#STRICTLY BUSINESS SHOW with Doctor J
Text
emails (1996)
beardj
To: jbeard (James Beard)
From: jbeard (James Beard)
Re: a poem
Here's a poem I wrote today. Figured I'd better e-mail it to myself before I forget it…
Notes from the underground
fill my soul.
Why can't dinosaurs
make poopey in a hole?
Because humans toss trash
and leave gummy goo
And what dinosaur see,
dinosaur doo-doo.
bleekermanm
To: bleekermanm (Melvin Bleekerman)
From: [email protected]
Re: My little compy
I was thinking about stopping by tonight. But I've heard these terrible rumors about the Brachiosaurus dropping like flies.
You wouldn't know anything about that, would you? Is any money being spent in strange places?
See you later…
To: bleekermanm (Melvin Bleekerman)
From: santarosam (Michelle Santarosa)
Re: Some minor inaccuracies
Melvin,No need to worry - let Mama take care of it all. I'll talk to Mr. Hammond today.
Keep up the good work! And please, put some meat on your bones. Doesn't that wife of yours feed you?
From: bleekermanm (Melvin Bleekerman)
Re: My little compy
Grrr…You drive me wild. More importantly, you make me free! Free of all the accounting mumbo-jumbo, free of that nagging creature who calls herself my wife. When can I see you again?
To: santarosam (Michelle Santarosa)
From: bleekermanm (Melvin Bleekerman)
Re: Some slight inaccuracies
I'm sorry to trouble you - I know you are very busy - but there seem to be some budgetary inaccuracies in this period's budget. Would it be possible to get a more detailed breakdown of the costs incurred by Security? It's almost as if they are siphoning money from the other divisions…
boutcherj
To: boutcherj (Jim Boutcher)
From: petrolaj (J. Petrola)
Re: Clean Sweep
We've got the go-ahead for Clean Sweep. No need to remind you that this is strictly hush-hush.
To: goodes (Dr. Saul Goode)
From: boutcherj (Jim Boutcher)
Re: Favor time!
I need Grotenstein out of here ASAP. I know you've been a bit lenient about supplying pharmaceuticals to him - make Jackson think he's got a habit or something.
By the way, this isn't an optional assignment. I know what happened to you in New Jersey, and I won't hesitate to go public, "Doctor Goodfingers."
Funny how the past has a way of catching up with you. Guess that's what you get for working at Jurassic Park…
bookmarks
CBIAC
> okay this link was broken, but it did lead to: http://www.battelle.org/cbiac/cbiachp.html
> to make research easier, Here’s what battelle was/is and what cbiac is
bradyt
To: bradyt (Tabitha Brady)
From: scaturron (Nicholas Scaturro)
Re: Last night…Thanks for a wonderful night.
And thanks again for picking up the tab. It really wasn't necessary, but it was nice to have a woman buy me dinner for a change.
To: bradyt (Tabitha Brady)
From: garveyt (Theodore Garvey)
Re: Pump Room renovations
I was wondering if you've read my memo about the pump room renovations. Both the pipes and wires are showing signs of wear and tear at a faster rate than anticipated, and need replacement.
To: scaturron (Nicholas Scaturro)
From: bradyt (Tabitha Brady)
Re: Last night
Dinner was delicious, and so were you. Let's do it again.Meet me at Ca' Del Sol at 8pm. My treat.
To: glickmang (Greer Glickman)
From: bradyt (Tabitha Brady)
Re: Hammond meeting
I was wondering if you might have time to stop by this morning. I'm scheduled to meet with Hammond at three, and could really use some help in getting my report together.
And can you please get Garvey off my back? I really don't think I can take another second of his incessant complaining…
carveyj
To: grotensteinj (Jonathan Grotenstein), saundersj (James Saunders)
From: carveyj (Jake Carvey)
Re: Current Projects
I think Boutcher may be on to our project. We need to keep a low profile for a while…
dangeloc
To: dangeloc (Christopher D'Angelo)
From: nelsong (Greg Nelson)
Re: A new TV show
Mr. D'Angelo,
I read your letter on the IntraNet, and I believe that I have the perfect TV show for the Gallimimus.
We could follow the life of a Gallimimus from infancy to adulthood through absurdist eyes. Imagine a cross between Voltaire's Candide and Cervantes' Quixote, a naïve ingenue whose rich internal life leads him into imagined combats with incredible monsters, who, in actuality, will be metaphors for various social injustices.
You'd need to hire some pretty talented writers, I think. People who can combine insight with play, a la Derrida.
I'm very excited, and I'm sure a man as brilliant as you can see the possibilities. Please let me know what you think.
To: dangeloc (Christopher D'Angelo)
From: stephanm (Meghan Stephan)
Re: Bombs away!
Nice try, Guru. Nelson doesn't work for us.
To: stephanm (Meghan Stephan)
From: dangeloc (Christopher D'Angelo)
Re: Nightmare!
Meghan,
I had the worst dream last night…I was sitting naked in the Park, wearing some kind of Triceratops-shaped unitard (Do we sell these? If not, make a note!), playing with all the dinosaurs. (The Compys were the cutest - And so frisky!). Suddenly, I heard a huge rumbling sound. It was that purple dinosaur, only like 400 feet high. And he started to trample on all the other dinosaurs, with this big smile on his face, singing that stupid song over and over again. "I love you, you love me." It was horrible!
By the way, who was that new intern in the ugly green sweater? The guy really bugged me. Maybe it was just the sweater. Anyway, fire him, will ya?
To: nelsong (Greg Nelson)
From: dangeloc (Christopher D'Angelo)
Re: A new TV show
Mr. Nelson,
Thank you very much for your suggestion. I found it very intriguing.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure that your concept will fly with Mr. Hammond - I believe that Universal already has a similar project in development.
Thanks for your time!
Chris
P.S. In the future, can you please send your ideas directly to Meghan Stephan?
To: stephanm (Meghan Stephan)
From: dangeloc (Christopher D'Angelo)
Re: Bombs away!
Meghan,
While you're in the firing mode, get rid of that Nelson guy, too. What a moron!
davisk
From: davisk (Kevin Davis)
Re: My appointments
Hi Dr. Katz!
I was just wondering. Work has been quite stressful of late, and I was hoping that we could perhaps schedule an extra session per week for me over the next month or so?
That Jim Boutcher is making my life miserable!
devosd
To: devosd (David deVos)
From: shenkinm (Melissa Shenkin)
Re: Daycare
What is the status of the daycare center?
To: devosd (David deVos)
From: shenkinm (Melissa Shenkin)
Re: I don't care
Let me explain something to you.
I have worked very hard to get where I am. And I plan to keep moving upward. Hammond is a doddering fool, and the stockholders know it. When Jackson drops the ball on the Triceratops thing, I will be the clear choice to run this company. And I will remember the people who helped me get there.
But perhaps of more relevance to your current situation, I will surely remember the people who stood in my way. Do the right thing, David. The Daycare Center will be finished on time and on budget.
End of story.
To: shenkinm (Melissa Shenkin)
From: devosd (David deVos)
Re: Daycare
Well, we are a little behind schedule. We don't have enough money left in this period's budget to hire an outside contractor, and the Maintenance Department keeps complaining about slashed budgets. Did you know that they're down to one full set of tools? Which they are using, of course, to make the repairs on the Climate Control Room (Maybe we can get some air conditioning soon!)
While we are on the subject, are we sure that it's such a good idea to build daycare facilities right next to the Hatchery?
dillingerm
To: dillingerm (Maria Dillinger)
From: scaturron (Nicholas Scaturro)
Re: Dinner?
I can't get you off my mind. Last Thursday night was phenomenal.
Care for a repeat performance? We could start with dinner, and see where the night takes us. And I promise to remember my wallet this time…
To: scaturron (Nicholas Scaturro)
From: dillingerm (Maria Dillinger)
Re: Dinner?
I'd love to have dinner with you again. I'm free tonight…
garveyt
To: bradyt (Tabitha Brady)
From: garveyt (Theodore Garvey)
Re: Pump Room renovations
I was wondering if you've read my memo about the pump room renovations. Both the pipes and wires are showing signs of wear and tear at a faster rate than anticipated, and need replacement.
glickmang
To: glickmang (Greer Glickman)
From: scaturron (Nicholas Scaturro)
Re: Any plans?
Couldn't help but notice how well you filled out that Donna Karan suit yesterday. You wouldn't be interested in having dinner with me tonight, would you?
To: glickmang (Greer Glickman)
From: bradyt (Tabitha Brady)
Re: Hammond meeting
I was wondering if you might have time to stop by this morning. I'm scheduled to meet with Hammond at three, and could really use some help in getting my report together.
And can you please get Garvey off my back? I really don't think I can take another second of his incessant complaining…
To: glickmang (Greer Glickman)
From: stephanm (Meghan Stephan)
Re: Plukas?
No big deal on lunch - I had some work to do anyway. When are they going to break down and give you Tabitha's job?
Stay away from Plukas. He works for me, and I have first dibs…
To: scaturron (Nicholas Scaturro)
From: glickmang (Greer Glickman)
Re: Any plans?
Drop dead.
To: stephanm (Meghan Stephan)
From: glickmang (Greer Glickman)
Re: Plukas?
Sorry I have to cancel lunch - Tabitha's having another one of her panic attacks and I'm going to have to cover for her again.
No, I haven't been dating. The only offer I've had in weeks was from that Scaturro character. And I'm almost sorry I turned him down.
What's the deal with Roland Plukas? Is he single?
goodes
TO: goodes (Dr. Saul Goode)
FROM: grotensteinj (Jonathan Grotenstein)
RE: A new order
Thanks for the dexedrine. I'm really feeling a lot better.
I'm doing some research that seems to have fallen outside the margins of what the Genetics Department has budgeted for this quarter, and was wondering if you could help me out. I'm looking for the following:
Piracetam
Centrophenoxine
Vasopressin
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated…
To: goodes (Dr. Saul Goode)
From: grotensteinj (Jonathan Grotenstein)
Re: Prescription drugs
Don't you mean the hypocritic oath? Good doctor, you are both a lush and a pervert. You've been paid for your services. Now it's time to step to the plate.
I need that prescription by tomorrow morning. And the name of a pharmacist who will fill it.
To: goodes (Dr. Saul Goode)
From: boutcherj (Jim Boutcher)
Re: Favor time!
I need Grotenstein out of here ASAP. I know you've been a bit lenient about supplying pharmaceuticals to him - make Jackson think he's got a habit or something.
By the way, this isn't an optional assignment. I know what happened to you in New Jersey, and I won't hesitate to go public, "Doctor Goodfingers."
Funny how the past has a way of catching up with you. Guess that's what you get for working at Jurassic Park…
TO: grotensteinj (Jonathan Grotenstein)
FROM: goodes (Dr. Saul Goode)
RE: Prescription drugs
The prescription that you've asked me to write seems rather large and obscure. As a man of medicine, having taken the Hippocratic oath, I feel that it would be a betrayal of my life's mission to assist you with your needs.
Perhaps we can discuss a further arrangement to bring me back into the comfort zone.
To: jacksons (Dr. Stephen Jackson), boutcherj (Jim Boutcher)
From: goodes (Dr. Saul Goode)
Re: An odd request
As you know, I am asked from time to time to write prescriptions for various employees. It's my job, as a practitioner of medicine.
However, I feel compelled to inform you of an odd request made to me by someone in your department. Jonathan Grotenstein has asked for an extremely large quantity of drugs that, if combined in the proper manner, could be used to produce substances that are both dangerous and illegal. I fear he may be involved in some sort of drug trafficking scheme.
Obviously, I would never think of fulfilling such a request. Just wanted to bring this to your attention.
grotensteinj
TO: grotensteinj (Jonathan Grotenstein)
FROM: goodes (Dr. Saul Goode)
RE: Prescription drugs
The prescription that you've asked me to write seems rather large and obscure. As a man of medicine, having taken the Hippocratic oath, I feel that it would be a betrayal of my life's mission to assist you with your needs.
Perhaps we can discuss a further arrangement to bring me back into the comfort zone.
To: grotensteinj (Jonathan Grotenstein), saundersj (James Saunders)
From: carveyj (Jake Carvey)
Re: Current Projects
I think Boutcher may be on to our project. We need to keep a low profile for a while…
TO: goodes (Dr. Saul Goode)
FROM: grotensteinj (Jonathan Grotenstein)
RE: A new order
Thanks for the dexedrine. I'm really feeling a lot better.
I'm doing some research that seems to have fallen outside the margins of what the Genetics Department has budgeted for this quarter, and was wondering if you could help me out. I'm looking for the following:
Piracetam
Centrophenoxine
Vasopressin
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated…
To: goodes (Dr. Saul Goode)
From: grotensteinj (Jonathan Grotenstein)
Re: Prescription drugs
Don't you mean the hypocritic oath? Good doctor, you are both a lush and a pervert. You've been paid for your services. Now it's time to step to the plate.
I need that prescription by tomorrow morning. And the name of a pharmacist who will fill it.
jacksons
To: jacksons (Dr. Stephen Jackson), boutcherj (Jim Boutcher)
From: goodes (Dr. Saul Goode)
Re: An odd request
As you know, I am asked from time to time to write prescriptions for various employees. It's my job, as a practitioner of medicine.
However, I feel compelled to inform you of an odd request made to me by someone in your department. Jonathan Grotenstein has asked for an extremely large quantity of drugs that, if combined in the proper manner, could be used to produce substances that are both dangerous and illegal. I fear he may be involved in some sort of drug trafficking scheme.
Obviously, I would never think of fulfilling such a request. Just wanted to bring this to your attention.
kungj
To: kungj (Jocelyn Kung), moselyk (King Mosely)
From: pylea (Arthur Pyle)
Re: Meeting
I wanted to remind you that we are scheduled to meet again tonight. My office, 7:30pm
Bookmark: Telepathic Communication with Animals
moselyk
To: kungj (Jocelyn Kung), moselyk (King Mosely)
From: pylea (Arthur Pyle)
Re: Meeting
I wanted to remind you that we are scheduled to meet again tonight. My office, 7:30pm
Bookmark: Proof!
> broken link, but it linked to something called ‘ufo.jpg’ so.... yeah
nelsong
To: dangeloc (Christopher D'Angelo)
From: nelsong (Greg Nelson)
Re: A new TV show
Mr. D'Angelo,
I read your letter on the IntraNet, and I believe that I have the perfect TV show for the Gallimimus.
We could follow the life of a Gallimimus from infancy to adulthood through absurdist eyes. Imagine a cross between Voltaire's Candide and Cervantes' Quixote, a naïve ingenue whose rich internal life leads him into imagined combats with incredible monsters, who, in actuality, will be metaphors for various social injustices.
You'd need to hire some pretty talented writers, I think. People who can combine insight with play, a la Derrida.
I'm very excited, and I'm sure a man as brilliant as you can see the possibilities. Please let me know what you think.
To: nelsong (Greg Nelson)
From: dangeloc (Christopher D'Angelo)
Re: A new TV show
Mr. Nelson,
Thank you very much for your suggestion. I found it very intriguing.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure that your concept will fly with Mr. Hammond - I believe that Universal already has a similar project in development.
Thanks for your time!
Chris
P.S. In the future, can you please send your ideas directly to Meghan Stephan?
petrolaj
To: boutcherj (Jim Boutcher)
From: petrolaj (J. Petrola)
Re: Clean Sweep
We've got the go-ahead for Clean Sweep. No need to remind you that this is strictly hush-hush.
To: prestonj (Jason Preston), saundersj (James Saunders)
From: petrolaj (J. Petrola)
Re: Oops
Fellas, I guess there's no easy way to break this to you. I'm pregnant. And I'm not sure which of you is the father. I've always had a thing for programmers, and, I guess in this particular case, my tastes may have overlapped a little…
Please don't be angry - I'm not asking either of you to take responsibility. I just thought it was fair that you both knew.
For lack of a better closing, congratulations!
Bookmark: Research
> Broken link. Link was this “http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~don/foucault.html” here’s the wiki on foucault
plukasr
nothing
prestonj
To: prestonj (Jason Preston), saundersj (James Saunders)
From: petrolaj (J. Petrola)
Re: Oops
Fellas, I guess there's no easy way to break this to you. I'm pregnant. And I'm not sure which of you is the father. I've always had a thing for programmers, and, I guess in this particular case, my tastes may have overlapped a little…
Please don't be angry - I'm not asking either of you to take responsibility. I just thought it was fair that you both knew.
For lack of a better closing, congratulations!
To: prestonj (Jason Preston)
From: saundersj (James Saunders)
Re: Dead man
I don't think I can fire you. But that doesn't mean I can't kill you.
Watch your back, Preston…
Bookmark: WaterWorld
> the link is broken, but thats cause universal changed their url stuff. so it should go here.
pylea
To: kungj (Jocelyn Kung), moselyk (King Mosely)
From: pylea (Arthur Pyle)
Re: Meeting
I wanted to remind you that we are scheduled to meet again tonight. My office, 7:30pm
From: pylea (Arthur Pyle)
Re: Confessions of a Repentant Sinner
On December 1, 1995, I woke up for the first time in my almost fifty years.
Until then, my life was a meaningless series of seemingly random events. I was a man who did what was expected of him, no more, no less. I studied hard at university, found a respectable job, married a practical woman and did the best I could at being a father.
When the children left for college, my wife and I found ourselves not-so-uniquely unprepared to deal with the void, the binds of love and respect having slowly dissipated with time. I embraced a mid-life crisis with all of its trappings: the new car, the mistress, the half-hearted attempt at "getting in shape." And when the opportunity to move to sunny Southern California to work for InGen raised its Jurassic head, I gave myself fully to the experience. Like the Sartrean waiter, I was a man who understood the very banality of his own existence and resigned myself to playing my inescapable role.
Or so I thought.
As my ex-wife is fond of reminding me, I am not a particularly social man, prone to long silences and private jokes. I enjoyed my work at InGen and did my job well, but declined to engage in the sort of social climbing and gossipy politicking that I might have embraced as a younger man. My self-induced exile was observed by many to be some sort of quiet rebellion, an opinion I made no effort to dissuade. I suppose that's what attracted some of the younger employees to look to me for wisdom. Isaac Washington, whom I found to be a bit of a loud mouth, and Jocelyn, a sweet, fragile flower with a genius for programming.
An unlikely trio, we three, who found ourselves bereft of other family and friends at Thanksgiving time. We shared a modest meal at my economy single. I'll never forget the sight of the three of us, passing a heaping plate of turkey while seated on the floor around my coffee table. I related a funny story about the Gallimimus, while Jocelyn, her shy voice barely louder than a whisper, spoke of the way in which computers were used to insure optimal genetic configurations for the dinosaurs we produced.
The wine began to flow more heavily. I joked about the possibility of a computer -related accident wreaking havoc on the genetic code. Jocelyn began to bring up chaos theory before she was interrupted by Isaac, who turned out to have a most unusual set of beliefs including animal telepathy and a healthy dose of astrology. There are no "accidents," argued Isaac.
As the group's "wise man," the role of skeptic came quite easily to me. Of course there are accidents, I stated. Our own existence was proof of that. Isaac steadfastly maintained his contrary position. Even seemingly random genetic code is governed by a set of rules that can be observed in other modes of nature. Most prominently in the positions of the stars and planets.
I laughed heartily and turned to Jocelyn, whose almond eyes had grown progressively more alluring throughout the evening, in an older man's pathetic longing for a younger woman's approval. Instead of amusement, however, I found only the cold emptiness of a mind lost in scientific calculation. Finally, she spoke:
Such a thing could be proven, given a computer powerful enough to compile both the necessary genetics information and the mountains of astrological data from which Isaac was so freely quoting. InGen had such a computer, and wouldn't it be interesting to try…
The next few days moved slowly. I saw very little of either Jocelyn or Isaac, as both busied themselves with the task that was before them. On the evening of November 30, I received a note of invitation from Isaac. The experiment would take place that evening in the computer lab.
Most of the details of what went into the actual programming are still unclear to me. What I did understand was this: using data supplied by Isaac, Jocelyn had written a compiler that compared various dinosaurs' DNA combinations with the astrological configurations during the Jurassic era. If the program were to find some sort of relationship between the two, new combinations would be suggested based upon the current configuration of the stars, moons and planets.
I am not sure what result we were looking for. What we obtained was both brilliant in its simplicity and stultifying in its meaninglessness.
It was a string of genetic code.
santarosam
To: santarosam (Michelle Santarosa)
From: bleekermanm (Melvin Bleekerman)
Re: Some slight inaccuracies
I'm sorry to trouble you - I know you are very busy - but there seem to be some budgetary inaccuracies in this period's budget. Would it be possible to get a more detailed breakdown of the costs incurred by Security? It's almost as if they are siphoning money from the other divisions…
To: bleekermanm (Melvin Bleekerman)
From: santarosam (Michelle Santarosa)
Re: Some minor inaccuracies
Melvin,
No need to worry - let Mama take care of it all. I'll talk to Mr. Hammond today.
Keep up the good work! And please, put some meat on your bones. Doesn't that wife of yours feed you?
To: hammondj (John Hammond)
From: santarosam (Michelle Santarosa)
Re: Careful!
Gianni,
You must talk to your friends in Security about the way that they are spending their money. My accountants are beginning to smell a fish.
Bookmark: Food!
saundersj
To: prestonj (Jason Preston), saundersj (James Saunders)
From: petrolaj (J. Petrola)
Re: Oops
Fellas, I guess there's no easy way to break this to you. I'm pregnant. And I'm not sure which of you is the father. I've always had a thing for programmers, and, I guess in this particular case, my tastes may have overlapped a little…
Please don't be angry - I'm not asking either of you to take responsibility. I just thought it was fair that you both knew.
For lack of a better closing, congratulations!
To: grotensteinj (Jonathan Grotenstein), saundersj (James Saunders)
From: carveyj (Jake Carvey)
Re: Current Projects
I think Boutcher may be on to our project. We need to keep a low profile for a while…
To: [email protected] (Luís Cypher)
From: saundersj (James Saunders)
Re: Sound the ALARM
My old friend,
I am sorry for having remained incommunicado for so long. I have been involved in a project that I am sure will further our cause, and feared I might jeopardize it in my excitement to convey it to you.
I have managed to get involved in a "secret plan" with two coworkers from Genetics, a bleeding heart liberal and a radical chemist who has dipped into his own supply one too many times. They are trying to save the Brachiosaurus from its second extinction (this time, at the hands of a bored public) by increasing its intelligence, and hopefully its personality, with the use of "smart drugs." Unwilling to risk the lives of actual Brachiosaurus in the experimental stages, Carvey (the bleeding heart) has ordered Grotenstein (the chemist) to first test his concoctions on that other scourge of the Park, the Velociraptor.
I know what you're thinking, Luís. It's wrong to use drugs on any creature. But I believe you'll be more than satisfied with the spectacular results.
The drugs are actually working!
The Raptors are getting smarter by the day. The time is right for one to escape.
I've found the perfect dupe. A Ranger called Rodriguez. He's been suffering from extreme financial difficulties, and a small bribe was enough to make him look the other way while I injected one of the Raptors with a heavier-than-usual dose of the nootropics we've been using.
With a little providence, this could be the event that closes Jurassic Park down and ends these horrendous experiments once and for all.
I hope to see you soon, Luís. Until then, I look forward to the day when we can rid the earth once and for all of biological DNA of any kind, creating a world without pain, elevating our collective consciousness and taking the snail-paced process of evolution to its next logical step.
To: prestonj (Jason Preston)
From: saundersj (James Saunders)
Re: Dead man
I don't think I can fire you. But that doesn't mean I can't kill you.
Watch your back, Preston…
scaturron
To: scaturron (Nicholas Scaturro)
From: bradyt (Tabitha Brady)
Re: Last night
Dinner was delicious, and so were you. Let's do it again.
Meet me at Ca' Del Sol at 8pm. My treat.
To: scaturron (Nicholas Scaturro)
From: dillingerm (Maria Dillinger)
Re: Dinner?
I'd love to have dinner with you again. I'm free tonight…
To: scaturron (Nicholas Scaturro)
From: glickmang (Greer Glickman)
Re: Any plans?
Drop dead.
To: bradyt (Tabitha Brady)
From: scaturron (Nicholas Scaturro)
Re: Last night…
Thanks for a wonderful night.
And thanks again for picking up the tab. It really wasn't necessary, but it was nice to have a woman buy me dinner for a change.
