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ashensgrotto · 1 year ago

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Protective (Part 2 of 'Am I Feeling Love')

Characters: Azul Ashengrotto x F!Reader

Word Count: 5,328

Part 1 Part 2 (You Are Here) Part 3a Part 3b

I had someone ask if I was going to do a continuation of ‘Am I Feeling Love?’ that was orinally written on my main blog @kiy-anna after I rewrote the story to fit the tags better. I was mulling over the idea and my poor sea-rotted brain decided “Screw it, Mari! Just write the damn thing!”

It took a bit to figure out how I wanted to execute the process, but I’m honestly more curious to see what you guys think as well. Also, don’t forget, I have a poll that ends in a few days that will help me decide what sort of fanfiction I will be posting going forward, so please vote! It ends on Wednesday!

Warnings: yandere behavior, beatings, manipulative behavior, and foul language

***

The world is cruel, the world is wicked

It’s I alone whom you can trust in this whole city, I am your only friend

How can I protect you, girl, unless you always stay in here

Away in here…

***

Azul tapped the desk he sat behind impatiently.

For the past hour, he had been cooped up in the VIP Room of the Mostro Lounge dealing with those poor unfortunate souls that sought him out - the pathetic fools making deals with the octomer as his patience thinned by the minute. All he wanted at this point was to get out of his office and watch you.

You, the magicless guest of Octavinelle, had been living in the guest rooms of the dorm for a little over two months and were working within the Mostro Lounge to pay for said room - not that you needed to, it was merely a lie so Azul could keep tabs on you. The other students of the Octavinelle dorm did not completely understand his reasoning; some thought that he was merely being a nice housewarden to a poor soul with no one else to turn to, others that knew the housewarden too well thought that he was using you as a way to lure in unsuspecting victims for his contracts.

Whatever their thinking was, only Azul and his vice-warden, Jade, along with the problem twin, Floyd, knew the real reason as to why you were kept close by.

Soulmates were rare and finding that ‘other half’ is like the story of the mermaid princess and her longing to be with a human. It’s a rare occurrence that only happens once in a millennium if not longer. Many times, people - humans, fae, and merfolk alike - often settle for someone they are content and happy with, someone that isn’t their other half. Azul, at the time he first learned about soulmates, wanted nothing more in the world than to find them - to have that one person who would see him for himself and not the pathetic octo-twerp he had been called during his youth; thus, he began working on himself, his powers increasing as he lured his victims in and stole away their most treasured gifts - a beautiful singing voice, powerful magic… all of it.

But even with the changes and his new found strength, Azul had no luck in finding the other part of his soul - that was until about two months ago when you first appeared in Twisted Wonderland.

Azul had been ecstatic the first few weeks after you had taken up residence in his dorm; consistently coming to check on you, making sure you weren’t too tired, asked if you had eaten… and sometimes just watching you from the darkness of the lounge as you shifted from table to table, taking orders and bringing food and drinks to the guests. Nearly two weeks into working at the lounge, the clientele number increased slightly - making Azul at first wonder what had happened.

Turns out, some of the students who had frequented the lounge had made mention of you in passing and how you were nicer compared to the other staff members - hence the students came to the lounge to, not just get a glimpse of you, but to also shoot a chance at getting you as their waitress. Jade and Floyd, who were consistently in the lounge and operated as Azul’s eyes and ears - especially when it came to you - informed Azul of what was going on. Hence, Azul decided to restrict your hours to only working when he, Jade, or Floyd was. When you asked if you had done something wrong, Azul merely rested a hand on your shoulder, eyes shining with a possessive kindness, as he explained there were certain students who had been watching you - and he was only doing this for your protection. After all, it wasn’t like he could monitor you twenty-four-seven - he still had his grades to keep up and you weren’t a student, technically.

It worked momentarily, but then Azul was back to the drawing board again when Jade had mentioned Riddle Roseheart’s overblot in passing.

Turns out, you had asked Azul for a day off the same day Riddle went berserk. Azul had asked what for, but you merely said you wanted to explore the school grounds, specifically the rose gardens that surrounded Heartslabyul. He knew that you had ‘made friends’ with two freshmen from the dorm - Deuce Spade and Ace Trappola, both who had been collared by Riddle because of their bad behavior. If Azul could work his will, he would have locked you up in his own room and thrown away the key to prevent anyone from looking at you or speaking to you - but he couldn’t find the strength to do so. Even so, he had agreed, allowing you to go to the unbirthday party that was randomly held on different days during the year, with the promise that you would come back as soon as it was over and not a minute later.

Turns out, the ‘unbirthday party’ had been a lie since Deuce and Ace both had challenged Riddle for his position as headwarden and you wanted to go to support them in their fight. However, Ace made a valid point about the rules that had been pressed upon the students of Heartslabyul and practically turned the whole dorm against Riddle - which caused his temper to flare up and the overblot to happen. Luckily, you didn’t get hurt during the fight between Riddle, Deuce, Ace, Trey, Cater, Crowley, and the pyromaniac demon cat-weasel, Grim - but you had been the one to smack sense back into Riddle with a slap to the face when he had gone after you next.

And it was because of that slap and knocking some sense back into the headwarden of Heartslabyul that those who heard about what happened began to flock to the Mostro Lounge in search of you once more.

Azul pressed his face to hands and rubbed at his skin hard enough to turn it red as he thought and thought. What was he going to do? He couldn’t let anyone else get close to you! You were his! His soulmate! You should be putting your entire focus on him and him alone! Was that too much to ask?!

“What’s with the face?” the unwelcomed voice of Leona reached Azul’s ears as the octomer sat up and righted himself.

“What’s it to you? Nevermind, I’m busy at the moment, Leona. If you wish to speak with me, you have to make an appointment…”

“I already did, did you forget?” The beastman prince strolled into the room and plopped on the couch, arms dangling behind the rest and feet landing on the table before him, “I need to make a contract with you for a potion.”

Azul shifted his glasses into place before reaching into his desk and pulling out the familiar golden paper he used for his contracts, his pen twirling in his fingers as it shifted into a fishbone and began to write, “What sort of potion?”

“An enhancement potion,” Leona answered, side eyeing the Octavinelle headwarden before explaining, “With the Spelldrive Tournament coming up in a few weeks, and with all of these little mishaps that have been going around the campus lately, it would be a shame if something were to befall a particular headwarden we know too well.”

Azul did not need Leona to explain any further nor to question who he was referring to.

It was no secret that the Diasomia dorm had taken first place in the Spelldrive Tournament for the past two years straight - practically overrunning Savanaclaw who usually held that spot. The dorm’s success had been due to the new headwarden - Malleus Draconia - who had taken up the position the year before Azul arrived at Night Raven. Malleus was a dragon fae and one of the top ranking mages in Twisted Wonderland - so powerful that he alone was the reason for Diasomia’s success, making ninety percent of the scores by the dorm’s team. He probably would be the only player if Crowley had allowed it.

Many of the other headwardens were disgusted by the losses and damage that had been dealt to their teams over the course of the past two years - even Azul had been winded by Draconia once and had no desire to be the dragon’s dinner again; due to this, the headmage had made the offer to place Draconia in the hall of fame, which would prevent him from participating in any more of the Spelldrive matches this year and next year. At first, all of the headwardens were in agreement - but Leona argued that it wasn’t a fair fight, claiming that they were acting like a bunch of cubs. Azul had twitched at that remark, but agreed that the fight wasn’t fair - as much as he hated it, he agreed that Leona did have a point about allowing Draconia to continue; he wanted to prove that Draconia wasn’t invincible nor was he immune, he wanted to prove that anyone could beat the Diasomia headwarden - even if it was just another individual.

Azul adjusted himself in his chair, thoroughly invested in the deal now, “If we’re thinking the same thing, Leona, you must be willing to offer something in agreement of equal price. How about that speciality spell you’re so fond of? You barely use it.”

“‘King’s Roar’?” Leona arched a brow in his direction, “I may not use it, but it does come in handy from time to time. How about my nephew instead?”

Azul twisted his features in disgust, “No thank you. I’m not Rumplestiltskin, nor a babysitter.”

Leona laughed, his voice shaking the settee for a moment, “I was only joking, Faleena would never allow me to hear the end of it. Well, then… perhaps a little advice on that soulmate of yours?”

Azul nearly dropped his pen, surprise appearing on his normally calm face before his pale blue eyes narrowed at Leona menacingly, “What do you know about that?”

“It’s not a surprise given your behavior as of late,” Leona curled his fingers inward as his gaze shifted toward them as if to inspect his nails, “Besides, I heard from a few of my dorm members that frequent here that you’ve been keeping a pretty close eye on our magicless guest.”

‘The sneaky lionfish,’ Azul sneered at Leona, feeling his temperature rising as his gloved hands curled inward.

“Personally, I have nothing against wanting to keep (Y/N) close,” Savanaclaw’s headwarden continued, “She’s cute and pretty, nevermind that fact that she’s a hard worker and kind - sucks big time that she’s a female. She probably would’ve done well in Night Raven if she was a boy.”

“What’s the point you’re getting at?” Azul seethed.

“Merely that everywhere she goes, she is welcomed. (Y/N) has made a few friends without your knowledge by working the floors of the Mostro Lounge. Every time she shares a smile, a laugh, or anything - someone undoubtedly falls for her charm.”

Azul leaned back in his chair, rubbing at his chin in thought. Leona had a point - (Y/N) may have been his precious pearl, his soulmate, but she was also well liked by any and all who encountered her. Deuce, Ace, and Grim were just the stepping stones, Cater, Trey, and Riddle also fell in line with her presence and kind words - and even many of the Octavinelle dorm that worked alongside her in the lounge had gotten close with the magicless guest. However, the students of the Octavinelle dorm knew that Azul had marked (Y/N) as his - those that did not understand the process, such as the humans of Heartslabyul, would always be a threat to the octomer’s happiness; they might even go as far as to ask the headmage to allow (Y/N) to stay in their dorm!

Azul clenched his hand tighter at the thought, ‘No! She’s mine! I will not allow anyone to touch nor taint her perfection or soul.’

The headwarden of Octavinelle leaned forward, fingers crossing together as his elbows rested on the desk and his chin on his folded hands, “I’m willing to make a deal with you, Kingscholar.”

Leona arched a brow as Azul continued in a dark voice, “(Y/N) is very important to me, the other half of my soul - as you know. Her recent encounter with Riddle Rosehearts’ overblot has left me worried that she might attempt to leave Octavinelle. I know that I promised I would help her return home, but I need to keep her close by in order to do so. Soulmates are rare - whether they are humans, beastmen, faes, or mers - and they need to be kept close to each other. I do not want to put (Y/N) on a leash nor lock her up, but she is far too free for my liking. I will create the spell enhancement potion for you in exchange for your help with (Y/N)’s freedom.”

“What is it you have in mind?”

“... Merely a little scare that will show her how cruel and twisted this world can be.”

***

It was a few days later when the plan was set in motion.

You had been helping with the set up for the vendors surrounding the colosseum where the Spelldrive tournament was set to take place in a few days; setting up tents and tables, covering areas with cloths and helping move heavy objects. You wiped at your brow as a bit of sweat dribbled down before a cloth was pressed to your face.

“You’re working too hard,” the familiar voice of your employer pulled your attention to him, a smile appearing on your face as Azul’s lips quirked into a grin.

He was dressed in the headwarden’s dorm uniform - a black tuxedo with a white dress shirt and purple tie and the dorm’s scarf hanging loosely around his neck, a pale gray overcoat that hung on his shoulders, and a black fedora perched on his head. He was leaning against the silver tipped cane with the large octopus on the handle - the mage stone held securely between its silver tentacles. It was strange to see for someone who was working on setting things up, but Azul was in charge of overseeing everything and making sure everything was where it needed to be and making changes as needed, using maps and planograms as reference points.

“Well, I always believed in the phrase ‘working hard or hardly working,’” you answer, taking the offered handkerchief and wiping away the sweat and grime from your features.

“Quite an interesting phrase,” Azul nodded, resting his hands on his hips, “Care to enlighten me on the meaning?”

You shrug, “I’m not really sure, honestly. People in my world use it for small talk or to point out a person’s laziness. For example, if someone wasn’t doing anything, someone might ask ‘working hard or hardly working?’”

Azul hummed in thought, “I suppose it is a good phrase to use - maybe it might actually get Floyd to do something for a change… however, as I’m sure you know, that eel will whatever whenever he wants to, regardless of what I tell him.”

I giggle, nodding in agreement, “Yes, and half the time he dumps his work on his twin - poor Jade.”

“Jade’s used to it,” Azul waved his hand dismissively, “but speaking of ‘dumping things onto others,’ I hate to ask this of you, but I do need you to do something for me.”

“Hmm? What is it, Azul?”

“I have an order waiting to be picked up at the school store. You’re familiar with Mr. S’s mystery shop, yes?”

You nod with a smile, “Yep, I’ve been there a few times.”

“Good, I need to go there and get the parcel. It has a few items that we’ll need for the Lounge and for the tournament. I would get it myself, but I have to keep things going here and Jade and Floyd are working on their own projects for the tournament. Would you be willing to go pick it up for me?”

“Why not have it delivered to the dorm?”

“It’s easier to travel to the store instead of going to the dorm and back. I had intended on getting it earlier, but it completely slipped my mind until now.”

You frowned a bit as something crawled up your back and tingled behind your head, a feeling that something didn’t sit right with the whole situation. However, Azul had slipped to your side as his arm came around your shoulders and pulled you close enough for you to smell the expensive cologne he always wore.

“Please, (Y/N), it’s very important that you do this for me. I’ll reward you, too, for your efforts - a drink of your choice from Mr. S’s shop or from the Mostro Lounge, on the house. Besides, you’ve been working so hard as of late that you need a little bit of a break. Take this as an opportunity to stretch your legs and cool down a bit.”

A refreshing beverage was starting to sound good. You had been working in the sun for a while like everyone else that was part of the setting up, never mind that your bottle of water had been drained a while ago and you had yet the opportunity to refill it. Perhaps just going to get the parcel for Azul as well as a small drink wouldn’t be so bad.

“Ok, do you mind if I finish up here?”

“Of course,” Azul pulled away before resting a hand on your head and messing your hair, “but as soon as you finish, please go and get the package. I need it as soon as possible.”

You nodded in understanding before turning back to your tasks as Azul walked away.

***

The parcel wasn’t big, thankfully, but it was awkward - an odd shape that looked spherical, but was flat with pointed edges.

‘I wonder what’s on here?’ you shake the package gently as you walk away from Sam’s shop, heading back toward the colosseum. You discard the thought, tucking it under your arm and taking your time, enjoying the shade the trees provided and the gentle cool breeze of autumn ruffling the changing leaves of the school campus and pulling some off and away from their homes. The colors reminded you of home - how the trees in the parks would shift from greens to yellows, reds, and oranges before fading into dark browns. It was strange to see all the trees do the same thing here - it made you wonder if Twisted Wonderland celebrated holidays like your world did.

You were so busy admiring the colors and deep in thought that you didn’t see where you were going and ran into the back of a very large student.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” you smile apologetically, “I guess I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

“Well, then, watch it,” the student growled.

“Hey man, look what she did to your jacket,” another student pointed at the sleeve of his uniform’s coat.

The charcoal gray coat that all of the students were required to wear was typically a heavy cotton and ridiculously hard to damage - however, low and behold, one of the pointed ends of Azul’s mystery order had put a decently sized tear in the student’s coat. The tear revealed the golden yellow of the student’s vest, traveling from his mid back to just the top of his waist. You covered your mouth in shock as the student took his jacket off and examined the tear, rage budding on his features.

“You stupid - look what you did!”

“I’m sorry! It was an accident -” you try to explain.

“Do you know how much this cost?” the student shook the coat at you, “Now I have to buy a whole new one!”

“Just make her pay for it,” another student spoke up, crossing his arms over his chest.

“P-Pay?”

“You damaged it, didn’t you? So, you’re the one who's going to buy me a new replacement.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t have any money…” you bit your lip as you felt your heart rate jump up, clutching Azul’s package close to you, “I-If you give me a moment, I’ll go talk to my employer and see-”

“Oh, no way,” the student grabbed the front of your borrowed button down shirt, “You’re going to pay for the jacket one way or another.”

Something within you snapped, you had tried to be reasonable with these three and had apologized for the trouble; however, it seemed now that you could only run and hope that you got to Azul before these guys did something to you. Your face hardened as you gave the student holding you a kick to the groin with your knee, the student releasing you as he groaned in pain at the sudden attack. Once you were out of his clutches, you took off in the opposite direction as the three students shouted at you and chased after.

You clutched the package close to your chest as you bolted into the school and down a corridor, staying close to the windows, hoping for someone to see you as you shouted out for help. Your cries echoed off the high ceiling, alerting a few students and staff members - but it seemed everyone elected to ignore your screams for help as the three pursuers gradually came closer and closer.

You threw yourself around a corner which led out into the courtyard to throw them off.

Unfortunately, an uneven stone caught on your shoe, causing you to stumble forward and land on the ground, Azul’s package flying from your hands and landing with a sickening crack against the side of the wishing well. You tried to stand to move, but something heavy came down on your ankle, a loud snapping sound and a cry of agony echoing across the lawn.

“You stupid bitch! All you had to do was pay up,” the student’s voice from earlier came in your ear as a large fist grabbed a handful of your (h/c) hair, pulling your head up to look into his rage filled eyes, “but nooo, you just had to kick me then run and tried getting help.”

“I think punishment is in order - after all, what can someone without magic and a broken ankle do now?”

Something heavy collided with your face as tears welled up from the punch, the pain coming again from the opposite side. Your hair was released before you felt a heavy boot collide with your stomach as you were kicked across the lawn like a football, landing a few feet away from the wishing well. You tried to sit up with a groan, your arm coming around to clutch your side as you spat out blood. Your entire body was shaking and was sore - you were beginning to wonder if they had hit any vital organs. A large hand came forward and grabbed at your hair again, pulling you up as you cried out.

“Piece of fuckin’ shit, you don’t know when to give up, do you?”

You bit your lip, fighting to hold onto consciousness and the tears that were slowly slipping from your eyes. You were scared and were still wishing beyond a doubt that someone would find you and stop these three from beating you up more. However, the wish was short lived when you were dropped to the ground, causing you to wince as more pain came from your side.

“Time to say good-bye,” your eyes widened as you pulled your arms up toward your face, the student rearing his foot back with his aim clear in his dangerous eyes.

“Care to explain yourselves?” a familiar voice asked, stopping the students as their eyes widened in fear.

You peered out between your fingertips as the familiar figure of Azul came forward, his dorm overcoat fluttering behind him in the breeze as his walking cane tapped against the dirt. His face looked difficult to read as he came forward, eyes sharp and filled with rage.

“H-Headwarden Azul,” the student put his foot down and backed away from you, “W-We thought you were over by the colosseum.”

“I was - I was looking for my errand runner,” Azul’s gaze shifted between you and the three students before repeating, “Care to explain yourselves?”

“I-It’s nothing, honestly,” one of the students visibly shuddered.

“Y-yeah, just a m-misunderstanding is all!” the third student smiled wobbly.

“A misunderstanding, hm?” Azul cocked a brow, eyeing the students, before lifting his walking stick and tapping the head against his gloved palm like a baseball player would, “I will only ask one last time. What. Did. You. Do.”

“S-she destroyed my jacket!” the first student tried to explain, “She wouldn’t pay up for a replacement so-”

“So you decided to attack a defenseless angelfish who is under my protection?” Azul snickered, “How very foolish and pathetic…”

He snapped his fingers as Jade and Floyd appeared before the students. Azul came over and lifted you into his arms, “I’m taking her to the infirmary to get patched up - Jade, Floyd, have some fun.”

You ducked your head close to Azul’s chest, a headache slowly forming as he carried you away. You swallowed and began to open your mouth to speak, but Azul hushed you.

“Rest, (Y/N). You’re safe - there is nothing to be said nor to say. Just relax - I won’t let anything harm you.”

***

You must have fallen asleep because when you opened your eyes, you were in your room back in Octavinelle’s dorms. Azul was there, resting in a chair beside your bed with his arms folded over his chest and eyes closed. You shifted slightly, which caused the octomer to open his eyes - blinking rapidly before they fell on you as a smile crossed his face.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, standing and coming to sit beside you.

“Sore, tired,” you answered.

“That is typical after a fight,” Azul nodded, handing you a glass of water that had been perched on your bedside table, helping you to drink the cool liquid.

You smiled as he returned the glass to its spot before your face fell, “I’m so so sorry, Azul.”

“Whatever for, (Y/N)? You did nothing wrong.”

“Your package - you entrusted me to get it, but it probably got broken after that fight…”

“Don’t worry about it,” Azul’s fingertips curled under your chin, lifting it up to force you to look at him, “I’m not going to be concerned about a package that was damaged when you - someone I’ve been tasked to keep an eye on - was hurt severely. You’re very lucky. But, I do need to ask, what in the world happened? What did you do?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. I… I accidentally ran into him because I was taking my time and admiring the changing colors of autumn, not paying attention to where I was going. When I ran into him, one of the parcel’s sharp points must’ve caught onto his coat and when I pulled away, it tore it.”

“NRC’s required suits are relatively expensive, so I can see why he was upset,” Azul nodded thoughtfully, “However, why did he attack you? You could’ve come to me and explained you needed money for a replacement jacket - ”

“I tried telling him that, but he wouldn’t listen and grabbed me. I kicked him so I could get away and was intending on going straight to you, but he…” you didn’t want to say anymore, the memory of what happened only a few hours ago was still painful in your mind.

Sensing your distress, Azul cooed to you, pulling you into his arms as his head landed on top of your head, hands running up and down your spine gently. You sniffled into his suit coat, hand coming up and gripping the back of his jacket, feeling the familiar warmth and comfort that was Azul Ashengrotto.

“Shh… it’s alright, (Y/N)... you’re safe now,” Azul murmured, his voice soft and soothing in your ear, “I know, I know… I can only imagine how afraid you were…”

You nod as you sniffle more.

“It’s alright, though… I’m right here beside you. Those monsters can never touch you again… but you have to promise me something.”

You look up at him as his eyes shine with pain and… something else.

“This world is cruel and wicked, (Y/N),” Azul reached up, resting a gloved hand against your cheek and wiping away the tears that gathered in your eyes, “It’s only I you can trust in this place - Jade and Floyd as well - your only friends. We can’t protect you if you are away from our sight, so you must stay here in Octavinelle - where we can always be within an arm’s reach.”

“B-But, what about the others? Deuce? Ace? Grim? Surely they…”

“(Y/N)... did they come to help you during your darkest hour? Who was there when you were getting beaten by those mongrels?” Azul asked, eyes narrowing slightly, “I did not see Deuce or Ace. Nor did I see Grim or Trey… the twins did not see any of them nor Riddle or Cater either. Who came for you?”

“...You did.”

“Exactly,” Azul nodded, “I will always be there for you. Jade will always be there. Floyd, as strange as it may seem, will also always be there.”

You nod slowly, tucking yourself against his chest as you realize the dark truth. They had abandoned you, left you to fend for yourself while you were getting hurt - it was Azul that came and found you and it was Jade and Floyd that put the trio in their place. The three of them were the only ones who cared about it - showing you love and support through these last two months in this strange, dark, twisted world. Tears fell faster as you sniffled under the calming strokes of Azul’s fingertips.

If you had happened to look up at that point, you would have seen the octomer grinning devilishly down at you, his eyes of pale blue filled with possessive love and adoration.

***

Azul ventured out later after you had fallen asleep with the twins in tow. The trio met with Leona in the lounge of Savanaclaw’s dorm, the octomer pulling out a vial of strange green liquid.

“As promised,” the headwarden of Octavinelle presented the vial to Leona, “for services well rendered.”

“This is it?” Leona snatched the vial, inspecting it closely, “I thought there’d be more.”

“Too much and the power will cause the user to overblot,” Jade explained, “We don’t want a repeat incident.”

Leona hummed in agreement, looking back toward the trio, “Speaking of which, what do you intend on doing since you hurt three of my best players with that little incident?”

“If anything, it’s compensation for us after what you did to three of our best players,” Azul let out a shrug, “but remember, Leona - there’s a much bigger fish to fry in the ocean that has nothing to do with me or the twins nor anyone in Octavinelle.”

Leona grumbled, turning his head, “Ruggie!”

The hyena appeared out of nowhere, landing next to Leona with a soft thump, “You called?”

“Take this,” Leona handed the vial to him, “On the day of the Tournament, you know what to do.”

Ruggie snickered with a nod.

“Well, we’ll be going,” Azul smiled, turning away, “pleasure doing business with you, Kingscholar.”

“And I hope that you live a long life with that soulmate of yours.”

“Oh, after that little incident - I doubt she’ll be going anywhere… at least for a while.”

***

You do not comprehend (You are my one defender)

Why invite their calumny and consternation, stay in here

Be faithful to me, grateful to me

Do as I say, obey

And stay in here…

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purpleturtle9000 · 2 years ago

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To celebrate the first round of peepaw polls ending, what with @beeceit winning and me getting more than four votes (21.9% is extremely surprising to me and I'm very 😍 about it), here's the first 500 words of chapter one of i know exactly what i want, the wify sequel

It’s honestly a surprise to Leonardo that everyone made it back to the lair in one piece. They’d all been pretty banged up after the battle ended, and he’s still not even sure what happened at the very end of it, after he passed out on Staten Island.

Donnie said that Leo got them all back through a portal. And that he almost passed out too, after that, and then Donnie took over. Somehow that doesn’t surprise Leonardo very much. He’s always pushed himself too hard, especially when it comes to his family.

He also spent almost the entire last week asleep in medbay. There were a lot of injuries his body had to get to work healing, from the apocalypse and the battle after it. Without any threats or emergencies at hand, he just kind of… collapsed, and took a while to get back up again.

There was one time he thought that his brothers were there – his brothers, the ones he’d lost to the apocalypse – but then when he’d woken up, they were all gone. He’s still not sure what to think, about how much it hurt to realise that it was just a dream.

Most of the reason he’s awake now is because of his younger set of brothers. Raph, Leo, Mikey – they’d all gotten hurt badly in the battle. So far he’s not sure what’s going on with Donnie, though. After the first four days he spent glued to Leo’s side, Donnie’s mostly been holed up in his lab since they got back. Leonardo will find a way to deal with Donnie later. Maybe just drag him out by his ankle.

