the needle in the ink again and started to hum a song as he got to work on your wrist. The endless poking was a funny feeling but you didn’t laugh as the sound of your boyfriend’s humming made you focus on what he was creating rather than the funny feeling it gave. 

It took a little while before you started to really recognize the flower he was creating, but once the shape was there, you fell head over heels for the creation on your wrist. “Let me finish it off a bit” He said as he wasn’t done yet but knew you were already loving the sight of it. He didn’t stop and just did as he was told, adding the last few details that couldn’t be missed in the tattoo and making sure the shape was similar and equally big as the one you made on his skin.

“It’s done” Renjun said with a smile as he carefully put his hand on the side of your arm, lifting it up to his eyes to see it with a closeup view. You got closer to him to see it as well, both of you having wide smiles on your lips, the kind that wouldn’t leave anytime soon.

Silence sat in the room with the two of you for a good minute, neither of you actually had an idea whether you were staring at the tattoos or at each other, but that didn’t seem to matter at this moment anyway. 

“We’re soulmates now” You whispered to Renjun when reality sent the silence out of the room. Both of you glanced at each other’s tattoo, your hands automatically reaching for one another to intertwine your fingers together. Renjun smiled wider “we always have been” he said back to you, letting out a happy sigh as he looked up to meet your eyes. 

“And we always will be”

[96thdayofrage]

The Affordable Care Act requires traditional health insurance plans to provide “minimal essential coverage,” which includes preventive care, mental health care, substance abuse, maternity and more. The less-conventional plans are exempted from those requirements. Some of the plans are offered by name-brand companies like UnitedHealthcare, but critics say they’re typically big moneymakers for the companies that can leave patients with unexpected medical bills. The plans’ limitations often are not explained in the advertisements or in brokers’ high-pressure sales presentations. Hundreds of complaints about the plans show up on consumer sites like the Better Business Bureau or Yelp.

“The marketing is extremely deceptive,” said Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms. “Both the advertising and the brokers use terms that to the average consumer would make them think they are buying a comprehensive insurance plan that provides coverage if they get injured or sick. But quite often nothing could be further from the truth.”

The misleading marketing may be ensnaring more consumers now, as an estimated 14 million Americans have lost employer-sponsored health benefits due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Google and companies involved in the marketing generally defended the term “Trumpcare,” saying it’s legitimate to use to describe the president’s general philosophy about health care or his 2017 executive order that allowed short-term insurance plans to cover a time period of up to 12 months rather than three months. Facebook said the word “Trumpcare” on its own didn’t violate its rules. However, Facebook and Google both initially accepted “Trumpcare” ads that, after they were flagged by ProPublica, the companies later said did violate their rules.

A ProPublica reporter responded to one of the “Trumpcare” ads and took calls from five insurance brokers. The brokers seemed to have no idea what type of ad had led to the call. They were focused on closing the deal. One said, wrongly, that “Trumpcare” was just a new name for “Obamacare.” The other four acknowledged that there’s no such thing as “Trumpcare.”

“It’s fake news,” said one.

“Trumpcare” “is not even in existence yet,” said another.

“They’re starting to change over from ‘Obamacare’ to ‘Trumpcare,’ but it hasn’t switched over yet,” a third broker said.

Traditional health care plans sold under the Affordable Care Act must comply with a host of regulations, including not discriminating against people with preexisting conditions. But the plans are expensive, and some consumers may not qualify for the income-based subsidies that reduce the cost. For example, a 40-year-old single person who makes more than $50,000 would likely not qualify for a subsidy to help pay for an individual health care plan, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation Health Insurance Marketplace Calculator.

The less conventional plans — called short-term, fixed indemnity, accident-only or specified disease plans — offered by the brokers are less expensive. Some provide benefits for a short term or give a fixed payment to cover a portion of a doctor or hospital bill. Others pay out only if the beneficiary had some type of accident. A purchaser would need to read the fine print to know what they did or did not cover.

ProPublica contacted the Federal Trade Commission and insurance regulators in all 50 states and found hit-and-miss enforcement of misleading ads and sales tactics. Some states, like Delaware and Virginia, have meted out discipline for using misleading tactics to sell the limited plans. But many have not. Most who spoke to ProPublica said they have no jurisdiction over the online “lead generation” advertisers. The regulators say it’s like playing “whack-a-mole,” as those caught using abusive marketing tactics can simply incorporate under a new name and resume the same behavior.

Online “Lead Generators” Lure in Consumers

Identifying deceptive tactics related to health care plans is as easy as going online and looking.

Southern California marketer Stuart Millar said he’s placed “Trumpcare” advertisements to join in “the gold rush of online entrepreneurship.”

Millar has spent at least $350,000 on 12,500 “Trumpcare” ads from four Facebook pages with “Trumpcare”-themed names since last October. “Thanks to our President,” one of them said, “U.S. health insurance companies have had to drastically drop their rates.” (ProPublica can see how much Millar spent because he had proactively marked his ads as political, triggering Facebook to disclose this information.)

Millar isn’t an insurance broker — one of the people who sell insurance and are regulated by the states. He’s a “traffic broker,” a marketer in charge of running ads to drive visitors to his clients’ websites. There’s little regulation of his activities. His ads have focused so much on the term “Trumpcare,” he said, because it’s clickbait. He called it far more attention-getting than the “left-wing one,” his term for “Obamacare.”

“I’ve got to find a fun way to make health care interesting,” Millar said. “‘Trumpcare’ is interesting but health care in general isn’t.”

Stuart Millar’s ads. (via Facebook)

“Traffic brokers,” like any Facebook advertiser, can select the specific demographics of the Facebook users who will see their ads.

Millar declined to get into details about how he targeted his ads, but said he mostly relied on Facebook’s algorithm to find him the people who’d click. He said he tested thousands of iterations of the ad to make sure it found an audience. “What I went with was what converted,” Millar said, a reference to people responding to the ads.

Some “Trumpcare” ads — not apparently linked to Millar — have been targeted at people Facebook labels as “interested in Donald Trump,” according to targeting data provided by Facebook to users along with ads that are shared with the Ad Observer project.

Millar says he didn’t come up with the idea of using “Trumpcare.” That came from his clients, whom he wouldn’t name. Many of Millar’s ads led to a page featuring a red, white and blue “Trumpcare” logo on HealthPlansAmerica.org, which is owned by a company called Apollo Interactive. (The company is not a nonprofit, but anyone can buy a .org website address.)

Apollo Interactive isn’t an insurance broker either. It’s what’s called a lead broker, yet another cog in the lightly regulated machinery of insurance “lead generation” marketing. That means it gathers profiles of people who are looking for health insurance. Those who input their information on these sites become “leads.” And then they’re put up for auction.

Officials from Apollo Interactive wouldn’t say how the company sells leads. But Colin Sholes, an activist and former online health insurance marketer, said lead generators extract an anonymized sample of each person’s data: ZIP code, age, gender. This profile, without any contact information, gets shared with potential buyers, who bid for it in an instant, automated auction. The winning bidder or bidders get the person’s name and their contact information.

Leads are often sold as “shared leads” — meaning they’re sold to more than one buyer at the same time. Some of the buyers are insurance brokers. Some are other lead brokers who bid so they can resell data that originated elsewhere. “It’s a big web and everybody’s interconnected,” Sholes said. “A lot of data just floats around.”

So how much is each “lead” worth? Sholes estimated that a lead for a person under 55 would cost as much as $20.

The lead might be even more valuable if it was sold as what the industry calls a “warm lead,” he explained. Some companies exist just to buy leads, then have a call center agent call and, if a human picks up, the agent “warms you up,” Sholes said. That means they check to make sure the consumer is interested in buying insurance. At that point the company sells the call to an insurance broker as a “warm” transfer. “A connected call,” he said, might sell for up to $80.

Millar confirmed he got paid by the lead, but he refused to say how much. He did say that he made a profit on what he paid Facebook to run the ads. He was not aware of what happens to consumers who click on his ads, then purchase the health plans. “I didn’t ever call in myself. I am not exactly sure how any of that works.”

Facebook and Google Profit From the Misinformation

This fall, someone Googling for affordable health insurance might have come across an ad that said: “Healthcare changes are coming. Check out the new pricing tiers under the American Health Care Act.”

The American Health Care Act — the bill most commonly called “Trumpcare” — failed to pass the Senate in 2017 when the terminally ill Sen. John McCain dramatically walked across the chamber’s floor and gave a thumbs down, leading to the bill’s defeat. So there were no new “pricing tiers” on offer, as the ad claimed, in 2020.

Those ads led to Apollo’s HealthPlansAmerica.org site. Apollo Interactive attorney Chris Deatherage said in a written statement that the Google ads “appear to be old ads” from when AHCA “was actively being discussed in the legislature.”

Deatherage said “Trumpcare” is an “abstract” term used to “tie together” various pieces of intended or existing legislation and policies and that Apollo’s “Trumpcare” website said the term refers to Trump’s “collective policy updates.” He compared it to “Obamacare” — which specifically refers to the Affordable Care Act — and proposals for “Medicare for All,” which are not law. He added that Apollo Interactive’s website lets visitors connect with brokers who can explain the term.

Google’s rules say it does not allow ads that “deceive users by excluding relevant product information or providing misleading information.” Facebook says it bans ads with “deceptive, false, or misleading claims.” But both accepted the “Trumpcare” promotions. Google even gave the misinformation prime real estate, with the ads as the top-listed results when people search for affordable health insurance.

Christa Muldoon, a spokeswoman for Google said, “Health care ads cannot make misleading claims about the advertiser’s identity or the services they offer.” She said Google removed the ads referencing AHCA under that policy after ProPublica contacted Google about them. She wouldn’t explain why the company apparently let the ads run for years, despite violating Google’s rules.

Until last year, Google also sold ads that lured in consumers with the phrase Healthcare.gov — the federal government site where you can purchase plans that comply with the Affordable Care Act — even though they were for private, lead-generation websites.

It’s not clear how much Google earned from selling “Trumpcare” ads. Unlike Facebook, Google doesn’t consider ads about “Trumpcare” political, so it doesn’t publish any data about them. Muldoon would not say how much Google made from the ads.

But, she said, citing Trump’s executive orders on health care, “We do not consider the phrase ‘Trumpcare’ alone to be misleading,” so it’s allowed in Google ads.

A report a year ago from Sen. Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat, criticized Google and other search engines for showing ads for for-profit lead-generation sites listed above the official Healthcare.gov site when a person searched for “Obamacare” or even “Healthcare.gov.” Casey called for search engines to put an “answer box” above all content, even ads, with a link to Healthcare.gov on searches for health insurance.

Muldoon hinted at a coming change to what kinds of health insurance-related ads the company will allow. She said that Google is “evaluating the health insurance space to strengthen our protections for users and prevent misleading ads.”

After Newsweek flagged the Facebook ads in a blog post in August, the Lead Stories news organization published a fact-check saying that “there is no such thing as Trumpcare.” That prompted Facebook to stop accepting the ads, under a policy that bans ads with content that fact-checkers have found to not be true.

Devon Kearns, a Facebook spokesperson, told ProPublica that some of the ads were removed for violating a Facebook policy that bans “scammy tactics.”

But then in mid-September, more “Trumpcare” ads appeared on Facebook, from something called “National Center for Medical Records,” which didn’t return a request for comment. These ads led to another company’s website, not Apollo’s. One of them featured a smiling Trump with his arm around the shoulder of a doctor and the slogan: “Trumpcare from $1/Day.”

Omissions and High-Pressure Sales

ProPublica wanted to learn more about the sales tactics involving “Trumpcare” ads, so we checked for ourselves. One of the reporters on this story, Jeremy, had been laid off in May. So he clicked on an ad in Facebook’s ad transparency portal, featuring photos of a health insurance card and a tuxedoed Donald Trump with Melania Trump in a ballgown. It took him to HealthPlansAmerica.org, which prompted him to input his contact details, as well as his age, gender, address, income range and whether he had any “major medical conditions.”

Jeremy is young and healthy, and he answered the questions honestly, so his information made him a hot prospect.

Jeremy entered a burner phone number that he acquired for this project — a good choice, because he got 67 phone calls the day he submitted the form; the day after, he got 46 more. The plans the brokers offered were legal, to the extent that they gave enough information to check. But to be informed, a consumer would want to know each plan’s limits and exceptions and be provided with detailed information about what’s covered, or not. The brokers often withheld crucial information.

Alex, from “the Enrollment Center,” said his plan offered free preventive care and would let Jeremy pick his own doctor. Using the lingo of the Affordable Care Act he described the insurance as a “minimum essential coverage plan.” But that’s exactly what it was not. Jeremy, who is married with no children, had to ask if the plan covered maternity costs, something that might be relevant to a childless couple. Alex said that would require something else, a “major medical plan.”

When Jeremy asked Alex to email the plan documents, so he could read what the plan covered or excluded, the line disconnected. Alex never called back.

When we called back several weeks later to ask for comment, the line was apparently disconnected.

Another company, “Modern Health,” would not even provide a brochure about its health plans. A supervisor named Louis said he was “in charge of the company” and that it would be a violation of patient privacy laws to send information in writing about the plan. (It isn’t.) Those details would supposedly have to come from the insurance company, and only after Jeremy signed up.

Anthony, who said he worked for the “National Health Enrollment Agency,” also wouldn’t send anything in writing. But his reason made it sound like he needed to lock in a fare on a flight that was rapidly running out of seats. “Once we disconnect the line, the companies aren’t going to let me hold onto the plan,” he said.

When Jeremy said he wanted to talk it over with his wife, Anthony countered: “Is she a licensed broker?” He offered to add her to the call rather than have the couple discuss it alone.

Dr. Anthony Fauci will see data from government-funded vaccine trials before the FDA does. One caveat: Pfizer’s study, which is ahead of the others, isn’t included in his purview.

None of the salespeople volunteered the details a consumer would need to make an informed choice. Brandon, the salesman from Modern Health, for example, offered a plan from a company called “HealthShield.” It’s for “things like emergency surgeries, hospitalization, ambulances and prescriptions,” he said. He went into painstaking detail about the amount it paid for certain items. But when asked if he’d shared everything Jeremy needed to know, he said, “It does have your essential package that a lot of people sign up for, especially at this time.” Only later, when asked what category of insurance the plan fell under, did he say that “they do remove certain things, which include substance abuse, mental health and maternity benefits.”

Reached for comment for this article, a man who said that his name was Brandon Greer and that he was now in charge of Modern Health said “I’m not sure” when asked if these omissions might confuse consumers. He said that the company instructs its salespeople to note the exclusions “upfront.” He then ended the call.

When we tried to reach the National Health Enrollment Agency minutes later, to get a comment for this story, the phone rang at the offices of Modern Health. The person who picked up denied knowing what the National Health Enrollment Agency was and hung up when asked his name.

Omitting the details of health insurance plans can harm consumers. In August, the Government Accountability Office, the auditing and investigative unit of Congress, published a secret shopper investigation of the sales tactics for the plans. GAO investigators tested 31 brokers by using a fake persona, a person who had a preexisting condition. Eight of the 31 brokers made misstatements, the report says. One was selling the GAO investigator — who claimed to have diabetes — a health insurance plan that the broker said would cover the investigator’s diabetes, but it really didn’t. In a different case, the investigator told the broker that they had diabetes, but the application completed by the sales representative said there was no treatment or diagnosis for diabetes in the past five years. “This indicates that the broker may have intentionally falsified information,” the report said.

