#I know the company sucked. I know there have been production issues from the start | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sea-jello · 1 year

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Hello !

I saw the ask you got about drama and copyright issues and maybe me feeling dismissive about drama stems from me just having being involved in theatre for years ??? I think casting is bound to cause some drama in the short term but i dont think anything long term will stem from it

Maybe its me being hopeful and having faith that the fandom based around a musical will be understanding of and respectful towards whatever casting decisions are made seeing as thats kinda just what happens in theatre????? Sometimes you dont get the part you want (if you even get cast at all) and it kinda sucks! But there will always be another opportunity. Shows will be put on again, and you never only have just one chance. Sure not getting the part you want is never and its okay to be sad about it, but sometimes someone else just fits the role better and theres not much that can really be done there. Id like to hope that everyone auditioning goes into it w an open mindset and will take whatever part they get w grace and treat casting like they would casting in a more traditional production (<- is a person who hasnt been active in online musical spaces in a few years. Take my words w a grain of salt i might not know what im talking about here)

If it does genuinely end up being a big issue though, maybe we could do smth w a cast a and a cast b ??? So that way more people get a chance to play a major character. It would be a lot more work as far as audio editing goes, but if theres enough of a want for it a second cast isnt impossible or anything. Itd honestly just take a bit more time to get out

As far as copyright goes thats! Iffier. Its weird and its wonky and itd be a bit of a pain but there are ways to deal w it

The easiest and simplest option is to only have the final version available to those who worked on it directly. No promotion, no making it public, just a fun thing for everyone who worked on it (and maybe their friends), and thats it. Itd be unfortunate to make a project like this so limited, but its the legal option that requires the least amount of effort 😔✌️

The other option would be to obtain the rights to put on the musical. I was curious about how much it would cost and after finding the copyright holders and filling out their mock form, it would come out to about 275 USD ????? Which is a lot! Thats a lot of money to pay out of pocket for a project that likely wont be monetized at all!

But, having said that, 275 starts to feel a lot smaller when you take into consideration how many people are interested in taking part. I think you mentioned about 30 or so people filling out the form??? If those 30 people individually contributed 10 USD (which is smth ive actually seen mandatory for a lot of non profit theatre companies and school shows) we would have some money left over even

275 is really only a lot if its just one person paying for it. I do 100% realize that having a cost would probably change this project a bit just by nature of real life money being involved, but i do still want to point out that its an option if youre willing to take it. Also i want to mention that the mock form said real prices might not be reflected. They didnt have an option for digital shows for where itd be put on, so if location impacts it at all 275 probably wont be the final cost 💔💔 (id like to hope the final cost would be lower though since it does assume the show in question is a more traditional in person show :') )

Also actually now that im thinking about it theres a secret third option which would be to combine the two???? Start out w it being just for everyone who worked on it but then put out a little interest check and fundraiser to see how many people would be interested in buying it. Kinda like what some physical print zines do but just w a musical instead! It would require putting a paywall on the final show which would also be kinda super unfortunate and a massive shame, but if enough people are interested its another way to deal w the licensing fees. Also if the project gets more money than the licensing costs maybe the leftovers could be donated or smth. Idk

Copyright is to me a much bigger issue than casting drama could ever be just bc of the legal issues it could bring up, but there are still definitely definitely ways to get around and deal w them ( ^^)b

(Btw @ the anon who kinda got me thinking about this and led me to send an ask in response, this is nothing against you !! I genuinely think bringing up copyright and potential dramas is a good thing to do especially so early on into a project like this. And running into copyright issues specifically could kill this project faster than anything else could tysm for bring that up genuinely :')

Also op sorry for such a long ask orz )

yeah casting will definitely raise some issues but there are after all only 8 major roles, you said it better than i ever will sjdjgkl also this is literally my first online musical space i got into bmc in like MARCH what am i doing

i actually have been thinking about doing an act 1 cast and an act 2 cast, but thats gonna raise the issue of finding two people with similar voices for one character so its not too jarring. we could totally do it but thats just more work for the casting people i feel. i mean if theyre up for it we could, again we'll just wait and see. there probably would be understudies too, and ive been thinking about having multiple voices for small sections of people who were squipped, like rich in the squip song, or jenna and christine in pitiful children/the play, even the creepy stock guy. there will be one "main" actor but maybe understudies will do underlying voices. will be a little more work for the editors so again we'll see

COPYRIGHT here we go. i really dont want to limit this project so the only option would be to pay. i did a tiny bit of googling and "Section 107 of the Copyright Act provides the statutory framework for determining whether something is a fair use and identifies certain types of uses—such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research—as examples of activities that may qualify as fair use." now if we were doing like one song then that would be fine, but we're attempting to remake the WHOLE THING, so i really think we might have to buy the rights which hm. wow.

i dont know if people are willing to pay 275 dollars for something that might not even succeed, so i think if we go through with this then we work on it first and see our progress. if it looks like we might succeed in actually doing the whole thing then we'll set up a thing for people to donate. to my understanding as long as we buy the rights we can release it to the public?? so as long as we get the 275 dollars we can release it, so it wont be only limited to the people who paid. but if we dont get enough then idk what to do with the money. maybe donate it or just wait until we hit 275. or we set a price and give it to the people who paid, sorta like a vip subscription or something

i actually have SIXTY RESPONSES as of now and its been at 60 for a while so if everyone gives 5 usd then we would have more than enough. ofc not everyone would be willing to pay tho so its really a gamble. i checked out the mock form too and are we even able to buy them if we're producing it digitally?? all that about ticket fees and average attendance if we cant even get the rights then theres no way we can release it to the public

im ngl i dont think i can do the actual licensing so we might need someone to handle finances specifically. also im not even a legal adult i really dont know if i should 💀💀 we gotta find someone responsible

YES everybody say thank you to anon for bringing problems up it would be bad if everyone got hyped only to realize we cant even do it

#bmcblr remake #and we REALLY need to prepare ourselves for not being able to do it at all #cause im like genuinely concerned we cant get the rights #if thats the mock form then the official form would most likely be the same right #we dont even have a location are we even allowed to buy them #unless we use danis connections and message joe iconis himself #idk how involved he would be but i think hes probably be pretty involved in licensing right #we're talking about LEGAL stuff and MONEY now this all started from a shower thought how did we get here #dont apologize for long asks!! they force me to think about problems i need to deal with earlier lmao #bmc #be more chill #be more chill musical #bmc musical

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eishtmo · 2 months

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Why Your Inventory Sucked Part 2

One of the positive things about working inventory is all the places I've been. I have seen more of the world of retail than most people even know exist. I've been in the back rooms and break rooms of so many stores I have to remind myself I shouldn't just go back there when I walk around a store.

I've been to warehouses and distribution centers. I counted book fair supplies in storage units, and a pharmacy distribution center with 3 giant round machines to fill bottles. One was a company that sold parts to oil drillers. Another was a warehouse where you could by anything for classic cars from doors to the manuals. I've also been in the backstage areas of amusement parks, and eaten in their cafeterias. I've walked through massive freezers, and sweltered in sheds.

And on top of that I drove to small towns you didn't know existed, down poorly marked roads and close enough to both the Canadian and Mexican border that I could wave to the residents and they could wave back. I drove a lot is what I'm saying. It was an experience I really enjoyed.

PART 2: Bad Accounts

Most inventories can be divided into two groups: Quantity and AQ-1.

Quantity is where you scan the barcode of the item and count how many of those items there are. It's fast, but not necessarily accurate. The accuracy issue is because sometimes two items look the same, may even BE the same, but have different barcodes so come up as different in the system. Otherwise it's just miscounting them.

AQ-1 means Auto Quantity 1. Scan the item barcode and it inputs a 1 for the quantity automatically. It's very accurate, as you do have to scan every bar code, but very, very slow. It's best for stores where nearly every item has a different bar code or they're so mixed there's no way to count them as a group.

Most store are a mix of both, but the majority of a store is either one or the other. But when the wrong choice is made, things go downhill quickly.

I have so far avoided naming stores, not out of any desire to not say, but mostly because it wasn't really important. Here it is important, so let me tell you the tale of Bath and Body Works.

You know the store, it's that hole in the wall mall store that sells candles and lotions that only come in like 4 scents, but have 30 different labels for those 4 scents. You've been in one, likely around Christmas. Now when I started, it was owned by Victoria's Secret, and I know you know what that is. Victoria's Secret is a proper AQ-1 store, as you're not going to open a drawer and have 15 of the same bra inside.

So when it came to BBW, they wanted the SAME inventory done. Now it kind of makes sense. The audit process for VS, which I won't go over but know by heart, is what they really wanted, and the stores had about the same amount of product, so that should be an easy fit, and it'll be accurate too!

Except it was miserable. VS needed 20+ people and 6 to 9 hours to complete, sometimes longer. BBWs are NOT as big as even the smallest VS, so now I'm trying to cram in 20 people into a tiny store to scan every item on a shelf that has 50 of 2 different products on the shelf over the course of 8 hours.. No one liked it, and it took forever. Also we made one hell of a mess because, again, we had to reach EVERY barcode.

They would eventually change it from AQ-1 to Quantity, and the results were immediate. That changed it from 20 people taking 8 hours to 5 people doing it in 4 hours. Hell, I had a store with me and the two worse counters in the office, and still got one done in 5 hours.

Understanding how the inventory is supposed to go is the job of the Account Instructions. This represents the agreement between the client and our company on how the inventory is supposed to go. Usually it contains things like the tag ranges to use, how many people should be there, what kind of audit system to use, what the final reports are to give to the store and weird things that might happen. A well written set of instructions can make an inventory go smooth as butter, and once you've done one a few times, you may never look at them again. Something that happened with VS for me after a bit.

Then there was the Apple Store. Yes, I've done the inventory for an Apple Store. Nothing terrible, it's AQ-1 as any high dollar store like that, and aside from the giant wall of aluminum that made it hard for the scanners to communicate with the laptop, it shouldn't be very hard.

And yet, the instructions insisted on having 2 Inventory Supervisors. This is odd because it's not much of a store. So we sit down to do the inventory and everything is going well until it's time for the audits and they require a special report printout, as per the instructions.

The report isn't there.

In fact, NONE of the reports I'm supposed to print are listed in the the program. There's a lot of reports, but not the ones we need. Now the two of us are pretty smart, and know the program pretty well so we can fudge it, but we're still not getting the reports we need.

Eventually, after bashing our heads against it for a bit we figured it out. The reports ARE there, but they don't have the same names as in the instructions. And that's when we realized why there were two supervisors. With the wrong report names, one IS would spend all their time trying to get the correct reports printed, which made Apple think we were all fire stupid, so they figured 2 would fix the problem.

The worst part is the person that wrote those instructions was NOTORIOUS for bad instructions, often leaving very old, out of date information in them literal years after they were no long relevant. And she resisted changing them. She retired a couple years or so before I left, and I do hope the new account manager could fix the mess.

The worst part about the job was giving bad news. Most stores know what they should have in the building. I often ask because it helped me gauge how long the whole thing should take. My experience also let me figure out how close they would be. The goal was to get within their Shrink, the amount of difference between what's on the books vs what's in the store.

Now I am kind of a wizard when it comes to the inventory program and I could, BUT DID NOT, change the numbers in practically any way I wanted. I had a few people ask me to do this and I had to deny them. But it also meant I can see where the numbers are short, and help guide them to the issues or even catch the mistakes before they even got to the store staff. That said, there were more than few occasions when the answer was bad. If it the product isn't there, going over those numbers again and again is NOT going to make that product appear. If it isn't there, it isn't there

One particular store started pretty rough to begin with. It was being sold off as part a merger agreement between two big corporations. The inventory was part of the sale process. It was raining cats and dogs, and the neighborhood was not the greatest. There was a cop car just parked in the parking lot of the minimall this dollar store was in. I arrive a little early, and since it's a local store, I'm waiting for the rest of the crew to arrive. But the store is locked. The store manager hadn't arrived yet to unlock the door. This is a BAD sign.

The store's District Manager arrives before the store manager, but she doesn't have the keys so we have to wait. He does show, not strictly late, iirc (it's been quite a few years), and the crew, as always, trickles in. The store is a mess to being with, but I tag it up and we get started. As we get to the end though, it's clear the numbers aren't looking good.

Dollar stores typically have between $250,000 to $400,000 worth of stuff in them. It varies on location, size of the store, the type of dollar store, etc, etc, but 300k is pretty common. They gave me this number for this store. The dollar value of the store after the inventory was 200k.

$100,000 dollars short. That's, a lot. Typically stores don't want more than 2.5% shrink, so they shouldn't be more than $10,000 short. Yeah, it was bad, very, very bad. There were a few minor corrections that could have been made (there was a stack of foil pans that was counted as one upc when they should have been another), but the DM and her boss (yeah, HER boss came in), said not to bother.

I couldn't, and by rights shouldn't, fix that. As I packed up the SM was sadly flipping through the final reports. He was already going to lose this store, but I wonder if he was going even have a job after that.

There was another time when I had good news. A truck stop we stopped doing after a couple years, and one I sharpened my skills in, hadn't had a good inventory in a long while. We also had issues even getting an inventory going due to crew issues and such. Anyway, for these stores the DM would basically be the contact person for the inventory.

I'm counting the inside of the cooler and the DM comes in and tells me point blank if this inventory is bad, he'll have to fire the store manager. This was the worse thing he could have said to me because I always strive for accuracy, but now a guy's job is on the line. I could not fake it, even though I could. But I could hunt for product.

Which I did. This store had a map that determined where each tag was set to go, and tagged the store accordingly. As we're going through though, I ask about a door near the food places in the truck stop. It didn't have a tag assignment and looked to be part of the food place. Inside was gatoraid, LOTS of gatoraid, amongst other things, all of it belonging to the store.. Tag and count it. I wondered if it had been missed repeatedly because it wasn't on the map.

At the end the numbers came in, and I was able to give the DM the good news. He thanks me, then promptly calls the SM in and in a stern, you're fucked, voice told him the inventory was fine. He would not be fired. The manager LOVED me after that day, and I generally got stuck doing the entire local chain until they switched to doing it themselves.

Next time, I'll get into the last major category why inventories suck. Until then.

