#early recurrence

[whxrecruxxes]

RUFFLED SHEETS - cl16

pairing- charles leclec x fem!reader warning- smutttt ( wrap it before you tap it pooks) , dirty words (frenchie french) porn with no plot :) lowk reader's first time riding ??? idk yall does that count genre- established relationship summary- missing charles when he's away is a recurrent feeling. question is, what happens when he comes home to find you in his shirt ? this is not proofread sorry for any mistakes english is not my first language les copains :)

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It was no surprise that you were alone for yet another weekend. Not that you minded it, it felt nice to be alone sometimes. But you had to admit, spending the weekend with Charles was always more fun than watching him spend his weekend without you on the TV.

You were sat on your couch, the blanket draped over your knees, your eyes heavy with sleep, Charles shirt heavy on your shoulders. Miami was always the toughest race for you to keep up with, seeing as though the time difference with Monaco was always so huge. But you stuck through, and in the end it was worth it, because you got to see Lando cross the line first for the first time in his career, and you got to see your boyfriend bring it home third. From the look on his face, you could tell he was happy for Lando, but that p3 was not the result he was expecting- nor hoping for. You shot Lando a quick congrats text, who responded with a flurry of misspelled, clearly drunken texts of different variations of the words "thank you, love you, wish you could've been there" instead reading "tjanl yio, lobe yiu, qisj yio xouldvr beem tjete". It took you a while to decipher it, but when you finally did, it brought a soft smile to your face. It was obvious the young boy you had gotten close to had not even waited a minute after that podium to go out with his friends and celebrate. Your phone buzzes by your side as you yawn, cracking your neck. You pick our phone up and squint your tired eyes at the screen.

"I'll be home by tomorrow night, ma chérie. Je t'aime, fait de beaux rèves." I love you, sweet dreams. You read out loud, rubbing your eyes. You got up from the couch and switched the tv off and ventured into your room, craving the comfort of your bed. Charles's shirt reached far enough down to the middle of your thighs, so you had assumed when you slipped it on hours ago (after remembering he had left his signature red shirt here as he didn't need it because of the blue shirts for miami) that you didn't need shorts, and now was no different, so you simply slid into bed and cuddled yourself into your pillow and letting yourself succumb into sleep.

When Charles walks in, almost twelve hours early because he was planning on surprising you by getting the first flight home, the sun hadn't even gone up yet. The apartment is quiet when he steps in, and he expected you to be asleep on the couch, still watching the TV. He's confused when he doesn't spot you, dropping his bags by the doorway and venturing further into the apartment, and when he finally reaches the room, he carefully pries it open. The moonlight is gushing in through the windows, illuminating your body. Your hair is sprawled over your back, your shoulders rising softly in sleep. Charles smiles at your sleeping state, quickly, ridding himself of any airport sullied clothes and slipping in next to you, his chest bare, sweatpants hanging low on his waist. At the sudden dip of the mattress beside you, you jolt awake, turning to face him.

The look on your face makes his heart melt.

You look so tired, but so happy to see him. Your eyes light up, and he practically melts into your touch as your hands find his cheeks and you sling a thigh over his middle, humming softly as his arms bunch up around your waist.

"Hi, mon amour. Surprise." He whispers, kissing his aw down your jaw. You push at his back with your heel, humming softly.

"Charlie ? I missed you." You mutter, burying your hands in those soft brown curls of his.

"I caught the first flight back. Needed to see my girl." He says, burying his face in the crook of your neck. He grimaces, his nose scrunching as he notices an odd smell on your body. His cologne, mixed with sweat and another mixture of things that you like about his scent. He frowns.

"Why do you smell like me ?" He asks, his voice soft against your ears. He softly pulls away from you, the darkness in the room making him squint. He turns on the bedside light, sending the slightest glow emmenating around the room, and finally illuminating your body. The sheets have bunched up near the apex of your thighs, revealing the soft black material of your lingerie and finally his shirt, resting on your shoulders. His number, splayed over your chest, the fabric stretching in a heavenly way around your breasts.

Charles heard his breath catch in the back of his throat. Sleepy and craving to hide your eyes from the light, you whimper and shift from side to side, the shirt hiking up to reveal he ruffled hem of the lingerie resting on your hips.

"I missed you." You repeat again as an answer, humming as you closed your eyes.

"Putain." Fuck. He mutters, gulping heavily. "Is that- Are you wearing my shirt ?" This makes your eyes open. There was so something to primal in his eyes. Seeing you in his shirt, proudly wearing his humber, knowing you were probably cheering him on and seeing the way the fabric of the shirt stretch over his favorite part of you- stroked something deep within him, ever ounce of blood leaving his head to rush between his legs.

"Do you not like it ? I can take it off." You whispered. The ferrari red brought out your flushed complexion, and Charles felt his pants grow uncomfortably tight.

"I'f i'd have known you were waiting for me here, like this.." His finger finds the apex of the your thighs, slipping his finger between the tiny gap, stroking the soft, subtle skin. "I would've come home earlier." He mutters, and you smile at him softly.

"If you hadn't left, you could've had seen me like this all weekend." You mutter, although you know he could never stop racing. He smiles teasingly at you, rolling his eyes. You sit up, the shirt falling down to your thighs, yawning.

"I need the bathroom. Be right back, baby." You breathe out, getting to your feet after pressing a soft kiss to his lips. His jaw almost drops, and the tightness in his pants grows. The number and red on your body seems to be made for you, and Charles has to bite back a primitive growl. When you emerge from the bathroom, the heavy lidded look of your eyes looks like you've been fucked out, and Charles sits up fully. You sit in front of him, kneeling at the foot of the bed as you tuck your hair behind your ears.

"You did really good today. P3." You say, smiling softly at him. He simply just nods, his chest heaving. You frown at his lack of answer, not noticing his eyes glue to your chest, to his number on your body. It's like he's finally staked his claim to you, and it makes his heart swell. You smile confusedly at his dazed expression.

"Charlie ? Are you okay ?" You ask, leaning forward, your arms pressing your breasts together. He gulps heavily, holding his hand out for you.

"Lemme look at you." You slide over, expecting him to be all soft and cute like he usually is when he's sleepy, but boy were you wrong. He guides you over his lap, forcing you down to straddle it as he inspects you.

"Fucking hell. You look hot in red. Why have you never worn this before ?" He asks, running his calloused hands over your thighs, the cold of his rings burning your skin.

"Because you're always wearing it ?" You reply teasingly, fingers mindlessly drawing out the sahpe of his abs and muscles.

"Ma belle fille.." My pretty girl. You blush furiously, smiling softly as he traces the apex of your thighs with his hands. You rub your eyes tiredly, craving to cuddle into him and sleep, but the way he's looking up at you, his hands grasping you tight, it makes a rumble start up in your stomach. He's looking at you like a man starved. I mean it's not as if he's never seen you wear red. But something about you, in his shirt, makes him hungry.

"Why ? Do you like it ?" You counter his question, giggling softly. His eyes almost bulge out of his head.

"Like it ? Amour, I love it. You are never taking this off. " You smile softly, cocking a questioning eyebrow.

"Never ? Don't you have to wear this in Imola ?" he shakes his head, licking his lips again.

"Were you wearing this when i crossed the finish line ?" He asks, softly swerving your question. You nod, smiling softly. He chuckles, his hands slipping up the shirt and caressing your ribs, his thumbs grazing right along side the underside of your breasts.

"Well then i'll tell Fred we're keeping the blue. You're wearing this at every race weekend from now on- My lucky charm." The words send a blush rising to your cheeks, and he laughs. "Really ? That's what gets you going ? I have worse i can say, bébé." He says, his eyes still trained on his number on the shirt, making you roll your eyes. Charles knew the effect his words had on you, and he was not afraid to use it. Wether in was to rile you up when you two were out with the rest of the grid, or when you were in the privacy of your home or his driver's room.

"And with you on top of me, looking like this.. I have a few ideas." He mutters, before his face dives down to bury itself in your neck, his lips nipping at the sot skin right below your jaw. You bite back a breathy moan as your hand comes flying up to grab his hair, the covers bunched up around both of you. Your hips roll instinctively against his as he continues to suck at your skin, inevitability leaving bright red marks along your jaw and collarbone, sure to mark you for everyone to see- And he was going to make sure everyone would see. You could already see the gears in his head turning, trying to figure out where to mark you so people would know you were his next time you even set foot in the paddock. His hands travel up to fully grasp your breasts, his thumps pinching the pebbled peaks, this time eliciting a whimper from the back of your throat. He smirks against your skin.

"There it is." He whispers, before pulling away from your neck, his hands leaving your breasts, slipping up to cup your cheeks. His lips smash down against yours, catching them in a rough dance, his hands blindly reaching down to push the fabric on your panties to the side, running his finger against your folds. When he's met with the obvious wetness and slick already coating you and spreading across your thighs, and audible groan is heard from your boyfriend, kissing you with a new fervour.

"T'est déjà prête pour moi, hein, ma belle ?" You're already ready for me, huh, pretty girl ? He teases, the accent rolling off his tongue as he pulls away to observe the way your eyes flutter closed at the sensation of his thumb pressing down on you clit as two of his fingers stretch you out with no warning. Your hands fly up to grip his bare shoulders at the sudden intrusion, a pained whimper leaving your lips as you bite your full bottom lip between your teeth.

"So wet f'me.. Only for me. Where do you want me, amour ?" He asks, slowly and teasingly kissing your breasts through the shirt. You whimper.

"L-Like this." You manage, gulping down the moans bubbling up your throat as his fingers brush against that spot he knows would make you come undone.

"You want to ride me, bébé ?" He asks, smiling against your skin. You nod frantically, unable to contain the shake in your thighs as his thumb continues to assault your clit.

"Tes mots, ma chérie. Utlise tes mots." Your words, darling. Use your words. He instructs, clearly not wanting to use your fucked out state to his own gain.

That's the thing about Charles.

He may be a huge fucking tease, but he will always double check before dong anything he thinks might hurt you in any way. Especially in these situations, when your need for him would be too overwhelming and your thoughts wouldn't process normally, and sometimes you would say thins you didn't mean just to get him to touch you. So when you notice that twinge of doubt in his eyes as he looks up at you, you gulp down whatever moan or cry of his name was about to emerge and lovingly kiss his cheek, trying your best to keep your orgasm at bay.

"I want to ride you, Charlie." You manage, before his thumb gives your clit another appreciative rub and you crumble, body going slack against his as your body convulses, your walls fluttering around his fingers. He kisses you through the high, letting you ride it out before your hips still and he takes that as his sign. He retracts his fingers from you, lapping them up with his tongue, and you gasp as he smiles.

"You ready for me, mon cœur ?" He asks, softly moving himself underneath you to tug down his sweats. Eagerly, you help him shimmy them off, watching as his cock slaps up against his abdomen. You practically drool, at the sight, and move to take the shirt off. Charles shakes his head, licking his lips.

"No. Don't. Keep it on." He says, a hungry glare in his eyes. Fucking you with his number on him seems to seem more appealing to him than touching your breasts- which is usually his favourite part. But there's something in his eyes that makes it so hard to deny him. So you simply nod and drop your hands back down, softly bunching the shirt up around your waist so he can see what he's doing. His hands find the lace of your underwear again, fully shoving it to the side before softly placing you right above his length. He pushes you down, stopping when your pained whimpers feel the air, your nails digging into his chest.

