The season finale had barely ended when Charlie took to twitter to vent her displeasure. [quote][b]šŸ”„CharliemanderšŸ”„[/b] @chrdeluxe Worst ep of star ever?? Logically incoherent, totally implausible--writers bs 'multiverse' stuff bc they're out of ideas[/quote] She watched as a scattering of responses came from her mutuals. @hamshrug bewailed the way his cinnamon roll son was treated; @scamdwitch ranted on rushed fight sequences. She was thinking through the first few scenes of a fixfic to try and salvage the mess when her tweet received another response. [quote] [b]Alec Vinswald[/b] @avinturer - 3 minutes ago Maybe you just didn't understand it? It's all very carefully crafted and clever. At first I was confused too! (1/32) [b]Alec Vinswald[/b] @avinturer - 2 minutes ago I'm happy to walk you through in detail. But first, we need to talk about parallel universes. (2/32)[/quote] At this point people started piling on, responding to his comment with 'But first, we need to talk about parallel universes' over and over, which caused her to snicker. But Charlie sensed an argument she was zero percent interested in having, and clicked to block the guy. The fun in communal misery had waned. She closed her laptop and wandered off to bed, still stewing over the atrocity of storytelling she had just witnessed. [hr] The next morning, Charlie woke up to the buzz of her phone. She groped for it, blearily looking at the newly-received email. [quote][b]Alec Vinswald - Thoughts on the Season Finale[/b] Dear @chrdeluxe, I hope you will not take this amiss, but I believe we got off on the wrong foot yesterday. I'd really like to continue our conversation, and think you will agree that surface-level inconsistencies mask what is a rather intricate rumination on causality. But first, we need to talk about parallel universes. [/quote] She hit delete. Halfway through getting up and dressed, her phone buzzed again. She clicked 'delete request' on the friend request on Facebook too. [hr] She was checking her mail downstairs when she realized something was strange. A postcard that had been delivered yesterday read: "Please pardon the crude display of my point, but now you must admit that what you had written off as 'totally implausible' does in fact have some merit. Allow me to explain. But first, we need to talk about parallel universes." She threw it away, along with two other letters from the guy. She threw away the newspaper too, after noticing the front page headline was [b]PARALLEL UNIVERSES, AND WHY WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THEM[/b] "Everything okay, hun?" Charlie looked up from jamming paper into the trashbin to see the lady who lived upstairs. "Just having a bad day." "Sorry to hear that! Oh, I met a friend of yours. What was it he wanted me to tell you againā€¦?" Charlie bolted out the front door. [hr] Pulling her car out of the driveway, Charlie turned on the radio. "Next up is the new hit by Alec and the Hadron Colliders. It's 'But first, we need to talk about parallel universes'!" She clicked it off. The car that pulled up next to her was blasting it out of open windows anyways. She found a pair of earplugs in her center console and jammed them in. It was only when she made it to work and realized work [i]wasn't there[/i] that she realized she would need to put an end to this somehow. The coffee shop had vanished from the strip mall. Instead, there was... Butt-First Fitness, then a theater playing We Need to Talk about Kevin, then Paralegal Services (that had lost its 'ga'), and finally Universus, the "one-stop shop for competitive unicycle jousting." So when she read them all across the top... She got out and stormed to the center of the parking lot. Throwing her head back, she yelled out, "I get it, let's fucking talk!" She was unsurprised when a dude in a Batman/Ghostbusters mashup t-shirt slunk out from behind a tree. "So talk," Charlie said. "What was so good about the Star Trek finale?" Alec stared at her. "What?" "You heard me." "You were talking about Star Trek?" "Obviously." "Notā€¦ Star vs. the Forces of Evil?" "Nope." Alec cleared his throat, shuffling his feet. "I think there's been a misunderstanding." Charlie let out a huge breath. "Are you kidding me? The Star Vs. finale was actually good. I don't like what they did to Marco, but--" It's only when Alec's eyes lit up that Charlie realized her mistake. "Well, actually..."