#wis #rgis #inventory #work complaining

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weebsinstash · 1 year

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More Val pls 😭 there’s never enough of him

I like this nasty man an unhealthy amount so I could just spit ball some random concepts I've been having for him

-I've been playing around with the different products and things I do to my hair and it made me think of like, since Val is so materialistic and likes having "pretty company" that he starts obsessing over Reader and their hair. Like, I mentioned before a concept "oh what if Reader's hair or eyes or something on them glowed" cause, you know, hes a moth, and you're just sitting chilling during or after your shift and like, he's on the phone or doing something where you aren't 100% paying attention to him and he just. Reaches over and starts playing with your hair. You're trying not to side eye him and give him weird looks in confusion as he's just casually twisting a strand of your hair around a finger, maybe running his fingers through it, just kind of, all but palming the top of your head. And you can't ask him what the fucking deal is because he's on the phone and you're just a server and you don't want him to potentially give you the pimp hand for interrupting what sounds like a potential business deal (and of course that's his intention). he's just getting his hands and fingers all up in that shit while you can't say anything while he's seeing your hair texture, where your parts are, the state of your hair and your scalp, maybe you catch a scowl or two if you have an issue like accidentally using too much conditioner or he sees any dandruff, making a mental note to "fix you later"

-couple that with another idea of "Valentino making you hate your own hair and maybe since it glows its white or something and one day he EXTREMELY pisses you off and the very next shift you have you slam his drink down on the table 'here you go Mr Valentino ^^' and he looks up and you've dyed your hair jet black and it doesn't glow now and he INSTANTLY drags you to HIS salon and his hair stylist to get all that out of your hair without damaging it (and maybe you even dyed it wrong or with the wrong materials to try and damage it or make the dye permanant on purpose just to piss him off and hope he leaves you alone, which he doesnt)

-Be high maintenance to be low maintenance. He wants to see you all fixed up without garnering animosity from, well, the hoes. Everyone is in the limo and he says some shit like how recently everyone's been earning him a lot of money so he's gonna treat everyone and he's just kind of like "and you can come too I guess 🙄" as if he's just throwing you in there as an extra but in actuality this is him avoiding anyone going "but Daddy why do THEY get XYZ and not me 🥺" because if he could, like, he'd just be a two faced asshole and blatantly pamper you while neglecting his hardest workers like, say, Angel. I've even considered, like, what if Valentino notices huge changes in Angel's positivity and obedience and just overall demeanor after he hangs out with you (because remember, Angel has a little sis who presumably went to Heaven and he misses her a lot) and Valentino kind of makes you two a package deal: if he keeps you happy, you help keep Angel happy and easier to manipulate

-like just imagine Angel is trying to stick up for himself amd tell Val, hey maybe I don't wanna sleep with that john, he's a real fuckin creep, and Valentino just cocks a brow, "oh, you want me to have your little friend do it instead?" And Angel is just alright sir right away sir thank you for this opportunity Mista Valentino 😊 like. Depressing

-another idea I've had is like, what if Valentino actually didn't even really care for you but VOX does and once he starts paying attention to you, it sucks Val in. And this kind of ranges from everything of "you're kind of a gamer/dweeb like Vox and you two click" to "you produce music and Vox is aware of/fan of your stuff, or Velvet is if Reader is like, an idol, because why not for fun lmao" to "you're a chick but you're a little more 'butch and tough' than Val's other girls and he's like a bottom or a switch and he likes that

Like can you imagine like, everyone is in the limo when it pops a tire or some shit and everyone has to get out on the sidewalk, and maybe someone on limo maintenance fucks up and there's no jack, or maybe one of the drivers is too dumb to know how to properly remove a tire, and Vox and Val are just getting progressively pissed off and, there you are, rolling up your sleeves and just, reaching down and, getting the breaker bar to finally spin and loosen the bolts around the tire, or even reaching down and picking up the limo (because really, where is the fun in putting Reader in a world with magic and powers and not getting anything ourselves"

Or someone comes to try and kill Val because he's a gangster and maybe he fucked someone over on a deal and that secret second job I.M.P training of yours kicks in and you practically become John Wick. You do some sly shit like idk catch Vox from falling and tripping or pulling him just out of reach of getting fucked up and all but pull him into a tango dip and maybe to lighten the mood you try to joke around "hey handsome you come here often?" While you're holding him up with your strength like he weighs nothing and he's just PINK and later on he's laying with Val in bed "hey I think I might be bi actually???" while Val pokes and prods to find out who tf he's talking about

-I've thought of really just goofy concepts for fun like, what if there's a dance competition with a cash prize and Reader who is maybe male in this idea is on the downlow but is like a dance major or even a hip hop superstar and he enters the competition and he's nearly in the semifinal round and suddenly the shows like "and for an extra special guest judge today we have the Porn King of Pentagram City, Valentino!!!" and your blood runs cold because like you're not exactly stripping but there have been quite a few dances where you've been dropping your ass a lil bit and being just more than a little zesty and Valentino turns his eyes to you and he's got just the most smug "I caught your ass" smirk on his face. The version of you Valentino knows is blunt and quiet and doesn't talk much, all but over compensating masculinity, and yet here you are, shaking that waist and ass of yours until he wants to squeeze you with all of his hands.

-honestly just concepts in general where Reader turns out to have some sort of artistic gift are fun. Reader is an author and Valentino finds out your porn is actually pretty good, or maybe he's entertained the quiet shy mousey little you had a nasty side, or maybe the numbers you reach on your stuff screams money to him. Or he brings you to a club and the track on the speakers change and your face lights up "oh my god I wrote this!" And its a song from when you were alive and you rush to the dance floor to whip out some choreography way too planned and precise to just be some bullshit you're whipping out of nowhere and maybe even singing as people in the club instantly recognize you as formerly-alive fans

Honestly its a little wacky but imagine the like tonal difference, the dichotomy, the black and white difference of, Valentino being this absolute fucking pervert and you're like this shy not very talkative person and he finds out like you're some poppy preppy bouncy feminine lil idol like some SAYU or Kyary Pamyu Pamyu shit and he's laughing in your face and maybe his pal Velvet comes into the room and her eyes just light up and suddenly she's shoving her phone in Valentino's face to show him your newest hit "Let Me Skip Into Your Heart (And Also Suck You Off) feat. Verosika Mayday" with like 2.5 million views in three months and he's like "ok I GUESS you have SOME talent 🙄" while he's also having an internal battle "wait do I have I new fetish for wanting to rip girly dresses and thigh highs off this bitch 🤔"

Honestly just "Valentino finding out you're a celebrity/influencer" ideas have been kind of fun. Imagine he's just minding his own business and one of his workers is sitting next to him watching something on their phone and he looks over and its a makeup tutorial, by you, or you're reviewing a certain product while making people laugh, or you're doing some like Stanzi Potenza sorta comedy or something, and he glances down to the metrics and likes amd view counts and its huge and he just glances across the limo to you and you're. In your work uniform, hair barely combed, you have some new acne breakouts, you have bags under your eyes, posture is shit because you're exhausted, but, that's definitely you and now he gets to find out the sheer scope of what you've been up to, and maybe becoming a manager of yours in the process

Ive even thought of like, what if Reader offhandedly gave Valentino some business advice and it turned out working really well and he consults you from time to time. Like imagine Valentino is talking business and you're around and he's talking about profits and shit and like, maybe the amount of people who want to sleep with his top earners is down, even not as many people want Angel to satisfy Val's green, and maybe you just kind of offhandedly butt into the conversation without even looking up from your phone "well maybe its because he's a porn star. If you just like created a celebrity or an idol or a micro celebrity or something who was attractive and then you pimped them out in secret it would probably make you a ton of money, like of Beyonce started her career as a stripper that would put a ton of people off but if you told people they could secretly fuck Beyonce the musician they would sell their entire families for it" and maybe that segues into "Reader becomes some sort of idol or entertainer or singer or product for Valentino that he eventually pimps out (or even decides he won't because he's too jealous, you can sing and dance but HE'S the only one you can sleep with)

God I can't wait until Hazbin comes out this year. I HAVE to know what this man sounds like because the voice and finally seeing and hearing his speaking will be everything 😩❤️ or it could backfire and I might not like the finished product as much as the one I've built up in my head but, thems the breaks right?

#yandere stuff #sinprompts

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stumpyjoepete · 2 years

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Don't really want to add more to that thread, so responding to @cromulentenough here in a new one.

From what I hear JavaScript is crap but used everywhere so it's good to know

I recommend using the new ES6 features and TypeScript. I totally hated JS and then stopped paying attention for almost a decade. Coming back to it now, it's actually good. Just assiduously avoid using any of the older misfeatures, and you're golden.

I've heard [Go] described as like halfway between python and c++, is that accurate?

Ehh, I don't think that's a great description, but I kind of get why people started saying that. There was a period of time where, at least as I remember it, there were 3 tiers of very popular languages. C, C++, Fortran, etc. ("low-level", high-performance/control, footguns galore); Java and C# (enterprise-brained, idiomatic code usually not all that fast but also stupidly verbose); and Python, Ruby, and other scripting languages ("high-level", fun to program in, but totally giving up on a lot of performance and control aspects). JS fit pretty squarely in the last category, but it also was extremely unfun.

Since then, there has been a wave of languages that seem "low-level" in certain ways but far less footgunny and more modern than previous options. Examples would be Go, Nim, Zig, and Rust. When Go first came out, people couldn't really gesture towards this grouping of languages yet, so they gestured towards C/C++ (fast!) and Python (doesn't suck ass!), which is kind of meh so far as descriptions go.

Where is it actually used/ what is it good for?

Google "companies that use golang". There are a bunch. Go is generally good for anything where Python or Ruby or whatever was going to be too slow, and people wanted something more productive / less crazy than C or C++, and where they happened to choose Go (rather than something similar). One issue for _any_ high-performance system is the latency spikes that garbage collection can introduce. Go has a major advantage over Java in that they have a much better behaved garbage collector, fwiw, but it's still garbage collected.

From the sounds of things Google uses it?

It's far behind C++ and Java for usage, but it gets used a fair amount. (NB: Don't work there anymore.) Also there aren't really any production services using Python anymore (I think Google Code was the big one for a while?), but there are some production backends written in Go.

Is it a waste of time to be learning it?

I don't think learning _any_ non-joke programming language is a waste of time. Put it on your resume, there are some companies who use it, and if you don't ever use it then whatever, at least you know a language that will make it easier to learn other similar languages.

#programming #stumpy answers

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bitacrytic · 2 years

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You still didn't mention the issue with Apo, the fact people are ignoring how shitty he is treated by his agency is amazing. BoC hasn't RT or mentioned anything where he is involved in his social media, not tagging him, they just posted a video where they tagged the wrong account and YES they know about that account that uses Apo's face to sell products yet suspiciously they haven't done anything about it? If you do not see how the marketing team is burying Apo's popularity is because you really do not care. People are mad about how Apo is again being bullied. Look at the Weiboo issue, their oficcial page turned out to be biased because Bible's gf was behind it. What managing agency allows that? The same people that left out Apo from the book cover, who had made racis remarks, who sexually harrased him, who are friends with people taht started rumours about Apo is in charge of his promo it is not coincidence there. There is probably some entitled people who just care about the ship that is truth but most of the people I've seen really upset is because how they're trying to bury Apo. I work on Marketing and we have to post post post and tag correctly to promote, you do not need to have new material. If they are working you can still use other stuff to promote them like all those brands mentioning them or the awards just mentioning them. The issue indeed is with BoC Marketing team who are in charge of the actors promotion and their personal agenda.

*sigh*

Anon, you said it yourself, people are ignoring what is going on with Apo. I am not BOC's defender. They are not paying me. I try not to expect too much from these companies (or people) because they all suck in one way or another.

But the issue still remains that people are more interested in MileApo content, than anything that's going on with Apo. At least from what I've seen. Which was what I was talking about. The voices calling for justice for Apo are quiet and far-between. I hear more people complaining about the lack of MileApo content than anyone screaming for justice for Apo.

BOC protected Build, so we know it's possible for them to care about their artists. But there have been complaints about the issue with cast members being harrased and BOC being quiet about it. And these are things that we are made aware of, by fans who catch these things for the rest of us. But it doesn't always get to the rest of us.

In fact, some of what you just mentioned, such as the weibo issue and the fake account, I'm only hearing about them for the first time.

Which is why I was having a hard time taking any if it seriously. Some of us don't go on twitter, often. We depend on what we see on Tumblr and Tiktok. And if people aren't getting on BOC's ass for Apo, but are only complaining about MileApo not attending an award show together, what does that tell you? What are we expected to take from this?

#kinnporsche #apo nattawin

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agentbeeswrites · 1 year

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This is going to be a rant about shows being cancelled and the state of streaming services and media.

I'm mad about Warrior Nun being canceled. I'm mad about First Kiss. I'm mad about Gentleman Jack, Legends of Tomorrow (and the whole lot of DC shows), The Owl House, Charmed. Older canceled shows like One Day at a Time, Dark Matter, Wonderfalls, Sweet/Vicious, the Hulu & Freeform Marvel shows (The Runaways, Cloak & Dagger), Teenage Bounty Hunters, Adventure Time, Steven Universe, Wynonna Earp. Carnival. Warehouse 13. STUMPTOWN! I'm never going to stop screaming about the tragedy of that one. There are tons more. I don't have hours to list them all.

It sucks when a good show gets canceled. It sucks when you look for more content, and all you can find is the same show starring the same kind of tough, cishet, white dude that's in its seventh season and has three spinoffs. There is never an abundance of queer content. It feels like there is when we get lucky enough to have multiple shows in a year, but it's nothing compared to cishet content.

Things began to change with Netflix a few years before COVID. I want to point to COVID and blame it for everything, and it certainly did have a big impact on production costs, but the fact is that Netflix (specifically) has been reluctant to have any show last for more than two or three seasons because then it has to pay everyone more. They'd rather cancel and start up a new show.

There's a problem with streaming services and access in general, though. You've probably started to watch an older show on Netflix (one that they license) and found that it would be leaving the service at the end of the month. It might be available on another service, or it might not be available anywhere.

And then there's the issue of licensing.

If you have a physical copy because the company who produced it included selling physical media in the deal or budget for the show, you can always rewatch it and relive the good times. But if it's a streaming-only show, there's a very low chance it will ever be legally sold on physical media.

Remember the Marvel shows on Netflix? I want to own more than one season of Jessica Jones. Guess how many seasons were released on disc? If you guessed "one," then you are correct. Even Daredevil only had two seasons released on disc, and it was a breakout hit.

Remember Wynonna Earp? IDW used Kickstarter to fund the box sets. They didn't even go through a major distributor.

I'll never see Sweet/Vicious on disc. I'll never own She-Ra on blu-ray. The Runaways, Cloak & Dagger (I know it's not queer, but I love that show, ok?), Sense8, Arcane, Dead to Me, Derry Girls, Paper Girls, ALOTO, Gentleman Jack - I'll probably never be able to buy any of them legally.

Yes, I know that the first three seasons of SPOP were released on DVD. Where's the rest of it? Where's my blu-ray release?

The best and worst thing the digital age has given us has been streaming services. You have a huge library of content at your fingertips that can be taken away at any moment.