To: dillingerm (Maria Dillinger)
From: scaturron (Nicholas Scaturro)
Re: Dinner?
I can't get you off my mind. Last Thursday night was phenomenal.
Care for a repeat performance? We could start with dinner, and see where the night takes us. And I promise to remember my wallet this time…
To: glickmang (Greer Glickman)
From: scaturron (Nicholas Scaturro)
Re: Any plans?
Couldn't help but notice how well you filled out that Donna Karan suit yesterday. You wouldn't be interested in having dinner with me tonight, would you?
shenkinm
To: shenkinm (Melissa Shenkin)
From: devosd (David deVos)
Re: Daycare
Well, we are a little behind schedule. We don't have enough money left in this period's budget to hire an outside contractor, and the Maintenance Department keeps complaining about slashed budgets. Did you know that they're down to one full set of tools? Which they are using, of course, to make the repairs on the Climate Control Room (Maybe we can get some air conditioning soon!)
While we are on the subject, are we sure that it's such a good idea to build daycare facilities right next to the Hatchery?
To: devosd (David deVos)
From: shenkinm (Melissa Shenkin)
Re: Daycare
What is the status of the daycare center?
To: devosd (David deVos)
From: shenkinm (Melissa Shenkin)
Re: I don't care
Let me explain something to you.
I have worked very hard to get where I am. And I plan to keep moving upward. Hammond is a doddering fool, and the stockholders know it. When Jackson drops the ball on the Triceratops thing, I will be the clear choice to run this company. And I will remember the people who helped me get there.
But perhaps of more relevance to your current situation, I will surely remember the people who stood in my way. Do the right thing, David. The Daycare Center will be finished on time and on budget.
End of story.
stephanminbox
To: stephanm (Meghan Stephan)
From: glickmang (Greer Glickman)
Re: Plukas?
Sorry I have to cancel lunch - Tabitha's having another one of her panic attacks and I'm going to have to cover for her again.
No, I haven't been dating. The only offer I've had in weeks was from that Scaturro character. And I'm almost sorry I turned him down.
What's the deal with Roland Plukas? Is he single?
To: stephanm (Meghan Stephan)
From: dangeloc (Christopher D'Angelo)
Re: Nightmare!
Meghan,
I had the worst dream last night…I was sitting naked in the Park, wearing some kind of Triceratops-shaped unitard (Do we sell these? If not, make a note!), playing with all the dinosaurs. (The Compys were the cutest - And so frisky!). Suddenly, I heard a huge rumbling sound. It was that purple dinosaur, only like 400 feet high. And he started to trample on all the other dinosaurs, with this big smile on his face, singing that stupid song over and over again. "I love you, you love me." It was horrible!
By the way, who was that new intern in the ugly green sweater? The guy really bugged me. Maybe it was just the sweater. Anyway, fire him, will ya?
To: stephanm (Meghan Stephan)
From: dangeloc (Christopher D'Angelo)
Re: Bombs away!
Meghan,
While you're in the firing mode, get rid of that Nelson guy, too. What a moron!
To: glickmang (Greer Glickman)
From: stephanm (Meghan Stephan)
Re: Plukas?
No big deal on lunch - I had some work to do anyway. When are they going to break down and give you Tabitha's job?
Stay away from Plukas. He works for me, and I have first dibs…
To: dangeloc (Christopher D'Angelo)
From: stephanm (Meghan Stephan)
Re: Bombs away!
Nice try, Guru. Nelson doesn't work for us.
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(STRICTLY BUSINESS SHOW with Doctor J)
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The Joker x Reader - “Trapped” Part 5
Almost one year ago, someone tried to kill The Joker in a speeding car and Y/N pushed him out of the way, getting hit instead. With a fractured skull and broken bones, she was out of business for 6 months; when she finally recovered, The Queen of Gotham wasn’t the same anymore. Trapped inside her own mind and exhibiting severe cognitive impairment, Y/N’s life switched upside down without any hope of ever returning to normal.
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4
4 Months Pregnant
“I need customized stickers that say Baby On Board for my purple Lamborghini and the other cars I drive,” The Joker growls at his own idea whilst sharing it with the person fulfilling his wacko trades: Franco Rossi, the leader of best underground supply chain in Gotham.
“When would you like them ready Mister J? After Y/N gives birth?”
“Nope! Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?...” Franco hesitantly inquiries about the sudden emergency since he can’t understand why The King of Gotham demands them so fast.
The Joker hates explaining yet certain people are obtuse thus they necessitate enlightenment.
“Y/N’s pregnant: when she gets in a car, the baby is also. Baby on board! Hello??” the father-to-be loses his temper.
Who can argue with The Joker’s logic? Nobody. It sort of makes sense anyway.
“Of course, Mister J. I’ll have them ready. If you drop by after 6pm, I’ll have your guns ready too.”
“Perfect!” the Joker hangs up among the ruckus coming from the office near the kitchen: sounds of shattered objects and yelling alert Richard aka Panda you’re at it again. He nonchalantly passes by in order to deliver the items to The Clown.
“Your drinks Mister J,” he gives one cup with Starbucks caramel latte to his boss and the other is placed on the table. Why does your boyfriend require 2 identical containers? It won’t take long to solve the mystery.
“Are the lids glued?”
Strange question but there’s a purpose in it.
“Yes sir. How is she doing?”
“She’s hormonal: breaking things makes her feel better which reminds me we have to hoard porcelain objects for her to wreck. NO glass!”
“Sure, I’ll tell the crew,” Richard leaves the kitchen while texting Frost. “Hulk needs more to smash,” he types the code name they gave you in the last weeks although The King knows about it: J’s the one that came up with it.
“Hey Pumpkin,” you are greeted as soon as you pop up from the office. “How’d it go?” he scrolls down on his phone and takes a sip of hot liquid.
“Ugghh!” a frustrated Y/N swings the yellow teddy bear The Joker stole for her on their first date, hitting his hand in the process. The drink flies near the fridge and splatters on the floor with minimal damage: only a tiny puddle instead of a disaster, that’s why the lids are glued.
Safety measure for The Queen’s unpredictability.
J grabs his reserve cup of coffee, paying attention now hence he dodges your renewed attack and keeps his coffee intact.
That’s why his drinks have the lids glued, in case you catch him off guard the second time it will result in negligible destruction.
It happened before.
“I don’t think so Princess,” The Joker strong grip on the container calms you a bit because you won’t be able to win this round. “Are you hungry?”
“No,” you pout and sit in his lap.
“I bet the baby is,” the secret weapon is unleashed: J discovered such a gem by accident and it works like a charm. How can Y/N say “no” if the baby is involved? She can’t.
A plate filled with a bunch of your favorite breakfast food is placed in front of you and strangely enough you’re instantly hungry.
“Extra bacon,” he purrs. “Plus chocolate dip and honey mustard for your pickled cherries. I added peanut butter olives as a bonus.”
In your defense, you’ve been having weird cravings lately.
You place the toy on the chair nearby and start eating, ogling a Joker texting back and forth with his business partners. He chews the morsel you just offered and shivers: waffle dipped in clam juice is disgusting. Maybe he should look at the food you shove in his mouth.
“Gross,” J washes the terrible taste with coffee and gets a kiss for encouragement, yet he’s aware of the connotations. Another kiss confirms it.
Let’s put it this way: besides the hormonal episodes and food demands, The Queen has had a fresh type of craving recently - The Joker kind.
More than usually.
That’s why he has to clear it up.
“I’m flattered for being the center of attention; we gotta keep in mind that contrary to the popular belief, I don’t have unlimited stamina, Pumpkin.”
You nod in agreement and unbutton his pants, then unzip them also.
“Y/N, pay attention!” J insists since you don’t give a damn about his woes. “Think about it as a two way street: The Joker Street and I Want To Break Things Street. Are you with me so far?” he double checks.
Why is he yapping so much??! I guess you should make an effort to comprehend: he’s even doodling patterns on his phone to emphasize the speech.
“When you get hormonal, Princess, let’s try and walk on the I Want To Break Things Street instead of The Joker Street, hm? The Joker Street is sometimes closed for repairs until further announcement.”
OK, OK, this is a lecture. Something about a Joker Street, he seems upset he doesn’t have one…?... Right?...
If you were him, you would be pissed Gotham didn’t name a street in your honor when you’re so important for the town.
Another peck on his neck, then your lips go down his collar bone.
“You’re not paying attention, are you?” J mutters when it’s clear his shirt won’t remain on his body for too long.
“I am,” you defend yourself.
“Oh yeah? What did I say then?”
“Ummm…” you try to piece together words among estrogen taking over. “No Joker Street?...”
“Bingo, that’s it Princess! No Joker Street, correct! Choose the other street, yes?”
This time he kisses you, excited his idea was well received when in fact, both parties are referring to unrelated concepts.
“Wait,” J dodges your touch, “Richard is calling.”
Because he’s on the phone ignoring Y/N, she is ensuring a nice surprise for later; concentrating to the maximum to avoid misspelling, the following message is sent to Franco Rossi from her cell:
“Make a landmark sign that says Joker Street.”
The King’s conversation is prolonged more than anticipated until he discerns you’re not wiggling: you feel asleep, softly snoring on his shoulder and he definitely can’t afford to wake you up.
The doctors said your body is trying to cope with the pregnancy the best way it can: if you doze off at random hours it means you ran out of fuel and you should rest. After cheating death and surviving the accident, the future mother is at high risk of serious complications which is why each day could lead to unforeseen problems.
The Joker rises from the chair holding you in his arms and after a few steps he realizes it’s difficult to walk: thanks to his unbuttoned and unzipped pants, they keep sliding lower and lower. There’s no way he will make it upstairs so maybe the sofa in the living room is the best option. He almost trips thus he begins to drag his feet on the carpet, the pants at knee level now.
“I’m reduced to a piece of meat,” J grumbles, finally making it to the couch and placing Y/N on it so she can have her power nap.
*************
6:02pm
You accompanied The King to a meeting with Seraphim, the best hacker/strategist J uses: they’ve been plotting for a while concerning D.A. Kevin Winchester. The politician is becoming a huge pain in the butt for Gotham’s underworld and something must be done; either annihilation or blackmail, it truly doesn’t matter since he’s bad for business. Due to a total lack of interest in the subject, you are exploring the surroundings quite angry The Joker dragged you here.
Luckily there’s stuff to do.
Bam! you punch the fragile glass sculpture and it splinters into a million pieces on the lavish marble floor.
Seraphim jumps at the noise, immediately recognizing his beloved possession:
“That’s…,” he gulps, appalled. “That’s a Vitriol!”
Yup, the one and only Degas Vitriol, the latest sensation taking the art universe by storm.
“She’s hormonal,” J sneers. “She breaks shit!”
“That’s valued at 150,000 dollars!” the hacker breaths in much needed oxygen regarding the atrocity unfolding at his hideout.
“So??!!” your boyfriend sucks on his teeth, irritated. “Serves you right for buying that asshole’s artsy fartsy crap!”
The Joker actually has 4 Vitriol masterpieces at the mansion yet you were strictly forbidden to destroy them, alas he gave you the office for your rampages.
You continue your exploration as they talk about God knows what until you perceive an alarming detail: Seraphim is literally screaming having a gun pointed at J.
You sneak behind him then in a split second you strike the pistol out of his hand and your fist lands on his temple with such brutality it knocks him out unconscious.
“What the hell are you doing, Y/N???” The Clown hisses at your erratic behavior.
“Hm?”
“What are you doing??!!!” he repeats, annoyed.
“S-saving you…,” you stutter, confused on why J is mad. “He was yelling and…mmm, had a gun,” you wince in pain because your knuckles hurt from the impact.
“The guy’s half deaf and sometimes he raises his voice without noticing, or did you forget??!! Now I have to wait until he comes to his senses and that’s a waste of my time, Y/N!!! Seraphim wasn’t threatening me, he was showing me his newest collectible!!! I suppose someone with half a brain can’t acknowledge the mess they’ve created!!!”
A lot of accusations thrown your way still… the last sentence brings tears in your eyes.
“I…” you bite your lower lip. “…I don’t have half of brain…”
“Wanna bet??” The Joker bites more instead of leveling with your logic: you though he was in danger and took action. If it was a real emergency, yes, you would have been the hero; it’s not and apparently he can’t appreciate your fast intervention in these circumstances.
“Y-you’re stupid…” you whisper, frustrated. “You don’t understand anything…”
Here it is -- the cataclysmic event of the century: someone called The Joker stupid. He’s beyond outraged with nothing better to utter besides a very childish:
“You’re stupid!”
Y/N turns around and stomps out of the house leaving a trail of destruction outside: she slaps the bottled water out of The Shark’s hand, kicks Panda’s shin and snatches Frost’s donut basically inhaling the sweet treat.
“I want to go h-home!!” you shout and enter the first vehicle you see, slamming the door so hard the window on the passenger side cracks.
“Jesus…” Jonny mumbles and being the sensible man that he is you are offered the whole box of pastries he purchased for his family. He can acquire more, but there’s no way in hell he wants to endure Y/N in the state she’s in.
Gotta keep Hulk calm somehow…
**************
3 Hours Afterwards
You sulk when The Joker strolls in the master bathroom frantically searching the cabinets.
“Did you see my shaver?” he asks.
“Hm?”
“Did you see my shaver?”
“I…I wouldn’t know. I only have half a brain,” the surprisingly eloquent phrase queues J his woman is holding a grudge for his earlier statement. Why wouldn’t she? He was a complete jerk.
At least you didn’t catch on to the obvious: The King of Gotham doesn’t own a shaver; hair just grows on his head.
He glimpses at Y/N soaking in the bathtub with a kid’s book in her left hand and the right hand fingers sunk into a bowl filled with ice placed at the edge of the Jacuzzi. The Joker leans over and switches your book since it’s upside down.
You huff at the unwanted help and stare at the pictures expecting he’ll look for his shaver and disappear.
You’re not that fortunate today.
“Imagine my surprise when I drove the main alley and detected a sign that says The Joker Street,” he brings up the topic.
Franco Rossi was super-efficient …sadly you ordered the item before J ran his mouth at the hacker’s place, otherwise you wouldn’t care he wants a street with his name.
“You said no… no Joker Street,” you stammer. “Now you have one,” the bitter tone makes him roll his eyes: Y/N’s brain got what it could from his monologue, he should have known better than to make it complicated.
“Excellent…” The King starts rubbing your tummy, “… precisely what I was aiming for. I’m washing the baby, not you!” he underlines when you move farther from him.
You scrunch your face displeased but let him do it because it’s for the baby.
“I know what you’re doing,” Y/N gives him a cold gaze. “U-using the baby… I’m not stupid!”
Busted, The Joker thinks. The schemer in him won’t accept defeat though.
“I didn’t say you were.”
“Yes you did!”
“You said it first!!!” he reckons, antagonized. “Therefore two stupid people put together gotta make up for a smart one!!’
“I… I don’t wanna make out…” you frown at his suggestion.
The Joker sighs, deciding not to correct the trajectory of your judgement; it sure sounds like an opportunity.
“Why not?”
“I’m tired and…and I h-hate you,” your heavy eyelids close.
“Both viable reasons, even if I have to admit you striking Seraphim like that got me quite worked up. He’s no small fry! I had to wait for one hour for him to recover; you got a mean punch, woman! The more I reflect on it, the hornier I get. Which reminds me, Pumpkin: guess what?... … … I’m hormonal too.”
No answer, Pumpkin’s out.
“Of course nobody gives a damn if I’m hormonal!” he complaints while grabbing you from the bathtub. You cling to him for a few moments prior to drifting back into your dreams.
“Thanks for getting me all wet,” J snarls at the cruel reality of having his favorite Prada suit ruined.
“You…you’re welcome…” his Queen replies in her sleep, somehow her mind clutching to reality amidst pure relaxation.
This is what two hormonal individuals are reduced to: one’s dozing off, the other is suffering in silence, although being the proud owner of the tiniest road in Gotham compensates for the mishap.
It’s a two way street.
Also read: Masterlist
You can also follow me on Ao3 and Wattpad under the same blog name: DiYunho.
#the joker x reader#the joker imagine#the joker fanfiction#the joker jared leto#the joker suicide squad#the joker#joker#joker x reader#joker leto#joker imagine#joker suicide squad#joker jared leto#mister j#mr. j#dc#dcu
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NCIS: LA has officially bid adieu to the Wonder Twins, with Eric Beale (Barrett Foa) recruiting Nell Jones (Renée Felice Smith) — filling in as operations manager while Hetty Lange (Linda Hunt) was MIA this season — to co-run the international office of his company with him in Tokyo.
The offer came in the finale as Retired Navy Admiral Hollace Kilbride (Gerald McRaney) told her she had to either take Hetty’s position permanently or resign. She chose the latter. (Eric has only held a consulting position with NCIS this season.)
“The door always remains open for Nell at NCIS, but it may be time for her to be pushed out of the nest a bit and see where this new opportunity takes her,” Smith tells TV Insider. “We’ll just have to wait and see with this new chapter. Nell is like a lot of us. She’s a smart girl and she chose stability for a good long time because it was the smart choice. it was the safe choice. Although she will always be committed to her team, which has essentially become her family, I think she needs to put herself first when it comes to this sort of decision and I commend her for [it].”
Below, Smith opens up about saying goodbye, reflects on Nell’s time at NCIS as well as her own on the CBS drama and ponders the future for Nell and Eric.
So this is officially your farewell?
Renée Felice Smith: Yes, this is official. Nell has made an exit. It’s surreal to say this out loud, but I think it’s time. I think that I spent more time at NCIS: LA than I did in my entire school career. [Laughs] I guess it was K through 11. I was there for 11 seasons, and it was an absolute gift, such an incredible opportunity. It became a little film school for me. I made my own short films. I made a feature that went to South by Southwest (SXSW) and then went on to Hulu. I’m currently developing a few television projects, which is very exciting, and just released our very first children’s book [with Chris Gabriel]. Lots of good creative juices have been flowing and will continue to flow.
Nell did try to leave NCIS last season. Did she need this time back with the team before she could decide it was truly time to move on?
I think so. I think more than anything Nell was fulfilling the wishes of her boss, her mentor, Hetty, who called her back in and asked her to fill in for the time being. And I think she had to make this tough decision when faced with the people on her team who have become her friends or family, her whole world really, and she had to really put herself first and make this choice for herself. It’s not something she took lightly.
She says that she’s not sure about the job in Tokyo, but she does know that she doesn’t want Hetty’s job. What is it about this job in Tokyo that might be the right thing for her to get closer to figuring out what she does want?
I think it’s just safe. I think she needs the time and space away from NCIS: LA. She was a good girl. She made the smart choice. She chose stability for so long. But now it’s about really asking herself those tough questions: What does Nell want to do with the rest of her life? She’s in the driver’s seat. She’s her own boss now, which is just so empowering. I think her future will be very bright.
Nell and Eric say this is going to be “strictly business,” but might they be able to make a relationship work away from everything that may have reminded them why they couldn’t make it work before?
Hey, that’s a possibility! We should get you in the writers’ room. I think when you spend so much time with someone at work and then outside of work, it can become trying in a relationship setting. Your guess is as good as mine as far as what will happen in the future with Eric and Nell. I do think they have a very lovely mutual respect for each other. They really respect one another’s intelligence and those are always the best building blocks for a long-lasting relationship.
Talk about working with Linda Hunt again in that farewell scene.
It was quite emotional to have Linda Hunt back on set again for our final day of the season, and that scene was shot on our final day of the season. She was essentially sidelined by the pandemic this year, so to be able to see her in the flesh, let alone share a scene with her, with the Oscar winner, it was a chef’s kiss, the perfect sendoff. But this scene was really bittersweet. It was a bittersweet reunion for Nell. She wants to stay and catch up with Hetty, her mentor who has been MIA really for the entire season, but she can’t. Eric’s waiting for her. She has this opportunity in Tokyo that she’s committed to now. It’s this goodbye for now scene. But we just had the best time filming it. Linda is a dear friend of mine, and so to be able to share that time with her was truly a gift. Anytime I can watch her work, it’s like a masterclass, and I’m just a student and I bow down bowed down to the great Linda Hunt.
I was happy to see Nell’s goodbye with Kensi [Daniela Ruah] because that’s been one of my favorite relationships over the years.
I absolutely love Daniela Ruah as an actor, as a person, as a friend, as a mother, as a dog mom. She is just the most generous, giving scene partner. We have this mutual appreciation for each other. Nell and Kensi do as well, so I think that comes through in our scenes. We just have the best time working together.
Among the most entertaining scenes this season have to be pretty much anything with Kilbride, and you’ve been part of quite a few of them. What has he brought to the show?
Mack is an absolute legend. He is a bulletproof scene partner. He does not mess up. Iron sharpens iron. He’s witty, he’s prepared, He is everything you want in a scene partner and I would work with him for the rest of my days. Maybe we should go off and do NCIS: New York or something together because he is just unmatched. I really am very fond of Mack and we have great conversations off-camera. He’s a dear friend.
And Kilbride’s really pushed Nell to make choices about her career.
For sure. Kilbride sees all of Nell’s potential and I think Kilbride has a different bedside manner than Hetty does. Whereas Hetty will mysteriously put the puzzle pieces together in your favor and lead you with breadcrumbs along the path, Kilbride just says it point-blank. It can be startling as a young woman anytime an older male figure speaks to you with that stern quality. You go, “Wow, OK, just relax dude.” Or at least that’s what I do. “Pump the brakes.” That was Nell and Kilbride this season: Nell encouraging him to pump the brakes and “chill,” so to speak, and Kilbride not really getting down with that. These two characters have a mutual respect for each other. Though they come from different worlds, they can see each other’s value and obviously they show respect to one another, which is key.
What are the moments stand out to you for Nell over the years when you look back?
Wearing the elf ears. The mistletoe scene with Eric Beale. Riding in the Jaguar with Hetty. Going out and partnering with Eric [Christian] Olsen, Deeks. A lot of the fans were like, “Oh my God, it’s Velma and Shaggy,” a Scooby-Doo reference, which I thought was spot on whenever we were paired together. That was during Daniela’s pregnancy. The show was great in that way that it would morph and kind of accommodate for Daniela’s pregnancies, which were truly a gift to me and my character, because I was able then to go out into the field and do some action sequences: jumping up on the desk and roundhousing the guy to the face, sprinting. The camera guys who were positioned in a golf cart realized they had to drive faster because I was running so fast. I was a sprinter in high school on my track team, and yes, I can run very fast, but obviously, our crew didn’t know that because I was always in the office. [There were] these fun discoveries that would happen whenever I was out in the field with our incredible crew.
A recent scene with Sam I really loved — LL Cool J is just an incredible scene partner. And we were talking about what a different flavor this scene had brought to the show because Nell is usually quick with a quip, but she does not often drop the hammer. [There was] a conflict between the two of them, and Nell just has this moment where she really shows her stern side. That was great, just to watch the reaction on Todd’s face as the scene was playing out. And I remember our camera operator said, “Ooh, you scared me. I would do whatever it is you said I should.” It was refreshing, it was something different for Nell to play. I appreciate that too this season.
Every time I think of Nell in the field, I think of the episode “Kill House.”
Yes, that’s right. That’s an incredible episode. At the end of that episode, Daniela’s character Kensi shares a little exchange with Nell. And then we walk away and Daniela just instinctually grabbed me and put her arm around me and leaned in. I think she might’ve kissed my head or something like that. That’s kind of the beginning of the on-camera love fest between me and Daniela Ruah.
When I spoke with her early this season, she actually brought up that too.
Oh, no way! That’s so crazy. It made an impact on both of us.
You mentioned the children’s book that you wrote. What made now the right time for you to tell that story?
We wrote Hugo and the Impossible Thing as a celebration really. Hugo, our canine son, overcame a life-threatening illness, a brain tumor that nearly everyone told us would be just impossible to beat, but through great determination on his part and our part and with the help of some really very generous doctors, Hugo made it to the other side of his impossible thing.
We knew we wanted to share his message and we knew we needed to find the right metaphor to do so. Enter “the impossible thing”: this labyrinth of raging rivers and thorny mazes, giant boulders, towering cliffs. We really wanted to challenge the idea of “impossible” and reframe it. I feel like oftentimes we’re told something is impossible to accomplish because it’s just quite simply never been done before when in reality it’s just extremely difficult, but it’s possibly possible, but you just need someone who’s willing to try, someone who’s brave enough to try. We wanted to share Hugo’s message and hope always that it could inspire children as well as adults to conquer whatever their impossible thing may be.
