#and it’s like we used to go out a lot and party but like. that was it but ever since he met this guy he just gets lost when he drinks w him
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narse-tantalus · 1 day ago
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Since I just saw a post on the same blog about countering the spread of misinformation using the SIFT method I'm going to apply it here.
Stop
Is this post provoking an emotional response? Yes
Is it trying to? Also yes.
What do I already know about the source? Twitter screenshots on Tumblr are unreliable. I know nothing about the linked pmc19.com but it doesn't look like a government or university website url.
Investigate (The Source)
What can you find about the author/website creators?
the link to pmc19.com/data resolves, and that website does seem to be the source of these claims, although the current numbers are slightly off those reported in the tweets, likely because we're a week later.
pmc19.com links to a PDF with "Background on Dr. Hoerger and the PMC". There they discuss how Dr. Hoerger (who claims copyright of the webpage at the bottom) is trained in clinical psychology, has taught and was doing an MBA in 2019 on strategic management. It claims he's "an expert in personality, emotions, and affective decision science..." and mentions he did a masters degree wich involved a lot of stuff... And also epidemiology.
The PMC is apparently "The Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative" with unnamed members who have " led many projects to keep people safer during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic." and "The PMC dashboard is cited in grant applications, including at least two grants already funded. It has been cited by trusted organizations like the People’s CDC, news outlets, and scientific journals, including several papers published in JAMA journals."
Which really sounds like they think I should trust them at least as much as I trust people who write grants, and/or "The People's CDC" -- this makes me think they are unlikely to be an accurate source.
Here's Dr. Hoerger's bio at Louisiana Cancer research center:
https://www.louisianacancercenter.org/people/michael-hoerger-phd
It says "Dr. Hoerger conducts psychosocial research to reduce the emotional and physical burden of serious illnesses. Dr. Hoerger is an international expert in psychosocial oncology as well as pandemic mitigation." And the lists a bunch of psychology stuff. Literally never mentions pandemics again. If he's an "international expert in pandemic mitigation" a) I'd expect him to work somewhere other than a Cancer center b) I'd expect his bio to mention his pandemic mitigation work. Maybe he's new to all this pandemic stuff? He certainly doesn't claim to be an epidemiologist on the pmc website, just to have worked on a project that involves it.
When I google "The Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative" the second result is this webpage which questions their methodology and suggests that their model is incapable of making accurate predictions -- claiming it's always going to be biased towards whatever happened on the same dates last year -- both low and high. (I'm summarizing and interpreting a huge amount here,so read it yourself, and the source is just a blog post so not intrinsically more credible...) But it is note worthy that the main 3rd party discussion of this organization is someone questioning the utility of their predictions.
https://buttondown.com/abbycartus/archive/we-need-to-talk-about-the-pandemic-mitigation/
What is their mission? Do they have vested interests? Would their assessment be biased?
Their mission seems to be to "track" or predict cases of covid -- but like better than the real CDC and epidemiologists. Presumably this is born out of concern for immunocompromised individuals, or boredom, or needing a project for a Strategic Management MBA, or distrust of Official Sources.
They appear to have a vested interest in pandemic mitigation, and therefore alarmism and possibly in not agreeing with official sources. Their assessment may well be biased!
Do they have authority in the Area?
No. They mention precisely 0 epidemiologists working for or with them. I don't see a reason to trust their models more than my physics grad student friends who made pandemic models on a lark in 2020.
Find Better Coverage
The official CDC (Centers for Disease Control) webpage on Covid data is here:
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#datatracker-home
It indicates lower numbers than last year for everything they track, numbers that are kind of ticking up in recent weeks, but numbers that are forecast (if I'm reading that right) to reach a smaller peak than in prior years.
Notably the CDC is not making any directly comparable claims about number of people infected or infectious. Or how many might be infected next month. I believe this is because these are fundamentally unknowable from the data they have, and that speculating on them would be irresponsible for public communicators of science. Sure, one could create models that predict those numbers, but publishing the results to the public without context on the uncertainties of the models would be irresponsible since people might make life or death decisions like wearing a mask or getting a vaccine based on those bad predictions. Or they might just rage at people online who disagree with them. Idk, I'm not a science communicator.
Don't trust the CDC? Tough. The New York Times ended their own covid tracking in 2023 saying:
After more than three years of daily reporting of coronavirus data in the United States, The New York Times is ending its Covid-19 data-gathering operation. The Times will continue to publish virus data from the federal government weekly on a new set of tracking pages, but this page will no longer be updated.
This change was spurred by the declining availability of virus data from state and local health officials. Since few states report more than once a week (and some no longer report data to the public at all), the weekly data reports from the C.D.C. have become the most reliable source of information on the virus’s spread.
There new webpage is here and it was last updated in March 2024, it says:
These Covid tracking pages are no longer being updated. Get the latest information from the Centers for Disease Control, or find archived data from The Times’s three year reporting effort here.
John's Hopkins University has this to say:
On March 10, 2023, the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center ceased collecting and reporting of global COVID-19 data. For updated cases, deaths, and vaccine data please visit the following sources: Global: World Health Organization (WHO) U.S.: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
So yeah, reputable sources have stopped caring and link you to the CDC as the place to get your info.
Trace Claims, Quotes, and Media to their Original Context
The pmc19.com website does appear to be the original context for these claims. Thank you OP for linking that.
My Verdict:
These claims are misinformation. Specifically they claim numbers that are based on a model that was not created by subject matter experts, that disagrees with the trends reported by the CDC and it's epidemiologists. Either government employed epidemiologists are wrong and no university epidemiologists want to call them out on it... Or the PMC is wrong. Since they aren't epidemiologists... They're probably wrong. Moreover: If you don't trust the CDC you shouldn't The PMC because in their technical apendix they claim to use CDC data to make their projections. The only way the PMC could be right is if all other epidemiologists are wrong about the COVID pandemic and how to interpret wastewater and hospitalization data.
The PMC and Dr. Hoerger are engaging in academic sounding BS. They have incentives to be alarmist and fear monger, and don't seem to care or understand that they're using a model that probably doesn't have predictive value.
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Data source: https://pmc19.com/data/
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lover-of-mine · 2 days ago
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Okay, me and @buckgettingstruck have been going back and forth since yesterday and we have reached enlightenment about bucktommy, and I'm here to share. This isn't an anti post btw, this is us trying to make sense of the relationship in the context of the show.
But imagine you're Tommy. You’ve been closeted for most of your life and you recently came out (yeah, recently, six years is not that long). You left your fiance and decided to come out, but since then most of your relationships — friends and otherwise — have been shallow. For some reason, you don't know how to turn off the instinct to keep people at arm's length.
Suddenly you’re helping your old coworkers rescue your former captain and his wife, and in come Eddie and Buck. 
You hit it off with Eddie. He’s very friendly and you have a lot in common, so you're hanging out with him and trying to get a feel for him. Maybe he’s into guys. Hanging out with him is fun, even if you still can’t find any actual reason to open up to him about your life. You go to fights, you practice Muay Thai, you play basketball. You have fun. 
And then there’s his crazy ass best friend — Buck. 
Buck is spinning out about the two of you hanging out for a few weeks for some reason. You kinda assume there’s something going on with him and Eddie and you try to apologize to the guy. Buck tells you that it's not because he’s jealous of Eddie, it’s because he wants your attention. It throws you for a loop (my attention? You two haven’t really talked since he asked for a tour around Harbor), but your interest is piqued. The guy is hot, and he’s cute in a rambly way so you decide to go for it and it works out in your favor. But in the back of your mind, you know that this dude has some very intense relationship going on with his best friend. You had to bring up Eddie’s kid to get him to warm up to you, after all. But for all you know Eddie is straight, and Buck says he wants your attention. You don’t want anything that serious — breaking off the first engagement was hard enough — and you don’t really have anything to lose by just seeing where this goes. You’ve only been out for six years, so you want to explore. Maybe this could be fun. 
The first date is a bit of a trainwreck, and the dude turns out to be too intense. Somehow Eddie showed up with that girlfriend of his he’s never really talked about, and Buck is spinning out. You decide to cut your losses and go home — even if leaving Buck on the curb was a bit of a dick move. But Buck calls you a few days later. You meet for coffee. He tells you he doesn’t know what he wants, but he wants to try with you. He invites you to Chimney’s bachelor party and his wedding to Buck’s sister as a nice gesture and you figure, what the hell? Why not? Maybe it’s a little much, but he’s trying. 
In your head, you're in a fun, casual relationship because you haven't had the conversation about it being serious. Since Buck doesn’t bring it up or ask you for very much at all, you believe he is on the same page. You keep him at arm’s length so it stays that way — when he talks about almost losing Bobby, the whole Gerrard mess. It’s subconscious, you think, but keep it light and surface level. You don't want something that deep, and he is following your lead. You maybe see each other once a week, considering you both work 24-hour shifts and have chaotic schedules. You go to dinner, you go to the movies, and maybe you make out a little. It's easy and it's fun, and you can stay that way as long as the Buck doesn't push you further. It’s been almost six months now, and beyond venting about Gerrard a few times, he hasn’t even nudged. 
It’s a little weird, though, how Eddie’s always there. And you really like Eddie, honestly, but he’s constantly around. Sometimes it feels like you’re the third wheel here. He’s already there when you arrive for Chimney’s bachelor party, dressed in a suit to match Buck’s and helping set up. Suddenly a few months later you’re being invited to Chris’s Zoom birthday party, where Buck looks just as defeated taking the decorations down as the kid’s father. Buck dislocates his shoulder — you didn’t ask why, and he didn’t volunteer the information — and Eddie is there tucked into the guest chair with a magazine and the shitty hospital coffee, asking about Buck’s recovery and return to work. You do get to stay with him overnight, on his uncomfortable couch and falling asleep as he talks on and on about the corpse he accidentally rented (and alright, why did Buck get mad at him for laughing and not Eddie?). When Buck wakes up with boils the next day it’s not even a question for him to call Eddie. Eddie talks him down a lot better than you could, even if the situation is a bit ridiculous. You don’t miss the way he snaps at you for calling him gross — mentioning your cousin gets shingles is apparently a crime — while he tells Eddie to call his appearance what it is and he’ll believe it’s stress if he says so. But hey, getting boils kinda sucks, and Buck is having a rough go lately, so you move past it. But you don’t miss how Eddie seems to sense that Buck’s picking at his face without looking up from his phone when you’re at the hospital a couple days later because of Hen’s kid. You don’t miss how everyone else gets the good news that he’s going to make it through. Everyone except for you. 