Just look at the shit show that is HBO Max after the Warner/Discovery merger. Shows are getting cut from that service faster than I can keep track of. Shows that may never see the light of day again (or ever, in the case of per-release properties) because WB/D holds the rights and is shoving them into storage in an attic. We are watching shows become lost media.

I'm getting tired of my shows being canceled. I'm getting tired of them being locked behind one particular service in a landscape where every company has to have its own platform. Streaming was supposed to be the alternative to cable, but they're squeezing us for more and more and giving us less and less for it.

But I'm tired of there being fewer and fewer legal ways to consume content offline. Even in the 90s and early 2000s when shows were cut down at alarming rates, we still had physical media. For example, Shout Factory was well known for putting out obscure or classic shows and movies with a big enough fan base.

(Note to self: buy that Facts of Life set before it disappears for another 20 years.)

We may need to go back to smaller companies making their own content. I don't know. It feels like the streaming wonderland is collapsing, and I don't know what system will rise from the ashes.

I used to joke that knowing me was getting to experience a list of shows that were canceled before their time. It's still true.

#show cancellations #streaming media #lost media #physical media #queer content #it's complicated and frustrating

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havnblog · 2 months

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✉️ To the SigmaOS CEO: This Is What I Don’t Like About Arc’s Direction

I really, really like the Arc browser. But as I alluded to in this post, I have some reservations regarding it, and don’t feel like it’s going in a direction that I like. In the post, I said that I might try SigmaOS again — and I am. 1

I mentioned this in their community Slack, and their CEO, Mahyad, asked me what about Arc’s direction I don’t like. I must say, the dev team seems very active, nice, and open to input! So this post is my reply to his question.

(And here’s a link straight to the TL;DR at the bottom.)

Hi, Mahyad — and thanks for asking! I wrote a blog post called «I Just Want A Nice Browser!», which might give you a hint, heh.

And let me also say that I’m a bit worried about your direction as well — but I’ll come back to that. 😉

Two fundamentals I don’t love, but that I don’t need to go too much into

I don’t love that Arc is built on Chromium — as I think Google has more than enough power over the web as it is.

I’m not against supporting any VC funded company — but in combination with an unclear business model, I become more skeptical and worried if our incentives align. 2

My main issue, though, is regarding AI

3. Focus

From my blog post linked above, in reaction to Arc’s launch of Arc II:

This is the moment I felt the Browser Company and I started to drift apart.

The entire premise of Arc II, is that «browsing the web sucks», so they would like to do it for me. But I don’t agree: I like to browse the web — I just want a nice browser to do it in!

Now, Arc is still a nice browser — and they haven’t stopped shipping new features to make it even nicer. But that direction just isn’t for me. And when dev resources aren’t infinite, focusing on big areas that aren’t for me, is a turn-off. 3

I like small features that enhance the product, like Instant Open. However, and I know I might be in the minority here, I hate Browse for Me. I don’t want the browser to browse for me, pick my sources, and keep me away from what, I think, might be my favourite tech service: Kagi Search. I want a more human web — not less. 4

Now, I do think LLMs, and other modes of generative AI, can be immensely useful. But the market is flooded with ways to interact with them. My personal favourite, is Raycast: Hyper + P gives easy access to a chat, regardless of which app I’m in, and I’ve made some small GPTs to help me with repetitive tasks (like checking how a word is spelled).

Sometimes having the AI know more about the context is useful. For instance, the one in Zed knows my code base. But it has to be quite a bit more useful than just using Raycast, for it not to be wasted dev time that could’ve been used to improve the core app instead! 5 It looks like you have some neat ideas with Aieris that leverages that it knows the web page — and I’m getting access to Airis today, to check for myself. 6 But my fear is that most of the features step so close to Raycast that it, for me, do end up being wasted dev time.

Because while the market for «general access to LLMs» is extremely flooded, the market for «nice web browsers» is far from it. Especially if you, like me, want to stay away from Chromium.

In my mind, there are two different ways companies seem to leverage AI these days:

Trying to be The One Big Portal To Generative AI.

To improve the details of their core product.

As I really like Raycast as number 1, personally, I want most other products I use to focus on number 2. Arc Max features that fit the latter, are things like Instant Open, Tidy Tab Titles and Tidy Downloads. 7

Some other (number 2) ideas for SigmaOS, from the top of my head:

Automatically sorting tabs as subpages might be a bit too much. But maybe you could have the AI «sense» that a tab might belong under another tab or in another workspace, and then display a button? And if you click it, it sends the tab there (hover would show where).

There could also be a button next to the tornado, to do it to every tab. (Need undo for this, though!)

Another use for the same feature, could be in the Mini-window: It could suggest a Workspace to open it in, based on the content. (And if it’s too unsure, it would revert to the default.)

Let’s say you have some text on a website, and you want to search for that somewhere else. Maybe you could select it, hit a hotkey, and it would propose (three?) places to search for it. You should be able to say which services you prefer to search on, and perhaps pin some. (I might pin Kagi, so that that’s always suggested.)

If I select a video game title, it knows that it’s a video game and that I prefer to buy on Humble Bundle or GOG — so it offers to search on Kagi (pinned) and those two.

Now, some might prefer just asking «is this available on GOG?», but I like to actually go to the websites instead, and that the browser makes that easier. 8

A variant could be that when you select text and hit a hotkey, you write something in a text box, and it acts on those two data points. Examples:

I select «Balatro» and type «Humble» = It searches for Balatro on Humble Bundle.

I select «Apple’s DMA compliance» and type «John Gruber», and it searcher Kagi for «Apple DMA Daring Fireball» (or something). The challenge here, of course, is knowing when a name is «a site to search on» and not.

The other way around, would do the same: Selecting «John Gruber» and typing «Apple DMA».

I select «SigmaOS» and types «YouTube», and it searches for videos there.

Oh, and I looove the Raycast practice of letting everything have an alias (keyword) and/or a hotkey. I want this for SigmaOS’ «send to» feature (as I mostly share via Telegram), and would also like it for the feature above. Either because I want to just type «yt» to search on youtube, or set Meh + K to search for a string on Kagi.

Lastly, yet another variant, could be to use it to enhance the Lazy Search: On Kagi, I can use bangs to search on specific sites, like «yt SigmaOS» searches for SigmaOS on YouTube. 9 However, I have to write exactly «yt + string». It would be cool, if all of these, typed in Lazy Search, searched on YouTube «youtube sigmaos», «sigmaos youtube», «sigmaos on youtube», etc.

4. Ethics

Even though I, personally, find generative AI useful, I’m also very skeptical regarding the ethics behind them and if they’re a net good for the web and society. Too many people think that «If you think it’s useful, you must think it’s ethical» or «If you think it’s unethical, you must think it’s useless».

John Voorhees and Robb Knight make some great points in the latest episode of the Ruminate podcast (Full of Spicy Takes), and Matt Birchler also says stuff I agree with here.

These models are worthless without other people’s content and hard work, but become very valuable with it. Then it simply feels wrong that they can take this content without it benefiting the creators. And «no», I don’t care whether it’s technically legal or not.

Personally, I’d love to use image generators for my blog posts — but I’ve landed on that being too unethical for me. But as mentioned, I do use LLMs — but I’m also unsure about that. I do try to be mindful about how I use it, though. 10 And I want the implementations of tools to be as positive as possible — both for the web and the greater world and people it in. I don’t want them to make it too easy for practices like gunking up search results and platforms, or ruin the livelihood of creators. And I think that Arc (and things like Perplexity) are doing too much of the latter.

Things like Browse for Me, are trying to replace me going to the places where it got the information. And, I mean, you have to be pretty naive to think that this 5-Second Preview feature benefits Our Escape Clause:

.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container video { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }

I absolutely don’t buy that this would lead to more clicks, because «the preview would make people more intereste». On Hard Fork, the CEO of Perplexity said that they were trying to cite more sources, and that if your name often came up as their sources, that would increase your credibility and recognition. How that, in turn, would pay for your mortgage (when Perplexity just gives users all your content), he didn’t mention.

I wholeheartedly belive that stuff like this, if left unchecked, will drive content creators out of business and drive a large portion of the content that’s left behind paywalls. And both will hurt the web.

So, while I disagree with Arc, in that «browsing the web sucks» — their products are starting to do their part to make it more true.

TL;DR:

So, I already didn’t like that Arc was built on Chromium and was VC funded without a business model.

But, from a user perspective, I don’t like that they’re moving the product to focus on stuff I don’t want — and I think that focus has questionable ethics and is hurting the web.

Please don’t do this, Mahyad. 👆🏻 If you’re going to implement AI into SigmaOS, do it in a way that doesn’t remove focus from it being a nice web browser for actually browsing the web. 11 And don’t do it in a way that hurts the real people making content and making the web a great place.

I like it pretty well so far! ↩︎

I would prefer to use a browser that only had one incentive: Being so good that I want to keep paying for it. I hope this can be SigmaOS. ↩︎

As I have the impression that you guys over at SigmaOS are a smaller team than Arc’s, this is extra important. ↩︎

Kagi’s Small Web initative, is a great example of a company that do make AI features also promotes a human web. ↩︎

I actually don’t really use the one in Zed - as there’s value in having muscle memory, that to me, outweights the benefits of Zed’s implementation. ↩︎

Even though I sometimes feel sumarisers can make the web «less human»… ↩︎

Which I wouldn’t mind you copying!

↩︎

This is also due to the ethics, which, spoiler, is my next big heading. ↩︎

And it also works on mobile and no matter which browser I’m in! I can also make custom ones. ↩︎

For instance, even though I’m not a native English speaker, I don’t use it to auto-translate stuff. ↩︎

Because SigmaOS is one of the nicest out there! ↩︎

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daveinediting · 9 months

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I can't tell you that every production team, every production company, embodies a healthy creative work environment.

Heck, I can't even tell you that every mom 'n pop, every small company embodies a healthy work environment.

And don't even get me started on corporations.

What I will say is that I've met kids embarking on their careers who believed they made a terrible mistake. Who believed they chose the wrong career. When, in fact, what happened is that their first job involved working for people who are without. Who are not leaders or team builders. Who don't know how to communicate or get the best work from other people. Whose skill set is terribly sketchy. Who don't, if you haven't guessed it yet, don't actually know what they're doing.

It's not an obligation, by the way. We aren't at all forced to assume that authority and ability are characteristics that are inherently locked together. Because sometimes they're not. And when they're not, you often find a work environment that's not suitable to any serious professional's time and effort. You find that some workplaces, like certain bosses, are unworthy stewards of our time and abilities.

Only...

Kids starting out their careers don't necessarily know that.

In my career, I had the distinct, well... I got lucky. I met the right people and went to work for them. Small companies, all. Except for the one big company where dysfunction abounded but I was largely working within a good team.

The dysfunction was breathtaking, though. Serious anger management issues that really do undermine authority. Straight up toddler tantrum behaviors. Actual conduct unbecoming anyone who strives to call themselves professional.

But me? I always had good role models. Great role models and colleagues. I didn't realize it at the time, but my early career experiences fundamentally shaped the professional I am and continue to be today.

Whereas...

Whereas a lot of the people who grew up in dysfunctional work environments have anger issues to this day. And that anger absolutely compromises judgment, wisdom, executive function, clarity, and problem solving.

Plus, these people suck to work with. No matter how talented they're apt to be.

Let's be clear: there is such a thing as healthy and unhealthy work environments. And if you think that healthy means coddling... you most likely have no leadership skills and shouldn't actually be working with, you know, people.

Because failure.

Because in my field, at least, failure is when you miss the deadline. And when a deadline's missed the efforts of everyone involved have just been wasted.

Failure also breathes its fire when a team effort produces what everyone—and I mean everyone—recognizes to be mediocre work. Basically, it's seriously hard work, enthusiasm, frustration, anxiety, and exhaustion that produces something that's meh.

In both cases, the efforts are rendered meaningless. Just—

Meaningless.

So yes. The people we work for and the people we work with, profoundly affect the quality of our work and how we feel about our work. Which means some people are right for us, professionally. And some people are simply not worth our time. They can't be allowed the influence.

Now, corporate managers like to think that saying "It's not personal. It's just business." functions as an iron clad rationalization to ease the betrayal of being let go. And I understand that, of course. Corporations aren't about individuals. They're about scale. They're monoliths that move where they will, as they will, when they will. And collateral damage, chaotic messes, and broken trust, are simply factored in.

It's not personal.

It's business.

You understand, right?

Only... this is not the sound of anyone who's remotely invested in you or your career.

It's just business.

If that sounds harsh, well, I've heard the "it's not personal, it's just business" schtick live and in person as I learned which colleagues of mine had just been fired. And then most recently a client for whom I create content was left hanging through sheer benign neglect by a corporation. Not surprising, of course, because the relationships of corporations with people outside those corporations isn't of the same quality, intention, and commitment as the relationship between two professionals.

Relationship?

Sure.

How they work together. How they cooperate, collaborate, communicate. There's a difference you can tell, is my point. There's a striking difference between working with someone who works for a corporation and... working with someone who works for a small company or as a sole proprietor.

I'm not outraged at the difference, by the way. What I am is judgemental. Not only because benign neglect is a bad look for anyone but because it's simply unprofessional. Straight up unprofessional. Because again. Authority and ability don't go hand in hand. And large numbers work against being an essential part of something, being connected to a larger purpose not just serving one, or feeling like you're growing as a professional.

Growing.

As a professional.

Lemme reel this back in, though.

How we begin our careers is crucial.

Who we begin our careers with...

Also crucial. The same crucial.

I was reminded of this truism this weekend during the 48 Hour Film Project as I worked with the team I was asked to join a coupla years ago as editor.

As I said before, I can't tell you that every production team, every production company, embodies a healthy creative work environment. What I can tell you is that for most of my adult life I worked for companies that do embody healthy creative work environments. And the weekend we just navigated is yet another example of that.

For starters, the professionalism, experience, wisdom, and ability of the people at the top are beyond question. The mastery and experience of the people leading each area of production is also beyond question. As well, an online communication app functions as the connective tissue for the entire crew from pre-production to production to post-production and on through marketing and promotion. Every member of the team is connected in real time in this way and can be involved at times in areas outside their own. Similarly, the resources of the entire crew can be leveraged for needs like locations, costumes, props, even film titles to name a very few.

Also, in general terms, the full crew is of a type: hard working, enthusiastic, of good humor, and completely engaged in the process from beginning to end. Even as the film's completed by only three members of the team while everyone else takes a well-deserved rest on the last day of the competition, there remains broad appreciation for the now completed shoot... as well as hope for two things: that all is going well in the edit suite and that the finish line will successfully be crossed on time.

Basically, that their efforts have meaning. That their work will be bad ass.

And oh yeah do I feel that.

My point though, is this:

Everyone. Every person who wants to participate in the creative industry in which we work should have this experience. Yes we all work the 48 without pay. But the effort we invest buys each of us a model of how the collaborative process of making a film—any genre of content, really—how that process can work.

