#contaminated series

[leftoverenvy]

Contaminated Masterlist

Header credit: @ssa-sapphic

Summary: Emily and JJ's marriage is in shambles, so Emily turns to an unlikely source of comfort: her student.  To add gasoline to the fire, Emily starts an affair.  A songfic inspired by Contaminated by BANKS.

Pairing: Emily Prentiss x OC; Emily Prentiss x Jennifer "JJ" Jareau

Chapter List: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

[xelidonia]

Here it is: The Venn diagram of the comparison that made me get into TMA!

Spoilers for ALL of the Magnus Archives:

I tried to stick to canon facts, but it's hard for a character as based in fanon as Watcher Grian. Originally, I assumed the reason they were so similar was that the Archivist was just so popular on Tumblr that bits of his storyline made their way into Watcher Grian fanon... but actually, the EVO finale took place nearly a year before MAG 160, though 3rd Life began after TMA ended. It really does seem to be parallel evolution (no pun intended.)

[pet-cemetery-emotes]

Rot, rotted, rotten, and rotting wordmoji!

[silverraes]

see my bio profs would've bitten his head of for a) having his phone in his workspace and b) picking up said phone with his gloves still on

[the-hidden-levels]

Page 1

It's the beginning. | Next

[sshbpodcast]

Some directives were meant to be broken

By Ames

[Edited to add: Since there’s a lot of debate on whether the Prime Directive only applies to uncontacted races or not, check out our post “Star Trek Prodigy fully defined the Prime Directive” for the canon rules in either scenario. Live long and prosper!]

To uphold or not to uphold, that is the question. Everyone and their grandmothers tend to confuse Star Trek’s guidelines for first contact and the Prime Directive, so let’s make things clear: this week on A Star to Steer Her By, we’re talking about the Federation’s capability to interfere with the cultures of other races, fullstop. That includes uncontacted, prewarp races and how we shouldn’t make ourselves known to them because it will affect their development; but that also includes races whom we talk to all the time and how we shouldn’t make them stop worshiping their gods or participating in their normal customs or engaging in their silly wars. Until we should…

And frequently, it’s a fine line that all depends on how any given captain interprets the situation. I whipped up a sort of Prime Directive Compass graphic (above) that is so arbitrary I’m not sure I could defend most of the placements of each episode in particular, but it does maybe give a decent overall look at scenarios in which captains maintain or break the first general order and how badly it impacts the alien culture.

Interestingly, some trends emerged, so read on below or listen to this week’s very in-the-weeds chatter on the podcast (discussion starts at 1:18:23) for some examples of brave captains going out of their way to help a struggling society and for other examples of stubborn morons entirely botching their dealings with other races. What harm could it do?

[images © CBS/Paramount]

Uphold/Good – Repairing Cultural Contamination

In the ideal scenario, upholding the Prime Directive has no effect on the other people. At all. Those would be points on the x axis with entirely neutral, entirely boring outcomes. But since watching things go swimmingly wouldn’t make for very watchable television, the episodes that I’d say fit this category tend to be ones in which the crew goes in to undo someone else’s breaking of the Prime Directive. The society is already contaminated, so these kinds of episodes skew the rules a little bit because someone needs to at least lessen the impact.

Spoilers follow a little here because the recent Prodigy episode “All the World’s a Stage” made for a really compelling example of this. When the Protostar crew happens upon the “Enderprizians,” it’s clear some contamination has already occurred but is actually benefiting the society. Dal and crew don’t just go in and fix everything; they empower the aliens to be able to fix it themselves and it’s so sweet I’m getting a sugar rush just thinking about it.

Other good examples of fixing someone else’s breaking of the Prime Directive include bringing some perspective to the gangster planet in “A Piece of the Action,” throwing a wrench into the workings of Nazi planet in “Patterns of Force,” removing the Ferengi taking advantage of a gullible race in “False Profits,” going to battle for the Ba’ku when it’s clear Admiral Dougherty’s plan is evil as hell in Insurrection, and I guess bringing a little bit of peace to the Yangs and the Kohms in “Omega Glory,” though I’d prefer that last one just not exist at all.