You kinda want what Buck has, if you’re being honest. He found a family at the 118, with really intense people on his six, and you’re hoping that when the relationship runs its course you can stay friends. Maybe you can still keep part of that. Maybe that’s still within reach, even if Buck won’t even show you the text everyone else got. 
Buck goes from zero to a million after that, because he finds out he dated your ex-fiance and his next course of action is to thank you for gay rights and ask you to move in with him.
Up to this point, you thought you were on the same page — light, casual, fun. He didn’t push, but then he shoved you both off a bridge and now you can't ignore the thing that's been in the back of your mind for the last six months. 
Honestly, you have no idea what’s going on with Eddie. The mustache is a choice, and he was doing some funny things with that ring pop back at the hospital, but for all you know, he’s a zero on the Kinsey scale. You know Buck has something going on beneath the surface with how he feels about Eddie, whether he realizes it or not. You knew there was an expiration date on this thing when you started, and you didn’t even mind. You kept it fun and light over the past six months. You kept your distance — maybe a bit too much, considering Abby never came up until now. You hoped maybe you’d get to keep some decent friends once Buck figured his shit out. You knew, even if you tried to ignore it. You tried to enjoy it while it lasted. 
You tried to convince yourself it wasn’t there for a while. Buck, as far as he knew, still knew, was telling the truth. He wanted your attention, your time, you. He’s still figuring everything out, and you thought maybe you had more time. Keeping it casual and slow could only go so far, in the end. 
Buck nudges once, pushes you to consider what it would be like to be in a relationship with him that's serious. He’s talking about living together and you’re panicking a little bit as a thousand scenarios run through your brain, but you can’t see an ending that's not him realizing he has feelings for someone else and leaving you. Another six months, a year, five years — it's all the same. 
You didn’t want to get hurt in this situation, but you will be if you stay. You’ve already hurt people by denying the truth before.
So you tell him — I know how this ends.
You didn’t want to. You never really planned on ending it because you figured he would, but you reached the point where you can't come back. He wants more, and you know that would just end in smoke. Not for him, but for you. 
So you have to break this guy’s heart. And you know if you break this guy’s heart, you’re going to become the villain. You lose the entrance to a family you wanted to be a part of. You lose the friendship you had with Eddie, who is just as goddamn weird and crazy about Buck as Buck is about him. You lose the potential friendship in Buck, in them both, in everyone. There’s only one way out of here now. 
Buck’s somehow still endearing as you end things. You try to nudge him for once, talking about firsts and lasts. He doesn’t get it. You throw in some line a parking spot because the second reserved one Buck got with his loft went to Eddie years ago. You step into the hall, out of Eddie’s shadow, and walk away with nothing.
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mareastrorum · 2 days ago
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Been chewing more on how C3 wound up here. What’s throwing me is the strange shift from the cast’s unflinching “yes, and” game in C2 to a misplaced feeling that they need to choose correctly in C3.
I want to be clear here that this isn’t a criticism post because I genuinely don’t know what’s happening here. It’s just odd behaviors that seem to signal a problem, and I don’t know what solution would resolve it. I’m not going to be so presumptuous as to hypothesize about any cast member’s thoughts.
In the Cooldown for C3E118 (and offhandedly previously), Laura and Ashley expressed some nervousness about making big decisions because they’re worried about making the “wrong” choice. Without more, that attitude alone would explain much of the party’s indecisiveness about key campaign questions. After all, their characters are the two Ruidusborn of most interest to the campaign villains, and other characters (especially Orym, Laudna, and Ashton) have insisted that Imogen and Fearne take the lead on Predathos.
But this isn’t a story in a vacuum. C2 got completely derailed multiple times. The Mighty Nein decided to steal a pirate ship and leave the continent the campaign was set on; shortly after they returned, they decided to reopen a collapsed tunnel to go the opposite side of the continent; then Caleb returned the Luxon Beacon and made themselves heroes of an enemy nation instantly. That’s not even getting into the fact that Molly died before the Nein got to Shadycreek Run (which absolutely would have been all about his backstory) or that Twiggy left an incredible magical artifact that wasn’t supposed to be given to the Nein. Each time, Matt adjusted and made it work. Granted, C2 was more of a sandbox campaign, but Matt demonstrated his flexibility as a DM time and again.
Like, as a general rule of thumb, DMs shouldn’t offer options that would torpedo the campaign. It’s rational to avoid situations that have a genuine possibility of undercutting the game. Matt has been DMing for a long time; he’s done a very good job of finding ways to make the campaign work regardless of the decisions the players make. Even when players do something directly against the signals he threw out (like Ashton trying to absorb a second shard despite consistent, dire warnings that it would kill him), he works with the players to come to a reasonable solution (Ashton survived but the shard wouldn’t take, and he got some character moments out of the failure). We, the audience, know Matt is good at pivoting when he needs to.
In addition to taking the players’ curveballs like a champ, Matt also takes big swings for the sake of the story. In C1, Matt broke his biggest city with a dragon invasion, then made a new god leading an undead titan to go stomp out the world’s oldest civilization. In C2, he let the players go off the map whenever and still made the digression relevant to their character arcs every time. Not to be parasocial, but if we can figure out that that Matt can handle this sort of thing, the players certainly have a better feel for it than us.
So what is going on in C3? We know Matt isn’t scared of breaking Exandria or destroying the pantheon: he set that possibility in motion as the default ending if the players did nothing. CR literally did a mini series about the start of the end of the world with EXU Calamity. Laura and Ashley were also in Downfall and making big choices between the gods and mortals. Breaking stuff is what they do!
Where did this idea that there’s a “wrong” choice come from? That type of thinking kills a lot of great improv, and the whole point of the “yes, and” exercise is to shake it off. While it’s incredibly obvious to say not to think that way, the real issue is sorting out why that mentality has taken hold at all. That’s a problem no amount of fan discussion is going to resolve.
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lennadanvers · 3 days ago
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The Heartbreak Chronicles
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 Edward The Freak Munson was your first love.
(In more than one way).
(None of them ended up well).
High school Edward was something. Jean and leather, band t-shirts and patches. The shiny chains were still there. He had picked up guitar and stuck with it, as you found out at the talent show. His hair and his opinions had grown.
And his big, sad eyes were still there.
He had a reputation now: dangerous, freaky, dark. Maybe it was true. Maybe it had always been. It was just that people took a while to realize. He was the same over dramatic, fun, imaginative boy you had lost. Except that he took his drama all the way up to the tabletops of the cafeteria now.
It was hard not to enjoy the show. It was even harder to wonder how would it be to know him again. He had so much determination and sarcasm, he was so over the way the world worked, so full of disdain and passion… As someone who had served under the Queen’s orders- even if it was a fantasy queen, years ago, in the battlefield that was kindergarten-, you wanted to be loved by him.
How would anyone not want to be worthy of his love?
You knew better, of course. He had distanced himself. And yeah, maybe it had been a long time ago, but why should you give him another chance? No, sir. You didn’t have many things, but your pride was something no one could take from you.
Besides, he had never asked for another chance.
But he was fucking everywhere. He had founded the coolest club in the whole state. His van took up half the parking lot, a lighthouse in the middle of a naked shore. His hair was impossible to miss in the hallway, and your lunches were plagued by him and his stupidly interesting speeches. He even showed up at every party, ready to supply the sheeples with the only best weed in Hawkins.
And not once, in any of those scenarios, were you the object of his attention.
You could have stayed away, of course. It was just a matter of willpower. But your curiosity was bigger. Also, the sheet to sign up for Hellfire Club ended up being taped to the wall right next to your locker. It had to be a sign, if fate could be any more literal: just sign the sign.
It was a terrible idea. Made your nerves skyrocket and your appetite disappear, and your hands were trembling more than usual. You promised yourself you wouldn’t go back if it turned out to be as awful of an experience as you feared.
It was much, much worse: your first day at Hellfire was amazing. You had actual fun- something you hadn’t had in years, if you were honest. The boys were nice in a warm way, talking over each other and, frankly, more excited about the game than you. It was great, because it didn’t make you feel like a guest, but like you belonged.
And Edward welcomed you.
After years without talking to you, without even glancing at you, he smiled and bowed, arms wide as if to show you his kingdom.
“Be welcome to our humble table, mighty lady. Be prepared to face more adventure than you’ve ever heard of, more danger than you can fear and to conquer more victories than anyone can dream.”
He acted that way with everyone. And he lied.
You had heard of that much adventure, sure as hell. Actually, some of his adventures sounded familiar- they were detailed evolutions of childhood games.
But you fell for it anyway. It was good to be back home.
Even if he stabbed you in the back every now and then.
After the first session, as everyone was tidying up, he had cocked his head at you.
“We used to play together when we were kids, didn’t we? You’re not as boring as you look.”
And he had the audacity to wink, as if it would do anything but burn. So you punched back.
“Oh… Did we? I have a pretty bad memory. Sorry.”
Cue innocent and nonchalant shoulder shrug, finished off with a tight lip smile.
The second time Edward Munson broke your heart was worse, because you saw it coming. And you still followed him, like a reflection on a dark mirror, like you had no choice but to help him shatter you.