But right now, he’s getting out of bed for what feels like the first time in nine days. Every joint hurts, along with half his shell, but there’s only so long he can stay in one place. Apocalypse ended or not, there’s still responsibilities he has. He’s no longer the one keeping the resistance together, but he still has family to look after.

And they’ve looked after him, too. Casey’s barely left his side this entire time. Every time Leonardo’s woken up, his boy’s been right next to him, a comfortingly warm presence who seems comforted by Leonardo in return. At least when he’s conscious enough to tell. He’s spent a lot of time sleeping.

When he’s awake, Leo’s rarely been far either. There’s worry behind his eyes, sometimes, when he looks at Leonardo. Almost like he knows that Leonardo’s hiding something, or thinks he’s lying. So far… well, as much as he hates to admit it, so far Leonardo hasn’t had the energy to dig into the problem and see what’s at its root.

Unfortunately Leo is also the biggest problem, since he keeps forgetting his crutches everywhere and every independent step causes him pain. He also keeps cracking jokes about every little thing that comes to mind, and only grins wider if the others snap at him to shut it. That’s a huge warning sign in and of itself, not that anyone else has picked up on it, but Leonardo doesn’t know if he’ll ever have the patience for that conversation. But he’ll have to. Leo’s too important to let it go.

#fic: i know exactly what i want and it's this life that we've created #series: when i found you i found me #preview

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zebrabaker · 5 years ago

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Demon’s Daughter: 02

Hey guys! I made a twitter for my stories (@ LilnomeStories) where all polls will be held from now on! Don’t forget I also have a Patreon and a ko-fi now, the links to which are in my bio. Here we go!

Part 1

The same day at lunch, Marinette had just exited the classroom after everyone else had left when she was accosted by a figure dressed in all black. She stumbled back a step, barely catching her balance. She managed to look up at the figure, only to squeal when she saw who it was, and eagerly return the hug.

“Uncle John!” She cried when he picked her up and swung her about. John was not the man’s real name, but a nom de plume he used to blend with the humans. The full name was John Therapon, and he was listed as one of her legal guardians (she had a lot).

“Little Mari!” He shouted, setting her down. He was an odd looking man, with waist length platinum hair in a warrior braid and green eyes like poison, he would always draw attention. He only drew more with his fashion sense. Her Uncle wore a long black trench coat over black skinny jeans and a black button up, with a clunky looking wallet chain. He also wore a thick chain-link necklace and heavy motorcycle boots. Over all, he looked like someone’s goth/emo/punk cousin more than an ancient immortal being who reaped souls.

“Are you the one Dad said was coming to check on me?” She asked, stepping back and adjusting her buns, which had come loose when he had glomped her.

“Indeed, I am, little chaos bringer!” He twirled her around and bowed low, pressing a kiss to her hand. “And for your birthday, I have a very special surprise!” He reached into his coat and pulled out a small business card, presenting it to her with a flourish, and she giggled as she took it.

Turn around!

It read. Marinette spun on the spot and looked up, only to scream in delight.

“DAD!” She flung herself at the tall, slim figure. Sebastian caught his daughter, wrapping her in a tight hug.

“Hello, dearest.” He smiled, flashing his eyes magenta. She flashed hers as well, making them shine a darker shade of gray.

“I thought you were in India, visiting Uncle Agni?” She asked, stepping back.

“A simple deception, dearest. Now, let’s go pick up your mother and Papa, I made reservations at Raven’s Writing Desk.” Marinette cheered. Raven’s Writing Desk was a Michelin-starred restaurant. The owner’s father had made a questionable deal with Sebastian (ten years of life and a successful business, then Sebastian got to eat his soul), so the family got reservations for the best tables and half off whatever they wanted. “We’ll even have some others joining us.” Sebastian teased, patting her head. Right as they reached the sidewalk, a crash echoed from a few miles away, and a plume of smoke filled the air. “Oh dear. It looks like we’ll all have to call and reschedule our reservation. You go handle this, dearest. I’ll go catch up with your mother and Papa.” She sighed, kissed her father on the cheek, and ducked into an alleyway, opening her purse. Plagg zoomed out with a sigh.

“Ooh! Raven’s Writing Desk! I love their cheese curds! Let’s finish this.”

“Agreed.” She grumbled. “Plagg, Claws Out!”

X0X0X

Hell-Cat raced over the rooftops, soaring through the air. The pads in the shape of a cat’s paw on the bottom of her boots silenced her steps, meaning she was a silent black and silver streak, soaring through the air. She landed in a crouch next to her partner and confidant, Coccinelle. Coccinelle nodded at her, twirling her yoyo in front of her as a shield.

Coccinelle’s costume was very different from Hell Cat’s. While Hell Cat wore a black body suit with silver highlights and a pair of pauldrons, Coccinelle wore a short red dress coated in ladybug spots and black leggings. Hell Cat’s boots reached her knees, while her partners went maybe an inch above her ankle. Whereas Coccinelle’s gloves were plain black and only went to her wrists, Hell Cat’s had wickedly sharp silver talons and reached her elbows, where they came to a point.

Even their masks were different. Coccinelle’s was round, and made her blue eyes look huge, while Hell Cat’s was slim and came to wicked looking points on each side of her eyes, making her look more feline. Another feature of Hell Cat’s mask was the magic that made her entire eye gray, the iris a few shades darker than the sclera. While Coccinelle had long, flowy ash blonde hair, Hell Cat’s, when transformed, barely reached her shoulders, and had a blue sheen. While Coccinelle was bright and colorful, Hell Cat was sharp monochrome. The only splash of color was the blue bow around her neck that tied in the front. Lots of small children tended to ask Coccinelle if she was a fairy, since she had wings (They were the tail ends of the scarf she wore) while teens and young adults tended to gravitate towards Hell Cat.

The Akuma was flinging a series of items at them, which all bounced off Coccinelle’s yoyo. The common theme seemed to be car repair. Hell Cat glanced at her partner.

“What’s the plan?” She asked.

“The Akuma is in his utility belt. I distract, you slash, I swing. From there, clear skies! Ready?” Coccinelle asked. Hell Cat nodded and crouched down, her ribbon tail flicking behind her. She waited until the Akuma reached for yet another projectile and Coccinelle began to monologue before diving at him, claws extended to their fullest. She slashed the belt as soared past the Akuma, who quickly dropped to his knees. As the dark magic bubbled from his skin, Coccinelle landed in front of him and captured the butterfly.

“No more rainy days for you, little akuma! Au revior!” She released the now-purified butterfly, and waved to the cheering people. “Kitty, can you handle the victim?” Coccinelle asked, reholstering her yoyo on her belt.

“Sure, I didn’t use my powers, so I’ve got a few minutes.” Coccinelle waved to the watching civilians and ran off, leaping to the roof of the nearest building with the help of her wings. Hell Cat sheathed her claws and knelt beside the victim; a young man dressed in a repair shop jumpsuit that was covered in grease stains.

“Hell Cat? Was I…?” The young man asked, staring at her.

“I’m afraid so, monsieur. May I ask why?” She set a hand on the man’s shoulder and guided him over to a nearby ambulance. The paramedic handed her a shock blanket and she wrapped it around his shoulders, as the other paramedic handed the victim a glass of water.

“My family repair shop isn’t doing so good.” He sighed. “My mom was diagnosed with cancer three years ago, and Dad remortgaged the shop so that he could still support the family and pay for Mom’s nurse. Now, we’re pretty successful, so we almost have it payed off.” He growled, clearly frustrated. “Except some big shot at the bank is demanding the remaining twenty-five-thousand euros in a month, or they foreclose the damn shop.” Hell Cat hissed. The bakery was the most successful in all Paris, maybe even France, and they catered a great deal of important events. Even during the busiest time of year, they would struggle to make that much, let alone have that much that didn’t need to go to other bills and buying ingredients. She had an idea.

“What bank is it, and who’s the one demanding the payment?” She asked, plotting. She did need to make another deal soon; her reserves were getting a little low.

“Um…Monsieur Gerard Lilac, at Goliath Banking. Curse his name!” No one asked why she needed the information. Everyone in Paris knew, if you had a problem, Hell Cat could solve it. No one knew how, just that she made problems (and occasionally people) disappear.

“Hell Cat!” Someone cried, and she looked up to see Alya charging towards her. This was yet another problem with Alya. She never considered the victims, just the next scoop. Hell Cat stood and blocked her view of the victim, and nodded to the paramedics. The two nodded back and hustled the man into the ambulance, quickly flipping on the lights and driving towards the nearest hospital. All Akuma victims got three one-hour therapy sessions, one right after being cleansed and then one each week for two weeks.

“Yes, mademoiselle?” She asked, crossing her arms.

“Why was the victim Akumatized? What will you be doing to help them? Do you intend to use this to track Hawkmoth? Do you have a statement for the press?” Her phone was inches from Hell Cat’s face. Hell Cat’s ears were pinned back, and she was really trying not to hiss. How she was ever friends with the girl she’d never know.

“Mademoiselle, the reason for Akumatization is never leaked to the press. We use every attack to track Hawkmoth. And the only statement I have for you is to get your phone out of my face before I break it, along with your hand. Goodbye.” She drew her staff and extended it, vaulting away.

#cambion Marinette #Sebastian is Marinette's dad #black cat Marinette #dd #ml salt #Adrien Sugar

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saiilorstars · 5 years ago

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Dare To Forget Me

Ch. 11: Rivalries

/ Story Masterlist /

Fandom: Law & Order SVU

Pairing: Rafael Barba x Original female character

Warnings: Due to the nature of the series’ plots, I do have to rate this as ‘mature’ for constant mentions of rape.

~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ` 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~

Chapter Summary: Montserrat's and Rafael's childhoods come for them both in different ways.

'With only 12 days left until New York's mayoral election, the latest polls show state senator Alejandro Munoz still holding on to his lead. The time has come to fix our broken schools. The time has come to provide affordable housing for the hard-working people of the city. The time has come!'

"Ouch - Kara that hurt!" Montserrat scrunched her face after one particular strong hair pull from Kara's hands. "Are you even paying attention to what you're doing to my hair or are you watching TV?"

Kara pulled her hands from Montserrat's fiery orange hair and cheekily smiled behind Montserrat's chair. The two were in Kara's salon, before opening, and while Kara was attempting to try a new hair style using Montserrat, a lot of her attention seemed to be going towards the television up on the wall.

"I swear to God," Montserrat muttered as she decided to end this impromptu hair modeling gig by pulling out the bobby pins in her hair.

"Sorry, it's just elections are coming up and I wanna stay informed," the blonde hair stylist replied with, not even bothering to help Montserrat undo a knot on her hair. "My vote's going to Muñoz for sure. What about you?"

"Don't know, don't - OW!" Montserrat angrily glared at her reflection after feeling like she'd pulled skin off during the unknotting process.

Kara remained unfazed. "You don't know who you want for mayor?"

"Hasn't been on my radar yet but I've heard things about all parties. Can I go now?" Montserrat dropped the last bobby pin onto the salon table and turned to find Kara engulfed in her cellphone. "Nice to see the attention you give me."

Kara sarcastically rolled her eyes. "It's Damian. We were gonna get lunch but he's at your cousin's right now."

"What? Casey?"

"With Gael too," Kara put her phone in her back pocket. "Something about a client gone wrong? Issue? Not sure."

"Hm, I guess they're still having trouble. Maybe I can stop by," Montserrat said as she got up from her chair.

"What are you going to do? You're a cop not a lawyer!"

"Thanks, really. I haven't talked to Gael in weeks and I was meant to babysit his girls last week but he cancelled in a very short text," Montserrat turned to the mirror to fix her hair as best as possible. "I'll say hi to Damian for you."

"And while you're at it, remind him that he owes his little sister $20," Kara pointed in a serious, mocking, manner.

Montserrat playfully rolled her eyes. "Hair model is gone!" she announced as she swiped her purse off the table.

"But coming back!" Kara reminded because she certainly had more styles to try out and as it turned out, Montserrat had very smooth hair.

~0~

On her way towards the D.A's office, Montserrat heard the distinct voice of her partner calling her name. Montserrat paused and looked back to see Sonny speeding to catch up with her, with, due to his long legs, was done in a quick stride.

"Hey, what are you doing here?" Montserrat asked him.

"Warrant," Sonny said the magic word that could answer almost everything.

"Case of Jamil?"

"We got him this time," Sonny promised then motioned Montserrat to walk ahead.

"I sure hope so cos I'd love to see the smirk get wiped off his face already," Montserrat thanked him for opening the door for her but as she was about to step in, she bumped into a man. "Sorry," she apologized dutifully.

"Oh don't worry about it, bonita," a familiar man responded with.

Montserrat stepped back, accidentally bumping into Sonny at the same time. "I know you," the redhead said within the second. "My roommate was talking about you earlier. Alex Muñoz, you want to be our mayor."

The man in question smiled the same charming smile Montserrat saw on the television. "Sounds like I got her vote. What about you?"

"I... don't know yet," Montserrat shrugged then looked up at Sonny behind her.

"Don't know either," he admitted.

"Psh, you'll vote for whoever Kara will," Montserrat waved him off, missing Sonny's face of offence when she looked back to Alex. "But I have to say I'm surprised a candidate for mayor is here…?"

"Just visiting an old friend," Alex left it brief.

"K, well, promise I'll do my research," Montserrat politely reached for the door again.

"If you need any help deciding, you can always call me," and the man surprised her with a small card. "Always happy to help a citizen, especially cuando toca ser una linda mujer."

Montserrat slowly took the card from him, eyes glued to Alex's returning smile. It was cocky no doubt even when he walked off.

"Okay, I skipped Spanish class a lot in highschool but I'm not that bad to miss the fact he just made a pass at me," Montserrat turned to face Sonny with a wide grin, close to laughing.

"You're so not voting for him," Sonny ushered her inside, instigating her full laughter.

"What? Why not? You're not actually thinking that being overprotective of your crush's roommate will score you some good grade points?" Montserrat leveled an amused glance his way, one that made him roll his eyes.

"I'm gonna go get that warrant," Sonny decided to avoid another teasing round which, thanks to Montserrat, the squad now partook in.

"Sure, sure," Montserrat waved him off and headed for Casey's office. She was only a couple feet away when the office door opened. Damian was the first to emerge, letting Montserrat notice his face expression. Whatever problem they were having didn't seem to be getting any better.

"Hey," Montserrat walked towards them, but the closer she got the better she could see Gael's grim face. "Woah, what problem have you two got?"

"None of your business," Gael snapped at the same time Damian had answered "It's just business".

Montserrat raised her eyebrows in confusion. "What the hell's your problem, Gael?"

"Seriously?" the older brother snapped again which only confused Montserrat even more. "You're asking me what's my problem after what you said about Dad?"

"Wait, you're actually mad about that?" Montserrat didn't know whether to laugh or not. It was plainly absurd. Though now she supposed it made sense why Gael cancelled her babysitting day.

"You said Dad was a bad parent-"

"-I did not say that!" Montserrat couldn't believe they were actually going to have this argument.

"Yes, you did!"

"No, I didn't!"

Damian looked back and forth between the siblings as their argument got louder and louder. He tried to cut in but it didn't work. It rarely did. And it just seemed to attract more people out from the offices.

"How could you be so insensitive towards Dad!?"

"How could you be so stupid!?" Montserrat mimicked her brother's tone without a care in the world. "This is why you didn't let me babysit the girls last week?"

"I was afraid you'd call me a bad father too," Gael promptly said, and it honestly became hard for Montserrat not to smack him right there.

"Would you quit being such a baby!? I didn't say anything about our father that wasn't true! But that doesn't mean I said he was a bad father!"

Casey flung open her office door and fixated an incredulous glare on her two cousins. "Would you two quiet it down?" her input only seemed to make things worse.

"No, I will not 'quiet it down'-" Gael mimicking Casey as well earned himself another glare from the woman, "-when my sister is being so ungrateful to our father!"

"I'M NOT!" Montserrat outright shouted, which then called forth her partner.

"Montse, what's going on?" Sonny emerged from Rafael's office, along with the ADA himself.

"The entire building can hear you," Rafael added.

Montserrat, frustrated, motioned them all to be quiet. "I'm not doing anything except defending myself from ridiculous accusations by my dear big brother!"

"You got a lot of nerve, Montserrat," Gael got face to face with his younger sister. "You want to call our father a bad parent when he worked his ass off to get both of us through? While Regina was out probably partying, he was there reading you stories and helping me with my homework-"

"-but I never said anything! And you know damn well that I know what Regina did."

"Well it doesn't seem like it-"

"-Gael-" Casey once again stepped in but the man went over her words anyways.

"-but of course you'd never understand. You're still thinking Mommy is coming back. You always thought that-"

"-screw you, Gael," Montserrat felt there was nothing left to say.

"Montserrat!" Casey hissed.

"Montse, why don't we head back to the station together?" Sonny made his own attempt as well.

"Yeah, go back to work and act like you didn't insult our father," Gael spat and finally moved around Montserrat to head for the exit.

"I'm so sorry," Damian felt like he needed to apologize to Casey at least for the siblings' brawl but it wasn't like Casey was new to it.

"We're good, go," Casey gave him the nod that it was alright for him to leave.

"No, we are not good!" Montserrat turned with the intention of catching up with her brother. "If he wants to talk about Regina then let's have it!" But of course she was stopped by both Sonny and Rafael. She fought the two for a bit before she finally backed off. "Taking his side?" she snapped at both of them.

"Easy there, Novak," Rafael pointed a finger at her to keep her from trying again. "You've got the whole building watching you."

"I don't care," she snapped. "If he wants to talk about Regina then I can do it."

"At another time," he snapped this time. "I'll find her myself if that'll shut both of you up."

That seemed to trigger her. "You know what, if you think you can find Regina Ramos then be my frikin guest because I haven't been able to find her in 25 years!" This particular spat startled Rafael due to the ferocity lacing her words. Even her expression had gone ballistic and he'd seen quite a lot of things in his line of work.

"Montserrat," Casey once again attempted to calm her cousin but Montserrat waved Casey off and took off in a storm.

"What the hell was that?" Sonny jerked a thumb over his shoulder, completely lost on the show they'd seen.

"What do you think? Another sister-brother brawl," Casey sighed. "How many siblings do you have again?"

Sonny playfully rolled his eyes. "My sisters and I have never argued like that."

"Who the hell is this Regina and why is she making such trouble?" asked Rafael. He'd certainly like to know why he'd garnered such a snap from Montserrat.

Casey knew what he was thinking and decided to answer only to clarify what Montserrat was dealing with. "Regina is Montserrat's and Gael's mother. She...sort of walked out on them when they were just kids." Casey sighed when she saw the sorrowful expressions on the men's faces. "And that's why Montse doesn't talk about that because she hated the pity faces she would get afterwards. She doesn't like talking about it, period. I mean, you guys got a firsthand look at what happens, and you-" she gestured at Rafael, "-got a firsthand taste."

"Wouldn't be the first time I accidentally probed where I shouldn't have," the ADA shrugged, though inside he was feeling a tad remorseful (which he didn't like one bit).

"I would just tread lightly," Casey parted with that warning and returned to her office.

"How the hell do we 'tread lightly' after that?" Rafael was left with an unanswered question.

"We take slow steps," Sonny decided it was as close to a proper answer as they could get to.

~0~

Montserrat practically stalked into her apartment that evening with a white paper bag in one hand, and a half eaten brownie in the other. Kara looked up from her dinner plate with a mouth full of spaghetti, one noodle in particular dangling below her chin.

"What's...wrong with...you?" Kara said while she swallowed the whole food in her mouth.

"My brother's an idiot," Montserrat spat and trudged into the living room to take her coat and shoes off. She stuffed her mouth with the remainder of her brownie. Kara watched her ginger roommate chuck the paper bag (aggressively one should add) to the couch before plonking down to take off her boots.

"Uh, my brother's an idiot too. All big brothers are. Didn't you get the memo?" Kara's light joke was met with a cold deadpanning look. "Okay. Um, I know I'm going to regret asking but shouldn't you be at work?"

"I asked Liv for a personal day. She's very understanding," Montserrat threw her boot across the living room, missing how Kara winced when the hell of one boot hit the television furniture piece. She then pulled her phone out of her back pocket and let it drop (not so gently) against the glass coffee table.

Kara feared for her furniture's safety. "Um, okay, so...would you like dinner…? I made spaghetti," she motioned to her plate which was half empty already.

"Since when?" Montserrat unceremoniously snorted. "You always complain how you never got that one."

"Sonny gave me a recipe," the blonde shrugged.

Montserrat shot her roommate a look. "You're trading recipes now?" but she decided in that second that she didn't even want to get into that potential romance that was sure to make her gag. "Never mind. No, I don't want dinner."

"Right, cos stuffing your face with brownies is the better way to go," Kara's sarcasm was once again responded with a cold glare. "What's going on, Montse?"

"You mean Damian didn't call? Not even Sonny?" Montserrat grabbed her paper bag and reached for another brownie.

"No...should I call one of them…?"

"Oh, right, like you need another reason to call Sonny - stop with that!" Montserrat pretended to shiver, making Kara roll her eyes, and took a bit of her new brownie. "Gael's still mad at me for what I said about our Dad leaving us alone sometimes. He thinks I actually called my father a bad parent."

"But I'm sure you didn't mean it like that-"

"-yeah, I know," Montserrat's sudden cut in sounded rude but Kara knew Montserrat needed to vent right now and this was how she did it. "He even went ahead and brought in Regina, like I don't know what she did to us."

Kara wouldn't even try to say anything about Regina Ramos. That topic had always been a delicate one that usually resulted in arguments between Gael and Montserrat. Their mother abandoning them as kids had left raw pain that hadn't really see any healing.

"Gael is an idiot. And more than that, he's…" Montserrat couldn't even finish without getting furious all over again. "We argued outside Casey's office and...we got loud."

"...how loud?" Kara raised an eyebrow, knowing well where this was headed.

"Pretty loud."

"Were there people?"

"...when we were finished…"

"Oh, Montse. How mad was Casey?"

"I don't know. I didn't ask her when I stormed out of there after threatening Sonny and Rafael."

"Oh Montse," Kara shook her head disapprovingly.

"Gael made me so mad!"

"That's not an excuse, that's just a sister-brother relationship," Kara dug her fork into her spaghetti. "Only now you're actually held responsible for your actions."

Montserrat hated when Kara was right. She just hated it. Thankfully, someone knocked on their door, preventing Kara from continuing with her lecture.

"It's probably the Andersons downstairs complaining about your stomping," Kara warned as Montserrat went up to answer the door.

"I've still got some colorful words left if you're interested," Montserrat said before opening the door. "Great, what are you doing here?" her initial whine made Kara lean to the side to try and see who was at the door. If it was Gael, she'd take cover for sure.

"Seriously, I don't get paid enough to be your partner," Sonny said with a straight face.

Montserrat deadpanned him but took his sarcasm to heart. He probably came around trying to see if she was okay, not for Kara nor for the sake of their work... but to be a friend. Those thoughts softened her expression and made her remember some politeness. "Come on in, Sonny."

"Careful, she bites when she's angry," Kara said while Montserrat shut the door.

"I come bearing gifts," Sonny raised his hand that held a white plastic bag.

"You didn't have to," Montserrat was now feeling exceptionally guilty for her behavior earlier in the day.

"After that kind of fight, yeah, I had to," Sonny held the bag for her to take.

"I heard plural which just makes me feel awful," Montserrat admitted as she rummaged through the bag. A smile came to her face when she caught whiff of the familiar peanut butter cannolis inside one box. "And I guess Kara gets to enjoy my guilty moment."

"Why?" asked the blonde in question. She scarfed down her spaghetti and looked in their direction.

"Peanut butter cannolis," was all Montserrat had to say for Kara to jump out of her seat.

"Sonny, you didn't!?" she zipped towards them and practically yanked the bag out of Montserrat's hands to see for herself. She squeaked when she confirmed the cannolis and suddenly planted a kiss on Sonny's cheek.

Montserrat nearly laughed when she saw how red Sonny had become in less than a minute. She honestly didn't think Kara even realized what she'd done.

"You better apologize to him right now," Kara wagged a finger at Montserrat.

Montserrat rolled her eyes but did know when it was time to give in. "I am sorry, Sonny. I got carried away and I...it was not the place."

"Look, I get it, siblings can be…" Sonny wouldn't even finish that sentence because they all knew what he meant. "I just hope you're feeling better about things. Casey told us about...your mom? She said few things-" he said quickly before Montserrat assumed the worst, "-and I want you to know that Barba and I understand you were in a...special type of moment."

"Very special moment…" Kara muttered under her breath.

"Shut up," Montserrat warned her. "Go eat your spaghetti already."

"You made spaghetti?" Sonny's attention was momentarily driven towards Kara. "Did you use the recipe I left you?"

"Of course," Kara smiled. "And it really was better than that frozen crap Montse buys."

"Hey," went the ginger with offence. Now it was Kara who motioned for silence. "I'm going to my room," Montserrat announced and snatched the cannolis from Kara's hands. "Thanks Sonny. And just so we're clear, Kara's not getting any."

"Rude," Kara frowned and watched her roommate go off into the hallway.

Sonny chuckled and offered to buy more another day. That perked Kara right up. Montserrat's phone started buzzing against the glass coffee table, cutting short Kara's beam.

"I really hope it's not Gael trying to continue the fight," Kara mumbled as she went to get the phone.

"Maybe he's calling to apologize?" Sonny offered another alternative but Kara shook her head.

"Looks like we're both wrong," she grabbed the phone off the table and waved the phone at Sonny, letting him see the caller ID on the screen. "Your friend's calling to check up on Montse, maybe?"

Sonny made a face that Kara found difficult not to laugh at. "Barba would never call to 'check up' on anyone."

"You came to check up on Montse, why can't Rafael do the same?"

"Because he just doesn't."

Kara's face clearly said that wasn't an answer.

"He doesn't do that sort of stuff, trust me," and that left Sonny wondering why Rafael would choose to do start doing it now.

"Hm, then Montse must be special enough to catch his attention," Kara made way for the hallway but the phone stopped buzzing. "But apparently I'm slow to help." She turned back with a disappointed expression.

