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diqldrunks · 18 days

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rafe cameron and you, wheezie’s babysitter… (part two here!)

a/n: this concept has me in a chokehold! asks are open for rafe <3

cw/tw: wheezie has been aged down to six because, well, PLOT (i don’t actually like this that much anymore but i’m posting anyway ✋).

:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ

imagine being wheezie’s babysitter, spending a lot of your weekends at tanneyhill. you would feel guilty about wheezie just watching tv when you were with her, so you would always try to mix it up, doing loads of different arts and craft projects with her (making sure to do anything involving paint or glue on some old canvas outside as to not make a mess in a house that wasn’t yours)

imagine being wheezie’s babysitter, and the first time you meet rafe cameron is when you are covered in hot pink paint and glitter. you had found wheezie a kids apron with the paints, but weren’t able to find anything to cover yourself, causing your top to become a mess. rafe had offered to lend you a jumper for you to put on while he put your top in the wash on a quick cycle. (yes = it smelt so good!)

imagine being wheezie’s babysitter, and deciding to make friendship bracelets with her one afternoon. you had some of the string from when you were younger at home, and thought wheezie would enjoy it — which she did. you spend ages (well, ‘ages’ in the perspective of a six year old) coming up with colour pairings and charm choices. there was one bracelet that wheezie was adamant that you made, because it needed to ‘be prefect’.

imagine being wheezie’s babysitter, and having rafe cameron get home as you were tidying up the mess that you and wheezie had caused as she’s upstairs asleep. after a slightly awkward ‘hello’, rafe was about to leave when you stopped him.

“wait, i have something for you.”

“you do?”

“well, wheezie does — we made friendship bracelets, and she was adamant we made one for you — here. you don’t have to wear it, i would totally get that—”

“that bracelet you’re wearing — that’s from wheez, right?”

“yeah, it’s one of the ones we made today…”

“i don’t see why i wouldn’t wear mine if you’re wearing yours. means we can match too. might need your help to put it on though — please.”

imagine being wheezie’s babysitter, and watching as rafe decided what wrist he wanted it on. you tied it, making sure to leave a gap of two fingers so it wouldn’t be too tight on him. you tried to ignore your fingers brushing his skin, this being the first contact you’ve had with each other — not knowing it would be far from the last.

a/n: (dolly this is where the “i want rafe cameron to make eras tour friendship bracelets with me” came from 🤭)

:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ

rafe taglist (lmk if you want to be added!); @izabellaemerson @spiderflunk @kitty-m30w @vincapandora @uraesthete @wickedtactics @harmoneeee24 @starkeybae @fairydvstss @alexiskirkland @devils-blackrose @makaylalovessmut @winterrrnight @clearbolts @slayystuff @neilove @littlemissborntolose @emyslittlebubble @fclklqre @ldrsource @stargrltara @isabelllauer @zizuras @sadgirlelenora @djosfuture @leaskisses444

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averann · 2 years

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Genealogical tree of Tour de France teams

Who remembers that the Reynolds group that Miguel Indurain and Pedro Delgado started was the first issue of the Movistar group in 1980? Was it better known as Banesto and Caisse d’Epargne? Founding father Jose Miguel Echavarri is no longer there, he is enjoying a quiet retirement at his home in Pamplona but he has left the keys to the truck to his former deputy, Eusebio Unzue, who continues to…

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#Origin The Daily Team #Paid #Philippe Le Gars #road cycling #top list (cat)#Tour de France #Tour of France 2022

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cinemaocd · 2 years

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ngl kinda jealous of mcr fandom right now...

#do you ever get jealous of other fandoms because they are getting A+ top of the line content and everyone is having a collective experience #and you are just over here listening to your faves and they are years from a new album and tour cycle....#(this is about U2 mostly....)

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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 months

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When private equity destroys your hospital

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW in PHOENIX (Changing Hands, Feb 29) then Tucson (Mar 9-10), San Francisco (Mar 13), and more!

As someone who writes a lot of fiction about corporate crime, I naturally end up spending a lot of time being angry about corporate crime. It's pretty goddamned enraging. But the fiction writer in me is especially upset at how cartoonishly evil the perps are – routinely doing things that I couldn't ever get away with putting in a novel.

Beyond a doubt, the most cartoonishly evil characters are the private equity looters. And the most cartoonishly evil private equity looters are the ones who get involved in health care.

(Buckle up.)

Writing for The American Prospect, Maureen Tcacik details a national scandal: the collapse of PE-backed hospital chain Steward Health, a company that bought and looted hospitals up and down the country, starving them of everything from heart valves to prescription paper, ripping off suppliers, doctors and nurses, and callously exposing patients to deadly risk:

https://prospect.org/health/2024-02-27-scenes-from-bat-cave-steward-health-florida/

Steward occupies a very special place in the private equity looting cycle. Private equity companies arrange themselves on a continuum of indiscriminate depravity. At the start of the continuum are PE funds that buy productive and useful firms (everything from hospitals to car-washes) using "leveraged buyouts." That means that they borrow money to buy the company and use the company itself as collateral: it's like you getting a bank-loan to buy your neighbor's mortgage out from under them, and using your neighbor's house as collateral for that loan.

Once the buyout is done, the PE fund pays itself a "special dividend" (stealing money the business needs to survive) and then starts charging the business a "management fee" for the PE fund's expertise. To pay for all this, the PE bosses start to hack away at the company. Quality declines. So do wages. Prices go up. The company changes suppliers, opting for cheaper alternatives, often stiffing the old company. There are mass layoffs. The remaining employees end up doing three peoples' jobs, for lower wages, with fewer materials of lower quality.

Eventually, that top-feeding PE company finds a more desperate, more ham-fisted PE company to unload the business onto. That middle-feeding company also does a leveraged buyout, pays itself another special dividend, cuts wages, staffing and quality even further. They switch to even worse suppliers and stiff the last batch. Prices go up even higher.

Then – you guessed it – the middle-feeding PE company finds an even more awful PE bottom-feeder to unload the company onto. That bottom feeder does it all again, without even pretending to leave the business in condition to do its job. The company is a shambling zombie at this point, often producing literal garbage in place of the products that made its reputation. Employees' paychecks bounce, or don't show up at all. The company stops bothering to pay the lawyers that have been fending off its creditors. Those lawyers sue the company, too.