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Second part! The next one is Eddie's POV! Please comment or reblog if you like it, that really motivates me to keep writing! Also, my inbox is always open (not just for requests and ideas about fics, you can also come say hi and tell me about your day or whatever you want to talk about). If you want me to add you to the taglist, just let me know!
Taglist: @arabellagreenleaf , @stylesxmunson , @am0iur
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mostlysignssomeportents · 13 hours ago
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Occupy the Democratic National Committee
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Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.
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Back in 2017, the Democratic National Committee's lawyers submitted a legal brief that didn't just say the quiet part out loud; they bellowed it: "[The DNC can] go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the [presidential] candidate that way":
https://observer.com/2017/05/dnc-lawsuit-presidential-primaries-bernie-sanders-supporters/
The brief was submitted in the lawsuit between Bernie Sanders and the DNC. Sanders sued over the DNC changing the rules midway through 2016 process in order to sideline him and give the nomination to Hillary Clinton. The DNC's response boiled down to, "Sure, we cheated. So what? We, the committee, are ultimately answerable only to ourselves, and we can choose anyone to lead the party into any election."
The DNC is a weak institution, in other words. There's a universe in which that would be OK. After all, there's a lot of overhead that comes with making strong institutions, all those checks and balances and oversight and transparency soak up resources that you could be using to do other stuff. In an ideal world, a badly run Democratic Party would be spurred to improve after it lost elections, which would result in the defenestration of bad party bosses and the ouster of bad candidates:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/30/weak-institutions/
But the US political system is not an ideal world. In the real world, it's possible for party bosses who pursue disastrous strategies that result in key electoral losses to remain in power. The Democratic Party still rakes in massive donations from people who hate Trump more than they hate the Democratic Party's incompetence. Candidates in gerrymandered safe seats can be wildly incompetent and still hold onto power for improbably long timescales, despite the manifest evidence of their total unfitness for office:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Lipinski
In the absence of real consequences for corruption, incompetence and utter moral turpitude, the Democratic National Committee needs some other form of discipline to get it into fighting form. We need to occupy the DNC, strengthen its institutional safeguards, and turn it into an election-winning, fascism-fighting, extinction-rebelling, worker-defending powerhouse.
Three weeks from now, the DNC will meet in National Harbor MD to elect its new president and officers. Who gets to vote on that? The 448 members of the party's national committee. Who are they? As Micah Sifry writes for The American Prospect, it's a secret, even to the committee members:
https://prospect.org/politics/2025-01-10-opening-dncs-black-box/
No, really. While nominally, members can request a list of their fellow members, the DNC stalls and stonewalls and does everything it can to prevent the committee from communicating in any way they can't control. This is incredible, but it's true. Which is why Sifry has published a leaked list of all 448 members:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bQKIP3W1NWChRjSbsE0O5k5s7OdgXrJi5-CMfFECIBU/edit?gid=0#gid=0
Looking at the spreadsheet of members, we get a rare glimpse inside the Democratic sausage factory. There's te 73 "at large" members who were voted on as a single block after being handpicked by outgoing president Jaime Harrison. These members are a mix of great people and terrible people, and that's by design: it meant that Sanders and Warren voters could only get their people onto the committee if they voted for some of the most disgusting corporate shills you can imagine.
The fact that the national committee's membership is secret and their communications must pass through a DNC chokepoint means that they get up to all kinds of shenanigans, like at the 2023 summer meeting where they voted themselves the power to throw out any bylaw amendments passed at a national party convention. The vote was whipped by paid DNC staff, creating an atmosphere so poisonous that Jessica Chambers (a rep from Wyoming) called the DNC "the least democratic organization that I’m involved with."
Sifry's breakdown is really useful: he identifies the minority of members who are elected by the party rank-and-file, calling them "the people most responsive to what the base of the party cares about." He also calls out the corporate shills who "buckrake as lobbists," like Donna Brazile, "a partner at “corporate reputation strategy firm.”
But even where state party organizations have elections for their committee members, some states keep the results of those elections a secret. Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania have 69 members, but the identities of all but 14 of them are a secret.
This is a rotten institution, and that's by design. If you want to know why we can't have nice things – or, you know, a world that's not on fire and haunted by creeping fascism – this is why. The takeover of the DNC won't be easy, but it can't start until we know who the DNC is.
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Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/10/smoke-filled-room-where-it-happens/#dinosaurs
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alluvthegurlz · 1 day ago
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GORGEOUS //
❝︎ i’m so furious at you for making me feel this way ❞︎
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pairing || drew starkey x actress!reader
summary || drew and actress!reader meet for the first time at a party. with the help of some certain, meddling co-stars.
content || alcohol, pining, obx cast meddling, parties, a little suggestive at the end
yaps-a-lot || ‘gorgeous’ by taylor swift was on repeat so here we are. ending is a little rusty it’s been a while since i’ve written anything so bare with me :)
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“just go talk to him.”
“absolutely not,” you protested quickly. madelyn and madison have spent the better part of an hour trying to get you to even look in the direction of their co-star who mingled across the room. none other than drew starkey. “i can’t say anything to his face, are you kidding?”
“why not?” madelyn whispered a little harshly.
“cause look at him!” you motioned a panicked hand in his direction as madelyn scoffed quietly. the roll of her eyes playful but not any less meaningful.
“you guys have been avoiding each other for months,” she reminded. “you can’t keep walking the other way when you run into each other on set.”
“it’s worked for me this long,” the tight lipped smile that followed was enough for madison to finally whine this time.
“c’mon,” mads whined. “you guys would be so good together.”
“says who?”
“everyone!” the two girls practically shouted.
you looked around the party slowly when everyone had looked over at the three of you. ignoring the shocked stares from everyone before you downed the rest of your drink, the liquor burning your throat that had you almost coughing it back up.
“jesus christ, i don’t think the people above us heard that,” you grumbled. “try it louder next time.”
you tried to walk away before madelyn was grabbing your arms and pulling you back. “nooooo, no, no. c’mon. just give him a chance. he’s seriously a good guy, there’s no need for this back and forth between you two.”
“there’s no back and forth between us because there’s nothing between us,” you offered stiffly.
madison had snuck off as madelyn’s pouted lips pouted even more as she held you in place.
“i think we both know that’s not true,” she joked.
you sighed a little heavily, letting yourself look back over at drew across the room. he was barely paying attention to the conversation that was going on between chase and jd, putting in a few words here and there, but he was two busy watching the party around the rim of his cup.
the music drowned into nothing as you watched him. his ocean blue eyes scanning the party like he was looking for something. or someone maybe. you.
it’s like the party froze when he met your eyes. the music muffled by the sound of the blood rushing to your ears, the hitch of your breath suddenly the loudest thing in the room as he sent the smallest of smiles your way. if you were being honest, you actually had no reason to avoid him on set. it was just the nerves really, which was weird for everyone to see cause you rarely got nervous around people. the last time you were nervous around someone was when you had met meryl streep on a red carpet one time. that was the only time anyone had seen you nervous simply because you were too starstruck.
so how in the hell was drew the only other one to get you to act that way?
the only thing that could break your eyes from him, was when they caught sight of madison walking up to him. you watched for a few seconds, watching her explain something before pointing in your direction.
“mm, nope. bye,” the second madison was dragging him over, you were turning around and sneaking away before madelyn could even grab you.
you didn’t stick around to hear what conversation had followed, weaving your way through the bustling party that seemed to get all that more stuffy the second madelyn and mads had started their tirade against you.
maybe it’s because you were freaking out slightly, or it was the alcohol.
the alcohol was the easiest thing to blame. it had worked in any situation before…so why wouldn’t it work in this one? you were definitely too tipsy to be left alone with the one co star everyone in that room was trying to set you up with. two young actors, both single, both incredibly hot, and both avoiding the person right in front of them. typical!
dating had been…hard, so to speak in the past. it was just something you couldn’t seem to enjoy. these days people were only after the idea of sleeping with the actress that everyone loved. they weren’t looking for an actual date that could lead to something. safe to say, the dating life was pretty much nonexistent.
and drew starkey was not going to be the one to break that streak.
another shot later and you were buzzing. maybe a little numb. definitely tipsy. it was hard to tell at that point.
“so, this is what my co-stars do at parties?” a voice sounded from behind you causing you to freeze. “ignore everyone and throw back shots.”
he was teasing, you could tell. you could even hear the slight smirk on his face before you looked over your shoulder slowly.
and sure as shit…drew starkey was behind you.
“it’s, uh —“ you cleared your throat. “helps with the nerves,” a short nod followed from you as the smile on his face grew. “lotta people.”
“people make you nervous?”
no. not at all. he made you nervous.
“sometimes,” you managed the confession through a whisper.
your eyes darted back to the drinks table in front of you, trying to find your next victim before settling on an easy mixed drink.
a quiet chuckle fell from his lips as he leaned against the table beside you, his own cup still resting comfortably in his hands and a hand in his pocket before he watched the party.
“you girls sure know how to throw a party,” he complimented. you, madelyn, and madison had been planning this party for months. one to celebrate the beginning of filming that started a little over two weeks ago.
“that’s all maddie and madison,” you brushed off. “i just supplied the alcohol,” you joked, holding up the liquor bottle to show it off as he looked over before pouring it into your cup.
he laughed again, a genuine one with a duck of his head. your nerves eased a little at the sound, the alcohol running through your system relaxing you even more.
you turned around, leaning back against the table with him as you carefully sipped away at your drink quietly. trying to avoid looking at him at any cost in all honesty.
you should’ve been mad at him. furious even for the way he was making you feel. this…nervous. that wasn’t normal.
god, he was so gorgeous.
the deep breath that escaped you had him curious, looking over at you as you caught it through the corner of your eye. the way his eyes tried to catch yours — it was making this worse. everything was so much easier when you could just ignore him. but the way you hugged your cup carefully to your chest, he couldn’t help but stare at you.
for a man who hadn’t said more than a few words to you, the magnetic field around him was a little too strong, you couldn’t help but be drawn to him. a silent glance towards him, a breath hitching at the back of your throat, every nervous swallow had you on your toes.
anyone else you had talked to with ease. like everyone was an old time friend with whom you were catching up with for the first time in years. he should be taking it as a compliment really that you were talking to everyone there but him.
something snapped you back into reality when he placed a careful hand on your ribs suddenly. reaching over for an unopened bottle of beer behind you. caging you between himself and the table, you were suddenly very aware of…everything.
the smell of his cologne, the t-shirt you wore that was well loved — stretched but not noticeable if you hadn’t been three inches from it — even the faint alcohol smell coming from him. it all grew tenfold when he had reached over you.