"You might be right about the first thing," Sonny conceded as he thought back to the various moments of strange behaviors between Montserrat and Rafael. "But that could also be because she nearly had a kid in his courtroom."

Kara laughed. "One of Montse's finest moments. Whatever, if he meant to check up, he'll call again and this time I'll be ready." She bit her lip and looked back to the kitchen where her lonesome plate remained on the table. "I've made enough for two but it looks like Montserrat's already got dinner so...you want to stick around? Give me some feedback on the spaghetti."

"Okay," Sonny nodded. "But I doubt you got anything wrong. You're a good cook."

Kara chuckled. "I like to think that I am. C'mon, I'll get you a plate." She walked past Sonny and tucked Montserrat's phone in her back pocket to be on red alert in case Rafael were to call again. She probably should have given the phone to Montserrat but, truth be told, she was curious herself about her roommate and the ADA.

To her surprise (and Sonny's), Rafael did call again that night.

~ 0 ~

Montserrat gripped her coffee cup all the way to her desk. She saw Olivia and Nick heading out, probably to continue questioning their latest victim. She plonked down at her desk and went back to her paperwork which seemed to get bigger every time she paused to look.

"You sure you don't want to take a break?" Amanda stopped by her desk with Fin beside her. "Our comfy Chinese place is always open for a third guest."

Montserrat smiled at the two. "No, I'm good. I'll get lunch later."

"And I'll make sure she actually does," Sonny reassured since they learned fast that Montserrat tended to skip meals when she felt swamped by work.

"Your call," Fin nodded to Amanda towards the hallway.

"You are getting lunch, right?" Sonny asked after the other two were gone.

"Yes, at some point," Montserrat dug her nose into a particular file.

Sonny rolled his eyes and went back to work at his end. He paused, though, when he noticed Montserrat picking at her hair every minute or so. "What are you doing?"

Montserrat put her pen down and groaned. "Kara keeps using me as her hair model and today was apparently a big ole crown braid." Her ginger hair was picked up with a large-sized crown braid adorning her her head from ear to ear.

"It looks nice," Sonny's compliment was met with a loud scoff.

"You're only saying that because Kara made it."

"You know, not everything I do is dependent on Kara."

"Sure."

Sonny decided to just keep quiet from now on.

Fifteen minutes passed and Montserrat finished her coffee - or drowned it - so she got up for a refill.

"Sonny, you want one?"

"Nah, let's head out for lunch already," his suggestion flew over Montserrat's head as the ginger went to get more coffee.

Montserrat returned two minutes later, surprised that Sonny hadn't continued calling her name out. Of course when she saw him talking to Rafael she understood why.

"They went to go talk to her, I promise," Sonny insisted yet Rafael still looked rather doubtful. "We're doing what you asked, alright? You can call Liv right now to confirm if you want."

Montserrat awkwardly cleared her throat as she neared her desk, gaining both men's attention. "Are we finished…?"

"You're one to talk," Rafael scoffed, but Montserrat took that with a nod. She deserved it.

"C'mon councilor," Sonny gave a disapproving tilt of his head towards Rafael.

"No, it's totally fine, Sonny," Montserrat shrugged her shoulders, though her casualness seemed to end at her fingertips since she was once again gripping her coffee cup. "I was rude, so...you two get a free pass."

"It shouldn't be like that," Rafael was the one to say as he considered once more the circumstances of her outburst.

"I wasn't professional and I accept that," Montserrat nodded. "You were the one to tell me, after all. Leave my problems at home and any other thing related to my personal life. Work is a place for work only."

And as she said all that, Rafael felt that twinge of guilt knowing he was virtually doing the exact opposite of his words right now. Because of that, he felt obligated to let her episode go. More than that, it was the right thing to do.

"Montserrat it's fine." The usage of her first name made Montserrat smile - it was a sure sign he forgave her completely.

"Thanks," she whispered.

Rafael nodded at her in return. His eyes gazed at the pretty empty bullpen and figured no one would be returning anytime soon despite the cases going on. He watched as Montserrat pull her desk chair to sit back down. Even as she tried to get back to work, it was easy to tell the problems with her brother weren't letting her focus.

He honestly felt that.

And maybe it was because he felt they were in a similar place at the moment, or...maybe for another reason he didn't know of, but he spoke up with a request. "Montserrat do you want to get something to eat?"

Montserrat paused and looked up, momentarily surprised since they hadn't had a meal together in a while now. The fact Sonny's eyes were flickering from her to Rafael - not so discreetly - made it all a little more on the spot.

Was her face warm?

"I would…" Montserrat was in the middle of making her answer when she recalled Sonny's insistence to get lunch together already. She quickly looked at the lanky detective with wide eyes. "But I told you I'd get lunch with y-"

Sonny raised his hands to show it was fine. "No, no, I've still got work to do." A lie. He was starving. "You go ahead."

"O-okay," Montserrat reached for her bag tucked in one of her drawers then looked to Rafael with a growing smile. "My turn to pay?"

"No, it's on me," he smiled right back at her. He felt awkward with the staring eyes of Sonny so he hoped Montserrat would get a move on already.

"I'll see you later," Montserrat told Sonny as she got up to leave.

"Hey, when is Kara's lunch hour?" Sonny's question earned him a deadpanning look from the ginger woman. "Hey, if you get to go on a date, then I get to go on a date."

"It's not a date," went Montserrat and Rafael simultaneously, quickly exchanging glances with each other to make sure the other knew they didn't think it was a date.

"Fine," Sonny picked his battles carefully and decided Kara would probably have a much better idea on how to go about this. "But seriously, when is her lunch hour?"

"Carisi, leave her alone," Rafael motioned Montserrat to walk ahead, and the look he gave Sonny just made things even more suspicious for Sonny.

Oh, Kara was definitely going to have something to say about this.

~ 0 ~

Steak. Steak was unofficially declared as the favorite meal.

"How could you get barbecue on that?" Rafael crinkled his nose when Montserrat practically savored her barbecued drenched steak.

"The real question is how could you not put barbecue on it," Montserrat smiled widely after swallowing.

"Some of us have taste," Rafael's straight answer made her laugh.

"And some of us are just plain rude. Guess who's who?"

Rafael took that as a tie between them and took more of his plate. It was refreshing to have someone who could keep up with his 'sharp mouth' as Olivia often said he had. As he ate, he watched her cautiously like he was waiting for something. And it seemed like Montserrat knew just what he was waiting for.

"I'm not gonna shout at you again. Gael's not here," she reminded him and reached for her glass.

"But are you...are you doing better now?" he asked slowly, now fully taking Casey's warning to tread lightly on the subject.

Montserrat appreciated his concern. "I'm...better in that I don't feel like shouting at anyone. But Gael's still not speaking to me." And even as she tried to smile a little, it was easy to see how big of a struggle it was.

There were probably plenty ways to start, but for some reason Rafael couldn't think of the right way. "About...about your...your…"

"This is the first time I've seen you speechless, councilor," Montserrat's smile widened, becoming a genuine smile in the process. "Have to say, I like it. But don't do that in court."

Rafael rolled his eyes at her, though her small-time humor did make things easier sometimes for them. "I meant about...Regina?" he watched the sarcasm fade from her face all too fast.

"I have nothing to say about that woman," Montserrat grabbed her glass again, drinking as a form of retreat. It pretty much said the opposite of her words.

"Except it looks like you do." And that was the thing about Rafael, he was trained to be observant. "And the things Gael said…"

"Look," Montserrat tinkered with her glass on the table, "Gael hates our mother. He despises her because she walked out on us when we were kids. Now, h remembers more since he was older, so naturally he has more reason to hate her. He remembers the love and warmth Regina deprived him of...I don't." Her attempt at a careless shrug failed. "I was four. I can't remember her that well except she knitted me this little pink sweater that I used to wear everywhere. And I mean, mothers don't make things like that if they didn't love you, right?"

She knew it was an unfair question to make, putting Rafael on the spot like that (not that he wasn't used to it) but it was something that always nagged at her mind. If her mother went through the trouble of knitting that sweater then it had to mean she did it because she wanted to, because she loved her daughter. It was right... right?

"I shouldn't have asked that," she said once she'd gone through her thoughts twice and realized how out of line it was.

"Yeah, maybe you shouldn't have," Rafael's agreement elicited quite a look from Montserrat. "I mean, it's not like my answer is going to make a difference." He smirked when Montserrat understood his point. "Is it?"

"Sometimes I actually hate you," she muttered though he laughed it off.

"And yet you're still here. How's your lunch by the way?" His not-so-subtle reminder that he was paying for their lunch wasn't made for bad intentions but if not to remind her in general of their little agreements.

You didn't go out for meals with someone you actually hated.

"It's actually very good, thanks…" Montserrat debated whether or not to be very specific about what she was thanking him for since it borderlined a different line of their friendship. "Thank you," she ended up saying anyways, nervously fidgeting in her chair afterwards.

Rafael completely understood her and nodded. "Anytime."

Montserrat found herself smiling more than she should have and quickly looked to her half-eaten food on her plate. "Okay, we're done with the unprofessionalism for now I promise."

"Novak, you don't have to keep worrying about that. Trust me, I finally understand it's not that easy being so detached."

Now that pulled Montserrat's gaze off her food in a millisecond. "I'm sorry, are you saying you were wrong?"

Rafael deadpanned her but even that didn't stop her from looking so wide-eyed. "Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about," he warned.

"But I'm not acting…"

Rafael searched her face for any indication that she knew of their recent case's problem, but there was nothing. "H-how...you do know about our case at the moment, right?"

"With the shoe model? Yeah, I've been following it like everyone else. Why?"

"Novak you're not kidding me, are you?"

"No, I am not. What did I miss?"

Rafael wondered how out of it Montserrat had to have been for her not to know what their case was doing to him and the squad. So, he began to tell her just how close he was to the suspect in their custody at the moment.

"Wait a minute, so you're friends with our mayor-to-be Alex Muñoz?" Montserrat chuckled at the irony. "Kara loves him. She has me and Sonny already lining up to vote for him."

"Well, Alex is a pretty good candidate," Rafael said as impartially as possible.

"Yeah, and a flirt," Montserrat's statement did not pass well with him.

"Excuse me?"

"I met him outside the DAs building just before meeting with Gael. I only talked to him for like two minutes and it was enough to confirm he is a flirt." Montserrat reached for her glass on the table. "He gave me his number and everything."

"He's married," Rafael said with a deep frown on his face, though the fact Montserrat nearly choked on her drink made him believe she didn't know that detail.

"What?" the poor woman reached for a napkin to dry her mouth. Her big wide eyes looked at him for some explanation.

"He's married and has three daughters. How did you not know that?"

"Because I work a ten hour shift?" Montserrat snapped and cleared her throat. "Hey, I did not flirt with him. You can ask Sonny - he was there. I didn't do anything."

"Maybe you misunderstood Alex's intentions," Rafael said alternatively, though there was something in the pit of his stomach that told him something else that was wrong was already brewing.

Montserrat would have argued that she most certainly did not misread his intentions but he already looked so...conflicted about the case. She didn't want to make things worse. "So, you grew up with these guys?"

Rafael slowly nodded his head. "Yeah…" but even then he still wasn't shifting away from the other topic.

Montserrat tried again and hoped for some luck. "Were you really close? Or was it like a hello-bye basis thing?"

"N-no, um…" Rafael shook his head and got back into the topic at hand. "We grew up together. The three of us. Los tres mosqueteros de Jerome Avenue. The three musketeers of Jerome Avenue."

Montserrat laughed. "Like the three musketeers, that's adorable. And I will be sure to remind you of that whenever you need it. Or when I feel like it."

A smile came to Rafael's face whether he had wanted it or not. "The joy."

"So you guys were like a close a team, then?"

"Mhm. Alex had the heart. I had the mouth, of course-"

"Of course," Montserrat smiled so widely it might have cracked her face in two.

"Eddie had the muscle to protect us when we got into trouble."

"And what kind of trouble did our young ADA get into?"

"Stop it."

"Impossible." Montserrat leveled his look until her lips curled into a smile, which was done in a pretty impressive time. Anyone else would have looked away out of sheer uncomfortableness. Eventually, she gave in but only because she wanted to get to something really important. "I hate to bring it up but please tell me you're not actually wanting us to...look the other way in this case because you happen to know the perp?"

The sheer 'perp' mention made Rafael uncomfortable. He never wanted to believe any of his friends could be capable of some atrocity. "I would never do that. I am only asking that you all get the facts before taking any action."

"...fair enough," Montserrat conceded with a small nod of her head. "But can I ask you something now?"

"Of course."

"How did you know the perp was a friend of yours? My understanding is you don't get involved until we call you and...I distinctly remember you being there when we first brought Eddie in."

"Alex came to talk to me," Rafael said, shrugging his shoulders and missing Montserrat's moment of pause.

"So...our mayor-to-be had time to do all this when he's near the elections?"

Rafael was about to take a drink but paused midway to give Montserrat a look. "What do you mean by that?"

"I'm sorry to say but people in Alex's situation don't really have time to look for anyone's back but their own," Montserrat expected some type of reprimand for her words judging by the look on Rafael's face.

"Eddie's been volunteering for him. He's been driving him around during the campaign and since - like I said before - we are all childhood friends, it's natural we try to help each other out."

"Right," Montserrat was smart enough to know it was time to keep her mouth shut. She didn't know who these men were so she should probably leave that up to Rafael for when the case gets further made. Still, now that she knew more details about the case there were some conflicts she could see coming into play very soon.

Just as they were finishing up their lunch, Rafael heard his phone go off. Soon as he fished it out of his pocket, he saw Olivia's name on the screen. "It's Liv." His tone of voice radiated anxiety so Montserrat assured him she was all done with lunch.

The two returned to the precinct quickly and listened - just like the others - as Olivia and Nick relayed their latest visit to Lindsey. Apparently, she was taking everything back and even adding new details...ones that didn't fit really well.

"Lindsay told you Eddie came into the store with his wife?" Rafael raised an eyebrow at Nick. "No chance. He hasn't seen her in three years. She's partying in Miami…"

"Are you sure?" Nick had still decent suspicion towards their perp and wasn't going to be letting it go just because said perp happened to know their ADA. "Cause he still wears his ring."

"I'm sure. Eddie's... eh, he's just catolico, loyal."

"So Lindsay saw the ring, tried to make up a story," Olivia was on the boat of keeping peace amongst them. "Yeah, then she says that she'd be more comfortable just talking to Nick."

"Because she thinks she has a better chance of working the male partner," Amanda made a face of disapproval, shared by the rest.

"So she's lied to you, tried to manipulate you…" Rafael almost started listing off with his fingers when Nick cut in.

"So did Eddie."

"I know Eddie's story," Rafael said all too quick, warning a mini-glare from Nick. "What's hers? Find out. Now." He gave all of them a sharp look before heading out.

"Great going, I had him relaxed twenty minutes ago," Montserrat made it as a joke but some of them took it to heart.

"Yeah, we heard about your impromptu date from Sonny," Fin said with a tiny of a smirk on his lips.

"It was not a - wait, where's Sonny?" Montserrat looked around for the lanky detective.

"He's with that roommate of yours," Amanda answered her and almost laughed at the wide-eyed look Montserrat did.

"I'll kill him." She huffed and went for her desk to get started on their work.

"Not until after 10 you won't," Olivia said a she passed Montserrat. "I need everyone working on this right now."

Montserrat huffed but obeyed. Of course it didn't help one bit when Sonny returned fifteen minutes later wearing a big smile on his face. Clearly he had a good time. And when she got home that night, Kara would be up and ready to tell Montserrat how much of a good time she had too.

"He just, like... surprised me! He finally brought me to that place he goes to when he brings cannolis! Let me just tell you that they are better fresh at the store - Montse?" Kara paused when she saw the ginger rubbing her temples. Montserrat had a laptop set in front of her but it appeared whatever she'd been looking at was no longer her interest.

"Kara, this is not a good idea," Montserrat dropped her hands to the kitchen table.

"What isn't?"

"You, Sonny...whatever that even is - it's not a good idea."

Kara's eyebrows knitted together. "Why not?"

"Because of it doesn't work out, guess who's gonna be the one that'll be stuck in the middle?" Montserrat swirled her index finger before pointing at herself with it. "Me."

"That's kind of selfish, don't you think?" Kara plopped down at chair next to her.

"No, just being mindful of a potential future."

Kara playfully rolled her eyes. "Well, thank you for your concern but as far as I'm concerned, things are going just fine. It is, after all, my life." Montserrat sighed not so quietly but did concede with Kara on that point. "Besides, if anyone should be mindful of who they go out with, it should be you."

It was Montserrat's turn to be thoroughly confused. "Me? What for?"

A smirk tugged at Kara's lips as she answered the question. "Sonny mentioned that you basically dumped him at lunch today for the ADA."

"I'm seriously going to kill him," Montserrat shook her head. "We won't have to worry about things not working out because he'll be found dead tomorrow morning."

Kara laughed at her roommate's dramatics. "Oh c'mon, he did you a solid. Anyone else would've been on your ass for leaving them right before lunch."

Knowing exactly where Kara was headed at, Montserrat decided to beat her to it and explain the famous lunch she has today. "I still needed to apologize and Rafael suggested we go to lunch-"

"-suggested or asked because Sonny mentioned it was more of an ask-"

"-stop! I'll kill him!"

Kara laughed again. Montserrat slammed her laptop lid shut and moved to get up, prompting Kara to sober quickly. "Okay, okay, I'll stop!" she put one hand over Montserrat's arm. "I honestly thought it was kind of sweet he asked you, even when you've been avoiding him for days. Anyone else would've...well...avoided you too."

Montserrat sighed realizing Kara was right. She let herself fall back into her chair. "Yeah, it was. Rafael has his moments."

"A lot with you," Kara muttered not so quietly. Montserrat practically growled and got up from her chair. She made a beeline for her room. "I'm sorry!" Kara laughing didn't exactly help Montserrat believe her.

"You're a child!" Montserrat shouted before slamming her bedroom door shut.

#rafael barba #svu #rafael barba imagines #ocapp #ocappreciation #svu imagines #rafael barba x oc #svu fanfics #Law & Order SVU #law and order imagine #law & order svu fanfic #oc: Montserrat Novak #oc: Kara Mackie #fic: dare to forget me #Olivia Benson #Sonny Carisi #amanda rollins #fin tutuola

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fortheheavenssake · 5 years ago

Text

MM Anon 6

Jan 1, 2020

MM ANON ……… “ I don’t want to go back!!!”…… “ get him a title”………… “ a monthly periodical�� ……… “mental health and well-being” ……… A brief synopsis LG……… “ I’ve prepared a small dossier ma’am”…… “One has no choice”……… “I’ll contemplate it”………… “ Somewhere warm Catherine”……… keep a low profile ………… he’ll do what he’s told!!!! ………… perhaps a state visit??………… “springtime with Boris in harmony” ……… “Mmmmmm, god help us”

————-

Jan 2

MM ANON ……… Drip, drip drip……… Drop ,drop drop……… back to school soon 🏫 ……… a successful 🌍 ……… Sophie steps up…… a stable stable ………a tad overconfident ……… “ sooner she falls off the better!!” ……… “ Mmmmm, quite the young man!!”…… “resuming play” ……… it’s the open!! ……… “a bit of an obsession!!” …………”it’s another course Catherine” ……… “be careful!!”…… “ we’ll have to send an envoy ma’am”. ……… “yes, it’s a disaster “.

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Jan 3

MM ANON …… “They will return… eventually!!”…… “mummy, it’s school Monday!!”……… cry-sis, 😭😭what cry-sis…… “from our house to Bauhaus”……” there together sir”………… “ one needs the quiet time “……… take the pulse of the populace ……… “ overwhelming support ma’am” ……… “football George,football!!”…… “O god!! He’s on another planet”………… “ A quiet few weeks would be welcomed” ……… I received the memo. ………” poison chalice old boy, poison chalice”

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Jan 3

MM ANON, The Suck-sexses are said to be contemplating a return to the UK, I don’t think so, they have made it quite clear that they have nothing but contempt for the BRF and its citizens. They probably will visit LA and try to get some free PR via OW. Nutmeg will begin to blab more word salad about her “Snoozpaper” and how she’s living this perfect life with archificial and himself. WHO PAID FOR HER SIX WEEK VACATION???? THE BRITISH TAXPAYERS

————-

Jan 3

MM ANON , Mmmmm ,RA has a point, no recipes from Harry except (photoshopped images) ? My own gut instinct is that all the misinformation has muddied the waters of confusion. As you say this site is for “ entertainment purposes” and your unique in that respect. No body posts the amount of information that crosses your blog from anonymous sources to real time situations, even the national press visit “Skippy” to fuel its veracity for copy. As they say “A diabolo,qui semia dei”

A diabolo, qui est simia dei. Where god has a church the devil will have his chapel.

Thank you MM Anon😊❤️❤️❤️❤️

—————-

Jan 4

MM ANON ……… a list of all her discrepancies!! ……… sex, lies and video tapes, my god!!……… metoo Monday …… “actually darling it’s now the safest local”…… “I’d love to play in a tournament” …… “ great backhand!! “ ……… Duty calls…… first things first!! ……… “an environmental tour??” ……” eventually,with the children” ……… no chance to cry racism ……… no protocol left ……… maybe frog cott?? ……… we start building in the spring ………” it won’t last long”.

—————

Jan 5

MM ANON, ……… 🎼I’m ready, ready ready ready,I’m ready🎼…… “No your not”………… vinegar and brown paper ……… activate the broken record ……… same old, same old ………” from my window I can see Frogmore House” ……… A short reflection on residency ……… home delivery …… another Sunday service , beautiful!! ……… she’s got this one in the bag. ………”The children aren’t participating!!”……A REASON, A SEASON A LIFETIME. ………

——————-

Jan 6

MM ANON … RICKY , RICKY ,RICKY!! …… respect!! …… A HANK-kerchief full of platitudes …… 🎼a speech full of sugar helps the Meganson go down🎼……… 🎼Oh happy days 🎼………… “SHE CAME, SHE SAW, SHE CONNED-CURD…… …”………… “ this must end soon !! very soon”…… We have the technology ……… “Ahhh , The elusive tape”……… Timing is everything!! ……… DM loading it’s guns……… print and be dammed!!

—————-

Jan 6

MM ANON, Ok , a sycophantic visit to Canada 🇨🇦 House tomorrow in a packed London, they’ll be met by the Ambassador and no doubt Harry will be the customary three steps behind his 43 year old companion who will smile on queue and fake waves to nobody watching. After the same old same old they’ll disappear into the same car and return to the elusive residence somewhere in England. Don’t expect a rush towards the crowd.

—————

Jan 7

MM ANON, ……… she’s the (arm) pits……… go home Yank…… he’s a stone lighter ……… get off my f#@£%land ……… “ come to my birthday, never!!” ……… A state of emergency …… who dares bins ………… 🎼return to lender🎼……… “ it’s a struggle old thing”……… “ stop swearing at the tourists”…………… “ bloody tourists” …… Sydney!!……… “ I’m looking forward to next series” ……… “new stamps??”

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Jan 8

MM ANON ……… 🎼”And she must face the final curtain 🎼 The problem with NOT WEARING your wedding ring opens all conversation towards conjecture ………… 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 the firm always wins. Numerous whores and courtesans have tried to put a dent in the Monarchy over the past 2000 years most were decapitated. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

—————-

Jan 10

MM ANON. .…… GSTQAOBC …… don’t rock the bloat. …… pain-t stripper …… past, present and future ……… hide-a-Weymouth ……… W&K rule……… make a list ……… common- wealth……… nutmegs strange grandiosity ……… feed the handbitten …… king baby ………… love in a cold climate ……… NO MORE MONEY ……… a fall from race ……… Harry has left the building

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Jan 10

MM ANON, BP has just denied that M&H were frozen out. And where did she accumulate £500 million. Something really really stinks. All her life she’s grifted and whored. TPTB should take her down before the BRF are involved in her elaborate deception. DM poll on side of RF and PH, want MM to leave Britain and never return.

—————

Jan 11

MM ANON ……… blowing up a GAIL……… “ it’s like de-programming sir” ……” better have them inside the tent pissing out……… “it’s her pattern of behaviour” ………… back in the day ……… W&K step up……… William refuses to play ball……… that’s weak Charles …………” it’s all about money with her”……… “ all I’m saying is,you’re powerful family “ ………” another snifter LG”……… “ hold the calls Sydney”.

————-

Jan 12

MM ANON ……… 🎼I don’t like Mondays🎼………” turn her bloody ugly face orf”. …… “ your call William!!” ……… bad advice ……… A military absence ……… “ yes,Pontcius Pilate” ……… Charles, The weakest link ……… “ your over generous ma’am”. ……… “ let them go, f**** em” ……… The taxpayers won’t like it ……… Canada caves……… RCMP……… BO offers a net- flick……… 🎼money,money,money 🎼…………… royal dis-appointments. ………… a tabloid tornado looms.

—————

Jan 13

MM ANON …………… take it or , take it!!……… no negotiation ………… Harry walks out ……… threats and lies ……… no comment…… tabloid carnage ……… more talk,talk. ……… commonwealth ambassador??? ……… no loss of financial support ……… MM gives up title ……… Harry keeps HRH. ……… archificial tells all……… W&K hold a huge party 🥳 🧣🤣🥳🥳🥳👀……… PP gives Sydney a knighthood ……… PP& Sydney get drunk. …………George bakes a cake. ……… Lottie has another sleepover. ……… Nanny gets a surprise

—————

jan 14

MM ANON ……… para-sight……… “ O ma’am, cunning very cunning”………… “ William is made of sterner metal”……… ( behind every great man) ……… spring offensive, the children!! …………” Lotties the key”……… the holy trinity ……… “freeze them out”………… “it’s all a smokescreen sir”…… “ yes, full steam ahead, ask Camilla “ ………… “ circle the wagons LG” …………” Burn that f**** olive branch, once bitten”………” a Canadian tour , with the children, OMG! Touché!!……… inde redire eruditionis Habes

--------------

Jan 14

MM ANON … She new well in advance of Markle V Markle, that’s why she ran , doesn’t want the dirty laundry washed in view of a few hundred yards of BP. HARRY, You married trash. Trash whose father is going to testify against her. Goodness sake Harry, didn’t you see this , or weren’t You briefed by the intelligence service about her family and sordid history.