The GAO didn’t disclose the names of any of the brokers in its report, but it said it referred them to the Federal Trade Commission and state insurance regulators.

“Garbage” Insurance Generates Profit for Brokers and Insurance Companies

USHEALTH Advisors, one of the companies whose broker contacted Jeremy, posts videos online to show off how much money its brokers are making selling limited insurance plans.

“How much can you earn monthly at US Health Advisors?” asks one of the videos, posted by US Health Advisors Coral Springs.

“$16,000,” says a bearded man in a black shirt and tie.

“$18,000,” says a woman in a sleeveless top.

“$34,000,” says a man in a dress shirt and tie, a family photo in the background behind him.

Then, the closer: “$42,000 — in one month,” a man says.

Justin Brain, the USHEALTH benefits specialist whose number is on the US Health Advisors Coral Springs Facebook page, said commissions vary depending on a broker’s “production,” or sales totals. He declined to say how much the commissions were per sale, but he said the video is used for bringing in new sales recruits to “give them what’s possible.”

An April study by the Urban Institute found brokers making commissions of around 25% for the type of plans offered by the company. Other insurance brokers told ProPublica the commissions on some plans could be as much as 50%.

The video closes with a USHEALTH Advisors logo that adds, “A UnitedHealthcare Company.” UnitedHealthcare is a massive company that provides health insurance and benefits. It’s part of UnitedHealth Group, one of the largest companies in the country, with $242 billion in annual revenue in 2019. UnitedHealthcare declined to say how much the brokers made in commissions.

A USHEALTH broker pitched Jeremy a plan sponsored by Freedom Life Insurance Company of America, which is also a UnitedHealthcare company. The broker characterized the coverage as similar to Affordable Care Act plans and sent a 36-page brochure that laid out the details of the offer.

The document he sent made it clear that the Freedom Life plan would provide limited coverage that could leave a person with hefty bills. But it would take an exceptionally savvy consumer to sort through dozens of pages of insurance jargon to understand that. At ProPublica’s request, Jeffrey Hogan, the Northeast regional manager for Rogers Benefit Group, a national benefits marketing firm, examined the document.

Hogan pointed out that it disclosed on Page 3 that the plans would “supplement” any “essential health benefit plan,” meaning one of the more comprehensive plans sold under the Affordable Care Act. If this plan was meant as a supplement, then it would not be ideal for an uninsured couple. This was not mentioned in Jeremy’s sales presentation from the Freedom Life broker.

[icemankazansky]

The Joke’s On Me: The Damaging, Dangerous Portrayal of Mental Illness in Awards Darling Joker

In the spring of 2005, I was nineteen, a freshman in college, and six months past my official diagnosis as bipolar II. I had been having symptoms since the seventh grade, but due to a variety of factors, I had been unable to see a doctor for my mental health until I was 18 and on my own. I went to the campus counselor my first semester, and spent two hours explaining my mood fluctuations and my self harm behaviors and my suicide attempts. Soon I had a name for the monster inside of me, and a prescription for a mood stabilizer and an antidepressant. It was scary to be officially labeled mentally ill, but in truth I had known for a long time, and it was nice to know that there were other people like me, and that my life could be made better with treatment.

One day in the spring of 2005, I was sitting in my abnormal psych class while we watched a video showing patients in the throes of mania. The lights were off in the big auditorium classroom, and I was glad, because I felt conspicuous, like I would be found out any second. I watched the patients in the video and saw myself. The students around me watched the patients in the video and laughed. 

I felt hunted, persecuted, flawed. I felt monstrous, inhuman. And I felt that very same way again last night, sitting in a dark theater and watching 2020 Oscar Best Picture Nominee Joker. 

For the past four years, I have bought the pass for Regal Cinema’s Oscar Best Picture Nominees Film Festival.  In one week, you watch all the films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.  I don’t always like all the movies the Academy has chosen, but I like seeing them all.  

I spent most of Joker feeling like I was going to be sick.

Joker was written by Todd Phillips and Scott Silver, and directed by Phillips.  Joaquin Phoenix, stripped down to wiry muscle, stars as the eponymous Arthur Fleck, a rent-a-clown and aspiring stand-up comedian with an unspecified mental illness.  Everyone who comes into contact with Fleck can smell the crazy on him, and they punish him for it.  He’s beaten, derided, teased, and laughed at.  This soon inspires Fleck to tremendous violence.  Towards the end of his murder spree, Fleck tells the following joke: “What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash...?  You get what you fucking deserve.”  He punctuates the joke with another murder, this one live on television.  It’s very catchy.  Very cute.  Very convenient, when in real life, conservative politicians blame mental illness instead of easy access to firearms after every mass shooting.  It’s also not true.  People with mental illnesses are more than 10 times more likely to be the victims of violent crimes than the perpetrators.  Fleck is angry because citywide budget cuts have kicked him out of therapy and cut off his supply of psychiatric medications.  (This is an interesting about-face within the narrative, because Fleck himself says that the drugs don’t work and his therapist doesn’t listen to him.)  This is based on events that really happened in American’s not-so-distant past.  When Ronald Reagan became president in the early 1980s, he repealed most of previous president Jimmy Carter’s Mental Health Systems Act of 1980, gutting mental health funding countrywide.  This is what happened to Fleck in the film: funding was cut, and people lost their mental health benefits.  We have a historical model to learn from, so let’s ask the question: What happened in Reagan’s America after mental health funding was cut across the board?  Was there an increase in violence across the United States, the displaced mentally ill lashing out at the system that had failed them?  There was, a little.  Within a decade of hundreds of thousands of formerly institutionalized psychiatric patients being expelled from care facilities, the percentage of mentally ill offenders in prison populations grew to about 10%.  But the bigger result was that the homelessness population exploded.  Some estimates in the mid-’80s suggested that as many as 50% of the United States’s homeless people were seriously mentally ill.  Once again, in real life: the people hurt by society’s disregard for the mentally ill are the mentally ill themselves.  Not their neighbors.  Not strangers on a train.  And not Batman’s parents.  I’ve heard the argument that Joker’s true message is that society suffers when it mistreats its most vulnerable citizens.  And that’s a noble aim, I suppose.  However, I can think of about a million ways to show that without resorting to a sensationalist, factually incorrect depiction of those living with mental illness.

I’d like to say that perpetuating the myth of the super violent psychiatric patient is the only problem with Joker’s portrayal of mental illness, but I can’t.  Every single instance of mental illness in this film is portrayed as the worst, most stereotypical, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest bullshit.  Fleck’s mother has delusions, so she doesn’t notice that she and her young son are routinely beaten and violated by her boyfriends.  She’s too crazy to be a mother.  To be fair, this is a common trope in cinema.  From Psycho to In Her Shoes, a 2005 chick flick that is one of my sister’s favorite movies, mentally ill mothers in film do nothing but scar their children, casting a dark shadow of Crazy onto their lives well into adulthood.  Whether they’re abusive or rendered useless by their mental illnesses like Fleck’s mother, Penny, or the special brand of tragic, magical, fragile insane like Caroline in In Her Shoes, they cannot be fit parents.  

But it doesn’t even stop at Penny.  When Fleck goes to Arkham Asylum to investigate his mother’s file from her stay there in his childhood, the patients he passes in the hallway are dead-eyed and shuffling, or simply acting bizarre to show how insane they are.  Because that’s the line Joker draws: the mentally ill are different and they make “regular” people uncomfortable, and if left unchecked, that strangeness translates into explosive violence.  This mentality about the mentally ill is so dated and ignorant that it’s shocking to see it in a film from the 21st century, but not only that, the film is a commercial and critical success.  Joker was nominated for 11 Oscars, and has been picking up awards at BAFTA and the Golden Globes.  People are buying this portrayal of the mentally ill.  They’re proclaiming it “raw” and “real” and “unflinching.”  To me, an actually mentally ill girl living in America, watching Joker felt like watching a minstrel show from the 19th century.  It was a crass caricature by someone who knew nothing of their subject matter but what they’d heard from other people who knew nothing of their subject matter, and in this day and age, we should know better.   

The 92nd Academy Awards air Sunday night.  I’ll watch, I suppose, to see if this is what America really thinks of me.

But I guess I already know the answer.  

[kathrynethegreat]

@random-emerald-thoughts as promised, here are the details on season 3 of The Rape of Europa Hannibal AU television series.

If anyone is seeing this for the first time and needs to know what the heck this is, links are here:

OVERVIEW

SEASON 1 SUMMARY | SEASON 1 DETAILS

SEASON 2 SUMMARY | SEASON 2 DETAILS

SEASON 3 SUMMARY | SEASON 3 DETAILS 

SEASON 4 SUMMARY | SEASON 4 DETAILS

Below the cut is the following information:

Additional Information about each episode and the real crimes that inspired some of the stories

Artwork featured in each episode

A couple pieces of Fan Art that didn’t make the cut for the Season Summaries.

Flashbacks featured in each episode

General Season Arcs / Information / Themes

General Clannibal info (Will they, won’t they? Spoilers - they totally do.)

Season 3 General Notes / Arcs / Themes:

The third season follows the first half of the novel Hannibal fairly closely as far as Dr.Fell and Rinaldo Pazzi are concerned. 

Clarice’s Art Team and Jack Crawford’s team with Behavioral Science team up to work together. Jack Crawford, who occasionally showed up in episodes here and there in the first couple of seasons takes on a more prominent role in this season. 

While we’ve seen a few flashbacks to the events of The Silence of the Lambs, the first two season’s flashbacks were much more heavily based on Hannibal Rising, so we will start to see a lot more SOTL this season.

The season draws heavy influence from the murders of Il Monstro. The viewer, for many episodes, will not quite be sure if Hannibal Lecter is Il Monstro or not. He will claim not to be, but scenes are set up to show that he could possibly be the killer.

The season also takes much from the Pazzi Conspiracy of 1478, just as the novel does.

After Johnny and Clarice hooked up in the second season episode Whoso List to Hunt, they are tentatively seeing one another.  Clarice is uncomfortable with this, and Johnny likely feels they are on stronger footing than Clarice does. She does not put a label on it but has accepted that he is in love with her. They do not talk about it in front of other people, but everyone sort of ‘knows.’

SEASON 3, EPISODE 1: Tableaux de la Mort

DATE: August 1992 FLASHBACKS:

Jack Crawford - A man shouts at Phyllis and calls her "Bella." while they are in Florence

Clarice - Clarice remembers her first meeting with Jack Crawford, who tells her about Buffalo Bill

Jack Crawford - Jack goes home to his dying wife

Pazzi - Pazzi works on the Il Monstro case. He holds a photo of a victim in hand.

Pazzi - Pazzi walks home, sees a poster of Primavera outside the Uffizi. He goes inside and stands in front of it and makes a connection about Il Monstro.

ARTWORK FEATURED:

The Last Supper by Leonardo Da Vinci, done as the last Tableaux Vivant at Pageant of the Masters in Laguna Beach, California. 

Primavera by Sandro Botticelli - Uffizi Gallery

NOTES:

This episode - and really the entire season is heavily inspired by the real Il Monstro case in Florence.

The season opens with Clarice Starling attending the Pageant of the Masters in Laguna Beach, California. She has begun to seek out art and culture on her own outside of work. 

The Pageant of the Masters is a yearly Tableaux Vivant Festival, and it is an absolutely magical evening, and if anyone reading this has not attended, I HIGHLY recommend. It does not disappoint. 

The Title Tableaux de la Mort is a play on the Tableaux vivant. The word “Tableau Vivant” literally means “Living Picture” while Il Monstro’s tableaux depict a picture - but using dead bodies.

We witness the staging of the traditional last painting performed as a Tableau - Da Vinci’s Last Supper. We hear the voiceover telling us about the painting - this year the narrator (for the festival) gives a beautiful discussion on transubstantiation, about the drinking of blood and eating of the flesh.

It should be noted that after catching (who he believed was) Il Monstro the first time, Pazzi went on to train at Quantico, just like in the novel. He began his training just as Clarice had caught Buffalo Bill and graduated. He had looked over the case file and remembers admiring her work. For this reason, he “Knows of” Clarice Starling. 

Pazzi knows Crawford and Johnny personally from his time training at Quantico. Having caught Il Monstro, he spent much time with Crawford at Behavioral Science discussing the case. Johnny and Pazzi also got along well.  

The Italian Police are understaffed and overworked. In 1992 and 1993, they were extremely busy dealing with the Corleonesi Mafia Clan. Pazzi has recently been disgraced when Il Monstro began killing again, signifying that he got the wrong man. His failure weighs heavily on him, and he knows he’s basically being put out to pasture. He is still employed, but not considered for any large cases. Because of all of this, the Italians reach out the Americans - specifically to Jack Crawford at  Behavioral Science and ask if they can borrow a small team.

Jack Crawford agrees to give a few people from his team, but also suggest Clarice and her team for the case as well. Since the case is art-related, he feels that Clarice may lend a different view to things than a normal agent hunting a serial killer.  Secondarily, Jack Crawford feels that the killer may actually be Hannibal Lecter. Lecter is known for his whimsy. Because Clarice is familiar with the Lecter case, he feels this is another excellent reason to bring her team in to work along Behavioral Science and the Italian Police.

Clarice is excited to be working with Behavioral Science, even if it is overseas and not officially as a member of Behavioral Science. She hopes that if she proves herself on this case that she will be able to get the promotion that she craves.

Lecter is spoken of in this episode but is not seen. Last we left him he had escaped in Sardinia after making sure Clarice and Margot were safe.

SEASON 3, EPISODE 2:  La Vita Nuova

DATE: September 1992 FLASHBACKS:

Pazzi - Pazzi trains at Quantico.

Pazzi - Pazzi meets Crawford and Johnny.

Pazzi - Pazzi attends a party on the Chesapeake with his wife

Clarice - Clarice remembers her first meeting with Lecter. When she leaves, Miggs throws semen in her face, which upsets Lecter.

Clarice - Hannibal tells Clarice to look in the car of Benjamin Raspail for a Valentine

Clarice - Clarice finds Klaus's head

ARTWORK FEATURED:

Palazzo Vecchio - Salon of Lilies, Florence

Bronze Statue of Judith and Holofernes by Donatello, Salon of Lillies

Dante’s first sonnet from La Vita Nuova by Dante Alighieri

NOTES:

The title is the name of a piece of work by Dante about courtly love. It is believed to have been about Beatrice Portinari, Dante’s lifetime love.

The Curator of the Capponi Library is missing, and Rinaldo Pazzi has been placed onto the case. It is not terribly important, and no one is particularly worked up over the curator’s disappearance. He goes to the Salon of Lilies where he speaks to the Directors of the Uffizi and the Belle-Arti Commission. Both boards are busy speaking to Dr.Fell and do not have much time to speak to Pazzi.  

Pazzi, having gone over Lecter’s forms before meeting (we are shown Pazzi looking over Dr.Fell’s paperwork) doesn’t immediately see Dr.Fell. Suddenly his voice appears - he is faced away from the viewer. He stands next to a bronze of Judith and Holofernes, and for a moment it seems as if the statue is speaking.

Dr.Fell gives a lovely debate as to why he feels he should be allowed to keep the position of Curator of the Capponi Library. He reads from Dante’s La Vita Nuova, and everyone is impressed. They agree that he should lecture to the Studiolo in several months' time, at which point they will determine if he gets the keep the position permanently.

Dr.Fell reads the following Sonnet, which will (hopefully) properly foreshadow what will happen with our two lovers throughout the season.