—

Uphold/Bad – Abiding by the Letter of the Law

Episodes about blindly upholding the Prime Directive even when it’s bad for the society in question are some of the hardest to justify. Frequently, it feels like the Starfleet representative is just being obstinate in enforcing the non-interference rule because getting involved and making things better would entail real work. The corrupt, endangered, or backwards society is left to fend for themselves instead of get better. This week on the podcast, we covered Voyager’s “Thirty Days,” in which Paris is punished for trying to help a people whose refusal to change their ways will result in planetary collapse. It’s agonizing to watch Captain Janeway not only tie her own hands in dealing with the Moneans, but literally shoot down their salvation. Pew pew.

Some may say (as Chris did in his DS9 fanfic as heavy-handedly as he could) that hiding behind the Prime Directive does more damage than good in these situations. The Federation’s intentions may be to allow for the cultural rights and unguided development of individual societies, but everyone also gets to wash their hands of any self-inflicted consequences because this group of savages did it to themselves. These kinds of episodes make for great points of discussion: Is Picard at fault when many Brekkians will ultimately die of withdrawal in “Symbiosis”? Should Phlox have given the Valakians the cure (that he already made!) for their disease in “Dear Doctor”? How much should we fully loathe Archer for chastising Trip when he stands up for the rights of an oppressed gender in the rage-inducing “Cogenitor”? (Answers: Probably; Why not?; and A lot!)

And sure, sometimes our heroes try their hardest to break the Prime Directive but it just doesn’t do any good. TNG’s “The Outcast” and “Half a Life” and SNW’s “Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach” come to mind in portraying attempts by characters to convince a race to stop being assholes that ultimately have no effect. The results are the same: more people will suffer because all we could do was stand aside and watch.

—

Break/Good – Taking a Moral Stand

On the exact opposite side of the spectrum are those instances in which our upstanding crewmembers stand up for what’s right even if it technically means getting involved in the affairs of another race. These are the episodes in which we say “Screw the Prime Directive! These people need our help!” If Tom had actually gotten away with altering the Moneans’ status quo, “Thirty Days” would have flipped over to this side of the compass, but certain Tuvix-murderers felt like upholding the law for once.

The series premiere episode “Strange New Worlds” of the show with the same name (why, Star Trek, why?) does a great job of putting morals first and shoving the first directive someplace else. Sure, there’s a little bit of cultural contamination due to the [spoiler redacted spoiler redacted] in the season 2 finale of Discovery, but Pike gives up on just trying to fix things and throws any semblance of coverup out the podbay doors, utterly annihilating every word of the Prime Directive because the Kiley were at the brink of a nuclear war that could destroy the planet. There aren’t many better reasons to break the Prime Directive than that...

...but I’m gonna list some more anyway because you’re here. It’s nice to save races from extinction even if the Prime Directive dictates that would be their natural course and people like Phlox can go screw themselves. So we see: Data advocating to save the volcano planet Drema IV in TNG’s “Pen Pals,” Janeway closing the Malons’ nuclear dumping site in “Night,” and Georgiou fixing a well in the teaser of the Discovery premiere “The Vulcan Hello.” We also witness smaller victories like freeing Tosk in DS9’s “Captive Pursuit” in which Sisko pretends he’s abiding by the Prime Directive when he’s totally not, Janeway sneaking telepaths through a checkpoint in “Counterpoint,” and Nikolai Rozhenko relocating some Boraalans from their dying world in “Homeward,” among several others you can look up yourself.

—

Break/Bad – Interfering with Primitive Societies

Let’s wrap things up with all the times everything goes completely off the deep end. These are cases in which not only is the Federation putting their nose where it doesn’t belong, but it’s also sneezing all over the alien race to boot. Most typically, we see these episodes surrounding more primitive societies because it’s so easy to entirely upend their ways of life with our advanced ideas and killing contraptions.