————-

Jan 15

MM ANON …………… OUR BEAUTIFUL DUCHESS OF CAMBRIDGE …………… ONE DAY OUR GLORIOUS QUEEN ……………WELL DONE KATE , YOU ASTOUNDED THE CRITICS ……… ONLY ONE CLASSY DUCHESS. 👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑

—————

Jan 15

MM ANON, MARKLE V MARKLE, won’t get to court, she will not Dare. She won’t bring the firm into disrepute. Unless she really wishes to harm the royal family and that’s a possibility. Will she permit her resentment for her father to drag her dirty washing through the royal courts of justice in the Stand. Is she that psychotic. Yes , I think she is, will Harry approve, I don’t think so.

—————-

Jan 16

MM ANON,……… sea-plane PR. ……… where’s Harry?………… “ leaves 15million mansion visits poor shelter 🤣🤣🤣………… so broke,(woke)……… Paternal hurricane ……… Royal courts of Justice ……… “ write me a roll”………… “what Megan wants, Megan forgets”:……… Calipornia politics? ………… “she can be the new AOC” ……… she’ll campaign for Dems……… “OW ,tell all coming”. ……… negotiations,negotiations!!! …… W&K kill it !!!

——————

Jan 16

MM ANON,……… laugh and carry on……… isolation desperation ……… W&K leapfrog ……… not jaw jaw …… pseudo Trudeau ……… re-distribution …………” just scrapping by ,sausage” ……… LA NA. ……… gizza job……… ahhhhh’ the ubiquitous tape……… brotherly shove ………… “ the tour will proceed” ………… Diamond Dogs……… 🦂🦂🦂………… twice shy

————-

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didanawisgi · 5 years ago

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Today, we begin with a new Full Measure poll on the national news media. As you might expect: the results aren’t very good. For the media. Whether it’s coverage of the Russia investigation or the Covington High School kids, news consumers on all sides of the political spectrum report declining trust — in us. We turn to two experts to analyze the current Media Madness.

Sharyl: One need only sample lowlights from a single month to get a sense of the problem.

In January, a Seattle Fox affiliate aired a doctored video of President Trump.

President Trump: Some have suggested a barrier is immoral.

Buzzfeed: The comparison which shows Trump with an altered face and a looped licking of his lips

The same month, Special Counsel Robert Mueller refuted a BuzzFeed bombshell that falsely claimed Trump directed his ex-lawyer to lie to Congress.

And a January article about Melania Trump in the Telegraph was followed by seven corrections an apologyand an undisclosed payment to Mrs. Trump. One-sided narratives presented virtually unchallenged. National news quoting anonymous sources that turn out to be wrong.

The headline contains the most devastating part: President Trump directed his attorney to lie to congress.

The same month, Special Counsel Robert Mueller refuted a Buzzfeed bombshell that falsely claimed Trump directed his ex-lawyer to lie to Congress.

The Washington Post took us “Inside theBattle Over Trump’s Immigration Order”— only to later admit the article misreported Trump’s actions, a reported meeting had not actually occurred, and a conference call hadn’t happened as described.

FBI Director James Comey debunked a New York Times article about supposed contacts between Trump campaign staff “senior Russian intelligence officials.”

And NBC News reported that Russian President Putin said he had compromising information about Trump. Actually, Putin said the opposite. It’s been a bad few years for media credibility.

A new Full Measure poll conducted for Full Measure by Scott Rasmussen finds: 42% of Americans believe national political news coverage is inaccurate and unreliable. Fewer— 38%—believe it’s accurate and reliable. And 52% say it’s worse compared to five years ago.

National political reporters also get poor scores. Only 26% of those polled say reporters carefully report the facts. 57% say reporters use news stories to promote their own ideological agenda.

Pollster Scott Rasmussen:

Rasmussen: We asked about national political reporters are, are they credible, are they reliable? And you know, a little more than one out of three people say yes. When we ask about Wikipedia, we get the exact same answer. So what's happening is we have a world where people look at journalists like they look at Wikipedia. “Gee, that's an interesting fact. I better check it myself.”

Sharyl: And what does that tell you?

Rasmussen: The media has a huge credibility problem and it's always had the problem. Oh, we talk about it differently today. Now we talk about it as a political bias. I think the issues have always been there. I mean, people were complaining about the bias of Walter Cronkite back in the 1960s.

Sharyl: People forget about that.

Walter Cronkite: For it seems now more certain then ever that the bloody experience in Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.

Sharyl: It is often argued that Donald Trump created this media environment where everybody hates the media. And then others say he simply understood that environment, and capitalized on it. Which is it you see?

Rasmussen: Oh, people have hated the media for a very long time

Trump: Fake news folks, fake news. Typical New York Times fake stories.

Rasmussen: Donald Trump capitalized on it. He understood it, but he's not the first to do so. The first President Bush when he was campaigning, he actually got kind of aggressive with, I think it was Dan Rather, during an interview because a lot of Republicans weren't sure he had the fire to, to be president.

President Bush 1: It's not fair to judge my whole career by a re-hash on Iran. How would you like it if I judge your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York? Would you like that?

Rasmussen: So he capitalized on that. But all you're doing is tapping into a sentiment that's already there and Donald Trump is playing them but beautifully

Rasmussen says his polling found a good recent example of how many today have come to regard— or disregard— the national media. The Covington High School pro-life students’ confrontation with a Native American activist at a Washington DC protest.

Rasmussen: When the story broke, of the students from Covington high school, we went out and polled right away when the story first broke and ask people what they thought. And as you would expect, liberals and conservatives had different views of whether the high school students acted inappropriately or somebody else did.

Sharyl: So to summarize, liberals probably thought the high school students who were pro-life behaved inappropriately and aggressively.

Rasmussen: Yes.

Sharyl: And Conservatives thought the Native American was the one who is inappropriate.

Rasmussen: Yes. And by the way, conservatives also thought the media was inappropriate.

ABC news: A group of teenagers, some Catholic high school students, seen wearing Make America Great Again hats, appearing to face off with Nathan Phillips – a 65 year old Native American.

Rasmussen: And then we had a week's full of coverage. And as you recall, there was a lot more coverage that came out, uh, about the incident. A lot more videos and a lot more information. And a week later, nobody's opinion changed.

Sharyl: I’m surprised by that because some reporters and in media even apologized that they had been too hard on the children at first or the high school students without knowing the full story.

Whoopi Goldberg: So many people admitted they made snap judgements before all these other facts came in.

Sharyl: But you're saying the public at large, didn't change their mind?

Rasmussen: That's correct. The public at large made up their mind. They knew their sources

Sharyl: But the most overwhelming results came when we asked about the motivation of political reporters.

Rasmussen: 78% of voters say that what reporters do with political news is promote their agenda. They think they use incidents as props for their agenda rather than seeking accurately record what happened. Only 14% think that a journalist is actually reporting what happened.

Sharyl: Most people also seem to think reporters cannot be fair when it comes to their chosen political candidate.

Rasmussen: if a reporter found out something that would hurt their favorite candidate, only 36% of voters think that they would report that.

Sharyl: So most people think the reporter would cover it up because they like the person?

Rasmussen: Right, exactly. So voters are looking at them as a political activist, not as a source of information.

Sesno: An actual report or professional reporter would yeah never do that.

Frank Sesno is a former CNN correspondent and bureau chief. As head of the School of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University, he routinely confronts declining public trust in the media.

Sesno: The public understands fundamentally what journalism should be. They don't understand how it's actually practiced. And that falls to news organizations in my view, to be more creative, more imaginative about how they're engaging with their publics, to both explain what they do to defend what they do when it's controversial and to be accountable for what they do if it's wrong.

Sharyl: After 2016 when so many of us got the election so wrong, we promised a period of self-reflection and correction, have we done it?

Sesno: No, not enough. If we had done the self-reflection and correction better and more deeply, there would be more reporters reporting from more places across the country talking to more diverse audiences. We would not be so in tiredly focused at least in certain media channels and places on the Trump administration and the outrage of the moment. That being said, there is so much news from this administration. It's kind of hard not to do that.

Trump: If we don’t get what we want, I will shut down the government.

Sharyl: In the era of the Trump presidency, can you point to a couple of things you think the media has done right

Sesno: I would start, actually, in the Trump era by calling out NPR. I think NPR has done an exceptional about getting outside of Washington and engaging other voices and people from different sides of the ideological divide to get their sense of what's happening. would call out the New York Times and the Washington Post for making remarkable use of multimedia. So there's a lot of good journalism and good media that's taking place also that, that extends beyond the Trump administration. There is such a thing as beyond the Trump administration.

It may not seem like it as we move quickly into campaign 2020.

Sharyl: I guess we should warn people, hang on to their seat belt with 2020 campaign coming. What do you foresee in terms of media?

Sesno: Yeah, so here's the next danger. The next is everybody for walks right off the cliff of coverage like they did last time. Obsessing over, you know, the, the candidate du jour, the moment, du jour. How will the media be able to arbitrate this mass of people who all want to be president so that the audience can follow it with some degree of clarity, and so that you neither fall into an oversimplified narrative, or a narrative that just revolves around the melodrama of who's up, who's down, and who's making the most noise or tweeting the most.

You can find my list of Media Mistakes in the era of Trump at SharylAttkisson.com

#Sharyl Attkisson #journalism #investigative journalism #investigative reporting

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bountyofbeads · 5 years ago

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https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1047551?__twitter_impression=true

Donald Trump holds the most powerful office in the world and he's used its authorities in ways never contemplated by his predecessors. So why does he portray himself as a victim?

Trump's 2020 pitch: A powerless presidency

Analysis: The most powerful man in the world would like voters to know he is beset on all sides by sinister forces that deprive him of the authority he needs to deliver on his vision for America.

By Jonathan Allen | Published Sept. 3, 2019, 7:15 AM ET | NBC News | Posted September 3, 2019 5:41 PM ET |

WASHINGTON — The most powerful man in the world prefers to portray himself as a martyr.

President Donald Trump says he's been beset on all sides by sinister forces that are oppressing him and depriving him of the authority he needs to deliver on his vision for America.

Often, the villains in his narratives work for him.

First, it was the CIA and the FBI, then Democrats, members of his Cabinet and Robert Mueller. Lately, his enemies list includes his hand-picked Federal Reserve chairman, Jay Powell, and Fox News. The cable network "isn't working for us anymore," Trump declared in a tweet last week, a few days after calling Powell an "enemy" of the United States.

Trump's persecution complex is an essential part of his brand — one that resonates deeply with a political base that believes anti-Trump liberals run the federal government and the news media. But as he seeks re-election in 2020, Trump is banking heavily on his ability to blend it into a coherent narrative with a version of his presidency in which he's been a commanding force, steamrolling adversaries to get things done.

"This election is not merely a verdict on the amazing progress we've made," Trump said when he kicked off his re-election campaign in Orlando, Florida, in June. "It's a verdict on the un-American conduct of those who tried to undermine our great democracy, and undermine you."

When he's less scripted, Trump sometimes speaks or tweets in terms that are more personal, such as when he describes himself as the target of "presidential harassment."

These two halves of Trump — victim and conqueror — fit together snugly for his campaign.

"It definitely is something that he and the campaign talk about," said Tim Murtaugh, communications director for Trump's re-election campaign. "There is no question he can still run against Washington based on the outspoken and unprecedented obstruction he has faced. And despite all of this, he has still accomplished everything that he has on behalf of the country."

Trump's supporters have mirrored the messaging.

Conservative commentator Bill Mitchell, for example, has cast Silicon Valley and the Drudge Report as anti-Trump forces tilting the world unfairly against him in recent days while also praising those — implicitly Trump — who overcome such challenges.

"Big Tech doesn't even care any more. They are all in to steal this election from President Trump. The days of appearing fair are over. They are just daring Trump to stop them at this point," he wrote in a tweet just hours after posting, "Let's start here: Life ain't fair. Proceed as if you know it. Be a champion, not a victim. Victims see roadblocks, champions see opportunities. #Trump2020."

Democrats say Trump's case requires a cognitive dissonance that is too much to bear.

"Playing the victim card in politics is pretty tough when you're president of the United States," said Chris Kofinis, a Democratic strategist and message-testing expert who has worked on presidential campaigns. "You can’t have it both ways. You either have control over the destiny of the country or you don’t. I think it’s that simple."

The Washington Trump is running against, critics note, is filled with people he appointed to run agencies that are under his control. The Senate has been in Republican hands throughout his presidency. And the Supreme Court has a conservative majority featuring two justices he appointed.

To the extent he's been frustrated by what he calls "the swamp," it has arguably been as much a result of his inability to get people in his own administration and in his own party to go along with policies that sometimes cross the border of seriousness — like nuking hurricanes — as it has been from an opposition Democratic Party that has held very little formal power since he swept into office in January 2017.

While Trump surely has racked up significant policy and political victories — a major tax cut, two Supreme Court appointments and deregulation of an array of industries — his trade war with China has caused economic pain for producers and consumers in the U.S., he's demonstrated no progress in dealing with the regimes in North Korea and Iran despite his focus on those countries, and the massive influx of immigrants from Latin America on his watch has resulted in a humanitarian crisis.

Democrats say swing voters will see these outcomes as proof that he delivers more calamity than calm when he resorts to his own devices to make policy.

Both Trump's allies and Democrats agree that the sentiments of the relative handful of persuadable voters will be critical to determining his fate.

"They look at him as the architect of destruction and dysfunction, and they are going to be negative toward any leader, whether it's Trump or anyone else who makes excuses about their actions," Kofinis said.

But Michael Caputo, a Republican strategist and Trump ally who worked on the president's 2016 campaign, said that there is a clear "connective tissue" between the two elements of Trump's argument and that he needs those swing voters not only to regard him as effective but as embattled.

"You'd have to be dead or near dead not to understand that Donald Trump has been attacked at every turn of his presidency like no president in modern times," Caputo said. "Part of victory for Donald Trump will be convincing the middle that he hasn’t gotten fairly treated by Washington."

Democrats say that the premise of Trump being uniquely under siege — despite long investigations into his campaign's ties to Russia and possible obstruction of justice — is faulty.

"It’s an absurd argument," Joe Lockhart, who served as press secretary for President Bill Clinton, said in a direct message exchange. "Trump has had no congressional oversight for the majority of his term. His administration has repeatedly violated the law and had courts stop him. And let’s not forget Clinton had dozens of investigations and was impeached."

For now, Trump appears to be set on proving how much he can do with executive power, particularly on the immigration issue that was central to his first campaign.

In just the past week, he's vowed to finish building a border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border before next November's election — a project that required him to execute an end-run around Congress by diverting funds appropriated for military construction — shifted money from disaster aid to immigration control and rewritten the citizenship rules for the foreign-born children of American soldiers and diplomats serving abroad.

While Trump continues to target his own appointees and allies at times, his campaign tends to keep a sharper focus on Democrats — a more traditional path to keeping Republicans united.

Murtaugh, who declined to discuss any polling the campaign might have done on its messaging, said the opposition is casting about for a strategy to counter the president.

"First they had the Russia hoax, which fell apart. Then they moved on white supremacy, and now they have moved on to rooting on recession," he said. "Never before has the opposition party taken on rooting against American success because it would be good for them if America faltered."

None of the Democratic candidates for president have cheered on a recession. But, like Trump did in the past, some have warned that one may be on the way because of the policies of the incumbent president.

Karen Finney, a Democratic strategist who worked on Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, said Trump isn't likely to change the way he approaches describing his own shortcomings.

"For anything he hasn’t done, he always has a scapegoat," she said. "It’s someone else’s fault."

In implementing his agenda, Trump backers counter, that's because he has been fought, undermined and investigated at every turn.

"He’s not going to have a problem delivering the message of him being beset by the resistance to his base," Caputo said. "The question is going to be whether he can make the case to the middle."

#trumpism #president donald trump #donald trump jr #trump administration #against trump #ivanka trump #donald trump #trump crime family #trump crime syndicate #u.s. news #us politics #politics #republican politics #politics and government #political science

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welcometothepenumbra · 6 years ago

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JUNO STEEL AND THE DRAGON’S DEN (PART ONE)

SOUND: RAIN. TRAIN ARRIVES, CREAKS TO A STOP. DOOR CLANKS OPEN.

CONDUCTOR: Ah, good evening, Traveler. And welcome… to The Penumbra. Take your seat, please, take your seat.

MUSIC: STARTS.

SOUND: DOOR CLANKS SHUT.

The junction lies just ahead, Traveler. If you'll allow me just a moment.

SOUND: TRAIN WHISTLE.

(CHUCKLES) Well, next stop? Hyperion City.

SOUND: TRAIN MOVING.

The Proctor’s final words have haunted Detective Steel ever since she died on her devious riddle. “A place of heroes, as far as the stars but as close as the heart of every child.” And apparently, the home of Ramses O’Flaherty, in some way. But where is that home, you ask? Well, Detective Steel is just about to find out. It’s unfortunate that he didn’t do earlier – if he had, perhaps nobody would have had to die.

SOUND: TRAIN BRAKES. DOOR CLANKS OPEN, RAIN.

Our next stop: Juno Steel and the Dragon’s Den.

ALL SOUNDS: FADE OUT.

***

MUSIC: STARTS.

JUNO (NARRATOR): An election makes a lot of noise – and, after months of the rallies and speeches and the fights in the street, it’s nice to escape to the quiet of the Martian desert for a while. Because the history of politics in Hyperion City is loud: a bunch of corporations in a bidding war over the Mayor’s office, with enough money changing hands that it’s not a question of whether your candidate’s in some big corporation’s pocket, just – whether this pocket is cozier than the last one.

My name’s Juno Steel. I’m a private eye, and I never thought I’d be helping one of those corporations’ candidates win, but… Ramses O’Flaherty seems like the first politician in a century who might care about people more than profit margins.

And even if he is funded by Northstar Entertainment, a company that mostly sells kids’ movies and cheap T-shirts? Compared to his competition, Ramses sounds like a saint.

VOICE (FROM RADIO): In a move that analysts have been calling “inevitable,” Nadia Bellevue announced this morning that she will be dropping out of the Hyperion City mayoral race, citing poor polls and a drop in Armada Firearms and Fine Liquors’ stock price over the last fiscal quarter. That leaves only Ramses O’Flaherty and current mayor Pilot Pereyra on the ballot when the citizens of Hyperion vote just five weeks from today. Mayor Pereyra had this to say about their opponent:

PILOT PEREYRA (FROM RADIO): Ramses who? (LAUGHS) Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard of Ramses. And I mean, he seems like a good guy. You don’t get as far as he has, doing all that philanthropy, and kids’ movies, and whatever without having some good rub off on you. And I respect that, to a point.

RITA: Ooooooh, Mista Steel, are we there yet? I can’t wait another second!

JUNO: Shh! I’m tryin’ to listen!

MUSIC: ENDS.

PEREYRA: But the fact is that Hyperion’s a tough town, and it needs a firm hand. And all this junk I keep hearing about police reform, criminal rehabilitation? We don’t have time for that. In a city this covered in crime, we need the HCPD more than ever, and we need someone who knows what they’re doing more than ever. So, leave it to the Pilot, eh? I’ve gotten us this far, haven’t I?

RITA: Mista Steeeeel? Are we there yet? Are we there yet, are we there yet, are we there yet, are we there yet, are we there yet, are we there yet—

PEREYRA (IN BACKGROUND): And let me tell you, guys like Ramses… they think they know everything.

JUNO: How the hell am I supposed to answer that? I don’t even know where we’re going!

PEREYRA (IN BACKGROUND): But as soon as it gets time to actually do something?

RITA: Oh come on, that riddle was so easy, boss! You gotta know!

PEREYRA (IN BACKGROUND): All that talk shows exactly what it was: just talk.

JUNO: Hey, driver? Just turn the damn radio off. My secretary’s decided she’s all the audio entertainment I need.

SOUND: RADIO CLICKS OFF.

Why did you come along, again? You have the day off, Rita.

RITA: And that’s why I came! You’d understand if you’d solved the riddle, boss. It’s so easy: “A place in the heart of every child”? You don’t have to be a detective to solve that.

JUNO: Brain’s full of about six hundred other mysteries, Rita. Who’s tryin’ to kill off Ramses O’Flaherty, for example. So just knock it off, and tell me where—

RITA: Nuh-uh-uh, no way, boss. I ain’t tellin’ you until you figure it out yourself– WHOAMYGOD WE’RE ALMOST THERE!

JUNO: Just tell me where we’re going!

RITA: I can’t take another second boss I feel like I’m gonna burst! Just figure it out already!

JUNO: Is that a gate?

RITA: C’mon, I’m gonna EXPLODE! Pleaeaeaeaease?

JUNO: “Northstar presents”– what the hell?

RITA: It’s Polaris Park boss! Oh gosh oh gosh I can’t wait! I’m so excited!!!

JUNO: Polaris… that Northstar amusement park?

RITA: Mista Steel, you gotta be kiddin’ me! Did someone kill all’a the magic inside’a you or somethin’?

JUNO: Yes.

RITA: Polaris Park! The Place That Fun Calls Home, TM! You gotta know about Polaris Park!

JUNO: I try not to pay too much attention to Northstar movies, Rita.

RITA: Act tough all you want, boss; they might be kids’ stories, but they got all kinds’a things for adults, like jokes, and deep themes, and sometimes advice, like how to kill an evil goat-wizard if you meet one and—

JUNO: Not kids’ stories. Just Northstar. (SIGHS) Let’s get this over with.

RITA: Boss? Is everything—

SOUND: CAR DOOR OPENS. CARNIVAL NOISES IN BACKGROUND.

(GASPS) We’re here we’re here we’re here we’re here!!

JUNO (NARRATOR): Polaris Park was, I’ll admit, a masterpiece. The greatest minds in the solar system had come together to build ‘The Place That Fun Calls Home, TM,’ and the faces of the people we passed said they’d succeeded. They were smiling, every one of them, kids clambering all over their parents with sticky fingers and… stickier voices.

It made my stomach turn. Places like this have always given me the creeps. What people forget is that manipulation is always manipulation, whether you’re being duped into a big debt or a big smile.

RITA: Oh, oh! There’s Orion’s Tower, they sell all kinds’a belts, Mista Steel – also insurance for some reason – and that ride is the Frozen Spinner, they make you put on real mittens before you get on and everything, and that’s—

JUNO (NARRATOR): We walked down the park’s main drag, surrounded on all sides by bright buildings and cartoon robots and foot-long ice cream bars. I was ready to go home by the fourth step in.

That wasn’t on the menu, though. Before we left the parking lot, our driver gave me an entry pass and a letter which said, in Ramses’ rushed handwriting: “Keep an eye out for Lorenzo Vega.”

Whoever the hell that was. Thanks a lot, O’Flaherty. Just tryin’ to save your life over here, no big deal, really.

RITA: I wanna go on a ride! No! I wanna have a hot dog! No! I wanna go on two rides, and have two hot dogs, just for me!

JUNO: Rita, we’re here to work.

RITA: Come ooooooooon, boss! What job could you possibly have to do here?

JUNO: That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Ramses gets a lot of his campaign funds from Northstar. If someone wanted to really hit him where it hurts, they could try to strike here… or dig up some dirt here, at least. Security Office might not be a bad place to start.

RITA: Well… if Ramses sent you here, that must mean security ain’t caught ‘em yet, whoever they are. We probably won’t find anything there.

JUNO: Not a bad point. Might be worth snooping around a little on our own first.

RITA: And while we’re at it, I was just thinkin’… a good place to snoop… might be… on… a ride?

JUNO: You’re really not gonna drop this, are you?

RITA: Never.

JUNO: Alright, alright. One ride. Then we get to work—

RITA: Got it Mista Steel okay thanks byeeeeeee!

SOUND: RUNNING FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING.

JUNO: Rita! …Lousy theme park. Lousy rides…

JUNO (NARRATOR): At the end of the street stood a mountain. A big, red, craggy thing with molten lava holograms flowing down its sides. It was the centerpiece of Polaris Park, and everyone on Mars knew what it was called.

RITA: Andromeda and the Dragon’s Peak.

Mista Steel, I’m gonna ride that ride six hundred times today.

JUNO: Good luck with that. Sign over here says it’s closed for repairs.

RITA: What over what says it’s WHAT?!

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

Oh, you gotta be kiddin’ me, it can’t be closed! Andromeda and the Dragon’s Peak is the whole reason to go to Polaris Park! It’s got everything, Mista Steel, music and big drops and real fast and everyone’s favorite chainmail warrior Andromeda and—

SOUND: CROWD SCREAMS.

JUNO: That’s coming from the Dragon’s Peak, isn’t it?

RITA: Y– yeah. But maybe, it– maybe it’s just some people havin’ fun, y’know? Screamin’ on the rollercoaster and—

SOUND: SEVERAL SETS OF RUNNING FOOTSTEPS.

VOICE 1: Oh God, it’s horrible, it’s horrible! They’re all dead!

JUNO: Sounds real fun. Rita?

RITA: I’m comin’, boss!

JUNO (NARRATOR): I shoved us through the crowd, up the long line to the Dragon’s Peak, until it all stopped at a wall of security two guards thick. The park cops had big grins across their faces, but the smiles were all a little too uniform and a little too green to be real. Whatever they were keeping us from wasn’t gonna be pretty.

VOICE 2: I’m so sorry, sir, but you can’t come through here.

JUNO: Pretty sure I could if you’d get that club out of my gut.

RITA: Mista Steel…

VOICE 2: No, I mean, um… visitors do not have access—

JUNO: I work for your boss. Let me through.

VOICE 2: I’m… fairly certain that I work for my boss?

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

VOICE 3: Is there a problem over here?

VOICE 2: Uhhh… I… uhhhhh…

JUNO: No problem, I was just giving Officer Dental-Plan over here some orders from the top. Who are you?

VOICE 3: The top.

JUNO (NARRATOR): The woman in front of me was equal parts strong jaw, sharp eyes, and grit. Her badge said ‘Chief of Security,’ her eyes said that she didn’t have time for this, and her smile said that Northstar customer service training really was the best on Mars. The only times people smile that genuinely at me are right before they hit me.

But she didn’t. Instead she turned to her toadie and asked:

VOICE 3: Who is this guy and why isn’t he out of my park yet?

JUNO: Ramses O’Flaherty sent me. I have a hall pass, I promise.

SOUND: PAPER RUSTLING.