To every loving, gentle-hearted friend,

to whom the present rhyme is soon to go

so that I may their written answer know,

greetings in Love’s own name, their lord, I send.

 The third hour of the time was near at end

when every star in heaven is aglow

‘twas then Love came before me, dreadful so

that my remembrance is with horror rent. 

Joyous appeared he in his hand to keep

my very heart, and, lying on his breast,     

my lady, veil-enwrapped and full asleep. 

But he awakened her, and of my heart

aflame, he humbly made her, fearful, taste:

I saw him, finally, in tears depart. 

After the debate, Pazzi speaks privately with Dr.Fell. He asks about a scar on his hand. He then begins to speak about the previous Curator. “You know, I am sure, that the previous Curator has mysteriously disappeared.”   “I am aware.” Hannibal Lecter says, and we flash to a quick shot of Lecter slitting the old Curator’s throat. “And the man has left no notes that you have found?” Another flash quickly shows us the Curator’s body dropped to the bottom of the Arno river, his feet in a block of cement. “No, I’m afraid he left no note that anyone has been able to find,” Lecter says. Pazzi asks if he can come by to the curator’s belongings and Dr.Fell agrees. Then he asks Pazzi if he is a Pazzi of the infamous Pazzi’s as his visage looks like a painting at the Pazzi family chapel.  Pazzi asks if he may come by to pick up the Curator’s belongings, and also says that several other team members from America might also have to ask him a few questions - he apologizes for any duplication of effort.  Dr.Fell says he understands and questions why the American police would be in Florence. Pazzi admits it is actually the F.B.I. - Behavioral Science and a couple of other people from another division of the F.B.I. - Clarice Starling, an agent who caught the serial killer Buffalo Bill is in Florence helping the Italian Police.

We are shown many flashbacks of Pazzi’s time in America at Quantico throughout this episode.

Clarice also remembers her first meeting with Hannibal Lecter and the beginnings of the Buffalo Bill Case. She thinks about the Buffalo Bill case in conjunction with the Il Monstro case, as well as her information on the Lecter case. 

At home, Dr.Lecter finds a photo of Clarice Starling in the paper. The article discusses the Getty kidnapping. 

Il Monstro strikes again - this time killing two people, and placing them in a tableau representing Judith and Holofernes. The last time we’ve seen Judith and Holofernes was in the Salon of Lillies where we were unsure if it was the Statue or Dr.Fell speaking...this will link Lecter and Il Monstro in our minds. Is Jack Crawford right? Is Hannibal Lecter Il Monstro?

SEASON 3, EPISODE 3: The Monuments Men

DATE: October 1992 FLASHBACKS:

Clarice - Clarice performs an autopsy on Kimberly Egan

Clarice - Clarice visits the Smithsonian about a moth

 Hannibal - Hannibal tells Clarice about the significance of the moth in exchange for personal information. They talk about transformation. She says the worst memory of childhood was the death of her father.

Hannibal - Hannibal agrees to help Clarice Starling Catch Buffalo Bill in exchange for privileges

ARTWORK FEATURED:

The Ecstacy of St.Theresa by Bernini 

Bramante Staircase by Giuseppe Momo

Portrait of a Young Man by Raphael

The Leaning Tower of Pisa by unknown, likely Diotisalvi)

Excerpts from Dante’s La Vita Nuova and The Divine Comedy by Dante

NOTES:

 One of the inspirations for this episode is the 2009 story of a woman who found an original Jasper Johns painting in Portabello road.  In our case, however, the painting found is Raphael’s Portrait of the Young Man, which has been missing since WWII and is still widely believed to exist.

Another big influence for this episode is honestly the novel Angels and Demons, which I read long before the novel Da Vinci’s code came out. I was in art an art history class at the time, and so my friend and I read the novel together, solving each art history crime along with the character and it was a really great time. I figured one episode with puzzles about artwork and a sort of “race” to find something might be fun. 

As Ardelia is dealing with the painting and its three claimants, the various clues Clarice is following around Italy sort of tell her more and more about the war. We learn about the Monuments Men and their quest to protect artwork from being destroyed.

Hannibal Lecter - who Clarice has not yet seen and does not yet know is residing in Florence - sends Clarice on a hunt around Italy with various poems and clues keyed to pieces of art. Often his poetry is keyed to Dante.

You must depart from Florence This is willed already, sought for, soon to be accomplished by the one who plans and plots where - every day - Christ is sold and bought You shall leave everything you love most dearly this is the arrow that the bow of exile shoots first. You are to know the bitter taste of others bread, how salt it is, and know how hard a path it is for one who goes descending and ascending others staircase - Paradiso, Dante 

There is a clue about a double helix, which winds up being the Bernini staircase. There is another clue about somewhere she can walk down but go up, which of course means the leaning tower of Pisa. The tower would have been closed to the public at this time (it was re-opened in 2001), but as an Agent would have been able to go up.

Many of the clues have to do with Dante and Paradise, as well as about transformation.

As Clarice journeys around Florence, she remembers her first time meeting Hannibal Lecter and starting to work on the Buffalo Bill Case. She remembers him agreeing to help her.

Finally, she meets Lecter at Santa Maria della Vittoria, where they stand before Bernini’s sculpture The Ecstacy of St.Theresa. He tells her he knows why she is here, and that he knows Jack believes he is the one who is guilty of the crimes. He promises to help her catch Il Monstro in order to prove his own innocence and stay away from the police. She asks him why she should agree to anything - the last agreement they made - that he would not kill Pierre Trebelaux, ended in him breaking that agreement. He asks her about Johnny. The theme of the statue before them is not lost on either of them, and Clarice is uneasy. Finally, he tells her she doesn’t have much of a choice - he gave her information to find a killer once before, and he can do so again. She finally agrees.

Eventually, Ardelia negotiates a truce and all three claimants are allowed joint ownership on the condition that they allow the painting to reside in a museum. The last shot of the episode shows it hanging in the Uffizi.

 October 31 – Pope John Paul II issues an apology and lifts the edict of the Inquisition against Galileo Galilei. Hannibal Lecter would likely mention this in one of his clues.

SEASON 3, EPISODE 4: The Lost Wax Process

DATE: October 1992

ARTWORK FEATURED:

  The Card Players by Paul Cezanne

 Juggling Man, by Adriaen de Vries

NOTES:

This episode is heavily influenced by several cases in which people have faked thefts, or intentionally destroyed their art in order to collect insurance payments.

 A wealthy businessman who everyone believes is successful is secretly going bankrupt. He has a wonderful private art collection, and he hires someone to steal it from him. When investigating the claims, the insurance company becomes suspicious and turns the case over to the F.B.I. Ardelia, with her legal background, is sent in to pose undercover as an insurance claims adjuster to uncover the truth.

 Il Monstro kills again, but this time he doesn’t kill in Florence, but instead in Rome.

The title references the method of metal casting in which molten metal is poured into a mold that has been created with a wax model and the wax model is melted and drained away.

The victim of Il Monstro makes a mold of the victim and made duplicates – the body is never found.

This episode features Ardelia almost exclusively. While Clarice appears at the end when the victim of Il Monstro is discovered, Ardelia carries this episode.

SEASON 3, EPISODE 5: The Pazzi Conspiracy

DATE: November 1992 FLASHBACKS:

Clarice - Hannibal tells Clarice the Hospitals to research and what to look for - what Billy's trees will look like, what the profile she is looking for is.

Pazzi - Pazzi remembers his time at Quantico and looks over the photos of Hannibal Lecter’s cell. He remembers seeing Lecter’s sketch of the Duomo from the Belvedere.

ARTWORK FEATURED:

Clarice Orsini - Domenico Ghirlandaio

Francesco de’ Pazzi as St.John the Baptist, Basilica di Santa Croce by  Luca della Robbia

Hanged Pazzi Sketch - Leonardo Da Vinci

NOTES:

This episode is heavily influenced by the Pazzi Conspiracy of 1475, which took place on Easter Sunday.

After a meeting with Dr.Fell, Pazzi walks up to the battlements of the Belvedere and looks out at the view. He watches Dr.Fell walk away down on the street. He looks at the view again and realizes he’s seen a sketch of this very view. He flashes back to his time at Quantico when he was allowed to look over the Lecter files. He remembers seeing this sketch in Hannibal Lecter’s cell. He realizes Dr.Fell is Hannibal Lecter. What’s more - he believes Dr.Lecter is Il Monstro. 

Pazzi notices the reward poster for Hannibal Lecter and calls the phone number. The poster does not specify who is offering the reward, but it is clear that is not the F.B.I. If Pazzi chooses to take down Lecter, he will be doing so as a bounty hunter, not as a police officer.

Pazzi is told that in order to get the money he must prove that Lecter is indeed where he is stated to be. The evidence must be in the form of a fingerprint.  Pazzi realizes he must somehow figure out how to get Dr.Fell’s fingerprints in order to get the money.

Clarice speaks to Pazzi about the Il Monstro case, but Pazzi has become difficult. Since Pazzi believes that Hannibal Lecter is also Il Monstro, he no longer wants Clarice to catch Il Monstro. If he, Pazzi, can catch Il Monstro, he would have not truly failed. He becomes disinterested and uncooperative with Clarice and her questions.

Clarice and Hannibal talk about Pazzi and Lecter realizes (but does not say anything) that perhaps Pazzi is on to him. He wonders if Pazzi will rat him out. Lecter then tells Clarice a bit more of Florentine history. They talk about the Duomo, and Clarice says it’s her first memory of him - telling her about it. He tells her more - about the building of the dome in a time before they understood how to complete it. As they walk inside he tells her about the Pazzi conspiracy that took place in 1478 on Easter Sunday. She asks if Pazzi is any relation, and he says that yes, he is. There is a likeness of him in his family’s chapel - he will show her some time. He goes on about the conspiracy, about how at the elevation of the host on Easter Sunday that Francesco de’ Pazzi tried to kill Lorenzo de Medici. Instead, Pazzi wound up stabbing himself in the leg and was ultimately hanged for his crimes. He shows her a painting of Lorenzo and she asks who the woman beside him is - he tells her it is Lorenzo’s wife, Clarice. (True, look it up)

Clarice and Lecter talk about art and Il Monstro. He notes he is clearly an artist with some skill.  Clarice decides to ask art schools in Italy for lists of problem students or students who had been expelled. It’s a big list, and the Art Crime Team and Behavioral Science team members will each be given a handful of people to investigate over the next few episodes, keeping them busy.

SEASON 3, EPISODE 6: Effets de soir

DATE: December 1992 FLASHBACKS:

Clarice - Lecter sketches Clarice's face on a clock and asks him about a transfer. She tells him about going to Montana. Chilton listens in.

Hannibal - Hannibal and Senator Martin negotiate. Hannibal gives Senator Martin the name Billy Ruben to mislead her.

ARTWORK FEATURED:

L'honestà negli amori by Alessandro Scarlatti

NOTES:

Dr.Fell attends the symphony.  As do Clarice and Johnny and Laura and Rinaldo Pazzi. They all chat together. Johnny still is not a fan of Dr.Fell and Pazzi is wary of having Dr.Fell in front of his wife. He is further concerned when Dr.Fell flirts shamelessly with Laura.  What’s more, Laura flirts right back and is charmed.  Pazzi watches on, horrified. Clarice, jealous, cannot say anything. 

Dr.Fell gives Laura the Scarlatti libretto with his notes on the original. She is intrigued and delighted. Again, Clarice is miffed and sulks for the rest of the performance, which annoys Johnny.

 Pazzi has hired a man by the name of Gnocco to get Dr.Fell’s fingerprints. He purchases a silver bracelet, highly polished. He tells Gnocco that he wants him to pick Dr.Fell’s pocket, but to botch the job in the hopes that Dr.Fell will get his fingerprints on the bracelet. 

After several days of watching Dr.Fell, Gnocco finally goes in. Dr.Fell grabs him and stabs him. Pazzi, knowing he will be responsible for Gnocco’s death, pulls him into an alcove and lets him bleed out. He then leaves him there to be found by the police.

Pazzi looks over the bracelet, but it is covered in blood and he does not think that he can get any workable fingerprints off of it.  He goes home angry and upset.

Laura tries her best to make her upset husband happy, but it is clear that she is unhappy in her marriage. She asks him if he will please return Dr.Fell’s libretto to him. Pazzi mumbles for her to put it on his desk and he will take it back in a few days. As he gets up to go to bed, he passes his desk and sees the libretto. He looks into his bedroom where his wife is asleep. At first he is jealous, thinking of Dr.Fell charming his wife...but then he realizes Dr.Fell’s fingerprints might be on the document. 

Pazzi sends away the Libretto to be analyzed in the hope that the prints are a match. 

Il Monstro strikes again - this time killing a current member of the Accademia Belle Arti, one of the boards that, as curator, Dr.Fellmust work alongside. Clarice wonders if Hannibal Lecter, in an attempt to better his chances of keeping his job as curator, may actually be Il Monstro. And if he is, is he misleading her with other information? 

SEASON 3, EPISODE 7: First Principles

DATE: December 1992

FLASHBACKS:

 Clarice – Clarice discussed first principles with Hannibal Lecter

 ARTWORK FEATURED:

Venus of Urbino by Titian

The Sacrifice of Isaac by Caravaggio

Cache of Lesser works, numerous small sketches, and small bronzes

 NOTES:

This episode is inspired by several instances in which museums tend to not report thefts of paintings because it will cause problems with insurance, as well as alert the media to various flaws in their security, which could cause further theft.

Clarice’s team receives a tip from an anonymous Museum worker about a cache of paintings in a warehouse. They obtain a warrant and uncover a small group of paintings that have been stolen from museums around Italy.  But Strangely, none of the paintings have been reported missing.

Clarice’s first thought is that since none of the pieces have been reported missing, they may perhaps have been forged. She calls the museums and is told that each painting is still in the collection, but a few museums admit that their pieces are under restoration. Clarice is concerned perhaps the pieces were stolen during restoration, or perhaps that the pieces in the warehouse are forgeries.

They go to the warehouse together and it is confirmed that all of the paintings are authentic.  

Clarice then begins the tasks of going to each museum again.  Most of the curators are shocked to find their paintings missing from storage/conservation area, but one curator is a bit cagey. Clarice thinks perhaps he may hold a bit more information.

Eventually, it is uncovered that due to financial problems and looking at these expensive paintings day after day, the curator worked with docents in other museums to forge an agreement for people to look the other way, enabling the curator to amass a small collection of art that he could sell to the Mafia in order to pay his bills.

Clarice, still going through lists of problem students and expulsions from various schools, wonders if they may be holding back information, as they have led her nowhere.

SEASON 3, EPISODE 8: Finishing the Arch

DATE: January 1993

FLASHBACKS:

Clarice - Dr.Lecter tells Clarice to look for rejections from several hospitals for her candidates for Buffalo Bill.

ARTWORK FEATURED:

The Baldin Collection  with works by Dürer, van Gogh, Manet, Rembrandt, Rubens, Titian

NOTES:

 This episode is inspired by the real-life Baldin Collection, a collection of 364 masterpieces taken from Germany to the Soviet Union by Soviet Army officer Victor Baldin during the end of WWII. The paintings came from a cache of pieces stored in Brandeburg castle to protect them from air raids.  The pieces Baldin took were hidden for a year, but in 1991 the collection was moved to the Hermitage and the existence of the collection was declassified and revealed to the world in 1992. It remains there to this day…but at the time, there was a great deal of discussion (there certainly still is a discussion) about what should be done.  The works were stolen…but they were also saved from destruction.  And, do Baldin’s credit, he did appeal to soviet leaders to return them to Germany, proving that he really did take them only for their protection.  Boris Yeltsin agreed to return the works, but subsequent Russian governments overturned the confirmation.

