#WHEN WAS THIS?? AROUND SEASON ONE?? 2016?? oh my god i Buried that | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nationalhoranleague · 5 years

Text

Sixteen | Doubt

Chapter Song: Us (Acoustic) - James Bay

≫ Everly - Monday, February 1, 2016 ≪

It was blistering cold out, but it was welcomed this morning. There was something about the cold air that brought along a certain kind of clarity to my thinking. It was early still, the sun wasn't to come up for another hour and a half. I have never been, am not, and will never be a morning person. I love sleep more than anything or anyone on this earth, Sidney included. But since my injury, a full night's rest has been harder and harder to come by.

The glisten of the holiday season has long been faded, my family has returned to work from their holiday breaks, and Sidney was knee-deep in the playoff run, leaving little time for himself, let alone me. I was left to my own devices and there were next to none to be left to. I had read every book that both Sidney and I had in our possession, watched what felt like all of the makeup tutorials on Youtube, and even attempted to remake some of Julia Child's classic recipes. Not being able to skate was driving me to the brink of insanity and boredom.

Behind me, I could hear the back door creak open and then quickly shut. I listened as Sidney's sleepy body shuffled across his back yard over to where I was sitting with my back to him. He leaned over the back of the pool lounge I had wandered over to this morning and pressed a warm kiss to the side of my face.

He shoved a warm mug into my chilled hands before sitting down into the chair next to me. He sighed, took a sip from his mug, and then closed his eyes as he settled himself into the metal chair.

For a long time, we were quiet, the only sounds being of the cold wind blowing around us and the pool cover in front of us rustling in the wind.

"Why are you awake?" I asked quietly, causing him to open his eyes and look at me.

He sighed. "I rolled over and you weren't there," I turned back to watching the trees swaying in front of me.

We sat quietly for another bout, in fact, we were quiet for so long that I was nearly halfway done with my coffee by the time Sidney broke the silence. "So, are you ready to fess up?"

"To what?" I asked, playing dumb with him.

He scoffed. "Don't play coy with me, Everly Grace," Clearly, Sidney is not a morning person either. "I know when something is bothering you. You're tossing and turning all night, you've been up before 6 pretty much every morning since your injury, you're not eating normally, and you've been in a mood since I've been back from my road trip." I exhaled heavily. "I'm worried about you. Did I-" He sighed. "Did I do something wrong?" He asked, his voice soft.

"No! Sid, no! I-I'm fine."

He laughed sadly, shaking his head at me. "You didn't even believe that yourself. Now, what is bothering you?"

I sighed. "Sid, not being able to skate has driven me to the brink of insanity."

"Oh, honey,"

"I have been skating since I was three, Sidney. I know nothing but figure skating. I have never, until this past year, not been able to skate whenever I wanted. Two injuries within a year is a lot to deal with, mentally and physically." I sighed. "Maybe it's too much?"

Sidney was quiet for a minute, letting the realization of what I had just said set in. It was a lot to take in and if he had said the same to me, I would have been just as stunned. Even I was shocked. Sure, I had been tossing the idea of quitting skating around in my head for weeks now, but saying it out loud made it feel like a plausible idea. "How long have you been thinking about this?" He asked incredulously.

"Since Christmas," I confessed. "Is my body going to let me do this anymore, Sid? I mean for God's sake, I've had two knee injuries in a year! A year! I'm falling apart at the seams!" I paused, briefly. "But how could I quit? I have nothing better to do. I have absolutely no backup plan. I bet my whole life on a career that could be over in the blink of an eye." I looked over at him. "Did I mess up, Sidney?"

Sidney shook his head. "You didn't mess up, you followed your dream and have made an amazing career out of it. An amazing career. You still have so much to do, I know it in my gut."

I half smiled at him. "I don't know, bubba."

Sidney stood up, practically unfolding himself from the pool chair, he reached a hand out to me, pulling me up from the chair. "C'mon, let's go in. It's freezing out here." I followed him across the backyard.

"I thought you were Canadian?" I asked, teasing him.

He faked a soft laugh, clearly not amused with my chirp. "Why did you sound like that one vine?" I tossed my head back in true laughter. I was sure that if it wasn't for my obsession with vine references, Sidney would have no idea what a vine even is. "I thought you were American?" He mocked.

Once inside, Sidney made a beeline for the coffee pot, desperately needing a warm-up for his mug. I found a comfy spot in the window seat of the breakfast nook. He refilled his mug before making his way over to me, sliding in behind me, pressing his back to the wall. I settled comfortably in between his thick legs and dropped my head back against his chest.

"Oh, my love," I sighed. "I don't know what to do. Tell me what to do, Sid."

"No," He said, confidently. I tilted my head up to look at him, confused.

"No?"

"No, I'm never going to tell you what to do with your life, Ev." I smiled softly at him, before returning my eyes to the window which now painted a portrait of the sun rising over the trees in Sidney's backyard. "I can, however, offer some advice, if you'd like."

"Okay, shoot, Crosby,"

"I've been doing some reading since I don't know anything about figure skating," I grinned. Sidney is, by a mile, the sweetest, most caring man I had ever met. It only made sense to me that he would research and learn more about the sport that made me the person I am today. "The first qualification event for PyeongChang is the 2017 World Championships, so you're technically in the position right now to be able to take an entire year off from skating. And, for what it's worth, I think you should. Give yourself the time to heal up both psychically and mentally. "

"Yeah, I mean, I agree with you," I began slowly. "But, I don't know what I would do with myself for a year, Sid."

"Well," He began hesitantly. "I don't know if you would be interested, and I don't want you to think this is a handout, because it's not. You just-" He sighed, clearly struggling to find the right words. I turned around to face him now. "You just know me so well, and we have the same passions and work ethic and I can't think of anyone else I would want to do it."

"Okay, what is it?" I asked, now a little on edge because I was completely unsure of where he was about to take this conversation.

"I have a spot open on the foundation board."

I gasped. The foundation was Sidney's pride and joy. Even while in the middle of trying to clinch a playoff berth, he was still heavily involved in the planning of his upcoming hockey school and charity events in both Nova Scotia and Pittsburgh.

"Sid, are you sure?"

"I'm 100 percent sure, I just want to make sure that this is something you want to be involved in too."

I nodded eagerly. "Oh! I would love to,"

"Yeah? Thank God! When can you start?"

I laughed, before launching myself into his arms. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled his lips to mine.

Liked by jeffskinner, taylorcrosby29, smellymelly, and 36,998 others.

everlygcassius: In December I sprained my ACL and as many of you have probably noticed, I have been off of the ice since. Tomorrow, I will be cleared to make my return to the ice. However, I have decided that two injuries in a year have been too much for my knee, my heart, and my mental health. I will be taking a step back from skating until 2017. I am looking forward to healing myself and returning to the international stage as a powerhouse in Helsinki for the World Championships!

≫ Everly - Sunday, February 7, 2016 ≪

For once, since my injury, Sidney was awake long before I was. In the past week, I had been able to calm down tremendously, thus allowing me to sleep in longer than the sun. I had officially accepted the position with Sidney's foundation and had informed my agent, Eva, family, and the rest of the world that I would be taking a break from skating. Most everyone was supportive, except for a few rude trolls here and there. However, I was happy and that was all that mattered to me.

I was missing skating already. But, I'm so looking forward to getting to know myself outside of the world of figure skating. I'm looking forward to finding something I was passionate about, something I enjoyed doing. I'm looking forward to having a short, busy summer with Sidney, who had recently collected his 900th point and a playoff berth in one fell swoop. I'm looking forward to working closely with Trina and the other foundation board members. I'm looking forward to so many things and amazingly, none of them pertained to skating, making me feel oddly at ease.

"Good morning, sleeping beauty," I perked up, seeing Sidney sliding himself between his bedroom door and the door frame. "Want to come down? I'm making breakfast, I thought we could have an 'us' day since we haven't had a lot of time together recently."

He was right. He had been traveling just about every other game recently and was typically only home late at night or early in the morning, all but forcing me to stay at his house if I wanted to spend more than 15 minutes with him. "Yeah, are pants required?"

Sidney titled his head in thought. Suddenly, he stepped into his bedroom, where I was still buried away underneath his heavy blankets, and dropped his sweatpants on the floor, leaving him clad only in his boxer briefs. "No,"

"Good," I proclaimed, standing up on his bed now, showing him that I only had on one of his t-shirts and a pair of black lacy boyshorts.

He cackled, before coming over to my side and lending a hand up to help me down from the bed. I placed my feet on the cream carpet and began to reach for my cell phone on the charger. Sidney swatted at my hand, making me eye him curiously.

"No cell phones," He pointed over to his nightstand where his phone was still plugged in and resting on the wood.

"Okay, yeah, I like that."

It was late. Neither Sidney nor I had bothered to replace our pants, check our phones, or brush our teeth for the entire day. We had eaten our weight in junk food, had a dance party, taken two naps each, switching between little spoon to big spoon, and watched countless Disney movies. The day was both greatly needed and appreciated by us.

Sidney held onto me tightly, keeping me from rolling off the side of the couch. Our legs were tangled together, probably as equally as hairy. His face was pressed into my hair, allowing his vanilla ice cream scented breath to fan over my neck. My face was tucked into the crook of his strong arm, serving as a surprisingly comfortable pillow.

"Ev," He whispered. "Are you awake?"

"Yes," I responded giggling.

"You know I'm proud of you, right?" I froze, not knowing how to respond. "I would give anything for you not to be having to go through this right now, but I'm so proud of how you're handling yourself with grace and looking at the situation optimistically. You make me want to be a better athlete and person." He paused to let out a long yawn. "I can't wait to spend the rest of my life admiring the hell out of you, Everly Grace."

Read Change on the Fly here!

Let me hear your thoughts!

Do you prefer to read on Wattpad?

15 notes · View notes

thecollegefootballguy · 5 years

Text

Bizarro Football: An Alternate History of College Football in 2011

Hello all, welcome to the culmination of my Bizarro Football project. I’ve been finding out what would have happened in college football had the last cycle of conference realignment from 2010 to the present day never taken place. Nebraska and A&M are still in the Big 12, Maryland is in the ACC, Utah is in the Mountain West, the Big East still exists!

I’ve broken down each conference each year from the moment they began expanding or contracting following the 2010 season. The full library is here for your reading pleasure:

ACC: 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 Big East: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 Big Ten: 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 Big 12: 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 PAC-10: 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 SEC: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018

I also ran a simulation of the non-BCS/Power conferences, but I didn’t get around to publishing that one, because honestly who wants to read about C-USA in 2014? But it will be of critical importance here so will include the relevant teams. In addition, I had to imagine what happened to Notre Dame without their ACC arrangement, which was a bit complicated. Finally, I made a few small adjustments to account for non-conference games that were never played. Now, with all of these pieces finally together, I can imagine how the BCS/Playoffs would have gone. So, without further ado, let’s take a look.

Here are the conference records, presented before the bowl games:

ACC

Atlantic Division

Clemson 10-3 (6-2) Wake Forest 6-6 (5-3) Florida State 8-4 (5-3) NC State 7-5 (4-4) Boston College 4-8 (3-5) Maryland 2-10 (1-7)

Coastal Division

Virginia Tech 11-2 (7-1) Virginia 7-5 (5-3) Georgia Tech 8-4 (5-3) Miami FL 6-6 (3-5) North Carolina 7-5 (3-5) Duke 3-9 (1-7)

ACC Championship Game: Clemson over Virginia Tech

The ACC got into realignment game fairly late, so in Bizarro 2011 they remain unchanged from what happened in the real world. Dabo Swinney’s first truly good Clemson team upset Frank Beamer’s last great Virginia Tech squad twice to claim the conference championship. Truly a symbolic turning of the tides.

Big East

West Virginia 9-3 (5-2) Cincinnati 9-3 (5-2) Louisville 7-5 (5-2) Rutgers 8-4 (4-3) Pittsburgh 6-6 (4-3) Connecticut 5-7 (4-3) South Florida 5-7 (1-6) Syracuse 5-7 (1-6)

Like the ACC, the Big East remains unchanged in 2011. West Virginia beat out Cincinnati and Louisville as the best team in the league, but the conference as a whole was wholly irrelevant to the national title race.

Big Ten

Michigan State 11-1 (8-0) Wisconsin 11-1 (7-1) Michigan 10-2 (6-2) Penn State 8-4 (5-3) Ohio State 7-5 (4-4) Iowa 7-5 (4-4) Purdue 6-6 (4-4) Illinois 6-6 (2-6) Northwestern 5-7 (2-6) Minnesota 3-9 (2-6) Indiana 1-11 (0-8)

Remember the 11 team Big Ten? Well it’s back! Ohio State, long dominating the league in the 2000′s, fell off in the one year gap between Jim Tressell and Urban Meyer. Filling the void are Michigan State, Wisconsin, and Michigan. The Spartans go undefeated in conference play but the loss prevents them from competing for the BCS Championship.

Big 12

North

Kansas State 10-3 (6-2) Missouri 9-3 (6-2) Nebraska 9-3 (5-3) Iowa State 6-6 (2-6) Kansas 4-8 (1-7) Colorado 2-10 (0-8)

South

Oklahoma State 13-0 (8-0) Oklahoma 10-2 (6-2) Baylor 8-4 (4-4) Texas 8-4 (4-4) Texas Tech 7-5 (3-5) Texas A&M 6-6 (3-5)

Big 12 Championship Game: Oklahoma State over Kansas State

The game changer. Oklahoma State doesn’t travel to Ames in this alternate history. The Cowboys’ historic year is made even more special with an undefeated season. Also, look how good this conference is, it’s such a shame it got pulled apart by realignment.

PAC-10

Oregon 10-2 (8-1) Stanford 11-1 (8-1) USC 10-2 (7-2) California 7-5 (4-5) UCLA 5-7 (3-6) Arizona 5-7 (3-6) Arizona State 5-7 (3-6) Oregon State 3-9 (3-6) Washington 5-7 (3-6) Washington State 4-8 (2-7)

The PAC-10 was a terrific conference in 2011 that looks horrible due to scheduling mishaps that kept a majority of the league from bowling. We’re in the thick of the Oregon-Stanford duopoly that arose following the collapse of Pete Carroll’s USC war machine. A great Duck team beat a peaking Cardinal squad but squandered the opportunity by losing to LSU and USC.