“sorry,” he apologized in a whisper you could barely hear.
“‘t’s okay,” you gave a small smile.
you followed as he leaned back once again, popping the bottle open with ease.
it would’ve done better to maybe be more mindful of where your eyes traveled. to respect him a little more like he deserved…but you just couldn’t help it. the way his shirt rode up a little and revealed the waist of his underwear when he ran a hand through his hair…it had you nervous all over again.
you cleared your throat again, taking a sip of your drink. he’d caught your eye for only a second, another smile growing on his face before he hid it behind the neck of his beer bottle when he drank some.
“so, what’s after this?” his question was a curious one, a hand motioning to the party before it scratched at the back of his neck.
you took a deep breath, taking a moment to think about it. the alcohol had hit your system now, the nerves dying down to nothing more than a light tingle. it’s what kept you alive.
“oh, you know…probably just gonna stumble on home to my cats,” the tease fell from your smiling lips with a shrug of your shoulder. your feet carrying you away back into the party and leaving drew alone just like you two had started the night. “unless you wanna come along?”
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butlervibesonly · 2 days ago
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HI GIRL! Omg I love all of your fics and I would love you to write something about Austin arriving from filming, and reader welcomes him at the airport after being separated for so long. She eventually makes some kind welcoming party or smth! PLEASE AND THANK YOU! 💗
𝐹𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑒 | Austin Butler
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• NOTE: Hi and thank u! 🫶🏼 What a wonderful idea and I had so much fun writing this! Also for the rest of y’all; my requests are open and I welcome every idea!
• PAIRING: Austin Butler x female reader
• WARNINGS: like a lot of fluff, and slight flirting in the end
You are at the arrival terminal, watching people pass by. Austin is arriving today after being away for two months, filming. It’s almost impossible for you to say how much you missed him, how much those two months felt lonely without him.
You take a look at the board to see the planes arrivals as you finally see that Austin’s plane has landed. You feel the excitement tingling through your body, can’t wait to hug him tightly again. Standing up from the seat you walk closer for him to notice you.
When people start to walk out with suitcases and bags your heart starts to beat a little faster, knowing you’re about to see Austin soon. You check every single person just to make sure you don’t miss him walking by. And how could you miss your boyfriend passing by?
Your eyes land on him - he’s wearing sweatpants and hoodie. He always wears something comfortable when traveling. When Austin’s eyes find you, his face immediately switches to the biggest smile you have seen. His eyes lights up, sparkling with excitement.
You can't take it anymore and you run towards him. As soon as you’re near you jump into his arms, wrap your legs around his waist, not caring about who's looking at you or who recognizes Austin and you, or not. “Oh baby, I missed you so much.”
Austin breathes out, wrapping his arms around you tightly. You hide your face into the crook of his neck and smell in his cologne. Oh, how you missed that. “I missed you too a lot!” Your fingers caress through his hair, kissing his lips.
“Baby, you had absolutely no idea - I was like tortured being without you.” Austin says, cupping your cheeks as you stand down again. “You tell me that, the house was so empty without you and I felt like the loneliest person alive.” You make Austin smile and he hugs you again.
“Don’t worry, I will not leave you again, not for a long time,” Austin presses a kiss on your lips, so softly and gently. It feels like a heaven to feel his lips kissing you again. He takes your hand in his, grabbing his suitcase. “How was your flight?” you ask, walking towards the entrance of the airport.
“Exhausting! I felt like the time wasn’t even moving as much as I counted every minute until this moment.” he explains, holding your hand more tightly. “Let’s go home now, shall we?”
“Definitely.” you smile at him as you guys walk to the parking lot, where Austin’s car is. He left his car keys to you, so that you can travel while he was gone, and as much as you love driving, you enjoy being his passenger princess.
You give him the keys, and Austin opens the car door for you. “Ma’am,” he gestures and you nod gladly. It’s such a wonderful feeling to have him back. You are used to Austin being away, but two months has been really challenging for both of you. You normally travel to the filmings with Austin but due to your busy schedule you decided to stay at home and wait for him to come back.
“I have a little surprised for you at home.” you say as he starts the engine. “Oh do you?” he smirks. “And what is that little surprise, honey?”
“I won’t tell you! If I do, it wouldn’t be a surprise no more..” you say jokingly, and watch Austin steering the wheel. His hands look so good being all muscular. You missed him way too much. Even tho the both of you FaceTimed each other almost every night, the feeling of going sleep with an empty side beside you was the worst.
“Y’know I missed you that much I was falling asleep hugging your pillow? It smells like you and I couldn’t help.” you say all of sudden and Austin glances at you. A smile appears on his lips. “Sounds like something you would do, honey.”
“But that’s not all. I might or might not stole one of your shirt to sleep in…” you admit shyly. If you love something it’s definitely sleeping in his clothes. You love it since day one actually - when you slept at Austin’s place for the first time before the two of you bought your own house, you forgot your pajamas and he offered you one of his shirts.
“Well, I hope it was not my favorite white one?” Austin raises an eyebrow, his sight on the road again. You chuckle “Umm… Would you be mad if I’ll say yes?”
Austin laughs, his hand landing on your tight. “Of course no! How could I be mad at you?” At that you just smile. As the two of you drive home, enjoying the embrace of each other even in silence.
As Austin pulls up to your home, you bit your lip, trying to contain your excitement. He steps out of the car, opens the door for you again and takes out his suitcase. “Close your eyes, baby,” you say, taking Austin’s hand and he follows you up the path. You unlock the door, taking a deep breath to steady yourself before gently pushing it open.
You slowly lead him to the living room that is joined with kitchen and he opens his eyes. As soon as he notices the balloons, his eyes sparkle with gratitude. “Welcome home, love,” you say softly,
His face lits up, a slow smile spreading as he turns to you, eyes filled with almost tears. “You did all this… for me?”
You nod, your cheeks flushing. “I wanted to make tonight special. You’ve been away for so long, and I’ve missed you like crazy.”
Austin sets his suitcase down and pulls you into a tight embrace, resting his chin on the top of your head. “You didn’t have to… This is perfect. More than perfect, Y/n. Thank you.”
“Wait, there’s more, actually,” you warn him, grinning as you pull away and lead him towards the dining table. “I actually made you your favorite meal, bought some wine…”
Austin laughs lightly, shaking his head in disbelief. “You’ve really thought of everything, haven’t you?”
“Well, you deserve it,” you say, your voice soft. “I know how hard you’ve been working, and I wanted to remind you how much I love you.”
Austin sits down, and you pour the wine to his and your glass. As you prepare the food, Austin follows you with his eyes, his heart melting from the fact he’s finally back home. And home is where you are with him.
“There you go,” you pass him the plate and he looks almost mesmerized. “You know a way to man’s heart, baby.” Austin chuckles and you both start eating.
The night passes in a mix of laughter, food that you made, and quiet, stolen moments. You talked for hours, talking about Austin’s filming, the weight of the distance that separated you melting away with each passing second.
“This is exactly where I want to be,”Austin whispers, pressing a kiss to your temple. “Home. With you.” he takes your hand in his. “But I would still like to enjoy some things I missed so much while being away.”
“And what is that, honey?” you ask, smirking. Austin smiles with the biggest grin. “I want to enjoy you,” he smirks and you know where he is leading to. “I missed you way too much, sweetheart, and now that I have you all for myself, I will not leave it just like that.”
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sky-scribbles · 2 days ago
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Party Banter with Rook!Blackwall
Harding: You know, for a moment back there, I thought you might actually get through to Solas.
Thom: Regret’s something we have in common. I thought… if I reached out to him, told him I understood what guilt drives you to do…
Harding: But no. ‘Do not compare your regrets with mine, Thom Rainier!’
Thom: He’s right, though. He can at least say he did his crimes trying to stop tyrants. I did mine for coin.
Harding: Uh, yeah, and then you faced up to it and decided no one else was going to get hurt for it except you. Solas is right. He’s nothing like you.
Lucanis: Do we have a problem, Warden Rainier?
Thom: You kill people. For gold.
Lucanis: I do. Venatori. Blood mages. The political rivals of those who hired me.
Thom: And that’s enough for you? Someone flashes a purse, and you’re ready to murder over some nobles’ spat over which of them gets the bigger fancy house?
Lucanis: Depends on the size of the purse.
Bellara: Um, so, about the mayor of D'Meta's Crossing? I just… do you really want someone like that? In the Wardens, I mean.
Thom: I won’t defend him. But he wouldn’t be the first Warden who let innocent people die for gold, and got another chance from the Order.
Bellara: He doesn’t deserve it. Like, really, really doesn’t deserve it.
Thom: No. Neither did I.
Thom: Do you ever get people trying to bribe you? To look the other way, or drop a case, or...
Neve: It's Minrathous. If I took even half the bribes I've been offered, I could buy an estate in Hightown.
Thom: It takes a special kind of strength to resist that.
Thom: I got a letter from Sera the other day. Don’t ask me how she got it to the Lighthouse.
Harding: ‘Friends’, I bet. And hey - she dealt with the Fade for you! So what'd she say?
Thom: Well, there was a lot of calling Solas a shite-faced arseknuckle. And then she told me not to get killed, or she’d yank my beard ‘til my head came off.