Our story takes place in the midst of that Government discussion. Should paintings be returned to Germany or stay in Russia? If returned to Germany, should they be put into a museum, or should the individuals who owned the paintings get them? How should it be handled politically, monetarily, etc?  

Clarice and Ardelia look over the collection and assess the situation – what pieces belong to people, and what pieces would be harder to find their owner (owners being dead). They go to the Russian Government, where there is much back and forth.

Eventually, Clarice and Ardelia go to speak with Victor Baldin and he tells them about taking the paintings and his motivations. They get to talking about paintings and the war and Hitler. Baldin remarks about Hitler loving art and wanting to be an artist. He wonders if perhaps Hitler had not been rejected from art school if instead of becoming Chancellor and bringing war, he might instead have been sitting in a field painting.

This gets Clarice thinking. She begins to think about her past cases, murderers and rejection from society, etc, She realizes suddenly that Il Monstro is clearly an artist…he has the skill, but no major issues have been noted with most students. No major behavioral issues she can link to all the murders. Clarice realizes suddenly he wasn’t a student – that he was rejected from an art school and that he is picking off, one by one those that rejected his application. She heads back to Europe before Il Monstro kills again.

January 15, 1993, Toto Riina, a fugitive of the Mafia is finally arrested after 23 years. Over the upcoming year, the Mafia will begin to retaliate with a series of terrorist attacks. This would be on the news as well as be something that the Italian police are busy with. It is also important to note in this episode, as it ties in with the Uffizi bombing later in the season.

SEASON 3, EPISODE 9: The Museum of Atrocities

DATE: February 1993 FLASHBACKS:

Crawford - Crawford is harassed by a doctor about him trying to get information on a patient

ARTWORK FEATURED:

Various Medieval torture instruments

NOTES:

Clarice heads back to Italy, aware that Il Monstro is killing people associated with his rejection from school.  She needs a list of rejected students from various art schools, but that list will be even bigger than the current lists of problem students and expulsions. She looks again at the deaths. One person was on the Belle Arti Commission, but the others were not. She looks deeper into their profiles and finds that they WERE on the board at one point in their life. 

Now Clarice knows that members of the Belle Arti Committee are targets. But not all of them. Just the ones on the board during the time of the rejection of the student in question. She needs to find the time period when all of Il Monstro’s victims served on the board together, and then get a list of students they rejected during that time.

The Belle Arti is hesitant to give Clarice such a list.  They could cooperate with giving a list of problem students and expulsions because they had been students and had signed paperwork that allowed the school to give their information in the event of an emergency, legal case, etc. People who had never been students in the first place had not signed anything, and thus revealing their info was more problematic.

January 20 – Bill Clinton is sworn in as the 42nd President of the United States.

Hannibal Lecter sees Mason's miniature Guillotine on display and flashes back to Mason showing him is "toys” - specifically Mason’s portable guillotine. It is this memory that causes Hannibal Lecter to realize who has sold him out and who, aside from the F.B.I. is hunting him.

Hannibal Lecter is very aware of Pazzi following him around Florence. He sees him at the torture exhibit and is aware of him as he continues to do his shopping.

Once another member of the Belle Arti Committee becomes a victim of Il Monstro, the school begins to reconsider and gives Clarice the list she needs.

SEASON 3, EPISODE 10: Carnevale di Venezia

DATE: February 23, 1993 FLASHBACKS:

Clarice – Lecter saying that they are a week into Lent.

Hannibal - Hannibal makes his own handcuff key

Hannibal - Hannibal escapes custody wearing Pembry’s Face

ARTWORK FEATURED:

Al Thani Jewels – Jewel Covered Dagger

 Al Thani Jewels – Gold Brooch

Al Thani Jewels – Pair of earrings

NOTES:

This episode is heavily inspired by the 2018 theft of Jewels from the Dodge’s Palace in Venice. The jewels were from the “Treasures of the Mughals and Maharajas” showcasing almost 300 gems and jewels from the private collection of Hamad bin Abdullah Al Thani of the royal family of Qatar.

The thieves nabbed several pieces of jewelry and then blended in with the rest of the crowd in St.Mark’s square.

This episode keeps the basic concept but places the event earlier in the month during Carnivale.

The theft is quickly discovered and Clarice and Johnny happen to be in the area and immediately try to find the culprit. Of course, the problem is nearly everyone is wearing a mask.

SEASON 3, EPISODE 11: The Second Moment of Creation

DATE: March 1993

FLASHBACKS:

Crawford – Crawford gives Clarice a fake offer to give to Lecter

Clarice – Lecter confronts Clarice on her fake offer

ARTWORK FEATURED:

The Birth of Venus by Botticelli 

NOTES:

The title refers to the role that art plays in the world. That the world was created, but the second moment of creation is when made created art. It is a very human thing. We have art at our cores.

The episode is inspired by the fact that sometimes when a museum has to move a very important piece, they will use a decoy mover or multiple movers so that nobody knows which one is the real painting.

It is also inspired by a painting by Francisco de Goya from 1778 called Children with a Cart that was stolen while en route from Ohio to the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Its value was $1.1 million. 

A priceless painting is being moved from the Uffizi going to be displayed in America. But it’s front-page news, 

Clarice goes to one of the forgers she has put into jail. Crawford has told her that she can offer him privileges if he works with them. This is a lie, but Clarice does not know it. She tells the forger that she will help him get out faster and he will have more access to phone calls, better food, etc if he will paint for her three duplicates of the painting being transferred. He agrees.

Three forgeries are created and the real piece, plus the forgery are crated and sent in different directions around Florence.

Johnny and Pazzi have drinks together and talk about their time at Quantico. Pazzi gets drunk enough that he lets slip some information about his plans to capture Dr.Fell who he believes to be Dr.Lecter.  He does not remember telling Johnny this the next day.  Johnny at first believes this to just be silly drunken ideas…but when he begins to think about it over the next few days he realizes that it is the truth. Once he understands this, he realizes that Clarice – who had interviewed Lecter – would know Lecter if she saw him, and thus must be fully aware of the fact that the man she has been in contact with on and off for the last few years is really Doctor Lecter.  Worse still…Last season Johnny realized that Clarice was in love with Dr.Fell, and realizes that this means she is in love with Lecter.  He suspects her love is what keeps her from turning him in.  He thinks about turning Lecter in immediately, but he realizes since Clarice is aware of Lecter, that ultimately she would get in a lot of trouble as well if Lecter were caught.  He ponders what to do, unsure just what to think.

Once the painting is safely in America, Crawford lets the forger know that he was duped by Clarice. Furious, he has his men on the outside plot revenge on her.

March 8 – The Moon moves into its nearest point to Earth, called perigee, at the same time as its fullest phase of the Lunar Cycle. The Moon appears to be 14% bigger and 30% brighter than the year's other full moons. The next time these two events coincided will be 2008

March 16- British fashion designer Alexander McQueen shows his first collection, partly inspired by The Silence of the Lambs film. Obviously, the film does not exist in this universe - HOWEVER - Clarice is shown looking at a Vogue spread featuring a couple of the pieces from the collection.

SEASON 3, EPISODE 12: Art and Artifice

DATE: April 1993

ARTWORK FEATURED:

Light and Colour  by J. M. W. Turner

Shade and Darkness by J. M. W. Turner

Nebelschwaden by Caspar David Friedrich

NOTES:

This episode is heavily influenced by the Frankfurt Art Theft of 1994, when three paintings were stolen from a German Gallery. 2 of the paintings were on loan from the Tate museum. The Tate museum devised a plan – Operation Cobalt – to buy back the paintings from the Mafia with the insurance money they had received from the theft. They would up actually making a profit!

Several pieces of art go missing from a gallery in Italy. It is believed to be at the hands of the Mafia. Clarice manages to find out who they think stole the paintings and poses as Elizabeth Chase in an effort to “buy” them for an interested client. She has the insurance money for the Mafia to see – so they know she is for real.  It is, of course, a ruse and several members of the Mafia are taken to jail.  They threaten revenge on Clarice.

Ardelia wonders if the FBI can use members of the Belle Arti to lure Il Monstro into attacking and essentially ambush him.

Jonny, having discovered that Dr.Fell is Hannibal Lecter wonders if he should confront Clarice about that fact, but he is not entirely sure how to do so.

April 19 – Waco siege: A 51-day standoff at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas ends with a fire that kills 76 people, including David Koresh.  This would be big news in the background of the episode, especially for the F.B.I teams.  Several of Crawford’s men are required to head back home.

SEASON 3, EPISODE 13: Violent Delights

DATE: May 1993

ARTWORK FEATURED:

 Adoration of the Shepherds by Gerard van Honthorst

 Birth of Christ by Gherardo Delle Notti

 Dispute with the Doctors by Manfredi

 Death of Adonis by Sebastiano del Piombo

Piramo and Tisbe by Gregorio Pagani

Disbelief of St.Thomas, school of Caravaggio

NOTES:

27 May – Via dei Georgofili Massacre: A car bomb planted outside the Uffizi Gallery in Florence by the Mafia kills five people and irretrievably destroying several pieces of art and badly damaging many others. This episode is heavily influenced by this event.

While it first appears that the bombing is in retaliation for the passing of a new measure in prison that greatly limited freedoms of prisoners based on their crime. It applied heavily to imprisoned Mafia members and freed Mafia members retaliated.

This episode explores the fact that while the law is stated reason for the bombing, the choice of the Uffizi has to do with the police participating in the fake sale of art in order to lure in the Mafia and imprison some of its members.

Clarice has made her name in the city for being disruptive in the art world. The Mafia has noticed her and Il Monstro has noticed her as well. We see a scene of a Mafia boss and Il Monstro meeting. We do not see Il Monstro – just the back of his shoulder. The Mafia boss asks if he would be amenable to taking care of Clarice – for which he will be adequately compensated. Il Monstro agrees.

Dr.Fell lectures to the Studiolo on Dante’s Infero. He discusses Pazzi and Judas Iscariot, who both died by hanging. The Studiolo considers the lecture to be a resounding success,

Pazzi meets Dr.Fell as he leaves the lecture. Once only the two of them remain, Lecter shows Pazzi a slide he forgot – a slide of his ancestor hanging. He chloroforms Pazzi. Pazzi wakes, tied up, his mouth taped. Lecter asks him if it was Mason Verger he sold Lecter to and Pazzi confirms that it was. Pazzi tries to negotiate – he will have Laura bring money. Lecter says he doesn’t need the money and begins to make a hangman’s noose from an extension cord. He puts the noose around Pazzi’s neck, slits open Pazzi’s bowels and throws Pazzi off the balcony before quickly escaping.

SEASON 3, EPISODE 14: Accademia di Belle Arti

DATE: June 1993

ARTWORK FEATURED:

San Bernardino alle Ossa, Ossuary of Bones

Visconti Coat of Arms in Milan

NOTES:

A list with Il Monstro's victim's surfaces and it confirms to Clarice that indeed he is killing men from the board of the Art School that he was rejected from - the Belle Arti.

Clarice’s own name has been added to the list at the bottom, Il Monstro knowing that she is out and about looking for him.  The FBI insists she keeps a low profile for a little while. She books a B&B in the country, but just before she leaves, a note from the Doctor arrives, and she chooses to go to that address instead. He has a villa outside of town he has rented for a little while and assures Clarice its owners met no foul end. For a week they talk, drink, eat, laugh, and mostly try to solve the Il Monstro Case, going over the evidence. The various board members have come and gone over the years, and so the board member kills look random - until the comparison of their years on the boards is compared. From there, they determine the years in which all of the dead board members were active. Once they narrow down the years, then they are able to look through a list of rejections given by that board. It’s not a small list, and they must cull through it as well. As Clarice works alongside Lecter on this, she is also calling her team back in town and “offering suggestions” in the hopes that they come to the same conclusions she is. Clarice and Lecter, as well as Clarice’s team ultimately come up with two names - but one of those people is dead - so it narrows it down to one. The problem now is finding where that person is...

Over the week with Lecter, there is a lot of discussion about Clarice’s father. When searching for the killer, Hannibal asks her "Isn't this what you wanted? To be back to the chase?” She says she is no longer sure. They talk more about her father and the lambs, and Hannibal Lecter shows her the Ossuary of Bones in San Bernardino alle Ossa. He tells her that her father is just like these bones - this is what time has reduced him to. Her father cannot judge her, that she doesn't have to fight crime because she thinks it will make him proud - he already is proud. She doesn't have to fight crime to bring him back - he will never come back. She must make peace with that. He tells her father is not a saint, to which she replies "Neither am I." which shocks Hannibal, as he has idealized her for quite some time.

She says he once accused her of forgetting who he is, what he is, what he is capable of.  She looks at him and says she hasn't forgotten, she doesn't care. They kiss and are about to go to bed together when the phone rings, and it is The Art Crime Team and the Behavioral Science team saying they have a location on Il Monstro - they are going in.  Clarice says she is on her way and leaves Hannibal Lecter to his thoughts.

SEASON 3, EPISODE 15: A Pound of Flesh

DATE: June 1993 FLASHBACKS:

Crawford - Crawford and his team surround the home of the suspected  Buffalo Bill, breaking down the door.

Crawford - The home Crawford and his team enter winds up being incorrect, and Crawford realizes that Clarice may be in grave danger.

Clarice - Clarice investigates James Gumb, knocking on his door. She soon finds he is Buffalo Bill, and he escapes into his basement, where she quickly follows.

Clarice - Clarice and Jame Gumb stumble about his basement, and she ultimately shoots and kills him.

Clarice - Clarice is on the front page of many newspapers for having killed Buffalo Bill.  She receives a letter from Hannibal Lecter.

ARTWORK FEATURED:

Perseus and Andromeda by Titian, The Wallace Collection in London

Various sculptures and pieces of glass in Il Monstro’s studio

NOTES:

The title of the episode is a famous phrase from The Merchant of Venice. 

Clarice has been notified that her team is closing in on Il Monstro and she drives from the country to meet her team.  Unfortunately, when Clarice’s team and Crawford’s team reach Il Monstro’s location, they quickly find that the name they have is wrong. After a moment of realization, Jack Crawford understands that Clarice is in great danger.

Driving in the country, Clarice is abducted by Il Monstro.

Scenes of Clarice’s team being led to the wrong location, only to have Clarice abducted are interspersed with flashbacks of the Buffalo Bill Case when Jack Crawford accidentally send Clarice to Buffalo Bill while they chase a lead that winds up not being the right location. 

Il Monstro takes Clarice to Venice. He has a small art studio - far away and secluded - along with glass blowing supplies. He reveals that his name is Franceso Grandin, but that he has been living under an alias.

He considers what he will do with her. He threatens her with molten glass at the end of a pole. How to kill her - and how to pose her?  What piece of art does she inspire?  He ultimately decides he will drown her in the narrow canal just outside of his studio. Will she be Andromeda? Maybe Ophelia? He decides instead she will be The Drowned Martyr. 

As he is speaking, Hannibal Lecter manages to find his way to Clarice. He was not far behind her when she was abducted, and followed Francesco the whole way. He tells Clarice this, but we do not SEE it happen, as this scene should be suspenseful - we should not know Hannibal is going to rescue her.