SEC

East

Georgia 10-3 (7-1) South Carolina 10-2 (6-2) Florida 6-6 (3-5) Vanderbilt 6-6 (2-6) Kentucky 5-7 (2-6) Tennessee 5-7 (1-7)

West

LSU 13-0 (8-0) Alabama 11-1 (7-1) Arkansas 10-2 (6-2) Auburn 7-5 (4-4) Mississippi State 6-6 (2-6) Ole Miss 2-10 (0-8)

SEC Championship Game: LSU over Georgia

The SEC remains exactly as it did in real life. The last good LSU offense took the Tigers to an undefeated season and a berth in the BCS Championship Game. Alabama was just as good, if not better, but the Crimson Tide’s future is much less certain with a loss to the Tigers. Arkansas, South Carolina, and Georgia all had very good seasons, but languish behind the Tigers and Tide.

Notable non-BCS Conference Teams

Boise State 13-0 (8-0)* TCU 10-2 (8-0)* Houston 12-1 (8-0) Southern Miss 11-2 (6-2)*

*conference champions

The last championship caliber Boise State team completes another undefeated season by torching the overmatched WAC. TCU similarly runs through the Mountain West, but struggled in non-conference play. Houston could have joined Boise as an undefeated mid-major, but lost to Southern Miss in the C-USA championship to fall out of the race.

Projected BCS Standings

#1. LSU 13-0 (8-0) #2. Oklahoma State 13-0 (8-0) #3. Alabama 11-1 (7-1) #4. Boise State 13-0 (8-0) #5. Stanford 11-1 (8-1) #6. Michigan State 11-1 (8-0) #7. Wisconsin 11-1 (7-1) #8. Oregon 10-2 (8-1) #9. Arkansas 10-2 (6-2) #10. Oklahoma 10-2 (6-2) #11. South Carolina 10-2 (6-2) #12. Virginia Tech 11-2 (7-1) #13. Michigan 10-2 (6-2) #14. Clemson 10-3 (6-2) #15. Georgia 10-3 (7-1) #16. Kansas State 10-3 (6-2)

I stop here because the top 16 is all we need when establishing automatic qualifications with the mid-majors.

Projected BCS Games

Rose Bowl: #6 Michigan State vs #8 Oregon

The Big Ten and PAC-10 champions face off in their pre-ordained meeting. It could be an interesting game but Oregon has to be the favorite here.

Fiesta Bowl: #10 Oklahoma vs #13 Michigan

By far the least interesting game in the lineup. Oklahoma qualifies as the Big 12′s runner up. Michigan gets an at-large bid over more deserving Stanford and Wisconsin teams because of course they do. Instead the Cardinal and Badgers likely lay waste to whichever poor souls they get paired up against in the PAC-10′s and Big Ten’s second place bowls. The Sooners probably beat Brady Hoke’s only good Michigan team.

Sugar Bowl: #3 Alabama vs #4 Boise State

Alabama doesn’t make the BCS Championship Game, so as the SEC’s runner up and the #3 team in the BCS Rankings, they get an AQ spot in the Sugar Bowl. Boise State also automatically qualifies due to placing in the top 4 of the rankings and for being ranked ahead of (several) champions from the BCS conferences. God I would have loved to have seen this game. Alabama likely wins though.

Orange Bowl: #14 Clemson vs #23 West Virginia

We’ve seen this one play out already. Both are AQ’s as they won their respective conferences. West Virginia buries Clemson in one of the more surprising BCS outcomes of all time.

BCS National Championship Game: #1 LSU vs #2 Oklahoma State

Boy, wouldn’t this have been something? The ultimate battle between hard-nosed, smash-mouth SEC football and the high speed, spread out Big 12 game. It’s a shame that we never got to see this game play out on the biggest stage. LSU would have to have been the favorites, but Oklahoma State’s style of play could have pressured the Tigers into a shootout they likely couldn’t win. That or the LSU defense prevents Okie State from doing much of anything and the Tigers roll. The numbers say LSU wins but the Oklahoma-Alabama Sugar Bowl says that you can’t be too sure when these styles of play collide.

There are so many ramifications if this game even happens. With Les Miles getting a second championship before Nick Saban, does Saban win that long war against Miles that culminated in Miles getting fired? If LSU does fall off anyway, can the Tigers fire a two time national champion coach? If Oklahoma State wins, how do their fortunes change as a non-blue blood school. They’d be the first first-time national championship winner since Florida. How does that change their relationship with Oklahoma? How does it change the whole Big 12?

It’s so fascinating how history changed that night in Ames when the Cowboys got sunk by Iowa State.

Ultimately, if the 2010 conference realignment cycle didn’t happen, would 2011 have gone differently? The answer is a resounding yes. Alabama didn’t win the national championship because they didn’t even play in the game. Was this a good thing? Well, not really. Alabama was the best team in college football that year, like it or not. They should have won and them not being in the game prevents the best team in football from winning the title. It’d have been another failure on the BCS’s part for getting it wrong. Not that anybody would care if Oklahoma State or even LSU had won over Alabama. Oh well.

Thank you for reading, and stay tuned, the 2012 projection is right around the corner!

#college football #LSU Tigers #Oklahoma State Cowboys #Alabama Crimson Tide #Boise State Broncos #Michigan State Spartans #Oregon Ducks #Oklahoma Sooners #Michigan Wolverines #Clemson Tigers #West Virginia Mountaineers

5 notes · View notes

soveryanon · 6 years

Text

Reviewing time for MAG122 /o/ (Rambling, pondering, wild mass guessing and probably many stabs in The Dark, as per usual.)

- … actually, relistening and realizing that Georgie and Basira never told Jon that by “a coma” they meant that neither his heart nor his lungs were functioning while his brain was still active for the past six months does… shed another light on their interactions, and on the fact that Jon is probably not as weirded out as he ought to be by the whole thing (or, at least, that he didn’t feel as “not fine” as Georgie would have wanted). Unless he’s been absolutely lying to them throughout the exchange, he… doesn’t really have a clear grasp on the amount of time that passed either:

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: I’m okay– GEORGIE: Jon, you are not okay! You have been in coma. ARCHIVIST: Wait– wait. H–how long? BASIRA: Six months. Give or take. ARCHIVIST: [WHISPERS] Six…

I initially freaked out over the whole episode, feeling that Jon was utterly off, and while there are some bits that are clearly worrisome (the apparently missing memories; the feeling “more real” thing; that ~the Archivist~; the mere concept of Jon saying that he feels all right??? his last explicit good night's sleep was around Halloween 2016!), and the whole basis/state of Jon waking up Means A Few Very Unfortunate Things… at the same time, how would have usual!Jon reacted, if he was waking up after apparently having survived the Unknowing, and suddenly being told that he’s been in a coma for half a year, while he himself didn’t feel like he had been unresponsive for this long (and quite the contrary: feeling like he’s just… waking up after only a night of sleep)? And when all these pieces of information are dropped on him, one after another, from Basira who had all those months to cope with them and to learn to not (totally) drown herself in this new life? The whole premise is wrong but, actually, Jon’s reactions didn’t seem… that much out-of-character, on their own?

- In the list of Jon-related things to get worried over, though, I am *squints squints squints* about the bits that he seems to have forgotten:

(MAG122) BASIRA: How much do you remember? ARCHIVIST: I don’t… Music. Everything was wrong. Gertrude was there, and then… dancing. I think? Then… pain. And I was somewhere else. Dreaming.

The Unknowing was chaos, it messed with their minds, they had been warned about it and we got to hear first-hand how it went. But I find it curious that Jon… didn’t mention Jurgen Leitner, who arrived right after Gertrude, and with a special purpose when Nikola was puppeteering them:

(MAG119) ARCHIVIST: I, I tried, I tried, I almost… GERTRUDE: You almost what? […] You know, it’s probably for the best I’m dead. Can you imagine how much I hate having to watch you fumble around as my replacement? I really cannot express how much of a disappointment you are. ARCHIVIST: I, I’m sorry, I didn’t even– GERTRUDE: […] This is your fault. ARCHIVIST: It is not! It’s not, I didn’t know, it’s not my fault you died! LEITNER: No, I suppose not. Me, on the other hand… […] you left me to get my head bashed in. I understand, of course. You needed a cigarette! I suppose you should have remembered that smoking kills! [LAUGHS]

“Leitner” was specifically brought up to shatter Jon’s defence that he has had no responsibility whatsoever in Gertrude’s death – while his actions had direct consequences in the case of Leitner’s. Jon makes no mention of Tim’s last moments in his summary, either, and those also contained something specific: his assertion that he was not forgiving Jon.

(MAG119) TIM: […] Jon, I don’t know if you can hear me, but if you can… ARCHIVIST: Tim…? TIM: I don’t forgive you. But thank you for this.

I wonder if perhaps, there wasn’t some messing around to keep Jon away from the guilt he had felt over some of his actions? (The feeling getting cauterized, or sealed, or the memories getting purposely buried to make him forget about it?) Especially since… it had been very prevalent in him towards the end of season 3.

(MAG098) MARTIN: […] Y’know, I think he thinks that the distance keeps us safe, you know? Like, like, if he just makes sure that we’re not involved, we’re somehow fine. […] He was… Y’know, we know about Sasha now, and… he said he doesn’t want to lose anyone else. Like, y’know, it’s his fault. TIM: Isn’t it? MARTIN: No! No, it isn’t! I mean, you heard Elias… We never really stood a chance. TIM: Yeah. Maybe. But Elias wasn’t actually the one who offered me the job down here.

(MAG113) MELANIE: Wasn’t a great time back here, either. ARCHIVIST: Oh, god, Melanie, of course. I’m… I’m sorry. If I’d known that Ivy Meadows was– MELANIE: What?! You’d have told me? Let me learn from one of your statements instead of from Elias? I don’t see that changing anything. ARCHIVIST: Even so, I… am… I’m sorry. MELANIE: I don’t need your apology. Or your pity. ARCHIVIST: Of course. [QUIETER] Of course.

(MAG114) TIM: … You listened to it, then? My statement. ARCHIVIST: I listened to all the tapes. I, I had no idea how much of a… a mess I left this place in, I–I–I’m sorry. […] [SOFTLY] Tim, I… I didn’t realise. I–I didn’t think. I’m sorry.

(MAG117) ARCHIVIST: I’ve listened to the tape, I– I know what they talk about behind my back, how much they’ve… suffered, because of… this place… because of me. God. Poor Melanie.

Jude Perry had highlighted that her choices had made her cast away at least some bits of empathy (MAG089: “Any feelings of pity or mercy I might have had for the poor woman I fed from were cauterised.”), so, I find it suspicious that Jon would forget about “Leitner” and Tim during the Unknowing, when both of them specifically had words that had probably elicited the feeling at the time…? Jon still sounded concerned about the remaining assistants (and he hadn’t forgotten about Tim’s whole existence), so that’s reassuring! But I do wonder whether he will still be able to feel bad/guilty about his own actions, past worrying over future consequences? As usual: wait and ~see~.

- He sounded less anxious than usual!Jon, more philosophical/detached than truly shaking over the idea of being inhuman, but that… could plainly be due to the avalanche of bad news and Jon having trouble processing and readjusting. Technically, there was a lot to assimilate, on all accounts and everywhere. (We can only assume that The Admiral is safe, and that’s it?!)

(MAG122) BASIRA: Jon, is it still… you? ARCHIVIST: Er… Y… yes. Y–yes, I–I think so? I, I don’t know how you’d… prove it, though.

ARCHIVIST: […] They can be hard, though, sometimes, oth–other people… feelings. I’m… I’m… I’m trying to focus. Trying to make sure I’m the same me as before, but… how can anyone really remember that? How do you know… you’re the same person that went to sleep…?

BASIRA: Me first. What are you? ARCHIVIST: … Honestly… I don’t know. I don’t feel… inhuman, or… … I want to say I’m the same. But I don’t… really know if that’s true. I know I’m different. I feel… more real, somehow. BASIRA: So what does that actually mean? ARCHIVIST: Probably nothing good.

^the reassuring thing is that 1°) Jon expressed doubts over the fact he could still be himself, while not being able to pinpoint differences (he’s not taking for granted that he could still be the same/The True Jon Who Was There All Along), 2°) HE EXPRESSED THESE DOUBTS ALONE, TOO!! So he’s not lying to Basira about it. He could be dissimulating some information again, but he’s genuine about these doubts – and doubts are a good thing! … though the word “monster” was quite curiously totally absent from the conversation, and it had been the one Jon had been using to refer to the Avatars before. Also, Jon quite obviously tried to get some Alone Me-Time at the end, when telling Basira that they should get the nurses; on the one hand, Jonathan “don’t tell me what to do” Sims could have tried to just… leave like this, on the other hand, it really sounded like he needed to blank out for a bit before facing all there is to face? (Sob, regarding Jon waiting for that medical check: the last big one had been… with Prentiss? There were apparently a few medical things after his first encounter with Michael, since he got five stitches, but Elias had told him to not “worry about the doctor’s note” back in MAG092, and we don’t even know if he tried to get his arm treated post-handshake with Jude… so yeah, it’s been a while since he got a complete check, probably. ;; I wonder if they’ll find something wrong about him (… O-negative blood…? There had been two statements in which spooks had that one), or if he will be… uncannily normal, still. Neither option would be reassuring given the context.)

- Noticeably: there was no static when he asked Basira questions. There had been no static either back in season 2 even in cases for which we retrospectively learned that he had actually been non/dubconning answers out of an unwilling person (Daisy), but punctual compulsion has steadily made the tape recorders react more reliably. So, unless twist (tape recorder not reacting anymore / Jon has lost that power / etc.): it means that Jon is still able to not compulse someone, and that he… didn’t do it on Basira, when he could have for various reasons (not caring, being too anxious to keep it in check, being unsure whether she would hide things from him, etc.) Which… is kind of good, actually??? (How long will it last.)

-Re: Jon’s memories and the “dreams”… In fact, I’m not sure that he’s currently able to remember their content? Or at least not in details?

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: [WHISPERS] Six… Er, the others. T–Tim? Is he… [SILENCE] Oh… [SILENCE] BASIRA: … Daisy, too. [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: … I’m sorry. BASIRA: Yeah. […] ARCHIVIST: Then… pain. And I was somewhere else. Dreaming. BASIRA: Dreaming. ARCHIVIST: Yes. … You’re… sure a–about Tim? BASIRA: Yeah, they, er… They found his remains a few days later. ARCHIVIST: And… Daisy? BASIRA: They still haven’t found her body.