That's the kind of PE company Steward Health was, and, as the name suggests, Steward Health is in the business of stripping away the very last residue of value from community hospitals. As you might imagine, this gets pretty fucking ugly.

Steward owns 32 hospitals up and down the country, though its holdings are dwindling as the company walks away from its debt-burdened holdings, after years of neglect that have rendered them unfit for use as health facilities – or for any other purpose. Tcacik's piece offers a snapshot of one such hospital: Florida's Rockledge Regional Medical Center, just eight miles from Cape Canaveral.

Rockledge is a disaster. The fifth floor was, at one point, home to 5,000 bats.

Five.

Thousand.

Bats.

(Rockledge stiffed the exterminators.)

The bats were just the beginning. One of the internal sewage pipes ruptured. Whole sections of the hospital were literally full of shit, oozing out of the walls and ceiling, slopping over medical equipment.

That's an urgent situation for any hospital, but for Rockledge, it's catastrophic, because Rockledge is a hospital without any hospital supplies. Steward has stiffed the companies that supply "heart valves, urology lasers, Impella catheters, cardiac catheterization balloons, slings for lifting heavier patients, blood and urine test reagents, and most recently, prescription paper." Key medical equipment has been repossessed. So have the Pepsi machines. The hospital cafeteria had its supply of cold cuts repossessed:

https://www.reddit.com/r/massachusetts/comments/1agc1j4/comment/kolicqo/

It's not just Steward's nonpayments that reek of impending doom. Its payments also bear the hallmarks of a scam artist on the brink of blowing off the con. The company recently paid off a vendor with five separate checks for $1m, each drawn on "a random hospital in Utah" (Steward recently walked away from its Utah hospitals; its partners there are suing it for stealing $18m on their way out the door).

This company – which owns 32 hospitals! – has resorted to gambits like sending photos of fake checks to doctors it hasn't paid in months as "proof" that the money was coming (the checks arrived 22 days later).

Steward owes so much money to its employees – $1.66m to just one doctors' group. But the medical staff keep doing their jobs, and are reluctant to speak on the record, thanks to Steward's reputation for vicious retaliation. Those health workers keep showing up to take care of patients, even as the hospital crumbles around them. One clinician told Tcacik: "I watched a bed collapse underneath a [patient] who had just undergone hip surgery."

Rockledge has nine elevators, but only five of them work – the other four have been broken for a year. The hospital's fourth floor has been converted to "a graveyard of broken beds." The sinks are clogged, or filled with foul gunk. There's black mold. Nurses have noted on the maintenance tags that the repair service refuses to attend the hospital until their overdue bills are paid. The fifteen-person on-site maintenance team was cut to just two workers.

Steward is just the latest looting owner of Rockledge. After the Great Financial Crisis, private equity consultants helped sell it to Health Management Associates. The hospital's CEO took home a $10m bonus for that sale and exited; Health Management Associates then quickly became embroiled in a Medicare fraud and kickback scandal. Soon after, Rockledge was passed on to Community Health Systems, who then sold it on to Rockledge.

Steward, meanwhile, was at that time owned by an even bigger private equity giant, Cerberus, which then sold Steward off. That deal was performatively complex and hid all kinds of mischief. Prior to Cerberus's sell-off of Steward, they sold off Steward's real-estate. The buyer was Medical Properties Trust, who gave Cerberus $1.25b for the real-estate: three hospitals in Florida and three more in Ohio. Steward then contracted to operate these hospitals on MPT's behalf, and pay MPT rent for the real-estate.

This complex arrangement was key to siphoning value out of the hospital and to keeping angry creditors at bay – if you can't figure out who owes you money, it's a lot harder to collect on the debt. The scheme was masterminded by Steward founder/CEO Ralph de la Torre. De la Torre is notorious for taking a massive dividend out of the company while it owed $1.4b to its creditors. He bought a $40m yacht with the money.

De la Torre was once feted as a business genius who would "disrupt" healthcare. But as Steward's private jet hops around "Corfu, Santorini, St. Maarten and Antigua" as its hospitals literally crumble, he's becoming less popular. In Massachusetts, politicians have railed against Steward and de la Torre (Governor Healey wants the company to leave the state "as soon as possible").

Florida, by contrast, is much more friendly to Steward. The state Health and Human Services Committee chair Randy Fine is an ardent admirer of hospital privatization and is currently campaigning to sell off the last community hospital in Brevard County. The state inspectors are likewise remarkably tolerant of Steward's little peccadillos. The quasi-governmental agency that inspects hospitals has awarded this shit-and-bat-filled, elevator-free, understaffed rotting hulk "A" grades for quality.

These inspectors jointly represent a mismatched assortment of private and public agencies, dominated by a nonprofit called Leapfrog, the brainchild of Harvard public-health prof Lucian Leape, who founded it in 2000. Leapfrog likes to tout its "transparent" assessment criteria, and Steward are experts at hitting those criteria, spending the exact minimum to tick every box that Leapfrog inspectors use as proxies for overall quality and safety.

This is a pretty great example of Goodhart's Law: "every measurement eventually becomes a target, whereupon it ceases to be a good measurement":

https://xkcd.com/2899/

But despite Steward's increasingly furious creditors and its decaying facilities, the company remains bullish on its ability to continue operations. Medical Properties Trust – the real estate investment trust that is nominally a separate company from Steward – recently hosted a conference call to reassure Wall Street investors that it would be a going concern. When a Bank of America analyst asked MPT's CFO how this could possibly be, given the facility's dire condition and Steward's degraded state, the CFO blithely assured him that the company would get bailouts: "We own hospitals no one wants to see closed."

That's the thing about PE and health-care. The looters who buy out every health-care facility in a region understand that this makes them too big to fail: no matter how dangerous the companies they drain become, local governments will continue to prop them up. Look at dialysis, a market that's been cornered by private equity rollups. Today, if you need this lifesaving therapy, there's a good chance that every accessible facility is owned by a private equity fund that has fired all its qualified staff and ceased sterilizing its needles. Otherwise healthy people who visit these clinics sometimes die due to operator error. But they chug along, because no dialysis clinics is worse that "dialysis clinics where unqualified sadists sometimes kill you with dirty needles":

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-dirty-business-of-clean-blood

The bad news is that private equity has thoroughly colonized the entire medical system. They took hospitals, fired the doctors, then took over the doctors' groups that provided outsource staff to the hospital:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/04/a-mind-forever-voyaging/#prop-bets

It's illegal for private equity companies to own doctors' practices (doctors have to own these), but they obfuscated the crime with a paper-thin pretext that they got away with despite its obvious bullshittery:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/21/profitable-butchers/#looted

The financier who decides whether you live or die depends on an algorithm that literally sets a tolerable level of preventable deaths for the patients trapped in the practice:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/05/any-metric-becomes-a-target/#hca

Private equity also took over emergency rooms and boobytrapped them with "surprise billing" – junk fees that ran to thousands of dollars that you had to pay even if the hospital was in network with your insurer. They made billions from this, and spent a many millions from that booty keeping the scam alive with scare ads:

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

The whole health stack is colonized by private equity-backed monopolies. Even your hospital bed!