"Woah, you got it, baby." He breathes, reaching up to brush your hair out of your face. "We can stop if you want to, amour. I don't want you to get hurt." He's barely halfway inside you, and he's already worried about hurting you. You shake your head, letting yourself sink down a little more and wiggle your hips to try and let yourself adjust to his girth, stretching you out from a new angle. He pushes your underwear further to the side, his hands balled around the shirt. When you finally sink down fully, the room is met with synchronized moans from the both of you.

'Fuck, chérie. Taking me so good." He praises as your hips start to instinctively roll above his. HIs hands push up the shirt, so that your stomach is revealed, leaving only the number on your breasts exposed. He groans as the bounce with your every roll, the number jutting out as if to further shove it in his face, that you are his. Your hands are splayed on his chest, gasping as you feel him poke his way into your stomach. He smirks at your desperate whimpers.

"What's wrong, darling ?"

"S'not enough." You whine, your hips stuttering. His hands guide you along, but it doesn't seem enough to push you further towards your edge. His brows furrow in worry. You whimper again, your hands balling into fists above his bare chest.

"Please, Charlie." You whimper, your head thrown back, sweat covering your skin, his hands coming to a still around your hips. His hand reaches around your back and pins your hips down against him. He holds you still, earning a whine of protest from you. he kisses up your chest, shaking his head as you try to roll your hips again.

"Shhh, non mon amour. Bouge pas. Let me take care of you." No my love, don't move. He whispers against your skin, finally letting go of your shirt, the material dropping back down to bunch up around your waist. He holds you still, before thrusting his hips up to meet yours.

"Better ?" He asks, his chest caving with every heavy breath that fills his chest, the only thing edging him on are your desperate whimpers. Your own hips start rolling again, and his head is thrown back, a low groan leaving his lips.

"Ah, fuck. So pretty. So tight. Just f'me." His words bring heat up to your cheeks, feeling his cock brush against that knot of nerves that is yet to be untangled.

"God, Charles." You cry, his hands trailing up and past the shirt to grab your breasts underneath the rough material of his shirt. He palms them, smiling as you whimper once again, leaning into his touch. His hips keep on bucking up to meet your rolls, and he can tell you're already getting close. The urge to have you pinned under him, ready for him, is overwhelming,. With no warning, he twists the two of your around, splaying your thighs open onto the bed, your hands gripping his shoulders in shock. His hips meet yours at a furious, hungry pace.

"God, you drive me crazy." He groans as his lips find your neck and leaves marks atop the already present ones. "Sleeping in my shirt, wearing my number.. it's like you're trying to get me to fuck you." He groans, a slight chuckle leaving his lips. You whimper, your hands digging into his shoulder blades.

"Fuck, i missed you so much." You whimper, tears flying up to your eyes. His hips snap against yours harder at your words, stealing the whimpers from your lips.

"I missed you more, fuck you have no idea. Tu m'a tellemment manqué." I missed you so much. He moans, his hips stuttering. You bite back a moan, your head thrown back as he pushes your thighs further apart, making you whine.

"God, please. Please, Cha, i'm so close." You whimper, gasping for air, the shirt tight around you. He pull back only slightly, gripping your thighs and dragging him closer to you. His hand wraps around your neck to tilt your head up, licking his lips.

"Vas-y, amour." Go ahead, love. "Show me how good i make you feel." His words seem to be the only thing your body obliges to, and your body convulses under him as you come all over him, whimpering loudly as your back arches off the bed. His body falls forward, pushing up your shirt to wrap his full lips around one of your breasts, making you moan loudly as he continues to push himself in and out of you at a steady pace. HIs free hand is still pushing your thigh open and flat on the bed, and he tries to ignore how it shakes and how you cry out in overstimulation as he tries his best to push you to another limit, not wanting to hurt you in his selfish need for release.

"Charlie, please, i can't-" You beg, your body shaking as tears fall past your eyes. He shushes you, pain blooming in his chest at your cries.

"Shh, i know baby, i know. Just one more for me, okay ?" He groans as your walls flutter around him, clearly already primed and ready for another. You nod frantically, feeling the tension build up in you stomach again. You hands drift down to his waist, grabbing it and pushing him towards you.

"Putain de merde." Fucking hell. "You're going to be the death of me, baby." He praises, his hips stuttering.

"Fuck, i'm close, do you want me to-"

"Inside." You gasp, feeling your own orgasm reach you, the third one of the night. The breathy sound of your voice has his toppling and he empties himself inside of you, moaning your name loudly as his eyes flutter closed. You whine as he pushes his shirt back down your chest, the emptiness between your legs evident. He kisses your face, slipping his own boxers on before grabbing a towel from the chair near your bed and baling it up, softly dragging it along your thighs. You whimper, squeezing your thighs together. He brushes your hair away from your eyes, softly shushing you as he spreads your thighs open again and proceeds with cleaning you up.

“Shhh, it’s okay, mom cœur. It’s okay.” He whispers, kissing the tears away. When he finally pushed your underwear back into place, he slides next to you and pulls you into his arms. He kisses your forehead, sighing heavily as you sniffle into his chest.

“I really did miss you.” You mutter, running your hands along his muscles. He smiles, looking down at you.

“I know, bébé. I missed you too. I wish you could’ve been there, cheering for me.” You giggle.

“You know i had to work, Charlie. I would’ve dropped everything to be there if my boss had given me the days off. P3.. That’s a great result.” He grimaces at the praise. You frown.

“What ?”

“P3 is not a great result- it’s just a result.” You sit up, glaring down at him, trying to ignore the pain in your legs.

“Hey.. P3 is a good result. It’s just the beginning, you can only get better from here, and i’m sure you will. I mean P2 in the sprint is already amazing.” You praise, and he smiles.

“See, this is why i need you at races. You’re such a better pep talker than Xavi and all the others.” You roll your eyes and lower yourself down next to him, sighing as you rest your head on his chest.

“If you get me a job, maybe i could be there every weekend.” He laughs, the rumble making your heart soar.

“I’ll see what i can do, amour. Anything to have you there with me.”

The rest of the night is spent laughing and him telling you about his weekend, pure and unfiltered like the TV would show you- and you make a mental note.

If you ever have to spend the weekend away from him again- which wasn’t bound to happen often- you’d make sure to be wearing his shirt when he got home.

[reasonsforhope]

"Doctors have begun trialling the world’s first mRNA lung cancer vaccine in patients, as experts hailed its “groundbreaking” potential to save thousands of lives.

Lung cancer is the world’s leading cause of cancer death, accounting for about 1.8m deaths every year. Survival rates in those with advanced forms of the disease, where tumours have spread, are particularly poor.

Now experts are testing a new jab that instructs the body to hunt down and kill cancer cells – then prevents them ever coming back. Known as BNT116 and made by BioNTech, the vaccine is designed to treat non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the most common form of the disease.

The phase 1 clinical trial, the first human study of BNT116, has launched across 34 research sites in seven countries: the UK, US, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain and Turkey.

The UK has six sites, located in England and Wales, with the first UK patient to receive the vaccine having their initial dose on Tuesday [August 20, 2024].

Overall, about 130 patients – from early-stage before surgery or radiotherapy, to late-stage disease or recurrent cancer – will be enrolled to have the jab alongside immunotherapy. About 20 will be from the UK.

The jab uses messenger RNA (mRNA), similar to Covid-19 vaccines, and works by presenting the immune system with tumour markers from NSCLC to prime the body to fight cancer cells expressing these markers.

The aim is to strengthen a person’s immune response to cancer while leaving healthy cells untouched, unlike chemotherapy.

“We are now entering this very exciting new era of mRNA-based immunotherapy clinical trials to investigate the treatment of lung cancer,” said Prof Siow Ming Lee, a consultant medical oncologist at University College London hospitals NHS foundation trust (UCLH), which is leading the trial in the UK.

“It’s simple to deliver, and you can select specific antigens in the cancer cell, and then you target them. This technology is the next big phase of cancer treatment.”

Janusz Racz, 67, from London, was the first person to have the vaccine in the UK. He was diagnosed in May and soon after started chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

The scientist, who specialises in AI, said his profession inspired him to take part in the trial. “I am a scientist too, and I understand that the progress of science – especially in medicine – lies in people agreeing to be involved in such investigations,” he said...

“And also, I can be a part of the team that can provide proof of concept for this new methodology, and the faster it would be implemented across the world, more people will be saved.”

Racz received six consecutive injections five minutes apart over 30 minutes at the National Institute for Health Research UCLH Clinical Research Facility on Tuesday.

Each jab contained different RNA strands. He will get the vaccine every week for six consecutive weeks, and then every three weeks for 54 weeks.

Lee said: “We hope adding this additional treatment will stop the cancer coming back because a lot of time for lung cancer patients, even after surgery and radiation, it does come back.” ...

“We hope to go on to phase 2, phase 3, and then hope it becomes standard of care worldwide and saves lots of lung cancer patients.”

The Guardian revealed in May that thousands of patients in England were to be fast-tracked into groundbreaking trials of cancer vaccines in a revolutionary world-first NHS “matchmaking” scheme to save lives.

Under the scheme, patients who meet the eligibility criteria will gain access to clinical trials for the vaccines that experts say represent a new dawn in cancer treatment."

-via The Guardian, May 30, 2024

[omarfor-orchestra]

I had a dream I messed up the days of the week and didn't go to my therapy appointment but I desperately needed one so she sent me to her therapist or something? He was french

[david-watts]

I might be sick over the holiday which is fuckin excellent

[loaksky]

I don't know if you've done this yet but can we have mean ellie is FWB with the reader but she's jealous when the reader is into someone else 👀

i have not + you know what anon i could kiss your brain rn ! i definitely view this pairing as separate from this fwb!ellie x reader, but this could also technically fit in their early timeline since nothing else has really been established about them...

content warnings: language, ellie being an asshole (very on brand for me to write ig lmao), reader actually sticks up for herself in this one, but eventually folds (i would too for ellie ngl) 18+ content that includes; brief mentions of strap-on sex, fingering (r!receiving), oral (r!receiving).

author’s note: i’ve been so unmotivated to write, but this request awoke something in me idk...also, if you’ve sent in a tlou request (yes even from june), i’m still cooking i promise! (and not in the way that ellie keeps promises in this fic lmfaoo).

main masterlist | tlou masterlist

You didn’t want to say anything at first, couldn’t be too sure under the lowlights of the party with bass-y music that makes both the house and your chest throb with every beat, but you see it clear as day on the drive home and a passing streetpost illuminates the purpling flesh on Ellie’s carotid.

She nearly jumps out of her skin when your fingertips brush over the blooming bruise, obviously fresh and warm to the touch.

“What the fuck?” she huffs, pulling the drawstrings on her hoodie to scrunch to fabric around her neck.

“Who gave you that?” you ask softly, expression on your face enough to devastate, but Ellie’s always been different, an anomaly of sorts when it came to the matters of her stony heart.

“Why does it matter?” she scoffs.

“Ellie,” you sigh. “You know why it matters.”

She’s swinging a right at the intersection, nearing the residential you live in.

“It doesn’t,” she grunts. “Because at the end of the night, it’s you I’m fucking, isn’t it?”

And you don’t know why the way she puts it stings so much this time around when she frequently reminds you both directly and indirectly that while you may be her most recurrent hookup, you’re definitely not her only one, but it does. Does so much that you’re turning your face towards the window to hide the tears that are pooling.