We’ve given Admiral Jameson shit before (he’s in Jake’s early blogpost Top 10 Worst Starfleet Admirals), but he’s worth kicking a few more times since what he does in TNG’s “Too Short a Season” is that effed up. This is a man who negotiated a hostage situation by giving a revenge-obsessed tribal chief on Mordan IV all the weapons he wanted. Then Jameson thought a good loophole around the Prime Directive would be to give weapons to the rival tribe as well, providing for a costly civil war. It’s only fair that way! Right?

Starfleet just can’t stop interfering with bands of people in developing societies! We see it also when Kirk notices Klingons giving weapons to one tribe on the planet Neural so he gives weapons to the other side in “A Private Little War,” when Peanut Hamper selfishly uses the Areore for her own advancement in the recent Lower Decks episode “A Mathematically Perfect Redemption,” and when the Federation trades with the Rutian government during a time of social upheaval in “The High Ground,” and many more! There goes the neighborhood!

—

There are way more episodes to mention and arguments to make about where they align in the chart, but I’m ready to let a negotiator handle the rest of this. Suffice it to say that breaking the Prime Directive is about as Starfleet as putting deltas on everything, but about fifty percent of the time it blows up in your face.

Keep your duckblind facing here for more blogposts, and make sure you’re matching speed with us in our watch-through of Voyager over on SoundCloud or wherever you unencrypt your podcasts. You can also break the Prime Directive by communicating with us on Facebook or Twitter, but use your best judgment because we’re still developing warp drive.

[handbagman]

there is so much needed context to this but im posting it anyways

[diabelskoga]

A little headcanon, but Sanji does not smoke while in the process of cooking/preparing meals. He either smokes afterwards or at the beginning before cooking/baking/preparing meals. He would prefer to avoid any kind of ash that could get into the food, etc. No matter what, trust is put into your cooks. Sanji will not break that trust at all. He cares for what he creates. Plus sometimes certain foods ( depending on what he's making ) may need to simmer at a certain time, so Sanji can always pop out of the galley and take a quick smoke break there too!

[photoboothdoll]

The Cross Contamination Show 03.11.23

[leftoverenvy]

Contaminated - Part 1

Summary: Emily and JJ's marriage is in shambles, so Emily turns to an unlikely source of comfort: her student.  To add gasoline to the fire, Emily starts an affair.  A songfic inspired by Contaminated by BANKS.

A/n: Thank you all for waiting and hyping me up about this story. I hope you like it :) All chapters will be from Emily's POV

Pairing: Emily Prentiss x OC; Prof! Emily x POC OC; Emily Prentiss x Jennifer "JJ" Jareau

Warnings: eventual smut; power dynamic; age gap (unspecified – but all over 18); power imbalance; professor - student; cheating; marital arguing

Word Count: 2.1k

A/n: Thank you all for waiting and hyping me up about this story. I hope you like it :) All chapters will be from Emily's POV

Tumblr Masterlist | Wattpad

Taglist: @ssa-sapphic 🧸; @reidselle 🦭; @gaelic-symphony 🎻 ; @hotchs-bitch 🦆 ; @multiverse-mxdness 🧌 ; @madelineleong

Part 1

I exhaled loudly, my office chair squeaking quietly from me abruptly leaning back.  I tossed my pen on my desk, frustrated with the quality of my students' work.  These freshmen papers really had me questioning the state of education in this nation.  Hopefully once I had a few semesters under my belt, I could stop teaching intro classes.  It wasn't that I didn't like my new job, I just wanted to teach classes on profiling.  My skills were wasted on these introductory courses.

I rolled my eyes at my arrogance and leaned forward to pick up the picture on my desk – my favorite photo of JJ.  It stood out.  It looked incongruous here, out of place.  I felt just as out of place in JJ's life recently as this photo looked in my office.  