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/05/hillrom/#baxter-international

Then there's residential care. Private equity cornered many regional markets on nursing homes and turned them into slaughterhouses, places where you go to die, not live:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/23/acceptable-losses/#disposable-olds

The palliative care sector is also captured by private equity. PE bosses hire vast teams of fast-talking salespeople who con vulnerable older people into entering an end-of-life system before they are ready to die. Thanks to loose regulation, the nation is filled with fake hospices that can rake in millions from Medicare while denying all care to their patients (hospice patients don't get life-extending medication or procedures, by definition):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

If you survive this long enough, Medicare eventually tells the hospice that you're clearly not dying and you get kicked off their rolls. Now you have to go through the lengthy bureaucratic nightmare of convincing the system – which was previously informed that you were at death's door – that you are actually viable and need to start getting care again (good luck with that).

If that kills you, guess what? Private equity has rolled up funeral homes up and down the country, and they will scam your survivors just as hard as the medical system that killed you did:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/09/high-cost-of-dying/#memento-mori

The PE sector spent more than a trillion dollars over the past decade buying up healthcare companies, and it has trillions more in "dry powder" allocated for further medical acquisitions. Why not? As the CFO of Medical Properties Trust told that Bank of America analyst last week, when you "own hospitals no one wants to see closed." you literally can't fail, no matter how many people you murder.

The PE sector is a reminder that the crimes people commit for money far outstrip the crimes they commit for ideology. Even the most ideological killers are horrified by the murders their profit-motivated colleagues commit.

Last year, Tkacic wrote about the history of IG Farben, the German company that built Monowitz, a private slave-labor camp up the road from Auschwitz to make the materiel it was gouging Hitler's Wehrmacht on:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

Farben bought the cheapest possible slaves from Auschwitz, preferentially sourcing women and children. These slaves were worked to death at a rate that put Auschwitz's wholesale murder in the shade. Farben's slaves died an average of just three months after starting work at Monowitz. The situation was so abominable, so unconscionable, that the SS officers who provided outsource guard-labor to Monowitz actually wrote to Berlin to complain about the cruelty.

The Nuremberg trials are famous for the Nazi officers who insisted that they were "just following order" but were nonetheless executed for their crimes. 24 Farben executives were also tried at Nuremberg, where they offered a very different defense: "We had a fiduciary duty to our shareholders to maximize our profits." 19 of the 24 were acquitted on that basis.

PE is committed to an ideology that is far worse than any form of racial animus or other bias. As a sector, it is committed to profit above all other values. As a result, its brutality knows no bounds, no decency, no compassion. Even the worst crimes we commit for hate are nothing compared to the crimes we commit for greed.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/28/5000-bats/retaliation#charnel-house

#pluralistic #Rockledge Regional Medical Center #private equity #looting #Steward Health #ponzis #maureen tcacik #Medical Properties Trust #Ralph de la Torre #Massachusetts #florida #Cerberus #too big to fail #pe #guillotine watch

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undreaming-fanfiction · 1 year

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When the Corroded Coffin makes it, Eddie leans into the success completely. He can't really help it, he never thought he'd make it anywhere, wouldn't even have a moderately comfortable life and now he's here, people love him, want him, think he's worth their time. It's intoxicating and he feels like if he slows down for just a second, he'll lose it all.

Steve is supportive, of course he is. It's everything Eddie's ever wanted, success in the world and the most amazing person at home, loving him unconditionally. But Eddie grows more and more frantic about his work, tours, everything. He loves Steve so much, he talks about him in awards ceremonies, in interviews and credits him as his forever muse that he maybe forgets a little that random people who he'll never meet hear more about his love for his boyfriend than Steve himself.

Maybe if he took a moment to think, Eddie would have remembered that Steve was left alone for most of his teenage years, that the love he had was real but distant. That this love always stopped him from asking for more, asking for time spent together, for actions, not words. But he didn't.

After many dinners wrapped in cellophane and tossed in the fridge, postponed dates, hurried goodbye kisses and whispered promises over the phone that never come true, it happens. Steve doesn't blame him, doesn't scream or snap, but Eddie would have preferred if he did. He just calmly tells him that he loves him, will always love Eddie and he can't imagine there being anyone else, but he finally realized that while he's happy for Eddie, he can't live through someone else's dream. He needs, wants more than another empty house and waiting, so much waiting. He kisses Eddie goodbye and whispers, "I'm so happy you managed to break your cycle, Eddie. The crime, poverty...I'm so proud of you. But now I need to break my own."

---

As Steve fully settles in his own apartment almost a year later, heart aching but finally not paralyzed, he turns on the radio and hears a familiar voice, like the sweetest pain. He sings a new song, one that Steve doesn't know.

I painted your room at midnight

So I'd know yesterday was over

I put all your books on the top shelf

Even the one with the four leaf clover

Man, I'm getting older

I took all your pictures off the wall

And wrapped them in a newspaper blanket

I haven't slept in what seems like a century

And now I can barely breathe

Just like a crow chasing the butterfly

Dandelions lost in the summer sky

When you and I were getting high as outer space

I never thought you'd slip away

I guess I was just a little too late

Your words still serenade me

Your lullabies won't let me sleep

I've never heard such a haunting melody

Oh, it's killing me

You know I can barely breathe

Just like a crow chasing the butterfly

Dandelions lost in the summer sky

When you and I were getting high as outer space

I never thought you'd slip away

I guess I was just a little too late

The last soft tones finish and Steve takes a deep breath, shaky and uncertain. He loves his new life, loves what he's doing, studying to save lives, and yet...