… it sounds like Jon discovered Daisy’s Official Status As Dead at the same level as he did with Tim; but Elias had previously narrated that Jon was searching for Daisy in his dreams (MAG120: “He looks around, his eyes scanning this forever road and the clouds of iron grey, looking for her – but she is not there. The Archivist expects, he hopes, to find the violence in her looking back at him, hungry for pursuit and murder. But the emptiness of the place is complete […]”), while the assistants are apparently excluded from his dreams (so even counting the post-Prentiss statement from MAG040, he’d probably never seen Tim in there). Jon would have pieced the things together, I think, if he remembered his dream about Daisy? Or was the memory of this one in particular robbed from him?

There is also the fact that he almost immediately began to ask about Tim and wasn’t aware that he had been out for six months… as if nothing had really happened between the Unknowing and the moment he woke up. I’m definitely fearing some memory tampering, since we already had Mike mention having no recollection of his own transformation (MAG091: “I don’t remember that night in detail. […] There are echoes of resignation, I think, almost desperation. That can’t be right, though. What reason would I have had not to jump? Not to become as I am now. Perhaps I just didn’t know the true joy of vertigo. It doesn’t matter.”) – memories getting twisted a bit when they don’t fit the ~narrative~ of Avatars willingly deciding to give themselves in wholly, without any hesitation? Or will that come… later. So, really: does Jon even currently know that he ~made a choice~ and apparently became an avatar/a monster/got an upgrade on the spooky-scale? Or was he… made to forget about it? Not banking on it but I can’t help but think that there is a possibility he might not know, given how… the tape recorder with Oliver’s statement on it apparently disappeared between MAG121 and MAG122:

(MAG122) GEORGIE: It was just there! BASIRA: Could he have come back? Moved it? GEORGIE: I guess. BASIRA: […] And you don’t know why this guy would have left a tape recorder? GEORGIE: You’re the detective. BASIRA: And you’re sure it was him who left it? GEORGIE: I mean, the nurses said there were no other visitors so, unless it appeared by magic… … What, seriously? BASIRA: I don’t know. The whole tape thing is… I don’t know. […] Shh. [SHUFFLING] Down here. GEORGIE: I told you. BASIRA: This is the one? GEORGIE: Sure. BASIRA: You don’t sound very sure. GEORGIE: I mean, I don’t know. It might be a different model, maybe? I thought it was plastic. But… yeah.

Tape recorders are still spooky, but in this special instance, it seems like the previous one vanished and that a new one popped up elsewhere. Which might mean that the tape inside is probably not the same. Which would mean… that Jon probably won't be able to listen again to Oliver’s statement? Why did it disappear? (And “how?”, but that’s the tape recorders for you.) Assuming that Jon wouldn’t even remember that he made a choice following Oliver’s statement… he would still be unable to rediscover what happened, so long as he can’t access the tape?

But at the same time, he threw us that (AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH) “Jonathan Sims, the Archivist” with a small hesitation (though there were hesitations everywhere in his introduction, he apparently had trouble reading/sorting the words out), so ��\_(ツ)_/¯ As usual: Jon, what the fuck do you know about things around you/yourself, what are you planning, and could you share it with us instead of letting us wonder about it for the next 10 or 20 episodes. If he knows, he didn’t tell Basira, and that part is concerning because uh, Jon, really, if ~you are(/were) still you~, you should give people plenty of warnings about agreeing-to-turn-into-a-monster-for-real in order to allow them to keep you in check. (… but that would also be Typical Jon Behaviour to know that he can be a danger and to assume that he can keep himself in check anyway. If he’s even caring about it.)

(Please, relisten to your old tapes, if you want to make sure that you’re still you ;__; At the same time, I’m fearing that he would also not really recognize or understand that “past Jon”, his worries and his concerns… ;; … and that’s assuming that the old tapes are still in the Archives, since they can now apparently… disappear. And assuming that whatever happened in the Archives didn’t damage some of them.)

- A few things had previously been established already regarding Jon’s powers: that Jon has grown to be dependent on statements (MAG107: “It looks like the recording of statements has now passed over from psychological compulsion into… a more physical dependence. I don’t know whether this is… some sort of classical addiction or something a bit deeper. […] What irritates me most is that Elias was clearly aware of this, hence his sending me this. Which seems to serve no other purpose but as a restorative. [BREATHES] But as usual, he chose to keep this very useful information to himself.”), complete with his voice getting sturdier as he’s reading after a withdrawal (though the process took much longer here compared to MAG107!), and the static happening when Jon quoted the words from spooky creatures (which… is something the tape recorder catches independently from Jon: it did the same things when the assistants were reading statements, and does it too during live-statements when people remember a Spook’s words, cf Georgie’s “The moment that you die will feel exactly the same as this one.” in MAG094, or Elias describing the “DIG” add in MAG120).

The only new things, as far as I can tell, are that Jon could feel (or see?) the statement in Basira’s bag, complete with static effect, and that he spontaneously changed his introduction to… that (“Recording by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist. Statement begins.”)… without questioning it… (Did he not realize? Or, as usual: does Jon know way more than what he’s deigning to tell right now, and it is one of the things he has embraced?) It’s quite funny how that new introduction sounded so off-balance to me, compared to the usual one which had its own rhythm and harmony (“Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London. Statement begins.”). Comparatively: he’s keeping his name, switching to the spooky title, and not tying himself to a place anymore. Jon, what do you knooooow…

- As usual with the series, characters… clash in bittersweet ways, but leaving you enough clues to feel why they behaved in the way they did – they don’t act as you would want them to, they tend to hurt each other very spontaneously, refuse to open up to others when it could maybe help, but all these reactions also feel like they make sense for who they are and what they've experienced. Martin had already mentioned that Basira was keeping things together, in the trailer, and her presence confirmed that she has been the one in charge for some time: Martin is out of their reach (Basira isn’t even sure that he’s working with Peter!), and Melanie is apparently too worrisome to be allowed to see Georgie-or-Jon at the hospital? And Basira has had her own worrying and grieving over Daisy in the meantime; Daisy who… had been her own anchor until now. She was very dry and steel-like towards Jon, making it obvious that she had to check if Jon waking up wasn’t… something that was making the already bad situation worse: she did not take the concept of “Jon” as an ally for granted, it hurts, but the situation sounds very bad overall so that’s… absolutely understandable.

As for Georgie… ;; I’m heartbroken that she apparently still hoped that Jon could still (want to) (try to) put everything behind him… while it hadn’t been an option for him for a long while. And that’s understandable for Georgie! Her own experience messed her up, took from her, made her lose a precious friend, and she knows it, and she felt it; and she also spent time rebuilding herself and trying to hide it (Jon had never realized that she was literally fearless when he had dated her afterwards!). Comparatively, Jon’s situation was different from the start since he had doomed more people in this mess (he had “trapped” at least Tim in the Archives by choosing him), but as Elias put it in MAG092, he also decided to press on and to seek knowledge (without understanding the repercussions) instead of letting things go. The circumstances preceding Jon’s awakening already had enough elements to give Georgie the impression of being in a hostile and alien territory (someone feeling like death being there; a wild tape recorder in the room, and Georgie was already wary of them before the coma; Basira answered her call instead of Melanie); and then, Jon just woke up after getting a visit from an Avatar of The End, in a medical room, and Jon insisted that he was feeling fine… There was enough to get triggered for multiple reasons, and to project and to get hurt by the differences in the way Jon reacted – I felt that Georgie wanted some normalcy, needed Jon to say that he wasn’t fine and needed time to readjust, just like she had? And indeed, what to think, when Jon presents his whole situation as “normal” while nothing had been normal for the past six months? When Georgie knew first-hand that you don’t (shouln’t) come out of this unscarred?

It’s so sad to think that Jon was easier to handle when he was… unconscious, and that Georgie did more than her share during all these months but that she ultimately reached her breaking point as soon as he woke up – pushing people away from her private life (“Honestly Basira, it’s not your business. … Sorry.”) and being excluded in return (“Georgie, could you give us a minute? There’re some things we should probably discuss.”) – and that she has decided to get out now. It’s good for her, but also so sad because her advice had been the bestest before, and Jon might have attenuated the damages a bit towards the end of season 3 thanks to what she had told him:

(MAG099) GEORGIE: I said I’m fine with it. At least until you’re properly back on your feet. You’re not doing well. You keep apologising and saying you’re changing, but it’s all just the same. If you leave, I think it’s just going to get worse, and I don’t want that. […] ARCHIVIST: Is it… Why are you so insistent on keeping me around? GEORGIE: Because you’re trying to cut yourself off, and that’s… that’s really bad. Look, when’s the last time you spoke to someone who wasn’t me? ARCHIVIST: That’s… I… I–I– talked to Martin a… a, a few weeks ago… GEORGIE: Did you talk to him? Or did he talk to you, while you tried to find a way to escape? Look, you’re worried. I get it. But if you really think you’re turning into something… inhuman, you need people around you. You need anchors. ARCHIVIST: All my “anchors” are just as deep in this as me. GEORGIE: Well, you still need them. ARCHIVIST: [SIGHS] Maybe you’re right. I’ll talk to the others. […]

(MAG0117) ARCHIVIST: […] Georgie was right. If I am… slipping, then I need people I can trust. And I… I don’t think that can happen naturally for me an–anymore, so… I’m making a decision. I trust them. All of them.

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: Georgie, I– GEORGIE: Jon. If this really is a second chance… please, try to take it. But I don’t think that it is. ARCHIVIST: Georgie, I don’t und– GEORGIE: Take care of yourself.

But now, Georgie is quitting, and she has every right to do so ;; Not even… abandoning Jon at his lowest, since Basira is there (Jon might have other anchors, or more or less?), and not even wishing him the worse, but also deciding that she has had enough with all of this. … It’s also the worst of Jon’s dreams (MAG120, Elias: “She simply looks at him sadly, a pity in her face that burns him worse than any flame. More than anything, the Archivist wants to looks away, to turn his Eye from her gentle sadness, from the disappointment for what she sees in him; but he cannot. So he watches her, until she simply fades away.”) happening to him in real life, and AOUCH. I wonder if Georgie remembers her own dreams of him…? I still hope that they might be able to more or less patch things up at some point, their friendship was great, okay TT____TT (AND SO WAS THE ADMIRAL.) … I’m also a bit worried for her, since she met Oliver, and since… she seems to think that she managed to leave behind what happened to her all these years ago, but given that she still lives with the consequences (she’s unable to feel fear), I’m not sure that it won’t catch up with her at some point.

Aaaand in return, Jon had apparently not quite understood what he was coming back from (six months coma with no lungs nor heart working), and is just being told that Tim and Daisy died; that Martin’s plan worked and that Elias is in prison, but that it solved nothing! that Elias had been able to choose his successor beforehand! and that it’s Peter Lukas; that Martin might be collaborating with him; that Melanie is not doing great; that “a lot has happened” while he was out; and Basira is wary towards him; and nobody looks relieved to see him alive… It had every reason to be disorientating for him, too.

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: Honestly, I… I, I think I’m alright? I mean, that’s… good, right? I… GEORGIE: After a six months coma? No. It’s not. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go, Jon. ARCHIVIST: I… What? Y–you, you’d prefer I was… brain-damaged? Dead? Or– […] ARCHIVIST: … What about you? Disappointed to see me alive? … Basira? BASIRA: We can deal with that later.

gODS, the misdirected bitterness towards Basira ;__; (His tone was so insidiously cruel and twisting the knife?! Gods, Jon D: Not out of character, since he tends to snarl/bite when cornered, but still, that one gave me chills.) In the same vein, it was… heartbreaking to see Jon trying to ground himself with familiar elements, and them being perpetually denied. Basira has always been quite direct and often savage, but she was stern and steely here (cautious about what “Jon” was); Georgie has always called out Jon on his bullshit, but got enough and quit. Tim is dead and confirmed dead, Daisy is “officially” dead. Martin isn’t there to fuss over Jon, and might be working for another party than the Institute. Melanie’s overall situation sounds bad. Elias is in prison but chose a replacement who sounds worse in his own way; there is not even that relief. Even materially: Jon’s old clothes from the Archives have been discarded, and Jon asking for a cup of tea (something familiar, associated to comfort: Martin and Georgie had usually been the ones to offer it to him) was cut off and denied. Aouch?!

- I stupidly freaked out at this part:

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: Georgie, is she, er… BASIRA: She’s gone. Didn’t see where. ARCHIVIST: [MUTTERING] (No, I, I wouldn’t have… (?)) [LOUDER] Probably for the best.

Because my brain was flaring “NOP NOP NOP NOP” at this “Probably for the best”, not for itself, but for the wording, and I couldn’t figure out why…? And, right. That’s because I was remembering this one:

(MAG108) PETER: Do I scare you Martin? MARTIN: Yes…! PETER: Hm. Probably for the best.

Probably absolutely and utterly unrelated, it’s just that the “same phrasing” echo made me flip out. (Still.)

- BASIRA!!! ;___;

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: [WHISPERS] Six… Er, the others. T–Tim? Is he… [SILENCE] Oh… [SILENCE] BASIRA: … Daisy, too. [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: … I’m sorry. BASIRA: Yeah. […] ARCHIVIST: And… Daisy? BASIRA: They still haven’t found her body. Probably never will. I thought for a while she might’ve… but. It’s been months. She’s gone.

So yeah, we’ll… see Daisy again at some point, in some form, and we’ll probably regret that she didn’t die orz I’m not sure that Basira finally managed to convince herself that ~Daisy is dead~, it sounds like she’s trying (and failing) to be rational about it. Gdi!! The fact that Jon immediately asked about Tim, got stunned, that Basira had to add about Daisy’s fate (Jon would have probably asked after a while, he kinda liked Daisy, they had that weird friendship/partnership going on?), and that Jon didn’t forget to ask about her the second time ;_; The weird pauses, because obviously, Jon was more concerned/curious about Tim (MAG118: “Tim, contrary to what you think, I did not bring you here to indulge your death wish! […] I am not losing you as well!!”) while Basira… lost her own anchor… (MAG117: “But at least Daisy's coming along. I mean… I know she’s… difficult. Everything they say about her, it’s true, it’s fair. But… she’s solid. She’s a fixed point. And if she’s there, I know exactly where I stand, exactly what I’m doing relative to her. She has no doubts. […] Despite everything she’s done, she’s… she’s still the best partner I ever had.”). She’s had months to try to rationalize that not finding Daisy’s body doesn’t mean that Daisy managed to escape; that Daisy is probably dead and not coming back… And yet, Basira has apparently been the one in charge since then… Due to their respective losses, Jon and Basira interacting was kind of the worst configuration, but at the same time, it was… for the best that Basira was the one to go. I am so impressed by her! She went straight to the point, asked the right questions to assess the current situation, kept in mind that the “Jon” in front of her might very well not be who Jon used to be (Martin would have probably been relieved first, denial&interrogations maybe a bit later). Obviously, there are still valuable questions that should get asked about the past/future (Why is Jon only waking up now and what did he give up to be able to come back? What is he planning, what does he want?), but Basira was focusing about the now and here and said herself that “We can deal with that later”. Though these bits will… have to factor, probably.