It was hard transferring out of the BAU, but ultimately it had been the right decision.  I would be forever grateful for my time at the BAU.  It had brought me to JJ after all.  But I did not regret that that chapter in my life had ended.  Once Hotch had found out JJ and I were dating, he fought long and hard for us both to stay, but Strauss didn't seem to care.  The optics of two agents dating was bad; one of us would have to transfer out of the BAU.  JJ had been devastated.  She loved being media liaison, and she loved the team.  I thought it the perfect opportunity to get a slower paced job.

I was tired of always traveling.  I wanted to sleep in my own bed more than a few nights a month.  I was over the hotel pillows, living out of a duffel bag, and takeout for dinner every night.  I was far too old to be running around chasing after unsubs.   I didn't know how many more pursuits my body could handle.  I just wanted to be home.  For my entire life, home had never been stable.  It was always fleeting, shifting.  I had hoped I would find a stable home in JJ.

I returned the photo of my wife to its spot and scooped up the remaining quizzes I was struggling to grade.  I didn't need to waste time sitting in my office.  I could just as easily grade at home.  No one had been by for office hours in weeks anyway.  I shoved the papers in my bag haphazardly, not giving a second thought to the few papers with newly creased corners.  Flipping the light off behind me, I rushed out to get home.

- - - 

"Em?" I heard softly, the sound of the garage door nearly drowning out JJ's soft voice.

"Jayje?  Is that you?" I called back in disbelief.

"Who else would it be?" she joked, the bite in her voice making me question her sincerity.

Chuckling at my own stupidity, I responded, "I just didn't expect you home."  I dropped my bag and keys and set out on my search for JJ.  I hadn't seen her in over a week, and even that hadn't really counted because she had been home for a night before leaving for a new case the next day.  I couldn't remember the last time we had spent any meaningful time together. 

I made a brief detour to the kitchen to grab a bottle of water, nearly doing a spit take when I saw JJ's phone – left on the kitchen island – light up with a new message.  I had to do a double take; surely I had misread something in the brief flash I had seen.  And for the first time in our relationship, I was ashamed to say, I opened JJ's phone to read further.

JJ was having a full and flirtatious conversation with a man named Will.  I had intended to read the last message only.  It was innocent; I merely needed to confirm someone else was not calling my wife sexy.  My stomach knotted around itself as I learned someone had indeed called my wife sexy and more.  Each message felt like a punch to the gut, pushing all air from my lungs as I struggled to keep my knees from buckling.  My fingers turned white against the edge of the countertop, the subtle ache helping to keep me in this moment.

I didn't know JJ was interested in men.  Hell, I didn't know JJ was interested in anyone else at all.  I guessed there was a lot she was keeping from me.  I wracked my brain trying to remember who this "Will" was.  Had she mentioned him before?  Was he a new profiler?  Who was he to JJ?

I rushed to put her phone back exactly as I had found it.  There wasn't a thing I could do about the messages now being read, but I'd have to just cough up to snooping through her messages if she asked.

- - -

She never mentioned her text messages.  I waited for the other shoe to drop for days.  And while I was waiting, I saw signs everywhere.  I couldn't believe I had missed them before.  Looking back, they'd always been there.  Maybe I had been too blind to see them, refusing to see what was right in front of me.  She had been distant and cold for several weeks now.  When she bothered speaking to me, it was cold, detached, or snippy.  She had a short fuse about everything.  Around eight times out of ten, our simple conversations turned into arguments.  It grew tiresome, especially considering she was so rarely home anyway.  I didn't want to waste our limited time fighting, but it was the only thing she seemed to want to do.  With me anyway.

I found it impossible that when she was home her nose was always buried in her phone, but when I tried calling her when she was away it went straight to voicemail every time.  My texts went unanswered for hours.  I tried to rationalize it; I told myself she was working when she was away, so she wouldn't constantly be on her phone.  However, as each day passed, it was increasingly difficult to continue lying to myself.