It's almost funny. They broke up a year ago, yet Eddie never left him behind. There was no pressure to get back together, no unwanted declarations of love, just...showing. Steve told Eddie that he needed actions, not words, and here he was, for a year, giving Steve the space he needed but always checking in, always making sure Steve was okay.

Eddie's words were his actions and Steve finally understands how to break his own cycle. Being alone doesn't mean he's lonely. Not when Eddie's thoughts never leave him.

Not when he remembers the four leaf clover he scribbled into his textbook.

When he says he always thinks of Steve when seeing dandelions, so bright and comforting, like home.

The nights they spent together, drunk on each other's presence.

And the melody Steve always hummed when he got out of shower.

He reaches for his phone, their careful messages blinking at him, making him wonder how this love can feel so distant yet so real.

I hope your classes are going well, Stevie.

Wayne says hi. He says he'll call you next Tuesday.

I hope you found what you were looking for.

I hope you're happy.

I'm thinking about you, always.

He types something cheesy and ridiculous, but he can't help himself. He just feels loved, seen.

What if I told you that you aren't too late, crow?

His phone dings back almost immediately and he smiles.

#steddie #steddie drabble #steddie songfic #steve harrington #eddie munson #steddie song rec #stranger things #stranger things drabble

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cyberchronics · 2 months

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.・。.・゜✭・.・✫..・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

jjk men + their love languages

☆ feat. satoru gojo + suguru geto ☆

★ straight up fluff, gn reader, no warnings apply ★

satoru gojo - quality time + gift giving

Satoru loves taking you out on the town. Restaurants, jewelry, clothing... you name It, and he's already dragging you towards the most expensive place in town. It doesn't matter how many times you two go on your weekly tours of Japan's shopping districts, he'll trip over himself for any opportunity to take you out and parade you around like some type of prize.

There's no greater joy to him than laying back on the plush couch in your favorite store and watching as you make yourself his model. He'll complement some clothes and tease you with others, watching with a stupid grin as you coyly ask him to buy the one outfit he seems to like the most as if you don't know he always comes behind you and gets whatever you leave behind.

The price tag is irrelevant. Hell, Satoru couldn't care less about the money he drains from his bank account on a daily basis. What he's focused on is the experience of shopping, the time you two manage to spend bonding over something as stupid as what fabric blend looks the best on your figure (spoilers: his answer is simultaneously all of them and none.)

You always give him the sweetest kiss whenever you two get home, too. Pulling off the sunglasses obscuring his crystalline eyes and cupping his cheek, dragging him down slightly and pressing your lips against his own. It makes him dizzy with love, head swimming with thoughts of you as he cages you against his chest and pulls you into another slow kiss.

suguru geto - quality time + acts of service

It's no secret that Suguru is a busy man. Every day is dedicated to running the cult: attending meetings, planning missions, and chiseling away at his goal bit by bit. The cycle never fails to leave him exhausted, slouched over a cup of coffee as he reads through senseless reports and suggestions that'll end up in the trash right next to the others. Despite the headache that seems to constantly plague him he still finishes as the clock strikes nine. sighing and dragging himself away from work.

If it wasn't for you, he'd be sleeping at his desk every night. But the idea of you all alone in bed makes his heart squeeze, his footsteps heavy as he wills himself to trudge through the streets that always seem to be crowded. He's just happy that you live so close, only a few minutes from his warm embrace at any given moment. It lets him take a short detour to a small bakery nearby, picking you up a treat despite his tiredness.

He knows it's worth it when you jump into his arms, almost knocking the cake to the floor as he's pulled into a hug. You're entirely too high-strung for how late at night it is, peppering kisses all over his face and making him melt against your lips. His only response is a smile, reciprocating the action with a gentle kiss on the top of your head and setting the box on the table.

Suguru can’t help but make himself stay up with you. It feels as if you can ramble on about the smallest things, especially once you spend twenty minutes answering something so simple as “How was your day?” But the last thing on his mind is complaining, even as he struggles to keep his eyes open. Your voice is calming, pulling him to the edges of sleep like the softest lullabies. He’ll feel bad about it in the morning, but his body finally succeeds in making him rest. Hopefully, you'll accept his apology in the form of another present.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫..・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

a/n: sorry about the dead air writer's block is a bitch :3 srry this is a little lazy but expect a gojo or choso fic by march + first multipost!! idk if I'll make more but they're nice little drabbles

#jjk x reader #jujustsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen #satoru gojo x reader #gojo satoru x reader #satoru gojo #gojo satoru #gojo x reader #jujutsu gojo #getou suguru x reader #suguru geto #jjk suguru #geto suguru

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jinnie-ret · 3 months

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video games

genre: teeny angst if you read into it, fluff

content warnings: none

word count: 0.7k

requested: @girlblogger2010

summary: it's nights like these, when you're staring up at the pretty stars, admiring the city lights, that you realise just how much you love your boyfriend

1K FOLLOWERS PLAYLIST 💚🖤

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Your boyfriend had dragged you out of bed the minute he saw you falling into your normal cycle of not looking after yourself. Before he hadn't been there, and that wasn't his fault, Chan was a busy guy, on tour with the rest of the kids and now he finally had time to be with you, look after you, love you.

"Baby, this isn't good for you, come on, at least just step outside for some fresh air," Chan pleaded with you, knelt down beside your lax form in bed, stroking your hair with his thumb finding it's home in caressing your cheek.

"Don't want to," you mumbled feebly, attempting to turn away in bed but Chan had you trapped in place, throwing an arm across your lower back and keeping you closer to him. That's all he wanted, to have you close, but slowly but surely you were pulling away, if he didn't do something now.

"I'm sorry, but I'm gonna have to make you," Chan sighed with a small chuckle at your stubborn personality, trying to keep things light-hearted to mask his worries for you.

After a small battle on the Western Front (your wardrobe), there was one successor (Chan) who had beaten his opponent (you) with valiant effort in getting them to stand down (getting you to put warmer clothes on and convincing you to step outside).

"Not so bad, hey?" Chan smugly said, hugging you tighter to his side.

"It's ok," you shrugged, footsteps falling in line with his own.

"Right, by the end of this walk, I am gonna see you smile," Chan laughed, leaning into you further with a small point to your face.

"Try me," you rose an eyebrow at his daring bravado.