- By the way, some potential canon credentials to the fantheory that Basira is religious /o/

(MAG122) BASIRA: … What, capital D “Death”? GEORGIE: Yeah. Y’know, one of your dark gods… BASIRA: They’re not– Look. I’m trying to help.

It proves nothing (they’re not technically gods, though Christopher Meyer had called them “outer cults” in MAG060) but it’s still something I’ll Take And Run With! /o/

- YEEEEEEEEEEPPPPPP things are not great regarding Melanie:

(MAG122) BASIRA: […] Look. I’m trying to help. You came to me. GEORGIE: I came to Melanie. BASIRA: Well, sorry. Right now, I’m it. […] ARCHIVIST: And Melanie? BASIRA: A lot’s happened, while you’ve been gone.

Sounds like Basira didn’t want Melanie to go near Jon orrrr to leave the Archives? It seems that she’s still there, though, since Basira used a plural form (“We don’t see [Martin] around the Archives much these days”). The question is: in which state. It sounds bad anyway.

- Is Melanie related to whatever happened to Jon’s clothes.

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: […] I don’t suppose you brought in any… clothes? […] Right, well, er… I kept some in the Archives, er, in my office. BASIRA: Yes, those got, hum… We had to throw those out. ARCHIVIST: What? BASIRA: Like I said, a lot’s happened. ARCHIVIST: S–since I’ve been… … Fine. BASIRA: I’ll get you some new ones. Better ones.

Fire? Flooding/rusting effects from the Lonely? Spiders infestation? Melanie permanently staying in the Archives? Peter forcing sailors uniforms on the staff? I really hope that this “Better ones.” is once again Basira’s own sense of humour (casually throwing shade at Jon for his style), because it… sounds… so weird… too…

- Did Jon share Gerry’s tape with the assistants, or did he give them a lecture about the entities between MAG111 and MAG117? I had already wondered about it due to Martin’s comment in MAG117 (“I mean, if you’re right, if these things out there are eating our fears […]”), and Basira confirmed that they’re now a bit more informed:

(MAG122) GEORGIE: He, er… He felt like Death. BASIRA: … What, capital D “Death”? […] So Jon told you, then. GEORGIE: Some of it. Not… everything. BASIRA: Right. So how exactly is it that you’re able to identify an Avatar of The End on sight? GEORGIE: Honestly Basira, it’s not your business. … Sorry.

-> Jon didn’t share Georgie’s statement with the others (or maybe even specifically hid it?), since Basira didn’t know about it. That’s… surprisingly thoughtful of him. (He respected her privacy!! Didn’t want to get her involved!! ;;) -> Basira was able to translate Georgie’s description to label it under “The End”, which is a veeeerrrry specific way to allude to it (one would more spontaneously stick to “death”, yes?). Not surprising that she, amongst all the others, did her research (she had some on Peter Lukas even before he began to be relevant, back in MAG108, and had tracked down the things around Maxwell Rayner as well), but I don’t think that she could have understood that its official name was “The End” if it hadn’t come from Gerry’s statement, be it directly or indirectly. So yeah, either Jon made them listen to that specific tape (or bits of it), either Basira found it herself, either Jon gave them all an Official Lecture before The Unknowing.

- The fact that Jon has been out for six months might complicate things a bit as to who-knows-what and who had access to the tapes during this time… Elias’s from MAG120 was directly addressed to Jon towards the end, but was probably kept by Peter Lukas since then? Or did it disappear (like the one from MAG121 apparently did) and will reappear only for Jon? It sounded like Elias intended for Jon to listen to it – it was a verrrry Beholding-like move from him indeed (the fear of ~having your deepest secrets exposed~, the ~feeling that something, somewhere, is letting you suffer just so it can watch~), but did it have another purpose? As mentioned above: what about the tape(s) from The Unknowing (MAG118+MAG119): have they been destroyed, will they resurface? What happened to Oliver’s from MAG121? Has Martin hidden his tape from MAG118 (T____T), or will Jon be able to access it? He ~listens to all the tapes~, but that would require getting his hands on this one… though they might get into his hands whether someone wants it to or not.

- I wonder if the assistants have still been recording things while Jon was out, and if he will catch up with that? Or if they… totally stopped in the meantime? Maybe they read statements to comatose!Jon but without the tape recorders on, since Georgie was so offended to find one there? Georgie had called for Melanie, and Basira came instead, but it doesn’t seem like… she had spotted that Jon was breathing, since Basira&Georgie were more concerned about the tape recorder that Georgie had seen before trying to chase Oliver, at the beginning of the episode, and there was no nurse attending to Jon. So apparently they hadn’t noticed that Jon’s body was functional again, and yet, Basira still came with a statement:

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: No, er, the, er, the, the statement. [STATIC] In, in your bag. BASIRA: Oh. Yeah, I, er… [ZIP SOUND] I just grabbed one on the way out. I thought maybe you’d need it. ARCHIVIST: You, you were right. I, I think that’d do me some good. Do you have a tape rec– oh. BASIRA: How did you know I’d brought one? [SILENCE] Right. ARCHIVIST: Thank you, Basira. […] ARCHIVIST: […] … I don’t suppose you brought in any… clothes? BASIRA: No, I just, y’know. Grabbed you a statement on my way out.

Basira didn’t question what she did, so it sounded like a regular thing? OR IS THAT A FUCKING SPIDER THING AGAIN…………… TELLING HER TO TAKE A STATEMENT THAT DAY BECAUSE OF COURSE, IT WAS THE LOGICAL THING TO DO, SHE HAD CLEARLY ALWAYS PLANNED TO TAKE ONE ON HER OWN. Orrr the Archives “gave” her this one? It sounded very fitting for Jon. Not reassuring at all (the world becoming alien and the statement-giver getting convinced that the problem was with everyone else), very disturbing, and also very fitting.

- (I barely mentioned anything about the statement itself, given how so many things happened around it… But yeah, wooowww was this one unsettling. No idea who did it, though? The eerie repeated words made me think of the Anglerfish, and there was something Stranger-like in your whole world turning into something you didn’t recognize; I thought of the Lonely because of the loss of contact and ensuing isolation; and I thought of the Spiral because of the idea of something twisting your mind and making you lose your bearings.)

- Some silly hopeful part of me hopes that there will still be… a way… to remember Tim’s last words… because it would be too sad, gdi!! That Tim died, and that his last moments are also forgotten!! (THAT HIS LAST UNFUNNY JOKE WAS FORGOTTEN…) We already got that with Sasha, not again!! ;_; Not when Tim had been the one to regard what the Institute was doing so gloomily, with his overall defiance and fuck-everything attitude… Maybe they wouldn’t have been caught in the mess if he hadn’t snapped, but he was also the one to ultimately pull the trigger and blow up the ceremony (and partially axing Nikola I think?!), I want them to know that the Unknowing was stopped thanks to him!!! ;_;

I have no idea if the tape from MAG119 survived the explosion (they’re spooky, this one could have just… managed), or if Jon will be able to get some of these memories back somehow through a live-statement, or through other spooks – I… don’t see Elias agreeing to do it with his Carving Truth Into Your Mind, though it could probably fall whithin his theoretical competences (MAG106: “I can see almost anything I care to, weave knowledge from someone’s mind, or place it there, but I just cannot change the nature of a person.”). But it occurs to me that the survivors should absolutely give their own statements about the Unknowing, and to carve it in stone rather than frail perishable tapes, for the next generation who will have to neutralize it in 200-300 years, since they had themselves been helped by a witness account of the previous one? … but at the same time, ~what’s the point, if The Watcher’s Crown is supposed to happen (and succeed!) before that~, right.

- Tim didn’t believe that avatars/monsters could fight against their own urges:

(MAG114) TIM: So, why don’t you ‘Archivist’ me, then? Just pull it straight out. ARCHIVIST: Because I don’t want to! I am not your enemy, Tim. TIM: [DISMISSIVELY] Like that matters! These things aren’t human. It’s… instinct. You can’t not. ARCHIVIST: [SOFTLY] I’m still me, Tim. [TIM HUFFS] I’m still… me.

And we’ll see if that’s the case with Jon, too, but gdi!! I don’t want Tim to have been right on that / to have been right to think that Jon was becoming this ;; There is the weird Agnes case (what was she?), she seemed quite reluctant to get into Business in MAG067 but she wasn’t benevolent either (she… was the one to recruit Jude Perry?); we had the case of “Helen” whose transformation, unless lie, went wrong (MAG115: “I took a man, wandering the halls of an old tenement. He’s dead now, he never even came close to finding me. It was nourishing, but… […] I didn’t like it. […] I feel… wrong. I feel this—”), so I have no idea how Jon will manage/navigate through his new state, since he apparently turned-avatar-for-real, but I have a mix of dread (and eagerness.) thinking about how his next interaction with Elias will go. It will be Terrible but in which ways? (Will Elias switch to calling him “Archivist” all the time, or will he stick to “Jon”? At least there is one (1) person that might be ~happy that Jon chose to not die uwu~ (since Martin is not there), but I don’t want Elias to congratulate him about thiiiiiiiis *cries*) I AM VERY AFRAID that in the end, after the “throw Elias in jail” plan, Jon will have to crawl back to him for help re:Martin and the Peter management ORZ Though I guess the alternative would be “getting Elias out of jail because he’s needed for The Watcher’s Crown and Jon now finds it logical that they would head towards it yeah?” but, at least right now, he’s still seeing Elias as a source of trouble and malevolence; WHICH IS GOOD.

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: What? Oh god, the, their plan, it’s, Martin is– Is he okay, or– … What did Elias do? BASIRA: No, nothing. Elias isn’t the problem. ARCHIVIST: Sor– what? BASIRA: Elias is locked up. ARCHIVIST: … Wait, Martin’s plan worked? BASIRA: Yeah. A bunch of Section’d officers took him in. He made some sort of deal, I think. But… he’s not getting out anytime soon. ARCHIVIST: … Oh. Wow. O… kay, er… Great, s–so… what’s the problem?

That surprise when being told that “Elias isn’t the problem.” dhrfcjn. YEAH, for fucking once, Elias is not The Problem. (Also immediately assuming that Elias would have done something terrible to Martin. Yes, Jon is still aware that they’re not on the greatest of terms.)

- Will Peter Lukas introduce himself to Jon right away (Elias… might have left… instructions… for when archivist!Jon would wake up…), or will he keep avoiding him entirely? So far, he had only appeared when Jon was kidnapped, when Jon was in America, and when Jon was in a coma, so. (Get Martin back!! ;;)

- *WHIMPERS LOUDLY* at Jon!!! Surprised that Martin wasn’t there!! Noticing Martin through his absence!! And also protective/possessive!Jon when it comes to him…

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: What? Oh god, the, their plan, it’s, Martin is– Is he okay, or– … What did Elias do? […] BASIRA: He appointed an “interim” director. Guy named Peter Lukas. ARCHIVIST: … Oh. BASIRA: Yeah. ARCHIVIST: Read about him. BASIRA: Yeah, I’ve… hunted down some of his old statements and… yeah. ARCHIVIST: … What did he do to Martin? BASIRA: Er, I… don’t know. We don’t see him around the Archives much these days. Best I can figure, he’s working on something with Lukas. ARCHIVIST: No, that– No, that, that… that must be something else.

… Jon sounded like he was out for blood, it’s gonna be great/terrible (last one of the original assistants alive! For now). That last line, though: is Jon not believing that Martin could collaborate with someone who is this much Very Bad News, or is something in Jon seeing the whole situation as Martin betraying the Institute/Beholding by working for another cluster…? I kinda hope that we’ll focus on Melanie first, though, since 1°) she’s accessible, 2°) she had blamed her entrapment on Jon (MAG102), 3°) she already had it bad before The Unknowing and the last time we heard her was when she relented after spitting that they should still kill Elias. She only shared her India war ghosts story riiight before Jon left for The Unknowing, they’ll have to… deal with that bullet.

- … I do wonder if Martin is actually leaving the Archives for random missions/working on that thing, or if he’s actually there, in the Archives… but in the Lonely dimension from MAG092’s statement, inaccessible to the others. If Martin sometimes passes by, it could be for recharging, to not end up like Tim? ;; (Though I always wondered if Tim had been a special case, and Elias basically dragged him back to the Institute because he wanted all the assistants to be there when Jon would come back?)

- Cheers, Jon has been in a coma for six months! Which means that his last birthday either happened during the coma, either while he was on the run from the police / kidnapped by Nikola / being sent here and there by Elias to get information to stop the Unknowing (cross out the wrong options). Jon, what’s your life. HE WOKE UP FOR THE INSTITUTE’S BIRTHDAY!! The Magnus Institute is now 200 years old!!! I wonder if they’ll throw a party.

#tl;dr 'AAAAAAAAAHHHH'#mag122 #the magnus archives #4 #5 #tma spoilers/#tma season 4 #tma liveblog

29 notes · View notes

bisexualstokes-archive · 6 years

Note

Is it too personal or may I ask what the long story that got you back into George is?

honestly i could use this ask as a way to really sit back and reflect on what’s going on in my life so yeah here’s the story:

(warnings for depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts)

so going way back to my junior year of high school, september 2009-may 2010, that was like…one of the happiest years of my life. I had some really great friends at the time, family life (from what i remember) was more or less going okay (although i remember my parents were pissing me off when i was in driver’s ed), i was getting out more, things changed in my youth group and over all it was just a great year?? and CSI?? Season 10?? was so good??

and then my senior year of high school started, I got into some shit with not just one, but TWO of my friends, one of which I was like..in love with, and I was getting scared because Things Were Changing and I had all this pressure on me to get a job, go to college, etc, etc. (I also did start a job in the summer between my junior and senior years and I had a crush at this job and our relationship got Complicated and we never did anything, I sort of pushed him away cause I thought I was too young to be with someone who was a couple years older than me, and I was just scared about it in general.) But I was still watching CSI. I still loved it. I still loved Nick Stokes/George Eads.