And how it should.

It should be the rule not the exception that each of us, professionals to a person, but especially those of us just starting out... each of us should have the experience we're gonna chase for the rest of our careers right up front. Each of us should have a thorough taste of the best our careers can be first. So that we, without question, without doubt, know what it is we're chasing and the kind of people we absolutely wish to chase it with.

Also, though...

So that we know what it is we should avoid at all times. Along with the people we need not include on our professional journey.

Of course your path is not my path just as mine isn't yours. But for sure we should, as much as humanly possible, strive to surround ourselves with people who not only challenge but help us to be better than we are right now. Full stop.

Surround ourselves.

With people.

Who not only challenge us.

But help us to be better.

Than we are right now.

Because that's how you build a career that lasts a lifetime.

☺️

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papirouge · 1 year

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Hi again this is contact allergy anon from before ☺️ I want to say thank you and merci so much for your info!! It’s helping me so much!! I wanted to ask if you knew about metals too? I know my gold allergy might not even be one. Could be nickel that’s causing issues but I also want to be safe for the future. Is silver or platinum good metals? I know to stay away from white gold since it’s expensive to maintain.

Also omg I just watched your vid on your collection coming up and omg you sound so sweet! You have the best accent and I can’t wait for it!!!! 🥰 will you be making scarves sometime in the future? Or beanie hats for the winter? Sorry to keep asking but thank you for answering!! 🙏😭💕

kdkakdkfek "allergy anon" 😭 hiiii

Sorry but not really educated about metals, it wasn't part of my curriculum in fashion school. We had a few classes about jewelerly so it explained how jewels were put into metals for necklace or ring but we didn't dig about the different properties of metal, their care, etc..

I also don't wear jewels (I just have a small cross necklace that u can see in my brand intro video lol). Maybe I'm insane but I'm not comfortable with the feeling of wearing metals (rings especially). I cringe whenever I see people washing their hands without removing their rings for example lol

And thanks for your comment about my video!!👉🏾👈🏾🥺💙🇫🇷 I was sooo stressed but I'm glad I could make it. I took the resolution to get out of my comfort zone and try news things. I am done of being the witness of my own life, I want the acting part now. I took plentiful of online classes on marketing and vlogging and they are all agreeing on the faxt that the first things we're going to put out will NEVER be perfect or 'great' but we have to start somewhere, bc ultimately we will inevitably improve. I'm slowly getting my hands on video recording and editing (I love it so far) but I need to pull out more to keep getting more comfortable. I already started to shoot another sequences for thz the next video ✌🏾

It's funny that you're talking about knit apparel (beanies, scarf) because knitting are my favorite clothing (I'm often cold lol) but they are a whole different category compared to woven fabric. Basically woven fabrics can be cut and sewn, but knit have to ve knitted which needs an actual production line dedicated into making the specific products you want (knitting is quite complex in that you can have totally different results with the different type of stitch techniques, fibers that you use, etc... So it needs quite a long sourcing & prototype testing process) . Since @atelierpapirouge is a single operated company (me) it's impossible I can order the minimum amount of quantities for them to start off the production (some companies won't produce anything below 1000 units for example). That's that problem with today's clothing industry : the scale of production are now so big that it's impossible for small designer to find a range where they can operate in small(er) quantities at an affordable provide..... And the only companies making lower scale of production are......you name it : IN CHINA!!

So for now, I'll stick to woven fabric, but developing knitted products is definitely a long dream of mine🤍

I also want to thanks all the people who like/reblog/comment my posts on my brand & on my side boog @atelierpapirouge - it really means a lot🤍 I suck at sharing but the last few weeks have been very difficult and working on this has been a solace in my life🌞 seeing you all cheering me on this venture truly helps me in building self confidence and hope for my future, so thank you all🤍🤍🤍

#answered #my work #fashion industry #personal

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plates-of-meat · 2 years

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DANE BACHMAN INTERVIEW - JUNE 2019

Hi Dane, welcome to Plates of Meat -

If I’m being honest I don’t know much about zines or about like, the fetish scene, but I’m exited…

Good ! Well - I am a big fan

Well that’s awesome - why ? Hahaha I have 45 monthly listeners on Spotify - so I’m glad you enjoy !

Have you always been a music guy?

Well, I started out doing film, I think I want film to be the main thing - I mean if music takes off I would love that too - but when I was like 11, I was really into Greenday - I wasn’t cool enough to be into punk music but I was just cool enough to be into pop punk music, and I liked American idiot , so I wrote this rock opera.

Now I was like 10 or 11 so it sucked - but I wrote all the lyrics and played the guitar, I mean it went nowhere - but when I was 16 I had all this angst, so I started recording all my problems, and somehow, in recording it helped to solve them. And every time I had a new existential nightmare I would write it out and figure it out that way…

So you’re a storyteller?

Yeah, I don’t like making an album that’s just a collection of songs - I don’t find that very fun. Mind you no one wants to really sit down and just listen to a concept album - the last album I made was just Mac Demarco, slacker rock kinda shit that teenagers can just play and vibe to, just in an attempt to gain some listeners - and it worked but it wasn’t fun to make so I think I’m going to stick to concept albums from this point on..

So when you made the Presidency of Dane Backman -

It’s Bachman.

Bachman - like Bach?

It sounds like Bak - I don’t know, its German haha.

But yeah, your Presidency album,

Right ! So yeah, I don’t have a studio, I just make them on my laptop in like a year - so I wrote and recorded those songs in like my senior year of high school and then I released it about a year ago , so by the time I released it I wasn’t into those problems anymore - I mean no one really listened to it anyway -

So you move from folky to rock to pop throughout the album - do you use specific motifs in terms of your music or your films?

Well yeah! I’m working on this album right now, called radio roam, I started recording it a year ago and I don’t like it anymore, its like a concept album and I don’t feel like it anymore - but each song is like a different style or genre throughout the 20th century, so one is synth, one’s a rap song, one’s like a punk song - and part of its point is to tell the story of how I view America. I’m very interested by America - it’s got it’s issues but it’s interesting - and I find that all genres of music have their own flavour, especially when trying to explain such a crazy place … it’s cool, you know?

Yeah!

I mean Boneless chuck is my most folky song, its got the most listens on Spotify - but like I was playing it at a steak house a couple weeks ago and I had to stop half way through because I was so bored - I think my biggest issue is the length of my songs - I got to realise that no one wants to listen to shit if it’s like 20 mins long.

So you’re also in a film making group collective?

Oh our local production company? Its in its very early stages.

So does collaboration interest you ?

Oh that’s a thing… I mean my sisters an amazing singer, and I have some really talented friends - but in terms of the writing I feel very solitary - that might sound arrogant, but music is like therapy for me so it feels weird to me to open that up at this point…. I mean I think our generation gets a bad rap, like I think often the older generation thinks we’re lazy and perhaps like there’s no more raw talent out there, but I look around at the people I know and I’m like - this guy knows how to shread on guitar, and I know so many incredibly writers, musicians and filmmakers - I just think everybody’s a little underground…

Do you have a particular affliction with New Orleans ?

I mean I took a trip to Austria, and everyone was like ‘oh, you’re from New Orleans, that’s the crazy city’ - and I get it, I think New Orleans is the most creative city I’ve been to in America - I mean its hot and we’re sinking into the ocean and everyone is into something - there’s a dude playing trumpet on every third street - everyone’s drunk - I mean I love it - it’s awesome, I would encourage everyone to visit it one day !

Is there anywhere else that you’d ever like to live?

I’ve been to Europe , but after like a month I missed Walmart and McDonalds - I mean they had McDonalds, but like my McDonalds where you know you’re going to die of heart disease. I’d like to live a month in different cultures I think that’d be the way I’d go. But I definently want to leave New Orleans, because I hate the heat - I’d like to move to the mountains.

And your creative process ?

Well, I’m surrounded by people all the time who don’t wear their heart on their sleeves - there’s just a lot of pretending- so I find it hard to finds art that speaks to these deep desires people have - in the negative or the positive - like the negative being ‘I don’t want to sound crazy’ and the positive being ‘I don’t want to sound cheesy’ - I like to think of my music as depressingly negative but outweighed by the positive.

I thought about this the other day - my friends aren’t really my friends they’re just people I get together and complain with - god I love them!

I just see a lot of people hiding their emotions - negative or positive, and I kind of want to mine it, I don’t know… I think about lawns a lot in my music. To me a front lawn is pretty interesting - you can tell a lot about a person by their lawn, some are perfect and you think ‘is that person happy or are they faking it, or maybe they just wanna put in the effort’ and then there’s those ugly decrepit lawns and you think ‘maybe their lives suck, or maybe they have better shit to worry about’ - that’s where I get my inspiration - why make art about stuff people already know about ? I want to know about your lawn…

What, in the UK? I don’t really know about the front garden culture, my front garden is rubbish - I feel like a lot of people piss in front gardens.

Really?

Yeah, I mean I certainly have, not enough public pissers.

Gross.

Do you mind if I ask about the creative influence within your family?

I mean I mom’s a writer, but she was my mom for many years before she was a writer you know? My dad used to play piano but he never did anything with it, and my sister’s a singer but now she’s doing science and math - I don’t know… there’s not too many creative people within my family. But everyone has their thing !

But the way my parents spoke when I was a kid was very romantic, they speak with grandeur, they’re very expressive and opinionated - it made me feel like everyone spoke in an opinionated, romanticised way and I think that’s part of the reason I love storytelling.

When you where little who was your cartoon crush ?

Oh ! I have no clue! - I was super into Marylin Monroe, but also the girl on the cover of GTA 5, and that supermodel girl with the iPhone was super hot…. When I was super little, the girls from Indiana jones - the girl lion in the lion king too

Oh nala?

Oh yeah ! Super cute, Snow White - in the original Disney film

I though you were going to say space jam ?

Oh Lola bunny? Not so much, she was weirdly too sexual for me, but you remember who framed Roger rabbit?

Oh Jessica Rabbit?

Absolutely…

Hot. What are your 2020 goals ?

I’m making a movie! And I also have two albums that I’m pretty much done with - I mean they’re probably not going to do anything - the no 1 goal to get it all finished and just being a little bit happier, lots of anxiety about the future.

What are your films about?

A big thing for me is romanticism… the main problem for me right now is nihilism, people sitting around waiting for some kind of answer, and I think that somewhat comes from the lack of religion in a modern society, like back in the day it was a clear list, do this this and this and you go to heaven - but now, we don’t have that as much you know? At least a lot more of us don’t have a god to judge us, so I think we’re not filling that space with anything - so I’m filling it with beauty and love and simple everyday things - that’s my niche, - I mean I’ve tried to write things about something not that but it’s not it for me … I think we need the real; ‘life is kinda shit’ but it’s good too, there’s beauty in a lot of shit.

Kinda like Camus’ Absurd Hero?

Yes! Exactly, like the stranger but less people drinking wine, more people skateboarding and yelling

Oh like Spiderman 2 ?

Masterpiece.

So for your music videos,

So for me, the videos have to match what the album’s about and the videos for Boneless Chuck and Skin, I wanted the videos to match the themes of the album so I storyboarded them but my friend Jake is super talented and he helped me shoot them. I mean I do write my albums as if they’re movies, I love dialogues - like old rap albums in the 90s were very full of skits - that’s cool.

Well that’s the extent of my planned questions - is there anything you’d like to say to the British youth

I don’t know much about the British youth, do y’all have Walmart

We do not.

Ok ! Well, you must see a Walmart Supercenter one day - it still blows my mind -

Thank you very much for your insight and your time.

0 notes

mostlysignssomeportents · 3 years

Text

Biden admin orders an end to surprise billing

Of all the dysfunctions of the famously cursed US healthcare system, few are so obviously a total scam as “surprise billing.” Here’s how that works: you go to a hospital (often its ER) that is covered by your insurer, and then, despite this, you get a giant bill. Surprise!

How can a hospital covered by your insurer hit you — and not your insurer — with a bill? Simple. A private equity company has convinced each of the medical professionals you interact with to secede from the hospital’s payroll and form an LLC.

The hospital contracts with your anesthesiologist’s LLC, your trauma surgeon’s LLC, the radiologist’s LLC — sometimes the WHOLE ER is amputated from the hospital and then grafted back on in LLC form, under contract to the hospital as a standalone independent business.

Your insurer has a deal with the hospital, but all of these artificial persons that have been Frankensteined together by private equity have no deal with your insurer. What’s more, they can charge many multiples of the “negotiated rate” for your care and bill you for it.

So after the ambulance brings you, bleeding and unconscious to the hospital and you wake up and ascertain that they lucked into bringing you to an ER that has a deal with your insurer, you’re still in for a surprise. Surprise!

The surprise keeps on coming. First you get a bill from the ER itself as a “facilities fee,” like the cover charge at a bar, except it’s hundreds or thousands of dollars and it applies whether you got any care at all.

Then you get the radiologist’s bill, which might be $12 or $200, depending on some invisible, inscrutable negotiation between their LLC and your insurer. Then comes the aneasthesiologist. Then the orthopedist.

Despite outward appearances and the sign over the door, the hospital isn’t a unitary entity. It’s a colony organism, a kind of rich Galapagos of intertwined, symbiotic, standalone entities that somehow produce care as an emergent property.

It’s like a hollow, rotten log, teeming with independent, variegated lifeforms that trickle bills into your mailbox without end, for months after your trauma, adding up to hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.

Even the $12 invoices take an hour to pay as you set up an account with the exotic payment processor that contracts with the chiropodist’s LLC, whose website and phone-tree were designed by a GPT-3 procedural dungeon generator.

This is a system of absolute and manifest terribleness, and it’s also illegal. US medical practices are legally required to be run by licensed doctors, but the doctors who get sucked into these scams quickly discover that they’re only nominally running the business.

The PE “investor” actually calls the shots, and any doctor “owner” who bucks the system gets fired from their own medical practice.

This worked well for PE companies during the pandemic, as they raked in millions in federal PPP loans while slashing doctors’ pay and denying medical staff access to PPE.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/04/what-wall-street-doesnt-want-you-to-know-about-hospital-emergency-rooms.html

All attempts to end surprise billing, were sabotaged by the PE giants who created it — Blackrock, KKR and co. They were long on surprise billing and spending millions to keep the racket intact was a rational investment.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/21/pluralist-a-daily-link-adose-21-feb-2020/#sickening

Surprise billing was a 2020 election issue. The same PE-backed LLCs (who’d cut doctors’ pay and demanded billions in bailouts) found vast sums to spend on astroturf campaigns where “patients” insisted surprise billing was great, actually.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/21/all-in-it-together/#doctor-patient-unity

And they pumped huge amounts to support the campaigns of ghouls like Richie Neal, whose progressive primary challenger was sidelined via a homophobic smear campaign, and who rode to office on promises of maintaining surprise billing.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/13/youre-still-the-product/#richie-neal

For those of us who despaired of ever being shut of this predatory scam, the news that the Biden administration is issuing an interim order barring surprise billing could not be more welcome.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/07/biden-administration-issues-interim-rule-barring-surprise-billing.html

“[The rule] bars surprise billing for emergency services and high out-of-network cost-sharing for emergency and non-emergency services… out-of-network charges for ancillary services like those provided by anesthesiologists or assistant surgeons…”

https://www.modernhealthcare.com/finance/cms-bans-surprise-billing

But the rule still offers a chance to do some price gouging. It follows the contours of the No Surprises Act (which passed the House in Dec 2020), “with baseball-style arbitration to settle payment disputes between providers and insurers.”