You couldn't help but admire how gorgeous Sydney looked at night. The city lights twinkling as they reflected upon the river, gorgeous colours that imprinted on your mind for it was one of the most beautiful sights you could ever fathom.

"You win," you sighed out blissfully with a small smile on your face, falling behind as you were caught in a trance.

"Uhh, what was that?" Chan grinned widely, staggering towards you with his arms folded.

"You win..." you say a little bit quieter this time, slightly blushing out of embarrassment as you turn away.

"I can't hear you..." Chan giggles into your ear, wrapping his arms around your waist and tugging you against him, nuzzling his face to rest on your shoulder next to yours.

"I smiled... you win, babe," you said at a louder volume this time, Chan laughing even more, and who could hide their smiles at that sound? You certainly couldn't. You'd do anything for this man, in fact, anything you do is already all for him.

"I win!" Chan yelled happily, lifting you up to spin you around, his arms still wrapped around your front with your back pressed against his chest.

"Chan!!" you laughed loudly, clinging onto his tense forearms that were holding you up.

"I win! I win! I win- oh!" Chan had placed you down back onto your feet, spinning you around so that he could brag to your face but you surprised him with a sweet kiss, lips naturally molding together before you pulled away.

"I love you, Bang Chan," you practically sung out, your hands resting on his lower back. He couldn't respond at first, bashfully looking down at his feet before he processed it and kissed you on the top of your head, then gave you a peck on the lips, and cupped your face with his hands.

"And I love you babe," Chan hugged you tightly to him, protecting you from the world so long as you were safe in his arms. When the two of you were together, it was like everything else faded away, like you almost found a heaven on this Earth when the two of you basked in the love you shared.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

top listeners: @skz-streamer @kiraisastay @hannahhbahng @kpopmenace143 @sakufilms @kai-lee08 @arloo00 @dunno-wut-to-do @splat00z @cheesemonky @his-angell @turtledove824 @2minstan @royal-shinigami @yangbbokari @skzoologist

#jinnie ret milestone #1k followers event #skz #stray kids #skz x reader #stray kids x reader #skz fluff #skz angst #straykids imagines #stray kids fluff #stray kids imagines #skz fic #chan fluff #bang chan fluff #bang chan x reader #chan x reader #bang chan angst #chan angst

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avatar-anna · 1 year

Text

Love on Tour: The Documentary, Part 2

we all know harry is working on a documentary, so this is my take on how young dad!harry would approach it!

and now a little key:

bold and italics: camera directions, or what you would be seeing as a viewer of the documentary in person

just italics: interviewer questions, or people who are speaking off camera

Young dad!Harry x Young mom!Reader universe

Part 1 Part 3

In the interview room with Harry.

“There are some pretty heavy songs on Fine Line.”

Harry scratches his chin and looks away from the camera. “Yeah.”

“You’ve said in the past that you write from personal experience. Where did songs like ‘Cherry’ and ‘Falling’ come from?

“Uh...Not the uh…not the best time of my life.”

Cut to Y/n’s interview.

“Harry is…the most hard working person I’ve ever met. He wants to do everything he does with a hundred and ten percent. Almost to a fault, and there—there were moments where I felt like he was choosing his career over his family. You know, once One Direction went on hiatus, I thought things were gonna be different. I thought we would have more time together as a family, but we started falling into the same cycles. Write, promote, tour.”

Cut to Harry.

“Were you choosing your career over family?”

“I know how Y/n felt back then, and we’ve talked about it at length since then,” Harry says. “I think…I think at the time I only knew one way of having a music career and providing for my family, and it worked, so I almost felt like I had to keep that momentum. After the first tour ended, I came home and we spent time together, but…All I’ll say was it was tense.”

Cut to Y/n.

“I often think the pandemic was a blessing in disguise.”

“Really? Why?”

Y/n looks down at her lap before answering. “Because I was done.”

Cut to clips of Harry in Japan and in recording studios with his team.

Harry’s voiceover: “I’d never felt truly alone until we separated. To some it may seem odd because I was touring so much anyway, but I spoke to my family every day. I don’t think a day had ever gone by that I didn’t speak to Y/n. I wanted to give Y/n space, and I felt so lost, so I just kind of…stayed away. It was so hard. All I kept thinking was, ‘I did this. This is my fault.’ I eventually started writing down how I felt, but…yeah. Not something I look back on with pride.”

Back to Harry’s interview.

“Why talk about any of this at all?”

Harry’s eyes are red and watery, as if he had just been crying. “It was part of this whole journey. It wouldn’t be authentic of me to only share the good parts. Fine Line is introspective. It’s an album about high highs and low lows, so it only makes sense to kind of…express what I was going through to make me feel a certain way while writing.”

Cut to Y/n’s interview.

“What was it like to hear Fine Line for the first time?”

“Jeff told me H jetted off to Japan to write songs for the next album, and I didn’t see him until after it was nearly ready to be released. I wanted him to fight for us, but he just left. It solidified for me how much we needed to take a little time apart and figure out what we wanted. I was…resentful going into it. It felt like his music was tearing us apart, and he went to write more. But…”

Y/n wipes a tear from her eye.

“He…He was hurting as much as I was, and I was partially to blame.”

When asked to elaborate about the children during that time, both Harry and Y/n refused to comment.

Cut to an interview with Jeffrey Azoff, Harry’s long time friend and manager.

“I have a lot of respect for the both of them,” Jeff says. “What the two of them went through together, what Y/n endured all those years. Being a parent is hard enough, add everything else they put up with on top of that?”

Jeff shakes his head.

“But Harry went on a huge tour under your management.”

“An error on my part. And his,” he says. “I think we were so excited to start his career, and as a manager who has a client who loves live performances, it felt like a no brainer. I could tell that H was going to be someone explosive in the music industry, and I let that kind of cloud my vision.”

Jeff also reveals that he has since apologized to Y/n and that they are on good terms.

“So how did you go about promotion for Fine Line?”

“It was tricky, you know, because to the outside world, why wouldn’t H be doing all the talk shows and interviews and things like that? To everyone who didn’t know what was going on, he had all the time in the world and no obligations, but that obviously wasn’t the case.”

“Were there ever conversations to reveal his family to the public?”

Cut to Y/n and Harry in an interview room together.

“We talked about our options moving forward,” Harry says. “But we decided the best way to protect the kids’ privacy was if no one knew I had a wife and kids.”

“Definitely not easy,” Y/n says, but not impossible.”