She was pulling away from me, physically and emotionally.  She was never home anymore.  She claimed she was working.  Of course I remembered my time at the BAU: the constant stream of cases, the long hours even when we were at the office.  But there was still time to come home.  Hours as a special agent had been long, but they were never this long.  

I berated myself constantly.  I was a profiler for Christ's sake!  These were classic signs, and I should have recognized them much sooner.  Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined JJ would use work as an excuse to sleep around.  I bit back an angry retort one night when she called to tell me she was sleeping on the couch in her office.  Surely she knew that I knew she was lying, right?  Who would buy that?

I thought back to every clandestine meeting we had in hotel rooms during cases, every liaison we had had in the liaison's office.  I thought back to every tiptoe down hallways, the constant fear of getting caught driving our frenzied hands to move faster.  I yearned for our hurried kisses swallowing the other's moans.  Of course things had slowed down now – we didn't have to keep us a secret.  I never expected her to trade my safe comfort and love for that same secretive passion we once shared.  

Only now she was sneaking around with Will.

This JJ wasn't the JJ I had first met; this wasn't the JJ I had fallen in love with.  Her eyes, once huge and full of child-like wonder, were now cold and calculating.  She rarely smiled at me anymore.  The job had changed her, hardened her.  It had made her cold and bitter.  I chuckled ruefully.  Hadn't life done that to me, too?

- - - 

My foul mood started the moment I saw a man's name in JJ's phone, and it had yet to dissipate.  In just a few short weeks, I had tarnished my once sparkling reputation in the Georgetown sociology department.  Though I had only been teaching three semesters, I was already a highly sought-after professor.  A prestigious, former FBI agent, my waitlists were always maxed out.  No matter how much I worried about sullying that reputation, I could not keep myself from being a stone-cold bitch.  As if my bad mood were a winter cold, I couldn't shake it.

Obviously, as a new professor, I did not yet have tenure.  And as if I didn't have enough on plate – worrying about my wife – I worried about how my mood would affect my new career.  Surely next semester's enrollment would tank.  If I didn't find a way to loosen up, I would be out of a job.  

I needed to get a grip.  Life had dealt me a shitty hand before, and I had never let it affect me like this.  I felt like a zombie walking around in my own life.  My fuse now ran as short as JJ's these days.  That wasn't fair to me or my students.  As an olive branch, I decided to hold an optional review session before exam season.  If their midterm papers were any predictor of their final grades, they could use an exam review.

My desire to turn my attitude around only went so far.  I knew holding the review during class time would invite students to ask a bunch of questions about my time at the FBI, and I did not have the energy to deal with that.  Instead, I scheduled it for an evening at the end of the last week of class in an effort to keep the non-serious students away.  My plan worked; only about thirty of my one hundred twenty students showed up.

"Thank you for trekking through the snow to be here this evening.  I'll try to make it worth your while," I started.  "My plan is to do about thirty minutes of review and then take questions."  My plan was shot to hell about five minutes into my lecture.

In a split second, everything stopped, everything changed.  It was as if I were dunked in a frozen lake.  I was jarred awake from my hibernation.  Wide, gleaming eyes captured my attention from across the room.  Their warmth thawed my cold, careless gaze.  She was the complete opposite of JJ.  Maybe that's what had drawn me in: how different she was from my frigid, absent wife.

Her caramel skin and big hair made me long to touch her.  And those eyes.  Lord, those eyes.  Innocent and earnest, like a puppy.  I just knew I could destroy her.  Desecrate every light part in her.  If I could sink my teeth into her, surely that gleam in her virtuous eyes would be extinguished.  I wanted to sully the good in her.  I wanted to ruin her.