Harding: Aw.
Lucanis: Rainier, I do not knife civilians. Everyone I have killed has been embedded in politics. Their hands are never clean.
Thom: And you're sure you’ve never made a mistake? Never got a passer-by or a child caught in all the blades and arrows? Never gone in without knowing everything, and got someone hurt?
Lucanis: Of course not. I’m a professional.
Thom: You’re a mercenary with a cape.
Thom: You could’ve left Dock Town. A mage. Talented. You could’ve gone anywhere, chased a better life.
Neve: If I left, I’d be abandoning people who never got that choice. I’m good where I’m at.
Thom: I hope you know how admirable that makes you.
Neve: Not that admirable. If I got that estate in Hightown? Too far to walk to Hal’s fish stand.
Thom: (laughs) Good priorities.
Davrin: So, Rainier. Heard a lot of rumours about how you joined the Wardens.
Thom: (uneasy noise) You know, Warden Blackwall told me your past gets forgotten after the Joining.
Davrin: A nice ideal, but it never stands up to the gossip. But you’ve shown your worth.
Thom: Enough for me to have one of those griffons when we rescue them, d’you reckon?
Davrin: (laughs) We’ll see.
Thom: I knew someone like Manfred once. He was a spirit, but he sort of… grew his own body.
Emmrich: Oh! A spontaneous incarnation! Do you happen to know what kind of spirit he was?
Thom: Uh… the kind that looks like a young man, but reads minds and flits about trying to make everyone feel better about themselves?
Emmrich: Ah, Compassion! A rather more advanced emotion than Curiosity, and therefore capable of manifesting a physical body, rather than needing to adopt a vacant one.
Thom: More advanced? Right. That explains why Cole used to talk to me about living with the weight of regret, and Manfred spent ten minutes yesterday poking my face to see if my beard came off.
Neve: So, you know Dorian?
Thom: Does anyone who’s been in the same room as him for thirty seconds get a choice about knowing Dorian?
Neve: And didn’t always get along, I take it.
Thom: He’s… he’s not so bad. We might’ve judged each other by first impressions back when we met.
Neve: And what’s your impression now?
Blackwall: Still too fancy for his own good. But it says exactly who he is that he’s fighting against slavers and blood mages. I think I got the better deal with the darkspawn.
Taash: I heard the Inquisitor turned into a dragon.
Thom: No, she… didn’t. But she did get one to fight with us once.
Taash: She did? What kind? How’d she do it?
Thom: Sort of… gold? And she drank from this pool of elven magic, and… that somehow let her ask it to help us. I think.
Taash: Did she ride it into battle?
Thom: Uh… No.
Taash: Oh. I would’ve ridden it into battle.
Thom: Emmrich, do you know what those demons were the other day? The ones that wouldn’t leave me alone?
Emmrich: Ah. Those were manifestations of Shame. A variant of the Despair spirit.
Thom: Right. Don’t know what I expected.
Emmrich: If it’s any consolation, I find that one can tell much more about a person from the more benign spirits that gather around them. I catch glimpses of them about you often. Valour. Fortitude. Honour.
Thom: I hope to be worthy of them.
Thom: Lucanis, have you ever regretted any of your kills?
Lucanis: Not so far.
Thom: So this is what you’re fine with being? A man who takes nobles’ money and lives in luxury with your bloodied hands? That's the life you chose?
Lucanis: Not ‘chose’, exactly. It is what I was trained to be since my childhood.
Thom: Wait. You were – who trains a child to be an assassin?
Lucanis: You met my grandmother.
Davrin: You held up pretty well in the last fight, Rainier. For an old man.
Thom: Whelp like you’d better watch what he says around a senior Warden.
Davrin: Why? You’ll tell me to do the fifty press-ups that your creaky bones can’t handle?
Thom (laughs) I’ll stop letting you borrow my best chisel.
Bellara: Hey, um, Thom? You know that little rocking griffon you made? Could you make, I don’t know, a bigger one? Like… adult… person-sized?
Thom: (chuckles) You never have a rocking griffon growing up?
Bellara: No! They’re not a Dalish thing! Because you can’t really rock. When the aravel’s moving, I mean. So… no, it’s a dumb idea. Forget I said anything.
Thom: You want me to make it a rocking halla?
Bellara: Yes please thank you.
Emmrich: How far you must have travelled, with both the Inquisition and the Wardens!
Thom: I like being on the road. Keeps a man honest.
Emmrich: I rather envy your fearlessness of the wider world. It’s so recent that the end of the Circles allowed me to travel freely outside the Necropolis.
Thom: Must have been freeing. Having the whole world suddenly open to you.
Emmrich: And rather overwhelming, I must admit. When I compare myself to you – a brave Warden, combatting the Blight across all of Thedas…
Thom: Trust me: compare the two of us, and that’s the only way I’ll come out better from it.
Thom: We fought quite a few dragons in the Inquisition. Almost got eaten once by some pissed-off beast in the Hinterlands. Kept throwing its dragonlings at us.
Taash: Fereldan Frostbacks are crappy mothers. First sign of trouble, and it’s ‘here! Take my children!’
Thom: (laughs) The worst was the lightning-spitter off the Storm Coast. Spent twenty minutes hacking away at its scales, rest of my team unconscious on the ground.
Taash: Wait - you what? That's not how you fight dragons. You can't just stand there and hit them. That's stupid. And boring.
Lucanis: It’s how the Crow Houses work. Children of the House lineage are trained from our infancy.
Thom: Andraste’s fucking tits.
Lucanis: It’s necessary. If Illario and I had been coddled… Caterina pushed us hard and young, because she wanted us to survive.
Thom: I don’t… (sighs) The things people do to children.
Harding: I never thought to ask - how come Varric changed your nickname?
Thom: I asked him to go with something else. 'Hero'... that was a name he gave to Blackwall.
Harding: Well, he chose the right name. You know, 'cause Rooks move in straight lines. And you charge right in there, don't mess around with fancy words, just hit things til they drop. You could say you're -
Thom: Don't do it, Lace.
Harding: Straightforward.
Thom: (chuckles) You're as bad as Sera.
Emmrich: Master Rainier, I wanted to say – I hope you know that you’re the only person here who looks at you with any harshness.
Thom: I – (sighs) You don’t know everything about me.
Emmrich: I would never claim to. But I know that you place yourself before your allies and the defenceless without hesitation and with utter selflessness. I know you understand your Warden oath better than many of your superiors. I know that you are a good man.
Thom: … I wish I knew what it was like to be you. Seeing the good in everyone, living or dead.
Emmrich: Then I hope you’ll permit me continue to see the good in you – until you can see yourself as I do.
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ladysherreeamore · 2 days ago
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Since they want to ship her with gay guys, why didn't they pick a hot one?
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At least I see chemistry in their pictures.
If these two have been dating for a while then why didn't he open her door? They would both be used to him opening the door for her and any guy i've dated automatically knew to open doors for me, it's what gentlemen do.
They also don't walk past you like your a stranger and leave you around a group of strange men.
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If this was a launch then why wasn't she in this picture? Why didn't he post a picture with her on his big day?
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If they were dating and a serious couple she would've invited him to spend christmas with her family and meet her mom and they definitely would've spent New Years Eve together, neither of them were working that day and he was at a NYE party without her.
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Anytime we see them together it's at an event or out with a group of gay friends going to a lot of gay events. I haven't seen any solid proof of them being on a date with both of them sitting together and that restaurant picture isn't proof they were there at the same time in my opinion, it just looked coordinated but She's looking at a side he's not sitting (he wouldn't need to move) the extra table settings, his table looked cluttered and hers looked neat.
Show me a picture of him looking at her with love in the eyes with his body language showing that he's into her, he always looks uninterested.
Just because she travels to events and brings him doesn't mean they have to be dating, he's her friend thatbis available to go and needs networking oportunities. Also she holds hands with her friends, not only did she say it in an interview but we've seen it with a variety of her friends. Please stop trying to force something to look romantic when all they are doing is talking or giving a quick hug, i'm sure we've all done that with people we aren't dating. All I see between them is a platonic friendship where she is a mentor and it looks like they have a close big sis little bro relationship.
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sweetdispatch · 2 days ago
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Sex stays, right? - J. Hughes
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Purple Chemistry | Previous Chapter
summary: Jack opened to you after one of his lost games to later ignore you
warning: mentions of sex, swear words, misunderstanding
words: 2.0k
note: devils - rangers game is a good reason to post another chapter haha
---
Everything went back to normal with you two. Well, normal after your secret was out. Jack was still showing up at your apartment when he needed to fuck you. Although, after you received the flowers, you started talking on a daily basis. It wasn’t the same as earlier when he only wanted sex. You felt that he’s trying to trust you again.
Still, Jack was enjoying the deal you two had about sex. He didn’t want to pressure things but having someone for a night was nice. He didn't feel bad that he was using you for this but after he fucked you and left undone, it brought him to realisation that you’re more than just this. He was bitter about the lie and your favorite club but he wanted to make it as normal as possible. 
During Christmas time, Jack gave you a gift and you were in shock because you didn’t prepare anything for him. You never thought he would come up with something like that. It was a teddy bear and your favorite chocolate but for you, this gesture meant a lot. You wanted to give him something but he was repeating that it’s fine. This teddy bear was sleeping with you from now on.
Day before New Year’s Eve, Jack played in Boston. You watched this game and saw that his team had a 2:0 lead, and lost 2:5. This time, you held your tongue and decided not to say anything. You felt bad for him but not bad enough to talk with him about it. You were sitting quietly at home, searching for inspiration for a tomorrow’ party. 
You woke up in the morning and went to prepare yourself with lemon water. You heard knocking on your door. Being sure that one of your friends decided to visit you, you opened the door but it was Jack. You let him in but didn’t say a word to him. You were keen on your preparations instead of him. 
“I feel like a loser” He sighed and dropped on the couch. 