Clips of Harry on various talk shows (Late Late Show, Ellen DeGeneres, Graham Norton) and at the Jingle Bell Ball, and One Night Only at the Forum appear. Some are of him performing, others are of him rehearsing, and one in a green room with Y/n, Simone, and Collette sitting on a couch.

Harry’s voiceover: “We decided on a couple talk show appearances in places where I could drive home afterwards, and longer breaks between tour destinations,” he says. “I was prepared to hold off on the album release so that I could spend more time at home, but Y/n wouldn’t let me.”

Back to Y/n.

“Keeping him from doing what he loves was never the goal,” Y/n says. “I just wanted there to be a balance. The kids were getting older and had more things going on, and I didn’t want their earliest memories of their dad to be that he was gone all the time. H wouldn’t be the same person if he didn’t have his music, but he also wouldn’t be the same without us. I never wanted him to give up his life for us, but things needed to be different.”

“Global lockdown was certainly different.”

She nods. “I think H saw it as an opportunity to…make up for lost time. It was difficult for obvious reasons. Online learning, keeping the kids entertained all day, staying inside, the toilet paper thing, but we’d never been the kind of family that spent so much time under the same roof before. It was strange, but also really nice.”

Back to Harry.

“You know, obviously I was bummed that I put out this album that I was really proud of and couldn’t perform it the way I wanted to, and there were already so many fans who bought tickets. I felt like I was letting them down too. But at the same time, it forced me and Y/n to share common space after so much time apart. I wasn’t about to take that for granted.”

This was all Harry and Y/n were willing to talk about concerning their separation. They did not say how long they were apart or when they officially mended things.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.

In another interview room are four children.

“Can you state your name for the interview, please?”

“Simone Styles.”

“Nicoletta Anne Styles.”

“Maeve!”

When the fourth child doesn’t answer, Maeve does it for him.

“And that’s JuJu.”

“No it’s not!”

“Then say your name!”

“My name is Julian.”

“Do you know what your dad does for a living?”

“He travels a lot,” Maeve says. “Sometimes we get to go with him!”

“Daddy sings onstage,” Julian says.

“And on the radio!”

“He’s a musician,” Simone says.

“Do you have a favorite song that your dad sings?”

They all begin to talk over each other.

“I like Adore You!”

“As It Was!”

“Only because you were in it.”

“Baby Shark!”

“I like his One Direction songs,” Collette says.

“So you know who One Direction is?”

“Yeah,” Simone says while the rest nod.

“Simone, do you remember anything about your dad being in One Direction?”

“Not really. But Mom likes to tell stories about all the cool places we got to go together.”

“What is the coolest thing about your dad?”

“Did he tell you to ask us that?” Maeve asks.

The whole crew laughs.

“No, he didn’t.”

“I like when he plays with my toy cars. Sometimes we make a really big racetrack with, like, loops and stuff,” Julian says.

“I like when he plays tea party with me!”

“I like it when Dad picks me up from school early so we can go shopping together,” Simone says.

Back to Harry and Y/n’s shared interview.

“You do what?”

“It was only a couple of times!” Harry says in his defense.

Y/n gives Harry a stern look before she says, “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Mmhm.”

Harry looks at the camera. “She does this to scare me. Pretends like everything’s fine and then grills me later.”

Back to the interview with Simone, Collette, Maeve, and Julian.

“What was it like being in lockdown together?”

“It was really fun!” Maeve says.

“We played lots of games and did campouts in the backyard and stuff,” Simone added.

“I learned how to ride a bike!”

Collette tilts her head to the side. “Well, it was mostly fun. When Mom and Maeve got sick it was not so fun.”

“I think Daddy was in over his head,” Julian says.

Cut to Harry and Y/n’s interview.

“I was not ‘in over my head.’ We were fine. Better than fine, even.”

Y/n looks at the camera, clearly amused. “He called me crying several times.”

“How did you and Maeve quarantine while you were sick?”

“We took our bedroom,” Y/n says, gesturing between her and Harry. “And they would bring us meals and everything. I was a little worried because GiGi was only a couple months old, but we made it work.”

“Why were you crying so much, Harry?”

“It wasn’t so much. But…I think we’re all used to having Y/n around, and sometimes Simone and Collette would argue, and Julian missed having Maeve around, and you know, was looking after a newborn during all of it. Y/n is truly the glue that holds this family together.”

“He got really good at braiding my hair!”

Everyone laughs at the little voice off camera, which turns away from Harry and Y/n to where Collette is sitting in a director’s chair. Then the camera swivels back to Harry and Y/n.

“She’s right. I am a master at the French braid.

Cut to a home video of Simone and Collette with Harry filming.

“Welcome to our home!” Simone says. She spreads her arms wide as she presents the front room of the house to the camera.

Both Simone and Collette proceed to give a tour of the whole house. They show a kitchen, a home theater, what they call “Daddy’s office,” which appears to be a converted recording studio, and the twins’ bedroom.

“This is my room. I share it with Simone,” Collette says.

Simone shows off the bedroom, which has white walls with pastel accents. Lots of stuffed animals on two beds with princess canopies and a small sofa. There are two rugs on the floor, a white one with a textured pink and purple smiley face and another white one with an orange pattern. A teddy bear bean bag chair sits by one of the beds. There’s a bay window with a small mattress and curtains with hand-stitched cherries on them. “A project completed by yours truly,” Harry says about the bay window bed. “I’ve become quite the handyman during lockdown. And an interior decorator.”

“Dad!” they both cry.

“Sorry, sorry. I’ll keep quiet from now on.”

The “tour” ends in Harry and Y/n’s room, where Y/n lays on the bed. Her belly is big, clearly several months pregnant. She smiles as Simone and Collette approach.

“What’s going on here?” she asks.

“We’re giving a house tour!” Collette says as she jumps on the bed. “This is our last stop.”

“We’re gonna send it to Nana and Auntie Gemma and…”

Simone rattles off all the names they plan to send their video to.

“Wow! And I see you have your own cameraman,” Y/n says.

“He’s good, but we have some notes,” Collette says, and Simone agrees.

“That’s it. No more cameraman. I’m the tickle monster,” Harry says.

Simone and Collette scream and run away, and the video ends shortly after that.