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A judge in Oklahoma on Monday ruled that Johnson & Johnson had intentionally downplayed the dangers and oversold the benefits of opioids, and ordered it to pay the state $572 million in the first trial of a drug manufacturer for the destruction wrought by prescription painkillers.
The amount fell far short of the $17 billion judgment that Oklahoma had sought to pay for addiction treatment, drug courts and other services it said it would need over the next 20 years to repair the damage done by the opioid epidemic.
Still, the decision, by Thad Balkman of Cleveland County District Court, heartened lawyers representing states and cities — plaintiffs in many of the more than 2,000 opioid lawsuits pending across the country — who are pursuing a legal strategy similar to Oklahoma’s. His finding that Johnson & Johnson had breached the state’s “public nuisance” law was a significant aspect of his order.
Judge Balkman was harsh in his assessment of a company that has built its reputation as a responsible and family-friendly maker of soap, baby powder and Band-Aids.
In his ruling, he wrote that Johnson & Johnson had promulgated “false, misleading, and dangerous marketing campaigns” that had “caused exponentially increasing rates of addiction, overdose deaths” and babies born exposed to opioids.
Sabrina Strong, a lawyer for Johnson & Johnson, one the world’s biggest health care companies, said, “We have many strong grounds for appeal and we intend to pursue those vigorously.”
Johnson & Johnson, which contracted with poppy growers in Tasmania, supplied 60 percent of the opiate ingredients that drug companies used for opioids like oxycodone, the state argued, and aggressively marketed opioids to doctors and patients as safe and effective. A Johnson & Johnson subsidiary, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, made its own opioids — a pill whose rights it sold in 2015, and a fentanyl patch that it still produces.
Judge Balkman said the $572 million judgment could pay for a year’s worth of services needed to combat the epidemic in Oklahoma.
“We would have liked to walk out of here with $17 billion, but we’ve been able to put together a billion dollars,” Oklahoma’s attorney general, Mike Hunter, said at a news conference on Monday. He was referring to the cumulative amount from the Johnson & Johnson judgment and previous settlements with two other drug manufacturers that produce opioids. Earlier this year, Purdue Pharma and Teva Pharmaceuticals agreed to pay $270 million and $85 million, respectively.
“We’ve shown that J & J was at the root cause of this opioid crisis,” said Brad Beckworth, the lead attorney for the state. “It made billions of dollars from it over a 20-year period. They’ve always denied responsibility and yet at the same time they say they want to make a difference in solving this problem. So do the right thing: Come in here, pay the judgment.”
The case was also closely watched by some two dozen opioid makers, distributors and retailers that face more than 2,000 similar lawsuits around the country.
In a statement, Michael Ullmann, the general counsel and executive vice president of Johnson & Johnson, referring to the company’s pharmaceutical subsidiary, said that “Janssen did not cause the opioid crisis in Oklahoma, and neither the facts nor the law support this outcome.
“We recognize the opioid crisis is a tremendously complex public health issue,” he said, “and we have deep sympathy for everyone affected.”
The stocks of Johnson & Johnson and other opioid manufacturers rallied briefly in after-hours trading after the news, perhaps because some had anticipated a judgment of $1 billion or more. Johnson & Johnson stock was up about 4 percent in after-hours trading on Monday evening, and the stocks of Endo International, Mallinckrodt and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries all briefly spiked after the decision, although some fell again.
Oklahoma has suffered mightily from opioids. Mr. Hunter has said that between 2015 and 2018, 18 million opioid prescriptions were written in a state with a population of 3.9 million. Since 2000, his office said, about 6,000 Oklahomans have died from opioid overdoses, with thousands more struggling with addiction.
To calculate the Oklahoma award, Judge Balkman relied on the state’s detailed estimates of what it would cost to remediate the effects of the opioid epidemic. The state said it would need $893 million a year, or about $17 billion over 20 years.
The state’s case was argued by private lawyers whose sense of urgency was driven by personal tragedy — among them, they had seen a son, a business partner and friends succumb to opioids.
On the eve of trial, the lead attorney, Mr. Beckworth, of Austin, Tex., almost dropped out because his wife had just begun chemotherapy for breast cancer, but he said she urged him to stick with the case he “had been born to try.” “If you have an oversupply,” he said in his opening argument, “people will die.”
Reading a summary of his decision in court in Norman, Okla., Judge Balkman said Johnson & Johnson had an outsize impact on the state’s epidemic, though its share of opioid sales was scarcely 1 percent of the market.
“The critical finding is that Johnson & Johnson engaged in false, deceptive and misleading marketing,” said Abbe R. Gluck, who teaches health policy and law at Yale Law School.
From 2000 through 2011, members of Johnson & Johnson’s sales staff made some 150,000 visits to Oklahoma doctors, focusing in particular on high-volume prescribers, the state said. In addition, the pharmaceutical giant supplied most of the nation’s opioid material to other drug manufacturers, refined by one of its companies from a variety of poppy that Johnson & Johnson developed and grew in Tasmania.
Johnson & Johnson, represented by Larry D. Ottaway, an Oklahoma lawyer, argued its case with an eye toward appellate courts. Indeed whether Judge Balkman’s verdict will survive scrutiny is uncertain: State and possibly federal appeals judges may take a skeptical view of the state’s legal theory and the extent of the company’s liability.
During the trial, Johnson & Johnson said blame for the epidemic could not fairly be placed on one company with such modest sales, whose drugs were approved and strictly regulated by state and federal agencies.
Johnson & Johnson said that the state could not show how Oklahoma’s problems, which the company said arose from the diversion of hydrocodone and oxycodone, could be linked to Janssen, which did not make those drugs. It cited black-box warnings on Duragesic, its fentanyl patch, which cautioned about the potential for abuse and addiction. And it said the state had not identified any doctor who had been misled by the company about the dangers of opioids.
But Judge Balkman wrote that he was persuaded by the state’s legal theory. The judge found that Johnson & Johnson perpetuated a “public nuisance,” substantially contributing to an ongoing public health crisis that could take decades to abate.
Public nuisance laws are usually applied in cases where something interferes with a right common to the general public, traditionally roads, waterways or other public areas. Recently, plaintiffs have used the laws to press claims involving lead paint, guns or water or air pollution, with mixed results. Oklahoma’s public nuisance statute is relatively broad, and the state argued that Johnson & Johnson substantially interfered with public health.
Johnson & Johnson’s lawyers contended that the state was contorting public nuisance law to the point of being unrecognizable.
Lawyers representing more than 2,000 cities, counties and other jurisdictions with opioid cases pending in federal court were cheered by Judge Balkman’s ruling. In a statement, they said: “While public nuisance laws differ in every state, this decision is a critical step forward.”
Judge Balkman’s ruling comes only two months before the first federal opioid trial is to begin in Cleveland, brought by two Ohio counties against an array of manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies.
Now that the value of the Oklahoma case has been determined, settlement negotiations may quicken between industry defendants and two large groups of plaintiffs — one, representing thousands of cities and counties, consolidated in federal court in Cleveland, and the other, a coalition of states.
But the seven-week Oklahoma trial, which began on May 28, was also singular in some ways. Judge Balkman, an elected jurist and former state legislator, presided over the case. By contrast, much of the forthcoming Ohio trial, which includes other claims, will be heard by a jury.
Also, the pending federal case in Ohio involves numerous defendants, while Oklahoma made its case in court against just Johnson & Johnson.
The level of proof required by the state to back up its allegation that Johnson & Johnson was the “kingpin” of the opioid epidemic required that it demonstrate that the company was responsible for most of the opioid-related damage — from criminal justice to health care, foster care and treatment facilities.
The state said that the company aggressively promoted the safety of opioids generally, through campaigns tailored for women, teenagers and veterans. The company engaged with “front groups” of pain patients and pain medicine specialists, who insisted the drugs were effective for quotidian pain and downplayed the risk of addiction.
“Judge Balkman has affirmed our position that Johnson & Johnson maliciously and diabolically created the opioid epidemic in our state,” Mr. Hunter said.
Phroyd
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A Hot Tangle: Bianca's Story (Biadore, side of Trixya) - doctor bitchcraftt
A/N: For those who loved A Hot Tangle, here is the companion piece with Bianca’s side of the conversation with Katya right after she discovers Courtney was awake and overheard her and Trixie. Xoxoxoxo, bitchcraftt
Read A Hot Tangle here, or scroll down to the bottom to just read the scene from Katya’s POV.
********
It’s a rare evening, both of them in the same zip code. Hurricane Bianca touches down at 5:00 pm and Adore is flying out at 8:30 the next morning, but they’re determined to make it work.
Adore and a skinny latte are waiting for her at Delta’s baggage claim, artfully cut up hoodie hiding her face from passing fans. The wait for her luggage is mercifully brief for once, and the Uber ride to the hotel spent in comfortable silence.
Bianca checks in to the room booked months in advance, thanking the front desk staff while pocketing her key. Instead of pressing the button for the eighth floor though, she leans against Adore’s shoulder until the elevator stops with a chime on the fifth. She follows Adore straight off the elevator and down the hall, their footsteps muffled on the carpet.
Predictably, Adore’s room looks like a tornado swept through while leaving all of the furniture and fixtures miraculously intact. Makeup is strewn over the table in front of the mirror, lipsticks with their lids off mingling with open palettes of eyeshadow. A set of lashes is stuck to the bra hanging off the back of the chair, and drag is draped over every available surface.
The complete disarray is oddly comforting as Bianca locates an empty patch of carpet for her luggage. She turns around to find Adore sweeping makeup into her bag, seemingly not bothered by the jumble of supplies.
“You know, it would be easier to find things in there if you actually organized it.” It’s a routine quasi-read, delivered with the same half smile over the years.
Adore wipes her hands on her hoodie, leaving glittering streaks of burnt orange and aqua blue across the front. The grin she offers in return is one of Bianca’s favorites, tongue poking out over her lower lip and eyes full of mischief. Even though she’s just gotten off a plane and wants nothing more than to collapse on the bed, Bianca silently joins in the packing process. Together they manage to fit everything back into the suitcases, Bianca’s neatly folded bundles a contrast to tights stuffed in every corner and mismatched shoes squashed over the top.
When all that’s left out are the boy clothes she’s wearing on the plane tomorrow and a single cosmetic bag, Adore shoves her towards the bathroom. Bianca knows it’s more for her own comfort than criticism of her cleanliness; missing a few showers would hardly bother Adore. It’s a small gesture, but one of many that she appreciates more and more as time goes on.
Bianca takes her time cleaning up, washing off the weariness of airports and travel. It’s just before 7:30 when she emerges to find Adore sprawled across the bed on her phone.
There’s a few missed texts from Courtney in the group chat, something about staying the night with Trixie and Katya. Bianca reads them over, sends a few Russian flags and pink flowers mixed with clown emojis, then shoulders Adore out of the way so she can have her share of the pillows.
She’s content to close her eyes for a little while, listening to Adore typing on her phone and willing the tension in her lower back to unwind. Bianca must have dozed off, because Adore is nudging her awake and shoves her phone in front of her face.
”B, look!”
Bianca blinks a few times, pushing the hand six inches further back so she can focus on the screen. “ ‘Trixya kai kai in progress’ ,” she reads out loud, “ ‘you cunts owe me $100’ ”
She grabs her own phone, channeling more crankiness into the texts than strictly necessary.
Bianca/Roy: …
Adore/Danny: WTF, why couldn’t they have waited until next month?
Bianca/Roy: Bitch, you woke me up for THIS??????????
Glancing over Adore’s shoulder, she can see the beginnings of a crack about her age. She grabs for the phone and a minor scuffle ensues, during which Adore’s phone flies out of her hands and squarely into Bianca’s.
Adore/Danny: Old people go to bed early :P htjjjjjjjjjjnn llmnnjbnnbbh
Bianca triumphantly stuffs the phone under one thigh before replying.
Bianca/Roy: Pizza party just lost her phone privileges.
Adore is pouting but it’s clearly for show as she leans in to read Bianca’s screen instead.
Bianca/Roy: Hello? HELLO???
They wait expectantly for Courtney’s reply, but not even the dotted indicator that she’s typing pops up.
”This is ridiculous, we’re not a bunch of teenagers spreading high school rumors,” Bianca mutters, scrolling through her contacts and tapping the one marked Courtney/Shane J (ABCD).
The phone rings longer than usual, and when the call connects it’s not Courtney’s hybrid Australian-American accent on the other end.
”Bonnie Del Rico,” comes the greeting, and Bianca’s eyebrows fly up in surprise.
“Katya.” Adore makes a confused noise beside her. “Since you’re answering, this is either some elaborate joke you’re all in on-“
”Are they all fucking?” Adore’s stage whisper is far too excited by the prospect, and Bianca smacks her shoulder in exasperation.
”-or,” she picks up as if the interruption hadn’t happened, “you really are Russian and we’ll never find the body. Then I don’t have to worry about her putting more fingerprints on my crown.”
”But you put it in a box, she can’t touch it now.” Adore doesn’t seem fazed by Bianca’s glare.
Katya is silent for longer than expected, long enough that Bianca considers ending the call and dialing her directly.
“Bonnie Del Rico,” Katya’s voice returns, “is there something going on on your end with a certain Ms. Delano?”
Well, that was unexpected. She laughs, buying time to come up with a reply. Bianca was always under the impression that the other queens in their Drag Race family knew about and understood their unconventional, label-defying dynamic.
“None of your business, and no.” Adore is still staring at her impatiently, and Bianca reaches out before dropping her hand to the bed.
Katya’s response sounds far too close to defeated. “Nothing here either.”
She’s heard countless “will they/won’t they” whispers in dressing rooms. Bianca doesn’t generally make it her business to know other queens’ business unless it affects her (or Adore, in all honesty) or seems public enough to work into her stage material. Trixie and Katya though, everyone notices and wonders.
Bianca has a few theories of her own, but now isn’t the time to air them. Behind Katya’s wild Russian hooker persona, she’s astute and far too honest. She and Trixie have to come to some sort of understanding though, before the tension brings their friendship down in flames.
”Queen,” she pitches her voice as softly as possible, “let me give you some advice?”
”Sure.”
”You decide if it’s worth it,” Bianca isn’t completely sure that the words are only for Katya, “and if you two can live with whatever the answer is.”
Adore has been oddly silent, mouth snapping shut at Bianca’s last reply. She squeezes her hand then with a sort of urgency that Bianca isn’t sure she’s ready to understand. “B-“
Bianca shakes her head gently. Not now.
”We didn’t hear anything,” she tells Katya firmly, “and I’ll make sure Courtney doesn’t make trouble. Now give her the phone back,” her voice takes on a stronger edge, “and figure this shit out.”
“Goodnight, Bianca. You always were my favorite clown.”
That earns a chuckle. “Fuck off, whore. Let me talk to Courtney?”
When she ends the call a half hour later, Adore is dozing and clinging to her arm like a lifeline. Bianca sets both phones on the nightstand with a yawn and stretches her aching neck, debating whether to forego getting ready for bed and just turning off the light. The motion shakes Adore awake though, and she relinquishes her arm long enough for Bianca to brush her teeth.
Once she climbs back under the covers however, Adore is back in her personal space, foreheads resting together on the pillow.
”B?”
“Yeah?”
”We’re ok, right?”
Bianca frowns, hating the insecurity making Adore’s voice quiver. There are at least a dozen ways she could reply, varying from levity to scoffing at the notion that they could ever be not okay.
”You’re my favorite person,” she answers. It’s a non-answer and hardly everything she wants to say, isn’t sure they could ever explain the ‘we’ of Adore-and-Bianca, but it seems to satisfy her.
She smiles then, not a full out Adore grin for the cameras, but something smaller and gentler, and Bianca kisses her forehead before rolling onto her back.
“Love you.” Adore’s words are a drowsy whisper against her shoulder.
”Love you too, chola.”
**** A Hot Tangle: Katya’s POV ****
Katya swipes her thumb across Bianca’s grinning face and brings the phone to her ear.
“Bonnie Del Rico.” There’s a pause on the other end, but Bianca recovers swiftly.
“Katya. Since you’re answering, this is either some elaborate joke you’re all in on,” a slapping noise echoes down the line followed by a muffled but distinctly Adore-sounding complaint. “-or,” Bianca continues, “you really are Russian and we’ll never find the body. Then I don’t have to worry about her putting more fingerprints on my crown.”
Bianca’s sharp voice eases a knot of tension between her shoulder blades. She knows the other queen is a consummate professional behind the thorny exterior, and hopes she’ll understand.
Courtney is sitting on the couch now, chewing her lip. Katya thinks she deserves to be nervous.
“Bonnie Del Rico, is there something going on on your end with a certain Ms. Delano?” Katya has to pull the phone away from her ear as Bianca’s scratchy laugh breaks up into static.
“None of your business, and no.” The last part is said in a quieter tone, and she can hear the rustling of sheets as if Bianca is settling back into bed.
She needs to go after Trixie, because it’s been suspiciously quiet in the bathroom. “Nothing here either,” she sighs.
“Queen, let me give you some advice?” Bianca’s voice is the gentlest she’s ever heard.
“Sure.”
“You decide if it’s worth it, and if you two can live with whatever the answer is.”
#rpdr fanfiction#bianca del rio#adore delano#biadore#canon compliant#katya zamolodchikova#doctor bitchcraftt
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Drake Thammasene
03/05/2019
Core Composition II
Mohrman
Things to Know About Toxic Masculinity in The Workplace
The stereotypical masculine gender role is referred to as toxic masculinity. Certain expectations and ideas such as limiting the amount of emotion showing, or having an unhealthy urge to assert dominance are examples of toxic masculinity. This ideology of today’s masculinity has been practised over the course of history. Toxic masculinity to this day, has been a problem emotionally, socially, and economically for both males and females.
1.Valley of the Bros; As New Tales Emerge of the High-Tech World’s Toxic Masculinity
Ms. Kimura was raised in China and Japan and was a worker for a popular photo-editing app called Meitu. Ms. Kimura moved to Silicon Valley, where she encountered an astonishing amount of sexual harassment. Ms. Kimura was called back to San Francisco where she had a business meeting with a venture capitalist. As the meeting was finishing up, the unnamed venture capitalist pops open a bottle of champagne and proceeds to kiss Ms. Kimura. Ms. Kimura had more encounters of sexual harassment in the past as well as in the future. Her story shines light on how women fighting back can change the environment in the workplace as well as the economy and the future.
2.Toxic Shock: Understanding Violence against Young Males in the Workplace
Workplace violence isn’t only limited to women being sexually harassed. Toxic masculinity can be experienced by many others. In this case, young males being violently pressed in the workplace. This paper explains how the current idea of masculinity was from learned practices taught overtime.
3.Toxic Leadership and the Masculinity Contest Culture: How ‘Win or Die’ Cultures Breed Abusive Leadership
In depth research shows the links between masculinity and leadership toxicity in the workplace. Many conducted experiments are done to ensure solid evidence of how toxic masculinity impacts the toxicity in the workplace. In this series of research experiment there are a number of graphs that depict the direct correlation between leadership and masculinity. Having competitiveness can be a good thing, but it becomes a problem when masculinity becomes a contest.
4.Practising Gender at Work: Further Thoughts on Reflexivity
Practising gender is something all people do, whether we notice or not. Martin reviews culturally doing gender and doing gender through interactions. Routinely interactions shows the practise of gender without reflecting on the actions is a focal point in Martin’s findings. She shows how unreflexive practices can harm both men and women in the workplace. Martin works to try to ‘capture’ practising gender in the act.
5.How Toxic Ideas about Masculinity Corrode the Workplace
The culture of competition at work can promote “winning”. Though not everyone can benefit from this contest. In the studies of toxic masculinity, women suffer from this type of work ethic. While women can try to compete, men were seen to undermine the work of women. Men also suffer from the competition if their work are seen as inadequate. “"Men were saying they did not feel like they were 'man enough' if they took care of their kids or left work early to go to the doctor, or showed other physical signs of 'non-manhood,' like long hair or wearing an earring," Berdahl says.” These ideas of masculinity cause problems for men and women alike.
7.Pixar Takes on Toxic Masculinity in the Workplace With Latest Short
Pixar has made a new short film called “Purl”. The short film shows a company “B.R.O. Capital”, which is ran by the stereotypical masculine males that fit today’s expectation of (toxic) masculinity. Purl is a character in the short film which she conforms to becoming masculine like her co-workers. Eventually, more characters like Purl come in and gradually change the way the B.R.O. Capital workplace is.
8.What Happens If Toxic Masculinity Goes Unchecked in the Workplace?
When generally thinking of masculinity, the ideas that usually come to mind are being dominant, showing little emotion, and to be the “alpha” male. This is the case in the workplace when the culture of contest gets too competitive and stressful. While it harms the workers and the atmosphere of the workplace, it actually harms the company itself because of company dysfunction and harassment gets no one anywhere.
9.Masculine Norms In The Workplace Could Be Holding Women Back
Toxic masculinity in the workplace creates gender segregation. Males will typically have higher wages and separate females from themselves regarding work. There are more male norms than female ones which are the norms. Lisa Quast, the author of the article states that analyzing the norms in your own workplace will help with adjusting to those norms or better yet, change the norms.
10.The 'male Machine' and Issues of Masculinity in the Workplace
“Male Machine” as Harvey Schachter states is a male that is made for strictly working. This impacts the work-life balance. Having a higher power in the workplace being a male machine will mean he will force his strict work ethic onto his subordinates. Most people have family issues and such, but the male machine will not empathize with his subordinates since he only needs results in work. Harvey Schachter states “But the behaviours that irk us at work – the behaviours tied to bad management – do not come out of the ether or spring solely from personality. They stem from a view of leadership that, given the role men have played in our history, is tied to masculinity.”
1.McMahon, Tamsin. “Valley of the Bros; As New Tales Emerge of the High-Tech World’s Toxic Masculinity, Tamsin McMahon Reports on the Men behind the Machismo, the Women Fighting Back, and What It All May Mean for the Economy, and the Workplace, of the Future.” GALE. 2017. http://go.galegroup.com.aurarialibrary.idm.oclc.org/ps/i.do?p=WHIC&u=auraria_main&id=GALE|A498998621&v=2.1&it=r&sid=summon.
2.Kenway, Jane, Lindsay Fitzclarence, and Lindsay Hasluck. “Toxic Shock: Understanding Violence against Young Males in the Workplace.” SAGE Journals. 2000. https://journals-sagepub-com.aurarialibrary.idm.oclc.org/doi/abs/10.3149/jms.0802.131.
3.Matos, Kenneth, Olivia Mandy O’Neill, and Xue Lei. “Toxic Leadership and the Masculinity Contest Culture: How ‘Win or Die’ Cultures Breed Abusive Leadership.” SPSSI. 2018. https://tb4cz3en3e.search.serialssolutions.com/?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info%3Aofi%2Fenc%3AUTF-8&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fsummon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Toxic+Leadership+and+the+Masculinity+Contest+Culture%3A+How+%22Win+or+Die%22+Cultures+Breed+Abusive+Leadership&rft.jtitle=Journal+of+Social+Issues&rft.au=Berdahl%2C+Jennifer+L&rft.au=Cooper%2C+Marianne&rft.au=Glick%2C+Peter&rft.au=Matos%2C+Kenneth&rft.date=2018-09-01&rft.pub=Wiley+Subscription+Services%2C+Inc&rft.issn=0022-4537&rft.eissn=1540-4560&rft.volume=74&rft.issue=3&rft_id=info:doi/10.1111%2Fjosi.12284&rft.externalDBID=BKMMT&rft.externalDocID=A554075311¶mdict=en-US.
4.Martin, Patricia Yancey. “Practising Gender at Work: Further Thoughts on Reflexivity.” Wiley Online Library. 2006. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1468-0432.2006.00307.x.
5.Carpenter, Julia. “How Toxic Ideas about Masculinity Corrode the Workplace.” CNN. 2018. https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/12/success/toxic-masculinity-workplace/index.html.
6.Carpenter, Julia. "How Toxic Ideas about Masculinity Corrode the Workplace." CNN. December 13, 2018. Accessed March 08, 2019. https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/12/success/toxic-masculinity-workplace/index.html.
7.McCarthy, Joe, and Erica Sanchez. "Pixar Takes on Toxic Masculinity in the Workplace With Latest Short." Global Citizen. February 05, 2019. Accessed March 08, 2019. https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/pixar-purl-workplace-gender-inequality/.