Francesco and Hannibal fight, and Francesco manages to burn Hannibal’s arm with molten glass badly enough that he pauses for a few seconds - long enough for Il Monstro to pin him down.  Tied up, Clarice and Hannibal cannot do much, but Hannibal slowly begins to work on getting out of his bonds.

Francesco leaves Hannibal and goes back to Clarice. He drags her outside and she screams, more concerned for Hannibal than herself. She struggles the entire time but is gagged and thus cannot make much noise. Her ankles and wrists are bound and she is thrown into the Canal. She struggles with her bonds.

Back in the studio, Francesco speaks to Hannibal, and much like he did with Clarice considers how he should kill and display Hannibal. “You don’t know who I am, do you?” Hannibal asks him. When he Francesco moves close to Hannibal’s face, suddenly Hanniba’s hands come out from behind him - he had managed to come loose from his bonds. With a clay cutter from a table littered with sculptures, Hannibal Lecter slits Il Monstro’s neck as he advises Francesco that a monster should learn to recognize another monster.

Clarice continues to struggle with her bonds, having gotten her ankles free, but it is too late and she finally loses consciousness. Suddenly Lecter appears in the water beside her. He grabs her around the waist and brings her up to the surface.  He performs mouth to mouth, and Clarice vomits up some water but does not regain consciousness.

Knowing that police will soon arrive - both to deal with the commotion of his just having killed a man, as well as the F.B.I. coming in search of Clarice, Lecter carries Clarice to a small abandoned studio not far from the one they just left. 

He strips them of their wet clothes and holds her close to warm her. It’s May, and the water int he canal isn’t cold enough to make her hypothermic, but she is still cold, shaken and weak from having nearly drowned. He kisses her hands to warm them and realizes suddenly she’s regained consciousness. She is relieved to find that he is alive, and he kisses her forehead and tells her she’ll be alright. After kissing her forehead, he looks at her, overwhelmed and kisses her lips and she kisses him back. He pulls away after a moment, and she says “Don’t stop.” With three years of sexual frustration having pent up and the relief at finding one another alive, they make love.

Clarice wakes to the sound of sirens and helicopters. She sits up and looks around and finds that Hannibal Lecter is gone. She goes outside to find Johnny, Crawford, several other team members, and the Italian Police outside calling for her.

Clarice runs to Johnny and he expresses relief that she is alright. He tells her that after going to the wrong place, they knew she was in danger. With some quick thinking, they ultimately found Il Monstro’s studio and his body - his neck slit, but when they couldn’t find her, they feared the worst.  She is given credit for the kill.

Clarice is once again in the news - now mostly in Italy rather than America. Crawford assures her that he is going to do his best to get her on his team at Behavioral Science.

We see a flashback of Clarice just after the Buffalo Bill killing receiving a letter from Hannibal Lecter.  We then see her going through her mail in the present day. We can tell she is expecting a letter from Lecter. We see her disappointment when there isn’t one.

CREDIT: “It’s Art that Kills Us” poster uses an edited and cropped photograph by Tommy Liddel.

[perreosolx]

Very saddened to finally realize that gerard probably just played with Bert frank and lynz’s feelings but also I cannot judge him and I even understand why he did it at some extent because I’ve literally done that to people too I think of it as not wanting/being ready to come out because maybe he doesn’t even really know for sure his own business so HOW would he explain it?? WHAT would he say?? I totally get that because I am in that territory myself, I haven’t come out to anyone really I mean I told a friend that i liked a girl a long time ago and she kinda did change her behavior around me ever since so that’s why I’ve been so reluctant to really really take that step plus I’m not sure about my gender AT ALL so that’s another thing, and based on my overall background regarding sexuality and gender I’ve never had like an official, serious, fr fr queer relationship, yeah I had that long distance entirely online thing with a girl when I was a teen and I’ve had one time flings but I haven’t been able to bring myself to take the bull by horns or whatever because a serious relationship would require actually going out in public places and introducing my friends and family and I just CAN’T I have SO MUCH to lose and I’m TERRIFIED so my guessing is that there’s a possibility that gerard feels a similar way, like ok maybe not because he’s gonna get thrown out of his parents house but maybe because he really didn’t want to come out and then be forever labeled as The Gay Singer from that band and thus have mcr become a Gay Band because you KNOW that’s exactly what the media would’ve done and honestly it just doesn’t seem fair for everyone else in the band, like I’m sure they probably wouldn’t really give a fuck to be called f*gs or stuff like that but the world just wouldn’t have taken their work as seriously as they have done and still do and they wouldn’t have had the success they did even if they just did the exact same fucking music because like it or not the world STILL is homophobic. Where I think he really really fucked up for no reason tho, was in not telling his own friends this, I really feel like he neve explained this to anyone like maybe MAYBE Mikey but who knows tbh? I feel like he just led both Bert and Frank on and when they wanted the whole deal, go public or something, he just cut them out of his life like some fuckboy, which is why Bert is Still Hurt to this day and why Frank wrote all that angry poetry, and ok I’m gonna allow myself to be annoying for a second here, those two? Doubtlessly in love, man. I honestly feel very strongly about this because looking at them, their interactions, Frank’s poems, their songs, just everything.... it reminds me of me and the girl I first fell in love with, this girl that ALSO played with my teenage confusion and led me on for years on end until I just Had to cut her out because it simply wasn’t letting me live my life, always waiting for her while she was away doing things and people I always had to find out from thirds, this awful feeling when she was away from me and then this divine feeling when we were together, this is what they remind me of. Frank’s longing and Gerard’s indecision. And after letting her go I just went back to dating men and presenting myself as a woman and it was fucking awful, everything about it felt Wrong until I found this boy, this beautiful man that is super artsy, constantly in touch with his femininity, unable to hurt a fly, so soft and funny and pure and wholesome and basically made of rainbows, you know...... like a girl. We’re engaged. But I always end up wondering, am I gonna marry him because I am in love with him or because he’s the closest thing to a girl I’m ever gonna allow my coward self to tie the knot with? It’s a thought that haunts me, because I really don’t know. Which then reminds me, wouldn’t you say Lindsey is a little masculine? With the tattoos and the style and the way she just carries herself with that ugly confidence only a heterosexual man can have? Her fingers must feel rough, I’m sure.

[harveywritings92]

The Path to Isolation: Genji Shimada x OC

Summary:  It all started when she arrived at the Shimada Castle... an arranged marriage, A fake relation ship...And did that hussy seriously just call him Genjikins?! Anri was only was only eight when her grandfather left her in the care the Shimadas so that one day she'll marry Genji, Too bad pompous carrot ninja has his head shoved so far up his own ass he's having a hard time seeing her.

____________________________________________________

The following is a non profit fan based story,  Overwatch belongs to Blizzard Entertainment .

please support the official release.

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I gain no profit from this nor do I own anything other then OCs  and whatever sprouts from my imagination. Thanks for reading!

[Note not related to Bed Fellows!]

                                         -Prologue/Timeline chapter.- 

(It all started when she arrived at the Shimada house a little girl no older then eight was wandering around the garden, this place was huge! the little raven haired girl stared in awe at the tall buildings and dragon statues around the place when she bumped into someone.

she fell to the ground and look up and saw an boy around the same age looking a her confused, "Hm? who are you?" he asked pulling her up in one tug "I'm Anri, Anri Townsend." the older boy blinked before bursting out laugh, as she watched him befuddled "what's so funny?" she huffed.

"Your last name is weird!~"

"Is not!"

"is too~ Towzendo it's weird."

"well what's your name?"

Anri pouted crossing her arms before the boy could answer: an enrage voice yelled "GENJI!!! Where the hell are you?!?!" both kids jumped at the angry shout as Genji grabbed Anri hand and hid the two of them in the bushes.

They watched an older boy with pink hair came stomping out of the main house, looking around frantically "Whose that?" Anri asked watching the enraged tween rush around the garden checking anywhere a small kid could hide. "My big brother Hanzo." he said holding back a giggle Anri looked between to two curiously "Oh...why's his hair pink?"

Genji went to explain how he snuck into his brother's bathroom and switched his shampoo with hair dye. only, for his brother to find them "There you little brat!" Hanzo screeched then froze when he saw Anri who was hiding behind Genji."who the hell are you?" he snarled before the honey eyed girl could answer, the older boy grabbed her wrist and dragged her and Genji to his father.

"Father Genji turned my hair pink and brought some urchin inside!" he yelled as his father gawked at his eldest appearance, his lips twitched like he wanted to laugh but, covered it up by clearing his throat. We'll discuss this later, right now I'd like to introduce you to Kurenai-san." Anri perked up at the mention of her grandfather the girl wiggled out of Hanzo's hold and ran up to the frail man hugging his leg, the old man patted her head as he looked down at his granddaughter sadly.

the Shimada brothers stared at them curiously as their father spoke up "We were discussing some personal matters." Hanzo and Genji shifted uncomfortably before bowing "R-right then we'll leave the you two... uh three alone." before either of them could step outside Their father stopped them.

"No, stay these matters involve Genji as much as it involves you."

"What, sort of matters?" Hanzo asked brow creasing as he tried to make sense of the situation, while Genji seemed distracted by Anri playing with some thread her grandpa gave her.

"Well Kurenai and I have been talking since the unfortunate deaths of his daughter and son -in law, how his health has been declining the last couple months...and we've come to an agreement."

"What agreement?"Hanzo asked looking at the older man sitting next to his father watching his granddaughter play cat's cradle Genji seemed to want to play with her too. but, was scared his dad would yell at him, then his father said something that would changed the brother's life forever

..."Anri is Going to be living here from now on, and when she and Genji are older they going to get married." Genji blanched as did Anri "What do you mean I gotta marry this weirdo!?" the younger Shimada yelled pointing at Anri who looked at her grandfather with shock and betrayal. "What is that uncle talking about?"

She looked up at her grandfather who just silently stood up, and started walking out of the main house with Anri following. only, for one of the maids to stop her and hold her back as she tried reaching for her grandpa who didn't even look back.

Later that night Genji woke up to use the toilet when he went back to his room he heard soft sound of someone weeping, he followed the sound found himself in front of Anri's room; cautiously he peeked inside and saw a small mass shaking under a blanket,frowning the ten year old walked over to the bed shook the younger girl who looked out from under the her blanket.

"What do you want?" she sniffled as Genji grimaced at her broken tone."I'm Sick of hearing you crying...move over." he ordered Anri looked at him apprehensively before doing what she was told as Genji got into bed with her and pulled her close to him, "You don't need to cry as long as I'm around." he said tiredly as Anri sniffled.

"So just calm down and get some sleep, Okay?"  the younger girl wiped her eyes nodded "Thanks Genji..." From that day Anri and Genji were inseparable, often seen playing together or pranking Hanzo or hanging out at school. Considering a lot of kids were wary of approaching Genji due to his family's status, the honey eyed girl a was godsend for the young Shimada his first real friend and crush.

But, then middle school started things just sort of changed; girls started noticing Genji. but not for his kindness and good heart. but for his money and good looks he grew arrogant and so spoiled, that soon he was barely home during the night, Anri only ever saw him at school and the times he was home, She and Hanzo had to listen to him lie through his teeth at what flavor of the week he was two timing on. that was his only girl, completely ignoring the fact that he had a fiancee.

A girl who looked way too plain to be one of Genji's girl apparently. See Anri had grown into good looking and confident young lady. But instead of showing it off? She chose to lay low be an ugly duckling, she grew out her hair and tied in braids wore large framed glasses that hides most of her face, and wore plain and modest clothes, She was often labeled as creepy otaku, mother goose or a nerd girl. there was no way someone like her would be Genji's fiancee.

A fiancee that his ex girlfriends or their other girl's boyfriends would torment because they were angry at him for cheating and or stealing their girlfriends, and what really dug the knife in deep in Anri's chest  is when Genji started joining them in the bullying as well, half joined if it got too violent he'd step in immediately tell them she's not worth it.

It went too far once when a girl who Genji was seeing at the back in fist year, pushed Anri into oncoming traffic much to her groupies horror; they just thought their leader wanted to scare Anri not kill her, luckily Genji pulled her out the road seconds before truck ran her over and that incident was just because his friends saw them walking together.

Afterward Genji just stop interacting Anri completely, he stayed in his lane and she stayed in hers. A least she would be if Genji hadn't been sitting next to her this semester she had to deal random glitter being blown on to her desk, the smell of cheap perfumes and hushed giggling of his Ho squad.

 Anri also had to endure Trash and balls of paper being thrown at her and has been sat on at least twice today; because they weren't paying attention or were just so oblivious to her presence, The second she asked them to get off, the person would jump from shock then she'd get laughed at for being a ghost.

Anri would just grumble something and leave to be with her friends which consisted of Takumi, Mikoto and Mayuki...

Takumi and Anri have been friends since elementary after she beat up a bunch of older boys for bullying him, Genji was reluctant at first of letting the bushy haired boy hang out with them, but allowed it because "hey someone who not afraid of my family wants to be my friend!" that was until the second year of middle-School,

 when she and Takumi announced they were dating, Genji treated the timid boy coldly and avoided them like the plague at school, Only Hanzo knew of Anri's reasons for dating Takumi and was appalled at his younger brother's behavior; he had no right to be upset! considering he's actively cheating on Anri almost every other week!

See, to outsiders Anri and Takumi looked like the awkward high school couple you pass by and not spare a second glance at, But in reality Takumi was dating Mikoto the popular good looking captain of the boys basketball team, He was in Genji's group of friends before dating Takumi and befriending Anri, They've been dating for two years and Takumi's family didn't know that he was gay.

Takumi's parents are a very bias sort and were starting to get suspicious,paranoid and accusatory toward his lack of attraction towards women, So in spur of anger he stole Anri's first kiss by kissing her right then and there! in front of his parents; much the poor girl's shock!

 then awkwardly apologized while walking her home and told her about his crush on Mikoto and how his family will throw him out if they found out. "Not if you're dating me they won't." The honey eyed girl said pulling the bushy haired boy into a hug and so began their fake romance.

Not long after Mikoto came around; told Takumi he liked him and the two started dating in secret that's how he became Anri's second friend. Then there was Mayuki she's bottle blond and a bit of an airhead, she use to have a crush on Mikoto, and when she saw him hanging around with the nerd girl, she got jealous and started fooling around with Genji in an attempt to make the handsome basketball captain jealous.

He never spared her a glance, finally she decided to confront him only to walk in on Mikoto making out with Takumi in one of the club rooms much to her shock, the fake blond fainted, and later woke up in the nurse's office; where the couple awkwardly explained their situation to her and Anri threatened to mail Mayuki to Antarcti.ca if she told anyone.

Mayuki soon became fast friends with the trio. she is Anri's only female friend who isn't using her to get Genji, seeing as Mayuki knows how the carrot boy lives his life and wants nothing more to do with that train wreck, But during their brief relationship.

She couldn't help but noticed how the young Shimada's eyes would always seem to wander and linger on a short raven haired girl's direction, when he thought no one else was watching,...Which tipped Mayuki off that there was something going behind the scenes with Anri and Genji...But clearly neither wanted address it.