We got hit by a wave of surprise bills last year after our daughter broke her wrist, with dozens of bills totalling thousands arriving in the mail for months after. The experience prompted us to switch from Cigna to Kaiser in January.

Kaiser is as close to the Canadian and British health care I used for most of my life, but every now and again you’ll get a reminder that the best for-profit health-care in America is much worse than the state-run care elsewhere.

Just yesterday I got a letter from a private insurance investigator deputized by Kaiser to investigate the circumstances of an “injury” I experienced to see if someone else could be sued or threatened to pay for the resulting care.

Not only is this seven kinds of fucked up, but I don’t have a knee injury. I woke up with a mysterious pain in my knee, and, after it persisted for a week, I had a telephone call with a Kaiser doc to determine whether I should be worried. He said it was fine.

The letter from Kaiser’s bounty-hunters was plastered in dire warnings to the effect that I’d lose my health care if I didn’t cooperate with them in their hunt for someone to terrorize into recouping the cost of this phone-call.

Ladies and gentlemen, the efficiencies of the free market.

An executive order is a nice start here, but we need actual legislative reform.

#pluralistic

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quellmythirst · 2 years

Text

House Hunting Part 12

Summary: You are the youngest child of Frank and Maria Castle. Your dads best mate offers to help you find a new place in the city. The only problem being you’ve had a crush on him since forever.

Pairing: Castle!Reader (you) x Billy Russo

Words: 2.7k

A/n: hahaha, where do I even begin? So this chapter was not this long before I swear. But some lovely human got me a subscription to Quinn and my horny brain took over. I hope you like it.

Warnings: Big ol’ age gap, dad’s best friend, daddy kink, teasing, smut, alcohol, swearing, violence, dirty talk. 18+ ONLY MINORS DNI

Part 11

When you woke in the morning you were alone, Billy must have snuck out sometime while you were asleep. Wrapping the blanket around you, you made your way into the kitchen to make a coffee. Only to find the entirety of squads 8 & 7 in Billy's living room huddled together over the coffee table. Erica was the only one standing, leaning casually against the kitchen counter with your suitcase resting against her thigh. "Here ya go," she said, taking the bag and wheeling it towards you, " I just got some essentials, should do you for a few weeks,"

Those essentials consisted of mostly yoga pants, bike shorts, shirts and products. Fuck, this girl was a blessing, in more ways than one. She was also excellent movie company. When Billy and your father were planning whatever they were planning, she made a point to include you in the conversion or even so much as just sitting and talking to you about the weather. It gave you a sense of normalcy in a world that had become much too intense for your liking.

As the first week dragged on you and Erica had made headway through most of the romantic comedies on Netflix and had started a Lord of the Rings marathon when your phone buzzed.

Bo- hey, haven't heard from you in a spell, you alright?

You- been better, how did things go the other night?

Bo- Tilly? She's great. We're going for coffee tomorrow if you wanna come and actually get to know her.

You- I'd like that, but can't right now. Maybe in a few weeks.

You felt Billy's eyes on you as you texted Bo and just smiled at him. He glared back at you, his eyes switching from your to your phone. You don’t want him to worry, so you send him a quick text.

You- I think Bo is in love.

Billy- Not with you I hope

You- remember that girl? The stunning brunette from the club?

Billy- as long as it's not you. He smirked up at you, winking at you when your father turned around, he nodded. Apparently approving of this conversation now that he knew Bo wasn’t a threat.

You- What’s she like??

Bo- Smart, hilarious, quick witted. Her melodic French accent shoots right into my heart every time she speaks. I mean, you saw her. She's hot as fuck. She’s got this smile, it’s just- Wow

You- Oh, my god! You really like her.

Bo- Yeh, I’m gunna play it cool. Totally chill about it and all that.

You- How many times have you seen her since you met?

Bo- Everyday

You- Yeh, dude. Really cool. Totally relaxed and chill vibes from you.

Bo- just let me know when ya free, I think you'd like her.

You- Will do. I can’t wait to actually meet her. Have a good time. 😁

“Who you texting?” Erica asked, as Gimli swore his axe to the fellowship, “a boy?”

“None of your business,”

“Oo tell me about him,” she said, sitting up closer to you on the couch so you could whisper without being overheard. You saw Billy shake his head at you both from the corner of your eye and turned to stick your tongue out at him.

You fill her in on most of the details about Bo, leaving out the parts about Billy and focusing on how you set him up with a random girl at a bar and they seem to be hitting it off.

“So what you're saying is, you're a matchmaker,” she smiled excitedly, “you should set me up with someone,”

“I don’t think you’ve ever had an issue finding a date in your life,” you giggle.

“Yeh, but those guys always suck,” she pouts at you.

“Tell you what, when I'm aloud to leave you and I will go out and we'll find you someone,”

“Pinky promise?” She said holding out her pinky for you,

“Pinky promise,” you agreed, linking your fingers together.

With your father now an ever present person in the apartment, tension was building between you and Billy. Only ever getting a moment alone every few days and even then it was only seconds before Lt Castle was upon you. For such close quarters you hadn't felt further from Billy in months. The only contact coming from stolen kisses in the bathroom or when you knew Frank was distracted. After the first night Billy never came to your room, he said you were lucky that Frank was so tired and didn't come to check on you until after he had snuck out. So, for now the feel of his hand grazing on your ass when he walked behind you, your own brushing his when you stood next to each other. It was scraps of the meal you knew he was.

Another week passed and the days were getting even more boring with Erica being put on guard duty downstairs, the other members of the squad labeled her to distracting. Which meant you were having to much fun while the rest of them just glowered in the corner. Boyd was so serious and his relief guy Erik, second in charge of squad 7 wasn't much better. They were both very handsome, the whole tall and built like brick wall thing, but there was a much more appealing man for you to ogle. Who for the last week had been walking around his apartment in his loose grey sweatpants. But it was that fucking smile he gave you when ever he caught you looking that was the real killer.

Deciding you were nearly bored to death, you send a text to Erik asking him to bring some shopping with him on his next shift.

He arrived only a few minutes late at 5:35, groceries in hand as he placed them on the counter. “Everything's here, though I don't know why you need all this stuff,” He said, shaking hands with Boyd as they prepared to change over. You heard Boyd whisper to him about how demanding you had been, pestering him with questions about himself. Mostly out of boredom.

“Seriously, you guys deprived me of Cafe treats for 2 weeks and I'm demanding,” you rolled your eyes at them, taking the ingredients out and placing them along the counter. Erik just shook his head and walked back towards the window, peering out over the city. Billy took a seat at the opposite end of the dining table where they were going over their inventory, so he could discreetly peer down your tank top when you leaned over. After measuring and organising everything you reached under the counter and took out a bowl, whisking up the egg whites, while you folded in the ingredients. The men watched intently as you piped the mixture onto a tray and carefully placed it in the oven. You saw Billy tap Erik on the shoulder and the man excused himself.

“What are you making?” He asked, dipping his finger into the ganache, on instinct you slapped his hand with the spatula.

“Macarons, get your fingers out,” you chided him.

“Can I lick the spoon?” A playful look in his eye as he leaned over the counter to wipe some almond flour from your face. You shuddered as his fingers caressed your cheek. You stared intently into his eyes, lost in the way the kitchen lights were flecking gold through them. A loud cough caught your attention and you saw Erik exiting the hall with Frank in tow. You both stepped back immediately.

Handing Billy spatula was a bad idea, you had to watch as his tongue caressed the end in ways that you wished he would do to your pussy, that was currently clenching around nothing.

You sat in silence eating your sweets, relishing in the crispness while the gooey center filled your mouth. They truly were delicious and just what you needed while the men talked over and around you. Were they ignoring you on purpose? Either way it was enough to drive you mad.

“I'm heading to bed,” you sighed, placing the rest of the macarons in a container for later.

You got a message just as you closed the bathroom door behind you, to brush your teeth.

Billy- Unlock the door.

It took seconds and he was through the door, his hands holding your face as he kissed you desperately. Billy’s head snapped towards the door when he heard the fall of footsteps. He gave you a forlorn look before retreating back into the hall. Your fingers caressed your lips, you missed his kiss, missed the way his lips and tongue made you feel more alive than anything else. With a sigh you began brushing your teeth when you got another text.

I wish I could kiss you anytime I want.

You smiled down at the phone, god he was cheesy when he wanted to be.

I miss the cute little snores you make when you're asleep next to me

I do not snore

You do, and you wriggle that ass right into my cock every single time

Don't. You reply, taking your phone to bed with you. You recline back onto the daybed that was surprisingly comfortable. The extra blankets that Erica had gotten you last week were definitely helping. You watch as 3 little dots appear and disappear on your chat. Maybe he's gone to sleep?

What? Don't want me to tell you how warm and soft you are? How I lay here wishing I was deep inside my sweet little pussy.

You stare at the message unable to reply as heat pools throughout your body, what are you suppos-

What's wrong? No comeback? Lost ya fire little girl?

Not at all. Just remembering

What? How good it feels when my cock slides into my girl, pumping you full of my hot cum?

Something like that you tease.

Tell me, you know what happens to bad girls

Is that a threat?

You know it is

I'm dripping wet just thinking about it, couldn’t possibly say.

VIDEO MESSAGE. you open the message, checking that your volume is all the way down. You press play and your eyes nearly bugle out of your head. Billy's fingers are pumping slowly down his cock, his thumb rubbing gently over the tip with every stroke. You can't see his face, you’ve seen it enough times now to be able to picture his teeth nipping on his bottom lip, the tiny trickle of sweat on his brow, eyes closed in euphoria as he pictured you in his mind.

Your fingers slide down your tummy and around your panties. Two fingers grazing into your slick pussy, your eyes locked onto the thick vein along Billy's cock, the jut of his hips when he twitched, your nails rubbing softly on your clit as you watch Billy.

Are you touching yourself? The text comes up and you bite down on your pillow, muffling your moans as your climax gets closer and closer.

You are. I know you. Bet you look so fucking sexy

Show me. Without thinking about it you flick the camera on, you realise it's too dark in the room. Leaning over you turn on the desk lamp to get some light. By a miracle you manage to find an angle that's a tiny bit flattering. With your phone resting on the bookshelf on the opposite wall. Pressing record, you record yourself. Spreading your folds apart and dipping a finger inside while you arch your back off the bed, making soft and quiet moans of Billy's name as you pleasure yourself. The angle giving him a full view of your body and face. You rush to send it before you come to your senses. Resting back on the bed, hoping that he thinks its sexy and not as embarrassing as it felt.

Fuck baby your so wet.

For you. You type with one hand while you slip a finger over your clit.

Put in your earbuds I wanna hear you.

Quickly you grab your earbuds from the floor, managing to put them in before your phone starts ringing. You hear Billy's voice in your ear, it's low and rough when he whispers "You're doing such a good job little girl," you breathe hitched and you bit down on your lip to keep the moan in, "You close? I'm so fucking close,"

"Billy," your voice soft as you try to keep quiet.

"Keep going, keep touching yourself for me. Wish I could see that pretty face when you cum,' you arched off the bed, panting as your fingers struggled to reach your g spot. Your other hand worked furiously over your clit. You heard a thump as your phone hit the floor, but you're so close, just a second longer.

"Say my name baby," he groaned, his breath speeding up and you knew he was close.

Thud! The sound draws you from your euphoria. Thud! You took one of your earbuds out and heard your father, "you ok in there kiddo?" He asked from behind the closed door.

“Yeh, just dropped my phone,” you answered, trying to sound not as breathless as you were.

“Night, love you,” he called and you heard his footsteps retreat, the mood well and truly killed.

“Night,” you called back, sighing defeatedly into your mattress.

“Doom Merchant,” Billy grumbled in your ear, “wanna try again pretty girl?”

“Not right now,"

"We could just tell him," Billy offered again, why was he still on about this?

"You know why we can't"

"I won't let him hurt you,"

"Not me I'm worried about, Billy. Goodnight.” you whispered, reaching down to pick up your phone.

“Goodnight little girl, just think about it, ok? have sweet dreams of me,” he cooed before hanging up. You rolled over, taking the bud out of your ear and hugged your pillow. You closed your eyes and hoped you'd actually be able to get off in your dreams.

2 more weeks had passed and you were still trapped in this apartment. It felt like the very large apartment was growing smaller by the day. Squads 7 & 8 were rotating shifts while your father only ever left when he and Billy were chasing down a lead at ANVIL. You were trapped here, sure it was a really nice place to be trapped, but you knew there would be no leaving until they caught whomever had tried to take you. The odds seemed unlikely with all this time passing and no leads. You assumed it was a one off, that the guy didn't even know who you were and had just tried to take the first woman he saw.

You were sure Billy was torturing you. Constantly walking around in just his grey sweats, whispering in your ear to just spill the beans whenever he walked past you, sending you even more naughty texts before bed. But he never called again, he was teasing and you were helpless. You discovered that returning the gesture only served to hurt yourself, after a particularly racy text got you all heated you replied in kind, praising the taste of his cock on your lips, how desperate you were to lick him all over. His response was to just send audio clips that played on a loop. "You're being a bad little girl, Daddy might need to spank you again," was the first of many and they only grew worse as time passed, "want me to tell Frankie what a little whore his daughter has become, begging and dripping for my cock?" In short, it was killing you. But you knew that the opposite was worse. Frank Castle would actually kill you, or worse Billy and that killed any desire to come out with the truth. Billy’s life was worth more to you than any ache in your heart.

Part 13

Taglist:

@fictional-hooman

@blackbirddaredevil23

@profoundme444

@eginv-blog

@spear-bearing-bi-witch

@nikki-sixx-is-daddy

@pedropascalfanclub

@mrs-billyrussooo

@duchessoftheheart

#billy russo x female reader #billy x reader #female!reader x billy russo #billy russo x you #reader x billy russo #billy russo fanfic #the punisher fanfic #billy russo x reader #house hunting

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ncssian · 3 years

Text

A Favor: Part Twenty-One

Nessian Modern AU

Masterlist

a/n: as someone who is physically incapable of reading fics and other long tumblr posts line by line and word for word, i think it’s so fucking cool that a bunch of you regularly, excitedly read what i post. i would not blame you at all for skim reading. thank you.