I stuttered in the middle of my sentence.  I lost my train of thought in the middle of my lecture.  I tore my gaze from the angel in the second row to resume teaching.  Teaching.  As badly as I wanted her, she was my student.  It was inappropriate, forbidden.  Just about fifteen minutes ago I had been worried about losing my job for being inadequate for my students.  Where had that concern gone?  This longing definitely should have raised a red flag in my mind.

Struggling to finish my planned points for the exam review, I quickly wracked my brain for a way to ground myself.  I felt anger swell in me as my control slinked out of my firm grasp.  I was always in control, and anything that made me lose that control was not welcome in my life.  I twisted my wedding band around my finger as a reminder that I was married.  As it slid around my finger over and over, my control slipped further.  Faster and faster I spun it until it warmed my finger from the friction.  My wedding band served as an anchor to the life I had built for JJ and me.  Nothing was worth imploding that. 

I was married to someone else.  I was her professor.  Married.  In a position of power over her.  A violation of school policy.  I pushed my ring further into my skin, hoping the ache would snap me out of this.  Married married married.

But it was useless.  I was powerless to the magic of her gaze.  Because once students had started gathering up their things, when I realized she was about to walk out of here, away from me, I simply knew.  I'd stop at nothing to have her.

_ _ _

Continue to next part

[althaeaofficinalis]

I finally came across that tiktok person who's ripping their asoiaf content straight from other people's tumblr posts and lol girl either cite your sources or get better at nuance.

[scientia-rex]

A lot of younger people have no idea what aging actually looks and feels like, and the reasons behind it. That ignorance is so dangerous. If you don’t want to “be old,” you aren’t talking about a number of years. I have patients in their late 80s who could still handily beat me in a race—one couple still runs marathons together, in their late 80s—and I lost someone who was in her early 60s to COPD last year. What you want is not youth, it is health.

If you want to still be able to enjoy doing things in your 60s and 70s and 80s and even 90s, what you want to do, right now, is quit smoking, get some activity on a regular basis (a couple of walks a week is WAY better for you than nothing; increasing from 1 hour a day of cardio to 1.5 will buy you very little), and eat some plants. That’s it. No magic to it. No secret weird tricks. Don’t poison yourself, move around so your body doesn’t forget how, and eat plants.

If you have trouble moving around now because of mobility limitations, bad news: you still need to move around, not because it’s immoral not to, but because that’s still the best advice we have. I highly recommend looking up the Sit and Be Fit series; it is freely available and has exercises that can be done in a chair, which are suitable for people with limited mobility or poor balance. POTS sufferers, I’m looking at you.

If you have trouble eating plants because of dietary issues (they cause gas, etc.) or just because they’re bitter (super taster with texture issues here!), bad news. You still want to find a way to get some plants into your body on a regular basis. I know. It sucks. The only way I can do it is restaurants—they can make salads taste like food. I can also tolerate some bagged salads. On bad weeks, the OCD with contamination focus gets so bad I just can’t. However, canned beans always seem “safe,” and they taste a bit like candy, so they’re a good fallback.

If you smoke and you have tried quitting a million times and you’re just not ready to, bad news. You still need to quit. Your body needs you to try and keep trying. Your brain needs it, too. Damaging small blood vessels racks up cumulative damage over time that your body can start trying to reverse as soon as you quit. I know it’s insanely, absurdly addictive. You still need to.

You cannot rules lawyer your way past your body’s basic needs. It needs food, sleep, activity, and the absence of poison. Those are both small things and big asks. You cannot sustain a routine based on punishment, so don’t punish your body. Find ways to include these things that are enjoyable and rewarding instead. Experiment. There is no reason not to experiment—you don’t have to know instantly what’s going to work for you and what won’t, you just need to be willing to try things and make changes when things aren’t working for you.