[aliceliddellsmirror]

@gatorfisch​   Okay I’m going to try to remember all the pieces of facts that led me to my conclusion... 1- Watch on Netflix the doc about the Yorkshire Ripper. Basically he had been active long before the first official death (he both killed, and attacked some who survived), he was at first referred to as a killer of hookers, although his first few victims labelled as hookers had no proof they were... they were just poor. But some WERE probably hookers, which means the Yorkshire UK cops didn’t give a fuck until they couldn’t hide it anymore (he didn’t just attack poor, he went after everyone). There are 4 episodes or so in this limited series on YR, and it will show you just how deeply even the UK cops don’t care about vulnerable people being killed b/c guess what! The mayors and city councils don’t like to be known for having an active serial killer in the area. Fucks up tourism. 

2- A youtube channel called Soft White Underbelly. He goes to places like Skid Row, and pays the people he finds willing to be interviewed about their lives. 2 separate interviews with 2 hookers, one had survived a single serial killer attacked, the other had survived 2 (TWO!!) serial killers. All 3 were different men. One of the hookers is asked how many serial killers are preying on the vulnerable in LA-- she said thousands. Without hesitating, she oh there’s thousands. I’m sure a skid row hooker is going to give a more honest answer than anyone associated with LAPD or LA city government... they REALLY don’t want people knowing just how many killers are active in that city, at this moment. Fucks up tourism. 

3- I’m currently watching Mindhunter on Netflix, about how the FBI created their Behavior Science division, ie serial killer hunters, and it’s currently on the section about the Atlanta child murders. I don’t remember the number, but many children were abducted and murdered, and then a bunch of older people were killed around the same time. FBI guys were sure this was a child serial killer for the kids, and 2-3 different killers for the adult victims. All victims were poor and/or black. The city refused to even look into it until they couldn’t hide it anymore. Fucks up tourism. 

4- I guess if you just consume a lot of media on serial killers like I do.. eventually, you ARE going to see this same pattern. Many serial killers go their whole lives never getting caught, b/c they take vulnerable people, which includes sex workers, addicts, homeless, and indigineous women (US and Canada). They don’t really like to investigate these as serial killings, and really only do if someone from the public stumbles across a body, or someone is killed who has family to advocate for them. That’s literally the only reason we know about most of the ones who HAVE been caught. Cops are told by their superiors there is no reason to investigate, city mayors and councils get upset at the idea of a serial killer active there being known, this has been going on since the original Jack the Ripper. Longer, of course, but before then serial killers could hide their crimes much easier than in 20-21st century. No one wants to say they have an active serial killer in their city. Fucks up tourism. 

Obviously this is all stuff you will have to look into yourself for anyone who thinks I’m off base on the thousands-tens of thousands number of currently active serial killers, but I am convinced that is the number range. No one investigating hundreds of thousands of murders over the course of 70 years or so, unless one pops up they can’t hide (think Son of Sam or Nightstalker, both were too bold to ignore and their victims were random and not vulnerable- hence coverage). But I am convinced, 100%, that the number 150 or so active SKs is WAY off base. The authorities don’t give a fuck about poor people and they really don’t like sex workers. They literally just declare every murdered woman or young man with no firm familial ties as a sex worker, and shut the case. Then bodies pile up.

We have one here in Asheville, NC. A cop who was dating a friend of mine told me about it, like 13 years ago, I would never have known otherwise. Still active, although likely a different one than the serial killer/s we have in our National Parks up here. These mountains make for easy hiding. 

[livinginlandmarketing]

Even as the House of Representatives laid the groundwork Monday for a second impeachment of President Donald Trump, one of his supporters, Jessica Martinez, took heavy political fire 3,000 miles away in her role as a member the Whittier City Council.

Martinez was in Washington D.C. last week when Trump supporters broke into the U.S. Capitol in the hope of upending the recent presidential election. Now, many in the city of 86,000 want her to step down from the council.

She’s hardly alone. From local teachers to attorneys to students to business owners, people from all parts of Southern California who attended the D.C. insurrection — some as participants in the breach of the Capitol buildings, some as instigators of the violence that left five people dead, and others, like Martinez, who say they were on hand simply to express an opinion — are facing a swarm of public shaming.

“As Americans, we have the right to free speech as long it’s exercised peacefully,” Martinez said Friday, as she condemned the violence. “That’s what I was doing.”

But as locals react to Internet evidence of who did what during the insurrection, a debate is emerging over free speech rights, their limits, and their consequences.

Exposed

Like the insurrection itself — shown live on television and re-shown by many participants on social media video — the consequences of having a role in taking over the Capitol are playing out in public.

At least 161 faculty members and trustees at Chapman University in Orange have signed a publicly circulated petition calling for the removal of law professor John Eastman. They say Eastman, who spoke to the marchers before they broached the Capitol, helped to incite the violence.

In Los Angeles, a Cal State Northridge student, James McMillan, drew focus in the college paper, The Sun Dial, which reported his “Storm Congress, baby!” posted to social media outside the Capitol.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by CSUN Department of Meme-ology (@csun_memeology)

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In the Inland Empire, Jim Riley, owner of Riley’s Farm, drew a “false information” warning from Facebook over his posting “What I Saw at the Insurrection.” By late Monday, the Oak Glen company’s page was at risk of being unpublished.

Related links

Southern California Republicans face reckoning after insurrection in D.C.

Huntington Beach far-right activist contrite after fiery video about Capitol attack goes viral

Photos: Pro-Trump mob breaks into the House Chamber at U.S. Capitol

Sources: Democrats will pursue impeachment on Monday

In south Orange County, elementary school teacher Kristine Hostetter is facing an investigation by officials at Capistrano Unified School District after parents flooded district offices with complaints that she’d been seen in social media posts marching toward the Capitol with people who said they were planning to storm the building. Hostetter didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Also in Orange County, a Huntington Beach hairdresser and conservative activist said he felt threatened after publicly praising the insurrectionists as “patriots.”

On Monday, some who were in D.C. were trying to distance themselves from the event.

On the day of the insurrection, Jan. 6, Michelle Stauder Peterson, the lead organizer for the Huntington Beach chapter of the “Recall Gavin Newsom” effort, posted a video on Facebook showing herself and a friend joining a crush of protesters entering a door into the U.S. Capitol. Her video captures people yelling expletives at police officers who are trying to hold back the mob.

But within hours of sharing the video, Peterson, a tax preparer, took it down and also apparently deleted her Facebook account.

Reached by phone, Peterson said, “I have no comment. Thank you.”

Others, however, remained strident.

Leigh Dundas, an Orange County attorney, delivered a speech to Trump supporters on Jan. 5, a day before the insurrection, telling the crowd that if Vice President Mike Pence didn’t vote to throw out Electoral College results Americans would have to choose to live as “slaves” or to “rise up” just as they did during the American Revolution.

“Any alleged American who acted in a turncoat fashion and sold us out and committed treason, we would be well without our rights to take ‘em out back and shoot ‘em or hang ‘em,” Dundas said in a video shared to her social media page.

Dundas — who made headlines over the summer for doxxing Orange County’s health officer Nichole Quick for implementing a mask mandate — could not be reached for comment on her involvement in last week’s event. But in another Facebook post, she said she was in the crowd outside the Capitol that got tear gassed. She also defended videos that showed her shouting profanities at Capitol Police, arguing that police were the aggressors and repeating the unfounded claim that outside agitators — not Trump supporters — were the actual participants in the Capitol building violence.

Speech protected; so is criticism

Legal experts say protesters who argue they shouldn’t be punished for expressing a political viewpoint are correct — up to a point.

“The First Amendment is broadly protective of speech, even if that speech is abhorrent to a majority of Americans,” said David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment coalition.

But, he added, the right doesn’t protect people from criticism or some forms of punishment.

“Just because people have the right to speak freely under the First Amendment, does not mean they are insulated from any criticisms of that speech, or any political consequences for engaging in that speech,” Snyder said.

Other experts pointed out that while protections for speech don’t extend to defamation and criminal behavior. However, they noted, speech alone can’t cause a person to lose their employment.

“If someone just wants to denounce someone somewhere, that’s an expression of their own First Amendment rights,” said Eugene Volokh, a free speech expert and law professor at UCLA. He pointed out that in California, like many other states, it’s illegal to fire someone for expressing political speech.

That’s the needle Whittier council member Martinez hopes to thread.

On Friday, after images emerged online showing her in D.C., she denounced the breach at the Capitol.

“I detest violence and the fact that people were hurt, injured and killed,” she said. “I think it’s horrible and that should never occur.”

Martinez, a Trump supporters who claims, without evidence, that the November election was hacked, added: “I wanted to stand as a citizen concerned about our election integrity and to ask them to review the evidence.”

But on social media, critics emerged.

“Nah, doesn’t work that way,” read one post on Twitter. “You posted on your social media pgs. You supported an insurrection against the government… you’re a traitor….”

Whittier Mayor Joe Vinatieri said that since Martinez didn’t take part in the violence at the Capitol building, there’s no reason for her to be removed from the City Council.

“Everyone has their First Amendment right to protest, whether you’re on the left of the right, that’s your right,” he said. “She chose to utilize her right.”

Others, however, suggest that participating in this particular protest — which ended America’s streak of handing over national power without violence — disqualifies people from holding a political position.

Democrats for Justice, a Whittier-based political group, said it has already gathered garnered more than 5,000 signatures calling for Martinez to be removed from office. The petition says Martinez was part of an “armed coup” and that she is a “domestic terrorist.”

Stakes are high

Marching into the Capitol building wasn’t speech, and people who participated in the protest in that fashion are starting to face criminal prosecution and public punishment. Reuters, among others, has reported that some who stormed the Capitol have been fired after their identities were publicized online.

Those punishments figure to expand.

On Monday, newly elected State Sen. Dave Min, D-Irvine, called for California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer to work with federal authorities to prosecute any local residents who were involved in the insurrection.

He also asked that they pursue criminal felony charges under California’s conspiracy law.

“It seems nearly certain that Californians, including some residing in Orange County and the 37th Senate District I represent, took part in the planning of these crimes,” Min said in the letter, citing media reports of locals involved in Wednesday’s events.

Min also asked for a private briefing on the status of state and local investigations into any role locals played in the insurrection.

Doubling down

Even in the face of video evidence, some who went to D.C. question news accounts of what happened. Like Martinez, they claim liberal agitators, not Trump supporters, were at the front edge of the violence.

“I hear NO stories of anyone actually making it to the house chamber, which leads me to believe that the people who actually got to the chamber were Antifa cowards waiting to do their thing,” wrote Riley, owner of the Riley’s Farm apple orchard, in a Facebook post that drew the label “false information.”

Riley, in an interview, said there was no excuse for the violence. And in his view, he added, Trump did not push for it.

“What he was doing was saying ‘be passionate about voter fraud,’” Riley said.

By Monday, in anticipation of being shut down by Facebook, Riley was referring followers to MeWe, another social networking site.

Eastman, once the dean of Chapman’s law school, before making an unsuccessful run for California Attorney General, decried violence and chalked up the unrest to a few bad apples. A day after the insurrection, Eastman said “it was a wonderful rally.”

Related Articles

FBI warns of armed protests later this week, next week

PGA pulls 2022 championship from Trump golf course

Read: House articles of impeachment against Donald Trump

‘Hang Mike Pence!’: Assault on U.S. Capitol a more sinister attack than first appeared

Capitol police were overrun, ‘left naked’ against rioters

Reporters Alicia Robinson and Susan Goulding contributed to this story.

-on January 11, 2021 at 11:17AM by Ryan Carter, Pierce Singgih, David Downey, Brooke Staggs

[curegbm]

The Great 5G Hype

David Rosen, CounterPunch, March 20, 2020

President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson share much in common – a similar appearance, a showman’s presence, conservative (if not racist) beliefs, a nationalist ideology, reputed extramarital affairs and support for Brexit. However, their mutual affection hit the wall in late January over 5G – “Fifth Generation” – broadband technology when the UK decided that it could work with the Chinese tech company, Huawei, as a supplier of 5G equipment as long as its market share did not exceed 35 percent.

The promise of 5G wireless service is significant, increasing connection speeds by tenfold over the current – “4G” – broadband service. Trump tweeted in February 2019, “I want 5G, and even 6G, technology in the United States as soon as possible. It is far more powerful, faster, and smarter than the current standard. American companies must step up their efforts, or get left behind. There is no reason that we should be lagging behind on………��

Trump claims that 5G is important to him and the country. In April 2019, he declared, “The race to 5G is on and we must win” and promised “my administration is freeing up as much wireless spectrum as is needed.” He then went on to claim, “It’s a race our great companies are now involved in.” Trump and others within his administration have warned that Huawei represents a national security threat, potentially enabling China to spy on the communications of American government agencies, businesses and citizens.

In light of the UK’s decision to work with Huawei, Trump was – according to the Financial Times — “apoplectic” and had a heated argument with Johnson, threatening to cut intelligence ties with the UK; Sec. of State Mike Pompeo quickly withdrew the threat.

The British decision raised great confusion within the Trump administration. In a major foreign policy speech on February 6th, Attorney General Bill Barr warned, “China has built up a lead in 5G, capturing 40 percent of the global 5G infrastructure market. For the first time in history, the United States in not leading the next technology era.” He then declared, “Huawei is now the leading supplier on every continent, except North America.  The United States does not have an equipment supplier.” Barr claims that China’s market share is 40 percent and its leading competitors are Nokia (17% share) and Ericsson (14% share). He then made a bold proposal: “Putting our large market and financial muscle behind one or both of these firms would make it a more formidable competitor and eliminate concerns over its staying power.”

Barr’s proposal freaked out the White House. The following day, key administration officials joined in a chorus to assail the proposal. Vice President Mike Pence appeared on CNBC insisting that “the best way forward” on 5G is through private enterprise, not government takeovers. He was quickly followed by Larry Kudlow, Trump’s economic adviser, who insisted that “the U.S. government is not in the business of buying companies, whether they’re domestic or foreign.”

A variety of federal agencies (including the NSA), corporations and politicians have put forward alternative strategies to address the nation’s lagging 5G status. Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) introduced legislation establishing a $1 billion fund for “Western-based alternatives to Chinese equipment providers Huawei and ZTE.”

Unfortunately, U.S. problems with regard to the deployment of 5G have far more to do with structural problems with the telecom industry – and the role of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) – then Huawei.

***

The Trump administration — led the by FCC — and the telecom companies are committed to the deployment of what has been labelled 5G. Media ads champion it as the greatest next new thing, an answer to all the nation’s communications problems. And all-too-many popular stories and industry reports fail to consider fundamental problems associated with its deployment – let alone whether it is the right long-term strategy for the nation’s tele-communications.

Unknown to most Americans, the U.S. is a second-tier communications country. A July 2019 report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) ranked the U.S. 15th of the 34 OECD countries in terms of broadband usage. More revealing, a December 2019 report from Speedtest Global Index found the average speeds for download and upload — for mobile and fixed services — for the top 25 countries were as follows:

+ Mobile – download 32.01 Mbps; upload 12.02 Mbps;

+ Fixed Broadband – download 73.58 Mbps; upload 40.39 Mbps.

The U.S.’s position is pretty bleak per data rate. For mobile, it didn’t make the top 25 countries assessed; for fixed broadband, it ranked 11th at 130.9 Mbps – Singapore ranked first at 200.12 Mbps.

Compounding this picture, Americans pay more for inferior services. A 2019 report in Forbes assessed 6,313 mobile data plans in 230 countries and found that Americans pay the most for a gigabyte of data. Fees ranged from $0.26 in India and $0.27 in Kyrgyzstan to $1.73 in Italian, $2.99 in France, $6.66 in the United Kingdom and $6.96 in Germany. Costs in North America were the highest, averaging $12.02 in Canada and $12.38 in the U.S.