VOICE 3: Ramses?

(SIGHS) Of course he did. Let him through, Rick.

VOICE 2 (RICK): But—

VOICE 3: Did I ask?

RICK: Of… course not.

Have a fun-filled day.

JUNO: You don’t sound so happy to see us, Chief.

VOICE 3: Simple reason for that. I’m not.

My name’s Yasmin Swift. I’m chief of security here at Polaris Park.

JUNO: Juno Steel. And this is my secretary, Rita—

RITA: (HIGH-PITCHED GASPING)

JUNO: Who’s… maybe… deflating?

RITA: Why, hello there, Ms. Swift. I like coffee, and squid cream.

JUNO: Rita, what the hell—?

VOICE 3 (YASMIN SWIFT): Breakfast, huh? I’m more of a dinner gal myself.

RITA: (GIGGLING) Oh, Yasmin!

SWIFT: I’m sorry to rain on your day at the park, but, Ramses had pretty bad timing, sending you here this morning. We’ve had a little bit of an… accident. Come on, I’ll show you.

SOUND: DOOR OPENS.

RITA: (GIGGLING)

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

JUNO: …Rita? …What was that?

RITA: She’s preeeeeetty.

JUNO: (SIGHS) I don’t have time for this. I do not have time for this. Come on.

RITA: (GIGGLING)

SOUND: DOOR CLOSES. CARNIVAL NOISES FADE.

JUNO: (SNIFFS) The hell is that smell? I thought all the food carts were back on the main path, but… it smells like jerky or something in here.

SWIFT: Yeah, about that. If you’re at all squeamish, I’m gonna recommend you close your eyes now.

JUNO: Oh, no.

SOUND: DOOR OPENS.

RITA: OH MY GOSH, THOSE POOR PEOPLE GOT COOKED!

JUNO (NARRATOR): We found them in the loading area for the ride, sitting in a cart on a track facing a dark tunnel. The cart was looking nice and toasted around the edges, and inside it sat three charbroiled shapes that probably used to be people.

SWIFT: I’m guessing this isn’t how you expected to spend your day.

JUNO: I generally try to assume the worst, but somehow the galaxy keeps finding ways to surprise me.

RITA: Who are those people? We gotta help ‘em, don’t we?

SWIFT: That’s sweet, doll, but I think they’re a little past help. This was bound to happen one day. I’ve been saying that to Vega for years.

RITA: Oh, it’s just too horrible! Somebody hold me!

JUNO: Oof!

RITA: (MUTTERING) Not you, boss!

JUNO: Bound to happen, you said?

SWIFT: You know anything about this ride, Juno?

RITA: No, he doesn’t. Mista Steel said all the magic’s dead inside of him.

JUNO: Andromeda and the Dragon’s Peak is a roller coaster that tells a story about Chainmail Warrior Andromeda trying to find her way home through Lion Village, has to go through Draco’s mountain for some reason, almost gets roasted, doesn’t end up going home. Just like all her other stories.

RITA: Wha—? But you said– you didn’t know anything about it—

JUNO: I said I didn’t want to know anything about Northstar’s junk. But sometimes not wanting to listen to stuff just makes you listen harder. No offense, Swift.

SWIFT: Hey, to each their own. We don’t all have to enjoy the story, even if it is a modern classic and you’re a moron for not liking it. Want to take a guess where the barbecue went down? Because I have a theory or two.

JUNO: I’m guessing the part where Andromeda gets almost-roasted dropped a word.

SWIFT: The ride’s needed repairs for years, if you ask me. The carts on this thing barely outpace the fire by half a second. All it’d take is for one of the brakes to flip early and, boom. Instant fricassee.

JUNO: Why was anyone on it if the ride was closed, though?

SWIFT: One of the carts started acting up yesterday, so I shut the whole thing down this morning, sent the engineers in, and then… this happened. On their test ride, I’d guess. With a bunch of guests watching from the line, too.

RITA: There are people who get to test roller coasters for their jobs?! Lucky!

JUNO: Rita, are we even looking at the same crime scene right now?

SWIFT: Crime scene? Honestly, Juno, negligence is the only crime I’m seeing here. (SIGHS) Why don’t you take in the park for a little while and I’ll find you later? HQ’s gonna have me behind red tape for a long time. They didn’t like me shutting down the ride for a few hours this morning, and I doubt they’ll like closing it for good.

RITA: You’re closing the Dragon’s Peak?! You can’t do that! That’s the reason everyone comes to Polaris Park! And also I never got to ride it!

SWIFT: Security’s got to be my number one concern, doll. Should’ve shut this ride down years ago.

SOUND: MECHANICAL, RHYTHMIC NOISES.

VOICE 4: Over my soggy corpse, Yasmin.

JUNO (NARRATOR): There was a man walking toward us on two metal legs ending in rusty boots, and his nametag said “Doctor Lorenzo Vega, Head of Resmirks and Developgrins.” Despite the title, he looked like he hadn’t smiled in about a century: age and anger had carved deep enough wrinkles into his face that I could barely make out his eyes, but from what I could see they looked about as greasy and mean as the rest of him.

VOICE 4 (LORENZO VEGA): Yasmin. I see your attempted murder continues apace.

RITA: Murder?! Not my Yasmin!

SWIFT: He doesn’t mean the engineers, doll.

VEGA: I don’t. If anyone mourns my staff it will be their own fault for leaving someone behind to mourn them. Marriage, children, friends… the Northstar work ethic has rotted off the bone. No, it’s not my staff I’m concerned about. Sir, I’d like you to arrest this woman, for the attempted murder of Andromeda and the Dragon’s Peak.

JUNO: That’s, uh… He knows you can’t murder something that’s not alive, right?

VEGA: For all of Polaris Park, then.

JUNO: Yeah, also, not alive. You… a little confused, doctor?

VEGA: Perhaps not murder, in that case. But much is on the line here, detective. My life’s work, and probably someone else’s, somewhere, if you care about that kind of thing. This park won’t last a month without that ride.

SWIFT: Maybe so, doctor, but the park doesn’t stand much of a chance if its star attraction’s deep-frying guests, either.

VEGA: You’d best zip up your ego, Yasmin. Your ignorance is showing.

JUNO & RITA: (IN UNISON) Eww.

VEGA: The Dragon’s Peak could not have burned my engineers for one very simple reason: there is no fire on this ride.

SWIFT: I hope you’ll give Dr. Vega the benefit of the doubt here, Juno. This might not be very Northstar behavior he’s demonstrating, but he’s a good guy at heart. Probably. If you’re willing to dig down a few hundred meters.

VEGA: Attempting to turn them against me. It won’t work for two reasons, Yasmin. First: I am naturally charismatic, and second: Ramses sent these two for me.

JUNO: Ramse– what?

VEGA: I received the message earlier – direct orders that I’d receive a private investigator to do whatever I say for one full day. Ramses spoils me so. Now tell me: what is your name?

JUNO: You expect me to buy that Ramses gave me to you without even telling you my name?

VEGA: I don’t need you to buy it, detective. Only lease it. (CHUCKLES)

JUNO: What the hell are you even saying?

SWIFT: Look, do you have those orders on you, Vega?

VEGA: Of course not. Do you carry all of your mail everywhere you go?

RITA: I mean, it should all fit on your comms pretty easily—

JUNO: —yeah, Swift, he actually has a pretty good point.

RITA: Oh. Nevermind. Forgot who he was talkin’ to.

VEGA: These deaths cannot have been caused by a malfunction, because the Dragon’s Peak couldn’t burn a fly, and I should know: I built it. Sabotage, detective. This must be sabotage. And you are going to prove it.

JUNO: Sabotage… that’s a pretty serious claim. Should be worth looking into, Swift.

RITA: Really, boss?

SWIFT: Worth looking into? We’ll see about that. Hey, doctor? Can you prove the ride doesn’t generate real fire? Do you have the plans anywhere?

VEGA: Of course I do. And it’s written into the most reliable storage available to humankind.

RITA: Oh, I always wanted to see the plans to the ride! Might be some nice readin’ for bedtime or snacktime or—

VEGA: My cranial fluid.

RITA: Actually nevermind, not gonna take that anywhere near my bed or snacks.

VEGA: I have the plans memorized. In here, no prying eyes can see them.

SWIFT: Welcome to our argument for the past two years, Juno. I say this is a deathtrap; Vega says it isn’t. I try to close it down; Vega tattles to the managers of Polaris Park, they have a tantrum about ticket sales, and then the thing’s back on its rails again. This could’ve been avoided. It could’ve been avoided twenty times over.

JUNO: But, I mean… come on, doc. You can’t really expect us to just take your word for it, right?

VEGA: I can expect that, actually… but I’m beginning to suspect I’ll be disappointed if I do.

(GRUNTS) There’s one other place I stored the plans for the ride: in its brain. Follow me.

SOUND: MECHANICAL STEPS.

JUNO (NARRATOR): Vega led us over to a monitor on a stand overlooking the ride’s track. He flicked the monitor awake, tapped out a hundred-digit password in a second and a half, and we were in.

SOUND: ELECTRONIC BEEPS.

VEGA: The full ride is too complicated for any human mind other than my own to control it, so I designed it to handle all its own functions. Completely automated. The computer has uplinks throughout the track that my engineers can use to access and interact with all data gathered while the ride runs: power levels, terminal activation logs, security feeds of every room, roaming snack bar—

JUNO: Wait, wait, hang on. What? You have security footage for every room in this ride?

SWIFT: Yeah, doctor. This is the first I’m hearing of it, too.

VEGA: The security footage wouldn’t be very secure if I gave it out to every Tom, Dick, and Yasmin who asked for it.

SWIFT: I’m your Chief of Security!

VEGA: Then I’m sure I told you at some point. I don’t bother remembering details like that.

SWIFT: If I knew that, do you really think I’d have waited this long to shut down your stupid ride?

JUNO: Just bring up the footage already, doc. If you’re so sure the ride’s innocent, your video should prove it.

VEGA: (SIGHS)

SOUND: KEYBOARD CLICKING.

I’ll have you know that the last time someone ordered me around like that, they died.

RITA: You– killed someone?!

VEGA: Of course not. The two events were unrelated. It just means I have terrible associations with being told what to do that you should be sensitive to.

SOUND: ELECTRONIC BEEP.

What? The footage!

SWIFT: What is it now?

SOUND: ELECTRONIC BEEPS.

VEGA: The data! It’s– it’s disappearing!

JUNO: Disappearing?

SOUND: MORE BEEPS.

VEGA: Self-deleting! This is impossible! My baby! My giant, metal, highly-intelligent baby!

JUNO: How long has this been going on?

SOUND: KEYBOARD CLICKING.

VEGA: How should I know? I don’t check! If it’s flawless, there’s no point in checking, because there are no flaws to check for!

SWIFT: Well, what do you call this, then?

SOUND: BEEP.

RITA: It looks like it just ate another video.

SOUND: BEEP.

And that musta been dessert.

VEGA: It’s gone. The schematics, all the footage from the past ride, and assorted footage from the past week. Gone.

SWIFT: Deleted? And you didn’t even do anything?

VEGA: What do you think I was doing?

SWIFT: Deleting it, maybe. Covering your precious baby’s tracks.

VEGA: You—!

SOUND: KEYBOARD CLICKING. MACHINE POWERING DOWN.

JUNO: What are you doing now?

VEGA: Shutting down the ride.

There. Everything but the audio cues and lighting, off. And now, Detective Whoever-you-are, you’re going to go in there and figure out who’s harmed my creation. Who has attempted to murder Andromeda and the Dragon’s Peak!

RITA: He… is?

VEGA: Ramses gave orders that you are do to whatever I say, didn’t he?

JUNO: I don’t know. Did he?

SWIFT: Hang on, doctor. If you think I’m going to let anyone run an investigation in my park without my say-so—

VEGA: Then you go with him. Someone has to take care of my ride. I don’t care who.

JUNO (NARRATOR): I remembered that letter that Ramses’s driver had given me: “Keep an eye out for Lorenzo Vega.”

If Ramses was suspicious of Vega, this might be the only chance I had to figure out why. Especially if he was trying to push the blame onto someone else.

SWIFT: I’m sure Detective Steel has better things to do than—

JUNO: I’ll go along. Rita, you stay out here and enjoy the park.

RITA: Nuh-uh, boss! If you think I’m lettin’ you take a behind-the-scenes tour without me, you’ve got another thing comin’!

JUNO: Rita—

RITA: No buts!

Now come on, Yaaaaasmiiiiin. Do you wanna show me all the spookiest parts of the ride?

SWIFT: If… that’s what we’re doing, I guess I don’t mind doing it with you.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING.

Y’know, you don’t have to hold my hand so tight, doll…

RITA: (GIGGLES) Yeah, I do.

SOUND: METAL STEPS.

VEGA: Just a minute before you go, detective.

JUNO: Yeah, yeah, you want me to keep an eye on her. I heard you the first time.

VEGA: It’s not that. What did she just call you? Detective Steel, was it?

JUNO: Juno Steel, private eye. Finding it kinda hard to believe Ramses didn’t tell you that.

VEGA: He did… it just didn’t sound familiar until I’d heard it.

JUNO: Y’don’t say.

VEGA: Steel… why does that sound familiar…?

JUNO: Uh… probably because you build your rides with it?

VEGA: No, no, that isn’t it. I was thinking about that name just this morning… but why?

JUNO: Okay, well, have fun figuring that out, doc. I’m gonna go get murdered by your ride now. Bye.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

VEGA: (DISTANT) Steel… hmmm… Juno Steel…

JUNO (NARRATOR): We walked along the tracks for a while because riding the cart seemed dangerous. After all, the last couple of people to do that were currently being scraped out of their seats with a spatula. After walking through the first tunnel, we found ourselves, weirdly, outside – in a big green plain, surrounded by stone huts and yawning lions lounging in the grass.

SOUND: DISTANT ROARS.

RITA: Oh my gosh, look at all this stuff! It’s gonna take forever to explore all this! Hold my hand, Yasmin, I’m worried I’m gonna get lost!

SWIFT: I’m already holding your hand.

SOUND: TRUMPET BLARING FROM SPEAKERS.

RITA: (GASPS) What was that?!

SWIFT: Just the ride going through its cycles. Vega said he left the audio on – he’ll take any chance to show off.

NARRATOR VOICE (OVER SPEAKERS): And so, after years of searching for a way back home to Polaris, Andromeda the Chainmail Warrior found herself in the Lion Village, where it was said a portal to her home opened once every thousand years.

SWIFT: If we want to get onto the main track without a cart, you’re going to need a retinal scan from a high-ranking employee. Just give me a second.

JUNO: Rita, what’s your read on Vega?

RITA: Huh? Oh, I ain’t barely read any of him, boss. I been a little distracted today. (GIGGLES)

SOUND: ELECTRONIC BEEPS.

JUNO: Yeah, I can tell. Come on, doesn’t it seem a little convenient to you?

RITA: Hmmm?

JUNO: Vega gets warned for years that someone’s gonna die on this ride; then, someone dies on this ride, and who does he send into the deathtrap but the people sent to watch him, and, the woman that’s been trying to shut him down for years? This is gonna be dangerous… whatever roasted those engineers could get us too, and with him at the controls, this one might not be an accident.

Rita, are you even listening?

RITA: I mean, yeah, it seems convenient, boss. But you’re the detective and this is my day off, so you figure it out, alright?

JUNO: (GROWLS)

SOUND: BEEP.

SWIFT: Alright, we’re in. Should be the last lock.

SOUND: MECHANICAL DOOR CREAKS OPEN.

NARRATOR: And so, after years of searching for a way back home to Polaris, Andromeda the Chainmail Warrior—

JUNO (NARRATOR): The door led us into one of the lion’s huts. The lion it belonged to was musclebound and gray-maned and sitting on his haunches next to everyone’s favorite chainmail warrior, Andromeda.

NARRATOR (IN BACKGROUND): —found herself in the Lion Village, where it was said a portal to her home opened once every thousand years.

RITA: (GASPS) Andromeda!

NARRATOR: “Andromeda!” said Leo, the lion-chief. “Our portal opens in one short hour, and then only for a few minutes. But if you want to use it, you will have to pay. On that peak lives the dragon, Draco, with all of his treasure. Bring me a treasure from Draco’s hoard, and you will have your way home!”

RITA: She’s real! I always knew she was real! Mom said, and Mista Steel said, and even I said sometimes – but I always knew, Andromeda was real, even when I knew that was impossible, and, and, and, and—

JUNO: Real, huh?

SOUND: ELECTRONIC BUZZING.

RITA: Oh. It’s a hologram. I knew that. Mostly.

SWIFT: Everything here’s a combination of robotics, practical effects, and holograms, doll. Here, touch Chief Leo if you want. A mechanical skeleton covered in real lion fur, grown in a real lab.

RITA: Wow, he’s so soft. Can we see him roar? And maybe pounce on Mista Steel?

SWIFT: You can’t turn on the robotics without turning on the carts, too: they run on the same power source.

JUNO: Sounds and lights on the same breaker? Robots and carts– this doesn’t exactly sound up to code.

RITA: I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, boss, that’s basically how I got the office hooked up.

SWIFT: I think being unsafe is part of the thrill for Vega. He’s good with holograms, but he doesn’t like them. He says they’re cheating. Anything safe is cheating with that guy.

Hope you’ve got hiking shoes on: this next part’s supposed to be the mountain, and the doctor went for authenticity.

SOUND: GATE CREAKS OPEN.

RITA: Ohh, it’s so dark and spooky in here – how do we know where to go?

SWIFT: I haven’t been on these tracks since my first trainings, but I’ve ridden it enough times to know the way. Just stick close to me, sweetheart, and you’ll be fine.

RITA: Hmmmmmmm.

NARRATOR: Andromeda said:

ANDROMEDA: You’re making a terrible mistake, Leo. Anger Draco, and all the lions will pay for it.

NARRATOR: But Chief Leo only laughed, and called her a fool. And so Andromeda climbed the mountain with a heavy heart.

JUNO: So what’s up with you and Vega, anyway? Hell of a feud the two of you got going on.

SWIFT: How do you mean?

JUNO: I know you’ve got safety reasons for wanting this tilt-a-whirl closed, but he seems to think it’s personal. Granted, he seems to think most things are personal, but still…

SWIFT: Just… different eras of Northstar butting heads. Call it a family squabble.

Vega’s old school – from back in the days when Northstar was just a little movie studio over in Hyperion City. Used to work on building fancy new cameras, now he works on ways to shoot people through a block of ice without hurting the ice. Back then, Northstar was cutthroat: scrappy little movie studio with scrappy little ideas. Great tech, great talent, but no investors. It meant everyone who worked there was… out for blood.

JUNO: And they had plenty of ways to get it, I hear.

SWIFT: Yeah, actually. How did you—

JUNO: —doesn’t matter. You said you’re different. What’s the new era of Northstar like?

RITA: Yeah, Yasmin! Tell us aaaaaall about you. Every teensy weensy little thing.

SWIFT: Either of you have any kids?

JUNO: Eugh.

RITA: No, but I’m… very suggestible.

SWIFT: Well, I do. A little lady, only five years old. Too young to remember the war. Too young to remember all the stuff humanity showed it could do to itself. And when I think about her growing up in a galaxy capable of all that… (SIGHS) Let me just put it this way: the old Northstar was all about making something great. But now? Most of us now… we just want to make something good. Something that the kids can look up to. Heroes that’ll risk it all for what actually matters… not some dumb new camera.

JUNO: You sound like Ramses now.

SWIFT: O’Flaherty might be an old-timer, but I always felt like he was one of us. (CHUCKLES) Call me a sap if you want, but… I think my Esta’s better off with Andromeda around. And I’d do anything for her.

RITA: That’s so beautiful and perfect.

SWIFT: Definitely makes getting up for work a little easier. It’s leaving her in the morning that’s the hard part.

(CLEARS THROAT) Uh, just be ready. Next part gets a little loud.

SOUND: DOOR SLIDES OPEN.

NARRATOR: Then, at long last, Andromeda arrived at the Dragon’s Peak!

SOUND: THUNDERCLAP, RAIN.

RITA: Ahh!! What was that?!

JUNO: It’s just the stupid ride.

SWIFT: The noise was, but… did either of you see that?

JUNO: See what?

SWIFT: In the lightning, that—

SOUND: THUNDER.

NARRATOR: Then, at long last—

SWIFT: There’s someone up by Draco’s lair!

NARRATOR (IN BACKGROUND): —Andromeda arrived—

JUNO: What? I don’t see anything—

RITA: Yasmin, save me!

NARRATOR (IN BACKGROUND): —at the Dragon’s Peak!

SWIFT: You two, keep up with me! If someone really is sabotaging my park, I’m not gonna let them get away with it!

SOUND: RUNNING FOOTSTEPS.

JUNO: Swift! Swift!!

NARRATOR (IN BACKGROUND): Then, at long last—

SOUND: THUNDER.

NARRATOR (IN BACKGROUND): —Andromeda arrived at the Dragon’s Peak!

JUNO: Yeah, yeah, we get it! Come on, Rita, let’s go!

RITA: Okay, boss!

JUNO (NARRATOR): While we ran, I held onto Rita as best I could, but I couldn’t save her from her own clumsy feet…

RITA: Oh!

JUNO (NARRATOR): …or, uh, mine.

JUNO: Oof!

RITA: Get offa me, Mista Steel, get offa me! I wanted this day to go like this with someone but it sure ain’t you!

JUNO: Damn it, where did Swift go?

RITA: That’s what I said! She was followin’ the tracks, so hurry, boss, hurry!

JUNO & RITA: (PANTING)

JUNO (NARRATOR): So we ran up the rest of the way into the Dragon’s Peak. A set of big stone doors parted, and a set of big glowing eyes stared down at us.

SOUND: HEAVY SCRAPING.

NARRATOR: And there, in all his rage and glory, stood Draco, the mighty dragon!

RITA: OH NO OH NO! PLEASE DON’T KILL ME MISTA DRAGON DON’T KILL ME– oh hey would you look at that he listened.

JUNO: Huh. …He did.

SOUND: SLOW FOOTSTEPS.

RITA: Careful there, boss! You don’t know what that dragon might do! They’re tricky! Probably.

JUNO: They’re not real, Rita.

SOUND: ECHOEY CLANKS.

This is just another robot puppet, like the lion at the bottom of the hill. Deactivated like everything else. …It looks like the track hugs the wall for a while – come on. Swift can’t have gotten that far ahead yet.

SOUND: DEEP WHIRRING, MACHINE POWERING UP.

What the hell?

SOUND: METAL SQUEAKING.

MUSIC: STARTS.

RITA: M-m-mista Steel! The– the dragon, i-it’s—

JUNO: —moving, I can see that!

NARRATOR: Andromeda grabbed a sparkling crown as Draco unleashed its fiery breath!

SOUND: ROAR, FLAME CRACKLING.

RITA: Boss!! That’s SO much fire! And boy, is it hot!

JUNO: Step back! Hopefully that’ll be the last of—

JUNO & RITA: (YELP)

SOUND: ROAR.

RITA: Mista Steel! It’s coming closer!

JUNO: And faster than I’d like, too. Rita, there’s a control panel on the wall by the tracks. Do you think you could hack into it?

RITA: Okay, boss!

SOUND: ELECTRONIC BEEPS.

The password– I was watchin’ Dr. Vega’s hands when he was puttin’ the password in—

SOUND: ERROR BEEP.

Oh no, oh no!

JUNO: Rita, we’re running out of time, here!

RITA: It’s like a billion-digit password, boss, you’re gonna have to buy me some time!

JUNO (NARRATOR): So I did what I do best: I bought time.

SOUND: BLASTER SHOTS. METAL CREAKING.

RITA: Did it work?

JUNO: Made its head snap back a little, but it’s coming back. It’s getting kinda warm in here, Rita!

RITA: You think I can’t feel that?!

SOUND: BEEPING. ERROR BEEP.

Arrrggghhh!

JUNO (NARRATOR): The fire was close. We were backed up onto the tracks, now, and I swore I could feel the huge workings of the mechanical dragon rumbling in the walls and the floor.

Or… was that the dragon?

SOUND: SUCCESS BEEP.

RITA: There! I got us into the terminal, boss.

JUNO (NARRATOR): And suddenly it hit me. I put my hand into the fire…

SOUND: ROAR, FLAMES CRACKLING.

RITA: Now I just gotta– Mista Steel, what are you doin’?! It’s gonna roast you alive!

JUNO (NARRATOR): But it didn’t. I was fine – the fire was just hot air and holograms. The rumbling, though… that got bigger. And then, I remembered what was on the same circuit as the robots.

SOUND: WHEELS CLACKING ON TRACKS.

JUNO: The cart.

RITA: The what?

Hey, let go’a me, you– oooooaaahh!

SOUND: THUD.

JUNO: Oof!

RITA: Ah!

SOUND: CLACKING GROWS LOUDER. DULL CRASH, CLACKING STOPS.

MUSIC: ENDS.

NARRATOR: And there, in all his rage and glory, stood Draco, the mighty dragon!

SOUND: RAIN.

RITA: That rollercoaster cart… almost splattered us, boss!

JUNO: Yeah. It got real close, didn’t it.

SOUND: ROAR.

NARRATOR: Andromeda grabbed a sparkling crown as Draco unleashed its fiery breath!

SOUND: CLACKING STARTS AGAIN, FADES OUT.

RITA: And now– it’s… gone.

JUNO: Sticks around just long enough for you to think you’ll get roasted, but there’s never any real danger.

It’s not fire. Just like Vega said.

RITA: But… then how did those engineers get all burnt up?

JUNO: I don’t know.

Rita, didn’t Vega say the computer kept a log of whoever accessed it last?

RITA: I think so.

JUNO: Check the log, then. Hurry!

RITA: Okay, okay, I don’t see what the rush is. First, I just gotta deactivate the carts…

SOUND: ELECTRONIC BEEPS. POWERING DOWN NOISE.

There. Now I’ll check the logs…

SOUND: KEYBOARD CLICKING.

It… doesn’t say who used it, but… it says it was in the next room. D’you think it’s whoever Yasmin saw?!

JUNO (NARRATOR): Aaaaaaand that’s when I figured it out.

JUNO: Turn on the security footage for that room.

RITA: Mista Steel—

JUNO: Now, Rita!