“It’s just one game, move on and focus on the next one” You didn’t want to have your mood ruined because of his pity party.
“Easy to say for you, we were leading and later we let score 5 fucking goals”
“Oh c’mon, games like that happen. Now, you can just learn from the mistake and be better in the next ones” You said while washing your glass. “Now, do you want anything more or can I start getting ready?” 
“Are you going somewhere?” He asked surprised.
“Yeah? I’m going to a party with my friends and I need to get ready” You replied.
“Can I stay and just talk?” You looked at him with shock written on your face.
“Um… sure. If you want” 
You went into your bedroom and sat down in front of your mirror. You pulled out your cosmetics and started working on your eye look. Jack sat down on the bed and talked his heart out about this game, how he feels playing and how his team is doing. You were listening to every one of his words but didn’t interrupt him. You wanted him to feel free to express his feelings. 
For Jack it felt so normal to lay in your bed and talk about everything. He hadn’t felt weird to be honest with you about what he’s thinking. Your presence was calming him even if you were only listening to him. He wished you two were more than this but he couldn’t forgive you lies and he was bitter over who you are rooting for. In his mind, you're a Rangers fan so you could never truly support him. 
After two hours, you were done with your makeup and stood up to go change into a dress. Jack laid on your bed and rested. This was a quiet moment between you two. No talking, just enjoying each other's presence. You grabbed the dress and went into the bathroom to change.
“I saw you naked, you don’t need to hide” Jack joked and you rolled your eyes. 
When you were ready, you left the room and Jack looked at you. You were wearing a short black dress that laid perfectly on your body. He was looking at you for a couple seconds and you felt insecure that it’s not a good choice.
“Do I look bad that you are staring?” You asked him and he quickly shook his head.
“No, actually I think you look gorgeous” You blushed hearing his words.
“Thanks” You walked into a closet to pick out high heels and a purse.
Jack sat up on your bed and couldn’t erase the image of you in this dress. You looked like a goddess and all he wanted to do now was to worship your whole body. Quickly he remembered that you’re going to a party and started feeling possessive that other men will be looking at you just like he is. Your voice brought him back to reality.
“Okay, I’m ready and you need to leave” You said while putting on your earrings. 
“Do you need a ride to the party?” He asked you but in reality, he just wanted to know where you were going and be sure that you’re safe.
“Yes, you’ll save me some money” You giggled.
You left the bedroom and grabbed your coat from a hanger. Jack followed you and you two left your apartment. You were following him to his car. As a gentleman, he opened the door for you. You gave him the address and focused on the road ahead of you. It was a nice feeling to know that he’s there with you but you felt like he’s doing this as a way to repay that he could talk to you earlier.
“If you want, I can pick you up from the party” You heard his voice. 
“No need, I’m coming home with my friend and I’m staying there for night, but thanks”
Jack dropped you in front of the house where the party was held. You placed your hand on the handle to open the door before Jack stopped you. 
“Let me know after the party that you’re safe… please” You looked at him, shocked that he cares that much about you. 
“Yeah, of course” You replied and just like that, you left him behind walking into the party. 
Jack watched you when you entered the house. He felt jealous that he’s not the one to take you out there or be your plus one. Today’s day made him realise that he has stronger feelings towards you that he would like to admit. Although he started questioning if you also had them looking at how cold you were to him. 
Since the New Year’s Party, you felt like Jack is putting distance between you two. He started talking less to you and you were wondering if you did something wrong. Maybe he’s mad that you didn’t respond to him while he was having a monologue? That was your first thought. You asked him about it but he said that everything is fine.
For you, nothing was fine. Jack was starting to trust you again but now, he was ignoring you. You knew that there’s a tension between you two, when after a tough loss, he hasn't showed up at your place like he was always doing. You wanted to scream at him and get your answers but decided to give him space instead. Two can play this game.
You stopped talking to him. For the past weeks, it was you who always started the conversation and Jack’ replies were dry. You were done with this. If he made up his mind, he’ll text you. One day turned into one week with no message from him. It bothered you but you didn’t want to let him win. 
Jack was confused with his feelings. One part of him wanted to have you close but the other part was scared that he’ll fall for you. He thought that the best thing he could do is to keep you away while he’s trying to figure out things. He felt bad that you’re always the one to talk with him but he didn’t do anything to change it. When you stopped, it finally was a signal for him that he needs to fix it.
You were coming back from work after a tough day. You needed a bath and wine to relax. When you left the elevator, you saw Jack standing in front of your door with flowers in his hands.
“What are you doing here?” You said not even bothered to look at him. You were searching your keys in the purse. 
“I came to apologise but you weren’t home so I waited” You opened the door and walked into your place, he followed you into. “This is for you” He handed you the flowers. You went to grab a vase and put the flowers.
“Thanks” You replied and the two of you stood in awkward silence for a minute. “Are you planning to say something or just came to fuck me?” 
“I just want to say sorry. I’ve been awful for the past couple of weeks and you didn’t deserve it. It's just…” He took a deep breath. “I like you and you're a good friend for me but it feels weird for me to forget about the lie and I needed to think about what we are even doing” He chuckled. “But when you stopped talking to me, I realised that I miss our pointless conversations and just hanging out around you” 
“Let me get this straight. You needed to think if you want me around you because I lied to you and you didn’t know if you can forgive me?” You asked.
“Yeah but as you said this like that, it sounds terrible” He laughed.
“It does” You sighed. “So what are we?” 
“Friends? If you want this of course” 
“I want this” You hugged him. 
“But the sex stays right?” You rolled your eyes at his words. 
“Sure thing. Now if you excuse me I have a date with my bath and wine” 
“How about you take a bath and I’ll order food and we’ll enjoy the night” You smiled at him.
“I would love that”
You prepared your bath and laid in the hot water trying to relax. Instead, Jack’ voice was ringing in your head and his words. You were overthinking the whole situation. In the meantime, he ordered your favorite meal and poured you a glass of wine. He didn’t want to drink because he still needed to return to his apartment. He turned on your favorite movie and waited for you. 
When you stepped out of the bathroom, you dressed up in more comfortable clothes and went to the living room. You saw Jack unpacking your food and smiled at this sign. It felt too good to be true. You sat next to him and the two of you enjoyed the meal and movie. After you finished eating, you started talking about how your life has been lately and joked around. Couple hours later, he left your apartment and you were lost in your thoughts about what the two of you are.
Last two months were interesting to say. You and Jack after a major argument and his ghosting finally returned on the right track. Everything was going smoothly for both of you and you felt like he’s trusting you again after the conversation when he returned from Boston. Your feelings for him came back like a boomerang and this time, you didn’t want to mess up. 
Jack opened his heart for you again. It was a tough process for him but last month helped him to realise that you’re his true friend. He needed to have you around because even if you were on the opposite side in his sports life, you were always next to him in his private life and that was the most important thing for him. 
---
Next Chapter
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iamconstantine · 2 days ago
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arcane characters as college staff
Mel
History professor 
Refers to all students by (honorific) (surname)
Nothing but praise on ratemyproffesor
“I didn’t like history until I took Professor Medarda’s class” 
Doesn’t write scholarly articles, just giant ass books that she pumps out almost every year somehow
Quickly responds to emails. No response = its in the syllabus 
“Is there any make up work I can do to get my grade up—“ Absolutely not
But if you go the writing center you can get extra credit
Every year her students ask for an extension on the final project and every year she gives a long and furious rant about how the project was visible online from Day 1 and they had all semester to work on it
She has a beautiful office that looks like a miniature library and she only sees students by appointment
Jayce
Physics professor
Is a prolific author but somehow can’t figure out how to set up the course online
Prints cheesy physics memes 
Every zoom meeting begins with 1000 messages saying “professor Talis we can’t hear you your mic isn’t on” every. time.
you can come see him in his office any time, door’s always open
but his office is so messy you probably won’t be able to sit because he has a stack of papers on every chair
“Everyone got this question on the exam wrong so I’m going to give everyone credit because that means i didn’t teach it properly”
Always throws an end-of-year party at his place 
Caitlyn
English Literature professor 
would win best dressed of the staff, always shows up in the slacks-and-blazer fit
“To understand why the narrator wears red shoes, we need to take a look at the sociopolitical state of Edinburgh in 1864.”
if you reply to a discussion board post with just “I agree” you’re not getting credit and it isn’t up for discussion 
Never reads contemporary fiction. The “newest” book she’s read is The Great Gatsby
“We’re not having a party but if you want to bring snacks and soda to the last day of class that’s fine”
Covers a lot of authors but it somehow always comes back to Emily Dickenson
Is that teacher that assigns 400-page books every week
Constantly publishing in lit journals (rumor has it she writes steamy open-door romance books under a pen-name but no one has confirmed this)
Ekko
Art professor 
You have to actively screw up to get a bad grade with him
He wrote thousands of letters to the board until they caved and gave the class a proper kiln
“Write a three-page essay explaining why AI art is not art and insisting otherwise is spitting in the face of humankind. Double spaced. Due Friday 11:59”
Throws back coffee. Has a coffeemaker in the studio. Two of them. 
“Hey guys some of you are submitting assignments at 2 in the morning. It can wait until the next day. Please get some sleep.”
He’s created awe-inspiring pieces but if you just wanna paint a frog wearing a hat he’ll say “that’s cool”
Says he knows who banksy is but will never tell
He gets way too deep in the zone. Once reached for his coffee cup while painting, drank paint water instead. Didn’t notice.
Jinx
Chemistry professor 
If you email her the response will be “k” or “no” and nothing else
Waits until twenty minutes after the class begins to email everyone that class is canceled 
Never wears a coat, goggles, or gloves. But will call out students if they don’t
takes 5 years to post grades
“Look I’m not remembering any names. Too many. If I’m talking to you I’ll just point”
Puts a meme on the projector every day. Mostly incomprehensible. Picture of a horse on an beach and it just says “Zimbabwe”
lowest score on ratemyprofessor
someone creates a website called ratemystudent and administration has no proof that it was her because technically the students with bad scores being the same students that get bad grades in her class can be coincidental 
Viktor
Biomedical engineering professor 
Only professor who still uses chalkboards
First day of class is first day of class. No reviewing the syllabus, turn to page 34 in your textbook.