Because all you wanted was Ellie. Wanted her in ways she wasn’t willing to give you. Wanted to learn and grow with her, but she wasn’t budging and lately, you’ve been feeling stupid.

When she turns into your neighborhood, you speak.

“Just drop me off, please.”

Ellie’s slowing down, palm finding purchase on your thigh.

“Babe, c’mon,” she practically whines, kneading the skin there. “Don’t be like that.”

You shift away from her, gather your purse from your feet as she continues through the different apartment buildings.

“Babe,” she calls again when you barely wait for her to stop and you’re pushing the car door open.

And maybe it’s childish, but you’re wounded and quite frankly done with the back and forth.

“She’s probably waiting for you,” you add petulantly.

“Babe, seriously. You’re being annoying,” she warns.

“And you’re being a dick,” you bite back. “First, you drag me out to a shitty party where I don’t know a single soul even though you promised we could just chill and smoke while watching that stupid fucking space exploration documentary, then when we get there, you’re leaving me with a bunch of sleazy assholes while you do god knows what with the same girl you’ve been telling me not to worry about for the last five weeks.”

And of things Ellie’s looks horrified at, it’s the fact that you’d been observant enough to recognize the girl she’d thought she whisked away before your prying eyes could catch on.

“I’m not fucking stupid, Ellie,” you say with resignation. “I tried to turn the other cheek because I really fucking like you, but you treat me like shit and I deserve better than that.”

Of course you don’t know it, but those fucking words bite. They’re an automatic trigger because unbeknownst to you, both of your friend groups think the same thing. Aren’t afraid to let her know otherwise. And she’s obviously well aware that, Christ, yes, you absolutely deserve better. Is actually really insecure on the low because she doesn’t know why you stick around with a piece of shit like her when you could have so much better.

So she does what she does best when she feels like a kicked puppy and lashes out.

“Of course Little Miss Princess deserves better,” she mocks. “What fucking ever. I don’t know why I flaked on a ten for such a stuck up bitch.”

And you see right through her, know that she’s all bark and no bite, but it hurts regardless, when you step off to the side and she’s leaning over the center console to shut the passenger side door herself.

She’s revving off without another word, and to add insult to injury, your phone’s pinging obnoxiously once you get out of your well-needed shower.

els <3 sent a video.

It’s the blonde from the party. Of course those dumb LEDs pulse red in the background, making Ellie and her flavor of the night look a thousand times more seductive. Ellie’s kissing her sloppily, whispering things against her mouth that you can’t quite pick out.

els <3 sent a video.

The next video’s grainy, but you can hear the tell-tale squelch, the girl’s shaky moans and Ellie egging her on. Your cheeks are on fire and you feel like you’re about to throw up.

els <3 sent a photo.

You wonder if the girl knows, that Ellie’s sending you the most compromising footage of her. If she knows how grimy the green-eyed girl truly is, sending someone else pictures of her stuffed hilt-deep with the same strap Ellie’d used on you.

els <3: still think u deserve better ?

You delete the thread and her phone number.

Ellie expects you to crack first, you always do. Because even if she isn’t shit, she’s your biggest weakness and she knows it. Can say so with confidence, because maybe the same can be said about her.

She hasn’t fucked you in nearly two weeks and not a single body she touches can elicit the same feeling that you do. And in the back of her brain, she knows why, but Ellie’s prideful. Won’t dare admit it out loud.

So she cracks first. Texts you between classes.

me: i have a few joints + a coupon to tino’s if you’ll let me come over… :(

my #1 girl: Who’s this?

Ellie throws her head back and groans.

me: cmon baby, dont b like that. im srry i was mean, ill make it up to u

my #1 girl: I think you have the wrong number…

me: babe stopppp

Her text bubbles turn green after that message.

You forget that Ellie has a copy of your key because she’s never used it in the five months that the two of you have been in this precarious situation, and your heart falls square to your ass when you emerge from the shower to find her setting up a box of pizza on your coffee table.

“Ellie, what in the fuck?”

She feigns nonchalance, pulls a few joints from her jacket pocket. But the aroma of weed or the grease of the pizza isn’t what makes you wrinkle your nose.

It’s the smell of flowers that waft from a pretty vase sitting on the cut away of the kitchen counter.

Your gaze fixes on the girl who settles on your couch.

“You need to leave,” you say stonily.

“But I just got here,” Ellie says. “And I brought you pizza…and flowers.”

“I’m sorry, did you think that a five dollar pizza and a bouquet of flowers from Saver’s was going to fix the fact that you’ve been so fucking awful to me for the past half year?”

Ellie shrinks.

“Well, no…but—”

“You practically sent me a homemade porno of you and some other girl you fucked to get back at me for setting a boundary, Ellie,” you say sharply. “What, did it not work out? Did you—”

“I’m trying to be the bigger person here,” Ellie sighs. “I am sorry. I just—”

“You what?”

“I don’t fucking know, okay?” Ellie snips. “God, you’re talking down to me like you’re a fucking therapist or my fucking mom and—”

You’re shaking your head, crossing the room and picking up the pizza from the coffee table to shove in her arms.

“I don’t have time for this,” you mutter. “Kenzie’s going to be here any minute now—”

“Who the fuck is Kenzie?” Ellie balks, caught like a deer in the headlights.

“Ellie, don’t,” you warn.

“Don’t what?” she practically seethes. “You think I���m just gonna be okay that you’re spending time with some other stupid bitch? Maybe you’ve forgotten, but you’re mine.”

And she shouldn’t have glanced down at your cleavage as you cross your arms over your chest, but Ellie’s weak and you look too fucking pretty for your own good.

“Yours?” you ask incredulously. “Do you hear yourself?”

“Yes, mine,” Ellie affirms. “All fucking mine and no one else’s.”

“God, you’re so full of shit, Ellie,” you scoff. “I’m supposed to be loyal to you and be okay with you having a roster, but I can’t go on a date with someone I genuinely like because it fucks with your brain to have a legitimate interest in somebody?”

“You like her?” Ellie asks in disbelief. “Like, like her, like her?”

“Yes,” you reply without hesitation.

And that makes Ellie’s jaw set, makes her narrow her eyes at you.

“You like her more than me?” she taunts.

And maybe she has you there, but you refuse to give her the upper hand.

“I could learn to,” you answer honestly. “Because Kenzie is kind to me. She doesn’t treat me like an option, doesn’t act like she’s God’s gift to the fucking world and that I should kiss her feet for giving me the time of day. And I get it, you don’t like me the way I like you—”

“You think I don’t like you?” Ellie asks like the thought is unfathomable.

“I don’t think, Ellie, I know. We went into this without any strings attached, we established that it’d just be fucking, but I was honest in telling you that I caught feelings and you used that to your advantage. You lied to me on multiple occasions, you make me look stupid, like I’m fucking crazy.”

And you wish you’d gotten through your spiel without choking up, but Ellie’s the first girl you’d liked in a while even if she was bad news. And when you thought that maybe you could shake her, she’d come barreling back.

“Baby,” she murmurs, face softening as she’s crossing the space between you two to cup your face in her hands.

“Don’t call me that,” you hiccup, trying to push her touch away.

“Babe, stop,” she says firmly. “I’m serious. You think I don’t like you?”

“Well, you don’t fucking act like it,” you mutter. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter anyways because whatever this was is done. You’re free to do what you want, who you want, whether you like me or not.”

God, do you unwittingly light a fire under Ellie’s ass when she thinks of what this Kenzie girl could do to you if she lets you walk out the door. Absolutely loathes the thought of anyone else knowing what you look like in any state of indecency, that you fucking cry watching children’s movies, that you snore like a freight train if you’re tired enough and have a weird ass penchant for pickle chips when you’re high.

“You’re not going on that fucking date,” Ellie says with finality, palms sliding from your shoulders to skim down the length of your arms and situate over the swell of your hips.

“Who says?”

“Me,” she huffs. “Because I’m going to make it up to you and we’re going to smoke these blunts and eat this fucking pizza and I’m going to make you cum so fucking hard, you won’t even remember that you were thinking of leaving me for someone else.”

“You’re not my girlfriend, Ellie,” you reiterate. “You can’t just–”

“Maybe not then, and maybe not in this moment, but I will be,” she says, and the words catch you completely off guard.

She’s catching your bottom lip between hers to further disorient you, kissing you like this could very well be her last.

“Just give me some time,” she whispers, walking you back towards your bedroom. “I’ll get my shit together for you. Promise.”

And you know deep down that you shouldn’t believe her. She’s just feeling territorial and grasping at straws to keep you leashed, but Ellie’s always been such a good kisser and she’s devouring you like she really is sorry.

She’s tossing your against your unmade bed, caging you between lithe limbs as she leans back on her haunches to take you in. Your blouse rides up to reveal the flimsy bands of your lacy little thong and Ellie’s lacking decency as she flips your skirt up to reveal a growing patch of wetness.

“Were you planning on getting fucked or do you always go out like this?” Ellie ponders, fingers rough as she pulls the tiny scrap of fabric down your legs and nearly salivates when a string of your arousal leaves with it.

Your lips part to answer, but her thumb’s dipping between your folds, pad collecting some of your slick from your drooling slit to smear over your achey little bud.

“I asked you a question,” Ellie says gently. “You just gotta be honest with me, baby.”

“S’hot out,” you whimper, fingers closing around her wrist when your body jerks against a particularly delicious stroke of her thumb.

“Yeah?” she clarifies. “You wouldn’t let any else touch you, would you? Not when I take good care of you like this?”

Her other hand comes to toy with your entrance, doesn’t give you any warning before her middle and ring finger are sinking inside slowly.

“Oh, fuck,” you whine.

“You’re my girl, you hear me?” Ellie murmurs, leaning down to catch your clit between her lips. “You’ll be my number one, always.”

She’s teasing at first, tongue languid against your fluttering pussy, but you’re quiet, back of your wrist caught between your teeth to muffle your moans.

One of her hands reach up to yank it away.

“Say it,” she barks, pulling away from your needy heat.

“Ellie,” you whimper.

“Say it,” she repeats firmly.

“M’your girl,” you moan shakily, thighs quivering as she smoothes her palms over the underside of your thighs to push them up to your chest.

“Yeah, you are,” she whispers, spitting harshly on your heat. “My favorite fucking pussy.”

She’s eating you out like she’s missed you, like she’ll only be satisfied when you finally cum. And maybe it’s true.

Maybe not.

Especially when she draws nearly three orgasms from you and practically knocks you out.

You don’t know how long you doze off for, but when you finally wake up, the sun has almost completely set, bathing your room in a burnt orange glow that leaves your dewy skin warm and sticky. And perhaps it’s wishful thinking when you call Ellie’s name, met only with the echo of your raspy voice. After all, you’re tucked on the wrong side of bed, elusive girl nowhere to be found.

As you dress and search for your phone, you can’t even find it in yourself to be surprised.

neng ©️2023

[astraystayyh]

mornings with hyunjin 🤭

anon are you in my brain because i had this in my wip list zjjdjdj

Thinking about how soft mornings with Hyunjin are. 

You are a tangle of limbs, to the point where you don’t know where your body begins and his ends. Your leg is draped over his and his arm is tightly holding you by the waist, bringing you closer to him. Even when you’re asleep, your hand finds a way to rest gently atop of his; as if your bodies had to touch each other, a silent reminder that you were both together.