#harry styles #young dad! harry #young mom! reader #harry styles blurb #harry styles x reader #harry styles fanfic #harry styles oneshot #harry styles imagine #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles x you #harry styles fluff #harry styles writing #harry styles one shot #harry styles fic

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hitlikehammers · 2 months

Text

on the radio

rating: t ♥️ cw: criminal-levels of softness, love beyond the boundaries of what it even meant to love before the spring of ‘86 ♥️ tags: established relationship, rockstar!eddie, teacher!steve, rockstar husbands, tour dates coincide with summer vacation because Eddie can't sleep without his Stevie thank you for your cooperation with this policy, soul-deep love, slice of life, softness

for @steddielovemonth day fourteen: Love is being late to work because you can’t ever say goodbye in a reasonable amount of time (@sharpbutsoft)

more codependent rockstar!husbands of the je ne regrette rien variety, you say? oh, well, I mean: I guess ♥️

Steve can fucking taste freedom, he swears.

He looks at the list of student records he needs to close out to transfer to the high school before he can pack away the last of his office and sign the hell off for the school year—and start the summer tour cycle with his husband through the Midwest, up and down the East Coast, and then they’re fucking breaking Europe, got signed on to a couple festivals, and Steve is goddamn vibrating with excitement and shit, just: are there parts of your heart that like, fit together? Like bones where they connect and shit, or is it all just one piece?

Steve thinks is more like one piece, but he is gonna go with that it’s more like stitched together or something, just so he can fucking say exactly what he feels, which is that his whole goddamn chest—heart and ribs and lungs and all the other fucking bones and shit there—all of it’s seriously bursting at the seams just with so much fucking pride, okay, because his Eddie’s goddamn made it. This dream of his isn’t just gold records; it’s a plane across an ocean to play for tens of thousands of people who don’t even all speak their language and that’s…that’s just like…

Steve’s so goddamn proud he’s split between wanting to scream about it from the top of the school and maybe sob about it with all kinds of sappy declarations peppered in as he messy-cries, so: bursting at the seams. Heart in his chest so full it’s primed to just explode like a goddamn confetti cannon.

Though time has kind of served as testament to the fact that that sensation’s less exclusively about Eddie’s music, or his success, and more just about Eddie.

Eddie, and loving him beyond the boundaries of any understanding Steve ever had about what it meant to love before the spring of ‘86.

He’s almost through the ‘V’s at the end of his alphabet of names when he notes the time—shit, he almost missed it.

He reaches for tiny radio in the corner of his desk that literally just lives there for the purpose of Eddie and the boys doing interviews on local stations every so often, and tunes it in 93.9.

…elcome to most of the infamous lords of midwestern metal, Corroded Coffin, the DJ’s introducing and good, Steve sighs and flips through his…fifth-to-last folder—just in time, he can listen to the interview the guys are squeezing in before hitting the road, then he can get home while the band’s getting their flight to the first venue in Chicago, they’ve got a couple of days there and he and Eddie are planning to look at some houses; Erica’s out of high school they’re ready to make the leap, and Steve will take the 6:10 flight and head straight to the show like the often do, it should work perfect; it’s great to have you guys back but Jeff, I gotta ask, the maybe most…colorful?

You can say obnoxious, Lenny, if anyone knows, we do, Jeff’s shooting playfully, and Steve snickers, distracted by closer folder-number-five and flipping open number-four.

I would never, the DJ gasps theatrically to laughter, and Gareth’s muted holler almost like he’s here! and then he continues on; that does open the line of inquiry, though: where’s your notorious frontman, Mr. Munson?

Steve’s hand slips on the folder; he barely catches it before it falls to the floor.

Eddie…Eddie’s not, not there?

Steve tries to talk down the adrenaline response that’s never wholly died at the idea of the love of his fucking life gone missing, and worse, the idea of something happening to him while unaccounted for: Jeff was playful. Gareth was teasing. They have to at least have known somethingabout Eddie’s absence, Steve talks down his racing heart to something just a little anxious as he listens for clues, and doesn’t have to mine little hints or anything even, it’s clear and plain:

Eddie’s got a sore throat, so like the diva he is, he’s resting it before showtime, Dougie chiming in and yeah, two points to that: one, the only reason Eddie’d have a sore throat would have been fine by sun-up, yeah, and it was, because Eddie was all sunshine and manic energy when they parted ways that morning, and then two: Steve actually knows these guys well enough to be able to tell when they’re talking out their asses.

And Doug is maybe the worst liar of the three on-air.

Steve’s chewing hard on his Bic, trying hard to keep a level head about this: if anything drastic had happened, he’d have heard, they all have his office number, they all know where he is, it would—

Steve startles when he hears rubber squeaking down the hall outside the office; as far as he knows, though, he’s the only person here—everyone else takes at least a week free from this place after classes end, but Steve has a timeline, and a flight to catch, so y’know: sacrifices must be made and whatnot.

He barely gets to turn in his chair to consider getting up to check when the culprit and his perpetually-trashed Reeboks skids to a halt in the doorway.

“Sweetheart,” Eddie beams at him, a little breathless, hair a fucking mess but smiling so big, those dimples popped so deep: shit, if Steve’s heart hadn’t been quick already, that’d fucking do the trick.

“Eddie,” Steve stands, and meets him in the middle where Eddie’s already crossing to him, kissing him immediately and hungrier than the maybe-five-hours since the saw each other really fucking merits. “What, you, why aren’t you at the station?”

Eddie’s eyes flick to the radio as he clocks the question and of all the reactions Steve could predict from him, the fake-sheepish grin with the glimmering fucking eyes?

Probably could have guessed that one.

“I forgot something.”

“You forgot something?”

“Yeah, something important,” he nods fervently and Steve frowns.

‘Babe, you could have called, I’m meeting you at the arena, I could drop it with security if needed to,” he offers, argues: but not really, and not like it fucking matters, because here Eddie is, and the boys were planning to run straight to the airport from the interview, both of which are in the city but Steve’s not, and Eddie’s gonna have to be fucking quick, here, if he doesn’t want to be late for his goddamn flight; did he already swing by the house for whatever it is he needs, it—

“Nope,” Eddie pops the denial like a bubble; “can’t leave it with security.”

Steve squints at him, because now it’s a puzzle. Now it’s Eddie being…kind of a little shit.

And Steve doesn’t even begrudge him the momentary panic before; he’s too adorable. Steve’s too fucking in love.

And now he’s curious.