And then came my first year of college, again, still watching CSI, and I was trying–oh god I was trying so hard to keep my anxiety under control as everything was changing, I was in a brand new school where I knew like…nobody (well a few people here and there–I went to a popular community college in my vicinity so I did see a few people from high school) and again getting this pressure to succeed in college cause college just wasn’t a thing people did in my family–not until everyone began to realize how important it was (some of my cousins went back to school and got degrees and such)

and I was also trying to do my best to keep in touch with my friends, trying to mend the cracks in the two friends I had beef with, but another friend–who I had since seventh grade at that point–and I were getting closer and closer (she’s my absolute BEST friend at this point in my life tbh and uhm yeah I don’t know where I would be without her but I’ll get to that later)

and I was still watching CSI, still in love with nick, etc etc–but I was also getting into another obsession…Doctor Who

Sophmore year of college?? I think this is where depression was starting to get to me a bit.

I had absolutely NO idea what I wanted to with my life. Family still pressuring me to succeed, things were getting Complicated with that guy at work, I started another job–so I was working two jobs at one point in my life and going to school which is uh Fun. I can’t remember much but I do remember in general being a bit freaked out over having to change schools cause that was a New thing and I was not good with change (because of my anxiety)

SO then we come to my junior year of college, and so began my dangerous Apathy phase, where I didn’t give a shit that I was failing tests because I wasn’t studying because Doctor Who basically consumed my life. I didn’t care about myself–It’s such a little thing, but I stopped brushing my hair at one point and wasn’t taking care of my body the way I should have–I had never gone to the doctor since my high school days, so I never had regular check-ups

things at this point had ended with my first job and I’ve never seen or spoken to that one guy that I have Regrets with–to this day I wish we gave it a shot tbh, cause he seemed like a geuninely caring, nice guy? (not without his faults of course)

and also uh…I think this was the year I stopped having a regular period.

I’m talking like…I didn’t have a period for months, and I sure as hell wasn’t pregnant

I also stopped watching CSI, for many reasons, for the way GSR was being handled, for the way Nick was getting the promise of all these interesting storylines but NEVER DID and watching Nick/George obviously going through his own shit (cause he definitely gained weight in that season–and NO JUDGEMENT FROM ME TBH cause I’m, uh…technically classified as obese myself), and again, I was also SUUUPER obsessed with doctor who to the point where it was probably hindering my life

at some point in 2015 i did get my period again and was like “OH LOOK I’M ALL GOOD ON THAT FRONT” probably cause this is when I entered my first almost-relationship, a frequent customer at the store I used to work at asked me out and it didn’t work out in the end cause he was um…idk just Not For Me (and a gross ass kisser) but then after that one period, it disappeared again.

OH but in 2015, when CSI ended, I did watch the finale–Immortality even though I was SUPER pissed about Nick being gone (I did go back and watch just his final scene and cried like a baby) and then proceeded to rewatch grave danger for the first time in years at that point–I actually documented that on my blog here lol (and I did all of that instead of studying for a test that I failed the next day lmao)

so blah blah blah had tons of shit going on until 2016, which was possibly the lowest point of my life in terms of depression/anxiety, even though I had finally graduated college, I got a full time job (the same one I’m in now, three years later, very successful I might add–I just got promoted last year and I’m held in very high esteem by many of my superiors so it gets happy)

but in this full time job, I was moved to third shift for a few months, and was forced to work with this one woman who I like DESPISED–although not completely at the time, but to this day I really just can’t stand her (thankfully she quit lol)

so the third shift transition was rough enough, but at least I was into a new show–Person of Interest and I was having the Time of My Life with it but it really did start getting me to think about my depression and mental health, which up until that point I had been ignoring, despite that one friend I mentioned earlier having pointed out to me many times throughout 2015-2016 that I needed to go to therapy (and I just didn’t think it would work, I didn’t want to do it, my social anxiety was screaming FUCK NO the whole time)

also the trump election thing happened and uhm yeah there was that. Got into a LOT of heated discussions…and lost like ALL respect for my step-father (who you’ll still see me refer to as “dad” but i’m pointing out he’s my step father in this instance because I would be ashamed to be blood related to him)

and despite our uh, troubles, my dad did try to get me to watch Macgyver, telling me that “hey, nick stokes is in it!”

but my depressed dumbass was like “oh really? nice” AND THEN DIDN’T WATCH IT LIKE A FUCKING MORON

and on top of that, my house got INFESTED with mice and my parents did nothing outside of setting up mouse traps but it was getting to a point where we found like…five mice in a day and I was starting to see them in the daylight (which is a sign you have an INFESTATION) and ALL of my belongings were getting mouse shit and pee on them (my room is right next to the kitchen) and I ended up purging A LOT of things (including a binder of friendship from the one friend I had trouble with in senior year–which man that hurt to get rid of ((side note, you know what really fucking hurts the most about breaking away from that friend? we’ve known each other since pre-school and I mentioned in tags before about how we do still talk and shit and i am one of her wedding bridesmaids and shit but yeah…not like it used to be)))

and i was getting to a point where I honestly?? just wanted?? to die??

I would say it was like, late 2016 where I was even starting to think of scenarios where I could just…like…disappear? kill myself? I just did not want to exist anymore

2017 came along, fresh start, I kept telling myself. Still had mice in the mouse, but I was fully aware of my mental health issues at this point, and was starting to really listen to my friend more and more, really starting to consider going to therapy (especially now that i had health insurance)

(and also I was beginning to realize I have Feelings for this friend as well–although I gotta wonder if it’s actual romantic love and just not intense friendship cause we really are close friends but like…I could also see us as more? if she were open to it? but I know she doesn’t feel that way about girls and she’s got her own shit to deal with, and i respect that so I never push it or bring it up)

and then? twin peaks: the return came along. Season 3, episode 3, “Call for Help” a fucking masterpiece of an episode and something just…CLICKED in me. Something made me realize, I need to call for help

and so I did.

2017 was the year of therapy, in which I talked about a lot of the shit above, and then I stopped going in I think 2018? when the therapist moved away, but my sessions were getting farther and farther apart anyway, and I felt like I was finally in a better place in my life. I had more coping mechanisms, more awareness of how to handle myself, and I began to realize I really needed to take care of myself more

so i went to the doctor for the period thing, seems like it was some hormonal imbalance cause i was put on birth control to get my hormones back in order (this is my first month off of them so fingers crossed it still works) and by the time august/september rolled around?

I started writing again

and I’m not talking fan fiction, I suddenly had the inspiration to write this original story idea I have for a series that was HEAVILY inspired by CSI–in which the third book in the series is about a guy getting buried alive (and a girl trying to save him but doesn’t because ANGST but that’s another long ass story lol)

which, naturally, made me want to watch grave danger again, for the first time in three years. and then…I suddenly wanted to watch more csi?? from the very beginning??

and so I watched the first four episodes of season 1 again, and Nick/George was back in my life again. And it felt SO FREAKING GOOD.

Then, I watched Macgyver because I wanted to see new George content, and immediately fell in love with jack

Caught up with Macgyver and then finished my csi rewatch, this time watching all of season 13 (which I STILL HAVE MIXED FEELINGS OVER just like season 9) and 14-15 (which i regret not watching when it first aired cause it’s SO GOOD)

and I’m not saying like…Nick/Jack/George is the sole cause of my happiness, the cure for my depression/anxiety (cause that shit never goes away, you just learn to manage it better), nor is he the sole love of my life or anything, but…he’s a huge part of who I am, because in those years, when I was struggling, I lost myself. I lost Nick. But now I found myself again, I re-discovered my passion for Nick Stokes, and i’m just as happy as I was back in 2009/2010, and life is just so good

#aaaaaaand now i'm crying #just...fuck man #i may have gone into uh...TOO much detail here #but honestly maybe not even enough?#but yeah trust me when I say #i'm happy to have nick/jack/george in my life #cause you know that quote nick says about warrick #about warrick being a huge source of strength?#that's how nick is for me #personal #nonny #about me #2019 #reflections

5 notes · View notes

leonardofrei-blog · 6 years

Text

I have come to bring this dead Tumblr back to life solely so that I can say this (S7 spoilers)(also really long because I like to write)

I absolutely loved Voltron season 7 and it is my current favourite season

I’m doing this post thingy because I’m seeing a failry big backlash from fans here because of the events of Season 7 and pretty much treating it like the worst season ever so I”d like to throw my 2 cents into the mix

The actual plot of this season (the Galra war on Earth and everything around defeating the fleet and the battle that comes right after that) is good, is just pure and of quality GOOD

the 3D animation was also amazing compared to other seasons, that fight coreography on the last fight was simply amazing

Just throwing that out there becauce the things that actually matter get buried by the hate

the main things I see people complaining about: the whole deal with Adam and Shiro, Lance and Allura’s relationship and Keith and Acxa’s possible future relationship

The big deal here is of course Adam, he’s Shiro ex boyfriend

and he dies

the shitty commander refuses to listen to the dude that knows bout alien stuff and gets all of the best pilots killed when the invasion starts, including Adam

the controversy here is that the crew has been hyping LGBT representation ever since 2016 and when they finally deliver it they kill the character

Personally I’m okay with it

the way they dealt with Shiro’s gay arc is that they completely ommited the fact that he was gay up untill now, and even then it wasn’t a big part of him or he’s identidity, mainly that the fact that he’s gay only affects wich person he has a romantic interest in, not who he is as a person, wich is great because it distances himself for any form of tokenism wich are rarely done well

Adam himself wasn’t much important, the scenes we got of him during the flashback were not the main focus, he was a side character on a scene designed to explain and develop Shiro and Keith’s relationship, counting the fact that the scene in question is him breaking up with Shiro since Shiro would put more focus on the missions than on Adam or himself, given he was sick

That (and the fact that Shiro spends 6 seasons without ever even mentioning him) shows that while they were a thing in the past, that’s it, it was a thing of the past, he’s still care for Adam as a person or friend, but lover was never the question, (also because Shiro is the calm and collected type and in the middle of a war situation like that it would be in character for him to hold anything back, specially since they were about to go discuss important stuff) and the scene that he dies? well a lot of people do, they likely just used Adam to try and get more emotional response of the scene where a bunch of people we never heard about die offscreen deaths

Characterwise, the whole thing with Adam was fine, he had one purpose and he filled it, while also introducing Shiro’s sexuality in a normalized way, instead of making it a big deal for his character, wich is indeed wasted potential, but when it comes to representation, normalizing it does better than bringing attention to it

the whole thing about they introducing a gay character solely to kill him, yeah I can see why people would find it offensive, specially since the crew did alluded to a lot bout a character being gay, but then again they were refering mostly about Shiro and most of the hype and attention drawn to Adam was made by the fans for the fans, so yeah

Next is the whole deal with Lance-Allura-Keith-Acxa

as we all know Klance is the big ship of the fandom, everyone seems to ship it and you can’t find a single Voltron crack video on YT without finding one with a Klance reference on it, that also likely led to the popularity of the theory that Acxa was Keith’s long lost sister that no one ever mentioned

long story short, fans wanted Lance to move on from his crush on Allura since she showed no romantic interest on him, and people wanted Acxa to be Keith’s sister because it would be different and if they used the scenes they had to build a relationship it wouldn’t be good since they had few scenes together and a lot of them revolved one of the two being attacked by the other one

I’ll do this quick, Lance’s entire romantic plot revolved around him going from “this chick’s hot I wanna date her” to “Oh my god I am in actual love with this beaultiful and amazing woman”, spending 6 seasons worth of development of that and just have him choose to get over it and not get with her is simply dumb and makes no sense, you don’t spend that much screentime of a character building said feelings up to then have they give up when the other one doesn’t immediately love them solely to sell this idea of maturity, if that was the goal they’d focus more on it on earlier volumes and deal with it quickly (plus he literally died for her, kind of awkward to not follow through with the subplot after that)

the deal with Allura not being in love with Lance, well it happened mid season, while she was still being woo’d by Lotor and before she learned he was comitting genocide on a global scale

Also note how these relationships were build up, Lotor did nothing but constantly tell Allura how awesome she was and how he’d never get anything done were not for her, he was constantly making moves on her by forcing this romantic vibe on a constant basis, basically he won her over by constantly using pick-up lines

the scene where she learns that LAnce actually loves her and not just hits on her like he used to do to every other girl, her reaction was that of pity/sadness that he felt that way because she liked Lotor

Then Lotor turned evil and on a non romantic scene (wich ironically is what makes it romantic) Lance comes to her and pretty much does the same that Lotor did, tell her how awesome she is, but unlike Lotor, it comes from a place of actual respect, Lance admires and respects Allura as an individual, and that is why he grew to love her, she realized it by the end of season 6, and knowing he liked her would help getting her to either start liking him or getting the feelings that were there to emerge and morph into love, culminating in the scenes from the last episodes where they make it clear she also loves him

Grantes, yes it short of came out of nowhee given that on previous episodes they basically had no interactions by themselves, specially on Allura’s part that would help show a progression

but then again next Season IS the last season to they might have rushed it because of that, this show has always had some pacing problems in the end

Acxa and Keith tho, they have had few interactions, and I think that is enough

unlike Lance, that had a lot of his character based on a romantic subplot, Keith has a lot of plot going on for him, so it is not necessary for him to get a lot of screentime dedicated to it, specially since Acxa is a really secondary character that doesn’t appear much on the plot

the whole scene with the other ones basically screaming at the camera that she had feelings for Keith were probably meant for the audience to make it clear, given how many people were still passing the whole sister theory around (even tho it was never shown to have any proof or anything that would led one to consider it being true, also because having them being siblings given the ammount of coinsidences that led them to believe and form a very weird and f**ked up “friendship” would just be bad writting) and because Klance was still a thing going strong, also the characters didn’t pay much mind to it because it was clear the others were just taunting them

it does seem that from now on they will build something that could become a relationship, since they already had short of a mutual respect and now they can build it up more without needing to kill each other everytime they meet

Overall, this insanely long post is solely my opinion on the matter, that Voltron Season 7 was amazing and that maybe I can get someone to look at it on a new light