Hyunjin's shirt would always ride up because he moves a lot in his sleep, exposing his smooth bare back to you. It becomes your canvas, where you draw gentle patterns–circles and triangles and flowers. And sometimes you spell out words for him in there too.

'I love you' is the most recurrent one. You hoped that your confession would imprint into his body and he'd carry it with him everywhere. Like a secret tattoo only the two of you can see. 

Hyunjin stirs in his sleep at your featherlight touch, your name slipping between his lips instinctively. Even in his dazed state, his first impulse is to reach out for you, patting the spot beside him. And when he finds you—your hand, your arm, your thigh—he grins victoriously, eyes still closed as he effortlessly draws you atop him.

"Good morning my angel," his voice is slightly raspy from sleep and it sends delightful shivers down your spine, you can't help but press a tender kiss to the curve of his neck in retort. 

"Morning baby," you reply and he draws you even closer to him. Sometimes his hold would suffocate you but you could never find it in you to complain. You knew it was his way of savoring those quiet mornings with you. 

"What time is it?" he asks and you steal a quick glance at your beside clock. "9:30."

"Too early," he playfully whines, and you can't help but giggle against his neck. "Just want to stay in bed with you," he mumbles, his lips brushing against your hair as he plants a soft kiss atop your head.

You physically melt into his touch, his words rendering you putty in his hands. You're both silent after that, and your breathing syncs with his without you trying. As if your body is seeking any opportunity to become one with him. 

His soft rubs on your back lull you back into sleep, and you don't fight it. Time doesn't exist in the confines of your bed. The world can go on without the two of you; you have everything you need right here– your Hyunjin.

[h50europe]

BUCK / TOMMY - HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE A FANDOM SCORNED!

I did some thinking. Never good, but my brain can't wrap around the breakup that came out of the left field.

Recently, it was announced that a spin-off of "9-1-1" is in the works. While no locations have been finalized, Hawaii and Las Vegas have been suggested as potential settings. The showrunner is already working on the project, with filming set to begin in March 2025.

However, one of my biggest fears has come true: the focus of the showrunners is being diverted from the current show to concentrate on this new spin-off. All the energy runs in the new project. Also, at this point, we don't know if the mothership will be renewed. Without an early renewal, we must wait until May for the announcement. That is another reason why they are focusing on the new show. I wonder if this is why the plots feel rushed and repetitive. It's nice to revisit the past, but not ad nauseam. 9-1-1 does it too often lately. What's the point in bringing back Gerard and turning him into the butt end of a joke? What's the point in digging out Abby's Tommy and hanging it around Tommy Kinard's neck when nothing was ever mentioned in the past. The focus is clearly not on the current show. It feels like Tim abandoned the ship to board a new one. It's fresh, it's crisp, it leaves room for a lot of things. Even if the breakup was meant as a shocker. If your focus is somewhere else, you don't see it. Right now, the mothership is leaking and starting to sink. If Tim keeps his focus on the new project and isn't invested in the current show, the lights will go out sooner rather than later.

Bringing in an established character was probably the biggest mistake Tim could have made if he wasn't meant to stick around. Bring in Mary Sue or Marty Stu to be a LI but not a character with a history that connects to so many people on the show. You can't sideline them forever. Especially as Buck's bi-arc was announced as something big. And it was big. A bit too big to be treated the way it was. The fanbase that had built around TEVAN, or BUCKTOMMY, within weeks, was massive. It drew so many members of the queer community into the show. Suddenly, many of them felt seen. Tommy and Buck were different from the other queer characters out there. Different from what was represented on any other show. People were willing to watch to get the slightest glimpse of them. Because they felt real. Their chemistry shot into the stratosphere.

And then you go and end it on such a horrible note? I don't care if the haters call Tommy a plot device. Everyone on the show is one at some point—even Christopher, Eddie, or anyone else from the main or recurrent cast, Karen, for instance, the Wilson kids. You name it. Tommy Kinard came, saw and conquered. So why not give him more room? They did it with Taylor (yes, I know JLH was pregnant then, but that's reason enough? I doubt it). As I said in my other long post, you could cut in a sequence of 5 minutes and show a summary of Tommy's and Buck's life.

Tim makes the same mistake as many showrunners do. Cramming a shitload of plots into 42 minutes of airtime. Is it really necessary to tell that many stories in such a short amount of time? That feels like speed dating. You blink, and you miss an important scene. Every episode, you jump from plot A to B to A to C to B. We didn't have this fast pacing in season 1 or 2. Stop it. Make Quality plots over quantity stuff.

In Tommy's voice: And for God's sake, clean up that mess you created with that shitty breakup, or the audience will wither away.

I'm sorry. I could write a book about what is happening in my head. You'd get Super Brownie points if you made it here.

[siriusly-parker]

OKAY nanami is a foodie and knows how to cook. How would you headcanon his cooking skills? Is he a skilled amateur home cook? What type of dishes would he make?

ohhhhh these are my favourite kind of asks!! omgggg don’t get me started on cook nanami 😭😭 [kinda got carried away loll] ˖ ᡣ𐭩 ⊹ ࣪ ౨ৎ˚₊

nanami is most definitely a calm and collected man, in and outside the kitchen. he just dreams of a peaceful life, of maple syrup and butter-drenched pancakes in the early mornings with you. he’s a good cook, and he finds great pleasure in taking care of his loved ones through the meals he so meticulously prepares. gojo even offers one too many times to fund his restaurant if he ever decided to create a business out of his cooking skills. kento denies every time, but he knows the white haired sorcerer only means praise. he doesn’t want to lose his love for cooking by making it his day job and source of income. he’d only end up burning out from the brutal rush of the culinary industry. but he can’t deny that he’s fantasized about opening a small restaurant along the edge of a soothing malaysian beach with the love of his life. he’s be old and withered and you’d still be beautiful and immensely loved by him. he’d cook you your favourite dishes, and you’d scold him, saying there are clients waiting for their orders. he shakes his head, pushing the daydream away. the corners of his lips quirk up, remembering he is in the kitchen. cooking. for you. no clients, no stress, just his deep affection for the woman perched on the kitchen counter and the sizzling sound of the frying meat on the stove. he chuckles at your exaggerated inhale of the fatty aroma, leaning closer towards the heat. “careful, honey.” you pout as he seemingly pushes you away, but he’s quick to kiss it off. he’s rather smooch away your frowns and pouts than any burns. this was a recurrent situation一nanami happily cooking whatever complicated dish you desired, and you sitting there, watching him, and eventually, getting overly excited. he loves cooking for you, and you love to watch. you wouldn’t admit it, but you’re not often focused on the food he’s making, eyes wandering to how his back muscles twitch, his forearm flexes and the veins on his hands pop as he strongly, yet precisely, holds the expensive usuba knife you got for his birthday and swiftly chops whatever it is that he’s chopping. you can’t truthfully say you care at the moment, completely lost in thoughts. that is, until he pulls you out of your trance with a gentle peck on your warm, and now probably flushed, cheek. “you’re staring.” he teasingly coos, but how could you not stare? when he’s so… him. and you think you’re sleek and that by asking to help him every so often, you’d be off the hook. he sees right through your not-so-clever game. but he doesn’t mind, so he doesn't spoil your fun. there’s nothing he loves more than cooking for his girlfriend, so what a bonus it is to have her soothing presence and saccharine smile to keep him company?

୨ৎ˙⋆.˚ ᡣ𐭩 hope this made your request justice!!

꩜ likes, comments + reblogs are very appreciated!! requests are open! <3

[metalhoops]

Inspired by this post

Steve had watched the world end a hundred different ways. He’d lived the same day more times than he could count, watching the people he loved die or feeling himself die. There were things worse than death. There were memories he didn’t dredge up for fear of calling them into the waking world.

He'd held onto hope for the first twenty recurrent days, which had dwindled to a sense of steely determination until he’d lost count of the days. Then all that was left was the comfort of repetition. He was Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill, day in and day out. Steve kept trying and failing to save Eddie until it was all he knew.

Maybe he was Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and spent his life paying for it, tied to a rock while birds picked at his liver, only for it to grow back with each morning. Prometheus whose name, by definition, means forethought; one’s ability to consider possible futures. Steve had spent a small lifetime considering futures. It wasn’t a comparison he would’ve made on his own. That was Eddie, who’d spent his childhood with his head in thick tomes of fantasy and mythology.

Eddie Munson came to him like cheap furniture, in crudely disassembled pieces that Steve had been working tirelessly to put together. Each new loop brought him another piece of Eddie. His favourite colour was blue. He only woke up early on weekends to watch cartoons. He liked too much cream in his coffee.

The Eddie that existed in a world where Steve stayed with him and Dustin during the swarm of bats had told Steve his biggest dream was to make enough money to buy Uncle Wayne a proper home. His biggest fear was that when he died, no one would remember him.

Days or months later, with Steve repeating the same damn day, he’d finally learnt why Eddie’s love for his uncle ran so deep. Wayne had taken him in before his dad went to jail when the man caught Eddie holding another boy’s hand. In that world, Steve had stayed with Eddie in the RV as the rest of the group searched War Zone.  

Eddie’s mother died when he was six. He’d told Steve that later, or earlier. Steve had and has lost his sense of past and present. Eddie loved his mother deeply, though was unsure if that love had been misplaced. He recalled two mothers, one who read him bedtime stories and threw herself around the kitchen each morning with her wild theatrics and another mother who was distant and whose temper could turn on a dime. Eddie wasn’t sure which of those mothers was his and which was the mother of memory. All good storytellers know the story shapes itself in the retelling. Eddie’s mother was Janus, god of duality.

Steve understood. He loved and hated his parents. These feelings weren’t mutually exclusive. Steve loved Eddie because he’d spent the last hundred-odd days getting to know him, but Steve hated Eddie because he kept dying. Until he didn’t.

The boys lay side by side in the red-blue soil of The Upside Down, their bleeding sides caked with mud and demonic bat viscera. In the end, Steve wasn’t sure what’d done it. It’d been so long since he’d lived Eddie’s original death that it’d been smeared by the haze of memory and conjecture. All he knew was that a sea of bats lay dead around them and that it was over. Finally, over.

Steve removed his hand from where it was pressed into his side and extended it to ensnare Eddie’s. He felt muscles tug and tear from the walls of his ribs with the effort. Blood flowed freely from the cavity, but Steve didn’t care. He wanted to hold Eddie’s hand. Holy shit, they’d done it.

Somewhere along the way, Steve had fallen in love. It’d taken him ten more iterations to reconcile with the fact he could not only like a man but love him.  That was months ago, in Steve’s time. It was old news. “Steve, you still with me?” Eddie asked, his voice horse.

He was hurt, though not as badly as Steve. All his wounds were superficial. He’d be okay. Steve had been so sick of watching Eddie die, he’d been willing to put his body on the line to make sure it didn’t happen again.

In this loop, he was still ‘Steve’, not ‘Stevie’. They hadn’t grown close enough yet. Eddie only called him ‘sweetheart’ in the iterations where they kissed. Steve wanted to kiss him, but there was the taste of iron in his mouth.

“I’m okay,” Steve insisted, squeezing Eddie’s hand. He felt a sharp pain shoot through his side as Eddie pressed his hand into Steve’s wound.