***

The majority of Cassian’s life was spent battling with the fact of his own existence. First he was fatherless, then motherless, then homeless. Being taken in by Rhys’s parents, who bought him nice clothes and nicer gifts, was like putting a bandaid over a stab wound. It couldn’t change the questions that made up Cassian at his core: was he equal to everyone else in this world, or had he been born inherently inferior? Did he deserve the same happinesses that his friends so carelessly reaped, or should he step back and know his place?

The older he grew, the more he grappled with those questions—until the night he learned who his father was, and the truth behind his existence. That he was likely a product of rape. Nearly driving himself drunk off a mountainside in Monte Carlo was enough to make him realize with a startling clarity: he couldn’t keep asking himself the same questions for the rest of his life. At some point, he was going to have to buck the fuck up and make his peace with the world, whether he believed he deserved to be in it or not. And though it might have taken him a while to reach that conclusion, Cassian can proudly say he did it. Not long into his post-college years, Cassian finally grew up.

By twenty-seven, he was secure enough in himself and his place in the world to not have to deal with those doubtful voices every waking minute. His life was figured out, and his ego was unshakeable. Until Nesta Archeron entered the story.

Now at twenty-eight, Cassian is again unsecured—this time in a less tragic but more confusing way. Because everything he thinks he knows about himself, about life, she insists on proving wrong.

Including the issue of celebrating his birthday.

“I feel like I should have asked this earlier,” Cassian mutters to Nesta as they stand in the cozy resort lobby, “but why is Az here?”

Nesta looks both humiliated and resigned when she mutters back, “He wouldn’t pay for the resort unless I let him come with us.”

“At that point you should’ve just let me pay, babe.” He watches Azriel’s back as he chats up the lady at the front desk while getting their room keys.

“On your own birthday? It would have ruined the point,” Nesta says.

Cassian doesn’t retort that having his brother present at their couple’s retreat also ruins the point. He’s sure she already knows.

Nesta’s reaction when Cassian told her that he didn’t celebrate his birthday was unforgettable.

“No one in our inner circle really cares about birthdays,” he had shrugged. “Feyre’s birthday is the exception because she’s sort of the outsider, and Rhys will find any excuse to worship at her feet. But the rest of us? I don’t know, it was never a big deal.”

As someone who’s never skipped a birthday once in her life, even when she was isolated and ignoring her family’s phone calls, Nesta took this as a personal offense. “I need to get you out of this cabin,” she stated.

Which brings them here, to Colorado’s finest ski resort situated high in the Rocky Mountains. The lobby is littered with overstuffed armchairs and a crackling fireplace, and huge windows look out over the blinding white mountains.

Az starts heading their way, key cards in hand, when Cassian suddenly turns to Nesta. “We need to find him a woman,” he whispers.

“What?”

“We can’t let him third wheel with us for the whole weekend. We’ll never get time alone.” Cassian is set on this new plan, already scanning the lobby for women around Azriel’s age.

“I agree, but—”

Azriel reaches the two of them, tossing a room card to Nesta. “You can stop talking about me now. I’ll be spending most of my time hitting the slopes.”

Cassian and Nesta mumble a halfhearted, “We weren’t talking about you.”

He narrows his eyes at them. “Uh-huh. Just remember whose credit card this is going on.” Picking up his ski gear and duffel bag, he turns for the elevator.

Nesta frowns up at Cassian once Az is gone, more adorably than she probably intends. “Do you think he’s upset?”

He scoffs. “We should be upset at him.” He doesn’t want to have to worry about his brother while he’s on vacation, and Az definitely wouldn’t want him to worry either, but it isn’t something that can be helped.

Despite his irritation, he might go skiing with Az later this afternoon. Just to keep him company.

***

Nesta will give it to Azriel—he’s a man of fine taste, and also generous with his spending. She originally wanted a normal room for her and Cassian, preferably the cheapest one, but Az went behind her back and upgraded them to a fully decked out penthouse suite.

“This is too much for just a weekend,” she tells him over the phone while Cassian is in the bathroom. “How am I supposed to pay you back for this?”

“Why would you pay me back?” he says dismissively. “I’m rich.”

When Nesta tries arguing with him, he only replies, “I don’t take money from poor people,” and hangs up on her.

Which leaves Nesta to enjoy the four-spray shower and heated bathroom tiles free of charge. By the time she comes out of the shower, Cassian has already left with Azriel to hit some slopes before dinner, though not before leaving her a note promising to teach her how to ski tomorrow.

Nesta doesn’t even get to unwrap her towel from her body before realizing her phone is ringing incessantly, all the way from the other side of the suite. Jogging over to the living area, Nesta answers Emerie’s call. “What’s up?”

“Where are you?” Emerie greets without introduction.

“At the ski lodge?” Nesta answers, confused. “I already told you, for Cassian’s birthday.”

“I know that,” Emerie hisses. “I mean what room are you in? This place is huge.”

“Wait—you’re here?” Nesta looks quickly around herself, as if Emerie will pop up from behind the couch.

“Not just me. So is Gwyn.” Nesta hears rustling on the other side of the line, and then Emerie saying from a distance, “Answer for your crimes, Gwyneth. Say hi.”

A new, clearer voice comes over the phone. “Hiii, Nesta.” Gwyn sounds weak, like she is not having fun at all.

“What the hell do you two think you’re doing?” Nesta demands.

“Well, it’s a long story and I need to see you first. Also, I have to pee. Where is your room?”

Five minutes later, Gwyn and Emerie are sitting obediently before the roaring fireplace in Nesta and Cassian’s suite.

Now fully dressed, Nesta stabs a finger at Emerie. “Explain.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Emerie says indignantly. “Gwyn barged into my place at eight in the morning and dragged me all the way here—”

“It was an emergency!” Gwyn tosses her hands in the air. “It still is an emergency. That’s why we’re here.”

“I’m here because Gwyn is scared of traveling alone,” Emerie interjects. “And driving on highways.”

“Guys!” Nesta snaps.

Gwyn makes a whining sound of defeat and drops her head into her hands. After a long moment, she speaks. “He asked if we could go to dinner together. Like, right to my face. And I panicked and said yes, because I couldn’t think of a reason to say no, but obviously I can’t do that. So this morning I cashed in my sick days and told him I was going on vacation for a whole week.” Gwyn looks up at Nesta with pleading teal eyes. “Please can we stay here the whole week?”

Nesta stares at Gwyn, feeling like her brain was just sucked dry. “First of all, who’s ‘he’?”

“Max!” She stands in her outburst. “The love of my life. The man who works on the fourth floor of the library. Do you pay attention to the groupchat at all?”

Oh yeah, that guy. “You came all the way here,” Nesta drawls out slowly, “so you wouldn’t have to have dinner with your crush?”

“It wasn’t just any dinner.” Gwyn flops back onto the couch. “It was a date. I can’t go on a date with him. First dates lead to second dates, and second dates lead to—sex.” She whispers the last word.

“Really?” Emerie frowns, not missing a beat at the mention of Gwyn’s deepest fear. “What kind of dates have you been having?”

“I haven’t been having any dates,” Gwyn says. “Why, how long do you usually see someone before doing it?”

“First date, at most,” Emerie shrugs.

“No,” Nesta steps in, sending Emerie a bewildered look. “Gwyn, you’ve known this guy for a while now. If he’s half as decent as you think he is, he won’t expect sex by the second date. And even if he does—”

“What does it matter?” Gwyn wails. “It’ll come up eventually. And when it does, he’ll think I’m a freak.”

“He won’t get a chance to think anything before I kill him,” Emerie says, eyes darkening.

Nesta says nothing, knowing this is something she can’t advise Gwyn about. Whether or not Gwyn chooses to share her past and unresolved trauma with another man, and whether or not that man reacts in an unshitty way isn’t something Nesta can determine. So she just states for the record, “You’re not a freak.”

“But it’s what he’ll think.”

“Then you shouldn’t be with him in the first place,” Nesta says firmly. Even though she knows better than anyone that it isn’t always that simple.

Proving her point, Gwyn scoffs and looks away. “You don’t get it.”

“What I really don’t get,” Nesta says, “is why you took your lie so literally. Why did you come all the way out here instead of hiding out at home for the week?”

“Merrill sees and knows everything. I can’t lie to her.” Gwyn cringes. “If I stayed at home, she would sniff me out as soon as she got me on the phone, and then I’d really be screwed.”

Nesta cocks her head at Gwyn, squinting her eyes in something akin to fascination.

“I had the same reaction,” Emerie pipes up. She shakes her head at Gwyn. “I’ve never met a more melodramatic idiot, truly.”

Gwyn curls into herself on the couch, looking ashamed.

Nesta sighs sharply, then whips out a hand. “Give me your wallets. I’ll go downstairs right now and see if I can book a room last minute.”

Emerie sits up at that. “Uh… I’m not sure I can afford a place like this.”

“Neither can I,” Nesta says. “That’s why Azriel paid for all of us.”

Gwyn’s eyes go comically round. “Azriel’s here?”

“Unfortunately.” She snaps her fingers at both girls. “Credit or debit, now.”

“So… I’m assuming we can’t just share this huge suite with you guys, huh?” Gwyn says hesitantly.

There might be actual flames in Nesta’s eyes. This is Cassian’s birthday, goddammit. Cassian, who hasn’t celebrated a birthday since he was eleven. “Please don’t push me.”

Gwyn and Emerie, very reluctantly, hand their cards over to Nesta. Emerie hands over two, just in case.

In the end, Nesta doesn’t use any of their money, but charges the new room to her own account. She’ll work it off by putting extra hours into Night Court, she tells herself.

When she returns to the penthouse suite, she spies tracks outlined in melted snow at the doorway. Shit. She barges inside to find Cassian and Azriel standing in the middle of the living area, with Emerie looking awkward on the couch.

“Uh, we just got back—” Cassian starts.

“I can explain,” Nesta interrupts.

A faucet turns off in the distance, and Gwyn peeks her head out of the bathroom door.

“Oh, shit,” Azriel says in delight. “Freckles is here too?”

Gwyn looks like she’s about to turn right back around to the bathroom. Nesta and Cassian both throw Az a baffled look, but Nesta says, “I can fix this. I’ve already fixed it.” She goes over to Emerie and hands her a key card. “You and Gwyn are going to stay on the first floor, and you won’t bother me or Cassian for the duration of our stay. It’ll be like you’re not even here.” She whips toward Gwyn, who still hovers near the bathroom doorway. “And at the end of this weekend, you’re going back to work like the adult you are and taking care of your shit.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Gwyn says quietly, lowering her head.

Cassian comes over to Nesta, whispering, “So, you didn’t invite them to keep Az company or anything, right?”

“I can hear you,” Azriel says.

“Of course not,” Nesta whispers back. “That’s a terrible idea.”

“Really? Because I thought it was kind of convenient—”

“I can still hear you,” Az repeats.

“So can I,” Emerie nods.

“Shut up,” Nesta hisses at the both of them. Grabbing Cassian’s still-gloved hand, she drags him upstairs and away to their bedroom. When the door shuts behind them, she turns to him and blurts, “I’m so sorry.”

Cassian only laughs, taking his ski jacket off and brushing away the wet snow from the back. “I’m not.” He tosses his jacket and gloves over a chair and approaches Nesta, tugging her closer by her oversized turtleneck. “And what did I tell you about wasting your apologies?”

Nesta doesn’t care. “I ruined your birthday.”

“My birthday’s not until tomorrow,” he says with a straight face. “But honestly, I like this a lot more than just you, me, and Az. At least he can’t third wheel anymore, right?”

She shakes her head insistently, frustration boiling in her blood. “Everything’s going wrong.”

“But you solved our problems.” He finds Nesta’s clenched fists and unfurls them with gentle hands. “You got the girls their own room, and now Az can be distracted with those two. We can still be alone. We win.”

Nesta purses her lips, unconvinced, when Cassian adds, “But seriously, though—what the fuck are they doing here?”

She exhales deeply, letting her head drop forward onto Cassian’s chest. “I don’t know,” she mutters. “Gwyn panicked about some personal stuff and thought it was a good idea to come to me. I don’t want to make her leave, though.” Gwyn is being stupid right now, without a doubt, but Nesta won’t abandon her. Neither will Emerie.

God, having friends sucks.

Cassian threads a hand through her loose hair and hums. “Gwyn was smart for coming to you.”

***

Dinner is held outside in the snow and cold, but everyone bundles up and sits down at a table that surrounds one of the multiple fire pits in the courtyard. Cassian convinced Nesta to let Gwyn and Emerie hang out with them for the weekend, because what else are those poor girls supposed to do, and now the women babble over each other as they decide what to drink.

Cassian sits back and takes it in, the sight feeling heartwarmingly familiar and strangely brand new at the same time. Nesta ends up being the one to order everybody’s drinks, and once the waiter scampers back inside, Gwyn releases a terse breath. “Sometimes I still get scared of that tone.”

“I’m always scared of it,” Az mutters, eyeing Nesta from the corner of his eye.

“What tone?” Cassian laughs. He knows Nesta is still a little wound up from her plans going off the rails, but she hasn’t done anything scary.

“I’m used to it,” Emerie says through a mouthful of fries, “but I think that waiter almost cried.”

“That’s how I sound all the time.” Nesta shrugs, sitting back.

“What tone?” Cassian repeats.

Nesta clicks her tongue impatiently. “You know how I talk. I’m straightforward.”

“And harsh,” Azriel adds. “Even aggressive.”

“Watch it.” Gwyn turns stern eyes onto him over the fire pit.

“I have no idea what you all are talking about,” Cassian says. He turns to Nesta. “You sound perfectly normal to me.”

She narrows her perfect brows at him, and Emerie laughs, “I don’t know if that’s romantic or ignorant.”

But now that they’re discussing it, Cassian does distinctly remember Nesta having a sharp edge to her words while they were getting to know each other. Did it disappear over time, or has he really stopped noticing it?

He doesn’t get to think about it before their drinks arrive, followed soon by a dinner of fancy sandwiches.

Cassian cuts his beef sandwich in half and gives the other half to Nesta, and she does the same with her turkey sandwich. They eat and drink around the crackling fire, laughing and talking about tomorrow’s plans (“It’s not your birthday, Azriel,” Nesta says. “Stop asking about gifts.”). Cassian and Emerie talk idly about video games over wine, and even though it isn’t really his thing, he can see her excitement over it and gladly indulges it.

Once everyone is finished eating and is slightly drunk, Gwyn pulls a small sleeve of crackers out of her puffy jacket, followed by a fun-sized Hershey’s bar and a handful of mini marshmallows.