8.Murray, Alice. "What Happens If Toxic Masculinity Goes Unchecked in the Workplace?" Jobbio Journal. November 13, 2018. Accessed March 08, 2019. https://blog.jobbio.com/2018/11/13/what-happens-if-toxic-masculinity-goes-unchecked-in-the-workplace/.
9.Quast, Lisa. "Masculine Norms In The Workplace Could Be Holding Women Back." Forbes. November 13, 2012. Accessed March 08, 2019. https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisaquast/2012/11/12/how-masculine-norms-in-the-workplace-could-be-holding-women-back/#62f342ac7c7d.
10.Schachter, Harvey. "The 'male Machine' and Issues of Masculinity in the Workplace." The Globe and Mail. January 27, 2018. Accessed March 08, 2019. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/management/the-male-machine-and-issues-of-masculinity-in-the-workplace/article37743858/.
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WWI ends: Front pages of Ames, Des Moines newspapers from 100 years ago
One century ago at 5 a.m. central time, World War I came to an end.
Overnight, the draft ceased, holidays were declared, and celebrations were had across the United States.
Here are the front pages of some central Iowa newspapers:
The Des Moines Register
Ames Evening Times
Ames Tri-Weekly Tribune
Iowa State Student
The Des Moines Register, 11 Nov 1918: “THE WAR IS OVER”
Page one of The Des Moines Register consists entirely of wire stories.
The story in the left hand column (”Washington waits for official word, truce is signed”) has a subhead of “Hears of the hun upheaval,” if you are curious how the press thought of the Germans at the time. The word “hun” is used a few other times on this page alone.
The Associated Press piece “Review of world’s greatest war now in dramatic finish” begins:
The German people, for a generation the obedient and submissive servants of their war lord, for more than four years his pliant instruments in ravaging the world, have spoken a new word, and the old Germany is gone.
The illustration is of an unkempt house labeled as Reconstruction and with a big War napping away. On the sidelines, sitting beside a nice basket of Peace, are his offspring Destitution, Hunger, Anarchy, Disorder, and Want. The next steps were already on the mind of Ding Darling.
On the inside pages, stories vary from more stories from Europe, notices on soldiers, some Iowa farming updates, a brief note about Yorktown no longer being under a quarantine as the Spanish flu waned, and a page celebrating the soldiers and the victory, plus some long editorials about the war.
Movies playing in Des Moines at this time included: Toys of Fate, De Luxe Annie, Laughing Bill Hyde, The Doctor and the Woman, The Yellow Dog, The Rainbow Trail, and Are Crooks Dishonest.
The Ames Evening Times, 11 Nov 1918: “RIGHT HAS CONQUERED MIGHT!”
Unlike the Register, the Ames Evening Times includes some local headlines on page one and most of its national headlines are popular/quick digest stories. The illustration is a denigration of Germany, blaming it for everything and now must finally pay for it.
Local stories included the declaration that the day was a holiday and stores would be closed for celebrations and the number of typhoid fever cases in Ames recent years had dropped, which stemmed from a statement from a medical officer that scarlet fever and diphtheria were on campus. The mayor disagreed typhoid fever should be a future concern for residents.
The other local story was the return of the Spanish flu. West Ames and especially campus had spent the past month under a quarantine that largely stifled travel. Here it was announced 100 students were possibly sick with the flu. The second wave had arrived.
Inside, it was largely business as usual with some local stories and occasional wire stories from Europe, but nothing celebratory or dedicated to the ending of the war.
What movies were playing in Ames? None. Movie theaters had been closed for a month and would remain so for another month.
Ames Tri-Weekly Tribune, 11 Nov 1918: “OUT GOES THE KAISER”
The Tribune doesn’t splash its front page with that much about the armistice, but some stories in the Times probably hadn’t reached the Tribune since it went to press hours prior to the Times. It notes the end of the war, conditions of the surrender, and the celebration in Ames. There is also a letter about what comes next.
A clean-up day for downtown Ames gets plenty of attention and was surely the original big story for the day. Other stories are common local stories for the time such as Spanish flu deaths, city council meeting, and a new ambulance in use at Iowa State.
The inside pages have nothing to do with the war ending. There’s new items from Gilbert and Huxley and then other lesser items about happenings and events in the Ames vicinity. There are a couple pieces about experiences of army men traveling overseas, but have nothing to do with the armistice.
Iowa State Student, 12 Nov 1918
The Iowa State Student didn’t publish on Monday, so Tuesday is the day it notes the end of the war. However, the item doesn’t get heavy treatment on the front. Since the day-to-day oversight of the Student was done by women, I am curious what their perception of it all was. The front page includes a handful of stories about women (”Told of sacrifice of French women,” “I.S.C. women pledge in excess of quota”), which was common for this term since most men were strictly quarantined. Being the day after the celebration, the Student mentions the Monday celebrations in downtown Ames, which included an effigy of Kaiser Wilhelm II — or Kaiser Bill as he’s called here — that was then burned and shot... the head flew off, too.
On campus, the girls ran the Campanile’s bells at 10:30 a.m. immediately after hearing news of the armistice.
Iowa State College celebrates peace with convocation
Victory bell proclaims victory for U. S. in world war
Girls leave exams
Girls rushed to victory bell to ring it until exhausted
The victory bell never rang for a greater victory than it did yesterday morning at 10:30 o’clock. About that time a small news boy appeared on campus with a huge pile of “Peace” papers. Swiftly the glad news spread to all parts of the campus.
Three girls who were taking an examination in architectural engineering, threw their papers to the winds and rushed to the victory bell. They were the first to reach the spot and rang the bell with all their might and main. When they were completely exhausted three librarians came down to take their place.
However, classes continued until 11:30 when the first celebration Iowa State College has had this year took place. Some 500 girls gathered on the steps of Central where led by Prof. A. A. Bailey they sang every patriotic and peppy song in creation.
All the S. A. T. C. soldiers on the campus turned out for the celebration, when some 2,000 of them headed by the navy band marched past Central Building with the band playing and girls yelling. “We’ll hike, hike, hike along the along the old turn pike till we reach, reach Berlin.”
The girls marched at the end of the procession around the campus, past dairy building and back to Central again where speeches were given by Acting President E. W. Stanton, Prof. F. W. Beckman and Major J. R. Lincoln.
The other big story, which receives better treatment being placed in the top left corner, is the return of the Spanish flu. After a few weeks of the flu’s waning, 100 men are sick and 6 women are, too, making the quarantine a top priority again. The football game against Iowa scheduled for Saturday was moved to Iowa City because of the new outbreak. Indeed the second wave of the flu had arrived.
Other front page stories are about the war effort and items needed for those the Red Cross.
Inside pages include an editorial about how everyone should show some self control and not swear so much and several articles on former students and alumni in Europe, campus events, and briefs on faculty.
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13x05 watching notes
I’m not used to getting what I want.
-
Expectations: holy crap am I excited to see Billie again. Yeah yeah Cas or whatever, we know he's back and would be coming back from the moment he died, and all the rest is just flavour text... BILLIE is an utter treat and given A: how she died (not just dead reaper killed off for man pain as a minor thematic antagonist, but also woman of colour on the show which was a bummer and at least she alters their post-death appearances dismal stats even if she isn't back-back as her full and healthy self a la Cas as a worst case scenario >.>) and B: the themes she embodied, and C: that Cas just got punted back OUT of the Empty, well, I am ridiculously pumped to have her (or the image of her >.>) around again, because of the utterly fascinating thematic conundrum she'll represent and because Billie was the most freakin awesome character ever, and Lisa Berry just exudes this raw calm power, and I went and watched Shadowhunters over hiatus 90% because she was on it in like 3 episodes and lo and behold she was a powerhouse in her scenes there too :P
Of course I have a personal stake too and as a meta writer it's not quite so obvious, as a shitposter you might have caught me endlessly referring to it, and as me personally inside my head, I know that I introduced Billie to Terrible Coffee AU to be a side character to the drama, meaning to embroil her in it as a voice of amused-warning-to-later-friend for Cas, and began constructing an entire narrative to explore cosmic consequences in as if post-death the show's Billie had wandered over to my silly AU and was using her extreme disappointment in them all to add another level of irony to the characterisation (listen: imagining what face the canon character would make at their role in your AU is a great way to characterise and people think I'm good at it, so free writing tip :P) and I had to make Billie proud about what I wrought.
I failed to actually write that section in time for this episode, had no idea there WAS an expiry date and that Billie would come back, but here we are and I've accidentally over-thought Billie to an absolutely astronomically disproportionate degree to probably most people around these parts for the sake of having her tease Cas about Dean from the deck of a boat while they were sipping cocktails together. :P
I can and will mentally insert a cocktail into Billie's hand in her scene(s).
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OH AND THEN THROW IN THAT THIS IS A YOCKEY EPISODE. Of all the current writers, he's the one who makes me lose my chill completely. He's got an incredible way with character and emotion which I absolutely adore, so I find it pretty hard to worry about all the nervous little things I worry about aside from how much the grand scheme of things will let Billie back. And season 13 seems to be going pretty in my favour as a viewer and meta writer so. Super sublime chill.
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Oh boy the recap people are trying to put us out of a job.
Superimposing Dean's speech to Patience over Sam crying over Dean nearly dying in 2x01 and ghost!Dean lurking behind him, which of all the reminders that they die a lot is a... lot of a thing. Because John etc. Season 2 theeemes everywhere. And then of course them getting shot as ghosts in 4x15 aka time to save Tessa. And Dean wasn't having an easier time in that episode, hell-damaged and talking to Tessa about how he wished he'd gone with her. Could just be subtle reaper reminders because the next shot is Sam detoxing demon blood in 4x21, nudging us into new territory for Jack theeemes. But that's part of the "pain" in his speech, "horror" is Dean hilariously dying in 3x11 when hit by a car, which, well, wasn't hilarious at all for Sam or the rest of that episode for us once the dying montage was over, and just reminds us how much they're dicked around with by the universe... And then "Death." Over. Death's hand.
Look, I am a simple person with simple wants. I would have been satisfied to just have this about Billie but now you're making me want to see DEATH again and see what the heck happened with him. I mean I've always sort of wanted to see him back again because if Billie would be pissed at them... :P But I could accept she was his stand in from now on. That she WAS the new Death all along, even, for our wild spec. Now I am MADLY excited about how they're going to utilise all this stuff because oh hi have you met me the reapers and death stuff is my absolute favourite stuff on the show. I was always hoping this wasn't going to be a cop out with the tasty sounding title, and it seems like they want us to really be on the ball about the themes here, to whatever end.
(Just having paused it to squeal here, it could be a fake out about Death because the first shot of him in his killer intro montage was his hand with his ring because in season 5 that was the cue we needed to know that was the ring we needed and that Death was who he was supposed to be... Logic dictates the ring crumbled in 10x23 but if they wanted to invoke Death without bringing Julian back...)
Weeeeeeeehheeheheheheeee Death's "affront to the balance of the universe" speech in 6x11 where he was resentfully giving Sam's soul back on one condition... The same thing Billie was pissed about in 11x02 onwards. Is he here to cover for her reappearance and make this seem like it's all just a big cosmic theme? Because something tells me this episode is about their deaths somehow or another, either temporary, threatened, or big picture :P
Or it's confirming that Billie is Death, there's always that because the next transition is Dean killing Death to Billie LITERALLY CONTINUING DEATH'S SENTENCE FROM 6x11 - "you cause disruption on a global scale -- so next time you die and your brother bite it, we're going to toss you out into the Empty."
"And *nothing* comes back from that" *stab*
Leaving it there with Cas - no cutting to him back alive in the bramble patch. Instead the last note, the only one ABOUT the Winchesters in season 13 aside from Dean's 13x03 speech being used - is Dean saying Sam needs to keep the faith for him, which was the comment only answered in dramatic irony by Cas's return. No comment on the dominoes of Cas stabbing Billie, getting stabbed himself, going to the Empty, and coming back from that. No comment on the deal. This is all stuff we're either meant to know already or isn't strictly relevant right now... But we'll see :P
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Sort of scared to play the cold open because eye horror in the promo pics and I don't wanna see the doctor drill some random person of the week through the eyeball :P
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Oh no, it's kids. I think they're still alive because of the promo where they refer to talking to some kids. Or one of them with the implication both made it out the house although I assume their time is numbered regardless.
They're visiting a house which used to be a mental health clinic, which has weird overlap to last episode and the fact the guys went to a fully functioning house with a modern day therapist in it. Mel pointed out the Asylum direct visual reference in one of the props we see in the fast promo so I suppose that's a good season 1 reference to keep in the back of your head.
The floppy haired kid with the backpack (aka the Jack mirror?) is more uncertain about doing this but encouraged by his friend to go along with it. His friend is a dick.
I hope someone's had a good look at the stained glass window because I can't tell if we've seen it before or not. This may or may not be set re-use >.>
You can tell the boys apart because one is half battery (the dick) and one has full battery still (our sympathetic guy)
Don't touch the plague masks!!!!
Literally that was your entire fault and at least the one we were rooting for legged it with a minor wound. I think even some other ghosts were yelling at them for waking up the doctor (I HOPE that's not a parallel to The Empty and Cas waking him up)
But yet... sam and dean seem to have visited both? Was it only "minor" brain drilling and the other kid comes back home slightly altered? Mel also made promo shot comparisons to Naomi and her drilling... Brrrr.
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Anyway Dean is making himself PB&J so I don't have time for you all. Ouch.
Did Sam literally just compliment Dean for making himself a sandwich?
is it a recovery sandwich?
I get the feeling if we're seeing this and the promo was a lil later on and some investigating further into the episode then maybe we're basically seeing Dean's breaking point for being babied through his grief by Sam's attempts to cheer him up.
Makes you wonder why they picked that instead of this, but this could be a relatively dull opener and Sam trying to talk Dean into going to a strip club was too funny to resist, because it kind of was :P
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Sam has been on screen 6 seconds and he's annoyingly peppy
I love Sam btw, like, you are not allowed to judge me for how I may talk about Sam in the coming stretch of episode because I get the sense he's in full on cheer up mode, which turns anyone into the most irritating person on the planet and then you throw in Sam's eyebrows and basically I can't with him :P It's not a judgement on his character, I know he's trying to help Dean because of what Dean told him, but Dean just wants to operate a shell of himself for a while and Sam's trying to dig him out of it because it's painful to see him like that and he doesn't know that Cas is reconnecting with them soon, and if not today then next week and also probably by the second half of the season Mary will be back with them.
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Anyway Dean just carries on stoically making his sandwich and we all talk a lot about the symbolism... I think in this context perhaps it's loosely linked to Kevin operating as a ghost out of this kitchen after dying halfway through his PB&J and coming back for the crusts as unfinished business. He was mourning his mom while he was alive but then it turned out she was alive but too late he was dead.
The PB&J is also symbolic of humanity so idk. He could just be making it because it's sweet and he has a sweet tooth, it's vaguely reminiscent of pie filling but not enough to be traumatic and it's Dean's "I'm doing 1 good thing for myself today" personal quiet method of getting better in the long slow aftermath that Sam wants to rush.
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"GET THIS" Sam is on full on Sam-ing
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Awww Jack's watching DVDs. I assume Sam HAVING a stash of DVDs is stuff he's collected as an adult with a Bunker to go on a nostalgia kick. I assume they have a PO Box pretty much for Sam's Amazon deliveries. Like, he hasn't been lugging DVDs around with him since the start of the show and before that they had a bunch of VHS tapes in the back of the car or something :P They grew up dependant on what was on motel TVs and picked what they liked to come back to as adults with a settled address.
Also: the clouds part and bestow on us: a thing Sam likes!!!! That's like at least 4 songs, a couple of movies including Star Wars stuff, HP Lovecraft, and now liking old bad fantasy movies that even Dean judges him for.
Or, I assume, Dean has watched and may or may not reference if the opportunity came up but he needs to box something off as Sam's weird nerd shit that makes him unappealing to the ladies, while Dean, obviously, has never liked anything nerdy, and has had lots of straight edge manly sex with women and all comments about Zorro masks are stricken from the record.
Sam, being in a magnanimous, my brother is grieving, mood, just literally takes the hit and keeps going. Jesus Christ Sammy.
I would swear he's worn his worst plaid today just to give Dean something else to judge him for :P
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Oh uh anyway point is Jack is being stashed in the Bunker just like Sam once stashed Cas with his netflix. Sam's being responsible for the pop culture education of 2 generations. At least Netflix lets you pick whatever you want once Sam's not trying to be helpful, and in 11x06 Dean related to Cas to switching to bad TV, rather than watching Sam's picks of the good stuff you're meant to watch.
Less chance of Jack going on a complete rampage through trash TV, but still if nothing else Dean's hands-off approach to the kid means that Sam is being allowed to mould him however he likes :P
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I just went back and watched again just because I realised the credits were ALREADY over after 5 names. It was like, J2, Misha (yay!) and 2 people I hadn't heard of who I assume are too important named characters in this episode to skip but also not reoccurring characters. I wonder what the slippery slope is when you don't put Lisa Berry's name in the credits of an episode you've advertised she's in. Even people who've checked on TV guides will know... But I guess you treat the episode as internally self-spoiling and ignore what everyone knows for the sake of the person who buys the DVDs and watches through without even reading the descriptions in the sleeve or whatever. Anyway glad she wasn't spoiled but it does make me like *itchy teeth* about Death being in the recap, because naaah. Naaaaaaah. NAAAAAAAH. they wouldn't. they're not. it isn't. She's making like, a hallucinatory cameo for theeeemes and I got to stick with that until the episode proves me wrong, never mind bringing Death back :P
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As a fan of Death and the reapers (probably already a band name) I'm like... so on edge right now :P
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Oh wait also Dean said "what about Jack" - he's using his name even to Sam now. Not teasing him about the anti-christ
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Ya know, based on how beer for breakfast (name of my band) went over and letting Dean be Agent Page (oh the promo is so the breaking point - Dean already is calling him out on all this IN THE TEXT, using his words to point out the weirdness) I am actually thinking that Dean would have actually quite liked to go on another job with Jack. That he was starting to see the use of him and to warm up to him ever so slightly as a person since he showed effort and did a good job and saved Sam and dug the graves for them. I don't think Dean would ASK out loud but if Sam had said, "Jack comes and that's final" Dean would have done that face shrug expression and let it happen without much complaint.
Sam is bending to Dean's apparent desires and being like, well Dean doesn't like Jack, this could be a chance to get Dean out of the bunker without Jack and let him forget all his troubles for a bit...
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Like, I don't wanna worry you Sam, but last time you decided you needed to cheer Dean up from his extra super special worries about Cas, you took him out into the woods for a fun werewolf hunt, got shot and strangled and had to kill literally every single werewolf in the episode with your bare hands while bleeding profusely from your stomach, while Dean had a random encounter with Billie in the depths of utter despair that he'd lost everyone he ever loved and the world was now going to end without you all.
Dean's a drama queen about a lot of stuff but when he tells Jack your plans don't usually work out, this is the sort of shit he's referring to :P
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*Sam looks so freakin smug with himself walking off after the badge exchange and Dean's like... what. What?*
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Poor kid with his great big bandage on his forehead.
He "can't even talk" because the trauma was so bad and we cut to him apparently drawing in his room, which makes me think right back to 1x03.
Omg lol of course Dean walks in the door alone to chat to him. And sees him drawing repeatedly the MotW. We bonding over trauma so bad we can't even talk about it again?
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OH there's 3 boys. Shaun/Sean (I'm gonna pick Shaun because this is America and I assume you all don't spell stuff proper - FYI to Americans reading this, please remember to read this all in a shrill British accent, what what) and Evan who was presumably the one who died in the cold open, and Mike is the third, who they're inseparable from but was NOT there in the house with them that night, and by nightfall at the promo scene they had not spoke to him yet.
What a frikkin rug pull though, to have 2 boys in the open, so you think they're a duo of best friends, and it's like NO WAIT THEY COME IN THREES... Bahahahaha
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Dean back upstairs with Shaun, and he's sat down to talk to him with a "you know" and at this point I am pausing and getting a stuffed toy because he's either gonna open up to a kid who won't squeal about it because he can’t talk, or say something completely awful because he's in an awful place and either way I don't need Emotional Honesty Hour from Dean Winchester at 9:30 in the morning without a friend :P
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On no, Dean talking about knowing what it's like to be scared of monsters, but then trying to reassure the kid that he can at least make it go away PHYSICALLY even if the horrific psychological trauma can't be erased. Comforting!!
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Promo sceeene!
Which we already picked over but aw yeah so Shaun didn't tell Dean anything after all, except for the plague doctor drawings (and he didn't show he had the mask with him? Really?? Did he drop it earlier?) so Dean really did just open up to the kid about understanding his pain but being the thing monsters are scared of... A better Dean pep talk than Patience got at least, since Shaun was a regular victim and Patience might have been angling to join the life... and it mostly just served to make him say that :P
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Since I've been barrelling through all the Wayward Sisters old episodes this month, I am reminded that I spent a good long while wallowing in Yockey vs Sam knowing Dean's porn habits and outing them to Jody in 12x06...
I think Sam trying to make the sacrifice to go to a strip club with Dean (and I can't believe this is the third time I'm putting myself through watching this exchange because omg second hand awfulness and yet I went back and watched it twice it was so good) probably fits under this characterisation umbrella.
Of Sam vs performing Dean, as much as the callbacks to season 1 and Dean vs Sam's Jess grief that I was talking about last night thanks to an anon nudge. And parallels to 12x16 and their chat about the swimming pool outside a similar hotel set (although this one is infinitely lower rate :P) - the writers playing with the knowledge that Sam and Dean have grown up completely latched onto each other like this and Sam's been dragged to strip clubs by Dean almost certainly and they just kinda know more than they want to about the other's personal habits, and they have low, bad boundaries. 12x16 was asserting some back, letting them have separate rooms, and showing Sam grossed out by the thought of Dean skinny dipping which, I mean, fair (if you're Sam anyway :P) but they don't really GET those boundaries.
So there's some re-poking season 12 specific themes here as well, just in that Sam, who has historically had his own walls up about Dean's porn and interest in strip clubs (because they're extremely not his thing) is willing to cross a line for Dean and just go with Dean to a strip club and buy him a lap dance from a place with a decent online review. Which also shows low bad boundaries that he would try and manipulate Dean back to happiness this way, just like in 1x19 especially, Sam had to angrily re-assert his boundaries about Dean constantly trying to set him up with Sarah, and Dean had to point out he has a stake in Sam's sex life too, even if it's just having to put up with Sam being cranky and miserable. Historically, Sam having to put up with Dean's sex life is considerably more on the "ugh, TMI" range for him :P
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... sorry, yelling "promo scene!!" usually means I stop analysing for a moment and just watch, because I already went over this ground last night, but I guess there's more untapped depths :P
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Holy shit, though in the reaction shots for Dean after talking about the Clam Diver, he's standing with his back to some stuff that on my screen makes a beautiful bi flag. What the hell. I was thinking how colourful the backdrop was last night but...
I mean that's the blurry background to his close ups on this.
I THINK it's just the road lit up behind him but oh gosh getting it in the background of the shot for THIS conversation about the Clam Diver? GUYS what are you DOING.
Who directed this??
I overshot and landed on "how you ever got laid" "heh, tell me about it" I can't BELIEVE, STILL that Sam just gave him that win. For some reason it reminds me of Swap Meat where he judges Gary for being a virgin based on the Star Wars stuff, even though Sam is an established Star Wars nerd of more than the general audience variety, and mostly likely read the old tie in novels :P Sam owning that his nerdy interests as a teen didn't exactly make him very sexy is probably the most frank thing he's ever admitted to Dean and he's just trying to help Dean.
(Tbh, again, it may have helped Dean more if Sam just reacted all prickly and got wound up, which is generally what someone teasing wants - a reaction, not rolling over and showing your tummy. Anyway more on the pile of Yockey probing their sex lives in relation to how they see each other, with Sam letting Dean be the one with the more manly sexy interests and letting the performing Dean layer that all comes from win, and then trying to pander to it some more by looking up places to make Dean feel even more manly and in control)
And holy crap I'm glad I have no yoga today because Yockey's got me talking in loops and I've been back to this conversation in the kitchen 3 times and it's nearly 10am and I've made such bad progress. Mental contortions instead :P
Ooooh directed by John Showalter. I'm pretty sure he's been around for aaaages and contributed more than his fair share of nonsense... :P
I just looked him up on the superwiki, saw he directed the episode with HP Lovecraft (and that ridiculous "I was busy having sex with women" or whatever line about Dean not reading the novels) and basically I am gonna hit the brakes on this thought and just watch the episode or I'm going down a rabbit hole I don't come back from until 11am :P
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Oh but the thing I was trying to confirm was... Not that I knew I was looking for it except in the most abstract sense that I was thinking of it in one hand and thinking maybe there was something by this director in the other without realising it was the same hand... the blue & red light falling on Dean in 10x16 which looks an awful lot like the bi flag and shortly preceded Dean confessing all that delicious confessional stuff?