“Christ, there’s a lot of blood,” Eddie muttered to himself. 

He was bad with blood. He’d scraped his knee down to the bone when he was seven and ever since, the sight of gore made him queasy. Steve wasn’t meant to know that yet. In this iteration, he hadn’t told Eddie about the loop. He’d tried before, but it never helped.

Pain and blood loss drag Steve down into a familiar oblivion. He expected to wake at the beginning of the loop, emerging in The Upside Down from Lover’s Lake, but instead, he found himself in a hospital room with Eddie in a bed by his side. It was late, too late for visitors, but Eddie wasn’t sleeping. His eyes were trained on Steve, equal parts concerned and curious.

“You scared the shit out of me,” Eddie confessed, as Steve’s eyes met his. 

Steve wanted to cry or scream. He wanted to untangle himself from the knot of cords and tubes to crawl beside Eddie in bed as they had curled up together in the back of the RV dozens of times before. He needed to hold Eddie to know he was alive, to understand he wasn’t going anywhere. Steve blinked away tears, balling his hands into fists. He didn’t want to scare Eddie.

“I scared you?” Steve choked out a mixture between a laugh and a sob.

Eddie didn’t know what to do. He never knew what to do when people cried. Steve learned that in the iteration where they’d lost Dustin. He didn’t want to think about it.  

“You almost died, man,” Eddie explained.

He somehow understood Steve wanted him closer. Eddie got out of bed, clutching his I.V. drip as he flopped into the chair by Steve’s bedside. He wanted to hold Eddie’s hand again, but he was out of excuses. He could tell him the truth, but he didn’t know what good it would do.

Steve was still used to thinking of possible futures. He was Prometheus who, unlike Sisyphus, escaped his torment. Steve wondered what happened to Prometheus after he was rescued. Did he return to a normal life? Does anyone bother to ask? Prometheus’ story is always about punishment. Afterwards, he was a footnote in the story of Hercules, but once the heroes leave the story, what’s left?

Eddie would know the answer, but it wasn’t a conversation he’d had with this Eddie. That Eddie was dead. This Eddie was and wasn’t him. This Eddie was Janus, god of abstract duality, god of beginnings and ends, god of life and death.

“Sorry my lame-ass face is the first one you had to see. Robin and the kids were in here all day. Wheeler left flowers,” Eddie tacked on awkwardly.

This Eddie didn’t know Steve. They were strangers. Of course, things were awkward. He couldn’t know he was the one person Steve wanted to see more than anything.

“No, Ed’s—.” Slip of the tongue.

“Eddie. I’m really glad you’re here, man.”

They were back to square one, but Steve could work with that. He’d been working with that for months. This time, Eddie would remember. This time, they had the luxury of taking things slow.

“One thing’s been bugging me all day,” Steve began.

After hundreds of days of getting to know Eddie, Steve had learnt a few shortcuts, a few ways to jump-start his way into Eddie’s heart.

“Can you explain what the hell Mordor is?”

It was a tried-and-true method. By that point, Steve knew Eddie’s response off by heart, but he wanted to hear him say it. Eddie gave him the same perplexed look he always did when Steve asked. It was as though Eddie thought he knew too much like there was some secret he wasn’t letting him in on, but he didn’t challenge Steve on it. He never did.

“Harrington, have you heard of Lord of the Rings?” Yes.

“No.” A million times.

“Tell me about it.”

Read Part 2 Here

[nevadancitizen]

-> PROLOGUE: THE OLD SOUL OF AMERICA

synopsis: you meet with a mysterious woman on an old californian dock.

word count: ~850

ships: Arthur Morgan/modern!Reader, Van der Linde Gang & Reader

notes: inspired by @heart-of-gold-outlaw !! go read their modern reader fic i really like it. also we'll be getting into the actual time travel stuff after this teaser lololol :3

THE OLD SOUL OF AMERICA MASTERLIST

It’s a bracing, misty evening – supposed to be spring, but doesn’t feel like it. The waves are choppy and the gulls are huddled on the pylons with their beaks tucked under their wings, their feathers ruffling in the cold wind. 

Three hulking great ships, all freighters, are tied up on the beat-up dock. This isn’t one of those fashionable wharfs with dockworker unions or passenger liners – no pretty girls on their balconies, clinking champagne flutes to celebrate the start of the cruise. Just a couple of red-faced salts in pea jackets tramping by, trailing cigarette smoke, boots crunching on dried-up gull shit.

They spare you glances as they pass by, surely wondering what you were doing here in the early hours of the morning. Were you waiting for someone to get off work? Were you waiting for a drug deal? Or were you just admiring the way the waves spray water onto the dock?

(In reality, it was none of those. You’re waiting on something much worse.)

A woman, sleek and modern in style and rugged and worn in looks, approaches you. She has a quiet intensity about her — something about the way she squints against the ocean spray mixed with the permanent-looking scowl on her face. 

She tilts her head toward you, and you nod. You walk towards her and meet her halfway, leaning in close on her insistence. 

“You’re the one in need?” She asks softly. You just barely hear her over the waves crashing against the dock.

“Yes, ma’am,” you say, just as soft. “It’s my sister’s daughter. My eleven-year-old niece. She’s… she’s in a really bad way.”

“What does she need?” The woman asks. 

“A pancreas,” you say. “She’s got acute recurrent pancreatitis. There aren’t a lot of affordable child-sized organs lying around. God knows I’ve turned not just California, but the entire Mojave upside-down trying to find one. I’ve called hospitals in Arizona, Nevada, even New Mexico. I – I’m not asking you to kill a child! I just… I need the money for the operation. It’ll put her on the waiting list, and… once we show the hospital we have the money, I’m sure she’ll be okay. Somehow.”

The woman narrows her eyes. “Why don’t you just take out a loan? Or take on debt?”

“I can’t,” you say. “None of us can. I foreclosed on my last house. My sister has thousands of dollars in credit card debt, counting all the interest. Please, just trust me when I say I need this money. I don’t think anyone has nearly half a million dollars in their junk drawer. If I did, why would I be here, asking you for it?”

The woman looks you over and tucks her jacket closer around her. The outline of a gun at her hip becomes glaringly obvious – she wants you to notice it.

“Ma’am, I’m begging you.” You clasp your hands together as tight as you can. “I come from a family of deadbeats and addicts. I was an addict myself, and I quit just to save money for her operation, but it’s just not enough. I need this money. I won’t misappropriate these funds – won’t use them to pay off other debts, won’t use them for drugs. Just… please, miss.”

The woman holds up her hand. “Stop groveling.”

What the fuck else am I supposed to do?! You shout in your head. I need money, and you’ve got the money! My niece is going to fucking die if I don’t get it!

Instead, you just nod politely and put your hands behind your back. “Yes, ma’am. My apologies. I’m sure you can understand my desperation.”

“Uh-huh,” the woman hums. “I can get you the money. Just give me your banking details and I can wire it to you.” 

You pull out a pre-prepared index card with your bank information written down. The woman checks that it has your full name, address, account number, and routing number before speaking again.

“Do you have life insurance?” She asks, as if offhandedly.

“Uh, yes?” You say, unsure. “It won’t come out to a lot, so I couldn’t have an “accident” at work. Maybe just under 200,000 dollars? Nowhere near enough to cover her operation.”

The woman hums and tucks the card into her pocket. “I’ll get you the money.”

“Thank you so, so much,” you say. “You have no idea what this means to me – no idea what you’ve done for me and my family.”

“I have some idea.” The woman’s hand lingers at her waist. It takes you a few seconds too long to notice that –

A loud sound. A raging pain. The bullet hit something vital, but doesn’t grant you the mercy of dying in that instant. 

You stagger back, holding yourself. “What…”

“You’re dumber than you look,” the woman says, her voice fading in and out. “I’m just helping your family.”

You inhale shakily and take a step back. There’s a sense of falling, and something cold surrounds you, but you can’t make out much of anything in this condition. 

The last thing you think before the black takes you? It’s May. Who the fuck gets shot in May?

[canmom]

The themes of NieR Reincarnation

A post about the recurring elements of Drakenier and the use of branching timelines as a storytelling device. I'll be discussing spoilers for basically every DoD/NieR game.

Records

A somewhat understated recurring motif of the Drakengard/NieR series is the idea of stories or memories of humanity being stored in some massive archive.

It's an idea that first entered the series in NieR Gestalt/Replicant. Early drafts of the game focused on the idea of a world built out of stories and fairytale characters, and while most of this was cut, some remained in the Forest of Myth area.

Following NieR's obsessive love of hopping between different game genres, the story here is delivered through prose/text adventure segments. There is a sense that this area of the game exists as prose, with the characters slightly aware of narration - narration which absorbs the characters until you find a way to escape. Eventually you find out - it's rather cryptic in the actual game, but spelled out explicitly in Grimoire NieR - that it's a huge computer system storing records of the deceased humanity.

In your second visit to the area, the story focuses more on distant history, that all these stories are fragments of memory of the lost pre-apocalpytic world. You encounter a Gestalt (human soul extracted from body) that is eating the memories stored in the tree, and kill it, and for Nier and co., this is enough - but for the player, you really don't know half of what is going on.

In the story The Lost World, which was adapted for the additional Ending E added in the Replicant remake, Kainé returns to the Forest of Myth and finds the computer system expanding. She fights clones of herself before eventually speaking to a mysterious administrator and descending into a virtual world that seems like a corrupted version of her memories. But she's able to connect to her memories of NieR, Emil and Grimoire Weiss, and through that connection cause a kind of timeline collapse effect that allows her to resurrect Nier. Terms from DoD3 such as 'singularity' come back again.

In NieR Automata, the idea of the legacy of humanity becomes increasingly central. While the androids believe they are reclaiming Earth for humanity, the Machine Lifeforms' motivation is in large part driven by their efforts to pore over the records of humanity and learn how to evolve their condition, even by blind imitation. Many of the different Machine Lifeforms you encounter are shaped by their interpretations of human society. The motif of human buildings recreated in white blocks recurs at certain points.

In the final sequence of the game, you climb a tower, and inside it visit simulacra of locations from the Replicant/Gestalt. You learn that the machines have infiltrated the androids' network and downloaded basically all the information the androids have, including all their records of humanity. When the machines' 'Ark' is launched into space, it carries their memories and consciousness in data form.

The YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse raid series in FFXIV continues this idea of obsessive, blind reconstruction. The machines you fight here are now all the more explicitly connected to the apocalyptic shit in DoD; they have also been frantically creating duplicates of YoRHa android 2P, the Bunker and so on in corrupted form. Although the story here has mostly other interests, it's another recurrence of the idea of trying to recreate things that were lost.

Along with this idea of the archive comes the idea of preservation of that archive. Whether by accident or deliberate attack, the survival of the archive is not guaranteed.

This is all absolutely central to what Reincarnation is about.

Branches

The Drakenier series has played around with branching narratives pretty much from the start. It's somewhat infamous for it in fact - did you know that NieR is actually a spinoff of ending E of Drakengard, the one where you appear over Tokyo and have to do a rhythm game? Yeah, so...

Most games are fairly cagey (ha ha) about the mechanics of these branches. Indeed, although we speak of branches, the structure of these games is not really a branching one like a visual novel. The branches and 'endings' are usually unlocked sequentially.