“What are you doing?” Nesta says.

“Making dessert.” Gwyn builds a mini s’more and places it carefully on her fork so she can toast it over the fire pit. When it’s done, she leans forward even more to try to put it on Nesta’s plate. “For you. Thank you for letting me and Emerie stay.”

Nesta jumps, catching the s’more with her plate and batting Gwyn away from the fire pit at the same time. “You’ll set your hair on fire,” she hisses.

Gwyn’s hair remains safe, but now Cassian catches his brother watching Gwyn amusedly from the corner of his eye. “Can I have one?” Az says.

“I’m all out.” Gwyn says while building another s’more, refusing to meet his eyes.

Cassian and Nesta share a look, a hundred words thrown back and forth between them in that glance. She scoots her chair closer to him to slip her cold hands into his warm ones, but while the conversation carries on around the table, she leans in and whispers, “I’m not a busybody but…”

“I am,” he whispers back. “Az is being weird, weirder than usual.”

Nesta nods. “I’ve never seen him so—outgoing.”

Neither has Cassian, but before he can mention anything else, he looks up to find that Gwyn and Azriel’s seats at the table are empty. “How much did those two drink?” he breathes.

Nesta follows his gaze, seeing what he’s seeing: Azriel and Gwyn wandering clumsily around the snowy courtyard. Or rather, Az is trying to chase Gwyn down for a s’more, while she clutches her mini marshmallows to her chest and vehemently yells, “They’re mine!”

Meanwhile, Emerie is half asleep at the table.

Cassian watches as Gwyn nears the towering fir tree at the center of the courtyard and slips. Az shoots out a hand to catch her, but not before her ass hits the stone, hard. He pulls her back up, no longer fooling around, and Gwyn rubs her butt in pain.

Cassian suddenly feels Nesta squeezing the life out of his hands, and he looks over to find fury written across her face. For a heartbeat, he feels worried for Az.

“Go deal with him,” Nesta says lowly. “Before I do.”

Not needing any more words to understand, he stands out of his seat and heads out into the courtyard. He doesn’t know why Nesta thinks Gwyn needs protecting, but it makes him feel protective himself. Approaching the duo, he sees that Azriel finally acquired the leftover s’more ingredients from Gwyn.

“There’s only like half a cracker left,” Az mutters to himself, shaking the baggie.

“Is he bothering you?” Cassian asks Gwyn, who still looks grumpy over losing their skirmish.

Whipping her head to Cassian like he’s her savior, Gwyn nods furiously. “Please make him stop.”

Cassian turns to Azriel with rage in his eyes, a clear What the fuck do you think you’re doing?

But Az shakes his head in denial. “It’s not like that. Look, she’s smirking at me!” He points over Cassian’s shoulder.

When Cassian looks, Gwyn is already walking back to the fire pit, holding her bruised ass.

Az starts, “What a fake little—”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Cassian interrupts. “Yesterday you’re crying over Elain and today you’re flirting with Nesta’s friend?”

Azriel goes serious, his face turning colder than the night air. “How do you know about Elain?” he says gruffly.

“Everyone knows, Azriel.” Cassian stares down his brother, wondering if he’ll finally get him to get his head screwed on straight after these past weeks of secretive bullshit.

Azriel sets his jaw, but a muscle there ticks.

“Will you finally at least tell me what’s going on in your head?” Cassian pleads. “Because I can’t keep guessing.”

Azriel glances toward the dinner table, as if checking to see that no one is paying attention to them. Looking back, he inhales a breath. “You want to know why I left Velaris?”

Like Nesta, Azriel is not one to quickly make himself vulnerable. So there’s no blatant emotion in his voice when he says, “I started seeing her at the end of summer, not long after she broke up with her ex. And it was so…nice after every other relationship I’ve been in has gone wrong. We kept it quiet, and because of that, it was peaceful.” Azriel’s eyes meet Cassian’s twin ones, and he smirks without humor. “But you already know what that’s like, don’t you?”

He does. Cassian crosses his arms, waiting for Az to continue.

“Anyway, we had a good run. For a long time, it was mostly just sex, but I liked her. I liked her a lot.” Az kicks at the snow-dusted cobblestones. “Then Christmas came around, and Rhys found out.” His face darkens as he remembers, and Cassian stiffens, knowing what’s next isn’t good. Sometimes Rhys forgets the boundary between boss and brother.

“He didn’t say anything about it to Elain, of course,” Azriel says. “But he dragged my ass aside and gave me this huge lecture about us using each other as rebounds. Said ‘Feyre’s sister’ deserves better or some shit. I told him there was more to it than that, but he wouldn’t listen. Instead he brought Vanserra & Co. into it, like his business matters had anything to do with me and Elain.” Azriel’s eyes crinkle at the corners in a puzzled way. “So I got to thinking, ‘why would he bring the Vanserras up?’ He made it seem like such a big deal.” The toe of his boot digs a hole into the ground.

Sympathy churns alongside anger in Cassian’s chest for Azriel’s situation, anger at Rhysand for crossing that line between brothers. He’s only momentarily grateful that Rhys never tried doing something similar to him and Nesta.

“I thought she was over that other guy, Lucien,” Az continues. “But maybe she’s not, if Rhys is so concerned about what Lucien’s stepfather thinks. Anyway, that’s why I ran. Because I knew she liked me, but I also knew she didn’t love me. I didn’t want us to cause all that trouble with Rhys just to end up backed into a corner one day, having nowhere else to go because she loves someone else and I’m just a rebound. It would be awkward for everyone involved.” He scratches the back of his neck. “It’s mostly my fault, for always chasing after women I can’t have.” He finally looks up at Cassian. “When you talk to Elain, does it sound like she hates me?” The question is quiet, straightforward.

“No,” Cassian answers, voice rough. Even if Azriel wants to hide his feelings, Cassian won’t. “She doesn’t seem like she hates you. I don’t even think she’s mad at you.” Concerned, anxious, upset—that’s Elain as far as he knows.

“She should hate me,” Azriel says. “She should get pissed, burn my old clothes, and swear to never talk to me again. That’s the only way she can move on.” Maybe even move back to Lucien, is what goes unsaid.

Cassian isn’t so sure about that. Even as he feels for Az, he thinks both of his brothers should get slapped upside the head for how they’ve been acting lately. He won’t be the one to do it, but he might get Nesta to relay a message to Elain. It’ll be the same thing. “I’m sorry,” he tells Az instead. “I know I’ve been hard on you lately. When we get home, I’ll start doing better.” He claps Az on the shoulder and squeezes.

Azriel surprises him by scoffing, looking away in disbelief. “Wow, being compassionate is really a full time job for you, huh?” He claps Cassian’s shoulder back, pulling him into a sudden hug. “You’ve already done more than enough,” he says into Cassian’s ear. “Go to your girlfriend and take a rest.”

Taken aback, Cassian nods and pulls away. He’s about to turn around and leave when Az says, “By the way, I wasn’t flirting with Gwyn.”

Cassian raises a brow. “You were definitely doing something.”

Az rolls his eyes. “I’m not giving her anything she can’t handle. But in case you haven’t noticed, I have no interest in other women right now.” He makes a face. “Especially not her.”

Cassian chuckles. “I believe you. It’s Nesta you need to worry about.”

“Whatever. I’m not scared of her.”

That makes Cassian laugh even harder, but he turns around, ready to go back to said girlfriend. As he nears the fire pit, though, he finds that Gwyn is already there and cuddled up to Nesta. On Nesta’s other side, Emerie now sits in Cassian’s chair, asleep on her friend’s shoulder. He stops in his tracks.

Cassian wasn’t lying when he told Nesta that he was happy about their changed vacation plans—he believes the more the merrier, and he loves these people. Yet he can’t help but wish the two of them could be alone for just one day. Only one.

God, sometimes having friends sucks.

***

a/n: this is a two parter so next chapter we’ll finally be getting more nessian alone time

tagging: @hellasblessed @sjm-things @thewayshedreamed @drielecarla @valkyriewarriors @superspiritfestival @aliveahaahahafuck @cupcakey00 @sayosdreams @rainbowcheetah512 @claralady @thebluemartini @nessiantho @missing-merlin @duskandstarlight @lucy617 @sleeping-and-books @everything-that-i-love @cassianscool @swankii-art-teacher @wannawriteyouabook @awesomelena555 @julemmaes @wickedqueenoffantasy @poisonous-bloom @observationanxioustheorist @gisellefigue08 @courtofjurdan @theoverlyenthusiasticwriter @wolfiixxx @cass-nes @seashade @royaltykxx @illyrianundercover @queenestarcheron @monstrousloves-explodinggalaxies @humanexile @that-golden-lyre @agentsofsheilds @mercy-is-alive @cassiansbigwingspan @laylaameer01 @verypaleninja @maastrash @bow-dawn @perseusannabeth @dead-on-the-inside666 @jlinez @hungryreadingaddict @anidealiveson @planet-faerie @shallowhighwaters @ghostlyrose2 @chosenfamily-valkyriequeens @rarephloxes @readiajin @nessiantrashh @live-the-fangirl-life @ifinallygavein @xoblivisci @sjmships @jungtaekwoonie-is-life @lysandra-tiara @lanyjoy-13 @frosted-crackers @post-it-notes33 @loosingdreams @fromthelibraryofemilyj @18moneytoad @dontgetsalmonella @champanheandluxxury @togreblog @arinbelle @ladygabrielli1997 @meridainthedisneyland

#ncssianwrites #a favor #nesta archeron #nessian #cassian #nessian fanfic #nessian au

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castiel-left-his-mark-on-me · 3 years

Note

Hi, Ary, very inactive ex-mutual(i think???) here. Good to see you thriving! ♥ It's been a while since I've dipped my head into cockles stuff. Could I perchance maybe ask uuuuum tf is going on??? lol I see Mish apparently confirmed he used to stay over at Jensen's in Van, and heard newbs were apparently freaking out about it and getting a bit messy, which I get that, business as usual. But I'm also seeing shit about spin-offs? And Jared getting in a twitter fight with Jensen, causing/resulting in stans to going feral and sending hate?? I know you're not as big a fan of Jar, but that's part of why I figured I'd ask you, you usually have a really level head about this kinda stuff. If you don't wanna answer publically, or at all, that's totally chill!

Hey, Rhi! We're still mutuals! Of course we're still mutuals! When I saw the notification of your ask, I was like "Hey! I haven't seen you in a while!" and my husband was like "???" and I said "Tumblr" and he said "Oh."

It was a wild time haha.

In any case, welcome back to the dumpster fire! We are obviously still a mess. So to catch you up, I guess I will start by summarizing both before and after the finale (not sure where you left off so this might be redundant for you) ... basically, it became obvious as the end of the show neared that Jensen was not on board with the plan for the finale; although Jared never stopped singing its praises.

We got confirmation of this during a zoom interview where Jensen said that he actually went into the writers room as well as called Kripke to basically voice how he didn't agree with the direction the final season was going, but he was shot down on all fronts. In another interview, he was asked "What would you tell your younger self going into this career?" And Jensen responded with: "I would tell myself to just keep your head down and do the work" meaning, "Don't try to change things because you can't." I also think that this whole situation is what he wrote "Let Me Be" about for his first Radio Company album, but that is just my own speculation. All of his reluctance, even though he always followed it up with "But I eventually saw the value in the script" or "I came around in the end" (which never sounded sincere, and I don't think he was really trying to sound sincere) made us all very nervous about what was to come for 15x20; and of course, when the last two episodes aired, we saw just how badly they fucked it up.

After the awful finale, the entire fandom became aware of the CW's heavy handed role in the thing, basically squeezing all the life out of SPN to shape it into a ramp from which Walker could launch itself. They not only erased all the love and joy and representation that Cas's love confession gave us, they also tore apart the things that made sense about the bond between Sam and Dean, making it really just about Sam-- and therefore Jared, which of course, Jared seemed to be fine with ... even though no one else was. Misha barely said anything during the finale, and a few of the other actors talked about the show ending in various posts, but Jared tweeted up a storm ... and Jensen? Jensen just sat in sexy-silent resentment of the whole thing. He didn't tweet, he didn't post, he didn't say a word once he no longer had to, and I think that's because he was already going full-steam-ahead on his plans for redemption.

Which brings us to Chaos Machine-- Jensen and Danneel's new production company that is being run by a queer creative director and has a mantra of inclusivity and representation woven throughout it's fabric; and apparently, the first story that Jensen wanted to tell through this new platform is the origin story of Sam and Dean's parents; so last week (?) he announced the upcoming production of "The Winchesters" -- the untold love story of John and Mary. Obviously, John is not the most likable character from the show, so the idea was met with a lot of resentment when it was first announced, but Jensen has gone on to say that he is excited to take on the task of telling the "true" story behind these characters-- the one that makes sense with the pre-established canon and doesn't reject it. So, given that, the idea is being mulled over with a bit more optimism from the fandom.

Who isn't being optimistic though?

Jared Padalecki.

When Jensen made this announcement on Twitter, many of his friends and coworkers congratulated him, but not Jared. Jared responded with a passive aggressive: "I'm happy for you, man, but I wish I didn't hear about it through Twitter." This of course, sent all the die-hard Jared fans into a tizzy and they immediately began asking him if he was serious (hoping it was just a joke-- we all hoped it was because there would be fallout no matter what one's opinion on Jared is). Instead of leaving it there though or just deleting that tweet, Jared went on to tweet some more, saying that he was being serious that he didn't know about the plans for the prequel, and that he was "gutted" that Sam apparenlty wouldn't be included (mind you, this a prequel to SPN... meaning BEFORE Sam and Dean were even born, so how could Sam be included? But Dean is apparently narrating this story so maybe Jared thought Sam should be helping to narrate it? I don't know). But Jared being Jared couldn't just leave that there, he then went on to tweet at Robbie Thompson who was announced as a writer for "The Winchesters" so then Jared went off on him too, calling him "Brutus" and a "coward" acting like Robbie betrayed him (speculation is-- Robbie refused to write for Walker, so Jared is pissed that he essentially chose Jensen over him). He did fairly quickly, remove that tweet attacking Robbie, but of course the damage was done at that point. And it truly only took his first tweet calling out Jensen for some people to be like "Jared-- that sucks if you didn't know but why are you saying any of this publicly?"

As you might know, Jared has had issues in the past with posting hurtful things on social media, and has even used it as a tool for attack before-- calling out customer service agents and public workers that he felt have wronged him, which is bad enough ... but for him to then do the same thing to his best friend of well over a decade? Many people who had once liked him or at least gave him the benefit of the doubt (I used to ...) stopped after this latest twitter tantrum.