Yeah guess which director according to Superwiki.
Now i'm done.
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I want to know what metric The Clam Diver got "four and a half" of on whatever site Sam was reading about it.
That's in Sam's browser history.
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"Is it my birthday? Did I win a bet that I don't know about??"
"I'm just trying to be nice."
"W h y."
"Because..... you know why."
"I'm f i n e."
Sam, back off, he's gonna stab you :P
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I got to ask... is the automatic door not working an improv because the door broke, or thematically relevant, because that's the sort of random thematically relevant detail I could have a nerdgasm about for absolutely hours of typing while Sam is harassing Dean into the building talking about him not believing in anything. The higher powers aren't doing shit for Dean even when he waves at where he thinks the sensor should be, so he gives up and just opens the damn door himself.
The door has a sticker that says, quite clearly, "warning automatic door" and at the very least for the shortsighted is a great big yellow warning sticker on it, so I'm gonna have to go that they're signposting that it's supposed to open, so this is something either scripted or added with full intent to metaphor and my brain hurts.
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Sam is trying to understand this massive great big VOID of misunderstanding and it's... frankly awful. He's babbling about his understanding about Dean and his confusion
"You're not, Dean. you said you don't believe in anything, and that's not true! you-you-you do believe in things, you believe in people, that's who you *are*, that's what you DO. I know you're in a dark place and I just want to *help*"
This is telling us a lot more about how Sam sees Dean than Dean's faith arc. Of course Dean believes in people and saving people and that the planet is worth saving. That's a baseline assumption around here. Dean and *faith* though, in believing in things, in how the universe treats them... it doesn't even open automatic doors for them. Cas is DEAD. Cas is where Dean's belief arc centred in the last minute of 4x01 and Cas is where it has freakin' remained for the next 9 years. Cas lost faith in God and Dean chucked away the amulet because he lost faith in everything - Cas and Sam and himself and their ability to save the world that didn’t want to be saved. Cas became God and Dean lost all hope he may have had left. Cas came BACK to Dean and his faith was restored but in THEM. GOD came back and Dean and Cas had similar and unchanging positions on it right down to Chuck basically telling Dean not to confuse him with his own father, but the ridiculous superimposing over John over Chuck and Chuck as Cas's failed father who Cas now just ignores outright and Dean lashes out on his behalf because he knows Cas doesn't believe. That Chuck broke Cas back in 5x16 and... Yeah. Cas is gone now and what does Dean even have left in his personal faith? Chuck didn't answer, the automatic door won't open even when he waves at it...
Sam sees Dean as having no faith in God (while Sam has had the much more complicated journey there with his personal faith, and feeling it in a religious way) but instead he tries to get a read on Dean's personal compass, and god dammit Yockey *takes a shot* in Wendigo of course Dean sits down with Sam and tells him HIS personal philosophy on why he does what he does: saving people, hunting things, the family business. The thing is, Dean has already in this episode reached out to Shaun and described himself and Sam as the people who know about the monsters, the ones who can't erase the trauma but they can erase the monster, and help what little they can there... Save *other people* from it - yeah it's a message full of regret and defeat that Shaun already got hurt and that's probably why Dean couldn't get him to open up because he didn't come in bubbling with wide-eyed optimism about saving the day, but heavy eyes that had seen this too much. But oh does he still care about the people, and saving them. He just doesn’t trust what HE can do, what they can do against the tide of awful. It's not in his speech to Patience, because it's not the motivation to be a superhero any more - he is just a guy doing a job. And he's lost his heart in many ways. But he will still fight to protect and help people because baseline, Sam is right, that IS Dean and even damaged like this he'll go on hunts and protect people. Take Jack into the Bunker with them in 13x01 expecting it to be a self-destruct thing where base case scenario they can take Jack out with them or something and contain the blast...
But yeah. 13x04 expressly ended linking Dean's lack of faith, via dramatic cast-iron irony, to Cas coming back as Dean voices what losing Cas has done to him.
And then Dean gets to say his bit -
"We've been down this road before, and I've fought my way back and I'll fight my way back again" which HONESTLY echoes Cas in the Empty telling his depression to stuff it and that he'll fight and fight for eternity if he has to.
Dean is trying to get better, he made himself a PB&J, he's just taking this all at his own pace, and Sam's starting to smother him.
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"How?"
"Same way I always do: bullets, bacon and booze." Dean regrets his no bumper sticker policy because that and the "whole bottle of Jack" comment from last episode are both iconic Dean talking about his coping methods out loud way.
Also throws back to 10x11 and how Dean did that list of 3 things which he was getting back to when he lost the Mark and left a blank space which should have been "babes" or something and just put more booze into it. The swap of sex for food happens a LOT with Dean. For some reason the Dean vs cake explanation I wrote recently was floating around tumblr again last night, in which the middle of season 10 conveyed clearly that cake was stuff Dean hadn't tried yet (and 10x16's confession tied it all together - we're really delving deep into the stuff that was explored back then and I've thankfully been in fandom for so have the language down really well but I hope I don't have to explain this entire complicated web over and over later :P) and pie was coping methods heterosexual sex with women - tying what Dean wanted in 10x07 in the hook up he didn't get, to pie in 10x13 via that gross dating app... All this with the cake, croissookies, and that comment in 10x11 where Dean was trying to detox and eating egg white omlettes (hi 12x18) and cutting out booze.
And, of course, there's the whole bacon = bisexual experimentation thing from 8x13, 9x13, 11x21, and I guess now :P Cass had a much more thorough bacon masterpost somewhere out there which I may have to dig out and reblog with a knowing look...
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And Dean slams his hand down on the bell to punctuate this statement and hopefully bring an end to the conversation by summoning a hotel receptionist.
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Cue screaming kid having nightmares about what he's seen.
His mom kisses him on his forehead where the doctor drilled him, and leaves the door open so she can be concerned about him.
Oh no, his backpack DOES have the mask in it. Dr Monsterface used it to get to him :<
(Oh wait hi yes that thing Jody said about the Dr Sexy leviathan in 7x02 is still fresh in my mind. Leviathans as a depression metaphor in a way The Empty rapidly escalated.)
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I saw/maybe reblogged a post about how Jack might have Kelly used against him and 13x04 was the nice version, but he's going around carrying his grief about her in a backpack. We have to hope like hell Mia gave him catharsis enough or he might carry that grief with him and things can use her image to get into his head.
(That and the 2x "shoot him!" order about Dean from Miriam and Buddy to the sheriff and Mia, 2 people who wanted to help, are causing foreshadowing concerns)
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I love the cuts between the doctor coming for Shaun, though - the bell ending one conversation to Shaun waking up screaming, and then he gets up and pretty much goes to confront the doctor head on rather than cower - but cut to an empty bed.
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Dean's empty bed, but he seems to have left the keys?
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Ah, he went and had some, uh, catharsis somewhere. I swear to god those are probably the sunglasses from 1x19 dug up again and stuck on his head just to haunt Sam.
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The fact his tie is tied around his head makes me feel like he was probably blindfolded at some point in all that... Hehehe. I doubt his tie is tied so nicely around his head with a pretty bow because he did it to look cool :P It would just be the same knot but on his head in that way.
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Sam's like "oh great" but doesn't kick Dean awake? Like on a normal day when dumping a glass of water on his face and telling him to suck it up would be the correct thing, Sam's like, "Sam's got this!" goes and gets dressed, takes the keys, and leaves Dean passed out on the floor. In 1x19 he hit the horn to wake Dean up because serves you right.
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(if he only went to a strip club he may have just made off with someone's underwear thrown on him for being a good tipper rather than actually having sex with anyone... I kinda doubt if he was THAT drunk he'd be more than a very generous customer they don't mind kicking him out at closing with a bra still on his head :P)
(I'm gonna assume Dean did not actually have sex but just went out and had some very drunk miserable fun and made a friend last night and now he's gonna be dependant on Sam for cash for a while until he can scrounge some back up :P)
Also, um, what is he holding when he rolls over? Is that a fun kinky times toy whip? Exactly what sort of place did he find last night, and please, for the love of god, tell me it was not the place Sam was diligently reading the reviews for between his fingers yesterday, apparently.
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Listen say whatever you want about the fact he walked home holding it, if that boy had his tie tied around his eyes he was not the one holding it while he was having fun :P
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I like Mike. He's a burly farm worker hefting hay outdoors in the sun, which makes him like 3 different directions of Cas parallel (the strong one in the dynamic, sun, hay), and also he was sensible enough not to be running around in a haunted house for youtube hits.
...
Look, at some point Cas hefted a bunch of hay out of the back of his truck and onto the side of the road and that happened in canon and no one ever mentioned it
thank you Yockey for acknowledging off-screen hay hefting.
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Aw no he's lying because he's scared and Sam makes him tell the truth and it's that he WAS scared and he thinks not going to the house was cowardly, but now his friends are missing and hurt (so far as they know because Shaun getting killed overnight might not have made it to them yet)... He does tell the truth in the end. He's also in DEEP denial about their deaths.
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Is that enough bacon, Dean.
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No, no it is not.
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Sam, you're gonna kill him if you give him more beer right now. Is he smuggling local ales to Dean?
I don't think I can actually watch Dean eat this entire pile of bacon with Dean's bad mood eating habits. This pause is just to procrastinate dealing with that.
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Wait also the friend is called "Mike" which, uh... Michael? is a thing we should be more worried about? What happened to that guy anyway?
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Man, we're 16 minutes in and where's Billie?
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I feel like Dean being hung over for the rest of this case is probably not going to help with him getting caught and threatened with a drill by a regular old ghostie.
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I'm snooping Sam's tablet before he delivers the cliff notes exposition, and aside from the creepy images at the top, including an old school newspaper article in the top image results that is illegibly small, but seems to have photos of the doc alive, the first and only legible article mentions a woman with depression who goes to the doc because she had depression because her son drowned... Which makes 2 son drowning deaths in 2 episodes, with the kid in 13x04 who killed his mom in the car. Also reminds me of 7x14 where when Dean confronts the guy behind all the nightmares, it's because his little brother drowned in the sea and he could never let go of that guilt.
I think drowning is the metaphor for depression here - people losing a part of themselves metaphoric to small son, who is overwhelmed in the water... Dean related to that loss and used it against the Plucky's guy, and that was in the slight turn around section of season 7 - the part where he began confronting the loss of Cas through mirrors because of course Cas was coming back. In season 13 the plan has been set in stone and can be done briefly and with HEAVY dramatic irony that we're all aware of because we only actually have 1 episode without Cas so far, even if 1 was his death and one was his waking up, he's surrounding Dean's grief in a layer of dramatic irony. Dean may be overwhelmed and drowning. We may have SEEN the memory of Cas drowning in the Empty, but it's all done with dramatic irony, that Cas is not lost to Dean but presumably finding his way back.
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Dean had better not puke at the grieving mother's house after all that bacon and beer for breakfast after a hard night out.
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I love the cut between Sam asking what happened in one scene and the woman saying "I don't know" in the next - there's some good thematic transitions I've noticed already, especially this way of skipping exposition here, but I liked Dean ringing the bell for the hotel and Shaun waking up screaming, because Dean was about to go out on his grief metaphor night out and for all I know get the sexy kind of drilled while Shaun was getting the unsexy kind... and then the cut to Dean's empty bed, because this is how bad his grief was hurting him.
(Also after Sam tried to control and placate Dean's grief, he resisted Sam's attempts to smother him but he still has been accepting the offers, and did eventually go out and get wasted and Sam had encouraged it - just Dean did it on his terms and without Sam, just his tacit approval that Sam wouldn't bitch about it.)
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ALSO WOW AFTER 13 YEARS YOCKEY FINDS A WAY TO SUBTLY WORK IN THE COLD SPOTS FOR GHOSTS.
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LOOK HOW INTELLIGENT THAT MAKES OUR BOYS LOOK WHEN THEY READ THE SUBTEXT OF A SCENE FROM A SURFACE READ OF SOMEONE WHO DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT GHOSTS BUT IDENTIFIED THE SIGNS AND THE PEOPLE WHO KNEW WHAT TO LOOK FOR COULD UNDERSTAND WHAT WAS HAPPENING WITHOUT HER SAYING IT AND NOW THEY KNOW EVERYTHING JUST FROM INFERRING IT
WOW
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Night time and they go to the house and we're at 18 minutes in. I mean we have time for a jump scare, some bad shit to happen, and then the ad break before pt.2 of the episode.
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Buzz buzz
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"What's up, doc?"
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*ad break*
*back to Dean getting drilled*
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Sam saves him and on with pt.2 of the episode.
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All the masks are back in place.
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Oops, don't touch the masks. *horrible screaming from elsewhere in the house*
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Well, except to burn them. Sensible to stay in the room, defend their turf, and get to the burning asap instead of poking around or investigating the screaming any more. 13 years and they have learned a fair amount about ghosts and I am admiring how competent they are. Sam especially has the lead here, probs because Dean is off his game by an enormous degree to him.
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Ahahah and Sam did a round circle at the door so we see the doc get partway through the door, realise there's salt, and have to awkwardly back out of it to have a second go and honestly that is the funniest shit a ghost has ever done on this show even though it's also terrifying :P
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*burn burn burn*
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So rescue Shaun?
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What can possibly happen next with nearly 20 minutes left
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LIGHTS BLOWING DOWN A HALLL
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Now they dealt with the advertised ghost I'm just waiting for Billie to show up, because they're about to be mobbed by a ton of ghosts and she can save their asses, or else... well idk I have to watch, but I'm just laughing because of lights blowing down a hall - 3 times already this season, for Jack, for Patience at least with them flickering rather than exploding like this...
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These are all the whispers about the doctor which we heard in the cold open
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I love the Winchesters running around shouting sensible ideas about what the ghosts are doing though.
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Is this going to be Dean's torch everything solution?
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YIKES, no, it's 4x15/11x17. BAD IDEA, DEAN. i can't believe he even carries a pre-prepared take me to the veil kit. Like, that's the reckless nothing to live for might as well die trying to do something dramatic toolkit. We also get shades of 11x16 with him doing that in a super haunted house.
You can NOT pass into the veil in a super haunted house with just your brother to watch over you and stop these 1000s of ghosts killing you.
Jesus Christ Dean.
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Wait is he literally doing this
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Sam is like FFUCKING HELL RIGHT HERE WITHOUT EVEN A SALT RING? ON THE FUCKING STAIRS UNDER THIS SYMBOLIC STAINED GLASS WINDOW THAT LIZZY DIDN'T ANALYSE EARLIER?
DEAAAAN
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And yeah this is 2x01 all over again with Dean walking down the stairs trying to get the attention of a ghost.
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Wait back up new reaper with a customer service calm grief counsellor voice, but what did she say her name was? :P
"Hello, my name is JESSICA and I'm here to lead you to your next life"
... well I hope she survives the episode just because I always root for the reapers and she's clearly just a random obstacle to Dean who is doing her job, a regular old part of the natural order, but that is not a name you use at random :P
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I'm just sitting here running my hands through my hair trying to deal with this right now. Gonna play a few rounds of Pokemon shuffle because I sort of knew this was coming since they showed 5x15 and 2x01 in the opening recap, but the way Dean did it and then walking immediately into a Jessica? Yeah I need a mo.
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Dean maybe never told Sam what he did in 11x17 because he didn't at the end of the episode and idk if that's one of those things you don't just bring up at the breakfast table.
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JESSICA.
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"Hi, I'm the spectre of the loss of the most important romantically loved loved one in your life, do you feel like moving on from them to the next thing"
"sorry I can't come to the phone"
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YOCKEY I AM DISTRESSED.
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Accidents don't happen accidentally.
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"Oh god."
She knows what she's got herself into.
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Sam takes 20 seconds to set his waych and sdakdfjgkl hang on who cares about Sam
WE'RE IN REAPER HQ
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"Dean Winchester is the the veil!"
Please say this whole thing goes to red alert.
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Where's his file. It it like 5000 times the size of all these little ones?
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Sam put down enough salt for Dean but not himself.
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I don't think that's ghosts blowing lights any more, I think that's emergency lightning from the cosmos.
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SHAUN! Oh no, you're dead :(
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At least he's talking again.
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Generally the freshest ghosts are the more talkative ones, and as Bobby showed us back in 7x19 which I generally try not to remember or rely on for ghost lore, because the older ones are fading and falling into patterns and the fresher ones still have a stronger sense of self and their old life.
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OH NO Shaun got possessed because of course that's how he got back here with the mask. I think we saw a smaller ghost in a t-shirt in some of the promo stuff, but I thought it was a kid, not a teenager.
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"I miss my mom" he's on the other side of the grief from Jack, who misses his mom because he's alive and she's dead. The doc said he'd feel better and he froze and let him kill him. Also Kevin parallels just of a kid whose most important relationship is his mom and now he's dead.
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Dean's thinking clearly for the first time in a while because he's not in his body. All soaked in alcohol and grief. He realises he let Shaun down by not being there to protect him. Which may have all happened this way in another episode, but that PB&J, man. It was a Kevin thing all along. (I SAID it was a Kevin thing and you all were like blah blah Cas blah blah Jack, look, don't doubt me on my Kevin knowledge, guys, I am still RAW about his death and it was 4 years ago :P) Dean's remembering in the middle of grief that it's "saving people hunting things" after he let Patience down with that speech. Or so I hope. They used Dean's speech over the open of the episode like in a season 1 episode they'd usually layer the more optimistic and simplistic "saving people hunting things" from Dean's like, second day on the job, not where he's all messed up and old.
Anyway Shaun is an emergency Kevin patched into his life to make him feel bad about failing people, and I guess that puts Dean at similar crossroads to the middle of season 9. Hopefully to a different end, just like this should be subverting 11x17 for why he just abruptly decided to cross into the veil, because Jessica is not having a good day :P
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DEAN GOING INTO THE VEIL TO HELP LOST PEOPLE is doubling up the job of a reaper. Reapers CAN'T COMMUNICATE across the veil to the living, and don't wanna solve the cases. They come to move on the one person with a ticket upstairs in a house full of hundreds of ghosts and just ignore them... Dean actively dives into their turf to solve the case and find out how to move the souls on. He SAYS he wants to help move the souls on.
I have such a huge love of Dean blurring the lines with being Death, and being a reaper. It's just such a symbolic thing. Their job is moving people on, basically handing souls to the reapers to carry on the job, when it's ghost cases. They're the human agents of the reapers breaking the ties that hold ghosts to the earth so that the whole process can carry on and the world doesn't fill up with ghosts - like it did when the veil was broken. (or is it still? Again, the whole Kevin thing not quiiiite answered, although maybe/maybe not that was a sign Chuck was fixing the thing... But then there were a whole bunch of souls Billie for for them out of the veil like 2 episodes later...)
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Reaper lore is fucked up on this show :P But Reaper HQ just in the first glimpse looked aaaawfuully empty adjacent...
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I'm guessing even though Dean's got back with the info he needs, and Sam's about to wake him up because the clock ran out, the reapers are going to intervene...
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WAKEY WAKEY DEAN
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Oh look Billie's back.
"Hey Dean"
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I haven't been this happy in about 1000 years. Like seriously Cas getting back was great and all but HOLY SHIT have you seen Billie? I would set this as my desktop immediately but my mum and Cat are both gonna have to watch this episode with me and probably see my desktop in the process, so... Saving a screencap for later ;)
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This is literally the best thing.
LOOK AT HER.
LOOK AT THAT SCYTHE. HOLY SHIIIT THAT SCYTHE.
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Billie's understated attitude is just *clenches fist*
She just shows up!! LOoking LIKE THIS!!!!
I don't even wanna hit play, I don't wanna move past this point, I just want to bask in this one image forever.
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THE COAT. NO one has shown up in a floor length leather coat in the entire show so far, because no one has been good enough for it.
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"We need to talk" Yeah no shit babe.
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LOL getting right to it - Dean like, Cas killed you. Billie like, "how's that working out for him?" - does she know? Either way, she's rubbing it in. Because of course she has eeeevery right to be pissed. :P
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UTTER GLEE.
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I have a sudden feeling... Billie says, "certain rules - after you kill one "incarnation" of Death" (Hey 1000 points to trisscar) "another one takes its place" and dude.
Death died and within 10 seconds Billie was singing "o Death" and following the Winchesters around, annoying them, making deals with them, making ultimatums with them... Like, the reapers aren't exactly itching to kill EACH OTHER and promote someone, and I guess just one biting the bullet and taking one for the team doesn't work... But this suddenly explains EVERYTHING about Billie getting all up in the business of the people who basically fuck up every deal and ally they make and hanging out with them... doesn't give you much of a life span.
Back in 12x06, Billie taunted Dean, made fun of him for not getting what he wants, and said she wanted something from him. Came to Mary and said she was there to reap her when she was ready. She LET Dean make another deal, a deal where one of his family would have to die, or he himself do it. In a car full of Winchesters, one of them is gonna take one for the team, or ruin everything and kill the reaper who's been bothering them, holds so much over them...
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I'm thinking very hard about changes of state right now - that Billie and Cas had mirrored deaths, and Billie came back improved, and Cas... Well, we don't know how he came back except he's been put on a better path, for his character narrative, in confronting and overcoming the symbolic depression, and he has a better coat. Not much to go on yet, and I haven't been participating in the wild flailing about all the ways he MAY have come back different, but this makes a veeery interesting mirror about returns and changes of state, upgrades after death. Now I'm interested in what may have happened to Cas.
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But, like, to a magnitude of difference to how utterly delighted I am that Billie won the game :P
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But yeah this is a bit of a lore fudge but who caaaares because it brings Billie back and powers her up and makes her into THE BEST CHARACTER ON THE SHOW IN A TOTALLY INARGUABLE WAY.
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I love her new ring :P
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"This universe can be so many things, and sometimes it is poetic."
Hell yeah it is Billie. I've been saying so for ages, but this really puts it in such a beautiful way. This is Dabb's entire job. He makes this universe *rhyme* with itself. This is what his mirrors and parallels and character repeats have been doing. I even compared scene transitions in 13x03 to the way poetry ends each line in a verse. It's something all the writers have been doing - making the story rhyme.
Gaaaaah. THIS is Dabb's writer meta commentary, perhaps. I think I can trust Yockey to spell it out this way :D
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She took him to Reaper HQ!!! Like Cas he's passing through states - I assume he'll be back in time to finish the hunt, but in the mean time... He's got to work through some shit, just like Cas did last episode. Rhyming with each other.
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Dean is wearing a black and grey plaid with thin red lines, and a black jacket. He's bringing like the only colour here to all the blackness.
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yeah, Billie, keep the scythe away from him.
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I love she set her desk up in the W section because even though it's not the middle of the alphabet, she's keeping a CLOSE FREAKING EYE on the Winchesters.
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Ooh she knows Dean went to the AU... She's interested in Jack. Dean's chance to protect him!!!???
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Billie looks INCREDIBLE how did I ever let myself talk myself into doubting she was here to run the game?
wait shit Dean's doing epic character stuff. Not bargaining with his life, or asking for Mary or Cas back. He just wants to complete the job and free the ghosts because freakin sshdfkjsjlks PB&J brought him back to his senses and he needs to save Kevin-stand-in rather than let him wallow in the veil for 3 seasons again
THAT is one heck of a thing, Dean. I love you so much
not as much as billie but it was a beautiful character moment
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Billie is STUNNED.
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Jessica gets to take all the ghosts back. She thought this was going to be a terrible day and it actually worked out.
Again, with like 10 minutes left of the episode so this isn't how it ends.
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Now Dean's talking about trust, and Billie brings up how they keep breaking cosmic bargains. I think he may be stalling - even planning to NOT give up Jack even though Billie went first... Or he's gonna tell her but... Natural order? She can't just go... kill him...
If Dean's still uncertain about Jack he could always make a query about IF she could kill him, but not give away enough, or have her as the weapon in his back pocket should Jack be a problem... something for him to regret later, maybe?
