My friend, I have a frankly embarrassing number of half-starts on a second Sesame Street fic, but my commitment to the format ends up causing problems!

Because, like, it has to be a series of short sketches, which all build on a theme, interspersed with segments that have nothing to do with the larger theme but do contribute to the same learning practices.

(I am pretty sure that no one who read the first Sesame Street fic CARED, because it’s not about that, but I did do my best to have, for example, the number of the day be a repeated aspect, but also the larger theme of rebuilding and coming together as a community.)

So I’ve had four ideas for Sesame fic lately, three of which are inspired by movies that came out in the past year.

One would not use our Sesame characters, but would be the Wakandan version of Sesame Street, in the same way that over a dozen different Sesame Street variations exist in our world. These versions are designed specifically towards those countries, so given how much more advanced Wakanda is (both in terms of technology but also, it seems, in terms of understanding how kids learn), it would have a significantly different educational bent. T’Challa and Shuri would both guest star, in much the way Michelle Obama visited Sesame Street  (This is honestly the story I feel LEAST qualified to handle, because I don’t have enough understanding of Afrofuturism to do it justice and I also don’t have the pedagogical background to extrapolate how education could progress.)

Another would take place after Thor Ragnarok (completely ignoring Infinity War), and would introduce an “Asgardian” Muppet alongside Thor, to introduce the audience to the concept of Asgardian refugees. Sesame Street has handled refugees before, but I feel like it’s different when they’re from another planet. My problem here is that I really don’t know where to go with it, beyond the premise, and the fact that Heimdall would appear.

The third idea, and the one I’m most likely to write, would take place post-Snap and would be about recovery. In this version, half the monsters and Muppets would be gone; we’d have Big Bird without Snuffy, for example, and Bert without Ernie. The interspersed sketches would deal with simple subtraction. The celebrity Avengers appearing would be helping them deal with loss. I feel like this story would not net me a lot of friends in fandom.

EXCELLENT! I’m imagining EK as the pirate (because of the ASG, obviously), and Claude as the navy captain who got press-ganged into service and rose up the ranks. (Could that have actually happened? idk. Am I willing to look it up right now? no.)

I don’t know how much I have to add to this premise, but I would give a non-vital organ for any of the following: 

Claude can’t swim and EK saves him from drowning to the consternation of his crew 

One (1) mutiny leading to the aforementioned being stranded on a deserted island together *handwaves* and huddling for warmth at night while EK flirts and Claude is prickly and helplessly into him

The “mutiny” could possibly be the crew’s equivalent of locking two people in a room until they get their shit together

They’re both at some sort of ball for Reasons and EK is all cleaned up and mostly disguised, and Claude fights his way through the crowd and they share a dance while hissing threats, taunts about what ships are going to be hit next, and compliments.

Someone else (Sid?) capturing EK and Claude being upset about that (”No, I’m not upset that he caught him, I’m upset that it was Crosby”) and breaking EK out / doing some daring rescue so that EK can sail off into the sunset and Claude can be the one to catch him. 

This obviously has nothing to do with how EK’s sentence would have been death. They may or may not meet up on neutral territory and have fantastic sex before starting up their game again and/or Claude abandoning the navy for his boo.

Is it cliche if I want Claude to have never been with another man before? Because I want it anyway

how do you eat them? they're in my local grocery, but I've no idea what to do with them. peel them? core them? eat them whole?

I wash them and slice them in quarters, and eat them, skin and all. The rind is a little firm, but still edible. However, these are home grown, and I know what sprays have been used on them (ie. none at all).

My mother had one today and she sliced it in half and scooped out the flesh, but didn’t eat the rind. You can do it either way, I guess!

SID. \0/ 

Okay, this was just going to live in my head because there’s no way to fit it in the story, but in the beginning where Claude is thinking about spontaneous bonds? Where you bond at first sight because you’re so compatible? Yeah, that’s Sid and Claude when they bond on the ice in the middle of a game. And yes, I know it wasn’t “at first sight,” but that’s due to Claude’s suppressants. When he forgets a dose (or his body acclimates to the current dose) there’s that moment on the ice with Sid, and it’s enough for the bond to manifest. 

*cough* Would spontaneous, one person your whole life, ~great sweeping romance~ bonds be just another form of malfunctioning bonding systems? Yes. Would the media treat them that way? No. *cough*

(Anyway, this all lives in my head so it’s subject to change, but I did have that thought from the very beginning. Poor Sid and Claude, very bond compatible, but also… able to make their own choices without one.)

Current summary sentence from Three’s a Crowd, the Claude/Flower/Sid sequel: “They were young and stupid, and they’d flipped a coin for who had to bottom.” (If you think this about Sid and Claude bonding on the ice and then trying to solidify it after the game, you would be correct.) 

And the whole thing is emotionally messy because Sid goes from Bond! to Giroux? to We need to break it? pretty quickly, and there’s a period of time that Sid can’t ever tell anyone about, not even Flower, where he’s sitting on the bench and trying to pay attention to the game and it’s all excitement and nervousness and a bit of confusion about why and him and now, but mostly blinding relief that he’s finally got a real bond. Because (and this is the part he can’t tell Flower, not ever), he hadn’t realized it was a warped bond, that it was only half-formed. He’d never had a bond before. He thought that was what they were supposed to feel like. 

Cue disappointment and anger and more confusion + sex + the unpleasant experience of having to break a half-formed bond + playing against each other (and with each other occasionally) for years afterward, and you’ve got a recipe for Very Complicated Feelings. And Sid would never want to come between Flower and Claude, but sometimes when he’s sitting next to Flower on the bus and he’s on the phone with Claude, and the two of them are talking in French, or Claude is trying to convince Flower to have phone sex (once, that happened once), or Flower is sleepy and talking quietly and it’s dark out so the bus—or their row on the bus—feels like the only real thing in the world, then sometimes… sometimes… 

Well. Sometimes. 

I’m sorry but only in the way where I’m really not sorry at all and am actually glad? But like in the supportive way where I offer comfort due to my causing your pain, not the way where I’d laugh at it.