Puts things in the syllabus to catch people who use ChatGPT. If you’re caught, you’re removed from his class. Immediately. You will not get to plead your case.
Most of his cited sources are himself
Literally begs students to thrift their textbooks online instead of buying them from the school. Provides free PDFs as often as he can.
He reads journals every day and will write personal letters to authors he disagrees with
If a student asks a particularly dumb question he’ll step out of the room for ten minutes to compose himself and then resume teaching like nothing happened
Vi
Not a professor, works at the on-campus gym and leads clubs
Constantly curses without batting an eye. Students will leave class with their very uptight professor then come to the soccer club where vi walks in like “sorry I’m late guys i had a motherfucker of a headache this morning”
Please don’t ask her about anything that isn’t club or sport related. If you ask for directions or how to get in contact with student services she’s got nothing
If she refs for a game and you’re on the opposing team you’d better watch yourself. She will rip you a new one if you break any rules. One time a player grabbed one of her member’s mask during a game and he left crying after Vi was done with him
Students run into her at the local hangouts a lot but it’s never awkward. just reminds you not to party too hard before the game tomorrow 
Leads pretty much every club but dance. Wouldn’t admit it but she has no sense of rhythm and refuses to even do it as a student
You can call her coach or captain or just Vi, whatever you want. But if you call her Violet she’ll stare you down until you correct yourself
Heimerdinger
Anthropology professor 
Spends the first day of class getting to know everyone. “We’re going to go around and give our names and a fun fact about ourselves!”
Gives the “Nacirema” assignment and can’t wait to tell everyone the catch
His classroom is filled with artifacts. Don’t ask about any of them because it will take up class time
If you can’t make it to class he sends really nice responses saying he understands, then checks in when you come back
The only thing that puts him in a bad mood is the “why do anthropologists study dinosaurs if anthropology is about people” question. He’s old and tired 
Keeps thinking about retiring, keeps changing his mind
Silco
Political science professor
His classroom is bare and blank. No life. Just fluorescent lights and chairs.
Brags about how few people pass his class
Very strict on attendance. Too many absences and you’re out. 
If the assignment is due at 11:59 and you turn it in at 12:00, it’s late
“I am quite interested to hear why you believe you are deserving of a higher grade when you’ve spent less than thirty minutes attending all of my classes combined. Please, continue.”
Will straight up roast other professors no problem. Encourages students to pass it along
He encourages debate but the only thing students debate about outside of class is whether he’s hot or creepy af
Final project is a choice between A) A ten-page essay on why there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, or B) a presentation on why the country is doomed
Vander
Education professor 
Makes his own series of Crash Course-esque videos
Comes to class in jeans at best. Sweats, sometimes. 
He has one coffee mug that says #1 Dad and he refuses to use anything else
He puts fun questions on his exams, like riddles. If no one gets it, he actually gets sad
Whenever he erases the whiteboard he always misses a spot. He’s that professor.
If he catches you plagiarizing, you get one pass before he reports it. But you have to come to his office so he can tell you how disappointed he is and how much potential you have
He gives a seminar about how worried he is for the future of education and the wellbeing of the next generation and everyone leaves feeling guilty. Everyone.
Make a pop culture reference in class and everything will grind to a halt so you can explain it to him. Visuals help.
Sevika
Librarian
If you play music in the library she’ll walk up to you and just go “are you joking”
Have a phone call on speaker and she’s hanging it up for you
There’s signs telling you to be quiet every three feet
If you see her outside of school no you didn’t
She’s in charge of leading classes on accessing academic databases and she fucking hates it
Somehow knows where every book is down to the shelf. She’ll tell you what you’re looking for before you can finish your sentence
technically she’s supposed to do a walkthrough before closing for the night but if you can’t read the library hours on the signs it’s your fault if you get locked in
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curiouspupsicle · 21 hours ago
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Good Omens Fan Fiction Friday (1/10/25) - "Mixed" AU Fics
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Okay, this is a weird theme. But it occurs to me that some of my fave fics have been tales where one of our ineffable pair is mortal while the other remains a supernatural being. It's a rich starting point for fiction. And it brings some creative results.
Let's start off with The Scarecrow (M) by AppleSeeds in which a lonely Aziraphale inherits a 14th century home. One night, the scarecrow he's been talking to in the field mysteriously appears in his bedroom. It's a little spooky with a sweet ending. Also by AppleSeeds is Ghost (T) in which Crowley finds a posh ghost sharing his flat. Said ghost is apparently worried about him and makes him dinner and draws him relaxing hot baths. Imaginative story with a surprising ending.
I'll admit this next pick gave me pause. I avoided it for a long time before reading thanks to the explicit rating, presence of a sleep paralysis demon, and the dub consent tag. But when I took a chance, Be Still, My Love, Be Still (E) by @entanglednow quickly became a fond favorite. It's amazingly tender. And the writer finds a creative way to incorporate consent into a relationship where one party is paralyzed and unable to speak. I highly recommend this lovely story.
Want some demon/human fluff? Check out Blue Roses (G) by NotEvenCloseToStraight. The demon Crowley owns a flower shop across from a cute bookshop owner. He "talks" the flowers into behaving in a way that will ensure he gets a shot at making the relationship progress.
The monarch of comic asides, @wyvernquill, gives us a crossover with a famous musical in The Serpent of the Opera (T). The wily Phantom, er Serpent, kidnaps Eden Opera House's bookkeeper, Aziraphale. Hilariously oblivious Aziraphale assumes it was so he could play matchmaker for the Serpent with his true love. Loads of laughs. Fun to see the extremes to which denial can go. In 21 Grams (T) by @hakunahistata, Hell gives 7-year-old orphan Anthony the ability to see demons. As you can imagine, he's terrified. But he gets help from angel Aziraphale after praying. So thankful to @addledmongoose for suggesting this. I absolutely love it.
Aziraphale buys a cottage for a great price in @commodorecliche 's in the house we remain (M). But the books authored by a former owner, Anthony Crowley, who died on the property, keep turning up in surprising places. A sweet, ghost love story.
Crowley finds Aziraphale working in a library on earth after losing track of him a year after leaving the bookshop in Among the Stacks (NR) by MeinirRhos. But Aziraphale doesn't remember being an angel. And is apparently mortal? Of course, Crowley has no choice but to love him anyway. The opening line: "What do you wear to mourn when all you ever wear is black?" Yep. lots of angst but a happy ending.
My final choice is a fandom classic beloved by many. So if you haven't read it, I highly recommend the series, Pray for Us, Icarus (G & T) by Atalan. Crowley becomes human and reincarnates over 300 years. Aziraphale tries to restore Crowley to his immortal, demonic status but only ends up hurting them both. It will break your heart. And heal it by the end. I promise.
Did I miss your favorite tale of a mortal/supernatural pairing for our adorable Good Omens characters? Share in the comments. More recommendations each Friday--follow and reblog if you like what you see.
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so i was talking to my dad about the byler, he hasnt seen the show but he started yappin about the 80s bc thats when he grew up. anyways he starts talking about how phones worked back then because i mentioned that the party uses radios
he said that the kids who messed with radios n shit were considered like the programmers of today. like they were into all sorts of techy shit and were into conspiracies and smart stuff or wtv.
so apparently area codes werent always a thing and you used to have to pay a fee if you were calling someone outside of your zip code. which is crazy to me lol. this fee was by the min and when you dialed the number it would ask u to confirm the fee and then at the end of the month your phone company would send you a bill.
apparently though, the radio kids had a bit of a thing going with the phone companies and had figured out ways to communicate with the phone through radios and tones and shit. so they figured out ways to bypass the long distance fee.
so phonegate.
maybe im mentally ill but now im loosing my mind. we know that mike called will multiple times and california is definitely a long distance call from indiana. at first i was in tears just at the fact that bro kept calling bc of the fee (which must have been expensive for that far) but now im loosing it bc what if mike got in trouble for accepting so many payments at the end of the first month. we know from lucas book that mike spent a lot of time between s3-4 hiding alone in his basement so what if he was trying to figure out how the hell to bypass the payment feature so he could keep calling will.
he could ask dustin but maybe he's embarrassed or smth idk man this is all hc but i cant rn dude
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This is a personal/opinion post grounded in my knowledge of Modern History. It does not attempt to be anything resembling a history of the SCOTUS or messiness in US Politics, and it does NOT argue/imply that the SCOTUS pre-2020 was a flawless haven of justice untouched by partisan issues and bigotry (lmao)
There's always a lot of talk about the rise of fall of the US Empire blah blah blah. But I'll tell you what moment is burnt into my brain is the moment I thought "that's it. The 'American Experiment' is over. Now it's just a long journey to the end." It was when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, and with her, my faith in the legitimacy of the Supreme Court of the United States as the supreme arbiter of justice. And that was solidified for me when when the Trump v. United States ruling was released on July 1, 2024. Supreme Court Opinion | ACLU Remarks
Now, that institution is filled with rapists, religious extremists, and extraordinarily corrupt individuals. I have no faith in the institution to deliver anything that resembles a non-partisan application of Constitutional Law. Whatever happens next won't be a fight for the "soul*" of the country. It'll be a fight to preserve whatever freedoms the SCOTUS and the very specifically post-Obama US Fascist Parties determine the left is allowed to maintain.
As always, I hope I'm wrong. But we have an incoming POTUS going full Hitler** and talking seriously about annexing other sovereign nations, and highly placed people acting like this is normal and fine. It's not normal.
I'm not even panicking or upset. I did that when RBG died. Now I'm just trying to figure out how to avoid complying in advance.