These findings are in line with estimates from New Networks Institute which reports that American subscribers to a basic “Triple Play” or bundled package — i.e., Internet, TV and phone services – pay between $70-$155 a month, not counting add-ons. In Europe, the OCED estimates that (in 2017) the Triple Play – broadband bundle — “basic” service ran $44.77 a month and the “cheapest” was only $15 a month. Thus, U.S. bundle prices ranked the highest – often two to three times higher – than other OCED countries.

Two fundamental challenges face the further deployment of 5G in the States – health concerns related to 5G signals and towers, and FCC telecom industry financing. Together, they raise substantial questions as to the whether the country will ever climb out of its second-tier telecom status.

***

One question that haunts 5G deployment is whether it is safe. Questions as to the health consequences of cellular communications date from 1993 when some early users claimed that cell-phone radiation caused cancer. The cell-phone industry sponsored research that raised serious questions as to the technology’s safety, but the research was fudged so as to protect the industry.

In 2013 the American Academy of Pediatrics requested the FCC to investigate the potential risks of 5G and numerous local and state governments have raised concerns about mobile cell phone use. In December 2019, the FCC reported that it found no health problems related to the rollout of 5G wireless networks. It cited the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) assertions that there was no scientific evidence linking cellphones use to health problems. “No expert health agency expressed concern about the Commission’s RF [radio frequency] exposure limits,” an FCC staff wrote.

In the fall of 2019, Scientific American hosted an informal debate over 5G’s safety. In the first opinion piece, “We Have No Reason to Believe 5G Is Safe,” Joel Moskowitz, PhD, director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Family and Community Health, argued that the FCC’s 1996 report focused on radio frequency radiation (RFR) and the behavioral changes in rats “exposed to microwave radiation and were designed to protect us from “short-term heating risks to RFR exposure.” The author points out since the original FCC study, “the preponderance of peer-reviewed research, more than 500 studies, have found harmful biologic or health effects from exposure to RFR at intensities too low to cause significant heating.”

In a follow-up piece, “Don’t Fall Prey to Scaremongering about 5G,” David Robert Grimes, a cancer researcher and physicist based at Dublin City University, dismissed Moskowitz’s findings. “Many of the studies Moskowitz linked to are of poor quality, and more tellingly, at least one he listed flatly contradict his dire assertions,” he asserts. Going further, he draws from a World Health Organization report that finds “a large number of studies have been performed over the last two decades to assess whether mobile phones pose a potential health risk. To date, no adverse health effects have been established as being caused by mobile phone use.”

The academic debate over the health consequences of 5G deployment persists and is moving from scholarly duels to the courtroom. On February 2nd, Children’s Health Defense (CHD), led by Robert Kennedy, Jr., filed suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit against the FCC for its failure since 1996 to review its health guidelines and “to promulgate scientific, human evidence-based radio frequency emissions (‘RF’) rules that adequately protect public health from wireless technology radiation.”

CHD’s suit is based, in part, on a 2012 report by the General Accountability Office (GAO) that found that the then-existing guidelines may not more recent scientific and medical knowledge and recommended that the FCC formally reassess its guidelines. The FCC’s guidelines address only one aspect of potential harm from electromagnetic radiation — heat. The current guidelines do not address other ways in which exposure to increasing electromagnetic radiation from wireless communications can harm human health as well as the environmental systems upon which all life depends.

In its suit, CHD joined forces with the Irregulators, a group of “senior telecom experts, analysts, forensic auditors, and lawyers …,” including former FCC officials, who are challenging the FCC’s accounting practices. On January 17, 2020, they appeared before the U.S. District Court in Washington, DC, to argue that the FCC has facilitated one of the largest accounting scandals in American history.

On March 13, 2020, the DC Court of Appeals ruled on the case, providing an opportunity for states and cities across the country to bring cases against the nation’s telecommunications utilities. The Court formally dismissed the Irregulators case because “none of them possesses Article III standing.” However, the Court took the group’s concerns seriously and – citing Nat’l Rural Telecom Ass’n v. FCC (1993) — noted:

Rate-of-return carriers also have perverse incentives to shift costs “away from unregulated activities (where consumers would react to higher prices by reducing their purchases) into the regulated ones (where the price increase will cause little or no drop in sales because under regulation the prices are in a range where demand is relatively unresponsive to price changes).”

Most critically, it went further and insisted:

… any injuries the petitioners suffer through the application of outmoded Part 36 [of Code of Federal Regulations] rules to price-cap carriers are traceable not to the Commission’s freeze order but to the states’ voluntary and independent decisions to use the rules of Part 36 for their own purposes.

Thus, the Court fulfilled the Irregulators primary objective and opened the door for states and cities to bring claims against individual telecom companies.

The group accused the FCC of “freezing” its cost-accounting rules 19 years ago, thus allowing the nation’s telecommunications companies – the telecom trust – to engage in a bookkeeping slight-of-hand practices that costs telecom users, states and taxpayers across the country an estimated $50-$60 billion a year. The group estimates that over the last decade this scam has cost users $500 billion or upwards of $1 trillion since 2000.

The FCC divides the communications into two distinct service categories. Title I services consist of enhanced “information services” whereas Title II services designate basic or “common carrier” services. Title I services are subject to fewer regulations, whereas Title II services are subject to more regulation.

The Irregulators argue that the giant telecoms, in collusion with the FCC, are seeking to fully privatize the Internet. Together, they are pushing the adoption of 5G wireless technology as a substitute for fiber-to-the-home. The Irregulators, along with others, see this as but the latest move to not only remove all regulations and allow private companies to take over the state utility wired networks, but provide Americans with a second-rate – as possible harmful – communications infrastructure.

The Irregators’ Bruce Kushnick, head of New Networks, warns: “The 5G frenzy is like any of the previous techno-bait-and-switch schemes — and this one is ironically similar to the super-hyped 1990’s ‘Info-Highway’ when America was supposed to get a fiber optic network that would replace the existing copper wires.” 5G utilizes higher-frequency radio bands but to be deployed, the system requires the installation of greater number of cell transmitters and receivers that are located closer to the ground and to a customer’s home.

At the heart of the Irregulators case is a call for federal and state officials – and ordinary telecom users – to remember that phone services are state regulated public telecommunications utilities. Its suit serves to reveal that since AT&T was formally broken-up into seven Regional Bell Companies in 1984, two things have occurred – (i) the telecom industry re-consolidated and (ii) the FCC became a corporate-industry-captured government agency that stopped working for the public good.

The great telecommunications revolution of the 1990s was based on a notion of fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), an infrastructure that guaranteed everyone – whether in a big city or the rural heartland – equal access to the world-wide-web. It was introduced in 1999 and began to take off in 2001 and, by 2007, 10.5 million FTTH connections were reported. In 2008, NASA conceives 5G wireless technology and the telecom industry quickly commercialized it, seeing it as an easier to implement and a cheaper option than FTTH. With the shift from wired to wireless services, the U.S. begins the steady decline as a first-tier telecom nation.

The effort to provide FTTH to all Americans has ended. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation noted: “Wireless carriers are working hard to talk up 5G (Fifth Generation) wireless as the future of broadband. But don’t be fooled—they are only trying to focus our attention on 5G to try to distract us from their willful failure to invest in a proven ultrafast option for many Americans: fiber to the home, or FTTH.”

Sadly, the U.S. is likely to remain a second-tier communications nation for the foreseeable future.

David Rosen is the author of Sex, Sin & Subversion:  The Transformation of 1950s New York’s Forbidden into America’s New Normal (Skyhorse, 2015).  He can be reached at drosennyc@verizon.net; check out www.DavidRosenWrites.com.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/03/20/the-great-5g-hype/ 

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My note:  Scientific American published my piece in response to an earlier piece by Ken Foster. Initially, SciAm told me that they would not publish a rebuttal to Grimes' piece, but after they were attacked for Grimes' inaccuracies by Microwave News and by wireless safety advocates, SciAm invited me to submit a rebuttal. However, after I submitted my response to Grimes, SciAm decided against publishing any further pieces on this topic.  If you are interested in an account of what transpired with SciAm or want to read my rebuttal to Grimes, "5G, Public Health and Uncomfortable Truths, see my post, Scientific American Created Confusion about 5G's Safety: Will They Clear It Up?.

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Related Posts on EMR Safety

"We Have No Reason to Believe 5G is Safe" (Scientific American)

Scientific American Created Confusion about 5G's Safety: Will They Clear It Up?

                (includes "5G, Public Health and Uncomfortable Truths")

5G Wireless Technology: Is 5G Harmful to Our Health?

5G Wireless Technology: Millimeter Wave Health Effects

Scientists and Doctors Demand Moratorium on 5G

5G Wireless Technology: Cutting Through the Hype

5G Global Protest

5G Day of Action

5G Wireless Technology: Major newspaper editorials oppose "small cell" antenna bills

FCC Open Letter Calls for Moratorium on New Applications of Radiofrequency Radiation

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Joel M. Moskowitz, Ph.D., Director

Center for Family and Community Health

School of Public Health

University of California, Berkeley

Electromagnetic Radiation Safety

Website:          https://www.saferemr.com

Facebook:        https://www.facebook.com/SaferEMR

Twitter:            @berkeleyprc

[mastcomm]

In Europe, Fear Spreads Faster Than the Coronavirus Itself

LONDON — A British man who tested positive for coronavirus was branded a “super spreader,” his every movement detailed by the local media.

Business has plummeted in a French ski resort identified as the scene of several transmissions of the virus.

And after some employees of a German car company were diagnosed with the virus, the children of other workers were turned away from schools, despite negative test results.

With 42 confirmed cases across the continent, the coronavirus outbreak is far less serious in Europe than it is in China, where more than 1,100 people have died and the fight to contain the virus has taken on the trappings of a wartime campaign.

But fear itself is proving contagious. And with that fear comes a new social stigma for people and places that have been associated with the outbreak.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, warned on Saturday of the dangers of letting fear outpace facts.

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Steve Walsh was widely identified in the British media as the man who brought the coronavirus to a ski chalet.Credit…Servomex

“We must be guided by solidarity, not stigma,” Dr. Tedros said in a speech at the Munich Security Conference, adding that fear could hamper global efforts to combat the virus. “The greatest enemy we face is not the virus itself; it’s the stigma that turns us against each other.”

In the United States and elsewhere, people of Asian heritage have faced intense public scrutiny over their health. In Europe, the handful of people confirmed to have been infected have also found themselves in the public glare.

In Britain, where there are nine confirmed cases, news outlets swiftly labeled a businessman at the center of a cluster of transmissions at a French ski chalet a “super spreader” even before the man returned to Britain and tested positive for the virus.

Updated Feb. 10, 2020

What is a Coronavirus? It is a novel virus named for the crown-like spikes that protrude from its surface. The coronavirus can infect both animals and people, and can cause a range of respiratory illnesses from the common cold to more dangerous conditions like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS.

How contagious is the virus? According to preliminary research, it seems moderately infectious, similar to SARS, and is possibly transmitted through the air. Scientists have estimated that each infected person could spread it to somewhere between 1.5 and 3.5 people without effective containment measures.

How worried should I be? While the virus is a serious public health concern, the risk to most people outside China remains very low, and seasonal flu is a more immediate threat.

Who is working to contain the virus? World Health Organization officials have praised China’s aggressive response to the virus by closing transportation, schools and markets. This week, a team of experts from the W.H.O. arrived in Beijing to offer assistance.

What if I’m traveling? The United States and Australia are temporarily denying entry to noncitizens who recently traveled to China and several airlines have canceled flights.

How do I keep myself and others safe? Washing your hands frequently is the most important thing you can do, along with staying at home when you’re sick.

The businessman, Steve Walsh, later came forward to say that he did not know he had contracted coronavirus when he joined friends in France after a business trip to Singapore. He said he had contacted the health authorities as soon as he discovered that had been exposed to the virus and that he had been in isolation at a hospital after testing positive.

When Mr. Walsh’s name and photograph were released, broadcasters breathlessly speculated about his movements. Others mapped his “trail,” while some residents of Brighton and Hove, where Mr. Walsh lives, wondered if it was safe to go outside. Only five cases have been confirmed in the area.

Peter Kyle, a lawmaker who represents the area, said that the fear around the virus was understandable, particularly as the outbreak in China grows. But he said the use of the term “super spreader” was irresponsible.

“The connotation of that term is that he was proactively passing it, that he was willingly transmitting it,” Mr. Kyle said. “Whereas we know for a fact that the moment he became symptomatic, he did everything by the book.”

Part of the problem, Mr. Kyle said, is that people try to reconcile what is happening in China — where more than 70,000 people have tested positive for the virus and tens of millions have essentially been on lockdown for weeks — with what they are seeing nearer to home.

Mr. Kyle said that because the British authorities had not articulated the response strategy clearly to the public, “people are filling in the gaps themselves,” driven in part by misinformation online.

He said that some constituents had asked him to confirm the identities of coronavirus patients and provide a detailed account of where they had been before they went into isolation.

“It just shows there is misunderstanding,” he said. “When there is misunderstanding, prejudice and behavior that is not acceptable.”

The anxiety has also impacted local businesses, like The Grenadier, a pub in Hove where the health authorities determined Mr. Walsh had spent time before he learned he had the virus.

An employee confirmed by phone that the restaurant had been inundated with calls about the coronavirus. In an effort to dispel rumor, the staff posted a statement on Facebook: “You are not in any risk by coming into the pub.”

A spokesman for the British Department of Health and Social Care cautioned against using the virus as an excuse to stigmatize groups and individuals.

The health department also emphasized that doctors did not discharge patients believed to represent any threat to public health.

The French Alpine ski village of Les Contamines-Montjoie has also had to deal with the fears of a coronavirus outbreak. At least six British citizens who stayed in a chalet in the village, including a 9-year-old boy, tested positive for the virus and are still in France.

“We were all spooked,” said Mélanie Boidard, 34, a resident of Les Contamines-Montjoie. “Let’s not pretend otherwise.”

No new cases have been confirmed in the village since the initial cluster, but fears persist. The village of 1,200 usually increases more than tenfold this time of year with the influx of tourists, many of them Britons, coming to the ski resort. But businesses have suffered from rumors of coronavirus contamination.

Philippe Gerault, 65, who runs a ski club in Les Contamines-Montjoie, said about a dozen British clients had canceled reservations for this week.

“It’s panic,” said Eric Paris, the only pharmacist in the village.

Mr. Paris said he had received 300 to 400 calls from people asking for information about the coronavirus.

“People call me and ask ‘I’m coming next week, should I cancel my trip?’” he said. “It’s absolutely ridiculous.”

Of the 16 confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany, 14 are linked to the car parts manufacturer Webasto, which reopened its headquarters in Stockdorf last week.

A Chinese employee of the company who is based in Shanghai had visited the Bavarian headquarters for meetings in mid-January.

The employee’s parents had visited her from Wuhan Province, the center of the epidemic, just before she traveled to Germany, and she began showing symptoms on her return flight to China. That same evening, a German employee became ill and was the first German person diagnosed with the coronavirus.

The next day, with three infections reported, the company closed its headquarters — where about 1,000 managers, designers and engineers work — for two weeks in an effort to stop the virus from spreading further.

But outsiders avoided the village, associating it with the coronavirus, local leaders said.

Ludwig Harter, who runs a local cafe, says his business was down 50 percent since news of the local outbreak made national headlines.