RITA: Oh, alright, alright…

(GASPS) N– no… The one who activated the carts– was– Yasmin?!

JUNO (NARRATOR): Yasmin Swift. Security Chief of Polaris Park. The camera feed showed her inspecting the cart that failed to crush us, and I saw Draco’s controls up on the terminal in front of her. Vega was right. Swift had been briefed on the security footage before, and in fact, she knew how to use it better than he did. She proved that about two seconds later when she deactivated the camera we were watching her through.

SOUND: BEEP.

JUNO: What the…? Rita, bring it back!

SOUND: KEYBOARD CLICKING.

RITA: I’m tryin’, boss!

SOUND: BEEPS.

But… it’s just… deleted! Everything that camera’s recorded in the past twenty-four hours is gone!

JUNO: So we have no proof. Great.

SOUND: DOOR OPENS.

SWIFT: Oh…! You’re alright!

JUNO: You sound surprised.

SWIFT: Relieved is more like it. I’m glad you two are so hardy. Surviving what even our engineers couldn’t… I could’ve sworn you’d be charcoal briquettes by now.

RITA: Y-y-y– Yasmin…

MUSIC: STARTS.

SWIFT: What’s the matter, sweetheart? Aren’t you happy to see me?

JUNO (NARRATOR): If she knew we knew, she wasn’t saying a thing; and unfortunately, it was going to have to stay that way.

She knew this ride better than we did. If we let her run wild in here, I’m sure she’d know a hundred ways to roast us, crush us, and fun us straight into our graves. But we couldn’t take her into custody yet, either, because we didn’t have any evidence, and unless she slipped up right in front of us, we’d never get it.

So for now, the safest place was just where I didn’t want to be.

SWIFT: Did you see anyone come through here? I was chasing after someone, but they slipped away…

You two alright? You look a little pale.

JUNO: I’m ready to keep goin’ if you are.

RITA: What?!

JUNO: If you want to go back, Rita, I’ll bring you back first. But we still have a saboteur to catch. And I’m staying in here until I catch ‘em.

SWIFT: Like a dog with a bone, Juno. I like it. What do you say, doll? Coming with?

RITA: I– I…

Yeah. I’m n-not gonna leave you alone, Mista Steel. Not again.

SWIFT: Alright then. Let’s go, ladies.

JUNO (NARRATOR): Yasmin Swift had gotten me, with that strong jaw and that bright smile. It costs nearly twenty creds to get a bottle of water in this stupid theme park, but the smiles, they say, are always free.

Ma wouldn’t’ve agreed. Good old Sarah Steel always said that there was only one thing in life that came free – and that was death.

SWIFT: Keep your eyes peeled. We don’t want to let the murderer get away.

JUNO (NARRATOR): And from the look of things, the alternative was getting more expensive by the minute.

MUSIC: ENDS.

***

SOUND: TRAIN MOVING, MUSIC.

CONDUCTOR: If you've enjoyed this tale, please consider donating to The Penumbra on Patreon. Our artists work tirelessly to bring you these stories, and if you have the means, we hope you will support our efforts. Every dollar helps. You can find that page at patreon.com/thepenumbrapodcast. If you support us on Patreon at the $10 level or higher, you'll receive access to commentary tracks like this one, from actors Kate Jones, Joshua Ilon, and Sarah Gazdowicz:

SOUND: TRAIN STOPS, DOOR SLIDES OPEN, RAIN.

SARAH: …to be manipulative, but I don’t think that that is true. I think that she thinks Rita is very cute.

KATE: How—

SARAH: And—

KATE: —can you not?

SARAH: I don’t– I don’t know.

JOSHUA: You have to be around her all the time. [unintelligible mumbling – speak up, Joshua]

KATE: Alright.

JOSHUA: No that’s what we’ve seen! We’ve seen what overexposure to Rita does. That’s what this episode has shown us, more. It’s-it’s beginning– before and after. It’s ‘oh, that’s charming!’ and then, now ‘I can’t get rid of it.’

SARAH: No, but you couldn’t live without Rita.

JOSHUA: No, you couldn’t.

SARAH: You can’t. Rita’s one of a kind.

JOSHUA: Yeah. You can drown in too much water, though…

SOUND: DOOR SLIDES SHUT.

CONDUCTOR: You can also support The Penumbra by liking us on Facebook, following us on Twitter @thepenumbrapod, following us on Tumblr @thepenumbrapodcast, telling your friends about us, telling your friends to tell their friends about us, and especially by rating and reviewing our podcast on iTunes. Every rating, comment, and kind word spreads our stories further and inspires us to keep creating more and better tales to come.

We would like to give special thanks to all who support us on Patreon, but especially to Lynné Herman, Gray, Jaimie Gunter, and the Princess and the Scrivener for their incredibly generous contributions per episode. Thank you.

This tale, Juno Steel and the Dragon’s Den, was told by the following people: Joshua Ilon as Juno Steel, Kate Jones as Rita, Sarah Gazdowicz as Yasmin Swift, Bob Mussett as Lorenzo Vega, Simon Moody as Mayor Pilot Pereyra, and M. Sutherland as the narrator.

On staff at The Penumbra: Kevin Vibert is our lead writer and recording engineer. Sophie Kaner is our director and sound designer. Grahame Turner is our script editor. Noah Simes is our production manager. Alice Chung is our designer and financial manager. Original music by Ryan Vibert. Promotional art by Mikaela Buckley.

The Penumbra is created and produced by Sophie Kaner and Kevin Vibert.

I'm afraid this is the end of the line for today, dear Traveler. We hope you will ride with The Penumbra again soon.

ALL SOUNDS: FADE OUT.

#juno steel

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cwsdjt · 6 years ago

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Free Agent Projections

It has been a minute! I apologize to anyone that reads this blog if I have been off the grid for a bit. Managing grad school with work has filled my schedule. Based on the Twitter poll I ran, I gave people the option, either I complain about Mike Trout getting snubbed for yet another MVP or provide my big ticket free agent projections. The latter won out 80% to 20%. I guess people don’t like hearing me complain. Come on, guys! I’m a White Sox, Bears, Bulls, Illini, and Northwestern fan. Northwestern and the Bears keep me sane right now, but I need to have an outlet some time! I digress. Without further ado, here are my 2018-2019 free agent projections. Unfortunately, Peter Bourjos signed with the Angels already, so I apologize if I wasn’t able to pick that one. I know people were waiting on it.

Josh Donaldson – Cardinals

He has long been connected to the St. Louis Cardinals. I’m going out on no limb here, so I’m going to say he fills that need for the Birds. They need a third baseman. This is a perfect fit for him. Also, they might be able to get somewhat of a bargain for him because he had some shoulder problems last season. If that continues, I don’t know if he’ll be able to bump Matt Carpenter at 1B for the upcoming season.

Patrick Corbin – Yankees

He has already been connected to them. He’s good. The Yankees always spend money. He’s going to end up in their rotation and become a watered down Andy Pettitte.

Andrew McCutchen – Braves

Cutch fits that Braves OF. Nick Markakis is gone. Cutch will play RF. It’s really simple.

Nick Markakis – Angels

The Los Angeles Angels are a nice mediocre team. Here’s a guy they can sign. That’s it. The Angels are the Mets of the AL. They're going to let Ohtani and Trout waste another season.

Charlie Morton - Astros

The Astros need pitching depth. He reformed his career in Houston. This is a perfect match for at least one more season.

Brian McCann - Braves

Reunited and it feels so good. He can platoon with Flowers.

Nelson Cruz – Cardinals

Jose Martinez might get traded. I don’t see him producing at a higher level than last season. He’s also old. However, so is Cruz. The only difference is you can sign Nelson to a short-term deal and hope he produces the way he has been. Just remember, he can still crush. Maybe you can bury him in the outfield somewhere because the NL hasn’t adapted to the 21st century yet.

Daniel Murphy – Dodgers

I have the inclination that the Dodgers will try to trade Brian Dozier. He was AWFUL for them in the second half. He might return a prospect or two, but the Dodgers will then have the ability to free up cap space for this jackass.

Zach Britton – Yankees

The Yanks already have a stacked bullpen, but they also like spending money. Britton is less volatile than Chapman, and Robertson has a shot at returning. I can still see the Yanks spending the money to get Britton back.

Wilson Ramos – Mets

The Mets are the worst run organization in the MLB. They have insane talent on the pitching side, but they also have an awful training staff. What’s a way to fix that and potentially make your team win 77 games next season? Sign a good hitting catcher. Keep Syndergaard and deGrom and maintain your mediocrity.

Yasmani Grandal – Astros

The Astros are losing two hurlers for the 2019 season to free agency and one to injury: Charlie Morton, Dallas Keuchel, and Lance McCullers (RIP). They need a backstop that can manage their pitching staff. They still have Verlander and Cole to headline what was a stacked rotation, but they will need a catcher. Stassi could back him up. Grandal is the best catcher in baseball currently and consistently the best pitch-framer. This is a perfect spot for him because the Astros have an excellent analytics department. I see them also trading some young talent to fill out their rotation (maybe for James Paxton, we’ll see).

Jed Lowrie – Rockies

They free up 2B with LeMahieu leaving, so why not bring in a solid 2B option. He just had a great season with the A’s. I think he fits the Rox perfectly.

D.J. LeMahieu – Cubs

Zobrist is a free agent after 2019. LeMahieu has been with the Cubs before. Reunion? I think yes. This also makes sense if the Cubs move an outfielder or two (i.e. Happ and Schwarber) for some controllable starting pitcher. Since they’re not going to spend like crazy, I can see this move happening.

A.J. Pollock – Astros

Marwin Gonzalez is gone. Pollock can play LF while Springer is in CF. This just makes sense.

Craig Kimbrel – Braves

The Braves are willing to spend. Kimbrel will return to them because he’s good. That is all.

J.A. Happ – Brewers

The Brewers need to shore up that pitching staff because we all know they will not perform like they did this season. Happ is older, but he’s still a solid arm and a perfect fit for a smaller market team that wants to win now.

Cody Allen - Phillies

They need a closer. Allen had a down year in 2018, and the Tribe has Brad Hand. The Phils can take advantage of his market.

Adam Jones - Mets

The Mets are a team I could see signing Jonesy. His sub-.315 didn't do him any favors for free agency, and the Mets need to win those 77 games!

David Robertson – Red Sox

What other way to stick it in the eye of the Yanks than signing one of their former pitchers? Robertson has a history as a closer with the White Sahx. I think he can return to that role with the Red Sawx. He also said he wants to be closer to his home in Rhode Island. This is a change of scenery and right next to Rhode Island (shrug).

Adam Ottavino – Rockies

They want to win. They want their closer. Ottavino was a stud last year. They’ll have to pay him but he’s worth it.

Gio Gonzalez – Cubs

Gio has already been on a Chicago affiliate before, so why not the Cubs? He is a step behind Corbin or Keuchel, so since the Cubs may not want to offer fat money to all of the top guys, Gio’s the next best thing. He also helps fill that rotation out, which was pretty rough last season.

Michael Brantley – Rockies

The Rockies have to improve in some manner. Why not finish your career in a hitter’s ballpark?

Nathan Eovaldi – Red Sox

He pitched well and won a World Series on him. He’s going to get a hefty paycheck because he’s younger than Corbin or Keuchel. Then, he’ll flop. I originally wanted the Sox to get him, but since there are so many teams bargaining for him, I say lay off.

Marwin Gonzalez - A's

They need to sign someone. This is their guy!

Bryce Harper – Phillies

I’ve been saying Bryce to the Phillies since last year, and I will stand by it. In fact, the Phils front office said they’re willing to spend recklessly this offseason. Well, Harper’s going to get paid. It won’t be from the Yankees, Cubs, or Dodgers. It will be the Phillies, who had amongst the worst hitting rosters in the league last year. They do have cap space.

Dallas Keuchel – White Sox

As I said, the White Sox are willing to hopefully spend money. Why not spend it on one of the best pitching arms in the free agent market? Keuchel had a down year by his standards, but that makes him a perfect candidate for pitching coach Don Cooper.

Manny Machado – White Sox

Manny has that south side attitude. Who cares if he sometimes doesn’t run to first or is kind of a dirty player. Did people forget this team had A.J. Pierzynski as their catcher for years? Stop this nonsense. Manny is an incredibly talented player. The White Sox could use a superstar for the first time since Frank Thomas. This is their guy. They’ve been connected to him for a while. Reel in that big fish, Rick Hahn!

The majority of players will go to the competing teams or teams ready to compete. The Winter Meetings are in a few weeks, and this is the hot stove time. I hope the Sox sign Harper, but I think all fans would be satisfied if they got Keuchel and Manny, instead. Go Sox! Jerry needs to spend that $$$.

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dunnystuff · 3 years ago

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Hi to all -

Virginia

Well, boys and girls, I got my tang all toungeled up yesterday, when I identified candidate McAufflie as being the fellow who had the rape accusations and blackface history as governor of Virginia. That was wrong. Those other problems were connected to the former governor - Ralph Northam.

Sometimes I just cannot keep all these folks straight. Some of you let me know that as well, which was a good thing. After all, we do not want to spread 'misinformation', now do we? Have you noticed how often forcible rape and racism are tied so closely to democrat party leaders? I mean, you can find those things everywhere, but never in such abundance as in the liberal left. Must be something in the Kool-Aide they force everyone to drink.

Also in Virginia, a group of 'white supremacists' showed up for a photo op with the contender. They carried tiki torches, like was done in Charlotte during the race riots there. But, wait, something is just not right here. Some of the 'white supremacists' were black. This got a few people to ask who the others were. Turns out that two were democrat party activists. Colleen Wachenfeld and Camden Layton. So, this was a very botched effort to discredit the candidate who is the contender, hours after he surged hugely in the polls. Add this to the efforts by McAuliffe to buy fake news to attack his rival, rather than debate the actual issues. This is a tactic called 'false flag', to make someone think they are working for one side, when they are in fact working against that side. Spies do that all the time.

Siege Warfare

This is one of the oldest tactics ever used. Surround your enemy, and cut off supplies, escape or reinforcement. Finally, starve them into submission. The Romans even built entire walls around their enemy towns, and locked everyone in until they quit. The Germans used U-Boats to blockade England, in an effort to starve them out of the war. In the previous war, England successfully used its navy to blockade Germany, with great success. The US did the same to Japan - virtually eliminating their merchant fleet, so that Japan ran out of food, and other materials. And, who can forget all those stories of armies besieging the castle, until the people inside threw down their arms and surrendered?

The supply chain crisis has many components, but the effect is the same. A combination of natural disasters, the pandemic and bad management, especially by politicians, has led to this place. But, politicians will never let a crisis go to waste. They will milk this to get more power, and make more rules. Ever notice how rules keep changing, so long as the goal is the same? 'Two weeks to end the spread' was over 18 months ago. But, we are still chasing those goal posts, always with the same goal - to 'control' that which cannot be controlled, by controlling the wrong thing.

The mandate issue there has another interesting twist. The first responders, police and more, who must be tested have discovered that all their tests are done by one company. Why, there seems to be some affiliations between that company and the powers that be. Nothing to see here, folks, move along...

Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream

These guys are well known leftists. They have been very outspoken about it. But, this time they may have stepped on their own feet. The company decided to boycott Israel, for their 'occupation' of the land. Unfortunately, 35 states have laws against such boycotts, and the financial companies also have such restrictions - including the one that holds the pension funds for Ben and Jerry. That would be the New York Common Retirement fund. In fact, it is explicit in their contract that the company may not do political activism. So, the bank announced that it is withdrawing the money from Unilever, parent company to Ben and Jerry, and taking their cash elsewhere. Choices have consequences.

Great Video

There was a video forwarded today from a doctor about the effects of the vaccines and boosters, etc. It is long, about 40 minutes, but very revealing. Some of the nifty notices that came out:

The J&J version was pulled off the market for a short time, after a reported 6 deaths. That was false. The actual deaths were 156. Deaths from Pfizer and Moderna were at least three times that number. But, these were not pulled off the market. The patents for the Moderna vaccine are held by NIH - that is to say, Dr. Fauci. Somehow, our law allows a public servant to do research on our dime, and yet that servant can still patent the result for himself, and collect all that money. Why is that? But, it is so, and Moderna and Pfizer use the same process to create their versions of this vaccine. So, if they were pulled over mere safety concerns, Fauci would lose money as profits fell. More if lawsuits were allowed. But, of course, they are not. The makers of these patent medicines are immune from prosecution, regardless of what happens.

Fauci's favorite cure Rendeversion (spelling?) turns out to be a deadly product. It utterly failed when used on Ebola, and in fact contributed to the heavy death toll. Those who used it for this pandemic had a very high mortality rate. One of the ways this fails is to induce kidney failure, a terrible way to die.

The FDA knew months before releasing these vaccines of the many, often terrible, side effects and risks to life and limb, but they let it be approved 'for emergency use' anyway. This seems unethical, if not outright criminal.

The VARS system says it collects only 1% of actual results. They reported 5100 cases of severe blood clots. Add a couple of zeros, and you have most of the claimed death toll from the virus, coming from 'the cure'.

Just to keep it interesting, other major adverse effects are 'inflammation syndrome' ailments that affect the blood, kidneys, brain, ovaries, heart, eyes, lungs, liver, skin, etc. That is in addition to the minor effects, like a soreness at the site of the injection, or a mild cold-like episode for a short time. Booster shots attack the autoimmune system, making the body less able to defend itself.

The doctor also recommended several things that will help your body defend itself. Certain vitamins (such as C, and others usually found in multivitamin supplements in low doses.), and other general health practices - such as we have heard before. Get rid of the excess weight, exercise, and so forth.

Florida has been setting the example for the states, to the great distress of politicians. No masks, no mandates, and readily available therapeutic treatments, all of which the feds have tried to shut down. Today, Florida has the lowest new case rate of the states, and the highest recovery rate. Just follow the science. Or, follow the politicians. Up to you.

This doctor was not too happy with annual flu shots, either. They can lead to increased risk of dementia, among other things. And, he suggests that this year, flu shots may be mixed with boosters for the other - watch out what you take.

He noted that 37 million seniors had been taking products that acted as immunosuppressants - making them far more vulnerable to any kind of virus. And kids do not need any of this, just as so many others have said. The only benefit to giving shots to kids is to make money for the pharma companies - while putting kids at risk. Boosters also give pharma a long term customer base, so they can continue to make lots and lots of money. 'A patient cured is a customer lost' is their motto.

So, now you know one of the reasons why the media (brought to you by Big Pharma) is so focused on ``Thought Reform", that is, brainwashing. And also on 'controlling misinformation'. Somebody did another study and discovered - what a surprise - that to take over a nation, the leaders needed only two things. Control of the media, and to limit free assembly of citizens. That is why we were locked down, (except for political riots), forced to work from home, not attend church or recreational facilities, etc. And, yet, the current crop of major sports events, with tens of thousands of fans, have not turned into super spreader events. Only special events, like Obama's birthday party (attended by fully vaxxed 'sophisticated' people) did turn out to be super spreader events. That is hard to do on an island, with a very small population, away from all that pandemic stuff. But, it did happen.

And that concludes today's adventures, boys and girls.

Rich

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drosophilase · 7 years ago

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fic: Yoda, Yuletide, and You

Title: Yoda, Yuletide, and You

Author: @drosophilase

Gifted to: @djchika as part of the @crisscolfergiftexchange 2017

Original prompt: “We made the mutual decision to go to this party separately and when I arrived there was this asshole flirting with you and I’m trying not to make it obvious that I’m seething with jealousy but it’s really difficult”

Ratings/Warning: Teen; allusions to sex (non-explicit), boss/employee relationship

Read on AO3!

Sorry this is two days late, thank you for the gracious extension and Merry Christmas Deej! Thank you so much for all you did to arrange this exchange <3

It had started, as most great love stories do, with a Yoda figurine on the corner of Chris's desk. "That green figurine, I like," croaked a terrible Yoda impersonation from the twenty-fifth (ok, just fifth) person Chris had interviewed that day. Darren Criss, his application said.

Chris raised an eyebrow. Giving interviews for a job at a nerd pop culture online news source, Chris thought he had heard it all. This guy is the first to be bold enough to do such a confident and terrible impersonation. Chris touches Yoda's pointy ear. "From my sister. She's determined to get me the entire Star Wars Funko Pop set over the next 20 Christmases and birthdays." He doesn't comment aloud on the terrible Yoda voice, but he does write a little Y in the corner of Darren's resume.

"That's so cool, man, it's awesome that your family knows what you love. I have a ton of Pops but I can't ever seem to finish a set. There's just too many other things I like. I just put my Chewie next to my Harley Quinn and go with it." There's a sort of sparkle in his eye, glowing gold in the sunlight filtering through Chris's office blinds.

Chris sets the resume aside (he'd already noted this one for the qualifications - degree in Theatre from Michigan University, four years on the Michigan Daily staff with one as senior editor. Proficiency in Final Cut and a few credits in web series and local theatre productions. Currently working in local news media and writing a blog on the Star Wars Extended Universe on the side. Even before he walked in looking like a dream, Chris was hooked). "Suicide Squad Harley or Batman: The Animated Series Harley?"

Darren scoffs, the black curls over his forehead bouncing. "Animated Series, dude. Hands fucking down. I try to forget that Suicide Squad ever existed. It's hard to be a DC boy these days."

Chris cracks a smile. "That's why the girls - well, Patty Jenkins, really - are going to save us all. Haven't you seen Wonder Woman?"

"If I've learned one thing in my time in this industry, no one ever listens to women when they should. You're right though, if they let Patty work she's going to do the whole damn thing."

"If only Ben Affleck could do his civic duty and disappear from the earth, I'd feel better about it."

Darren laughs with his whole body, his eyes crinkling in the corners. "Dude, yes. Just go softly into that dark night."

Chris cocks his head. "You didn't just make that pun, oh my god."

Darren smiles. "You didn't notice 'witty wordplay' under my skills? It's like in my top 3 best attributes."

Chris wishes he had the power to cancel the rest of his day's appointments and just end the day with Darren's interview. Instead, he takes the scant three minutes he has until the next interview to smile absently back at Yoda and make another note on the resume.

1. Wordplay

2. Smile

3. -Ass- Experience

The great thing about PopNow's building is the super cool collaborative open floor plan with lots of coworking tables, glass doors, and zero fucking privacy. Chris had always cringed sitting at the long tables, having to work face-to-face with someone else's computers and get distracted every time they got up to go to the bathroom. Honestly, half his drive to move up to staff editor was to get one of the more private (loosely) offices around the edges of the room with a single desk and a wall to stare at instead of a strange coworker.

Being promoted to division head of PopNow Nerd was Chris's ultimate dream (private office, final say on all published material, sitting in on meetings with creative directors and sometimes, investors. The control freak inside of Chris was fucking delighted). That is, until 3 months later when PopNow shifted their entire focus and all their resources to video reporting. Luckily, they weren't completely cutting out the website or articles that Chris joined the company to write. And, Chris was getting a lot more flexibility to hire new talent and explore new realms of reporting. And thank fucking god, Chris never had to be in front of the camera.

He knew he had to change with the times quick, though. He had writers - he just needed producers. And, after a quick poll of the office didn't yield many nerds willing to get in front of a camera (who would’ve thought), some on-air personalities.

Enter: Darren Criss.

The first day Darren’s new hosted series “Heroes and Zeroes” went live with an episode rating Disney villains on some complicated ranking system based on hotness, degree of evil, and personal style, the PopNow Nerd Facebook page gained like 5,000 followers. Darren’s video instantly became their most watched.

And the comments, well—Chris’s cheeks reddened just thinking about them. A bashful Darren appeared at Chris’s door two hours after the video went live, one hand buried in the shorter hair at the base of his neck. “So… I think people like it?”

Chris raised his eyebrows, looking over his glasses where he had the comments section open on his own computer. Girls and guys alike were tagging their friends just to point out how hot Darren is. With him there draped casually in his door frame, Chris would have to agree. “I would say yes, they do.”

Darren laughs an embarrassed sort of huff, looks down at his feet. Chris can tell that though he might be humbled by the success of the video, Darren is definitely feeling proud of himself.

“Actually,” Chris continued, “maybe you should reply to a few of them. Start building some rapport with the fans. Couldn’t hurt, and the higher-ups really want to see viewer engagement.”

The next day the Facebook page following had grown again by the thousands. Suspicious, Chris scrolled to Darren’s video again. The views just kept going up. And Darren himself was in the comments section, cheekily replying to a few of them.

Brittany Smith Oh my god, @Ashley did you watch this? I don’t even know what he said, I just keep staring at his hands for some reason

Darren Criss Next time pay attention to my face, we pay the makeup department a lot to cover up my lizard skin! ;)

Chris had one hand over his mouth to keep from laughing out loud. Darren was fucking funny. As if Chris didn’t have enough problems drooling over him already in production meetings, writing pitches, and the million times a day he stops by Chris’s office with just “one quick question.”

Chris glanced out his glass office doors to Darren’s desk (the one he has a perfect view of if he just pretends to work at his computer but instead looks right past his monitor out to the main office, no Chris didn’t put him there on purpose the desk was just open). And Darren’s comically large hot pink headphones, and Darren’s brow furrowed as he works hard at something on his computer, and Darren himself chewing on his lip and tugging on a curl and oh, god—

Chris has got it so bad.

“Fuck,” Chris says quietly, taking off his glasses to rub his tired eyes. He should have known better.

The crush stays mostly on lock down for almost two weeks. Chris is like, acutely aware every time Darren walks near his office door (inconvenient, since he has to walk that way for the bathroom, the breakroom, and pretty much everything else) and he gets flustered during staff meetings when Darren starts smiling at him.

And then, of fucking course, there’s Lea.

“Who is this Darren again? You’ve said his name like ten times in the last five minutes.”

Chris swallows hard and tries to keep his tone casual. “Just one of the on-air personalities we hired. He’s a good writer too, when we can keep him focused. The best idea man we have, after me of course. He’s been working here for like three months. I swear I told you about him. Curly black hair, stupidly big brown eyes?”

Lea gasps. “Christopher Fucking Colfer. Do you have a crush?”

Chris instantly feels his face burning. “You know Karyn Colfer would never give me such an unsightly middle name. Jesus, Lea, I don’t know… He’s just a great guy. We get along well. He’s my employee, for fuck’s sake.”