*If, indeed, the soul of the country is worth preserving. But that's a different conversation.
**While comparisons to this individual are horrifically overused, by the late 30s Hitler was 100% serious about annexing the Sudetenland, Austria, and Poland, and highly placed individuals were like "sure bro long live the Reich this is normal and fine."
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am-i-interrupting · 9 hours ago
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Across the River | Viktor x Jinx’s Older Sibling
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Chapter 7: Something Something Struggling, Something Something Support
Summary: After the explosion and disappearance of Vi, you take your little sister across the river to Piltover. You struggle to keep the two of you afloat but manage to get Jinx to the academy. This is where she procures an internship that changes your lives.
Up and down. Up and down. Up and down. Up again! And back down.
Jinx was playing a very dangerous game with the screwdriver in her hand. Your heart didn’t falter though. It didn’t stop nor did it race even when the pointed tip got mere inches from her eye.
“Oh,” she grabbed the screwdriver from mid air as she sat up, “did I mention Jayce invited us to a stuffy Piltover party?”
“No,” you said slowly, “when was this?”
“When we went to the Undercity,” she answered. “It’s not for another like three weeks though. He said we didn’t have to come but if we wanted to he’d cover the costs for the night.”
You didn’t like that idea. You didn’t like charity. Rarely ever was it actually that in your experience yet Jayce had been kind thus far. Not that you trusted him entirely but Jinx seemed to. There was also that specific tone in her voice.
“You want to go,” you stated, not asked but stated.
She twirled the screwdriver in her hand. “It’s a scientific Piltover party,” she said. “At least I could learn something if we went but we don’t have to.”
“You can go without me,” you told her.
She laughed, her nervous, uneasy laugh, “Yeah, no, not happening, sis. You’re going with me or I’m not going at all. There’s no way I could survive all of that without you. I told Jayce as much.”
“You can survive it,” you assured. “You’d definitely fit in there better than I ever will.”
“That’s a fat fucking lie,” Jinx said with a snort. “You are sooo much better at social shit than I am. The main reason I haven’t blown up Jayce or Viktor even though I like them is because I don’t take my gun with me when I’m at the lab. That’s the only reason. You think I could do okay with a room full of snobby, arrogant Piltover Pansies? Uh, no. You’re going with me—“ she stuck her finger in your face— “or I’m not going at all.”
The thought irked you. Going into a place where people were flaunting wealth with unspoken etiquette.
When you and Jinx ran up here, there’d been judgement.
It had taken you so long to get a job that was steady. It’d only been within the past two to three years that you’d been able to hold down one for more than a few months at best. All because things were different in the Undercity. You hadn’t known any other way to be than gruff and harsh. Even when you were being kind you’d been scolded for being inappropriate while you’d been here.
The ways of this world were still foreign to you even after more than half a decade. You weren’t sure how to handle things. Not really.
Even more than that, you didn’t want to embarrass Jinx. She was already facing the hardships of being different. People didn’t need even more of a reason to see her as less than. Despite her being better than the lot of them.
“Just think it over,” she said.
She caught the screwdriver mid air as she sat upright. Her feet went beneath her thighs as her legs crossed. She grabbed her homemade bomb and tightened some screws.
You shook your head and continued on making dinner.
You put together the noddles and sauce and shrimp all together in a bowl. You mixed the contents together to get a somewhat even spread throughout the pasta. A piece of bread smothered in garlic and a bit of cheese was placed atop.
You couldn’t even make food look presentable. How were you supposed to make yourself appear that way?
It was on a lunch drop off a couple days later that Viktor followed you out of the door to the lab.
It’d been a suspiciously quiet food drop off. Jayce had been avoiding your eyes but giving you meaningful looks the entire time you were there. You didn’t know what they meant and it was, quite frankly, frustrating.
There was no doubt in your mind that Viktor was going to tell you about the unspoken, quiet elephant in the room. You weren’t sure you were ready for the trunk to let out it’s trumpet but you knew you didn’t have a choice in the matter.
When a cane sounded instead of the door closing, you took that as your cue to brace yourself.
“Jinx has told me she might not go to the convention in a few weeks,” he said. “It’s a very special opportunity.”
“Look, I’m trying to convince her I just—“
“She does not need convincing,” Viktor said. “It’s you.”
You sighed. Your lips sucked into the interior of your mouth in something akin to frustration.
“I have no place at something like this,” you said simply.
Viktor made a noncommittal noise. “Perhaps not,” he settled on saying after a moment, “but she needs you there. You have the opportunity to give her something important.”
You turned to look at him. “How is embarrassing her something important?”
His brows furrowed and his lips pointed downward. “You have the opportunity to give her support.”
You rolled your eyes with a scoff. Your head followed the pull of your neck forward. You began walking away.
“I can only give her so much,” he said. “The people as a whole have forgotten my origins but they have yet to forget hers. Stand by her as someone from the Undercity and I will do the same for you.”
You stopped in your tracks.
“They do nothing but look down on us,” you said. “She’s at least been here long enough in formative years that she knows the way of their world. I don’t know anything. All I will do is show that she isn’t from here.”
A cane sounded against the tiles of the floor. A hand slowly fell on your shoulder. Your body tensed. Only a second of remembering yourself stopped you from slapping it away. Viktor’s face came into your view.
“I’ve been speaking with Jayce about this and he’s extended a hand. He has a friend on the council. She’s expressed willingness to explain the way things are at these events in ways neither one of us could,” he said. “She’s met Jinx several times and sees her potential. Meet with her and then decide?”
“I—“
Your teeth tugged at your lip. A habit you’d picked up from your little sister.
“I guess it can’t hurt too much,” you settled on saying.
“Thank you.”
You held up your hand. “Don’t.”
Mel Medarda was almost exactly what you expected and everything you didn’t.
She was beautiful, breathtakingly so. She spoke with the slyness of a fox. Her voice curled around words with elegance. Her every movement was done with the grace of a dancer. All these things made her the perfect assassin, ready to strike for a kill.
However, she was also kind. There was a warmth in her hazel green eyes. A true sweetness was in the smile on her lips.
She was vulnerable. She was honest. She was soft but she was still sharp.
Her fingers curled around around a silky green dress. The fabric reflected the light like glass.
“What about this one?” she asked, looking to Jinx. She held the fabric up against her skin. “It goes very nicely with the undertones you have.”
Jinx’s lip curled up. She moved to touch the fabric. Immediately her nose scrunched up and her eyes squeezed shut. She couldn’t hold in the noise of disgust.
“I don’t get how anyone could ever touch that fabric much less wear it,” she said. “That feels like butter, not clothes.”
Mel took the reaction with grace, laughing softly. “So that one is a no.”
A man came out from within the racks of clothing. He held a different dress in his hands. It was a dusty blue with silver floral details but as he came closer it was easier to see that it was velvet. Another material Jinx had learned she was not fond of this evening.
Mel hummed. “I’m afraid not this one. I do believe we’ve managed to further improve upon on what we’re looking for though. No velvets or silks. No pinks or blues. Focus primarily on purples, greens, and neutrals.”
The man nodded and spun around before he walked off.
You were careful as you followed the Medarda to not touch anything. You felt like even just doing that would cause you to ruin it and you did not have the money necessary to get it fixed.
All the information you’d been given over the course of the day swirled around in your mind. You felt like you’d been in a daze, not fully there nor in control. Things had just been happening to you since you met Mel Medarda for what she’d called brunch but you thought of as a late breakfast.
No, it was called brunch. Apparently there was a term for late breakfast.
You’d eaten a sandwich with tea that tasted awful. The sandwich was. . . something. Why there were cucumbers on it? You had no idea. It fucked with the texture in a way certainly.
Either way, during this you’d been given a crash course on all things politically correct. It was a lot.
Now you’d been coaxed into dress shopping with Jinx with Jayce’s money so one could assume that meant you’d agreed to going. You don’t remember doing that so you were kind of confused but okay! You were in it now.
Next time you saw Viktor you were going to curse him out. If Jayce and Mel were friends, then Viktor must have met her. That means he must have known she had a knack for doing these sorts of things. That meant this was all his fault.
“Oooh!” Jinx said with excitement in her voice. “Is there a jacket we could find to go with this?”
“I don’t see why not,” Mel said softly.
The man returned. “What about these?”
His voice was like nails on a chalkboard and dear Janna! You just wanted to smash his head in.
Yeah, Viktor was definitely getting something the next time you saw him.
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lover-of-mine · 2 days ago
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i appreciate your meta so much especially the insistence that the relationship was still fairly casual, which i always felt like was what canon was showing us.
i feel like i’ve seen too many people act like being together 6 mos is serious by default or something which is ridiculous. every relationship is different, some might be more serious by that point, some still casual and anything in between!
Yeah, this is something @buckgettingstruck and I were talking about a lot when discussing that meta because of all the "oh they've been together 6 months, it had to be more serious than it was being shown to us" but that truly only works if you assume both of them are exclusively dating to get married at all times. And yes, we know Buck wants to be a husband more than anything but we have no reason to believe that Tommy shares the sentiment. The relationship was presented as fairly casual even after 6 months and if we consider they do a shift based work, that Tommy is a pilot that could end up being called more frequently than Buck (see him being on standby for the bachelor party when we never saw the concept for the 118 unless we consider the way they were living in the firehouse during the blackout but that was an emergency situation), to see it as they see each other once or twice a week, really just hang out when they have a chance, and keep it casual but exclusive makes sense. And if we use situations where Tommy shuts Buck down (like the "your father is alive") as Tommy, maybe even subconsciously, trying to keep Buck at arm's length because he knows how it ends makes the relationship make a lot more sense. They were going along with the flow, never really reconsidering things after deciding to take it slow and see where it takes them, but then Buck wanted everything all at once and he wasn't willing to bet on Buck staying with him. Valid concerns if you try to look at it from Tommy's pov.
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