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This is stressful
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Dean spills. "Lucifer's son. Jack. When he was born it created a little rip."
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What does Billie know about the AU?
Well she knows how the multiverse works, and she knows a "big dumb Winchester" is fairly statistically likely to be the one to knock it all down.
The warning not to try and get Mary back? Now Cas is back? The consequences may still be on Mary, however she's returned to them, intentionally or not, she could topple it?
Ugh I hate spec but all these lines are so leading :P The comment that Sam's plans don't work out, in this light, for example, is realllly nerve-wracking. And we know from spoilers the AU is going to become a more immediate problem at some point...
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"That does sound like us."
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"You've changed." Billie reading Dean deeply and now we get to the character part of this where she's just... analysing him.
"The Dean I know and love" look I'm die hard Destiel to the bone but Dean x Death is something I've always thought the dynamic for was absolutely stunning since their first meeting, and I hate to say it but making Death into Billie is making it aaawfully tempting to ship :P
Please show him his massive folders.
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She's currently just calling him out on how bad he feels. Pure awful character exposition.
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"I don't matter." OH DEAN NO.
He and Cas totally rhyming with each other about their passing through these dark other worlds...
Dean couldn't save mom, he couldn't save Cas, he can't even save this kid... But he already saved the kid with that bargain with Billie, and Cas is... out there somewhere. And Mary is a whole other problem and the one he can't solve right now. If she's alive, she's on the other side of a wobbling house of cards he can't touch. But the difference in the way he gets finality on Mary vs the finality on Cas? 13x01 vs this episode as Dean slides from dealing with Cas to dealing with Mary? Getting this blunt exposition from Billie about it...
I think Billie would have thought it was funny to show Dean his file, but then realised because he's changed she needs a different approach to intimidate and interrogate him. She sees that he doesn't feel like a hero any more, not the guy who saves the world. All his crushing losses have made him feel like he's still utterly helpless to make anything good happen in his own life.
And Dean can't work through it, won't work through it, and he knows it - this is the thing that has broken him hardest... That at this point there will be NO recovery except the story handing back Cas to him, and even then that's one hell of a shake to what he believes he can accomplish... If they wanted to scare him back down from "i kill gods" Dean who then went and killed Death too, to show him the universe his huge, and keeps on ticking and his actions have put Billie in charge and the natural order keeps on ticking... But he still can't get mom and Cas back...
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I am literally sitting in that room in Alice in Wonderland where she's floating around on her tears.
I mean in my head, anyway :P
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My heart is broken.
Billie's "don't you?" though when Dean says he doesn't matter... I wonder what she knows that Dean doesn't :P
But Dean starts ranting to her about how Sam's been trying to help and he's useless... :(
"You really believe that. You want to die." Well, yeah the universe has become a crushing hard place where no one makes sense and Dean doesn't even believe in the blaze of glory death, doing something HEROIC now, let alone not believing in it because he thinks he deserves better and a happy ending at the end of this all...
Lowest point, unlocked! \o/
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Oh, ALL those notebooks are his individual deaths... How he dies. "heart attack. burned by a red-haired witch" HEY ROWENA
Are they potential deaths or ones still looming over him, disappearing as he passes those marks? Or are they his entire history of deaths not died?
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"Unfortunately, none of these books say you die today"
....
So are they potential future deaths or what?
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I mean, Billie just introduced hope to his life.
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"I stand witness to a much larger picture" they could not have picked a better character to be Death. She has such DEPTH and WEIGHT to the way she speaks, and such an amazing calm, powerful aura of energy. I just love her so so much.
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OH GOSH this camera angle with the scythe in the background behind Dean's face... Gotta save and remember to add that to this, because after telling him all the ways he dies, Billie moves onto his big picture cosmic weight. That he's important. And Dean has the scythe symbolically pointing at him as she talks, telling him he's at those crossroads of life and death but not today... Is this going to be a burden like the one Chuck laid on him, or Billie reminding him that a heroic life is not such a bad thing?
I really think this is one of the best episodes of the show and I got a few minutes left of it and don't know how this resolves :P
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SHE IS LITERALLY giving him the 4x01 Cas speech - "you have work to do" and telling him he's important, telling him he deserves to live... Kinda still like I hate you but you're important, and setting aside past grudges. There's more for him to do.
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"And trust me, having my eyes opened to the importance of any humans, especially Winchesters, is not a thrill." HA. yeah, she's an anti-Cas but she and Cas are literally bouncing off each other in the story anyway since he stabbed her and then got stabbed himself in turn.
Rhymes. Rules. Reason. Billie is the best character on the show and I love her.
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"So, you wanna die, but I say, keep living."
"Hmm."
This is NOT the same as what happened with Cas - but he may not remember it - but it works in sort of mirrored ways. Cas utterly defeats the Empty with his will to live, may not remember it, and may have to piece his newfound will to live together himself in this new hopeful return to life. I hope. Dean has no will to live, and orders of work and purpose are just the way his life goes, the orders endlessly being placed on his head by every cosmically powerful figure... God, Death that time in 6x11, Billie now, JOHN every day of his life from aged 4 to 27 and then one final order to haunt Dean to his first grave...
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"I need to know. My mom" *wakey wakey*
Oh, and there's the so far missing hope. She can't lie to him and say Mary's dead, so she cuts him off in indecision and uncertainty, and THAT, unfortunately, is a massive step up from where he was in total despair that there is no one he can save...
And Cas may very well be back in his life to give him the hope that it can be done again by the end of this episode... Aaaaaaaaaaaah.
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Anyway Dean goes wakey wakey at last and the house seems to be wrapped up, yay.
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there's exactly 5 minutes left, which is always the omen. :P
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Sam comforts Shaun's mom, and wanders through the scene, looking small in the chaos, to rejoin Dean at the car.
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And like in 11x17 Dean lies again.
Sam is too smart for that, chases it up when Dean tries to brush it off as luck, and says that when Dean says they talk about it later, it means they won't talk about it and it's Dean's way of shutting off a conversation from ever happening...
Sam calling out their communication issues? I am LIVING
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Dean glances at the mom, and is reminded that they do this job for a reason, that he bargained to save the souls of the children... Sold out the info about Jack for it...
"I saw Death. The Death."
*Sam does the eyebrows*
"He's dead"
"No she's not"
*EYEBROWS*
"it's billie"
And Dean goes on to even say that she wanted intel, and does Sam pick up on it?
... no he doesn't. He doens't ask or guess what it was...
Dean repeats the line about work to do, which is also, especially in the context of Sam and Dean talking, what they say in instances like for example 2x22 when Dean had just sold his soul for Sam, when they're about to go back to work with their regular job. The open the trunk of the car and look at their gear and announce they're going to go kick ass phrase. (Which, of course, in 4x01, Cas was subverting the context by saying it to Dean away from Sam, putting the burden on him - Billie at least made it about Sam and Dean both but that she was talking to Dean)
But they're sitting on the back of the car, keeping the trunk closed... Not moving on
And Dean starts talking about how he's not okay.
And how he always believed in what they did - saving people hunting things - that losing John or Bobby or people they cared about was a hit he could take for the higher purpose. Billie has just REMINDED him that he is bound to a higher purpose. But he's so lost, and he's lost people who he CAN'T lose. Mary and Cas at once is just TOO MUCH. It makes the universe cruel not poetic...
(I say, having it paused here but knowing Misha's in the credits again as an awful TEASE :P)
He just needs a WIN.
And he may just get one because he told 90% of the truth to Sam, conveyed exactly what was going on behind that line about not believing in anything from last episode, the power of which narratively brought back Cas because that was a huge step in his grief arc, to admit it. Now he's explaining it, telling Sam how badly it's all got to him...
Oh god where is Caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaas.
They're driving off and there's music, which... agh.
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drive drive drive sexy car
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Omg we're going back to the house... More grief on the mom for her son... Just really WALLOWING in how much loss hurts everyone, and even when the soul has moved on, that Dean got a win for their knowledge of the afterlife, that they know ghosts can go to a better place, the mom doesn't, she has lost Shaun and that's it for her. No closure, just pain.
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drive drive drive
Billie reading Dean's book
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I think Billie really has a huge interest in Dean... :P
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drive drive drive... Okay so Yockey is the new Robbie montage guy.
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Also Sam is asleep while Dean drives - this seems to parallel 12x20 where he was asleep and Dean checked his messages from Mary...
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Bring bring?
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BRING BRING.
Called that like a boss :3
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WHAT, NO "HELLO DEAN" ON THE PHONE?
FUCK YOU YOCKEY I TAKE IT ALL BACK I HATE THIS ENTIRE EPISODE
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I mean there probably was one under the music if that was Cas...
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Well this alley has that cross from 11x06, aka the start of Cas's depression arc, the one where Metatron was teasing him about a real life angel on camera...
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drive drive drive
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Cross reflected in the car
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Hey, bison sign
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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
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Has he just been waiting at that phonebox for hours.
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I'll just wait here then... I'll wait for you...
Well that got fucking tied up with a fucking bow, from all the left over crap Robbie left lying around.
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God I don't even have anything to say... Cas waited. For Dean. Like the love ballad warned he would. Because he's Dean's real life angel, and Dean's win. It was FOR Dean. Dean's arc narratively brought Cas back into his life, but on Cas's side of the story they fully fleshed out the end of his depression arc and made Cas bring himself back on his own terms so it doesn't shove Cas into a subheading for Dean even when the bigger story is handing Cas on a plate back to Dean...
And that, my friends, was one hell of a fun game :P
#13x05#season 13 spoilers#suicide mention cw#yockey fanclub#holy shit this episode was wish fulfilment of the highest order#Sometimes it is poetic#my stuff
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I Care a Lot: Peter Dinklage is the Scariest Gangster We’ve Seen in Years
https://ift.tt/eA8V8J
This article contains I Care a Lot spoilers.
J Blakeson’s I Care a Lot is one of very few films where everyone in it is a villain. In the lead role, Rosamund Pike ushers in a new amoral high mark as conservator con artist Marla Grayson. Peter Dinklage meanwhile mines the standard Hollywood heavy role for an unexpected haul of gangster gravitas. And with his turn as Roman Lunyov, the former black sheep of the Lannister family in Game of Thrones joins the likes of Robert De Niro, Marlon Brando, Wesley Snipes, and Humphrey Bogart as memorable cinema crime bosses.
However, this isn’t Dinklage’s first turn in a mob movie. He got his button in Find Me Guilty (2006). The film was based on the true story of Lucchese crime family soldier Jackie DiNorscio, played by Vin Diesel, and the longest mafia trial in American history. The movie was co-written and directed by Sidney Lumet, who not only helmed such crime classics as Dog Day Afternoon and Q&A, but was one of the original Dead End kids when the proto-gangster social drama was still on Broadway. Dinklage didn’t play a mobster in Find Me Guilty. He played a lawyer.
Dinklage’s Lunyov Family isn’t strictly going up against law enforcement in I Care a Lot. Rather Pike’s Marla Grayson and her partner in crime (and life), Fran (Eiza González), are court-appointed guardians from hell, and they represent a rival outfit. They are also operating a lucrative racket.
This guardianship gang war could be seen as similar to the scenarios which happened when Italian, Jewish, and Irish mobs moved in on the Harlem and Chicago numbers games in the 1920s and ’30s. Or how Michael Corleone’s first order of business as head of family in The Godfather was to take over the casinos in Las Vegas. Like Don Vito Corleone before her, Marla’s also got judges, such as the sympathetic Judge Lomax (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), in her pocket. Eldercare racketeering dominance is also comparable to the prohibition fights of The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, and the body count is just as high. The take is just as sweet.
Edward G. Robinson set the standard for cinematic mob rule as “Rico” Bandello in Little Caesar (1931). Dinklage’s Roman Lunyov, by contrast, is more of a Czar. He heads a family in the Russian mafia and purports himself like a descendant of the Romanov dynasty. But he’s got Cossack in him. It’s in his DNA and cascading down his chin like the tail of a cavalry horse.
On Game of Thrones, Dinklage’s Tyrion Lannister was part of an insidious dynasty whose roots intertwined with every twig of the ruling class. The modern Russian mob, on screen and off, can boast even more branches.
Netflix’s World’s Most Wanted dedicated an episode to Semion Mogilevich, the reputed head of the Russian mob (aka Bratva). While Moglievich is allegedly tied to arms dealing, international trading scams, and countless murders, the cops in the documentary series compare him to the Keyser Söze character from The Usual Suspects. He’s a respected, low-key businessman who likes to smoke. He lives in a mansion next to the head of the Communist Party in Russia. His activities aren’t merely state-sanctioned, they are apparently encouraged.
Dinklage’s Roman is all these things, even as his identity is actually more elaborately guarded than Söze’s, and his tastes run toward elitist’s treats.
But then Russian mobsters are always ruthless on screen. These are the guys who killed Denzel Washington’s seemingly indestructible narco cop Alonzo Harris in Training Day (2001). You never prepare for that. When the “Three Wise Men” who always have your back tell you to skip town, you know you’re dealing with folks in a rough trade. On Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black, Galina “Red” Reznikova (Kate Mulgrew) would rather go to jail for keeping bodies on ice than say she was keeping them fresh for the Russian mafia in Queens.
Dinklage’s big bad leans into this mythic image of Russian mobsters, with Roman appearing cut from the same cloth as the New Jersey-based operators who could make even Tony Soprano take pause in The Sopranos. Albeit if Dinklage’s character ever actually visited the tough guys in the Garden State, he would probably need to rethink his man-bun. After all, Tony Soprano couldn’t even get away with shorts.
When James Cagney had fist fights in his early films, he was always matched with a bruiser twice his size because the studios thought no one in the audience would accept him being remotely challenged otherwise. Dinklage also doesn’t display a traditionally imposing physical presence. But he is no lightweight. His own thugs cower at the very thought of a cross word. In the Lunyov family, it’s best to bring a gun to a food fight.
Roman’s personal attorney almost wets his briefs when he screws up. That’s because Roman is as unpredictable as Cagney’s Cody Jarrett, the gang leader in White Heat, Cagney’s most psychopathic role. Dinklage’s introduction as Roman shows him asking how many mules died on the last drug run. He calculates them coldly, as part of business, with the sociopathology of a Chief Executive Officer. But his biggest similarity can be found in oedipal complexities. Like Cody Jarrett, Roman Lunyov loves his mother.
We don’t know much about Jennifer Peterson, the nice old lady played by Dianne Wiest. She’s got money, a nice house, no living relatives, and a doctor who will exaggerate dementia symptoms in court for a stock payoff. On the surface Peterson seems to be a competent business woman who retired after a successful career. Now under the less than sensitive care at the Berkshire Oaks Senior Living facility, we realize her chosen field was career criminal. After all, any of these sweet old ladies could have had criminally scandalous youths.
When Marla finally asks her ward who she is, all Jennifer has to say is “I’m the worst mistake you’ll ever make.” We learn she has more than one son in the Russian mob. She could be a post-Glasnostic Ma Barker from the Prohibition era. Barker’s fictional approximation in White Heat, Ma Jarrett (Margaret De Wolfe Wycherly) tells her son she can take care of herself. And while Jennifer may have been declared legally unable to do just that in I Care a Lot, she is quite adept at a choke hold, eschewing the standard garrote assassination for her own elbow.
Marla doesn’t romanticize her mother, calling her a psychopath and offering her up as the collateral damage of closing costs. Her single-minded opportunism is more sociopathic than Pike’s Amy Dunne in David Fincher’s adaptation of Gone Girl. She employs a cutthroat logic that’s in the same territories as bad-mannered comedies, but with the ruthlessness of the shark in Jaws.
Roman’s black-on-black dress code ensembles, by contrast, broadcast a desire for stylish power games. Marla is not interested in gangster chic; she prefers classy monochromatic suits so brightly focused they attract moths like flames. Her crew is all business as usual. Dr. Amos (Alicia Witt) is the fixer. She picks the “cherries,” elderly cash cows who can be milked in the retirement home. Sam Rice (Damian Young) is the monster at the center of the center. Everyone’s got a soulless nature except Eiza González’s Fran, who is also the only one to see the wisdom of getting the fuck out of there.
Dinklage is fearsome in one of the scariest screen gangsters in recent years. This guy can dispatch troublesome community angels easier than a creamy éclair pastry–and he loves those treats. He even takes a last loving bite of a chocolate-covered, custard-filled house specialty before he tosses it onto the cold concrete of an underground parking garage.
When he ends negotiations with Marla, his only caveat is to make it look “organic.” Georgia Lyman, who is only credited as “the Assassin,” is I Care a Lot’s Luca Brasi, sharing duties with a few “heavies.” The film’s Fredo is Alexi Ignatyev, played by Nicholas Logan as if he’s always waiting for another shoe to drop. Even Ms. Peterson laughs and calls him an idiot. She laughs a lot, and it’s not just the steady drugs she’s being forcibly and legally dosed with, it’s the glee of power.
Roman’s power lies in his legal team, and the Lunyov family’s Tom Hagen is Dean Ericson (Chris Messina). One thing you have to admit with the Russian mob is they do appreciate innovation and sophistication. Ericson can’t help but be impressed by Marla’s scam. His lowball offer of $150,000 is an insult, but an understandable one. His veiled threats are as subtle as his suits are ostentatious.
Marla doesn’t seem to appreciate the power the Lunyov family wields, but she does appreciate the irony.
“If you can’t convince a woman to do what you want,” she says, appraising the fine print under the mouthpiece’s exploratory offer, “then you call her a bitch and threaten to kill her.” Marla pays it forward by calling the Lunyov matriarch far worse and threatening extreme discomfort, which she promises will last until the day she dies. As restrained as her venom may be, Marla is a proud femme fatale. Though also a stereotypical “ice queen” villainess, and heartless materialist. We’re almost sorry to feel bad for Marla when she is tied to a chair during last minute negotiations.
Director Blakeson, who made the science fiction action movie The 5th Wave and the noir thriller The Disappearance of Alice Creed, sets up I Care a Lot like a horror movie.
“There’s no such thing as good people,” Marla Grayson says at the start of the film. The opening is exquisitely unsettling as Jennifer is guided through a process of enforced institutionalization, followed by her house being emptied, painted, placed on the market, and sold. The plot thickens as keys are traced to a safety deposit box containing millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds, which officially don’t exist. Most gangster films aren’t driven by this kind of mystery, but Roman is a new kind of gangster. Though cheap, dead drug-mules are an unnecessary expense, the Lunyov family want to make a difference in the world.
Blakeson wanted to highlight all-too true stories of elder abuse and the perils of court-appointed conservators which could even bring The #FreeBritney movement calling. But he captures the allure of the anti-hero and the all-American dream of a corner on the market. Roman Lunyov has one final thing in common with Michael Corleone, and many of the traditional gangsters: He wants to earn money legitimately. This is not to be confused with wanting to go legit.
Those of us who root for the “bad guys” will find a wealth of insidious characters, and a very original caper, at the heart of I Care a Lot. Peter Dinklage’s Roman Lunyev may go against type, with his eastern bloc nobility stunted by the limits of black comedy. But as a movie mob boss, he is Street Regal.
I Care a Lot can be streamed on Netflix.
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The post I Care a Lot: Peter Dinklage is the Scariest Gangster We’ve Seen in Years appeared first on Den of Geek.
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(STRICTLY BUSINESS SHOW with Doctor J)
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Hi! I'd like to request a oneshot where Frisk and Mettaton have a hangout, either right before the True Pacifist Ending(no genocide) or after the ending. Mettaton never really got a hangout or a chance to show his softer side towards Frisk during the game like Papyrus, Undyne, and Alphys did, and I'd love to see one. And maybe Frisk could be nervous around or slightly scared of Mettaton at first, but warm up to him once he shows his softer side. Thanks for letting me submit a request!
CEOs Should Wear Tu-Tus
read the fic on AO3
Mettaton is so busy getting ready to open his first hotel on the Surface after the barrier falls he almost forgets to feel guilty for trying to kill Frisk that one time…almost. If he’s honest, it bothers him very much. But he needs to do this, and that, and check on Alphys who’s building a body for Napstablook and…oh, who’s that in the lab?
Sharp heels on tile floor echoed against the walls, followed by dull footsteps at a faster tempo. Mettaton walked through the near empty hallways in his Underground resort wearing his humanoid form with one of his assistants close on his bright pink heels. Several weeks of preparations to move larger items to the surface with a new elevator were all ready to go. The extra doors in the lobby stood where Glamburgers and Face Steaks used to be sold but the relocation of the cafe was more than worth it.
“Over here, darlings,” he said as he approached the group by the shiny new doors. “We’re almost done here. Soon the carpenters and electricians will go upstairs and start to disassemble some of the rooms for remodeling. We need more human friendly rooms if we want this to ever become the true gateway between the surface and Underground, which of course, with all of your efforts, I don’t doubt it will be.”
Four bunny monsters clapped enthusiastically, making Mettaton preen under their attention. He didn’t think that would ever get old.
“I’ll go meet them to make sure we go over the blueprints one more time. Ping us if you need anything, Mettaton!”
The monster who spoke, the one with yellow fur and a bright green nose, gestured to her teammates and all seven bunnies disappeared down the hallway he and his assistant came from. A handful of people remained looking for direction. Mettaton smiled like he practiced in the mirror every morning and brought the monster behind him to the front. His cat-like ears looked much bigger without the MTT-Brand Burger Emporium’s hat sitting between them.
“Alright so, uh, Mettaton here put me in charge of this group headed to the surface on this elevator for the first time. So we’re all gonna just make the most of this ride, right?”
With a genial pat on the shoulder, Mettaton left his assistant in charge of the remaining monsters and headed for his personal transporter that would take him through Hotland to Alphys’s lab. He needed to recharge the batteries on this body. On the walk to meet the Lavaperson clinging to the ledge near the entrance, he wondered if the royal scientist had had a chance to work on improvements for this body while building the other in her workshop.
The ride from the top of the volcanic crag to the bottom was short and convenient. Mettaton was one of few monsters that ever interacted with the Lavaperson, cousin to the Riverpeople as far as anyone knew, so he was subject to more than one comment during the trip down. While his body, comprised of magic and metal, could withstand extreme temperatures by design, holding onto lava rocks on the way down a volcanic waterfall between the Resort and Lab was not a feat he’d attempted. Yet.
“Oh, Alphys!”
A metallic crash made Mettaton wince as he walked into the Lab. When he rounded a corner he saw the good doctor picking up tools from the floor where her tray had fallen. A bright blue, silver and black metallic body lay out on a table next to her which made his Soul swell for a moment - Blooky’s body! - before he rushed over. He held the tray for her as she inspected each delicate instrument for any accidental damage. Flamboyant as he was, he still tried not to frighten Alphys, but it was unfortunately so simple to do. Once done, he stood and placed it where Alphys pointed, then looked over to the other side of the room when something moved out of the corner of his optic tracking modules.
Dark hair and dark eyes rounded the corner behind one of the exam benches in the room. Brightly lit, this lab was much more clinical than the True Lab beneath their feet, so it made Frisk’s dirty complexion stand out.
“Darling, are you alright?”
Before the child answered, Mettaton felt Alphys’s hand on his arm. “They came here after tripping in H-hotland. I was c-closest and they were hurt and I j-just, uh, I don’t have any-”
Mettaton put one of his hands over Alphys’s and smiled softly, genuinely, which made her stammering stop before it became a rushed stuttered monologue. “Quite alright. I can help if Frisk would like me to?”
Frisk, still partially hiding behind the table that held Napstablook’s robot shell, stepped out a bit and stood at their full height when addressed. They cocked their head to the side for a moment, considering the robot quietly with the same expression Mettaton remembered from their first few encounters. The only way he could think to describe it was determined. The child nodded and walked up towards them, stopping before they got close enough for Mettaton to reach out and touch, but the reduced distance felt like an improvement. He hadn’t interacted with the child one on one since he’d, well, tried to kill them, for which he was ashamed now. A small sigh came from Alphys behind Mettaton, relaxing some of the tension he hadn’t realized he’d been holding since spotting the human that had broken the Barrier months ago.
Standing much closer, the extent of the damage to the child’s clothes was painfully obvious. No blood, thankfully, Alphys likely attended to that messy part. “Darling, come with me, we need to get you into something more comfortable.”
Mettaton turned towards the room at the end of the lab where he kept some of his belongings even after moving into the Resort full-time. The light tapping of small feet behind him made him smile.