Drakengard/Drag-on Dragoon (DoD1) is probably the closest you get to a traditional branching structure. You can unlock routes in certain missions by fulfilling certain conditions. The exact logic of these branches is not really explained - you can go back to a point before you recruit a party member and get a different branch where they're present for example. That said, it's not like a visual novel where you can be 'on' one branch or another - you can always jump to any level from any timeline.

This oddness of the branches is also lampshaded a little more in DoD3, the game that is most explicit about the nature of the branching timeline. DoD3 is, from the player perspective, a linear game. After you complete the first 'ending', you unlock new levels that appear at earlier points in the timeline, and diverging branches appear. In the later branches, the logic of the world is starting to break down. Party members who you'd recruit later in the story are in your party much earlier, in some cases suffering from amnesia, the implication being that it's an effect of the Flower's corruption.

The game is intermittently narrated by a character called Accord, an android 'Recorder' whose job is to document all the different versions of the story for an unknown party. Accord isn't supposed to intervene in the story, though she occasionally talks to protagonist Zero, and in the final D route, she decides to break the rules and save Zero. Otherwise, she's responsible for 'sealing' branches where it seems the world cannot be saved.

This is Accord:

The final cutscene of DoD3, available only after you beat the ludicrously difficult rhythm game that is the 'final song', shows a bunch of other Accords appearing and talking about what a mess this all is.

Accord's other role in the game is to sell weapons. Another series tradition running back to DoD1 is the 'Weapon Stories'. In each game, you can collect weapons, which can be upgraded through a series of four stages. Each stage unlocks another part of a story. These stories tend to be quite brief - each entry is at most a short paragraph. They also, particularly in the DoD games, tend to be comically grimdark.

DoD 3 came out after NieR Replicant/Gestalt, but in every game since then, there have been cryptic mentions of Accord. In Automata she's mentioned in a note as a weapons seller; in the updated version of Replicant she is mentioned as visiting Nier's village while the party is away on her adventures, and you see a documention that mentions the 'Accord Corporation' supplying magic weapons.

OK, so, put a pin in that, we'll come back to her later.

The side material commits further to the branching idea. The original Drakengard is established to follow from the DoD3 Story Side novel, while Branch A gives rise to the Shi ni Itaru Aka manga and the DoD 1.3 novel. The YoRHa stage plays spawned alternative versions, namely YoRHa version 1.3a and Shōjo YoRha version 1.1a, with the gender of the casts flipped. YoRHa 1.3a also has Accord in it. The anime NieR Automata ver. 1.1a also presents an increasingly diverging version of the events of the game - notably, Adam turns into a multi-armed monster.

DoD2, something of the black sheep of the franchise, was originally written to follow DoD1 ending A; later it was retconned to belong to its own branch. Just 'cause.

With me so far? ...no? Yeah, that's fair. You can read about all the details I've gathered so far here, but in short, there are lots of timeline branches, and multiple versions of several stories with small or large divergences.

Reincarnation

NieR Re[in]carnation is a gacha game that's been running for the last three years, and is going to be shut down at the end of April. At the time it came out, it was acknowledge for having unusually nice graphics for a mobile game, but rather desultory, grindy, repetitive gameplay. Which remained true throughout the game's life, so I can't exactly recommend playing Reincarnation, especially at this point.

But! I would definitely say it's worth your time to dig up the story on Youtube/Accord's Library if you're into NieR stuff. I won't be going into all the ins and outs of the story and how it all fits together in this post, but I am gonna talk about how it's structured.

NieR Reincarnation places you in a vast stone city called the Cage, calling to mind the environments in Ico. At the outset, you play as a young girl travelling with a weird ghost-like creature called Mama, tasked with restoring the memories stored in objects called 'dark scarecrows' which are being subverted and corrupted by black birds which form into various monsters.

Within each chapter of NieR Reincarnation, you get a short story in four parts, presented in a kind of cutout style, which are the four segments of a weapon story. You collect the weapon and the character.

The Cage is shaped by the content of the weapon stories somehow bleeding into the simulated setting. A character's memories can be used to restore the stories to their proper course. It is possible to interfere in small ways with the worlds of the stories.

The corruption of the stories tends to involve subverting characterisation to make them crueller, more prone to random violence etc. - or points when a character could be threatened in a narratively unsatisfying way. For example, a peace-loving runaway prince could be turned into a warlike king.

Over the course of the first arc, you discover that the girl you are playing is actually a monster who has taken the form of a human girl and, regretting it, wants to give her her embodiment back. The second half of the arc has you playing the girl trying to reunite with her monster friend; at the end, you get her own backstory as a victim of brutal prejudice. After all is said and done, both characters transform into weapons, which Mama picks up and hides away.

The second arc, The Sun and the Moon, deals with a brother and sister from present-day Tokyo. Both of them have been transported into the Cage by more of the weird ghost thingies, to participate in a strange ritual that is allegedly going to restore the Cage. The rules are highly mystical - a significant sacrifice is needed.

In the most recent arc, The People and The World, the characters all emerge from their stories as the Cage becomes increasingly corrupted. We finally get the long awaited point where these characters can interact with each other, and advance the stories from a series of tragic vignettes to something more. At the same time, we get a lot more allusions to other games in the series - from the Lunar Tear room where Emil memorialised Kainé and later 9S memorialises 2B, to a brief appearance Devola and Popola.

There's even a nod to Yoko Taro's other terminated gacha game, SINoALICE, which is going to be made into a movie oddly enough. There's a wry nod to the game being shut down.

And in the most recent chapters we find out that the Cage is actually a server on the moon containing records of humanity - 10H from A Much Too Silent Sea is one of the main characters. 'Mama' is actually the Pod tasked with overseeing the archive, and wiping 10H's memories whenever she learns too much - though it seems at some point 10H learned the truth and affirmed that she'd protect the archive anyway and they stopped wiping her memory.

Over the course of the chapter, 10H helps the gang make their escape from the moon through the androids network, to Earth. But when they get to Earth, they find themselves in a strange white city more resembling the Cage.

We'll finally get some answers, maybe, later this month. Anyway...

So, these records come from multiple diverging timelines, and they take the form of weapon stories. You have a unity of the ideas of character - weapon - memory - world. A record is simultaneously a tragic series of events, a person who can manifest inside the Cage itself, a simulated world which other people can visit, and a weapon.

In addition to the main storyline chapters and 'character stories', each character is associated with two additional 'EX' storylines, termed Dark Memories and Recollections of Dusk. Each one is a much more substantial narrative than most in the game.

Some of these EX stories clearly take place in different timelines to the first ones we encounter. Akeha's story, for example, takes place after her death in the original version. For the brother and sister from the Sun and the Moon arc, originally from present-day Tokyo, their Dark Memories take place in the backstory to NieR Gestalt/Replicant - the period where humanity is dying out to White Chlorination Syndrome and fighting monsters called the Legion. In this one, before the siblings could be torn apart by family drama and resentment, the apocalypse happens. Both of them end up coming into their own as heroic fighters. In the finale arc, the characters learn a bit about these alter egos, and it's made very explicit that this is a different timeline.

The monster Levania's Dark Memory is especially weird. It's the story of a salaryman who plays a monster called Levania in an MMORPG. His MMO character inspires him to live more bravely in the real world, and his life seems to be improving, but he is murdered by a jealous coworker. He wishes for reincarnation as he dies - classic isekai stuff. But the connection to the Levania you encounter in the main story is far from clear. Are all versions of Levania derived essentially from this man's tulpa?

The nature of the 'enemies' attacking the Cage is still not yet clear. They take the form of black birds. The birds are given a small amount of dialogue and characterisation, and they seem to not be malicious, just confused. The girl from the first arc in particular tends to interact with them sympathetically. However, they seem to be connected with the mysterious 'God' who was trying to destroy the world in DoD1, and the Angels and Flower of DoD3.

The birds are able to gathe together to manifest much larger monsters, the largest being giant elk and fish called Cursed Gods. During the finale arc, one of these becomes something that resembles the Mother Angel from DoD1 - and yes, there is a rhythm game - though mercifully a pretty easy one.

In the same arc, the character Yurie, an AI city overlord with grandiose ambitions and a loathing of imperfection attempts to download the entire history of humanity from the Cage and become a more perfect being. She succeeds, only to find the answers disappointing...

This is perhaps the closest thing we ever get to an explicit statement of what all these stories and histories add up to, but despite all this, the throughline is very strongly that these stories are essential to preserve. NieR characters exist in small groups, and it is their intense connections to these others, their treasured memories of travelling together, that motivate them to fight to preserve that thing, even if the results are destructive.

Similar themes emerge for example in Noelle's Recollection of Dusk story, which sees her travelling to preserve a place valued by her sister in crystal. And they also connect to the theme of sacrifice - the recurring ending device where the player must delete their save data in order to help someone (something echoed in Hina and Yuzuki at the altar of the sun and moon, or Levania and Fio). It's perhaps fair to say that nothing is more valued in the world of Nier than memories of a treasured person.

What about Accord? She has in fact made a brief cameo in Reincarnation already...

It seems incredibly likely that Accord originates from the Cage, and the accumulation of weapon stories is accomplished by androids like her. Definitely in the fandom there's a lot of excitement for the idea that Accord - something of a fan favourite - will show up at Reincarnation's ending.

So mystery solved, the Cage exists in the world of NieR Automata on the moon server? Not so fast - there are various discrepancies which seem to suggest that the world of the Cage exists in a separate branch than the one we see in Automata. For example, the androids are aware that the humans are dead and what remains on the moon is a huge archive of their memories; the humans seem to have survived much longer; 2B and 9S seem to have died in different circumstances. There are other oddities which fans have compiled.

And yet, despite being a divergent timeline with a much older point of divergence, some things seem to be fixed. There is still a YoRHa, still a 10H deceived about being on the moon, still a 2B and 9S.

One popular fan theory is that Reincarnation belongs to the NieR Automata anime (ver1.1a), since Adam turns into a monster there similar to the ones in Reincarnation. The black birds are reasoned to be the Machine Lifeforms, since we know they come from Earth. I'm not 100% sure of this, but maybe?

Anyway, that's basically the gist of it.

A story told through permutations

In many fictional series with a shared universe, there is an effort to maintain a consistent shared universe, so all the different events can fit into a timeline with understandable cause and effect and characters living out their lives. Even when this proves impossibly unwieldy, as in comic books or Star Wars, the attempt is made.

NieR does not really take this approach. The creators leave many details of the world, such as place names, incredibly vague - the focus is always on telling an emotional story with characters. There is, as we've seen, an almost gleeful willingness to declare another new timeline.

There is also a certain aspect of repetition, or more kindly reiteration - the same core character dynamic revisited and retold in various forms. (2B9S gets the worst of it). A character is something like a principle or ideal, and each story shines another light on that 'core'. In the earlier storylines of Reincarnation, it became quite frustrating because it seemed like e.g. the character event stories were just rehashing the same idea rather than advance the story.

However, the more accustomed I get to this style of storyline, the more I think this kinda works. It is of course quite similar to the ideas proposed towards the end of Homestuck, or to time loop stories - the idea of varying the contingent circumstances to try to better illustrate the core characterisations and dynamics.

Yoko Taro has talked about how he constructs stories from a very simple idea, typically a moment of high emotional impact at the climax, and then works backwards to figure out what sort of story could lead into that. In Reincarnation, each character gets fairly limited time to establish themselves, so they tend to be defined in terms of a pretty narrow high concept.