You will still age. Your body will stop making collagen and elastin. Tissues you can see and tissues you can’t see will both sag. Cushioning tissues under your skin will get thinner. You’ll bruise more easily. Skin will tear more easily. Accumulated sun damage will start to show more and more. Joints will begin to show arthritis. Tendons and ligaments will get weaker and get injured more easily, as will muscles. Bones will lose mass and get easier to break. You’ll get tired more easily.

But you know what makes the difference between being dead, or as good as, in your 60s vs your 90s? Activity, plants, and quitting smoking. And don’t do meth. Saw a 58-year-old guy this week who is going to have a heart attack if he doesn’t quit whatever stimulant he’s on. I pretended to believe it was just the cigarettes, and maybe it is, but meth and cocaine will kill you quicker. Stop poisoning yourself.

Baby steps; take it one step at a time; you don’t need to have everything figured out right now. But you do need to be working on figuring things out.

[phe-purple-parade]

Been waking up stressed lately, today's stress dream featured such hits as:

Contamination

Social exclusion

Supernatural beings

Preying on vulnerable people

Violent pursuit

Mental contagion

A performance to Michael Jackson's 'Thriller'

Shopping

So,, a mix of anxieties..

[racefortheironthrone]

Hi- er, this is my first-ever writer's strike, how does one not cross a picket line in this context? I know how not to do it with things like Amazon and IRL strikes, but how does it apply to media/streaming?

Hi, this is a great question, because it allows me to write about the difference between honoring a picket line and a boycott. (This is reminding me of the labor history podcast project that's lain fallow in my drafts folder for some time now...) In its simplest formulation, the difference between a picket line and a boycott is that a picket line targets an employer at the point of production (which involves us as workers), whereas a boycott targets an employer at the point of consumption (which involves us as consumers).

So in the case of the WGA strike, this means that at any company that is being struck by the WGA - I've seen Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Disney, Warner Brothers Discovery, NBC, Paramount, and Sony mentioned, but there may be more (check the WGA website and social media for a comprehensive list) - you do not cross a picket line, whether physical or virtual. This means you do not take a meeting with them, even if its a pre-existing project, you do not take phone calls or texts or emails or Slacks from their executives, you do not pitch them on a spec script you've written, and most of all you do not answer any job application.

Because if this strike is like any strike since the dawn of time, you will see the employers put out ads for short-term contracts that will be very lucrative, generally above union scale - because what they're paying for in addition to your labor is you breaking the picket line and damaging the strike - to anyone willing to scab against their fellow workers. GIven that one of the main issues of the WGA are the proliferation of short-term "mini rooms" whereby employers are hiring teams of writers to work overtime for a very short period, to the point where they can only really do the basics (a series outline, some "broken stories," and some scripts) and then have the showrunner redo everything on their lonesome, while not paying writers long-term pay and benefits, I would imagine we're going to see a lot of scab contracts being offered for these mini rooms.

But for most of us, unless we're actively working as writers in Hollywood, most of that isn't going to be particularly relevant to our day-to-day working lives. If you're not a professional or aspiring Hollywood writer, the important thing to remember honoring the picket line doesn't mean the same thing as a boycott. WGA West hasn't called on anyone to stop going to the movies or watching tv/streaming or to cancel their streaming subscriptions or anything like that. If and when that happens, WGA will go to some lengths to publicize that ask - and you should absolutely honor it if you can - so there will be little in the way of ambiguity as to what's going on.

That being said, one of the things that has happened in the past in other strikes is that well-intentioned people get it into their heads to essentially declare wildcat (i.e, unofficial and unsanctioned) boycotts. This kind of stuff comes from a good place, someone wanting to do more to support the cause and wanting to avoid morally contaminating themselves by associating with a struck company, but it can have negative effects on the workers and their unions. Wildcat boycotts can harm workers by reducing back-end pay and benefits they get from shows if that stuff is tied to the show's performance, and wildcat boycotts can hurt unions by damaging negotiations with employers that may or may not be going on.