“I can fix your clothes in a snap, darling, though I’m sure you’d find something you like here!” Arms throwing a pair of double doors wide, Mettaton invited Frisk into the suite he used to occupy before the fall of the Barrier. Modest considering the monster who lived there it still boasted a closet that spanned the length of one entire wall, the bathroom repurposed to expand it even further.
Frisk stopped to stare at the entrance to the enormous closet, eyes reflecting the multitude of lights, their mouth formed in a little “oh” of amazement. It takes all of a few seconds before they’re broken out of their reverie and are sprinting from one rack to the next, reaching up to touch a shirt here or a pair of shoes there. Strictly, Mettaton did not need the shoes, but he couldn’t bear to not purchase an entire matching set. He had to have the best!
A twitch of a finger started playing music from the stereo in the corner, soft and poppy and just enough to provide some atmosphere. This human child was deaf, or so he’d been told, but Frisk never had a problem hearing the music in the Underground as evidenced by the little tapping of their feet as they paused in front of a barrage of sparkling skirts. Madonna could get anyone moving.
“Point to what you’d like to try and we’ll get you changed. Blooky will be by soon to take a look at what Alphys is building for him, I hope, and we should get you dressed for the occasion.
Party? Frisk signed, arms moving broadly.
Mettaton chuckled, smiling indulgently down at this tiny creature that easily slipped into the hearts of every monster they met. He forms his hands in a mimicry of Frisk and repeats the sign, but much smaller. His hard drive was chock-full of every language known to man and monster so understanding and speaking to Frisk was no task. He used sign as he answered, “Napstablook doesn’t enjoy the limelight like you or I, darling.”
Frisk nodded to show they understood, and points empirically up at the display of frilly clothes. I still want to give Blooky a little party.
“Yes, let’s!”
With the precision of a mechanical monster robot who made all of his own performance outfits, Mettaton took what Frisk chose from his closet and created a dapper little outfit in the perfect size. Frisk watched each movement with eyes as wide as saucers and giggle fits every time the monster had to pull this, that, or the other over a ticklish part of their body. The mechanics of the human body elude and fascinate him.
Dressed, cleaned up, and dimples on display, Frisk preened in front of the full set of mirrors to admire Mettaton’s handiwork. Their hair had protested at most attempts to comb it into a semblance of a style but he was hardly deterred, the results worth every moment of careful primping. He was almost prouder of the results than Frisk. Turning this way and that they made sure to catch every angle of the outfit that they could. A pinstripe vest with dark red button up on top, a pair of trim black slacks stopping artfully on their shiny shoes, all offset with a cluster of tulle in the middle. The entire look makes Mettaton think more CEOs should wear custom made tu-tus, but it could just be Frisk making it look this good.
Without warning, the human rushed off the pedestal to hug as far around as they could of his legs. Mettaton felt a pink magical blush cover his cheek chitin before leaning over to scoop the child up into his arms.
“You’re very welcome, darling, I’m glad you like it,” he said, tone soft and sincere. “Now, let’s go meet Alphys in the lab and see if Blooky is here yet!”
Frisk agreed and points with their finger again towards the direction of the lab. The way they act melts his metaphorical heart, since they’re no longer flinching at the sight of him even after what he attempted to do, even demanding to be carried back across the lab so Frisk could use both hands to tell him a story. To receive the full attention of Frisk is to be drawn into their charm, which Mettaton happily does.
Whether Napstablook is ready to make the move into a new body today or not, Mettaton counts it as a win as the little ambassador clings to his shoulder chassis in a way he didn’t know he needed. Maybe he really is forgiven.
#mettaton ex#mettaton#alphys#burgerpants#frisk#undertale fanfiction#stuff i write#one-shot#pacifist run#post-pacifist run#asks answers and replies
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Joker x Reader
One-shots
Damaged - Imagine being the Jokers Queen. And weeks after being kidnapped and tortured, you’re finally brought back to him.
Dramatic - Imagine the Joker being dramatic after you go out without telling him.
Fame - Imagine being a writer for the Gotham Gazette and you try to get perfect picture of the Joker for your article, but you get caught.
Tease (NSFW)- Imagine spending a lustful evening with Mister J at the club
Weakness - Imagine returning home with the Joker after a run in with the Batman. The two of you start drinking and you can’t help but tease the green haired villain once you learn his weakness.
Sweet Valentine - It’s Valentines Day and you’re bitter that the Joker would rather have business meetings with Gotham’s criminals then spend time with you. So you find a way to keep him home.
The Last Time - Imagine being the Jokers wife who was killed by one of his enemies. Though he has Harley now, he still mourns you on the anniversary of your death.
You Don’t Own Me- One-shot based off of the song ‘You Don’t Own Me’.
For Her - Imagine having a child with the Joker but constantly getting into arguments in front of her.
A Set-up - Imagine going with the Joker to a warehouse for a business deal. You try to convince him not to go through with it but he ignores you and you end hurt.
You’re Not Real - You’re just an ordinary girl, writing fanficions on your laptop and obsessing over the new movie ‘Suicide Squad’. After going to see it for the third time, you end up going home with Gotham’s most dangerous criminal, who shouldn't even exist.
Run Away - You’re fed up with the Joker’s bullshit so you turn yourself in and are taken to Belle Reve.
Go Away - Imagine being the new inmate at Arkham Asylum. Its not long before you gain the attention of Clown Prince of Crime, but to his shock, you want nothing to do with him.
Surprising - Imagine your the Jokers new girlfriend. Everything is going fine until Harley tries to get revenge, little does she know that your a force to be reckoned with.
First Kicks - Imagine being pregnant with the Jokers child and in the middle of one of his business deals both of you get excited when the baby starts kicking.
Enough - Imagine the Joker finding out that your self-harming.
Interview - Imagine being a writer and your boss wants you to write an article about the Joker, no matter how dangerous it could be.
Unbreakable - Imagine being a professional torturer and being hired to torture the Joker. After being unable to break him, you realize that you’re falling for him.
Newlyweds - Imagine being married to a sane Joker and being pregnant.
Little Birdie - You’re the adoptive-daughter of Bruce Wayne. Despite your rebellious attitude, you do what you can to appease him and Gotham, even if you have to fight by his side. One night at a party, you’re taken by the Joker and he sees to use you as a weapon.
Hurt Me - Imagine being a ordinary girl and being kidnapped by the Joker. He tortures you and after awhile he starts to realize that he is falling in love with you.
One Kiss - Imagine being the new psychiatrist at Arkham. You become good friends with Harley and one night asks you to take over her session with the Joker. He ends up taking interest in you and plans to take you with him when he escapes.
Drugged - Imagine going to the Jokers club and almost getting drugged.
Mine - Imagine the Joker being protective of you and not being happy when Harley tries to kill you.
Missing You - Imagine getting into a argument with the Joker and it ending with you leaving him. But after a few weeks, he shows up at your door injured and you decide to take care of him.
Only You - Imagine being the Jokers girl and becoming best friends with Frost because he always keeps you company when the Joker is busy. One day, Joker gets angry and accuses you of being in love with Frost.
Sorry - Imagine being the Jokers Lover and he finds out that you’ve been raped by one of his henchmen.
What I want - Imagine being Ricks little sister and working as a doctor at Belle Reve. When the Joker is finally captured, he’s brought there by your brother. He warns you not to fall for anything the Joker says, but what will happen when you fall for Clown Prince of Crime?
The Deal - Imagine being the Jokers girlfriend, you’re kidnapped and tortured. To make it all stop, all the Joker has to do is turn himself in to Arkham Asylum and give up his freedom forever. Regardless of what happens, there is going to be a lot of pain
Forget You - Imagine getting in an argument with the Joker. In his anger, you get hurt and end up with amnesia. Will your memory come back? Will you forgive him?
Take Me Away - Imagine being an inmate in Arkham Asylum and seducing your new blue-eyed doctor to help you escape.”
The Real You - Chubby!Reader x Joker
Dress Up - Imagine your a mob bosses daughter, super shy and innocent. The Joker ends up kidnapping you to get your father.
Family Matters (Daughter! Reader) - Imagine being the Jokers daughter. Because of him, you have power and money but it all comes with a price. You don’t want to be evil like your father. The only chance you have is to team up with Jokers biggest adversary, the Batman.
Me Time - Imagine trying to have some alone time but the Joker doesn’t know the meaning of space
Distress - Imagine almost losing your baby when a deal goes wrong and it causing the Joker to go crazy.
The Cure - Imagine being poisoned and the Joker never leaving your side as you both wait for the cure.
Just Go - Imagine the Joker breaking up with you because he wants to keep you safe. Only to have you get kidnapped anyway.
The Watcher - Your life changes after a bank robbery sends you into the arms of Gothams most dangerous criminal. Little do you know, he's had his eyes on you for awhile.
Favorite Doctor - Imagine being Harley’s psychiatrist and the two of you have become really good friends. When the Joker finally comes to rescue her, she refuses to leave without you.
Uneasy Phobias - Just a normal movie night with Mister J, until you notice the growing storm outside.
Strictly Business - Imagine being the princess of a large crime family. One day your brother is murdered, leaving you traumatized and growing to be heartless. You follow lead after lead until you finally learn the name of the name who killed your sibling. But you can’t go after him alone, you’re going to need help.
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Johnson & Johnson Ordered to Pay $572 Million in Landmark Opioid Trial
Johnson & Johnson supplies 60 percent of the opiate ingredients that drug companies used for opioids, which are addictive. If you were a Johnson & Johnson executive, what would you do if the head of marketing submitted a 10-year plan for Oklahoma that would entail making 150,000 visits to Oklahoma doctors, focusing in particular on high-volume prescribers, in a state, projecting future 2015-2018 sales of 18 million opioid prescriptions in a state with a population of 3.9 million: (1) approve the plan, (2) reject the plan because it could create a public health problem? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?
A judge in Oklahoma on Monday ruled that Johnson & Johnson had intentionally played down the dangers and oversold the benefits of opioids, and ordered it to pay the state $572 million in the first trial of a drug manufacturer for the destruction wrought by prescription painkillers.
The amount fell far short of the $17 billion judgment that Oklahoma had sought to pay for addiction treatment, drug courts and other services it said it would need over the next 20 years to repair the damage done by the opioid epidemic.
Still, the decision, by Judge Thad Balkman of Cleveland County District Court, heartened lawyers representing states and cities — plaintiffs in many of the more than 2,000 opioid lawsuits pending across the country — who are pursuing a legal strategy similar to Oklahoma’s. His finding that Johnson & Johnson had breached the state’s “public nuisance” law was a significant aspect of his order.
Judge Balkman was harsh in his assessment of a company that has built its reputation as a responsible and family-friendly maker of soap, baby powder and Band-Aids.
In his ruling, he wrote that Johnson & Johnson had promulgated “false, misleading, and dangerous marketing campaigns” that had “caused exponentially increasing rates of addiction, overdose deaths” and babies born exposed to opioids.
Sabrina Strong, a lawyer for Johnson & Johnson, one the world’s biggest health care companies, said, “We have many strong grounds for appeal and we intend to pursue those vigorously.”
Johnson & Johnson, which contracted with poppy growers in Tasmania, supplied 60 percent of the opiate ingredients that drug companies used for opioids like oxycodone, the state argued, and aggressively marketed opioids to doctors and patients as safe and effective. A Johnson & Johnson subsidiary, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, made its own opioids — a pill whose rights it sold in 2015, and a fentanyl patch that it still produces.
Judge Balkman said the $572 million judgment could pay for a year’s worth of services needed to combat the epidemic in Oklahoma.
“We would have liked to walk out of here with $17 billion, but we’ve been able to put together a billion dollars,” Oklahoma’s attorney general, Mike Hunter, said at a news conference on Monday. He was referring to the cumulative amount from the Johnson & Johnson judgment and previous settlements with two other drug manufacturers that produce opioids. Earlier this year, Purdue Pharma and Teva Pharmaceuticals agreed to pay $270 million and $85 million, respectively.
As a consequence of the settlements, Oklahoma faced the steep climb of pinning the blame for its opioid crisis mainly on just one defendant.
“We’ve shown that J & J was at the root cause of this opioid crisis,” said Brad Beckworth, the lead attorney for the state. “It made billions of dollars from it over a 20-year period. They’ve always denied responsibility and yet at the same time they say they want to make a difference in solving this problem. So do the right thing: Come in here, pay the judgment.”
The case was also closely watched by some two dozen opioid makers, distributors and retailers that face more than 2,000 similar lawsuits around the country. Also on Monday, the health news website STAT said that the Kentucky Supreme Court let stand an earlier ruling to release documents related to Purdue Pharma’s marketing of the opioid OxyContin. STAT had filed a motion in March 2016 to unseal the documents.
In a statement about the Oklahoma case, Michael Ullmann, the general counsel and executive vice president of Johnson & Johnson, referring to the company’s pharmaceutical subsidiary, said that “Janssen did not cause the opioid crisis in Oklahoma, and neither the facts nor the law support this outcome.
“We recognize the opioid crisis is a tremendously complex public health issue,” he said, “and we have deep sympathy for everyone affected.”
The stocks of Johnson & Johnson and other opioid manufacturers rallied briefly in after-hours trading after the news, perhaps because some had anticipated a judgment of $1 billion or more. Johnson & Johnson stock was up about 4 percent in after-hours trading on Monday evening, and the stocks of Endo International, Mallinckrodt and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries all briefly spiked after the decision, although some fell again.
Oklahoma has suffered mightily from opioids. Mr. Hunter has said that between 2015 and 2018, 18 million opioid prescriptions were written in a state with a population of 3.9 million. Since 2000, his office said, about 6,000 Oklahomans have died from opioid overdoses, with thousands more struggling with addiction.
To calculate the Oklahoma award, Judge Balkman relied on the state’s detailed estimates of what it would cost to remediate the effects of the opioid epidemic. The state said it would need $893 million a year, or about $17 billion over 20 years.
The state’s case was argued by private lawyers whose sense of urgency was driven by personal tragedy — among them, they had seen a son, a business partner and friends succumb to opioids.
On the eve of trial, the lead attorney, Mr. Beckworth, of Austin, Tex., almost dropped out because his wife had just begun chemotherapy for breast cancer, but he said she urged him to stick with the case he “had been born to try.” “If you have an oversupply,” he said in his opening argument, “people will die.”
Reading a summary of his decision in court in Norman, Okla., Judge Balkman said Johnson & Johnson had an outsize impact on the state’s epidemic, though its share of opioid sales was scarcely 1 percent of the market.
“The critical finding is that Johnson & Johnson engaged in false, deceptive and misleading marketing,” said Abbe R. Gluck, who teaches health policy and law at Yale Law School.
From 2000 through 2011, members of Johnson & Johnson’s sales staff made some 150,000 visits to Oklahoma doctors, focusing in particular on high-volume prescribers, the state said. In addition, the pharmaceutical giant supplied most of the nation’s opioid material to other drug manufacturers, refined by one of its companies from a variety of poppy that Johnson & Johnson developed and grew in Tasmania.
Johnson & Johnson, represented by Larry D. Ottaway, an Oklahoma lawyer, argued its case with an eye toward appellate courts. Indeed whether Judge Balkman’s verdict will survive scrutiny is uncertain: State and possibly federal appeals judges may take a skeptical view of the state’s legal theory and the extent of the company’s liability.
During the trial, Johnson & Johnson said blame for the epidemic could not fairly be placed on one company with such modest sales, whose drugs were approved and strictly regulated by state and federal agencies.
Johnson & Johnson said that the state could not show how Oklahoma’s problems, which the company said arose from the diversion of hydrocodone and oxycodone, could be linked to Janssen, which did not make those drugs. It cited black-box warnings on Duragesic, its fentanyl patch, which cautioned about the potential for abuse and addiction. And it said the state had not identified any doctor who had been misled by the company about the dangers of opioids.
But Judge Balkman wrote that he was persuaded by the state’s legal theory. The judge found that Johnson & Johnson perpetuated a “public nuisance,” substantially contributing to an ongoing public health crisis that could take decades to abate.
Public nuisance laws are usually applied in cases where something interferes with a right common to the general public, traditionally roads, waterways or other public areas. Recently, plaintiffs have used the laws to press claims involving lead paint, guns or water or air pollution, with mixed results. Oklahoma’s public nuisance statute is relatively broad, and the state argued that Johnson & Johnson substantially interfered with public health.
Johnson & Johnson’s lawyers contended that the state was contorting public nuisance law to the point of being unrecognizable.
Lawyers representing more than 2,000 cities, counties and other jurisdictions with opioid cases pending in federal court were cheered by Judge Balkman’s ruling. In a statement, they said: “While public nuisance laws differ in every state, this decision is a critical step forward.”
Judge Balkman’s ruling comes only two months before the first federal opioid trial is to begin in Cleveland, brought by two Ohio counties against an array of manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies.
Now that the value of the Oklahoma case has been determined, settlement negotiations may quicken between industry defendants and two large groups of plaintiffs — one, representing thousands of cities and counties, consolidated in federal court in Cleveland, and the other, a coalition of states.
But the nearly two-month Oklahoma trial, which began on May 28, was also singular in some ways. Judge Balkman, an elected jurist and former state legislator, presided over the case. By contrast, much of the forthcoming Ohio trial, which includes other claims, will be heard by a jury.
Also, the pending federal case in Ohio involves numerous defendants, while Oklahoma made its case in court against just Johnson & Johnson.
The level of proof required by the state to back up its allegation that Johnson & Johnson was the “kingpin” of the opioid epidemic required that it demonstrate that the company was responsible for most of the opioid-related damage — from criminal justice to health care, foster care and treatment facilities.
The state said that the company aggressively promoted the safety of opioids generally, through campaigns tailored for women, teenagers and veterans. It said the company engaged with “front groups” of pain patients and pain medicine specialists, who insisted the drugs were effective for quotidian pain and minimized the risk of addiction.
“Judge Balkman has affirmed our position that Johnson & Johnson maliciously and diabolically created the opioid epidemic in our state,” Mr. Hunter said.
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Johnson & Johnson Ordered to Pay $572 Million in Landmark Opioid Trial https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/26/health/oklahoma-opioids-johnson-and-johnson.html
Johnson & Johnson Ordered to Pay $572 Million in Landmark Opioid Trial
Oklahoma pursued the first case against a drug manufacturer for the national public health disaster, and the ruling may point to what lies ahead in 2,000 more lawsuits.
By Jan Hoffman | Published Aug. 26, 2019 Updated 8:28 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted August 26, 2019 |
A judge in Oklahoma on Monday ruled that Johnson & Johnson had intentionally played down the dangers and oversold the benefits of opioids, and ordered it to pay the state $572 million in the first trial of a drug manufacturer for the destruction wrought by prescription painkillers.
The amount fell far short of the $17 billion judgment that Oklahoma had sought to pay for addiction treatment, drug courts and other services it said it would need over the next 20 years to repair the damage done by the opioid epidemic.
Still, the decision, by Judge Thad Balkman of Cleveland County District Court, heartened lawyers representing states and cities — plaintiffs in many of the more than 2,000 opioid lawsuits pending across the country — who are pursuing a legal strategy similar to Oklahoma’s. His finding that Johnson & Johnson had breached the state’s “public nuisance” law was a significant aspect of his order.
Judge Balkman was harsh in his assessment of a company that has built its reputation as a responsible and family-friendly maker of soap, baby powder and Band-Aids.
In his ruling, he wrote that Johnson & Johnson had promulgated “false, misleading, and dangerous marketing campaigns” that had “caused exponentially increasing rates of addiction, overdose deaths” and babies born exposed to opioids.
Sabrina Strong, a lawyer for Johnson & Johnson, one the world’s biggest health care companies, said, “We have many strong grounds for appeal and we intend to pursue those vigorously.”
Johnson & Johnson, which contracted with poppy growers in Tasmania, supplied 60 percent of the opiate ingredients that drug companies used for opioids like oxycodone, the state argued, and aggressively marketed opioids to doctors and patients as safe and effective. A Johnson & Johnson subsidiary, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, made its own opioids — a pill whose rights it sold in 2015, and a fentanyl patch that it still produces.
Judge Balkman said the $572 million judgment could pay for a year’s worth of services needed to combat the epidemic in Oklahoma.
“We would have liked to walk out of here with $17 billion, but we’ve been able to put together a billion dollars,” Oklahoma’s attorney general, Mike Hunter, said at a news conference on Monday. He was referring to the cumulative amount from the Johnson & Johnson judgment and previous settlements with two other drug manufacturers that produce opioids. Earlier this year, Purdue Pharma and Teva Pharmaceuticals agreed to pay $270 million and $85 million, respectively.
As a consequence of the settlements, Oklahoma faced the steep climb of pinning the blame for its opioid crisis mainly on just one defendant.
“We’ve shown that J & J was at the root cause of this opioid crisis,” said Brad Beckworth, the lead attorney for the state. “It made billions of dollars from it over a 20-year period. They’ve always denied responsibility and yet at the same time they say they want to make a difference in solving this problem. So do the right thing: Come in here, pay the judgment.”
The case was also closely watched by some two dozen opioid makers, distributors and retailers that face more than 2,000 similar lawsuits around the country.
Oklahoma Opioid Trial Decision Against Johnson & Johnson
(On Aug. 26, 2019, Judge Thad Balkman of Cleveland County District Court in Oklahoma ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $572 million to the state, finding that the company helped fuel the opioid epidemic. (PDF, 42 pages, 1.81 MB)
 42 pages, 1.81 MB)
In a statement, Michael Ullmann, the general counsel and executive vice president of Johnson & Johnson, referring to the company’s pharmaceutical subsidiary, said that “Janssen did not cause the opioid crisis in Oklahoma, and neither the facts nor the law support this outcome.
“We recognize the opioid crisis is a tremendously complex public health issue,” he said, “and we have deep sympathy for everyone affected.”
The stocks of Johnson & Johnson and other opioid manufacturers rallied briefly in after-hours trading after the news, perhaps because some had anticipated a judgment of $1 billion or more. Johnson & Johnson stock was up about 4 percent in after-hours trading on Monday evening, and the stocks of Endo International, Mallinckrodt and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries all briefly spiked after the decision, although some fell again.
Oklahoma has suffered mightily from opioids. Mr. Hunter has said that between 2015 and 2018, 18 million opioid prescriptions were written in a state with a population of 3.9 million. Since 2000, his office said, about 6,000 Oklahomans have died from opioid overdoses, with thousands more struggling with addiction.
To calculate the Oklahoma award, Judge Balkman relied on the state’s detailed estimates of what it would cost to remediate the effects of the opioid epidemic. The state said it would need $893 million a year, or about $17 billion over 20 years.
The state’s case was argued by private lawyers whose sense of urgency was driven by personal tragedy — among them, they had seen a son, a business partner and friends succumb to opioids.
On the eve of trial, the lead attorney, Mr. Beckworth, of Austin, Tex., almost dropped out because his wife had just begun chemotherapy for breast cancer, but he said she urged him to stick with the case he “had been born to try.” “If you have an oversupply,” he said in his opening argument, “people will die.”
Reading a summary of his decision in court in Norman, Okla., Judge Balkman said Johnson & Johnson had an outsize impact on the state’s epidemic, though its share of opioid sales was scarcely 1 percent of the market.
“The critical finding is that Johnson & Johnson engaged in false, deceptive and misleading marketing,” said Abbe R. Gluck, who teaches health policy and law at Yale Law School.
From 2000 through 2011, members of Johnson & Johnson’s sales staff made some 150,000 visits to Oklahoma doctors, focusing in particular on high-volume prescribers, the state said. In addition, the pharmaceutical giant supplied most of the nation’s opioid material to other drug manufacturers, refined by one of its companies from a variety of poppy that Johnson & Johnson developed and grew in Tasmania.
Johnson & Johnson, represented by Larry D. Ottaway, an Oklahoma lawyer, argued its case with an eye toward appellate courts. Indeed whether Judge Balkman’s verdict will survive scrutiny is uncertain: State and possibly federal appeals judges may take a skeptical view of the state’s legal theory and the extent of the company’s liability.
During the trial, Johnson & Johnson said blame for the epidemic could not fairly be placed on one company with such modest sales, whose drugs were approved and strictly regulated by state and federal agencies.
Johnson & Johnson said that the state could not show how Oklahoma’s problems, which the company said arose from the diversion of hydrocodone and oxycodone, could be linked to Janssen, which did not make those drugs. It cited black-box warnings on Duragesic, its fentanyl patch, which cautioned about the potential for abuse and addiction. And it said the state had not identified any doctor who had been misled by the company about the dangers of opioids.