“You kissed me goodbye.”

“Oh, always,” Eddies almost offended by the suggestion he could have forgotten that. As in: ever.

“Said you loved me.”

“Bigger than the universe,” Eddie says exactly what he came up with that morning, like he does every morning, some new outlandish way to describe the scope of his affections and Steve rolls his eyes but eats it up every fucking time; “and the universe is always expanding so I love you bigger than what it’s expanded to since this morning, too.”

Steve can’t help but kiss him for that, because; well.

Because.

“What the hell else then?” Steve asks, because Eddie has a fucking timeline here and then his husband’s grin stretches slow, and sly, and then he’s drawing Steve in, and kissing him deep, licking as far as he can reach and wrapping his arms around Steve’s waist tight, knocking him a little off balance by design and Steve goes with it, because he fucking loves it, and then—

“Goddamnit, Edward,” Steve growls between them into Eddie’s shit-eating fucking grin as he smacks Steve’s ass, again, and keeps his hand there to squeeze while he pecks at Steve’s lips with feeling.

“It’s good luck, baby, for the journey!” Eddie protests between kisses. “It would curse the whole shebang if I left without showing the appreciation duly accorded to a goddamn masterpiece,” and then he leans in and goes deep one more time, draws a moan out and drags it slow from Steve’s lips before breaking away to declare emphatically:

“Unthinkable.”

And Steve…Steve fucking loves this man bigger than the whole expanding fucking universe or whatever, so he kisses him back until Eddie’s the one moaning, then pushes him away, kinda hard.

“Get out of here, you fucking lunatic,” but then he’s quick to drag Eddie back for one last kiss to mouth against him: “have a safe flight, I’ll see you tonight.”

And Eddie smiles against him, and makes to actually listen, but.

Not before Steve slaps that ass as it makes its way out the door.

Turnabout’s fair play.

Or whatever.

tag list (comment to be added): @pearynice @hbyrde36 @slashify @finntheehumaneater @wxrmland @dreamwatch @perseus-notjackson

♥️

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ladyluscinia · 6 months

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I think they were so worried about not getting a season 3 they ruined both the viewers expecting one and the viewers who would've liked it to end there. they've created an easily destroyable status quo because of course something needs to happen to get everyone back together for season 3. so it's not even a happy ending; it's so fragile, it's designed to fall apart the second that anyone learns that the show is back on. i get not wanting to bank on having a third season and wrapping it up but like. Galavant did that and did it better. WITH THE HEROES RETIRING AND THE TWO MINUTE MARRIAGE CEREMONY TO BOOT. But it gave an outline of where the plot might go from there and how the adventure will continue if it gets to. And it never got to, and season 2's ending is good because it's not /fragile/--it's not a cliffhanger, but you get the idea that they could keep going from there still. whereas this one didn't want to be a cliffhanger so much that they created the most breakable new status quo in history and if there is a season 3 it'll immediately be undone and I'll probably still watch it but like I'll /know/, y'know? They could fix everything in the first episode of season 3 and I'd still have to know that at one point, this was considered an acceptable outcome.

The thing that is driving me absolutely insane is they DID NOT HAVE TO DO THIS!

There's so many people looking at it like "well it's a shame that 2x08 clearly had to cram several episodes into one for budget reasons and it made the development weaker but that's the situation MAX put them in" and I cannot emphasize enough how much that is not true.

MAX did not break it to them after episodes 2x01 - 2x07 were written and half filmed that they would have to wrap up the whole plot in 30 minutes. Like absolute worst case scenario they had 10 eps mostly written and budget came back 20% over and they had to reduce to 8 total. More likely they knew they were getting 8 from the start.

It is absolutely nobody's fuck up except David Jenkins and his writers' room if they were unrealistic about what character beats were needed and would fit in the timeframe to reach a satisfying wrap up.

Worries about no S3 were on the table the moment it took until JUNE to get confirmation of S2. This wasn't sprung on them. If they wanted their story to have a "just in case" happy ending and then a "fully realized arc" happy ending, they should have fucking acted like it???

I was shocked when the first three episodes that dropped were so hardcore on destroying Edward's relationships and laying bare exactly how deep his issues went. It only made sense to me if they were going all in on getting a S3 and prepared to spend all of S2 focused on the implications of all that, and then the not-even two week in-universe timeline of the season reinforced my understanding that was happening.

"Shame we don't have time for our main couple to even start addressing their relationship or having moments of self-realization and sharing their issues," says guy who decided to make the first half of S2 about adding more problems on top of well established ones from S1 and the second half of S2 about throwing in a second breakup cycle instead of dealing with the fallout from the first.

Want Edward to end on a beat of feeling part of the found family? Well maybe adding a timeskip after 2x05 and then a crew chat in 2x06 where you make it clear he did an apology tour offscreen could help, but you also could have just not focused hard on him poisoning his relationship with every single one of them in the first place???

There's multiple different ways you can do Act 2 of a three act structure, and they did not have to choose one that ends on another dark cliffhanger beat or right at the open ended turning point toward growth? Like they didn't even do the one they picked in a way they could fit in their season. I feel like by the end of a struggles Act 2 both your protagonists need to have self-realized their issues and maybe had one conversation about it? Edward still wasn't talking about his guilt, and Stede wasn't talking about anything.

They aren't even at the turning point of growth and out of the backsliding / lessons learned era yet, that's why potential S3 will start on another backslide when status quo breaks and Stede starts "that's nice, dear"-ing Edward during the day and slipping out at night to vicariously listen to pirate stories or whatever (and they frame it like he's cheating).

We have two out of three seasons in a show that might only get two, and I feel like the characters have barely moved from their starting position.

Like idk maybe they are really good at coming up with character flaws - ex: Stede is repressed and bottles up his traumas until he mentally checks out / runs away - and just drawing blanks on how to believably "fix" them, but just going "well what if we just used this flaw to throw another miscommunication roadblock in their relationship?" is not getting them where they want to be.

The season was fundamentally designed against their stated goal and did not make what seem to be necessary writing concessions to the reduced screentime if they wanted their finale to land as an even plausibly happy ending. It's hollow.

And possibly not even salvageable in S3 since they aren't demonstrating the skills to salvage it.

#our flag means death #ofmd s2 #ofmd s2 spoilers #ofmd 2x08 #david jenkins #ask #ladyluscinia #ofmd meta #ofmd critical

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