Lea scoffs. “That’s the highest praise I’ve heard you give another human in the entire time I’ve known you. You definitely like him.”

She’s always so infuriatingly good at pointing out the one thing Chris is trying to pretend doesn’t exist. “Yeah I… guess I do.”

She hums, sympathetic. “It’s been a long time since you’ve embraced another human being, Christopher. Maybe try leaning in this time instead of running away. It might do you some good.”

Eager to not hear yet another long-spun tail about her and her fiancé’s meet-cute, recent cohabitation, or extensive wedding planning, Chris says quickly, “Okay, yeah. Lean in. I’ll try that.”

“Just talk to him! You’re very charming, in your own way. He willingly works at PopNow Nerd, for Christ’s sake, just talk about your elaborate Halloween costume for next week, he’ll love that.”

Chris can’t argue with that.

“Lean in,” Chris murmurs to himself as he sees Darren get up for his second coffee and first trip to Chris’s desk right around the usual time, 9:20.

“Hey Chris,” Darren says, rapping on the open glass door twice. Chris looks up from pretending he’s engrossed in end-of-year reports and not sweating into his hoodie. “Quick question, to settle a debate: Richard Harris or Michael Gambon as Dumbledore? Must cite sources.”

Chris smiles. “Michael Gambon, without a doubt. I loved the look of Richard Harris, don’t get me wrong, but Order of the Phoenix Dumbledore, tracking down horcruxes Dumbledore, was not frail. Richard Harris could have never pulled off standing up to the Ministry and escaping with Fawkes, no way.”

Darren cocked his head. “So not what I would have thought you would say. And honestly, you’ve almost sold me on Gambon. I’m one of those who can’t overlook the didjupuyurnameinthegobletofire debacle but you have excellent points. Always surprising me, Chris.”

Was that… flirting? It was so hard to tell because Darren was so easily entrancing like this just all the time, but something about the way he said Chris’s name made him think it was different.

Darren had already half-turned to go but Chris calls him back, saying his name. Darren turns around, eyebrows quirked. This was deviating from their normal routine, Chris knew. He tries to calm his pounding heart. Lean in.

“You know, the real casting tragedy in the Potter series was how old James and Lilly were. Like, alright yes, the ‘mother’s eyes’ thing was absolutely shot to hell. But how are they going to tell us James and Lilly died at literally 21 years old and cast middle-aged actors?”

Darren smiles. “Dude, yes. They fucked up the ages of everyone in the Order of the Phoenix except for like, Tonks. And maybe they got away with Lupin since he would be more weathered. But casting mid-50s actors for characters barely pushing 35? It totally takes away the resonance of these young people fighting for the future of the world.”

He sits in one of the chairs Chris has arranged along the side of the wall (PopNow has a thing about the formality of sitting with a desk between them) and Chris should move to go sit next to him but it feels like this new thing is a bubble that he might burst at any second if he moved the wrong way.

Darren leaves twenty minutes later to go back to his desk, his empty coffee-stained Vader mug forgotten on the floor.

Chris smiles as he catches Darren eye through the glass. He’ll be back in an hour or two.

By the time mid-November rolls around, it seems that Chris and Darren’s quick coffee run questions have turned into thrice-daily chats have turned into… something. It’s started to become a running joke at staff meetings, that Chris and Darren are usually more ChrisandDarren these days. Chris ran into Darren once at his favorite lunch Chinese spot, and then he suggested another lunch spot for tacos and Darren suggested they go together, and now lunch is just always assumed to be theirs. Even when Chris had to work three days straight through lunch to meet the deadline on proposals for the next quarter, Darren showed up every day with cashew chicken, disappearing when Chris was stressed or offering alien conspiracy theories when Chris needed a break.

That was the thing about Darren, he was always just there. As soon as Chris opened the figurative door by starting a conversation, Darren blew the whole fucking thing open and made himself at home. It was hard to remember work before Darren.

It doesn’t dawn on Chris that they really haven’t seen each other outside of work until he overhears a few other producers and writers making plans to get drinks after work the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Chris doesn’t think anything of it—he never wanted to get drinks with anyone in the office before, and he figured no one wanted to drink with their boss anyway.

So he’s pretty floored when he clearly hears Darren (speaking in his still-loud “low voice”) ask Denise if Chris is invited.

Chris doesn’t even try to hear the answer (it’s no, Chris knows) as he reels. He can see Darren outside of work. Darren maybe wants to see Chris outside of work. Chris would have a reason to go somewhere other than home to his cat. He had never thought of it before but now Chris really, really wanted to be invited out to drinks. By Darren, that is.

Darren stops by his office (fifth time that day) with his coat over his arm and bag slung over his shoulder on his way out. “Happy Thanksgiving, Chris.”

“Happy Thanksgiving, he automatically replies. “Headed down to Republic with Denise and Lars and everyone?” Chris says it just to see how Darren will react.

Darren winces and looks sheepish. “You heard about that, huh? Yeah it seems like it’s just a writers’ thing, sorry about that, I didn’t decide that it would be exclusive.”

“No, yeah, it’s totally okay,” Chris says, waving his hand. “I wouldn’t want to like, intrude on the group anyways. Frankly, there’s few people in this office I’d want to see outside of these stupid glass walls.”

Darren pouts, put-upon. “I hope I made your short list.”

Chris knows his ears are red-tipped but he swallows and forces himself to say, “Duh. You’re like, the whole list.”

Something comes over Darren’s face. He’s more beautiful than Chris has ever seen. “Yeah? You’re at the top of mine. Maybe after the holiday we can compare lists. Have a good Thanksgiving, Chris.”

“Y-yeah, you too,” Chris manages to say, half-strangled, awkwardly waving as Darren turns and leaves.

Holy shit, Darren may have just asked him on a date.

There are three things Chris learns on the Friday a week after Thanksgiving weekend.

It is most definitely a date, Darren’s preferred drink is a whiskey sour, and he is the best kisser Chris has ever known.

“I thought maybe you only wanted to hear more on my nuanced analysis of Star Trek captains,” Chris teases after they break apart just inside his front door.

“Oh don’t get me wrong, I love your analysis,” Darren says breathily from where he’s kissing Chris’s jaw. “It’s just that I also love the way your arms look in your tee shirts and your butt looks in your jeans and that your lips are so damn kissable.”

Chris thrills as Darren stretches up to kiss him again, basically on his tiptoes. How is someone who appreciates all those things even real? Chris runs his hands along Darren’s shoulders, grips his elbows, squeezes his waist. Darren slips his tongue into Chris’s mouth and Chris reflexively grabs Darren’s perfect ass. Oh, he’s real all right.

“That’s awfully fresh, Mr. Colfer,” Darren says breathily even as he pulls Chris in, walking backwards. “Don’t you think that’s better suited for the bedroom?”

Later, Chris’s best shirt is maybe ruined and Darren is sleepy and soft and come-dumb, draped across Chris’s chest (he’s a cuddler, as Chris should have guessed).

“Give me five minutes and I’ll get up I promise,” Darren mostly mumbles as he rubs his face into Chris’s belly.

“Mmhmm,” Chris replies skeptically, sinking a hand into Darren’s curls and tracing his thumb over the sweat gathered at his temples. “I really don’t mind.”

Darren groans, low and long. “I have like, a thing about my hair being played with, dude. Once you start I’m always going to beg you to keep going.”

Chris smiles wickedly, pulling his fingers slowly through the soft strands and listening to Darren’s responses. “I could be okay with that.”

Chris thinks they’re totally rocking the first day back at work giving off very “we definitely didn’t have sex last night, no way, thanks for asking” vibes. Until a very concerned Eileen stops by his office after their afternoon meeting.

“This is definitely not my business Chris, but you know I care deeply about the balance of the workplace ecosystem, so I’m going to meddle just this once. Are you and Darren—”

Chris immediately opens his mouth, panicked, “Oh uh, no, I—”

“—Mad at each other?”

Chris stops mid-sentence. “Wait, what?”

Eileen is unfazed, as usual. “You definitely snubbed him during that planning meeting and he’s only stopped by your office once today instead of the usual six. I count on you two to keep meetings fun and productive. He makes you less cranky. I don’t know what you did, but fix it.”

She leaves before Chris can put words together. Well, that wasn’t what he expected.

Eileen apparently thinks we’re fighting.

Maybe we went too hard in the other direction.

O M G. She’s so nosy. Our coworkers are way too perceptive.

There’s only one way I want you hard. This ain’t it

Fuck. Why are my office walls made of glass?

That’s hot, Colfer. Feed your cat and come by my place tonight.

…Was that a euphemism?

Pre-Darren, holiday parties at the office were to be endured and survived. Chris would show up for the shortest time he could, drink two vodka sodas, talk to ten people, and get the fuck out. Now in the Age of Darren, Chris is actually brushing his hair and putting thought into his outfit and humming Christmas carols on the train.

Almost one month into their relationship feels way too new to tell all of PopNow, let alone just their department. (Chris had gone to HR with the intent to file their relationship but his hypothetical questions were met with vehemence that superiors could not date subordinates. So Chris had slunk out of there and didn’t mention it to Darren in case ignoring it meant it wouldn’t exist.) They’re arriving to the company holiday party separately and meeting oh-so-casually by the Christmas tree, avoiding all mistletoe and any game that might lead to awkward kissing with anyone. They are totally (almost) masters of acting totally normal at work, they can handle this.

What Chris can’t handle is the blonde with godawful dark roots and nose ring practically pushing her breasts into Darren’s face. At 20 freaking degrees outside there’s no need to wear a sweater that low-cut. Darren, Chris begrudgingly credits, is looking unwaveringly at her face. But this girl is hardcore flirting, hip cocked and chewing on the stirrer in her pink drink.

Chris knows he’s being ridiculous but at the same time, he can’t stop. She touches his shoulder for a second and Chris downs a shot. She laughs way too loudly and Chris crushes a cookie into crumbs. He tunes out the droning anecdote from some guy in accounting and instead vividly daydreams, replaying in his mind the past weekend spending a full 48 hours locked in Chris’s apartment.

Chris was so wrong to think that he could keep it together for this entire party. Darren is just so damn charming and every single person who works at PopNow is gravitating towards him. Chris understands the feeling, but the possessive jealous lizard brain just wants to take.

He spots an opening as Darren is trying to physically move away from a man who is whispering in Darren’s ear every other sentence. Hell no.

Chris steps between them deftly, delighting at the way Darren’s face absolutely lights up. “Chris, hi. Thank god.”

“So sorry to steal him away, but Darren there’s someone I want you to meet,” Chris apologizes to the guy in a rush, grabbing Darren by the elbow and leading him away.

“Thank god,” Darren says again from behind him as Chris weaves through the crowds. “That guy was like a level 5 creeper. I’ve been looking for you for half an hour and just couldn’t disentangle myself from these people who all want to talk about my videos. Which is flattering, I guess? But they’re like, strangers. I’m just trying to get buzzed and play that piano in the corner and start a Christmas carol sing-along. Wait, this is the bathroom…”

“Yes, it is,” Chris says, leading Darren into the single room family bathroom and following quickly, locking the door.

He presses Darren against the door and kisses him hard, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt. “That was torture,” Chris whispers, tugging on Darren’s earlobe with his teeth.

“Colfer, were you j-jealous?” Darren chokes out, head lolling back as Chris moves down to kiss his neck. He wants to leave a visible mark. He settles for one right below Darren’s collar, right in the hollow of his shoulder. Darren moans, cradling Chris’s head. “Fuck.”

“Maybe I was,” Chris admits, pulling back and pushing stray hairs off his forehead. “That one girl was just so blatant, it was awful. And I couldn’t do or say anything! Maybe I should ask for a department transfer. Or find another job, I…”

Darren is wide-eyed. “Are you trying to abandon me?”

Chris shakes his head. “God, no, it’s just some ban on superiors dating their employees, I didn’t want to tell you before….”

“What about superiors dating their equals? Would that be okay?” Darren asks, a mischievous smile curling the corner of his mouth.

“Uh yeah, I think so,” Chris says, confused. “I don’t see why not?”

“Good,” Darren says, full-out grinning now. “Because Rebecca called me into her office today. Honestly I thought I had to be getting reprimanded or something, but she promoted me. Well it’s not totally official yet, but next week they’re creating new Video Editor-in-Chief positions in some departments. Equal with the department head. A new team-leading thing to further focus on video content. And the job in Nerd is mine. She said she heard I work great with my department head and I had to agree.”

Chris reels. “Holy shit. I knew Rebecca had asked me about you, but I didn’t know why. Holy shit! Darren, that is amazing. You are amazing. I am so proud of you.”

Darren’s eyes practically disappear, he’s smiling so hard. “Thank you. I couldn’t have done it without you. I guess we don’t have to hide in this bathroom anymore…?” Even as he says it, Darren rubs a hand right over Chris’s crotch. Chris sucks in a loud breath.

“We don’t have to, but maybe we should for this part.”

Three whiskey sours in and with no prodding, Darren hops behind the piano and leads a rousing chorus of the promised Christmas carols, Broadway songs, and Disney hits. Four vodka sodas in and Chris is pulled into a clumsy duet of Baby It’s Cold Outside after he makes everyone in the area hold both hands up so he knows no one is recording. There’s no way this won’t end up in the Monday morning email thread, but tipsy, warm and fuzzy Chris is okay with that.

It’s the best company holiday party he’s ever been to. Which on the surface makes no sense—it’s in the same venue, with the same cheesy decorations, the same too-strong drinks and the same terrible ornament exchange. But this year, the Christmas tree seems taller and fuller and more beautiful than ever. And this year, the bartender is wearing a Santa hat and smiling and singing along. And even though an ornament exchange game with no stealing or trading allowed is a totally lame game, Chris somehow gets a Yoda ornament. He gasps, looking up at Darren, who is just across from him. Darren has that shit-eating grin, toasting his glass to Chris as he takes another sip. He remembered.

And then Chris realizes that it wasn’t the party that had changed, it was him. And it was Darren. Because of Darren. Even the most dreaded event of the year has Chris laughing, smiling, relaxing, even feeling the joy of the Christmas spirit.

He blames Darren and his magic that when someone comes up to them shrieking mistletoe! and dangling a bunch over their heads, Chris doesn’t laugh it off. He looks at Darren, closer than the careful distance they’ve been keeping all night, and is hit with the full force of his sparkling brown eyes. You’re beautiful, Chris thinks, and grabs Darren’s lapel before he can think too hard.

Darren is dazed when they pull apart, the mistletoe bearer long-gone. “Merry Christmas,” Chris says so fondly, brushing his thumb over the spot hidden under Darren’s shirt.

“Merry Christmas,” Darren says, taking Chris’s hand and holding it tight, laced with his.

#djchika #crisscolfer #crisscolfer fic #crisscolfergiftexchange #cc gift exchange 2017 #bee writes fic #NOW i can go read all the rest of the fic yessssss

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mysticalfriends · 7 years ago

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Anon Asks: RFA reacting to an MC with a fuck ton of cats

Hey there y’all. The excitement is great, almost 100 followers. We’re planning on doing something for the big event, and there will be a poll posted sometime on Saturday with a couple options for y’all to choose from. We’re all really happy that someone likes our writing (like wow, we never expected this~) and we’re so honored that y’all decided to join us in our fun. Anyways, have another head canon, y’all~

<3 Mod Vem

Yoosung -When he finds out that you have cats he’s excited to meet them -Until MC asks him to come over and meet them -MC starts listing off names while pointing out which is which -Yoosung knows that cats are social animals, they like having friends -but for the apartment where MC is living, this is too many furry friends -Yoosung finally just asks how many cats you have -6? That’s...a lot of cats. But momma cat had 5 kittens, and if you can’t find homes for them you’re certainly not going to kick them out on the streets -Yoosung knows the feeling, you can’t just abandon them. They’re a family. -Once he gets to see the cats together, chilling out and not acting stressed he settles down -He becomes a cat whisperer, spending time over at MC’s place is really helping him learn about feline behavior -It takes him a while, but he does learn all their names, even though he always gets Tootsie and Footsie mixed up.

Zen -Nope -No -Why did you think this was a good idea again? -He loves you, very very much, and he’s willing to try for you. He’s not going to ask ‘me or them’, he’s afraid of what the answer might be -He doses himself with allergy meds and braves the fray, and knocks on your door -He braces himself for the sneezing -MC greets him and he walks into the living room -and screams -It was a very manly scream, and he would like you to know he heroically jumped in front of MC to defend his lady from the demons -Wow Zen, I’ve never heard anyone call my cats a shriveled pack of goblins before -With their big floppy ears and bald wrinkly faces they do look like goblins, or bats -They are the ugliest things he has ever seen. But he’s not going to tell MC that. -And it just so happens that they’re hypoallergenic. Zen’s allergies don’t act up around them. -He refuses to admit that he likes them though. He’d never hear the end of it from Jumin. -Jaehee, however, does have a photo of Zen sleeping on the couch with Fizzles sleeping in the crook of his arm, courtesy of MC

Jaehee -Jaehee knows you have cats, she’s seen the traces of fur on your clothes -But she doesn’t expect there to be so many of them -She stops and stares in shock at the 4 kittens chasing each other around the coffee table -and what is apparently their mother cleaning another 2 in a fluffy cat bed -And the biggest, meanest looking cat she’s ever seen lounging across the back of the couch in a patch of sunlight -Before she works herself up into righteous indignation MC heads her off -I know you don’t care for cats, but only Victoria belongs to me. The rest of them are foster cats from the shelter, here to be socialized for future homes -Now Jaehee appreciates community service. It’s important to help out causes that are important to you -But did it really have to be cats? -So long as Jaehee isn’t responsible for their care (and MC is very practiced at handling their charges) she doesn’t mind that much -And it obviously makes MC happy -And they both cry when it’s time to send the batch of kittens off to their new homes

Jumin -Unfortunately, Jumin had to be away on business -MC was kind enough to offer to take care of Elizabeth the 3rd -He hated leaving them both all alone -So it was a suitable arrangement -Especially when MC told him they had cats of their own -He worried about Elizabeth the 3rd. How would she handle meeting the other cats? -But he trusted MC to know how to properly handle the situation -When he got back he went directly to MC’s apartment, he wanted to surprise them -But he certainly didn’t expect that -Elizabeth the 3rd was cuddled up with a beautiful orange male, they were grooming each other, as a tortoiseshell looked on jealously -Instant protectiveness -After MC greeted him, they opened up a can of cat food and another 3 sets of eyes magically appeared around corners, before they slunk around the edges of the room to their dishes, one of them looking painfully round -MC was more than happy to explain that they had a business breeding calico and tortoiseshell cats -They really knew a lot about their cats. While he knew about Elizabeth the 3rd, there was a lot he didn’t know about cats in general. -He was more than happy to support them, and in return MC was more than happy to let her pets test out any of his feline products -They had a system, and it worked

Seven -For a while MC wouldn’t even let Seven over -He knew she had cats -They said that they couldn’t handle a lot of stress -And that’s okay, not every cat wants to play all the time -But eventually MC relented -but he had to promise to leave them alone -He was just so excited when he drove over -Until he got in and saw them -They were all so old, or thin, or sick -MC had a deal with the local shelter, they called MC’s apartment the ‘Hospice for Hopeless Cats’ -He was so proud of her, taking care of all these lost causes -It still didn’t stop him from tossing around a few toys to the energetic ones -and when Sir Purrcival decided to chase his headphone wires -That just made his week

Saeran -He didn’t understand why people wanted pets -She certainly never allowed them -So when MC offered to introduce him he was wary -He wanted to get away from Saeyoung though -He was feeling smothered -After MC reassured Saeyoung that there wouldn’t be any problems, he was released with an embrace -He stared at MC. He didn’t know what to say. Was he supposed to apologize? How do you even say “I’m sorry for kidnapping you?” -MC just smiled at him, and led him into the living room. Apparently he’s not supposed to say anything. -They handed him a ziploc bag full of green...what sort of spice was this? It didn’t smell like oregano... -There was a rush of bodies low to the ground at the door -He shrunk back into the couch, and went completely still -The bodies resolved to be cats, and they were very interested in the bag he was holding -It was a swarm, and they weren’t particularly picky over where they were standing. -One of them thrust their face inside and almost knocked it out of his hands before MC took pity on him -“Tiberius, don’t be rude to our guest!” They pulled the tall, obnoxious cat away. “Feel free to push them away if they get too nosy, they know their manners. They just forget them when they get excited sometimes.” -Well doesn’t that sound familiar. Despite himself, Saeran felt a grin on his face. -After a while of letting the cats investigate him and the bag of catnip they wandered off -All except for the small one half-perched between his shoulder and the back of the couch cushion -“Oh don’t mind Nugget. She likes to be tall.” He stuck out a hand and let her sniff it in introduction -Nugget then pressed against his hand so forcefully she fell over and slid down into his lap -Where she proceeded to make herself comfy, and started up the cutest purr -And her fur was so soft he couldn’t stop petting her -It was comforting

V -He...doesn’t actually realize that MC has more than one cat -They just never seemed to appear in the same room at the same time -so when he told MC that he really liked how friendly their cat was -MC was all, “I don’t know, I think Andromeda can be kind of rude. Chiron is the nice one.” -“What do you mean the nice one? I thought you only had 1 cat?” -He could just hear MC’s incredulous not-laughter -“I’ve got 5 cats, but they’re siblings, so they’re all pretty identical” -And MC went and collected the cats one by one -Everytime they brought out another cat his jaw dropped lower and lower -And they were pretty identical -He has never felt more embarrassed -How is it that in 3 years no more than 1 of these cats has ever been in the same room as him at a time?

#mod vem #writes #mystic messenger #mysme #mm headcanons #headcanon #mystic messenger hc #yoosung #zen #jaehee #jumin #seven #searan #choi #v #cats

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rogerjharding · 4 years ago

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Essay in the #OurOtherNationalDebt collection in response to the COVID-19 crisis. Full report and responses to it available here: https://www.ourothernationaldebt.com/

FULL TEXT:

The coronavirus has illuminated who is truly indispensable in modern Britain.

While some are confident this will bring about new-found respect and reward for working class people, I’m sceptical. The financial crash also brought the sense that things wouldn’t be the same again, and they weren’t, but not for the reasons we hoped. Working class people rarely fare well during or after economic turmoil and, with the financial crash in the rear-view mirror, many of us know it.

I worry an anger is building in many working class communities about how inequitably the current costs and risks are being shared. Just like the idea ‘we’re all in it together’ after the crash, the idea this crisis is the same for all of us just isn’t ringing true. The disconnect presents fertile ground for polarisation, pessimism and populism to grow.

The pain in communities is raw and real – and it risks being deepened by middle class activists and commentators too readily racing to talk about the ‘opportunities’ this time presents. Working class movements can, however, start to think – carefully, cautiously, compassionately – about the things we can win together if we stick together. The young people at RECLAIM kicked this off with a rapid response campaign to thank #TheIndispensables but we will need to have a medium and long term plan if we’re to make sure Britain’s working class comes out of this time stronger and more united.

Right now, YouGov polling for the Times Red Box suggests that there’s a reasonable degree of togetherness but in a recent report the Collective Psychology Project highlighted that there’s a fairly consistent progression in collective emotional responses to major events. The initial ‘heroic’ phase is met with high altruism and is then followed by a ‘honeymoon’ phase of great togetherness and optimism. However, this relatively quickly gives way to a long ‘disillusionment’ phase marked by increased polarisation, feelings of abandonment and concerns about the limits of the response.

It is hard to say whether we have reached a disillusionment phase of this crisis, but the toll on people’s mental health is already clear. Ipsos Mori polling for Kings College London finds that half of us feel more anxious and depressed and 29% are finding lockdown extremely difficult (or expect to) in the next four weeks (notably rising to 42% for 16-24 year olds).

Working class people are already experiencing greater threats to their jobs (as reported by the Resolution Foundation), living in more densely populated areas (as covered here by the FT), not having enough space at home (as reported by the JRF), not having as much access to decent green spaces (as reported by CABE), having poorer lung health due to being more likely be exposed to air pollution (as reported by Asthma UK), being more likely to have underlying health conditions (as reported by the King’s Fund), finding it harder to get online or have enough devices for everyone at home (as reported by the Sutton Trust), having less ability to home school (also reported by the Sutton Trust), having less access to affordable food (as reported by the Food Foundation), being less able to access cheap credit (as reported by the Centre for Social Justice) and low paid workers are disproportionally represented in the key worker jobs that expose them and families to increased risk (as reported by the IFS).

Put even more starkly, Office of National Statistics data shows that living in the poorest neighbourhoods means you're twice as likely to die from the coronavirus as people living in the richest ones.

Strangely, I’m not sure that horrific reality is the thing likely to generate the most anger. Having a shorter life due to your postcode was already the pre-coronavirus reality. Instead it’s often the subtle, more visible things that anger people more.

Who is (not) in the room always shows in a crisis

Being working class often makes you acutely aware of the little ways people unconsciously reveal they’re better off. Despite us now being physically separate, social media, video calls and simply how we talk about our lockdown experience is giving people greater insight into ‘how the other half lives’. People won’t easily forget their sneak-peek into the bigger, nicer, greener space of others doing less essential work or making fewer sacrifices.

This moment also tells us a lot about who makes decisions and what informs them. There’s one example that features frequently in discussions at RECLAIM. In early March, during the government’s new daily press conference, ministers and scientists provided guidance on what to do if you suspect someone in your home has the virus. It encouraged those self-isolating ‘to use a separate bathroom’ if possible. This obviously isn’t bad guidance, but the assumption this was more important to cover than how, for example, you deal with isolating in an already-overcrowded home, is telling. I similarly doubt the need for guidance – then flouted in at least one notable case – on whether you can use your second home will be forgotten either.

Some working class people will also be asking themselves why it is that old unemployment and housing benefit rates (the improvements noted in Ashwin Kumar’s essay) aren’t good enough now that it isn’t just them who need to claim them.

This sore created by the coronavirus is only likely to increase when our divides are further exposed by the lockdown easing. People will spot that middle class professionals are more able to continue to work from home and that middle class young people are benefiting from more home-schooling and tutoring (as reported by the Sutton Trust). The young people we support at RECLAIM already often flagged the state of their high street and related areas as top of their list of local economic concerns. Boarded up shops and ever-decreasing visitors are visible signs of something not being right, and sadly many high streets will look a lot worse when the lockdown ends.