The important thing to remember with all of this is that the strike is about them, not us. Part of being a good ally is remembering to let the workers' voices be heard first and prioritizing being a good listener and following their lead, rather than prioritizing our feelings.

[reasonsforhope]

The Klamath River’s salmon population has declined due to myriad factors, but the biggest culprit is believed to be a series of dams built along the river from 1918 to 1962, cutting off fish migration routes.

Now, after decades of Indigenous advocacy, four of the structures are being demolished as part of the largest dam removal project in United States history. In November, crews finished removing the first of the four dams as part of a push to restore 644 kilometres (400 miles) of fish habitat.

“Dam removal is the largest single step that we can take to restore the Klamath River ecosystem,” [Barry McCovey, a member of the Yurok Tribe and director of tribal fisheries,] told Al Jazeera. “We’re going to see benefits to the ecosystem and then, in turn, to the fishery for decades and decades to come.” ...

A ‘watershed moment’

Four years later, [after a catastrophic fish die-off in 2002,] in 2006, the licence for the hydroelectric dams expired. That created an opportunity, according to Mark Bransom, CEO of the Klamath River Renewal Corporation (KRRC), a nonprofit founded to oversee the dam removals.

Standards for protecting fisheries had increased since the initial license was issued, and the utility company responsible for the dams faced a choice. It could either upgrade the dams at an economic loss or enter into a settlement agreement that would allow it to operate the dams until they could be demolished.

“A big driver was the economics — knowing that they would have to modify these facilities to bring them up to modern environmental standards,” Bransom explained. “And the economics just didn’t pencil out.”

The utility company chose the settlement. In 2016, the KRRC was created to work with the state governments of California and Oregon to demolish the dams.

Final approval for the deal came in 2022, in what Bransom remembers as a “watershed moment”.

Regulators at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) voted unanimously to tear down the dams, citing the benefit to the environment as well as to Indigenous tribes...

Tears of joy

Destruction of the first dam — the smallest, known as Copco 2 — began in June, with heavy machinery like excavators tearing down its concrete walls.

[Amy Cordalis, a Yurok Tribe member, fisherwoman and lawyer for the tribe,] was present for the start of the destruction. Bransom had invited her and fellow KRRC board members to visit the bend in the Klamath River where Copco 2 was being removed. She remembers taking his hand as they walked along a gravel ridge towards the water, a vein of blue nestled amid rolling hills.

“And then, there it was,” Cordalis said. “Or there it wasn’t. The dam was gone.”

For the first time in a century, water flowed freely through that area of the river. Cordalis felt like she was seeing her homelands restored.

Tears of joy began to roll down her cheeks. “I just cried so hard because it was so beautiful.”

The experience was also “profound” for Bransom. “It really was literally a jolt of energy that flowed through us,” he said, calling the visit “perhaps one of the most touching, most moving moments in my entire life”.

Demolition on Copco 2 was completed in November, with work starting on the other three dams. The entire project is scheduled to wrap in late 2024.

[A resilient river]

But experts like McCovey say major hurdles remain to restoring the river’s historic salmon population.

Climate change is warming the water. Wildfires and flash floods are contaminating the river with debris. And tiny particles from rubber vehicle tires are washing off roadways and into waterways, where their chemicals can kill fish within hours.

McCovey, however, is optimistic that the dam demolitions will help the river become more resilient.

“Dam removal is one of the best things we can do to help the Klamath basin be ready to handle climate change,” McCovey explained. He added that the river’s uninterrupted flow will also help flush out sediment and improve water quality.

The removal project is not the solution to all the river’s woes, but McCovey believes it’s a start — a step towards rebuilding the reciprocal relationship between the waterway and the Indigenous people who rely on it.

“We do a little bit of work, and then we start to see more salmon, and then maybe we get to eat more salmon, and that starts to help our people heal a little bit,” McCovey said. “And once we start healing, then we’re in a place where we can start to help the ecosystem a little bit more.”"

-via Al Jazeera, December 4, 2023