But Judge Balkman wrote that he was persuaded by the state’s legal theory. The judge found that Johnson & Johnson perpetuated a “public nuisance,” substantially contributing to an ongoing public health crisis that could take decades to abate.
Public nuisance laws are usually applied in cases where something interferes with a right common to the general public, traditionally roads, waterways or other public areas. Recently, plaintiffs have used the laws to press claims involving lead paint, guns or water or air pollution, with mixed results. Oklahoma’s public nuisance statute is relatively broad, and the state argued that Johnson & Johnson substantially interfered with public health.
Johnson & Johnson’s lawyers contended that the state was contorting public nuisance law to the point of being unrecognizable.
Lawyers representing more than 2,000 cities, counties and other jurisdictions with opioid cases pending in federal court were cheered by Judge Balkman’s ruling. In a statement, they said: “While public nuisance laws differ in every state, this decision is a critical step forward.”
Judge Balkman’s ruling comes only two months before the first federal opioid trial is to begin in Cleveland, brought by two Ohio counties against an array of manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies.
Now that the value of the Oklahoma case has been determined, settlement negotiations may quicken between industry defendants and two large groups of plaintiffs — one, representing thousands of cities and counties, consolidated in federal court in Cleveland, and the other, a coalition of states.
But the nearly two-month Oklahoma trial, which began on May 28, was also singular in some ways. Judge Balkman, an elected jurist and former state legislator, presided over the case. By contrast, much of the forthcoming Ohio trial, which includes other claims, will be heard by a jury.
Also, the pending federal case in Ohio involves numerous defendants, while Oklahoma made its case in court against just Johnson & Johnson.
The level of proof required by the state to back up its allegation that Johnson & Johnson was the “kingpin” of the opioid epidemic required that it demonstrate that the company was responsible for most of the opioid-related damage — from criminal justice to health care, foster care and treatment facilities.
The state said that the company aggressively promoted the safety of opioids generally, through campaigns tailored for women, teenagers and veterans. It said the company engaged with “front groups” of pain patients and pain medicine specialists, who insisted the drugs were effective for quotidian pain and minimized the risk of addiction.
“Judge Balkman has affirmed our position that Johnson & Johnson maliciously and diabolically created the opioid epidemic in our state,” Mr. Hunter said.
Katie Thomas contributed reporting
Why Was Johnson & Johnson the Only Opioid Maker on Trial in Oklahoma?
Other states are suing a range of drug makers, distributors and retailers. Here are three reasons Johnson & Johnson was the only company on trial in Oklahoma.
By Jan Hoffman | Published August 26, 2019 Updated 8:28 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted August 26, 2019 |
Some two dozen opioid manufacturers, drug distributors and retailers are now being sued by states, counties, cities and tribes across the nation for their roles in the opioid crisis, yet Johnson & Johnson, the corporate giant, wound up as the only company on trial in Oklahoma despite the fact that its drugs accounted for only about 1 percent of opioid sales in the state.
On Monday, a district court judge in Norman, Okla., ruled against the company, ordering it to pay the state $572 million. Here’s why Johnson & Johnson was the only defendant on trial:
All the plaintiffs who filed opioid lawsuits have named drug manufacturers as defendants, largely based on which companies sold opioids on their turf. A smaller number of plaintiffs also have sued the giant distribution companies and a still smaller subset have also gone after retailers like CVS, Walmart and Rite Aid. Oklahoma was among the first states to file suit in an attempt to hold pharmaceutical companies responsible for its opioid epidemic, and it acted before the idea of also targeting distributors and retailers had been developed.
Oklahoma sued two other drug manufacturers, Purdue Pharma and Teva Pharmaceuticals, in addition to Johnson & Johnson. But they both settled with the state earlier this year — Purdue for $270 million, Teva for $85 million — without admitting wrongdoing. Purdue Pharma is widely seen as bearing a great deal of the responsibility for starting the epidemic with its aggressive marketing of OxyContin. But as the trial approached, Purdue began exploring filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, a step that could have insulated it from legal judgments. That gave the company greater leverage to push for a settlement with Oklahoma.
Johnson & Johnson also had the deepest pockets of all the companies Oklahoma sued, and it was the only one that refused to settle. The company has long had a reputation for being ready to risk jury trials, as it has in cases involving its talc-based baby powder, the antipsychotic drug Risperdal and the blood-thinner medication Xarelto. The company contended at trial that it should not shoulder the blame for the opioid epidemic because its opioids had such modest sales, and because its drugs were regulated by state and federal agencies. Oklahoma argued that the company had a broader role than its own sales. It developed a poppy strain that, when refined, became a central ingredient for drugs like oxycodone and hydrocodone. And Johnson & Johnson was the top supplier of base opioid materials to other pharmaceutical companies. The state also maintained that Johnson & Johnson’s sales staff relentlessly promoted opioids generally, not just the company’s own, in some 150,000 visits to Oklahoma doctors.
#politics#science#opiod epidemic#opiods#opiodcrisis#opiodaddiction#health news#pharma news#health medical pharma#big pharma#pharmaceutical companies#u.s. news#united states department of justice#justicedept#justice
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Being China
When I moved back to the USA, after living in China for almost seventeen months, I was always asked the same questions I wasn’t quite ready to answer. A year later, I have finally processed what those seventeen months were all about and have come up with [short] thought-out answers.
I decided to record the repetitive curiosities and document them in my [China] travel journal to really meditate on them. Sometimes it’s better not to talk about something until you yourself have made sense of it and have absorbed those amazing details. While there are too many instances in 517 days to cover all, I hope I was able to finally answer your questions in the best way I know how: through writing.
1. What made you decide to go to China?
China chose me. I never expected to do this. I knew I wanted to go to China for fashion because there was a major economic boom at the time. A Chinese friend knew this and started to give me Chinese lessons. She randomly called me one morning, during my last month of class, telling me her friend was starting this company and needed a teacher. She told me to call him and set up an interview because this could be a gateway into the fashion culture. I remember thinking, “Eh. I’ll at least go to the interview and see what it is about…”, but it was less of an interview and more of a persuasive orientation. I ended up moving to China within a week after I graduated from college. Since then, not only has my outlook on life completely shifted, but also what I want for my own life.
2. Where were you in China?
I was based in a “small” rural city known as Baotou. It is located in the northern province of Inner Mongolia; a little over 400 miles from Beijing. Not many people are aware of this province, let alone the city. It is out in the middle of the Singing Sands desert and holds a population of [only] about 3,000,000 people. Baotou is the home to the largest earth metal industry in the world (Read my epic story on that HERE). This city has many secrets, but what area in China doesn’t, really?
Factory stacks behind the high school playground.
On a more relatable level, Baotou is the city that’s basically set in the story of Mulan. I practically lived on the prancing grounds of Mulan and Mushu [*flips hair*]. The end, and oldest part, of The Great Wall, is just outside of Baotou. The Genghis Khan Mausoleum is located in the grasslands of Baotou. Cool stuff.
The most beautiful part of Baotou, though, are the possibilities to visit the famous Singing Sands desert, and also the grasslands. Two completely different environments within a couple hours drive from each other.
3. Why were you there?
Prior to my departure, I was under the impression I would be working with a company, working at a high school that would speak great English… that was not the case. I ended up mentoring at a high school with beginners or less level of English. I also briefly helped start up a program at a pre-school. All with the same company. After a few months, I taught strictly at the high school (3,500 students/42 classes of 60-70 students).
As one of the first employees of this new company, I was also expected to help start up the entire business. I acted as the brand ambassador; sitting in meetings, speaking at schools, having lunches with the local government, going to dinner with potential clients, posing for photos at events and so on. We also orchestrated teacher workshops for over three hundred of Baotou’s greatest Chinese-English teachers (that also knew little English). We even hosted summer camps for Chinese high school students. As I continued to learn and grow from the various jobs and situations, it was obvious my position there was more than just a teacher. As a fresh twenty-two-year-old college graduate, I had been a part of building a company, in a foreign country, from the ground up.
I was given the official title of an “Education Director”. I was in charge of developing a curriculum based on American pop culture. I made lesson plans, instructed Chinese English teachers how to teach and most importantly, inspired students of my own (at the high schools and offices). I taught popular songs, dances, American football, how to make a PB&J, TV shows, movies, inspirational figures and the importance of the American dream… it was a blast and ever so fulfilling.
One time I told them we were learning a new word and wrote “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” on the board. Their explanations were hilarious.
I still remember walking into my first class and seeing the excited, yet lifeless faces; walking down the halls, and hearing whispers of my name… After a few months of being there, I realized how exhausted and uninspired my students were. These kids spent their youth attending school fifteen hours a day, six-seven days a week. When they finish the class they are expected to complete impossible amounts of homework. American kids don’t know how good they have it. Most of my students lived at school because it was easier for their studies.
In China, the ‘two’ means, “YEAH!”
I decided to throw away my lessons and walk into class doing improv. Those were the best memories. The heaviness in the airlifted, and there was a new light in the face of those kids. I motivated them, inspired them, played cruel jokes on them… I taught them a new culture. When they were depressed, I told them to keep fighting and to never give up, even when they felt they could not go on. I told them I believed in them, and that I was always there to listen or just give them a hug. That was enough because they are never told these things. In China, there are no mistakes, so I taught them the beauty of being human: we aren’t perfect.
They told me my once-a-week, forty-minute class, was what kept them going; it was what excited them about going to school. Leaving was the hardest thing I ever had to do. I remember crying so hard after leaving that school on my last day. Chinese students are taught to hide their feelings, so seeing them cry and saying they don’t know how they will go on without me… it was gut-wrenching. With me, in my class, they felt free; free to be who they are. I still get messages from students on Chinese social media every day.
The ‘thank you’s I get still make me wonder how it was me who impacted these kids. To be told, “because of you, I believe I can follow my dreams.” or “My parents want me to be a doctor, but my dream is to be a writer. I never thought I could before, but now I think maybe I can…”. There is nothing like that. Nothing.
4. What was the hardest part of living there?
The cultural differences were difficult at times, but I think it was a lot of fun learning and overcoming the obstacles. I think I speak for myself, and all the foreigners there, when I say how crazy it is how much we Americans take so much for granted. It’s the little things we learned to cherish.
I remember causing a scene when we all saw avocados at the supermarket. Those are foreign to the culture, so seeing them was shocking. People gathered around us as we searched for ripe ones… some asked us what they were, some looked disgusted that we picked them up, some just crept around the pears, some thought they were rotten pears… A girl asked us what we do with them. We exchanged QQ numbers (Chinese Facebook), and sent her a recipe for guacamole. She later replied that she made it for her and her grandmother and they loved it.
I had a manual washing machine. No dryer because those aren’t a thing in China or any country besides the US, really… but the manual washing machine was fun times. Imagine filling up a tub of water from your sink, dumping it in your washer, then turning a switch to make it swoosh and spin. Then, emptying the water, putting the clothes in another section, then flipping another switch to make it spin out all the excess water. After that, you just hang them up in your living room to air dry. We lived in the desert so, by the time they were dry, they were already dirty again from the dust and sand that is as lovely as sticky glitter. I’m not complaining, though. It was an awesome experience.
The most difficult part though was losing two loved ones throughout the time of being there. I had never lost anyone within my family before. Being on the other sides of the world when it happened was really hard. I took the situation as an opportunity to teach my students what my Grandma and Papa both had taught me.
My Grandma was a badass woman. She didn’t take any type of negativity from anyone or anything, yet she was so poised, elegant, and loved everyone unconditionally. She was an artist. I told my students about her and told them what she showed me. She may have not even realized it, but she showed me a lot. Then I showed my 3,500 students.
My Papa was a true fighter. He served in WW2, overcame cancer, a heart attack, and only God knows what else… He always told me to go live ‘my’ life and don’t stop for anyone else.
A tea stub that reassured me I was doing right here during this difficult time.
While I couldn’t be in the States for their funerals, I was able to pass on what they each taught me to my students: always keep fighting. These lessons ended up being the most impactful, and “fighting” became our mantra.
My students comforted me during these difficult times. I didn’t know all of them, but they all knew me. They all cheered me on when I needed them most. The bond between these 3,500 students and me was so powerful. So unreal.
5. Did you get the chance to travel around China?
I didn’t have as much time as I had expected to have, but I am forever thankful for the fun times I had on planes, trains and automobiles across the country. I had to undergo so many adventures; some stressful, some relaxing, but both overall fun and memorable!
6. Can you elaborate on that?
Whew, ok, well… I traveled around Inner Mongolia a lot. Especially when it came to gaining a work Visa. My company had me taking cars to trains, trains to planes, planes to more trains… I had to go to the province’s capital, Hohhot, to take a plane to Erenhot (the city of dinosaur remains… pretty cool. Check it out), and from there a bus to the Mongolian border where we ended up having to take an immediate flight to Beijing; where we had to catch a last-minute flight to Hong Kong. It was a long drawn out adventure. A three-day trip made into a two-week trip we were not prepared for at all… it was epic.
Photo shot near the China/Mongolia border in the Gobi desert
I went to the desert a handful of times. Each time was special; each time spent with different groups of people. The most memorable was when a student’s family invited us to their family reunion.
Imagine spending twelve hours looking at nothing but endless miles of red sand, eating lamb, drinking baijiu (that Chinese floor cleaner moonshine), and riding sand dunes in sleds and dune buggies. I slightly remember sitting in a random shack with eleven shirtless old men, between my American friends, thinking, “How. the. hell?…”. It was one of those moments when you have an out of body experience and know that that mental picture, of that instance, is going to go down in the books of most epic travel moments ever. I will never forget that day at the desert. There aren’t enough stories of that day to express how downright uniquely herculean it was.
One of the times I had off of work, I traveled down the eastern border. It was known as the “birth-week trip” because it was my birth-week. With close friends, my brother and I took an overnight train to Beijing. I suggest taking an overnight train in China at least once. Having the experience of staying on a train and sleeping on a flatbed overnight, is a lot more fun than you may think it sounds. From the train station, we got Starbucks. You have to understand that for us, Beijing wasn’t a tourist trap, but a chance to get away and have western experiences. From Starbucks, we went straight to The Great Wall of China, where we hiked for a few miles before eating Subway, because, Subway was American and in Baotou, there was no such thing as American.
We made friends with our driver, who ended up taking us around to more local must-sees. Ending in Tiananmen Square, we checked in at New Balance for the first Color Run ever taken place in China. We checked in, then went back to our hotel to soak into the luscious comfy American beds (it was truly a treat because Chinese beds are literally your kitchen table). The next day we took place in the first-ever Color Run, and it was another memory we would all remember for the rest of our human lives. We ended up being on international news… finding out when students in Baotou saw us, as well as a family friend in Indiana, United States.
Following Beijing, I took a high-speed train to Shanghai where we felt even more spoiled (Shanghai is a China-based city with extreme Western and European influences). After spending some time in Shanghai, I took a bus to Jiangsu province where I stayed with the family of one of my friends I’d met in Baotou. Together, we took another bus to a city called, Suzhou, known as the Venice of China. It was a cool experience to see the many different cities because they are each so different. Every province in China is known for something and holds its own special piece of history.
Like I’d said before, we had to go to Hong Kong for Visa purposes. I’d lived and studied abroad in Hong Kong before, so returning was super exciting for me. During my time in China, I ended up having to go to Hong Kong twice, spending a total of four weeks there. I was able to see some old friends, visit old stomping grounds, and even met some amazing new friends that shared new adventures with me. They’d invited me along to their annual boat trip where I ended up on a yacht in Sai Kung all day. There was a lot of dancing, eating, boat jumping and swimming in the ocean water, that laid between mountains and tropical forests.
I took a lot of day trips to cities around Inner Mongolia as well. One of those cities was Ordos: the largest, most extravagant ghost city in the world. Check out that story, HERE! That city is freakin’ amazing.
7. Did you feel like a stranger there? Was the atmosphere welcoming?
Going to a new place is always strange, and leaving your comfort zone is always uncomfortable. Even more so when it is only you visiting a foreign country you’ve never been to before. In this city, Baotou, there was always something freakin’ weird happening. I remember arriving that first night and thinking, “what. did. I. do…”, but then woke up the next morning to the excitement of a brand new adventure.
While it was fun, it was also quite frustrating and stressful at times. Being one out of 200 foreigners in a city of over 3,000,000 people, you best believe I stood out. Most of the locals had never seen a foreigner in real life (apart from television). Every time I left the house, people would stop dead in their tracks and just stare in disbelief; jaws open. Others would stare, tap their friends, and continuously point. Getting pointed at had never been more obnoxious; I quickly remembered why I was taught pointing was so rude. Some people would even pull out their phones and take pictures without even trying to hide it. When I’d catch them, they’d excitingly wave and giggle. My facial expression at that moment probably resembled an ogre.
Other locals would run up and ask (in Chinese or sometimes broken English) where I was from and why I was in Baotou, then usually ask to take a picture with me. I still wonder how many pictures there are of me floating around Chinese social media. Yikes.
I tried to stay positive and love the celebrity treatment, but most days, I felt very relatable to Britney Spears or Lindsey Lohan… It got so annoying knowing I couldn’t go on a run, or walk to the supermarket without having my picture taken outside a car window. Somehow they’d always know we were foreigners. No matter how much we’d try to disguise ourselves.
What kept me going, though, was putting myself in these people’s shoes. They’d never seen a foreigner. I was the first one. I’d always try to remember this and keep the situation light. I’d give them something to look at; something to smile at… sometimes I’d take a picture with them, just to turn the tables.
One day, I just had to laugh, because I was walking as a man was riding by on his scooter… He turned his neck so much, I thought it’d break. He crashed into a bush, causing another couple on their bike to wreck because he’d been staring so hard. We both just laughed hysterically, then continued on our day. I had a lot of fun encounters like this with strangers. Many times in the taxi like this one.
This city definitely gave the biggest culture shock I’d ever had. You go to cities like Beijing or Shanghai and it’s like another country compared to Baotou. I mean, we would go to Beijing or Shanghai for a [slight] western experience. Just when I thought I would get used to the culture there, something would happen, making me feel so small again. I always got over it, though. By the time I left, I had the culture down just like it was my own. Even though I’d get too much attention at times, everyone was always so welcoming. Everyone wants to be your friend. You would never go hungry; you’d always have an invite to dinner; always have people wanting to help you feel more at home. I experienced so much just through the people; some extraordinary people at that.
8. What did you learn from those people?
A lot. I was a teacher there but between the thousands of students, friends, fellow teachers, the ladies at the supermarket, taxi drivers and just random peers on the streets… I learned far more than I could even fathom. Everyone was always so curious about me; wanting to help me in any way possible. The selflessness of these people is something I had never experienced from my own country; from some of the people, I’ve known all my life. The guy, Zhou, in the [silly] picture above was the only trainer at the gym that spoke English. He taught himself the language. Zhou ended up being my best friend in China and still yells at me for not doing my daily planks.
I learned so much more about how people in other countries live. They live so small and are some of the happiest people on this earth. They don’t waste anything. You literally eat every part of the animal and use other parts for other things… There is just so much.
There are so many traditions there as well. Tradition is so important to Chinese people; as is family. Family and tradition are sacred, and that is something I wish more Americans would appreciate.
The food they eat is special. There is a special story to these foods; special herbs and spices; special tea… I learned how different flower teas help improve health. Chinese are so health-conscious, and it makes sense because they are some of the healthiest people on earth.
9. They eat weird stuff over there, don’t they? Did you eat cat? Dog?
I mean, I suppose some things were strange to me because it wasn’t what I was accustomed to from American culture… just like cheese to them is FREAKIN’ WEIRD. Most of the “weird” stuff though wasn’t that strange. They don’t eat insects or weird things on sticks… If you’ve seen that in Beijing, then you were part of the touristic ploy. Since many westerners expect to see weird things on sticks, they entertain your expectations. You were fooled.
NO, I DID NOT EAT PETS! That’s a very racist and stereotypical assumption. In southern China (just like in the south of the US), that could be possible… but you have to remember, China only recently became a second-world country. So many citizens still live in a third-world scenario. Sometimes they have to get what they can eat.
10. What were some of the best and worst foods you tried?
The area I lived in was known for their lamb/sheep. It was amazing. Mouth-watering, addictively amazing. Lamb in hot pot (stew), lamb on a Korean bbq, lamb in dumplings or SHAOMAI… it’s all just amazing. Shaomai is a type of dumpling served at breakfast. It is honestly the most amazing thing I have ever had in my mouth. I didn’t come across anything too horrid, but I also hold an open mind while traveling (if you don’t, then what are you even doing?).
Honestly, though, I didn’t know what I was eating half the time; I didn’t know if I wanted to know (haha, just kidding…). The strangest foods I had the opportunity in trying were: an entire rabbit [head and all] roasted on a plate before me, noodles made from A SHARK’S FIN, fish eyeballs, lamb bone marrow sucked straight out of the bone [YUM!], chicken feet, a pig penis, and every part there is to a duck. It was Thanksgiving, China doesn’t have turkey, so the next best thing was a Peking duck! Duck meat, duck feet, duck bones (totes edible), duck BRAIN, and every other gizzard, liver, and heart you could imagine. I tried every part as I threw back baijiu, the Chinese moonshine that will probably burn every part of your insides.
Baijiu is necessary at any Chinese gathering or party. Government-teacher lunch in-between classes? Why not. Desert feast? Why not. Birthday party with a bunch of teenagers? Let’s do this because the kid brought a gasoline can full of his father’s homemade baijiu as a gift.
People usually always bring bottles of red wine and baijiu. Saying yes to a shot of this floor cleaner is a sign of trust and respect, even if you are going to teach three classes of seventy students after this…
11. What did you miss out on or wish you had done while you were in China?
I always make sure I never have to ask, nor have to answer, this same question to myself. There is always something more to see and learn everywhere. I am so thankful for what I did experience in China. I am so blessed to have had met the people I did, and have had the experiences I had. Whether it was negative or positive, I learned something. I learned something huge. The only thing is, I wish I could have loved those negative moments within the moment I was living them. I recently came across a Buddhist saying, “Everything in this moment is exactly as it should be. Accept it and enjoy that truth.”. It has helped me remember that what is happening now is authentic. Enjoy that authenticity in life, because it’s real and there is no going back. Each moment is special and each moment is worth living through.
12. What was the most beautiful thing you saw while in China?
Of all the beautiful things I saw, which was many, were the moments I experienced with the people. The positive change in my students, the smiles from the ladies at the supermarket, the odd interactions in taxi cars, the laughs I gave peers at the gym… I could go on and on. There was nothing more beautiful than the light I saw in people who had once had no light at all. There was nothing more beautiful than the change in the will to fight after some had completely given up on life itself.
13. Would you go back today if you were given the opportunity?
I will always feel as if a piece of me is missing because that piece is and always will be in Baotou. Not a day goes by where I don’t think about those kids, those people, the streets, the ratchet smells… I miss it all and will for the rest of my life. That country changed my life and I changed those peoples’ lives. With that said, I would not go back today. I do plan to go back and visit one day, maybe even live there again, but in this moment there is a different— and even more special— opportunity waiting for me. A different opportunity to inspire and be inspired by another beautiful country in our very colorful world.
That is my dream… to bring something positive to an unfamiliar culture; to learn from that culture, and share it with the world; to share that inspirational experience in order to influence even more countries. I have always seen the world differently; I hope to use that gift in order to live out experiences some people don’t care to do, or do not have the opportunity in doing. That way I can bring more love and equality to this world; all in the height of cultural knowledge. Travel isn’t about the places you go or the tourist traps you see… it’s about the life-altering experiences. It is about the people and the challenges you are able to endure from it. Travel is an opportunity to grow, and I’ve never been one to stop growing…
I without a doubt miss those serious “wtf” moments…
I had to move apartments while here; how they packed my things was quite amusing (and stressful).
because, no matter where you are, nap time at noon is necessary.
At the end of the day, no matter who we are or where we come from, just know everyone out there is fighting for something. No matter what it is, each person is battling their own fight.
When my grandmother passed, I told my students that very sentence. I played that music video, “Hall of Fame” by The Script (with Chinese/English subtitles). The silence in the room after the song ended gave me chills. The song became our theme song. We began to cheer each other on by saying “fighting”. I got a tattoo of “fighting” in Chinese as a symbol of my time there. I got it for my kids, so they knew I would never forget them or our time together, as they would often say: “please don’t forget us”.
Words and Imagery by Jennifer Jarvie
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