Hopefully

seriously tho it was an amazing season, I mean have you guys seen the final fight? Holy S**t

#voltron #voltron legendary defender #voltron season 7

12 notes · View notes

earlyspringtranscendence · 3 years

Note

Okay so i have thoughts on this (pls note this is not a complete list this is just the ones that came to my head rn) (also this is quite recent matches bc i mass watched a bunch of 2017 onwards games whilst i was ill over summer but there could be so many more bc this team love each other sm)

1. Adam Lallana 2016 final goal against norwich: shirt off and lfc basically all jump on him

2. Trent and Andy: whenever one assists the other for a goal (see; RB salzburg where Robbo scores) but the main moment for me is a clip when they’re celebrating the 4-0 comeback from barca in 2019 and it’s andy hugging trent so tightly and his hand comes to like cradle the back of his head and i go FERAL

3. Trent assists Ali, West Brom away at the end of last season: in the celebrations after Ali’s header from Trent’s cross, Trent fully jumps onto Ali legs around him and buried his face in GOD

4: Hendo and Andy after his goal away at southampton in 2017-18 season: i know this has been giffed on here but after Hendo’s goal andy is like the last to get to hendo and they literally push their faces together and they’re both smiling so widely they look like boyfriends

will think of others bc there’s so so many but in conclusion: lfc should kiss that is all

STOPPPPPP STOP IM SO 😭💘🥰 trent & robbo make me feel so normal and regular and well-adjusted i s2g they are ☝️😭 one second 🤧 THEY ARE SO EVERYTHING. the bezzies of it all i cannot deal with that my GOD

also im gonna rb this in a sec bc i giffed that trent & ali moment because oh yeah that also made me feel seriously insane <3

i don't think i've seen nr4 actually but UGH these are so good also asdfjggksg why is hendo involved in like. all of these

#girlies (gender neutral) i am living for all of these keep sending them in i wanna know. also i wanna know about other tams #teams* bc im nosy and i love judging people i dont know #judging in a positive way too but like i already know leeverpoul is insanely affectionate w each other i wanna kno abt teams i hate #i wanna feel conflicted you know <3 #anon #fv2

0 notes

livinginlandmarketing · 3 years

Link

This story is Part 3 of a series

What actually happened to David O’Sullivan?

Two weeks into what was supposed to be a 2,650-mile hike of the Pacific Crest Trail, the 25-year-old from Ireland made it to the Riverside County town of Idyllwild. He stopped for a couple of days to resupply, checked out of his hotel room the morning of April 7, 2017, and was never heard from again.

After that, there are three broad possibilities.

One: He died somewhere in the San Jacinto Mountains north of Idyllwild.

Two: He died somewhere else.

Three: He’s alive, which would mean — unless you believe in sci-fi or soap opera plots — he disappeared on purpose.

“Oh God no,” his mother, Carmel O’Sullivan, said about the third possibility. “99.9% of my heart says no. … He wouldn’t have been so cruel to do that to us.”

Read the series

Part 1: The mysterious disappearance of Pacific Crest Trail hiker David O’Sullivan

Map: David O’Sullivan’s 180-mile Pacific Crest Trail journey

Part 2: Who’s looking for David O’Sullivan? At first, almost no one

More: Missing in the mountains: 4 families ache for those lost

Part 3: 4 years later, searchers seek an answer: What was David O’Sullivan’s fate?

A team of volunteer searchers who haven’t given up hope of finding answers are focused on the first option. But they face some formidable challenges.

No one knows which of the many possible routes he planned to take from Idyllwild back to the Pacific Crest Trail or how far he may have gotten.

“If we only had one haystack, we’d eventually be able to find the needle, but we have half a dozen different haystacks,” said Jon King of Idyllwild, a prolific local hiker who’s helped searchers try to figure out the likeliest scenario.

The terrain where the group believes O’Sullivan is most likely to have met trouble is steep and thickly forested, and quickly becomes inaccessible when you get off trail. Drones would be the best way to search, but the area is designated as state wilderness, where drones aren’t allowed, and federal rules say pilots have to keep their drones in sight at all times, which wouldn’t be possible. Even if the group could get permission, the trees and boulders can obscure objects on the ground.

One dark possibility that his mother worries about is whether O’Sullivan could have gotten lost and wandered into an area where marijuana was being grown — a significant problem in California’s national forests. Some of the people searching for O’Sullivan wonder, even if he met a natural or accidental death, could someone else have found him first? If people involved in illicit activity found his remains, could they have disposed of them so as not to attract law enforcement’s attention?

If O’Sullivan’s remains are out there in the wilderness, the forces of nature — from rain, snow and sun to gravity and animals — have had four years to claim them. Every season that goes by makes the task harder, and 2020 was a lost year because of the pandemic.

A photo taken during an aerial search of the San Jacinto Mountains shows Fuller Ridge, the portion of the Pacific Crest Trail where volunteer searchers believe missing hiker David O’Sullivan is most likely to have encountered trouble in April 2017. (Photo courtesy of FireWatch)

Still, the volunteer team has some reason for optimism. In late 2019 and again in early 2021, they found the remains of two other people they searched for: Paul Miller, a Canadian who went missing in Joshua Tree National Park in summer 2018, and Rosario “Chata” Garcia, a local woman with dementia who disappeared in July 2020 after getting her car stuck on a rocky trail 40 miles from her home.

Western States Aerial Search, a nonprofit group of drone operators based in Utah, was able to fly over the areas around where Miller’s and Garcia’s cars were found — they got permission from the national park, and none was needed in the area where Garcia went missing. Volunteer image searchers then began scouring the photographs. In both cases, a Missouri man, Morgan Clements, was the one who first spotted bones.

After Miller was found, Carmel O’Sullivan said the success gave her hope. But while she’s happy for other families to get good news, she’s a little jealous too.

Not knowing what happened to her son, not being able to bring him home and bury him, is an ache that won’t go away. She still hasn’t been able to bring herself to give away his clothes and books.

“The passage of time — in one way, it does ease (the pain), but in another, I don’t think it ever will,” she said recently.

Her son’s 30th birthday is this August, and it’s hard for her to think that as she and her husband and David’s brother grow older, David never will.

The force behind the search

After seeing the struggles of the O’Sullivans and other families, Cathy Tarr, the woman leading the volunteer search effort, was inspired to start an organization to help. The Fowler O’Sullivan Foundation achieved nonprofit status in 2020 — a bright spot for Tarr in a year that included not just the pandemic but a breast cancer diagnosis.

The foundation will use what Tarr and her team have learned to become a resource for families of people who have gone missing in wilderness situations, especially once the official search-and-rescue efforts end.

“When that’s called off, that’s when families are lost,” Tarr said. “They don’t know what to do — how to read a map, how to look for clues, how to attract volunteers. It becomes random. We do it systematically.”

The foundation’s other focus will be proactive safety initiatives. Tarr said they gave away six rescue beacons to Pacific Crest Trail hikers this year and partnered with Nomad Ventures in Idyllwild to offer discounts on microspikes, which go on hikers’ shoes to give them better traction in the snow.

Cathy Tarr stands at the Devil’s Slide Trailhead in Idyllwild on Wednesday, May 12, 2021. She considers that trail the most likely route that David O’Sullivan would have taken from town back to the Pacific Crest Trail on the day he went missing. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

Cathy Tarr sits near the Devil’s Slide Trailhead in Idyllwild on Wednesday, May 12, 2021. Tarr is leading volunteer search efforts for David O’Sullivan, a young man from Ireland who went missing in the Idyllwild area while hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in 2017. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

Cathy Tarr holds a rescue beacon similar to ones that a nonprofit group she founded last year, the Fowler-O’Sullivan Foundation, gave away to six Pacific Crest Trail hikers this year. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

Cathy Tarr’s research into the David O’Sullivan case and other missing hikers has included research on how people are likely to behave when they get lost. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

Cathy Tarr walks to towards the Devil’s Slide Trailhead in Humber Park Idyllwild on Wednesday, May 12, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

Show Caption

Expand

Tarr’s involvement in O’Sullivan’s case began with unrelated events in two corners of the United States far from Southern California.

Tarr, now 58, had been planning to hike the Pacific Crest Trail herself in 2017, and had been in New Hampshire training for the snow. Two weeks before she was supposed to head out, she was in a car crash.

She couldn’t hike, but she heard about another PCT hiker named Kris Fowler who’d gone missing in late 2016 in a snowstorm in Washington, and she figured she could help. She traveled there for a four-day search and ended up staying six or eight weeks, she said. (Fowler — the other namesake of Tarr’s foundation — also has never been found, though volunteers and the local sheriff’s department continue to search and Tarr remains involved in those efforts, too.)

While she was in Washington, word of O’Sullivan’s disappearance began to spread north up the Pacific Crest Trail.

Tarr had previously lived in Southern California and her daughter still lives here. Tarr was planning to visit and found out that O’Sullivan’s parents were coming from Ireland at the same time, so she arranged to have lunch with them after they met with the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.

“They were very unhappy with the meeting they had just had, so I said let’s do our own investigation,” Tarr said.

She was surprised by how little was being done to search for O’Sullivan compared to Fowler’s case. “I thought, ‘Woah, this is weird. Where are all the flyers? Who’s searching for him? What’s going on?’”

Tarr knows the heart-wrenching feeling of having a son go missing. A year or two before meeting the O’Sullivans, she got a call in the middle of the night that her own son hadn’t returned from a hike to the mountains.

“I know that initial shock that a family gets,” Tarr said. “I’ve felt it. I remember pacing back and forth … I remember calling the police. I remember how scared I was.”

Thankfully, her son was found safe in less than a day. But even now, she visibly tenses up talking about it.

“Once you experience that, it’s something you never forget,” she said.

That feeling is part of what has motivated her in the almost four years since she first met O’Sullivan’s parents.

“If it weren’t for her, there probably would be no search going on,” Carmel O’Sullivan said.

Solving the mystery

Over the past four years, Tarr and the team of volunteers she assembled have done extensive research to narrow down the possibilities of what could have happened to O’Sullivan.

Working backward through that list of three broad possibilities, they don’t believe he could still be alive.

David O’Sullivan, then 25, of Ireland, took this photo of himself while he was hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in Southern California in spring 2017. (Photo courtesy of the O’Sullivan family)

Friends and family say O’Sullivan was as enthusiastic about the trip as he’d been about anything, and his messages from the trail showed someone who “had set himself a personal challenge and was enjoying the journey,” in his mother’s words.

Sgt. Sean Lawlor, a Murrieta police officer who first took O’Sullivan’s missing-person report, also did some investigating and doesn’t believe O’Sullivan survived. Knowing he was an inexperienced solo hiker and had a good family dynamic, he believes O’Sullivan probably got lost, maybe dehydrated or washed away by a river.

“I didn’t get any inkling of signs of foul play or that he would have run off,” Lawlor said.

Once word of O’Sullivan’s disappearance got out, his family received many tips from people who thought they saw him at points north of Idyllwild.

“He was even ‘found’ a few times, even to the point where we rang hostels to speak with ‘him’. None of these sightings were him,” Niall, his older brother, wrote in an online post in July 2017.

During the reporting of this story, someone Tarr’s volunteer team had never heard from before, despite all of their outreach, came forward on Facebook claiming to have seen O’Sullivan that summer in Kennedy Meadows, an area known as the PCT’s gateway to the Sierra. “I even joked with him and a few other hikers that he was the missing Irish dude. Guy basically told me to mind my business,” the commenter wrote.

Tarr believes sightings like those are cases of mistaken identity. She’s found at least three or four other hikers from that year who look very similar to O’Sullivan. The accent is what stood out to some people who thought they’d encountered the Irishman, but hikers came to the PCT from all over the world, including places with similar-sounding accents such as Scotland.

O’Sullivan had been stopping in towns and making financial transactions all the way to Idyllwild, but nowhere after that, including the next town where he would have needed to resupply, Big Bear, about five days up the trail from Idyllwild. Several thousand dollars were left sitting in his bank account. His Kindle was never turned on after April 5.

Why, Tarr reasons, would he have kept hiking without doing any of those things — let alone without contacting his family again. She’s convinced that he couldn’t have made it to Big Bear or else his family would have heard from him there.

While a hiker can run into trouble anywhere, everything that Tarr knows about the trail and the conditions that year tells her that O’Sullivan faced the highest risk on the trail just north of Idyllwild.

Heavy winter storms broke a five-year drought and covered the San Jacinto Mountains in snow that was still up to 3 feet deep when O’Sullivan was coming through. Multiple hikers reported trouble in the mountains, especially along a 5-mile stretch of the PCT that traverses Fuller Ridge. People were sliding downhill and enduring exhausting, injury-inducing battles to get back to the trail. Several hikers required rescue that spring.

A sign at the northwest trailhead to Fuller Ridge, part of the Pacific Crest Trail in the San Jacinto Mountains, warns hikers to be prepared for hazardous conditions. (Photo by Nikie Johnson, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

When O’Sullivan set out, “He was very ill-prepared,” Tarr said. He hadn’t trained in the snow and, as far as anyone knows, didn’t have the proper equipment for safe snow hiking. He didn’t have a working phone, and his Kindle only connected over WiFi. He had paper maps but no GPS-equipped device, and no rescue beacon that he could have used to summon help in an emergency — something Tarr strongly recommends.

His last email to his parents indicated he was going to get a later start back to the trail the next morning because he had to stop at the post office again, so there may not have been anyone left behind him that day.

If he got hurt or lost, he would have been all alone out there.

Other PCT deaths

O’Sullivan wouldn’t have been the first Pacific Crest Trail hiker to die in the San Jacinto Mountains, and he wouldn’t have been the last.

In March 2020, 22-year-old Trevor Laher of Fort Worth, Texas, was killed when he fell about 600 feet into a ravine near Apache Peak, about 13 trail miles southeast of Idyllwild. The trails were snowy from a series of storms that had rolled through over the past week. Laher had been with two other PCT hikers he had befriended along the trail, and they were able to call for help with an emergency GPS device.

The risky mission to recover Laher’s body and rescue his two friends — winds were so strong that they grounded a helicopter, so searchers had to cut trail into the steep, hard snow slope to reach them — was one of several in just a two-day span. One PCT hiker slipped and fell in the ice and snow and had to take shelter under a rock through a snowstorm until rescuers could get to him the next day. Another fell 150 feet off the trail and also spent the night lost. Then two PCT hikers from France needed rescue when one fell about 60 feet off the side of the trail and the other got stuck in a section of ice.