“It’s everyone — older ladies and gentlemen, young mothers — many of our customers stopped coming,” said Mr. Harter.

Employees of Webasto said that schools and day care centers were reluctant to take their children, according to Nadine Schian, a spokeswoman for the company. Others reported that their partners had to be tested for the virus before they could go to work.

In one widely reported case, a man who brought his car to his regular mechanic was refused service because he worked for Webasto.

“It’s a small village,” Ms. Schian said. “Everyone knows everyone.”

Megan Specia reported from London, Constant Méheut from Paris and Christopher F. Schuetze from Berlin.

from WordPress https://mastcomm.com/event/in-europe-fear-spreads-faster-than-the-coronavirus-itself-2/

[whittlebaggett8]

WHERE ARE THEY NOW: The 19 biggest ‘Bachelor’ and ‘Bachelorette’ villains, Defence Online

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Arie Luyendyk Jr. became one of the most hated men in “Bachelor” history after his season.

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ABC/Paul Hebert

ABC’s “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette” have given viewers quite a few stars who have been labeled as villains based over the years based on their actions.

People like Arie Luyendyk Jr. and Chad Johnson became unlikable on the reality TV shows.

Visit INSIDER’s homepage for more stories.

Every good show has a villain, and that goes for reality TV as well.

On ABC’s “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette,” someone can be pegged as a “villain” thanks to editing. But one has to give the editors the footage too. And it’s clear that many contestants have earned the title. Sometimes, the leading man turns out to be unlikable, which was the case for season 22 of “The Bachelor.”

With the “Bachelorette” reunion special on Monday at 8 p.m. ET and return of “The Bachelorette” on Monday, May 13 at 8 p.m. ET, its a good time to revisit 19 of the biggest villains from the “Bachelor” franchise.

Brad Womack didn’t pick anyone on season 11 of “The Bachelor.”

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Brad Womack starred on season 11 “The Bachelor” in 2007.

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ABC

Womack narrowed down his 25 women to the final two and ultimately picked neither of the two women after they professed their love for him. Fans of the series were mad at him for walking away.

Where is he now? He got a second shot at love when he was the bachelor once again for its 15th season. He chose a winner then, but the two are no longer together. Womack doesn’t have any social media accounts, so he’s stayed relatively quiet. He reportedly opened up four bars in Austin, Texas. It looks like two, The Dizzy Rooster and The Dogwood, are still open.

Jason Mesnick, from season 13 of “The Bachelor,” shocked fans when he changed his mind.

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Jason Mesnick starred on season 13 of “The Bachelor” in 2009.

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ABC

After becoming a runner-up on “The Bachelorette” season four, Mesnick became the 13th bachelor.

Mesnick finished the season engaged to Melissa Rycroft. But in a surprising twist, he changed his mind and dumped her on live TV during the “After the Final Rose” special. He then asked runner-up Molly Malaney if she wanted to give him another try.

Where is he now? Malaney said yes and the couple has now been married since 2010. They have a daughter, in addition to Mesnick’s son from a previous marriage. He’s a consultant at NWG Real Estate.

Season five “Bachelorette” contestant Wes Hayden was only interested in getting his music exposure.

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Wes Hayden appeared on season five of “The Bachelorette” in 2009.

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ABC

Hayden went on Jillian Harris’ season of “The Bachelorette” with nothing but the worst intentions – he wanted to promote his music career. He also made it to the top four and bragged about having a girlfriend the entire time as the limo was taking him away.

“I’m going down in flames,” he said. “The first guy on ‘The Bachelorette’ to ever make it to the top four with a girlfriend.”

Where is he now? Hayden tried his hand on “Bachelor Pad” and has released an album and a few singles, which have received little commercial success. In 2019, he released a self-titled album with 11 tracks.

Jake Pavelka, star of season 14 of “The Bachelor,” was not well-liked.

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Jake Pavelka starred on season 14 of “The Bachelor” in 2010.

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ABC

Pavelka’s “On the Wings of Love” season took a nosedive as fans got to know him. He had been introduced on the fifth season of “The Bachelorette,” but on his own season, he was condescending to the women and arrogant. After he chose the season’s “villain,” Girardi, as his winner, things continued to go downhill for the couple. There were cheating reports and the couple was in the tabloids. The breakup aired on TV and did nothing to quell the dislike.

Where is he now? He has made a few television appearances, including appearing on JoJo Fletcher’s season of “The Bachelorette” and “Dancing With the Stars.” In May 2018, he sat down for a podcast with Ben Higgins and Ashley Iaconetti (called “The Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous Podcast”) and spoke about his time on the reality TV show. He’s still a pilot.

“The Bachelor” season 14 contestant Vienna Girardi was always fighting with Jake.

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Vienna Girardi appeared on season 14 of “The Bachelor” in 2010.

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ABC

Girardi spent much of her time fighting for bachelor Jake Pavelka’s heart by undermining, taunting, and manipulating the other women, particularly Ali Fedotowsky.

Pavelka still chose her in the end, but their relationship imploded and their “official” breakup was featured as a “Bachelor” special.

Where is she now? Girardi was pregnant with twins but lost them at 18 weeks in August 2017. She revealed the news in an emotional post on her Facebook page.

Justin Rego, from season six of “The Bachelorette,” competed even though he had a girlfriend.

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Justin Rego appeared on season six of “The Bachelorette” in 2010.

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ABC

Rego went down in infamy for competing on “The Bachelorette” while having a secret girlfriend back home. When confronted by Ali Fedotowsky, he walked out. He later denied that he came on the show for fame. He also denied that he called his girlfriend, but the show played back voice mails as he left. Rego took other guys’ chances when he wasn’t even in love with her.

Where is he now? He later tried his hand at “Bachelor Pad,” but was eliminated on the first episode. He’s still not a fan of the show and is convinced that the producers made him look worse than he is.

Michelle Money, from “The Bachelor” season 15, was known for her aggressive tactics to try and win over bachelor Brad Womack.

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Michelle Money competed on season 15 of “The Bachelor” in 2011.

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ABC

She was slightly whiny, sarcastic, and not a friend to the ladies. She somehow ended up with a black eye, too. She was later redeemed thanks to appearances on other reality shows.

Where is she now? She went on “Bachelor Pad” and “Bachelor in Paradise” hoping to find love. After “Paradise,” she was dating fellow Bachelor Nation member Cody Sattler. Since 2016, she has been dating golfer Mike Weir. She’s an actress, hairstylist, and beauty guru. In March 2019, she addressed her “villain” label in a lengthy Instagram post.

“She was brave and bold and confident,” Money said of her younger self. “She was also incredibly naive and easily manipulated. She was just trying to figure herself out. She was a ham, yes. But she was fierce and funny.”

Bentley Williams was a jerk on season seven of “The Bachelorette.”

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Bentley Williams competed on season seven of “The Bachelorette” in 2011.

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ABC

Bachelorette Ashley Hebert was falling for Williams. But in his interviews, he made it clear he didn’t care about her. He said she wasn’t attractive. His most infamous line? “I’m going to make Ashley cry, but I hope my hair looks OK.”

He later came back and strung her along briefly, but Hebert got rid of him.

Where is he now? The father and former Goldman Sachs analyst has since kept a low profile, which is probably for the best. He married travel and beauty blogger Meg in March 2018.

Kalon McMahon from season eight of “The Bachelorette” said some things he shouldn’t have.

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Kalon McMahon appeared on season eight of “The Bachelorette” in 2012.

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ABC

Emily Maynard, the bachelorette McMahon was trying to win over, was a mother to a then 7-year-old daughter. While the group was in London, McMahon referred to her daughter as “baggage.” One of the men went straight to Maynard to let her know and she promptly told McMahon off. She finished by telling him to “get the f— out.” To make matters worse, during the “After the Final Rose” special, the arrogant jerk made it clear that he wasn’t sorry.

Where is he now? He tried to find love on “Bachelor in Paradise,” but his reputation preceded him and no one wanted to date him. According to his Twitter, he’s an entrepreneur and financial wellness strategist for Financial Finesse.

Courtney Robertson from season 16 of “The Bachelor” was not there to make friends.

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Courtney Robertson competed on season 16 of “The Bachelor” in 2012.

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ABC

Robertson was not a house favorite during her time on Ben Flajnik’s season. She was brash and is most remembered for the time she convinced Flajnik to skinny-dip in the ocean.

Flajnik picked Robertson in the end. But after breaking up and getting back together, the couple finally split for good a few months later. Like Robertson said, “I didn’t come here to make friends.” Incidentally, that’s also the title of her tell-all book.

Where is she now? She’s a model and realtor.

Tierra LiCausi’s attitude on season 17 of “The Bachelor” made the women in the house dislike her.

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Tierra LiCausi appeared on season 17 of “The Bachelor” in 2013.

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ABC

LiCausi’s attitude made the women in the house dislike her. She would get angry and yell, but bachelor Sean Lowe was unaware of her behavior until a massive argument brought it to his attention.

Where is she now? LiCausi keeps her life private, but people can still follow her on Twitter.

Juan Pablo Galavis, star of “The Bachelor” season 18 in 2014, was controversial.

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Juan Pablo Galavis starred on season 18 of “The Bachelor” in 2014.

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ABC

Galavis, a former professional soccer player, first won hearts when he was a contestant on “The Bachelorette’s” ninth season. Bachelorette Desiree Hartsock sent him away during week six.

But he’s better known now for his own “Bachelor” season where he was shown as a self-centered jerk. He didn’t treat the women with respect, dismissed their concerns and emotions, and blamed them for problems. He refused to even tell the season’s winner that he loved her. He also had to apologize for homophobic comments he made about a gay or bisexual bachelor not being a good example for kids.

Where is he now? Galavis’ Instagram says he’s a “music and sports consultant,” and he married Venezuelan TV host and model Osmariel Villalobos in August 2017. In March 2019, he told Us Weekly that he’s “trying to find a way to trick [Villalobos] into getting pregnant” because he wants more children” (he has a daughter with ex-girlfriend Carla Rodriguez).

Nick Viall from season 10 of “The Bachelorette” was a jerk on “After the Final Rose.”

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Nick Viall appeared on season 10 the “The Bachelorette” in 2014.

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ABC

Viall wasn’t liked by many of the guys when he competed for Andy Dorfman’s heart, but none of that mattered as he made it to the top two. Dorfman ultimately broke his heart.

On the “After the Final Rose” special, Viall confronted Dorfman about their fantasy suite night, exposing their night on live TV and slut-shaming her in the process. A broken heart is no excuse for that sort of behavior.

Where is he now? After placing second on the 10th season of “The Bachelorette,” Viall returned midway through “The Bachelorette’s” 11th season to try and win Kaitlyn Bristowe’s heart. He ended up as a runner-up again.

Viall went on to “Bachelor in Paradise.” But once that didn’t work out, he was finally picked as the bachelor. He and his winner, Vanessa Grimaldi, split nine months after getting engaged.

He seems to like his fame and pops up on TV every once in a while, like when he competed on “Dancing With the Stars” following his season’s end. He also started a men’s grooming business and launched a podcast in 2019 called “The Viall Files.”

On season 19 of “The Bachelor,” Kelsey Poe didn’t get along well with the other women.

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Kelsey Poe appeared on season 19 of “The Bachelor” in 2015.

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ABC

Poe had some creative schemes that she tried to use to win over bachelor Chris Soules, but her behavior and attitude rubbed the other women in the house the wrong way. She also boasted about “an amazing story” she had, which happened to be a depressing story about being widowed. Her phrasing didn’t sit well with fans.

The particular problems between Poe and contestant Ashley Iaconetti resulted in both women being sent home.

Where is she now? Poe quit posting on social media in 2016. But prior to that, she was updating a blog and moved to Paris. She was in a relationship.

Olivia Caridi, from “The Bachelor” season 20, didn’t arrive at the mansion looking for friends.

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Olivia Caridi competed on season 20 of “The Bachelor” in 2016.

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ABC

Caridi wanted to win Ben Higgins’ heart. But her attitude towards the other women made her standoffish, and she often appeared conceited. She was sent home after the other housemates told Higgins that she was insensitive to them.

Where is she now? Caridi is a podcast host and television personality.

Chad Johnson was the clear villain from season 12 of “The Bachelorette.”

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Chad will also be remembered for biting into this sweet potato.

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ABC

From the very first moment Johnson stepped into the mansion, he established himself as an alpha male with a bad temper and aggressive behavior. He was eventually booted from the show after making his roommate Derek Peth feel uncomfortable, punching a door, and ripping contestant Evan Bass’ shirt, among other things. He has also made sexist comments, like calling bachelorette JoJo Fletcher “naggy.”

He later went on to “Bachelor in Paradise,” where he got incredibly drunk, called Lace Morris a b—- multiple times, and was kicked off after one night. He was arrogant and proud of it.

Where is he now? He was in a brief relationship with model Zoe Baron and appeared on the reality show “Famously Single.” He joined the “Celebrity Big Brother” cast in the United Kingdom and ended in fifth place. According to his Instagram, the real estate agent was hired by HÔM Sotheby’s in Newport Beach, California in 2017, but now, he’s promoting himself as an actor and has made diet and fitness plans for people to purchase.

Corinne Olympios was in it to win it on season 21 of “The Bachelor.”

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Corinne Olympios competed on season 21 of “The Bachelor” in 2017.

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ABC

Olympios will forever be remembered for her memorable one-liners, frequent napping, and her “nanny,” Raquel, during her tenure on Nick Viall’s season. But she was initially painted as the season’s villain thanks to her disregard for the other women, sexual advances, and entitled behavior. Ultimately, Olympios just wanted to find love and she’s still friends with many of the women.

Where is she now? She was supposed to appear on the fourth season of “Bachelor in Paradise.” But following a sexual misconduct scandal that briefly shut the production down, she left the show. She’s modeled and is an Instagram influencer.

Krystal Nielson established herself as one of the most hated women on season 22 of “The Bachelor.”

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Krystal Nielson at the “Women Tell All.”

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Paul Hebert/ABC

This was due to her condescending treatment of the other women in the house, her fake soft voice, and her bad attitude.

During the “Women Tell All,” she referred to the other women as “c—s” and called Arie Luyendyk Jr. “needledick.” She also refused to apologize, adding that she didn’t bully anyone.

“I didn’t bully anyone on the season,” she said. “I was bold and abrasive in my actions – I was very assertive and the boldest, but I wasn’t a bully. When did I talk down to someone, or hurt someone? I never, ever maliciously hurt someone or sought that out.”

Where is she now? She’s a fitness coach and is very active on social media. She got engaged to Chris Randone during the season five finale of “Bachelor in Paradise.”

Arie Luyendyk Jr. became one of the most despised men in “Bachelor” history for what he did after the season 22 “Bachelor” finale.

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Arie Luyendyk Jr. from season 22 of “The Bachelor” (2018) is now despised.

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ABC/Paul Hebert

The leading man dumped Lauren Burnham and proposed to Rebecca Kufrin (known as Becca K.) in Peru. But just weeks after getting engaged, Luyendyk went to Los Angeles to break things off with Kufrin so he could be with Burnham.

ABC chose to air the entire, unedited breakup, and fans reacted angrily. Kufrin was sobbing for minutes at a time and told Luyendyk repeatedly to leave and he didn’t listen.

His treatment of Kufrin has labeled him a “Bachelor” villain.

Where is he now? He and Burnham are still together and have been traveling around the world. They’re expecting a baby girl, too. He’s also still racing.

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