In this context it’s not surprising that people hanker for the past. While activists on Twitter enjoy sharing slogans about how ‘we can’t return to normal, because normal was the problem’, much of the British public have been enjoying nostalgia. Recent research from Thinkbox, the TV marketing body, reveals a lockdown surge in the number of us watching old TV, with Last of the Summer Wine and Only Fools and Horses repeats doing especially well. Spotify has seen something similar, with increased subscriber use of ‘throwback’ playlists.

Part of why we get comfort from the past is that we see it through rose-tinted glasses. Comparisons (many unhelpful) are regularly drawn between this crisis and WW2. Our national mind’s eye view of the end of the war is the street celebrations of VE day. Many hope for something similar at the end of this period. What we don’t tend to reflect on is the disillusionment and anger many people felt soon after 1945.

While some people cautiously but thankfully dreamt of us building back better, many just wanted done with Britain. David Kynaston’s Austerity Britain notes that in spring 1948, just weeks before the creation of the NHS, a Gallup poll found that 42% of people wanted to emigrate (up from 19% in 1945). We also tend to ignore the post-war resurgence of antisemitism on the streets of our cities, showing that hatred and division can quickly re-emerge.

Turning anger into accountability

It’s hard to know what the exact dividing lines will be this time, but in crises there are always those who encourage working class people to fear one another. White people encouraged to fear people of colour, working people in towns and villages told to be wary of those in cities, southerners to suspect northerners and vice versa, and longer-standing residents urged to fear more recent arrivals. As Kitty Usher notes in her essay, one new split in this crisis might be those furloughed and those not.

We face a double threat here – populists on the right exploiting divisions and some on the left being parasitic on people’s pain. There are some who get excited by a crisis, despite all the human misery, because they see this as a necessary price for change. It’s often not even subtle: at one recent webinar for organisers I heard a left activist happily tell people ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m really excited by all this’. Those don’t feel likely to be the words of someone who spends a lot of time truly listening to working class people.

We need to get past the anger and turn it into a drive for real accountability. The list of policy, societal and business responses needed to do justice to those leaning into risk or having to get by with even less is huge. This collection covers a good number of starting points on wages, job security (see Andrew Pakes’ essay), the strength of our social security (see Ashwin Kumar’s essay), housing (see Rachael Orr’s essay), our approach to immigration (see Satbir Singh’s essay) and much more. This will all be vitally important to honouring the country’s other national debt, but so will ensuring working class people have a permanent seat around the country’s top tables, regardless of which party is in power and whether we are facing good times or bad.

We need much more direct involvement of working class people in the decisions that affect our lives, starting with specific youth assemblies as part of the national commission outlined in the introduction to this collection. At every layer of society – not just in the professions, business and politics but in charities and funders too – we need class inclusion to be a core equality concern.

There is a very real risk an unrepresentative charity sector becomes more distant from the country when the register of which organisations survive is taken (as noted on race by Charity So White). As work we supported young people on last year showed, the current approach of some charities inadvertently alienates young working class people. If organisations in any sector want to build back better they will need to look as much at their own practice as the changes they demand in others. At RECLAIM we’re reshaping our work and are pleased to see a growing number of organisations work with us and the young working class people we support to go on co-discovery processes to work out the specific changes needed in their field.

Finally, we all need to get better at explicitly calling out those that sow division amongst working class communities. Emerging research from the US shows this is the best framing approach to counter hateful populism. This approach means campaigners on economic issues getting more comfortable explicitly talking about race and immigration, rather than always hoping to pivot away from them. This also means helping everyone to feel included by being explicit about how policy ideas deliver for working class people whether white, black or brown, a more recent arrival or someone whose family has been here for generations. Most importantly, to be successful this requires campaigners getting as busy delivering better communication messages to the unconverted as they can be debating how best to fine tune them with the choir.

That we owe working class people is so beyond question it unites the Guardian, Telegraph and FT. This situation is also changing so quickly that it’s hard to know what exact prescription of proposals will do their contribution and sacrifice justice. The only way to know for sure is to have working class people round the table when it’s decided. This should be a central legacy of this crisis, the idea that essential workers are essential voices. Working class people more than have the talent, strength and ideas to finally steer the country they so obviously drive. It’s time for all of us to make it happen.

Roger Harding is Chief Executive of RECLAIM, the Manchester-based charity powering young working class people to change the country today and lead it tomorrow. He is a trustee of Victim Support.

@Roger_Harding

#OurOtherNationalDebt

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wickedbananas · 7 years ago

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AMP-lify Your Digital Marketing in 2018

Posted by EricEnge

Should you AMP-lify your site in 2018?

This is a question on the mind of many publishers. To help answer it, this post is going to dive into case studies and examples showing results different companies had with AMP.

If you’re not familiar with Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), it’s an open-source project aimed at allowing mobile website content to render nearly instantly. This initiative that has Google as a sponsor, but it is not a program owned by Google, and it’s also supported by Bing, Baidu, Twitter, Pinterest, and many other parties.

Some initial background

Since its inception in 2015, AMP has come a long way. When it first hit the scene, AMP was laser-focused on media sites. The reason those types of publishers wanted to participate in AMP was clear: It would make their mobile sites much faster, AND Google was offering a great deal of incremental exposure in Google Search through the “Top Stories news carousel.”

Basically, you can only get in the Top Stories carousel on a mobile device if your page is implemented in AMP, and that made AMP a big deal for news sites. But if you’re not a news site, what’s in it for you? Simple: providing a better user experience online can lead to more positive website metrics and revenue.

We know that fast-loading websites are better for the user. But what you may not be aware of is how speed can impact the bottom line. Google-sponsored research shows that AMP leads to an average of a 2X increase in time spent on page (details can be seen here). The data also shows e-commerce sites experience an average 20 percent increase in sales conversions compared to non-AMP web pages.

Stepping outside the world of AMP for a moment, data from Amazon, Walmart, and Yahoo show a compelling impact of page load time on metrics like traffic, conversion and sales:

You can see that for Amazon, a mere one-tenth of a second increase in page load time (so one-tenth of a second slower) would drive a $1.3 billion drop in sales. So, page speed can have a direct impact on revenue. That should count for something.

What do users say about AMP? 9to5Google.com recently conducted a poll where they asked users: “Are you more inclined to click on an AMP link than a regular one?” The majority of people (51.14 percent) said yes to that question. Here are the detailed results:

This poll suggests that even for non-news sites, there is a very compelling reason to do AMP for SEO. Not because it increases your rankings, per se, but because you may get more click-throughs (more traffic) from the organic search results. Getting more traffic from organic search, after all, is the goal of SEO. In addition, you’re likely to get more time on site and more conversions.

How the actual implementation of AMP impacts your results

Before adopting any new technology, you need understand what you’re getting into.

At Stone Temple Consulting, we performed a research study that included 10 different types of websites that adopted AMP to see what results they had and what challenges they ran into. (Go here to see more details from the study.)

Let’s get right to the results. One site, Thrillist, converted 90 percent of their web pages over a four-week period of time. They saw a 70 percent lift in organic search traffic to their site — 50 percent of that growth came from AMP.

One anonymous participant in the study, another large media publisher, converted 95 percent of their web pages to AMP, and once again the development effort as approximately four weeks long. They saw a 67 percent lift in organic search traffic on one of their sites, and a 30% lift on another site.

So, media sites do well, but we knew that would be the case. What about e-commerce sites? Consider the case of Myntra, a company that is the largest fashion retailer in India. Their implementation took about 11 days of effort.

This implementation covered all of their main landing pages from Google, covering between 85% and 90% of their organic search traffic. For their remaining pages (such as the individual product pages) they implemented a Progressive Web App, which helps those pages perform better as well. They saw a 40% reduction in bounce rate on their pages, as well as a lift in their overall e-commerce results. You can see detailed results here.

Then there is the case of Event Tickets Center. They implemented 99.9% of their pages in AMP, and opted to create an AMP-immersive experience. Page load times on their site dropped from five to six seconds to one second.

They saw improvements in user engagement metrics, with a drop in bounce rate of 10%, an increase in pages per session of 6%, and session duration of 13%. But, the stunning stat is that they report a whopping 100% increase in e-commerce conversions. You can see the full case study here.

But it’s not always the case that AMP adopters will see a huge lift in results. When that’s not the case, there’s likely one culprit: not taking the time to implement AMP thoroughly. A big key to AMP is not to simply use a plugin, set it, and forget it.

To get good results, you’ll need to invest the time to make the AMP version of your pages substantially similar (if not identical) to your normal responsive mobile pages, and with today’s AMP, for the majority of publishers, that is absolutely possible to do. In addition to this being critical to the performance of AMP pages, on November 16, 2017, Google announced that they will exclude pages from the AMP carousel if the content on your AMP page is not substantially similar to that of your mobile responsive page.

This typically means creating brand-new templates for the major landing pages of your site, or if you are using a plugin, using their custom styling options (most of them allow this). If you’re going to take on AMP, it’s imperative that you take the time to get this right.

From our research, you can see in the slide below the results from the 10 sites that adopted AMP. Eight of those sites are colored in green, and those are the sites that saw strong results from their AMP implementation.

Then there are two listed in yellow. Those are the sites that have not yet seen good results. In both of those cases, there were implementation problems. One of the sites (the Lead Gen site above) launched pages with a broken hamburger menu, and a UI that was not up to par with the responsive mobile pages, and their metrics are weak.

We’ve been working with them to fix that and their metrics are steadily improving. The first round of fixes brought the user engagement metrics much closer to that of the mobile responsive pages, but there is still more work to do.

The other site (the retail site in yellow above) launched AMP pages without their normal faceted navigation, and also without a main menu, saw really bad results, and pulled it back down. They're working on a better AMP implementation now, and hope to relaunch soon.

So, when you think about implementing AMP, you have to go all the way with it and invest the time to do a complete job. That will make it harder, for sure, but that’s OK — you’ll be far better off in the end.

How we did it at Stone Temple (and what we found)

Here at Stone Temple Consulting, we experimented with AMP ourselves, using an AMP plugin versus a hand-coded AMP web page. I’ll share the results of that next.

Experiment No. 1: WordPress AMP plugin

Our site is on WordPress, and there are plugins that make the task of doing AMP easier if you have a WordPress site — however, that doesn’t mean install the plugin, turn it on, and you��re done.

Below you can see a comparison of the standard StoneTemple.com mobile page on the left contrasted with the default StoneTemple.com page that comes out of the AMP plugin that we used on the site called AMP by Automatic.

You’ll see that the look and feel is dramatically different between the two, but to be fair to the plugin, we did what I just said you shouldn’t do. We turned it on, did no customization, and thought we were done.

As a result, there’s no hamburger menu. The logo is gone. It turns out that by default, the link at the top (“Stone Temple”) goes to StoneTemple.com/amp, but there’s no page for that, so it returns a 404 error, and the list of problems goes on. As noted, we had not used the customization options available in the plugin, which can be used to rectify most (if not all) of these problems, and the pages can be customized to look a lot better. As part of an ongoing project, we’re working on that.

It’s a lot faster, yes… but is it a better user experience? Looking at the data, we can see the impact of this broken implementation of AMP. The metrics are not good.

Looking at the middle line highlighted in orange, you’ll see the standard mobile page metrics. On the top line, you’ll see the AMP page metrics — and they’re all worse: higher bounce rate, fewer pages per session, and lower average session time.

Looking back to the image of the two web pages, you can see why. We were offering an inferior user interface because we weren’t giving the user any opportunities to interact. Therefore, we got predictable results.

Experiment No. 2: Hand-coded AMP web page

One of the common myths about AMP is that an AMP page needs to be a stripped-down version of your site to succeed. To explore whether or not that was true, we took the time at Stone Temple Consulting to hand-code a version of one of our article pages for AMP. Here is a look at how that came out:

As you can see from the screenshots above, we created a version of the page that looked nearly identical to the original. We also added a bit of extra functionality with a toggle sidebar feature. With that, we felt we made something that had even better usability than the original page.

The result of these changes? The engagement metrics for the AMP pages on StoneTemple.com went up dramatically. For the record, here are our metrics including the handcrafted AMP pages:

As you can see, the metrics have improved dramatically. We still have more that we can do with the handcrafted page as well, and we believe we can get these metrics to be better than that of the standard mobile responsive page. At this point in time, total effort on the handcrafted page template was about 40 hours.

Note: We do believe that we can get engagement on the AMP by Automatic plugin version to go way up, too. One of the reasons we did the hand-coded version was to get hands-on experience with AMP coding. We’re working on a better custom implementation of the AMP by Automatic pages in parallel.

Bonus challenge: AMP analytics

Aside from the actual implementation of AMP, there is a second major issue to be concerned about if you want to be successful: the tracking. The default tracking in Google Analytics for AMP pages is broken, and you’ll need to patch it.

Just to explain what the issue is, let’s look at the following illustration:

The way AMP works (and one of the things that helps with speeding up your web pages) is that your content is served out of a cache on Google. When a user clicks on the AMP link in the search results, that page lives in Google’s cache (on Google.com). That’s the web page that gets sent to the user.

The problem occurs when a user is viewing your web page on Google’s cache, and then clicks on a link within that page (say, to the home page of your site). This action means they leave the Google.com page and get the next page delivered from your server (in the example above, I’m using the StoneTemple.com server.)

From a web analytics point of view, those are two different websites. The analytics for StoneTemple.com is going to view that person who clicked on the AMP page in the Google cache as a visitor from a third-party website, and not a visitor from search. In other words, the analytics for StoneTemple.com won’t record it as a continuation of the same session; it’ll be tracked as a new session.

You can (and should) set up analytics for your AMP pages (the ones running on Google.com), but those are normally going to run as a separate set of analytics. Nearly every action on your pages in the Google cache will result in the user leaving the Google cache, and that will be seen as leaving the site that the AMP analytics is tracking. The result is that in the analytics for your AMP pages running on Google.com:

Your pages per session will be about one

Bounce rate will be very high (greater than 90 percent)

Session times will be very short

Then, for the AMP analytics on your domain, your number of visitors will not reflect any of the people who arrive on an AMP page first, and will only include those who view a second page on the site (on your main domain). If you try fixing this by adding your AMP analytics visit count to your main site analytics count, you’ll be double counting people that click through from one to the other.

There is a fix for this, and it’s referred to as “session stitching.” This is a really important fix to implement, and Google has provided it by creating an API that allows you to share the client ID information from AMP analytics with your regular website analytics. As a result, the analytics can piece together that it’s a continuation of the same session.

For more, you can see how to implement the fix to remedy both basic and advanced metrics tracking in my article on session stitching here.

Wrapping up

AMP can offer some really powerful benefits — improved site speed, better user experience and more revenue — but only for those publishers that take the time to implement the AMP version of their AMP site thoroughly, and also address the tracking issue in analytics so they can see the true results.

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kevinclerk11-blog · 5 years ago

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Cuomo’s L-Train Bombshell: All (OK, Not ALL) Your Questions Answered!

No need for a long, windy intro. We all know that Gov. Cuomo torpedoed the MTA’s longstanding plans to completely shut the L-train tunnel between Manhattan and Williamsburg in favor of a less-intensive proposal that raises a million questions. So here goes…

Wait, so what’s the plan?

Even though the MTA has been working on fixing the Hurricane Sandy-damaged tunnel for three years, Cuomo has jettisoned the full 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week shutdown in favor of a partial plan that would close only one of the two tunnels on nights and weekends and merely patch damaged portions of the tunnel, and mount new cables on the walls rather than painstakingly replace them inside the walls.

For years, the MTA said it needed to replace 302,000 feet of cable, 14,000 feet of rail, plus 15,000 feet of third rail, reconstruct 30,000 feet of concrete ducts, install new tunnel lights, replace pumping equipment, build a substation, replace circuit breakers, repair a fire-protection system, and repair 7,100 feet of concrete that lines the tunnel [PDF]. It is unclear what, if any, of that work will be done.

Cuomo’s engineering consultant, Mary Boyce, dean of the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University, told reporters that an easier plan is possible here because it had been tried in London and Riyadh.

Forgive us if we don’t think much of the Riyadh subway system, which hasn’t even opened yet.

Why did he do it?

There’s lots of speculation, including some that Cuomo wanted to impress 2020 or 2024 presidential voters (which is complete hogwash, given that no Democratic primary voter in Iowa or New Hampshire would ever have said the words, “I was leaning towards Cuomo until I heard that some commuters in Canarsie had been inconvenienced by his decision to repair vital infrastructure”).

Obviously, this is all about Cuomo, as the Times far-from-subtly pointed out: “Mr. Cuomo appeared pleased to have stepped in to save the day,” reporter Emma Fitzsimmons wrote.

Indeed, Cuomo said he believes that straphangers favor a partial shutdown rather than a full one, though polls indicate just the opposite, as the Post mentioned in its editorial.

And Cuomo will definitely see an “L train bump,” judging by the Post’s gushing front page.

Tomorrow’s cover: Brooklyn residents thrilled after L-train shutdown nixed https://t.co/CE6DPkkZWz pic.twitter.com/EvlNQqEoGW

— New York Post (@nypost) January 3, 2019

Who is credible — Cuomo or the MTA?

Cuomo says the Canarsie Tunnel does not need to be shut because all that’s needed is fiber-reinforced polymer to patch it. (Hmm, patching it doesn’t sound very comprehensive.) This decision comes just a few days after Cuomo toured the tunnel with a hand-picked engineering team — and three years after the MTA said the repairs were absolutely essential. Indeed, the agency issued this dire statement two months ago:

The L tunnel – also known as the Canarsie Tunnel – was one of nine underwater tunnels that flooded during Superstorm Sandy in 2012. … The tunnel was flooded with enough water to fill 11 Olympic-sized swimming pools and suffered extensive damage to tracks, signals, switches, power cables, signal cables, communication cables, lighting, cable ducts and bench walls throughout a 7,100-foot-long flooded section of both tubes. Bench walls throughout those sections must be rehabilitated to protect the structural integrity of the tubes.

The MTA and city DOT said the L train tunnel looks really bad. But Gov. Cuomo doesn’t think so. Photo: MTA/DOT

Protect the structural integrity — sounds important, right?

And the MTA’s plan was very detailed because, it said, the repairs were so urgent (see one page of the agency’s handout left).

Independent analysts seemed to side with the MTA. “The repairs are necessary because saltwater inundation in 2012 caused by hurricane Sandy accelerated deterioration within the tunnel,” Crain’s reported. “Temporary work allowed the tunnel to reopen soon after the storm, but conditions continued to worsen.” (Continued to worsen sounds bad, right?)

Meanwhile, Dan Rivoli of the Daily News pointed out that the very part of the tunnel that Cuomo will patch rather than replace caused a subway derailment when it collapsed one time.

A crumbling bench wall in the G train tunnel once caused a derailment.https://t.co/MtwQiZ08EN

Those are the stakes facing L train commuters now that the repairs are a patch job instead of a full renovation.

Here's the exchange with me and the governor on this today: pic.twitter.com/zzzL92ew8Y

— Dan Rivoli (@danrivoli) January 3, 2019

And MTA board member Veronica Vanterpool was stunned to find out about Cuomo’s announcement shortly before it was made, given the supposedly dire condition of the tunnel.

“What are the long-term implications of this decision? Are we just essentially putting a Band-Aid on a problem that has been well documented?” she said, according to amNY.

Riders Alliance Executive Director John Raskin pointed out that the emperor is the one with no clothes in this debate.

“At the end of the day, what riders care about is whether the L train is repaired for the long term, and how much disruption it will take to get there,” he said. “The governor’s plan may or may not work, but you’ll pardon transit riders for being skeptical that a last-minute Hail Mary idea cooked up over Christmas is better than what the MTA came up with over three years of extensive public input.”

And interim MTA board chairman Freddy Ferrer didn’t help Cuomo sound very credible when he told reporters, “You might ask, ‘Well why wasn’t this approach considered earlier?’ The answer is that the integration of these approaches — there are several — and the technology had not previously been applied in the context of a rehabilitation project. It’s innovative, creative and we deem it a sound plan.” (A sound plan? Cooked up in a couple of weeks?)

Who does this help?

Cuomo wants us to believe it helps all commuters.

“You would have roughly 250,000 people who would need a different way to get to work,” he said of the shutdown. Closing the tunnels only on nights and weekends will “be a phenomenal benefit to the people of New York City,” he added.

Judging by the coverage — from NY1’s report of blissful residents of 14th Street to New York Times Metro Editor Clifford Levy’s horrendous tweet — NIMBYs along 14th Street are pleased, as are selfish inter-borough subway riders.

But aren’t we forgetting something…

Who does it hurt?

Almost everyone:

One of the government’s basic tasks is to maintain infrastructure. If, indeed, the Canarsie Tunnel is damaged as badly as the MTA said, failing to fix it now will bring much more pain (and expense) later.

The biggest losers, of course, are the L-train riders who use the train on nights and weekends — which may not sound like a lot of people to daytime commuters, but the L train is one of the busiest lines on nights and weekends. There’s also a class issue, as nighttime riders tend to be working people, as Erwin Figueroa of TransAlt and others pointed out.

As always, poor and POC New Yorkers will bear the brunt of this new "plan" for the L train, as shutdowns during nights and weekends will impact them the most. The bike lanes, busways and longer G trains need to remain as planned. #CuomosL

— Erwin Figueroa (@TransitErwin) January 3, 2019

People who were already using the new protected and on-street bike lanes — and were looking forward to HOV3 lanes on the Williamsburg Bridge — all which may soon be erased because of the “sea change” of Cuomo’s announcement, Mayor de Blasio said. “We’re going to evaluate what [the announcement] means and if we’re going to look at these things in another light.”

People who wanted to reclaim our roadways from car commuters, who will likely again be able to drive over the Williamsburg Bridge in their single-occupancy vehicles and Ubers.

Most important, the MTA’s credibility has now been completely undermined by Cuomo, which is a problem because…

Wait, doesn’t Cuomo need the MTA to look good right now?

The timing of the announcement is a horrendous public relations disaster for Cuomo, who is about to head back to Albany to push congestion pricing to a less-than-enthusiastic legislature. In many interviews with Assembly and Senate lawmakers, Streetsblog has found intense ambivalence among outer-borough legislators, who wrongly believe that many of their constituents regularly drive into the city (very few do, statistics show) and that congestion pricing would hurt working-class people (car commuters tend to be wealthier overall).

So just as he’s about to counter that hemming and hawing with a bold plan to raise $1 billion per year for the MTA, Cuomo basically undermines the MTA’s credibility as a steward of the transit system. Even the spokesman for Mayor de Blasio — who has also waivered on congestion pricing — pointed that out.

“Like everyone else, the mayor thinks the MTA has some real explaining to do about how it has handled this for the last few years,” spokesman Eric Phillips said in a statement that also questioned the MTA’s abilities.

Aaron Gordon of Signal Problems also raised these questions on Friday morning:

I don’t know how the MTA, as an agency, recovers whatever credibility it had left. What happens the next time the MTA determines a major public works project must be undertaken? Who is going to take them seriously? Who is going to defer to their expertise? What does this mean for Byford’s upcoming appeals to the state legislature to give him some $60 billion? Are elected officials going to say “we believed you about the L shutdown being necessary, why should we believe you now?” I suspect Byford will try to spin it as a sign of the agency’s nimbleness and willing to accept best ideas, but I don’t know how that will play.

Will Mayor de Blasio keep the good parts of the L shutdown?

As noted above, the mayor is skeptical that he needs to keep the good stuff like the sort-of protected bike lanes on 12th and 13th streets — which NIMBY groups oppose because they removed on-street car storage — and dedicated bus lanes. Advocates are demanding that the street safety and transit improvements remain, but NYC Transit President Andy Byford said new ferry service would certainly be eliminated.

“Smart transportation plans have been laid in concert with community and elected leaders that should still go into effect, including the transit way on 14th Street, which would serve as a model for improving bus travel throughout the city; experimentation with HOV restrictions on East River crossings; and accessibility and station circulation upgrades at First Avenue, Sixth Avenue, Union Square, and Bedford Avenue,” the Regional Plan Association said in a statement. “Changes like these would improve the commutes of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers and visitors to our city and help our city address pressing transportation challenges.”

Should Andy Byford resign in protest?

Of course he should. Byford was informed of Cuomo’s decision shortly before it was announced publicly, putting him in the position of having to answer for a governor who had just bigfooted him worse than a raging Sasquatch. If Cuomo’s plan succeeds, Cuomo gets the credit. If it fails, Byford will have to clean up the mess.

Poor guy sounds sick and tired. https://t.co/GeCdok9NyE

— Interim MTA Chair David 'Amazon Cuomo' Meyer (@dahvnyc) January 3, 2019

Meanwhile, Byford looks like an ineffective leader just when he’s trying to restore faith in the system he oversees.

He should consider resigning in protest, as Travis Eby, a member of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign pointed out in a tweet.

Everybody working for Cuomo should resign in protest, starting with Andy Byford https://t.co/D6bsv7fsPV

— Travis R. Eby (@travis_robert) January 3, 2019

Oh, and what’s with Clifford Levy’s New York Times Metro section lately?

Before anyone could digest the ramifications of Cuomo announcement, Levy, the editor of the Metro section of the supposedly sober Gray Lady, tweeted, “Brooklynites, rejoice! Cuomo plans to cancel the full shutdown of the L train between Brooklyn and Manhattan.”

It was a weird take from an important opinion-maker — and transit advocates let him have it all day.

You are the head of the metro section and you don’t know this is a Cuomo ham job?

— Cameron O'Leary (@CamtrakAcela) January 3, 2019

“Metro Editor at New York Times” clueless. Makes you wonder how a person gets that job title while not comprehending the issues related to it.

— Thomas (@thomstern) January 3, 2019

Worse, Levy’s Twittergate comes just one day after his Metro section published a story questioning why the Port Authority should continue running the PATH train — which serves 82 million rides a year — because it loses money. The implication that Levy allowed into print is that transit and other infrastructure exists to raise money rather than fulfill its actual purpose: to foster the regional economy. Levy’s Metro section also recently reported on the need for adult crossing guards in Tribeca without even mentioning congestion pricing or holding any politician accountable for allowing suburban commuters to terrorize city pedestrians.

Source: https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/01/03/cuomos-l-train-bombshell-all-your-questions-answered/

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