Any of them could have ended up lost like O’Sullivan if just a few of fate’s dominoes had fallen a different way.

Then there’s the case of John Donovan.

John Donovan of Virginia, shown in an undated family photo. (File photo)

The newly retired Virginia man came to hike the Pacific Crest Trail in 2005. He was last seen in the San Jacinto Mountains on May 3, headed toward Fuller Ridge as a storm moved in. Despite multiple searches, it was a year before his remains would be found by astonishing accident.

In May 2006, a young couple visiting from Dallas rode the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway into the San Jacinto Mountains. Brandon Day and Gina Allen hadn’t intended to go for much of a hike, but took a few wrong turns while looking at the scenery and ended up hopelessly lost.

In an essay for their hometown’s D Magazine, Day and Allen described spending the next two nights trying to fend off hypothermia and the days clawing their way through thick vegetation and sliding down rock faces in terrain so rugged, they wondered if any human had ever been there before.

They ended up following a creek to a canyon where not just any human, but Donovan himself, had been until he perished.

Gina Allen and Brandon Day, both of Dallas, Texas, tell about their ordeal of being lost for two days in the San Jacinto Mountains in May 2006. (File photo by Rodrigo Pena, The Press-Enterprise)

“We couldn’t walk our way out,” Day told The Press-Enterprise at the time. The canyon was too steep. “We were stuck.”

Day and Allen used some of Donovan’s matches to start a small fire that attracted rescuers; they credited him with saving their lives.

They also found some papers that Donovan scrawled notes on, chronicling his final days.

According to an in-depth story in Backpacker magazine, Donovan described in the makeshift journal how he couldn’t find the trail back to Idyllwild amid the blizzard conditions, so he tried heading toward the lights of Palm Springs below. He ended up in the canyon, injured and down to 12 crackers. He spent more than a week there, including his 60th birthday. In his last entry, dated 11 days after he got lost, he wrote: “Goodbye and love you all.”

“Nobody knew where he was, nobody knew to come looking for him, so he was preparing for the end,” Day told The Press-Enterprise. “We were looking at the words of a man who was passing.”

Assuming Tarr is right that O’Sullivan never made it out of the San Jacinto Mountains, which scenario befell him? A quick death like Laher’s? Or an ordeal more like Donovan’s?

An image shows the flight plan for a plane hired to do aerial photography over the San Jacinto Mountains in 2018 by a group searching for the remains of David O’Sullivan, who came from Ireland in 2017 to hike the Pacific Crest Trail and was last seen in Idyllwild, Calif. The search areas were identified by previous helicopter flights. (Image courtesy of FireWatch)

Searchers will ‘never give up’

Since late 2017, Tarr and her team have conducted numerous ground and aerial searches north of Idyllwild. Always on the lookout for bright blue — the color of O’Sullivan’s backpack — Tarr jokes that they’ve become the mountain’s mylar balloon cleanup crew.

The Idyllwild area’s many hiking trails are well-used and have been searched thoroughly for signs of O’Sullivan. The group has been back out already this year, but Tarr is frustrated that the areas they have left to explore now are too dangerous to reach by foot.

“I feel right now we’re at a standstill, and that’s not where I want to be,” she said.

“I’ve always felt we could find him. Always. But, I don’t know … It’s the one case I have that I’ll never give up on,” she said.

Members of her team are equally committed.

“We will not stop,” said Gloria Boyd of Yucaipa, “because for me that’s the worst thing that could happen: Not only did the authorities walk away but the only people you have left who could potentially help walk away? I’m not going to stop. I don’t see an end in sight. If it’s 10 years it’s 10 years, but damn it we’re getting him back home.”

How to help

Anyone wishing to help the Fowler-O’Sullivan Foundation, whether by volunteering or donating, can go to www.fofound.org/joinourteam.

The O’Sullivan family asks that anyone who is hiking in the Idyllwild area and spots something potentially of interest leaves it where it is and emails information to [email protected].

Hiker safety

Here are some of the Pacific Crest Trail Association’s safety tips, which are good advice for hikers on any trail.

There is intrinsic risk in the wilderness, and you are responsible for your own safety. Be prepared, and learn first aid.

Let someone know your plans. If you’re on a day hike, tell someone where you’re going and when you expect to return. Long-distance hikers, leave a copy of your itinerary with someone, check in regularly, let them know when you’ll check in next and have a plan for what they’ll do if you don’t.

Be mentally prepared for the risks you may encounter. Think through scenarios ahead of time and decide how you might respond.

Travel within your skill level.

Always carry current maps and know how to use them.

Cellphones and rescue beacons can save lives in emergencies — but they don’t guarantee your safety. Rely on your own skills and intuition, not on your technology.

Use extra caution if hiking alone.

Be wary of people who make you uneasy.

Stay on the trail. The moment you leave, you’re in the wilderness. If something goes wrong, you may never be found.

-on May 26, 2021 at 01:01AM by Nikie Johnson

#riversidenews

0 notes

stunudo · 7 years

Text

BAU Prep School AU

A Criminal Minds Fan-fiction

Thanksgiving

Welcome to the Frederick Buchanan Institute located in scenic Quantico, Virginia, a senior high academy that shapes the best and brightest minds. Its motto is “Behavior, Analysis, Unity,” the mascot the Submariners, colloquially “the Unsubs”. The small school supports the most accomplished faculty from across the country.

Nov. 15, 2016 7:07am

“Hey, kid, got a minute?” Derek asked, leaning into the kitchen door after catching a glimpse of the lanky doctor chatting idly with the chef.

“The school bell rings at 7:30, for you Coach, I’ve got roughly twenty minutes.” Spencer answered in his soothing ramble.

“Right.” Derek remained in the doorway, “Mind if we walk and talk?” Spencer waved to Rossi and followed the football coach into the dark wooden halls. Derek was wearing a suit again, it had been rumored that he owned a few, but now that he was on office detail during his non-teaching hours, he liked to look the part. Spencer sighed internally, despite wearing ties 96% of his working days, he would never pull off the look like Derek Morgan could.

“So, midterms grades are back and I am worried about my guys.” Derek began. “Sciences are crucial and I was hoping that you and I could tag team some study sessions.”

“I am impressed, Coach, certainly I can arrange perhaps a weekly after school tutoring group. But I have obligations that keep me rather busy at night.” Spencer grimaced before sipping his coffee to avoiding continuing on the tangent.

“Sure, no problem. What night does your chess club meet?” Morgan continued.

“Tuesdays, in the Library, until five o’clock.”

“Right, well, my afternoons are open since football season is over.” Derek trailed off.

“Oh, right, sorry? I mean, wasn’t there a loss?” Spencer tried to be conciliatory.

“Yeah, Reid, there was a loss, in the playoffs,” Derek shook his head. “Should we try for Wednesdays?”

“Derek? Aren’t you a little busy? Since Hotch is on paternity leave?” Spencer hinted, trying not to overstep. They had reached his office door, nestled in the middle of the science wing, which contained a meager three classrooms and a storage closet.

“Fair point. Well, I will talk with the kids struggling the most, but maybe we start this after the holidays?”

“That would help their performances in time for finals.” Spencer agreed. Derek patted him on the back robustly, and he chuckled.

“Good talk, thanks Reid.” The deputy headmaster hustled back the way he came.

“Good talk.” Spencer Reid called after his superior, staring awkwardly after his retreating form.

Nov. 16, 2016 3:58pm

Emily Prentiss strode into the library with her head buried in her phone, just in time for the monthly staff meeting. She had been ignoring the emails from her parents, obligatory apologies for not being “home” for the coming holiday. She sighed, sitting down with a long screech of her chair against the floor. The arm beside her retracted, causing her to glance around the table. She had inadvertently sat between JJ and Reid. Perfect.

“Alright, looks like we’re all here. Thanks for spending your afternoon with us, but I feel we need to meet early before the break next week. Penelope? Care to start us off?” Derek’s smooth voice gained everyone’s attention, even the mopping Elle Greenaway and tired Mrs. Kyle.

Penelope started, her list of activities and concerns made up most of the meeting. Emily zoned out when it came to the teachers she had little interaction with, unfortunately she didn’t need anymore to worry about at the moment. The enthusiastic voice behind her began and she tilted her head to pretend to listen, still not looking directly at him. Spencer added that he and Derek would be tutoring students in the new year. God, could he be any more noble, this kid was such a boy scout. Emily cleared her throat after Derek called her name, leaving her jealous annoyance fade from her expression.

“Department is solid this semester. I know some of my Shakespeare kids were hoping for a spring play, but Forensics take priority. I am hoping to take them on a day trip to one of the local universities if I find a scholastically pertinent production.” Emily was concise, letting JJ take over.

“Let us know if you need anything for the outing, Emily. Coach Jaraeu?” Morgan wrote as he talked. Emily’s eyes followed to JJ’s, her voice falling over Emily’s tense form like a cherished blanket, warm and comforting. She watched JJ’s mouth without hearing her words, the conspiratory smirk sneaking onto Emily’s face. The meeting continued, the world falling away as Emily silently gushed over her gorgeous girlfriend.

Derek was the last to address the group, reminding everyone about alerting him to any building issues with the students. “Alex and Stephen have a lot on their plates over the next few weeks, so please be willing to help out if they come a knocking. Thanks everyone, good meeting.” Derek Morgan concluded with a proud grin.

As Emily gathered her things, trying not to obviously brush against JJ, Derek chatted quietly with the school counselor, rubbing his sweaty palms on his slacks more than once. Spencer sat back and observed Emily and JJ making small talk that was overly casual, even for colleagues. He cursed himself for not noticing the hints before, his perspective had been too narrow, too focused and he had missed the now obvious message. Emily pushed in her chair, accidentally nicking Spencer’s foot.

“Oh, sorry, there.” Emily said offhandedly. Spencer shrugged it off, keeping his eyes on his yellow memo pad instead. They caught each other’s side glance just long enough to call it a stalemate, Spencer blinked first.

Nov. 17, 2016 12:55pm

Chloe Roycewood had stormed away, still clutching her lunch tray in front of her. The tears stung her eyes as she looked for a safe space to sit in the familiar tables of the cafeteria. Anywhere but with him, Brayden was being impossible today. She soon spotted Lucas Turner and Jake Hernandez, diving beside the large blonde boy for cover, inadvertently bringing the kind guy into her boyfriend’s warpath. She didn’t mean to start a fight, but she needed someone big enough to protect her and Lucas was sweet.

“What’s up Chloe?” Jacob asked quietly, glancing over at the table that she had practically ran away from. Lucas had already turned toward the girl, patting her back in smoothing circles.

“Brayden is being a jerk,” Chloe tucked her hair behind her ear, “Can we just talk about homework or something?”

Lucas and Chloe were both sophomores, so they had more classes together than her and Brayden or her and Jacob. “Uh, isn’t Brayden always a jerk?” Lucas shared a knowing look with his fellow actor, trying not to be insensitive, but failing completely.

“Lucas!” Chloe groaned, hiding her face in her hands. The boys motioned back and forth, finally breaking the silence.

“So, uh, what do you think the Pipe Cleaner will put on the test next week?” Lucas asked, referring to their Chemistry teacher. He knew he had done well as the girl’s back shook with her muffled giggles, she let her head fall onto his meaty shoulder as she slowly relaxed.

From across the cafeteria Stephen Walker was watching the exchange over his third cup of coffee. Elle had caught his stare and followed it to the unusual trio laughing together.

“Since when are Brayden and Chloe unattached at the hip?” Ms. Greenaway asked, impressed.

“About five minutes, she stormed off, perhaps she is finally coming to her senses.” Stephen whispered, keeping his opinions from the nearest table of students. Just as the teachers looked away a collective gasp escaped the tables between Chloe and Brayden Jennings. Someone (obviously Brayden) had thrown a carton of milk at Lucas Turner’s face, Chloe was frantically trying to wipe the liquid from her face as the other students had all backed away, forming a misshapen circle around the conflict.

The teachers were on the move, but not before some words had been exchanged and the two boys had started pushing chests.

“Brayden! Stop it!” Chloe screamed, her voice cracking under the volume. No one had ever heard her raise her voice, let alone at her controlling boyfriend.

“Why don’t you listen to the young lady, Mr. Jennings?” Mr. Walker asked pointedly, forcing his arm between the two boys like a toll bridge. Lucas backed away instantly, taking some napkins that Jake had collected in the chaos. Chloe had crossed her arms over her chest, but she refused to meet her boyfriend’s glaring eyes.

“Beat it, Jennings, or I’ll drag you to the headmaster’s office myself.” Ms. Greenaway spat, spinning Chloe away from the gawking eyes of the nearly silent cafeteria.

“Poor Lucas!” Chloe whimpered, crying into the teacher’s soothing embrace. Elle looked back at Stephen, he nodded, escorting the belligerent junior boy to be dealt with.

Nov. 18, 2016 10:20am

The entire school had heard about the blow up between Lucas Turner and Brayden Jennings, leaving many speculating if quiet Chloe had been messing around behind the arrogant boy’s back. Those who knew Lucas well, knew that wasn’t the case, between the musical and football, he barely kept up his grades. Romance was not something that had crossed his overworked mind. The approaching holiday break and gossip had created a ruthlessly distracted atmosphere throughout the school.

Emily Prentiss had no qualms answering students’ questions about the matter, if it squashed the rumor mill once and for all. She had explained that Brayden had received detention, helping Mr. Anderson clean the cafeteria for the next week. Her senior seminar was oddly wrapped up in the affair, despite it affecting the lesser beings that were their underclassmen.

“Didn’t Mr. Walker have to break up the fight?” Andrew Heathridge asked enthusiastically.

“There wasn’t a fight, Drew. They had just stood up when Ms. Greenaway and Mr. Walker showed up.” Camille explained.

“Wait, Ms. Greenaway was there?!” Lizzie Strauss balked. “Brayden is lucky to be alive.”

“That’s enough Miss Strauss, I will answer your questions.” Ms. Prentiss stood from her resting position leaning back on her desk. “But you will not disrespect the staff of this school, is that clear?”

The classroom grumbled in agreement, Lizzie’s blue eyed stare challenged her teacher’s piercing brown gaze, glibly.

Nov. 18, 2016 3:42pm

“Ah! Here she is, the only sunshine in this dark and dreary cave!” Chef Dave called, grabbing Penelope’s face between his lined palms, kissing her heartily on each cheek. Michel and Cissy stood behind their fearless leader, awkwardly, their arms full with paper sacks.