However, some people have suspected for some time that J2 had a falling out either shortly before the finale or just after. Their public/social media interactions have seemed awkward, stilted or even non-existent in moments that they normally wouldn't be. In the past year, when Walker premiered, Jensen didn't say much about his friend's new venture other than a "Congrats. buddy" here and there. Later, we learned that Jensen refused to work on the show ... Jared said he make him do it, drag Jensen to the set "kicking and screaming" which made many fans quirk up an eyebrow because, why would Jensen put up a fight unless the two weren't as close as they used to be? And then Jensen moved his family to Colorado (either permanently or for an extended period at least) which is notable considering how he moved to Texas seemingly to be closer to Jared, even buying a house that was near his. All this was just speculation though; but it wasn't until Jared's tweet complaining about not knowing about the prequel that the theories behind them falling out, became less theory and more fact.

The day after his twitter tantrum, Jared tweeted again-- not retracting his statements or apologizing, but instead saying that he and Jensen "talked" and were "all good". Jensen then tweeted too, parroting this statement to some degree, which only made the whole thing even more sour in the mouths of the fans. The fact that Jared didn't apologize for his outburst and throwing his friend under the bus, and also the fact that Jensen-- Mr. Sexy Silence, Mr. Never Tweets, Mr. Tech-Ignorant-and-Proud, actually had to POST SOMETHING saying that he and Jared made up, it just screamed OPTICS. It was obviously the work of agents and PR firms and lots of people going "Look, if you two keep beefing, that will mean the death of both of your projects. Even more people will stop watching Walker, and this SPN prequel will never get picked up due to the scandal." So, the two "made nice" publicly to quell the chaos, but in my opinion, it's all too little too late. Jared started a storm that he can't contain now with a little tweet, and it seems like he knows that too because before he talked about him and Jensen making up, he asked that people "not send threats". He could have just as easily said that he shouldn't have made this a public issue and that he's sorry, but instead, he continued to play the victim and stoke the flames by alerting us all to the damage he's done.

Now, like I said before-- I used to give him the benefit of the doubt. I don't think he's an awful human or that he deserves to be attacked or anything, but he is an adult man with very poor judgment and an obvious selfish-streak a mile wide. He should know better, and he should have more respect for his so-called "friends" and "brothers" than to make them targets to public ridicule. I have a hard time believing that Jensen still sees Jared the way he used to, and I wouldn't blame him a bit for wanting to pull away-- especially when he's moving on to so many new and exciting things. Jared certainly deserves happiness just as much as anyone else, but he went on twitter and basically asked for a scandal, and he got one.

The question is now-- was there a motive behind it? Was just looking for a reason to bring his and Jensen's falling out to light-- while making himself looking like the victim in the process? Or did he genuinely not know about the prequel and just decided to go about "not knowing" in the most toxic and hurtful way he could manage?

In any case, that is the drama ... that is the J2 insanity in a rather lengthy nutshell ... that is the tea ... and I hope it all makes sense.

But the good news out of all of this is, Cockles is thriving-- they are happy and in love and Jensen calls Misha "Babe" and Misha misses waking up to see Jensen in the morning, and they are just as cute and wonderful as can be.

So, I will end that there. I am so glad to see you back, and I hope I answered all your questions in a way that made sense ... I tried anyway!

💖💖💖

#omg #I don't even know if this makes sense #this took way too long to write #j2 #cockles #long post #spn family #so glad you see you back again my dear #welcome to hell #it's hotter now

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gohyuck · 3 years

Text

the purge: society

pairing: firefighter!san x reader

genre: purge au, angst, some fluff

warnings: mentions of violence (especially violence against cops), murder, blood, injury, weapons (guns, knives, metal baseball bats)

word count: 2.4k

note: this was originally meant to be a drabble and it’s still pretty short so i didn’t get to elaborate on the characters but honestly maybe i’ll explore a purge universe with ateez someday because this was fun (i’ve never watched any of the movies though so i’ll have to get on that)

“What the fuck?”

He hadn’t expected to see anyone left alive on this street.

“Shut up and get down,” You hiss, reaching your good arm up to grab onto the man’s jacket collar before unceremoniously pulling him towards you. He stumbles, falling gracelessly onto you. A scream bubbles up in your throat as he accidentally puts pressure onto your already free-bleeding bicep, but you get ahold of yourself just in time, only letting the quietest of wounded moans escape you.

“You’re the first person that hasn’t tried to kill me before talking to me all night - oh, shit,” The stranger trails off, swearing when you effectively stop him from speaking further by placing your switchblade right under his skin. It’s only then that he even pauses to take you in: your back is up by the police car door, sure, and your left arm has a massive gash in it, but you’re armed. There’s a pistol laying idly in your lap, kept company by a metal baseball bat.

Not to mention, the knife at his neck.

“What the hell are you doing, walking around unarmed and with a first aid kit? Also, how the hell are you unarmed and with just a first aid kit? What the fuck?” You let the questions out in a rapidfire fashion, and he can’t help but clock the slight rasp in your voice. It’s easier to recognize than the pained wheeze you’re trying very, very hard to suppress, but neither escape him. He’s trained to notice the little things, anyways.

“You need to bandage that shit up,” The man ignores your questions, moving his head just enough to miss your blade but also enough to be able to look you in the eyes. “How long has it been bleeding?”

“That’s none of your business,” You grit out. “Answer my questions or I’ll kill you right here and now.”

“If I answer yours, will you answer mine?” For some reason, he doesn’t seem to be panicking just yet. His gaze is sincere, but it’s too solid to be that of a bona fide idiot. You suck in a breath of air. Threatening him would be so much easier if he didn’t seem like a nice guy. It’s hard enough to live through the night, you don’t need guilt on your hands, and you know you’re going to feel guilty when you kill him. And you will kill him.

You need that first aid kit. You’ll do anything for it.

Anything, starting off with lying.

“Sure,” You reply, steeling yourself for any sudden movements he might make now that you’re faking amicability. Maybe he’ll believe you to be vulnerable and try for your pistol or your bat, or maybe he’ll be properly cruel and finish off your arm. You don’t want to think about it. He lets out a sigh of relief, and you can’t help but wonder if you’ve actually affected him after all. “Now speak.”

“Not unarmed, there’s a police-issue pistol in my jacket and a tactical knife in my jeans. I’m not totally nuts. First aid kit’s for my buddy, though, I’ll be real, you need it way more than him.” There’s something resembling concern in his expression as his eyes flit between your torn arm and your face, but that barely interests you. You haven’t truly registered anything after ‘police-issue’.

You lean in, pressing the edge of your knife against the skin directly above his adam’s apple. For the first time since you’d cornered him, your mystery purger’s breath hitches. His eyebrows draw together in confusion. It’s no matter. You no longer regret the fact that you’ll have to tear his jugular out yourself.

“You’re a hog, huh,” You stare him down, any sympathy you might’ve had gone. For a moment, it seems as if he has no concept of what you’re saying. A second passes, though, and his gaze clears.

“Firefighter,” He responds, though the word is garbled due to him attempting to keep his movements to a minimum. You pull back slightly, very slightly, to let him explain. “I… found a dead cop, jacked his pistol. I’ll show you my ID, if you want.”

“Let me see it.” You nod your head at him as if giving him permission to live a little longer, though you both know full well that identity theft and identity fabrication are legal, too. Might as well see how much effort he puts into a fake. The man waits until you pull back just a bit more, enough to let him slowly reach his hand into his back pocket before producing a lanyard.

You grab it out of his grip with your hurt arm, not willing to move your knife too far away from his throat. You simply don’t have a good enough read on - you glance down - San Choi, ACT Firefighter, Employee ID: 018-102-4 to allow yourself any leeway with him.

His gently smiling face stares up at you from the plastic card, protected only by a clear sleeve connected to a red lanyard. San’s photo has black hair and an undercut, styled so his forehead is on display. A pair of dimples makes a guest appearance, and, overall, he seems like a genuinely sweet guy. The ID looks real, too, so maybe you aren’t totally fucked.

The San under your knife has bleach blond hair that almost falls over his eyes, though you suppose you can’t blame him for skipping out on the hair product tonight. He seems slightly tanner than his photo, his skin beautiful even now as dust from the aftermath of the explosion starts to settle against it.

Right. The explosion.

Recalling the events leading up to you meeting San forces you to remember that you have a gaping, bloody gash in your left arm. You’re honestly lucky to be alive, having ducked and used the car you’re against for cover from flying debris after a building down the block had exploded. You’d just finished driving your knife into a cop’s side - third cop of the night, eighth of your career as a purge cop killer - to make sure that he was dead when you’d heard the bomb go off, and you’d dropped before even thinking about it. Something had hit your arm on the way down, and when the adrenaline had finally left your system, you’d taken note of your blood-soaked sleeve.

You’d closed the car door after that, sealing your third murder of the night in the vehicle just so you could lean up against the door. It had been 6:31 in the morning then, and you had figured that someone would come by and kill you in the last moments before legality ensued again. You’d assumed that you’d fight, of course you would, but your arm being totally fucked definitely put a damper on your belief in your ability to overcome anyone or anything else.

Instead of the disgruntled, trigger-happy purger you’d expected to eventually find, though, you’d been found by San Choi. San Choi, who’s currently staring at your wounded arm like it’s grown eyes and can stare back.

“Come on, let me fix it up,” He pleads, lifting the kit up with the hand that’s farther from you. “You might not trust me, or whatever, but the purge is about to end as it is. I have a paramedic friend, Seonghwa, who’s taught me the basics of -”

“Shut the fuck up.” You tell him, though you’re quickly losing your bite. He obeys regardless. God, your arm really, really fucking hurts. Before pulling your knife back, you check the watch on your wrist. 6:47. Stay alive for 13 more minutes, 780 more seconds. You’ll be fine. You take the shakiest breath you’ve ever taken.

You pull your knife away from him.

Nothing happens.

“I’m going to use an alcohol free wipe and then wrap gauze around your arm, okay? You’ll just have to hold out until we can get you to a working hospital after that,” San speaks as if he’s talking to a child, or a scared animal, and you can’t blame him. He doesn’t seem like a purger, but you technically are one. You wouldn’t put it past yourself to attack on a whim if you were him. He, very slowly and with his hands in your full view at all times, opens the kit and pulls out the requisite materials.

“Gonna need you to rip your sleeve off above the cut.” He continues, leaning back as you bring your knife up to your clothes and slit the cloth right above your wound. You tear the remainder of the sleeve off your arm before throwing it behind you somewhere. San gently grabs ahold of your elbow - his palm is calloused in a way that tells you he lifts regularly, and you’re sure of this as he discards his jacket and you watch the muscles ripple in his arms under his thin black shirt - and places the wipe against your cut.

Your reaction is instantaneous: now that you’re completely past the adrenaline stage, the feeling of something, anything against the gash has you reeling to cry out. Before you can even process that you’ve made a sound, a hand presses hard against the back of your head, shoving your mouth against San’s.

He doesn’t know how else to shut you up.

His lips are chapped, but the sensation of being kissed so suddenly jars you out of your pain. San attempts to pull back, and you can already feel the apologetic wince he’s about to give you, but he brushes over your wound with the wipe again and your pain doubles back. It’s you that pulls him in this time, pressing your lips to his sloppily but forcefully as if it’ll alleviate the burn in your arm.

Kissing him only slightly muffles you at best, but you no longer care. The purge isn’t over yet. You could both die at any second. Hell, San could kill you at any second. His hand moves from the back of your head to cup your face as he leans in towards you to deepen the kiss. His lips are chapped, yes, but they’re soft. He tastes like mint and copper: there’s a cut in his lower lip. You don’t mind.

San pulls away for a moment, but only does so to grab the gauze from the kit. Once he’s wrapped it around your arm once, twice, thrice, he leans back in and your mouth accepts his own eagerly, your other hand coming up to drape over his shoulder. Neither of you know why you’re doing this, kissing a stranger with such fervor as one of you bandages the other up, but you both know that there’s really nothing else to do.

It’s only after he finishes taping you up that the two of you pull away fully. His eyes are still just as kind as you’d thought them to be at first, though his lips are far more swollen than they’d been mere minutes prior. You admire your handiwork, eyes tracing his features as he admires his own, thumb very, very gently running over your gauze. Both of you raise your heads to smile sheepishly at each other at the exact same time.

Three things happen in rapid succession.

“Good?” San’s voice is barely above a whisper, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. Just as you’re about to speak -

“San!” A voice, low and hoarse, interrupts you, and you look up to see the barrel of a gun pointed directly at the space between your eyes. You’re frozen in place for a split second before you start reaching for your own pistol. Your fingers brush the grip when -

The clock strikes seven, and sirens go off all around you, signalling the end of the purge.

The gun is out of your face. Your hand moves off of your own.

“San,” The owner of the gun pays you no mind, suddenly, his entire focus on San. The gun-owner reaches a hand out, and the firefighter beside you takes it, allowing himself to get pulled up to his feet. “You okay?”

“Yeah, Yunho, I’m totally good,” San responds, giving the taller man a cat-like grin of reassurance. Yunho’s got a fireman’s helmet on, and you suppose it’s good as protection. He must be a fellow firefighter, then. He’s tall, and though he’d seemed nothing short of severe mere moments ago, he seems softer, kinder now that the purge is over. The transformation is enough to give you whiplash. His right hand is wrapped in bandages, and this catches San’s sight at the same time it catches your own. “What the hell happened to you, though?”

“That policeman you killed had buddies,” Yunho replies with ease, but you don’t miss San’s wince. Seems like he hadn’t just happened upon that police-issue pistol. You can’t help the small grin that fights to make its way across your face. “They tried to get into the station, we had to fortify ourselves. We’re mostly fine, just that Woo’s lost a finger. He’ll live once he stops whining about it. We were mostly worried about you, honestly, taking fucking forever just to find a first aid kit. Who’s this?”

Yunho moves the topic of conversation over to you so naturally that you barely even realize what has happened before San is reaching a hand out to you to pull you up to a standing position. You grab ahold of your pistol, though you shove the bat off your lap before allowing yourself to be brought up. Without thinking, you practically plaster yourself to San’s side. Now that he’s for sure what he told you he was, and now that you’re no longer in danger of dying, you can’t help but feel inexplicably connected to him even though neither of you know each other. San wraps an arm around your waist naturally, and neither of you miss Yunho’s eyebrow raise. Neither of you acknowledge it, either.

“This?” San asks rhetorically, turning his head slightly to look at you. He’s smiling again, and you find that you want to see it more often. Maybe you’re experiencing the onset of delirium. You hope not. “This is…”

“(Name),” You reply, being honest. There’s no need for you to lie. Besides, you owe San answers, right? You stick your uninjured arm out, letting Yunho shake your hand. San’s grip tightens around your waist.

“I’m (Name).”

#first #five #tags #dont #work #san #san fluff #san angst #ateez san #choi san #ateez angst #ateez fluff #san x reader #choi san x reader #san smut

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