For example, Akeha is an assassin in a vague historical Japanese setting; her introductory story sees her decide for the first time to disobey her lord after she finds another person who has been treated as instrumentally as her. Most Akeha stories focus on her assassinations, her relationship to her retainer, and what she sacrifices to perform the duty. Only her Dark Memory lets us see an Akeha who has escaped that life - it's a simple story about preparing food, but that's given meaning by all the other Akeha stories.

Hina and Yuzuki are defined by the same traits in their flashy scifi Dark Memory stories as in the more mundane ones - Yuzuki the quiet outcast, Hina the self-sacrificing star. Fio is defined by kindness in the context of abjection, seeing the good in monsters. Levania stories are about the desire for escape and transformation. Argo is always a shitty dad who only feels alive while climbing mountains.

The staticness of these characters seems on some level to be the point - in that we are told in Hina and Yuzuki's story that the mechanism of the Cage is to sort characters into 'Light' and 'Dark' natures, and push them to inevitable conflict, even if they try to break free. In the final arc, the characters seem to finally approach some resolution as they leave their contexts behind. Given the themes of Automata in rejecting an inevitable tragic fate, similar movement may be at work. There's an ambiguity - the need to hold on to even tragic histories, vs the wish to not be confined to them. (Perhaps it's significant that it's called the Cage...)

With so many balls in the air and so many mysteries still unanswered, it's hard to figure out how Reincarnation can deliver a satisfying resolution in just one remaining chapter, but the final arc has been really cooking so who knows! But I'm also coming to appreciate it as a kind of broader lens to notice all these recurring elements and tie them together.

Stories about alternate timelines and branching narratives are very common nowadays, particularly as a tool for revisiting a nostalgic franchise. Something something effect of the fan wiki era. So I can't exactly say NieR is doing something completely unique, but I do think there is something to its fragmented, collage-like approach to putting together story elements. There's something quite honest about it - an ability to say 'these details aren't important'.

Yoko Taro always talks about himself as an entertainer rather than an artist. And probably it is true that a lot of this eemerged from an iterative design process rather than being the plan from the beginning (the first draft of NieR envisioned it as something closer to what SINoALICE ended up being, about a world of fairytale characters; NieR Automata began life as backstory for an idol project). There's definitely a strong sense that it's being improvised. And yet despite that, it does feel like it is cohering into some sort of picture, that there is an artistic throughline to all this.

Or perhaps that's just the effect of getting way too invested in something. I won't deny that NieR brings out the fan in me.

Anyway Accord had better show up next month. Guys. You've been teasing us for so long...

[covid-safer-hotties]

What would an adequate COVID response look like? - Sept 05, 2024

By: Julia Doubleday

Ok, COVID is a problem. What can we do about it anyway?

The problem is stark: we have unmitigated transmission of a deadly and disabling virus, in all public spaces, with zero plan to bring it under control.

We’re seeing millions of infections in each wave, and multiple waves a year; an unsustainable health burden on an already strained healthcare system.

We’ve got a student absence crisis, record worker sick days, rapidly rising disability, and the expulsion of high-risk people from public spaces.

And unfortunately, we have a public that is largely uneducated about and unaware of the problem, thanks to the tireless efforts of our political leaders and corporate media outlets who pushed for a “new normal” of forever COVID reinfections.

The first hurdle is making people aware of the problem. But beyond that, a second hurdle; often, once the risks of recurrent COVID infections are conveyed, the next objection is: but what can we do about it anyway? Surely you don’t want a permanent forever lockdown?

Well, I don’t. So what, in my wildest dreams, would competent public health bodies be doing to mitigate transmission of COVID, even years into a botched response with millions of people negatively polarized against collective measures?

Start from the top: acknowledge that COVID is airborne. Loudly.

Educate the public about airborne mitigation measures and model them.

On April 30, 2021, the WHO officially acknowledged that SARS-COV-2 is a fully airborne virus. They did so quietly, without fanfare, on their website, without a well-publicized apology for the year they spent loudly claiming otherwise.

The embarrassment of this early mistake- costly and deadly as it was- has doubtless played a role in the subsequent inadequacy of communications around SARS-COV-2’s actual mode of transmission.

Droplet measures like surgical masks and social distancing were inadequate to prevent the transmission of COVID; both can reduce, but not eliminate, risk. Has the public been made aware of this? Have medical practitioners?

Official communications from representatives of the WHO and CDC tend to avoid mention of high-quality respirator masks entirely, if masks are mentioned at all. The importance of ventilation and filtration have never been properly explained to the public, certainly not by our politicians who continue to do nothing but repeat their treasured talking point, “COVID no longer controls our lives” while a thousand Americans lose those very lives to the virus each week.

In public, operatives from public health bodies do not mask, nor speak about airborne disease mitigation. Politicians certainly do not mask, even elected officials who quite clearly fall into high-risk categories, belying their claim that people are simply adopting the libertarian “personal risk assessment” approach to COVID. This refusal to mask, no matter the case numbers, no matter the risk factors, is a political choice designed to encourage the public to accept a lack of airborne disease mitigation. It pushes people to believe the virus is harmless, even as scientific research fails to support this claim, and while the CDC puts out conflicting guidance that large swathes of the public are high-risk.

Refusal to directly communicate 1) how COVID spreads 2) that it can be avoided 3) how it can be avoided while modeling mitigation, makes pandemic communications much more difficult for vulnerable people, activists and marginalized groups attempting to reduce disease burden in their communities. We should not be swimming against the current of public health officials’ poor pandemic hygiene.

Mandate airborne infection control in all healthcare settings

Of course, COVID is an international problem, and it’s critical that measures like indoor clean air and airborne infection control in healthcare are implemented globally. WHO has no legal authority to issue such a mandate; it can do little more than make recommendations. However, those recommendations have power, and as of now, it has failed to make them. Recommendations from WHO often form the basis of directives from regulatory bodies like the CDC.

The decision to claim that SARS-COV-2 was not airborne was politically motivated. There was no data to support this claim, only decades of bad physics in medicine and very strong financial and legal incentives to assume that COVID was not spreading through the air. It all comes down to the cost of rethinking medical care entirely, with an eye to airborne infection control.

I already wrote about the WHO’s recent attempt to both acknowledge COVID’s airborne nature while walking back their early-pandemic claims that, were COVID airborne, of course they would recommend proper airborne infection control measures.

Specifically, WHO Health Operations, Infection Prevention and Control Technical Team wrote in an April 2020 email to a group advocating for airborne precautions:

"Would there be evidence of significant spread of SARS-CoV-2 as an airborne pathogen outside of the context of AGPs [aerosol generating procedures], WHO would immediately revise its guidance and extend the recommendation of airborne precautions accordingly"

Well, COVID is airborne, and they have not immediately revised their guidance.

This continues to cost the lives of hospitalized vulnerable people every day.

It also contributes to public confusion about how COVID transmits, including among healthcare workers. Doctors and nurses are well aware that there is no airborne infection control in medical settings; their personal justifications tend to be either “because COVID must be mild” or “because COVID can’t spread that way.”

This is an understandable psychological response to watching their employers- hospitals and medical facilities- fail to implement measures to control the spread of airborne disease in a hospital. Either COVID must not be spreading that way, or COVID must be no big deal.

Education and mitigation practices coming from the top will speed the process of normalizing disease control and bringing down cases at an institutional level.

Like seeing public health officials masked, seeing doctors and nurses masked in hospitals with well-fitting respirators will also help educate the public about how SARS-COV-2 spreads, and confirm that indeed, COVID is still with us.

While there is no previous legal framework for patients to rely on, what medical institutions are doing is highly immoral if not explicitly illegal. They are failing to even attempt to provide proper infection control in hospitals.

Public health bodies should properly educate medical professionals about airborne infection control and mandate upgrades to hospital infrastructure that accommodate the existence of SARS-COV-2. Set the expectation that healthcare settings will be held responsible for healthcare acquired infections.

Legal and financial consequences for healthcare acquired infections

Currently in the US, many HAIs have to be reported to the CDC; that COVID does not, is a choice based on the reality that they are allowing it to spread freely.

From the CDC website on Healthcare Acquired Infections and the 2022 HAI Progress Report:

"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is committed to protecting patients and healthcare personnel from adverse healthcare events and promoting safety, quality, and value in healthcare delivery. Preventing healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) is a top priority for CDC and its partners in public health and healthcare….The 2022 National and State HAI Progress Report provides data on central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs), catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs), ventilator-associated events (VAEs), surgical site infections (SSIs), methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bloodstream events, and Clostridioides difficile (C. difficile) events."

The CDC itself states that preventing HAIs is a top priority, and it collects reems of data around other, more easily controlled infections. HICPAC, the CDC advisory body that recommends infection control measures has repeatedly come under fire from activists over the past several years as they attempt to shove through a new set of recommendations that incorrectly equates N-95 respirator protection with surgical masks and otherwise ignores airborne transmission of viruses.

HICPAC’s strategy for dealing with the entirely new paradigm uncovered by engineers and aerosol experts in 2021- because, bear in mind, the work of scientists like Linsey Marr showed that no viruses are spreading via “droplet” alone, the way scientists formerly conceptualized their transmission- is utter denial.

It would be too disruptive to decades of infection control norms to acknowledge that SARS-COV-2 came in like a wrecking ball to previous guidance; thus, HICPAC members are pretending they’ve never even heard of COVID. Watching their public facing meetings is bizarre; hours of academic debates where the pandemic isn’t mentioned, followed by 45 minutes of activists explaining that they are unable to access medical care, or that their loved ones caught COVID in the hospital and died. HICPAC members remain utterly stone-faced throughout these sessions and fail to acknowledge the comments at their next session.

Currently, Medicare has a program that reduces funding to hospitals with higher rates of acquired infections; COVID is not one of those targeted. Change this and watch how quickly hospital management goes from not understanding, to indeed understanding, airborne infection control. This is all a matter of financial incentives to hospital management, and those incentives must change.

Since 2020, incentives have stubbornly pushed healthcare institutions to ignore COVID to save the money it would cost to dramatically reimagine healthcare with top-to-bottom airborne infection control. How do you properly segregate COVID+ patients? When do you test them? How often do you test staff? Do you send COVID+ staff home? (Yes, you should, but currently the hospital saves money by not doing this).

We need to pivot from the early pandemic model of mandating individual behaviors (masks, distancing) to mandating outcomes (lack of viral spread in public spaces). That doesn’t mean a public space can never mandate masks, it means that masks must be part of a coherent strategy to prevent infections; this should also eliminate irrational mask rules (mask only before you sit down) and incentivize mask hygiene, education, and distribution. If a hospital loses money because of hospital acquired COVID, it is not merely incentivized to mandate masks. It is incentivized to mandate proper respirator masks, educate staff as to proper mask wearing, fit test masks, properly ventilate and filtrate, ensure that masks aren’t being worn on chins, test staff and patients, send sick staff home, ensure that meals can be eaten in a COVID-free, low-CO2 area, etc.

Legal and financial consequences for infections acquired in congregate settings, prisons, workplaces and schools

Continuing this theme; there is nothing particularly radical about the idea of legal repercussions for infectious disease via negligence in a workplace, school or congregate setting.

You can sue your workplace for infecting you with a foodborne illness if it was not following proper public health regulations. You can sue a school that doesn’t get your kid his epi pen in a timely manner. You could sue a retirement home with cholera in the water.

Therefore, world governments need to set indoor clear air standards, as well as assign culpability for the containment of outbreaks to employers, schools, prisons, etc., with government money available for infrastructure upgrades and a timeline for their achievement. If disease transmission occurs because indoor CO2 is high, because air filters weren’t turned on, because sick people were forced to work, that should be legally actionable the way dirty water and poorly handled food is.

All institutions- schools, workplaces, retirement homes, prisons- must have not only baseline protections like clean air, but outbreak plans. What happens in the event of a positive case? How is that handled, how is spread prevented? Government money, guidance and resources must be available to ease the development of this process.

Before Biden was elected, he promised to implement a new OSHA standard to protect workers from COVID infections. On January 21, 2021, the day after his Inauguration, he issued an Executive Order asking OSHA for revised guidance to protect workers from COVID-19. What resulted was both grossly inadequate and temporary. In June of 2021, OSHA issued an ETS - Emergency Temporary Standard- for healthcare workers only. It included guidance about social distancing, AGPs, solid barriers, and surface disinfection, though it was issued over a month after the WHO updated its website to affirm that COVID was not droplet spread.

It did, however, contain good guidance including screening for healthcare workers, sending positive workers home, reference to respirator masks, reference to HVAC and MERV-13 filters, but it has since expired. In the years since, OSHA has dragged its feet as workers’ groups like the National Nurses Union (NNU) lobbies for protections and industry groups like the American Hospital Association (AHA) lobby against them. If “COVID is here to stay” and “we have to learn to live with COVID”, why would worker protections from infection be temporary?

On the whole, workers were forced back into COVID-riddled workplaces with no new protections. A new OSHA standard should acknowledge the threat of airborne disease, make use of the many technological solutions for mitigating airborne disease, and outline the responsibilities of employers to both utilize available technologies, promote mitigation, and send sick workers home.

Comprehensive indoor clean air laws with specifications for upgraded ventilation, filtration, and other tools like Far UVC

I’ve already written about this in detail. The CDC has decent guidance, updated in May of 2023, about ventilation and filtration, here. However, none of this is enforceable without new legislation, nor does our current infrastructure meet these standards.

Ventilation norms and requirements must be overhauled. Currently, hotels and schools often have windows sealed shut; this is inappropriate for disease control and leads to dangerous levels of CO2 accumulation. All public buildings must be able to guarantee air changes per hour (ACH) deemed appropriate by aerosol experts, keeping CO2 as low as possible. Only MERV-13 or higher (HEPA filtration) effectively filters airborne virus from the air, so these must be standard.

I have only the basic knowledge of a layman; to learn more, you can check out this roadmap for national IAQ standards written by dozens of experts and published in Science.

Far UVC is another promising tool, and engineers should be consulted as to the appropriateness of implementing it in public spaces, particularly in schools, airports, hospitals, and crowded venues.

Work from home should be encouraged, conferences should be virtual where possible, flights should be tested.

Unwinding WFH in the midst of wave after wave of COVID was anti-science and self-defeating. Increasing the severity of waves and worsening spread in the community creates less productivity and more worker absence. Additionally, lessening the environmental impact of commuting and converting commercial real estate to residential should be priorities.

Governments, instead of pushing people back into the office, should be pushing in the opposite direction, for a sustainable approach to long-term remote work. This lessens community spread, environmental pollution, and local traffic, while creating more accessible jobs. Conferences should always have virtual options if they can’t be fully virtual. The carbon footprint of professional conferences is something I do think about a lot, but I digress.

Relatedly, yes, I believe people should have a negative PCR to fly. You do not have the right to get in a tube with a bunch of other people while positive for COVID, period. People need paperwork to fly. They need an ID to fly. They need a passport to fly internationally. It is expensive to fly. There should be on site, cheap, fast PCR or PCR-accurate testing at the airport, and you should need the negative to fly, like you need your ID and ticket. PlusLife tests are 5 Euros.

I had to PCR test to board flights to Mexico, Chile, Brazil, and Argentina in 2022 and nobody died. As a disabled person, it was the last time I was able to fly internationally, because I wasn’t forced to risk exposure. Testing has the added benefit of encouraging pro-social mitigation behaviors when people know they will have to test before flying.

Free masks, free tests, free vaccines, free Paxlovid, universal paid sick leave, and negative tests to exit quarantine

Expense should never be a barrier to practicing disease control. As usual, our governments continue to be penny-wise and pound-foolish, depriving people of the tools to keep themselves safe and incurring much, much higher expenses to the economy in terms of long-term health loss of workers.

As of now, volunteer-led radical mask blocs are attempting to fill in the gaps by offering free masks and tests to locals in need, but there is only so much that small groups of (often disabled and multiply marginalized) citizens can do.

We need free distribution of proper KN95 and N95 respirator masks, as well as tests; ideally tests that work well. Currently, the government sends out the odd packet of 2-4 rapid tests; RAT tests are 28% accurate on day 1 of symptoms. We need to get more tests and more accurate tests into the hands of the public, for free. Then we need to allow people to stay home until they test negative.

The CDC has unscientifically reduced the COVID quarantine several times until it has become functionally non-existent; this was done not to effectively control disease, but to appease employers. People with COVID-19 should leave quarantine when they have tested negative on two tests, 24 hours apart. Period. Not before. A positive test = viral load = contagion.

OSHA standards that penalize employers for spread between employees would incentivize the provision of proper sick leave. I do understand that the government, after failing to control COVID for so long, cannot shift the burden of disease control overnight to individual business owners. There needs to be a long period of infrastructure upgrade, education, resource distribution, perhaps even tax incentives for proper pandemic management and airborne infection control. But overall, incentives must align to push individual institutions toward infection control and away from infection maximization. The government must continue to provide support, resources, and education, while building a framework for regulation and financial disincentive as well.

Vaccines must be free. Paxlovid must be free. And in an ideal world, in a world that truly wants to end this pandemic, and all pandemics, healthcare must be free.

Education

Education can take many forms; even the implementation of proper airborne infection control in hospitals is a form of education. It educates the public “here is how you halt the spread of COVID” and “yes COVID is still here” and “yes we take it seriously because it can kill”. Currently, hospitals and medical professionals, at the behest of the WHO and CDC, are communicating the opposite.

But in addition to the education provided by modeling airborne infection control, wearing masks, instituting infection control, implementing legal consequences for infections, setting a new OSHA standard for workers, etc., the public needs direct, honest communication about the health risks of COVID.

This means talking about the risk of Long COVID that accompanies each infection without purposely undercutting that messaging by then loudly reassuring people “but it probably won’t happen to you.” It means explaining COVID is a multi-systemic disease, not just a respiratory virus. It means explaining that COVID carries long-term health risks that outlast the acute infection. It means explaining that COVID variants are excellent at evading immunity, meaning they learn to outsmart our body’s protection via vaccine or previous infection; that’s why you must get boosted and layer your precautions.

Of course, the above is only an overview of prevention. We need another coordinated, funded, communications and research campaign to handle the Long COVID crisis.

In the fantasy world where tomorrow, we can build an ideal pandemic response from the ground up, I see several major switches that would need to flip.

The first is that the culture of silence and denial among leadership would have to change to one of education and communication. Right now, state representatives are deliberately avoiding mention of COVID, while propagandizing the safety of infection and/or the end of the pandemic by refusing to mask. It is hard to imagine how successful a pandemic response might be if public officials were actually trying to end the pandemic. We quite literally have public health and political and media figures working to hide three pieces of critical information: public knowledge of the virus, public knowledge of mitigation measures that would reduce viral spread, and public knowledge of the severity of the virus (which would motivate desire to reduce viral spread).

On the one hand, that is a terrible and depressing place to be. On the other hand, it tells us that we might better control COVID through public behavior alone, if the public were given information and tools instead of purposely obstructed from accessing either. We have a lot of room to grow.

The second would be the construction of physical infrastructure to deal with the existence of very contagious, very common, highly disabling airborne virus that is currently circulating in all public spaces. If we have to “learn to live with” COVID, let’s learn to live with an airborne virus by cleaning the air.

The third would be building the legal infrastructure to enforce and hold accountable a failure to implement said physical infrastructure, along with other disease control measures. Patients should not be infected in hospitals. Workers should not be forcibly infected at work. Prisoners should not be forcibly infected in prisons. Kids should not be forcibly infected in schools. Let’s drill down and prevent transmission in congregate settings, with accountability.

COVID control essentially came to an utter halt because our system was not designed to control airborne disease. Our governments did not want to pay to do it. Our governments did not want to explain that they did not want to pay to do it. But this is 2024. We have technology we haven’t even begun to deploy in the fight against COVID, all because we’re too proud to admit we’re still fighting. We have not even scratched the surface of what would a pandemic response that acknowledges the airborne nature of COVID could achieve.

The introduction of the vaccines in early 2021 appeared to our governments like a “get out of jail free” card. They thought they could grab onto it, induce broad herd immunity, and get back to normal without ever acknowledging or paying for clean air. But that isn’t what happened, and now, our lack of mitigations continues to rapidly produce new variants that harm the efficacy of our vaccines.

It would’ve been nice if the vaccines were all that were needed to end the SARS-COV-2 crisis. Since it isn’t, we need our leaders to stop doubling down on their failed strategy, accept reality, and start building a long-term approach to ending this airborne pandemic, as well as avoiding future ones.

The problem underlying all the current failures is that, quite simply, our government is not trying to end this pandemic. It is trying to hide this pandemic. And you’re not going to solve a problem you won’t acknowledge.

[thebibliosphere]

so I’ve always had dermatographia, but since getting Covid for the 4th time this fall, I also am spontaneously breaking out on hives on my back a couple times per week. It doesn’t seem to do much, just kind of itches and then goes away after a half hour. I have no known allergies. Do you think this is indicative of some kind of mast cell issue? I can’t tell if this is an episode of weird body, meh, or a red flag of a huge impending problem.

There was a study released this year about long-covid and how it can result in symptoms similar to MCAS.

Let's see if I can find it... Ah. Here.

So, obviously, we won't know the full ramifications of covid for probably decades, but in the meantime, there is some evidence to suggest that long-covid patients show abnormal mast cell release of excessive cytokine (among other things), which is, well, when it fucks up, it fucks up.

That's what made the cytokine storms patients were experiencing in the early days of covid so dangerous. It's like the immune system equivalent of throwing napalm onto a housefire.

(I also suspect that's why so many front-line doctors now believe in the severity of MCAS. They were watching this shit happen in real-time.)

So, is it possible your recurrent covid infections have led to a bit of mast cell instability and causing spontaneous hives? Speaking anecdotally from the sheer volume of emails people have sent me and the MCAS forums now flooded with people who got covid and can't stop itching, yeah, it's possible.

But it's also possible it won't progress beyond that point.

I'd advise keeping an eye on it and talking to your doctor if you have concerns.

Also, maybe look into getting re-tested for allergies. Allergies can develop at any time in your life, and there could be another explanation for the hives.

Basically, don't panic, but do take care of yourself and watch for any other symptoms. Don't ignore any sudden new food allergies or gastro or cardio symptoms. The sooner MCAS is treated, the easier it is to manage. Mine had decades to run rampant on my body to get to the stage it was at. It doesn't have to be that way for everyone.

Take care, and I hope the hives stop!