“You know, I should come down here more often, it’s good for my ego.” Penelope teased, hugging the older man firmly, yet awkwardly with shopping bags hanging from each of her hands.

“Now, tell me, are we going to beat last year?” David said firmly, inspecting the bags’ contents before setting them on one of the many counters lined with boxes. He motioned to the kids where to set down their loads.

“I hope so!” Penelope prayed, “I would hate to see President Strauss’ face if we didn’t continue to further the school’s good name.

“Don’t worry about Erin,” Dave Rossi muttered, “With all the work you do, no one could ever claim that.” Penelope shrugged at the compliment, her pleased grin staying put.

“How many students participated?” Michel asked as they folded the brown paper into neat rectangles. The chef had already finished sorting the foodstuffs from Penelope’s bags, adding their totals to his tally sheet.

“Out of the 216 students currently enrolled, 154 brought in items,” Penelope closed her eyes reciting from her memory, “Though 89 students brought in more than one item.”

“This is phenomenal, between the staff and students we have over 500 non-perishables to drop off at the food bank.” Dave nodded, pleased with their haul. Cissy and Michel shared a shocked expression, hugging with excitement and pride.

Nov. 21, 2016 11:16pm

Aaron felt like his eyes were going to roll back into his head, but the involuntary reaction to his work email account was valid. There were twelve emails, from Regent President Strauss alone, since he had been on paternity leave. The six weeks had flown by in a sleep deprived blur. He had another six weeks until he was due back to school, but he couldn’t leave all matters lie for so long. He chose one from the middle of last week, hoping it was still relevant.

Erin Strauss

To: Aaron Hotchner

Nov. 15 6:47pm

Mr. Hotchner-

I hope you and your family are well. While I hate to take away from the adjustment period, I hope you understand my alarm. It has been brought to my attention that Mr. Gideon fell asleep during a film strip he provided as a supplement to teaching this week. Now, I agree that documentaries are beneficiary, but we have standards at FBI and I hope he can adjust and meet the students’ expectations, if not the board’s.

All my best,

Erin

Hotch knew what film strip she was eluding to, as Jason had been showing it annually since before Hotch was a student in his class. It was a fail safe to cover up his hangover from the anniversary of someone’s death. Now that he thought about it, Jason had never told him the whole story. Either way, it was unprofessional and a rather outdated cover for it. For the first time since Jack’s birth, Aaron worried about how Derek was handling the reigns.

Nov. 22, 2016 5:45am

The alarm kept whining across the room, but the athletic body beneath the sheets rolled away from the annoyance, burying her face in a pillow of ebony. Emily groaned and smiled to herself, there were worse ways to wake up, in fact she couldn’t imagine a better way to do so. This relationship was turning her into a softy, she thought to herself. She stroked JJ’s golden locks out of her determinedly sleeping face, letting the harsh sound fade from her attention.

When Emily’s phone alarm woke them twenty minutes later, they both began the early morning scramble. Since they had stayed at JJ’s there were energy bars and breakfast shakes for breakfast, the coffee was even less satisfying as it was instant packets. But the easy high of watching each other get put together, made the mediocre caffeine worth it. There was always Rossi’s La San Marco when they got to work.

JJ stopped Emily as she lifted her signature lipstick to her mouth, Emily briefly panicking, double checking her make up in the bathroom mirror. She eyed JJ suspiciously before taking another glance at her eye makeup. Then JJ dove in, taking Emily’s still bare lips in a hungry, yet playful kiss. Laughing making the kissing all the more angled and all the more sweet. At some point JJ had hopped up on the bathroom sink, leaning down to continuing the pecking between discussing plans.

“So, your mom is aware you are bringing me home for Thanksgiving?” She verified, warily.

“Yes, Em,” JJ rolled her baby blues.

“And she knows I am a woman?”

“Actually I told her you were an escaped convict?” JJ shrugged, mouthing ‘sorry’.

“How awkward is it going to be, waltzing in to dinner?” Emily’s nerves were starting to show, her thoroughness fading away as she allowed her vulnerable voice to surface.

“Emily, I played sports growing up. I spent years playing professional soccer, let’s just say, no one was surprised.”

“No one? Really?”

JJ bit both of her lips, shaking her head, completely at ease. Her calm broke through to her girlfriend as Emily let out a long deep breath.

“Pennsylvania, here we come?“

“I’ll pick you up after school, four thirty?” JJ verified.

“Four thirty.” Emily kissed JJ cheek quickly, nudging her from the sink as Emily carefully checked the mirror to apply her deep coat of crimson.

4:46pm

It was closing on five o’clock when Derek Morgan sauntered into the decorative hideaway that was Penelope’s office. She sat silently typing on her computer, her back shaking. He couldn’t tell if she had earbuds in until the sob broke from her chest, he crossed the linoleum floor in three easy strides.

“Hey, hey now. What’s going on?” His deep voice, tender in a way that was seldom heard on campus.

“Uh-huh,” Penelope squeaked out, diving into Derek’s soothing arms. Her whole body shook with the emotions she had been holding inside her. The tears streaked her makeup and pooled on to his shirt, but still he held her warm, soft body in his arms. She gasped and stepped away to clear her throat, coughing until she could calm down further. His dark eyes pleaded with her, waiting for an explanation or some signal that this was a fleeting problem, a pain soon to be rid of.

“I was, uh, I was just filling out a report on one of the kids. I noticed some self harm signs with one of the girls and when I followed up, she denied it.” Penelope dried her cheeks with a nearby tissue from atop her desk, the box was swirls of primary colors. Derek leaned back to sit beside her, ignoring the open door and the late hour.

“Do you think she is still at risk?” Derek asked concerned.

“Yes, of course,” Penelope tossed her tissue and sighed, a belly deep groan of a sigh. “I mean, they’re teenagers. It feels they are always at risk, no matter how much money they were born into, they’re just a bundle of insecurities and neglect, mixed with hormones.”

Derek nodded to the side, understanding on a unique level the emotional stressors of the students. “Have you contacted her parents? Does she need intervention?”

“Oh, you know I did.” Penelope’s voice turned, “They said that she was just trying to get attention and that it would be handled.From what I get out of her, nothing has changed, she hasn’t gotten help, it has been two months!”

“That’s why you’re so upset. Because the parents completely are missing the point.” Derek took Penelope’s hand in his, gently stroking her wrist and forearm.

“I know my kids, you know?” Penelope continued while Derek nodded, “She was hiding the cuts beneath jewelry and clothing, Derek. She was not doing this for attention, at least not for attention here.”

“We’ll talk to Hotch, keep the other teachers on guard, but still hands off.” Derek tried to soothe her. “These kids are important to us all, let us help you. Can you do that?”

Finally Penelope’s natural grin returned, “Yeah, I can do that.” She swung Derek’s hand in hers playfully. He used the gentle momentum to pull her to him, framing her within his prone legs. “So, why are you really here, Coach?” She asked his chest, avoiding eye contact.

Derek smiled up at her, with her cat eye classes and her bubble of bangs. He carefully dodged and weaved until he caught her furtive glances. “I was hoping you would let me take you out before the long weekend, but I didn’t want to bring it up when I found you like this.”

He grew quiet, the confidence fading as he waited, the anticipation of her response freezing him, as she shifted from foot to foot holding his hands. She kept looking at him and then looking at their hands, her feet, never one place too long. She let out a stuttered breath, “Like a date?”

“Yes, Penelope, exactly like a date.” Derek kissed her fidgeting hand carefully, his eyes smoldering her into a quiet squeal.

“Okay,” She grinned, her nose scrunching up the way that always melted him. “So, yeah, just give me twenty minutes to wrap up this report and we’ll be on our way. And Derek? Thank you.”

“Anytime, Baby Girl.”

Very Special Thanks to Cassie @mentallydatingspencerreid,

Meg @imagicana , and Loki @jodiewhittakers!!!

@ddreammcatcher @ultrarebelheart @lightbluelester @criminal-anatomy @captainreid @thebadyears @amarislestrange @shaelyn102 @badasprentiss @fl0werb0nes18 @inestava @sam-carter-in-training @wonderboygenius @fortheloveofpearlet @valentina-pendragon-blog @imarockstar45 @chocok22 @cynbx @fairymega @madamredwrites @doctorspencerreidrp @mindsunleashed @dontshootmespence @bookofreid @marvelfanlife @welp-there-it-is @ilikeitwhenyousleepforyouareso @remember-me-forever-silent-angel @original-criminal-fanfics @derpyprentiss @olicia-leeshy @lookwhatyoumademequeue @veroinnumera @sarahkay-19 @sammles27 @lesbian-asajj @teatimewithtiya @braziliangirlonasharkcity

51 notes · View notes

artificialqueens · 7 years

Text

Never Too Old Chapter 4 (Biadore) - China

AN: Hey guys here’s chapter 4. I really enjoyed writing this chapter so I do hope you guys like it. I read the comments and it really warmed my heart, thank you guys so much. Enjoy!

December 2, 2016 6:32 AM

Roy woke up suddenly, he felt Danny’s head resting on his chest again. His head was hurting, and there was a sudden throbbing in his head. He tried to remember what happened last night, knowing that what he’s feeling is being hung over. All he could remember was after their dinner, the seven of them went to a bar that Aaron used to work at. Aaron and Willam kept making Roy drink until he blacked out. The only memory Roy had after drinking his 7th shot of tequila was Danny; just Danny. He wasn’t sure if it was at the bar or on the ride back to the hotel or in their room.

Roy let out a deep sigh and tried to stretch a bit, Danny started moving closer to his body. This wasn’t new, but with Roy’s new feelings for him, this excited him. Roy looked around the bed, the blanket covering the lower half of their bodies, and one of Danny’s legs dangling off the edge of the bed. Roy realized he wasn’t wearing a shirt and so was Danny. His eyes went wide and panicked.

“Holy shit.” He said softly. He immediately looked under the blanket to check if they were both naked. He felt a slight relief seeing himself in his sweat pants and Danny in his boxers. He was sure they didn’t have sex if he’s in his sweats.

“If we had sex you would be naked, you know that Roy.” Danny suddenly said, he rubbed his eyes and gave a soft yawn. Roy felt a bit embarrassed, he probably woke Danny up from cursing and having a mini heart attack.

Roy brushed the hair away from Danny’s face. “I’m sorry did I wake you up?”

Danny looked up at Roy, still clinging onto him. “Kind of, but it’s okay.” He loved the feeling of Roy’s skin on his. He could feel Roy’s chest hair rubbing on his cheek, Roy smelled of alcohol and cigarettes but it wasn’t as powerful as to Roy’s usual scent, something Danny loves about him.

“What happened last night? I seriously don’t remember anything.” Roy said rubbing his eyes.

“Aaron and Willam wanted to drink.” Danny giggled remembering how drunk Roy was that night. “I was with Justin, Shane and Dan while the other two were shoving tequila down your throat.”

Roy trying to remember what exactly happened, but all he could get was himself taking so many shots. Roy chuckled and let his hand fall on his face. “Oh god, I can’t remember anything.”

Danny lifted his head up and looked at Roy, his elbows on the bed. “You kept feeling me up.” Danny said giving Roy a devilish grin.

“What?!” Roy sat up on the bed. His head started spinning fast and almost fell off the bed. Danny immediately grabbed Roy, laughing at him. Danny made him sit properly, he got off the bed and grabbed him a bottle of water from the mini fridge. Danny headed back to the bed and gave the bottle to Roy. “Thank you.” Roy mumbled, drinking the water. “What do you mean I felt you up?”

“I was helping you back to our room and I had to change your clothes.” Danny said sitting next to Roy on the bed. He bit his lip remembering how Roy asked him to strip him naked and Roy drunkenly shoving his pants down to help Danny. “And when I helped you wear your sweats you just grabbed my butt.” Danny could see the shock in Roy’s face, he was trying to avoid eye contact with Danny but Danny just finds this cute. “It’s alright, Babe. I don’t mind as long as it’s you.” He gave a look at Roy. Roy couldn’t help but blush and just smiled at Danny.

Danny nestled next to him and rested his head on Roy’s shoulder. “You know it’s still 6 o'clock, you can still go back to bed.” Roy said softly, looking over to Danny. His voice was husky, Danny could sense the tiredness from it.

“Yeah but maybe later.” He replied. “What about you? I mean you’re probably having the worst hangover right now.”

Roy chuckled, he has to agree since his head was still throbbing and opening his eyes was painful. Roy leaned his head on Danny and closed his eyes. Danny was smiling to himself, he was enjoying how close Roy is to him right now. Danny knows that Roy isn’t clingy, not that he doesn’t like being touched but he isn’t used to it. People always hugging him or always touching him asides from hands, like his waist or thighs. Usually it’s his friends that hover over him and do a lot of physical contact. Shane was always the one trying to get Roy to hug him for fun. If not Shane then it would be Danny. But he knows how to respect Roy’s personal space. Yet, Danny does want to invade it and maybe even do more than just hugging.

Danny smiles at the thought of doing more with Roy, it would be something more if he actually reciprocates Danny’s feelings.

The weight of Roy’s head became heavy, Danny could hear the soft snoring coming from Roy. The younger man couldn’t help but smile at the situation, he loves it when he sees Roy in these moments. Giving in to sleep and admitting that he’s tired, because of the years he’s been with Roy and Shane, Roy never says he’s tired or shows it.

Danny gently lifts Roy’s head and maneuvering his body to lie down on the bed. Danny looks down on him, wanting to drop his lips on Roy’s unguarded ones. It was at that moment, even if the sleep was still in him, but he was awake enough to recognize his love for Roy. Danny was still trying to figure out how fast he fell for the older man, but after the incident of his breakdown a few days ago, how Roy took care of him, and kissed his hand on the start of the trip, he was sure. He was so sure how much love he has for Roy. He was still debating with himself about it, maybe it was just platonic. Looking down at Roy sleeping and recognizing every crease of his face, he felt a pang of emotions on his chest and he was sure it wasn’t platonic. It was confusing for Danny, like a war was happening and he doesn’t know which will win.

Danny positioned himself next to Roy again, lying next to him. He was facing the ceiling, he felt like his emotions are floating in air, right above him. He couldn’t figure out what he was feeling, because he knows things will end badly if his feelings for Roy would get in the way. He doesn’t know how Roy feels towards him, he didn’t want to ruin himself again with this. Roy meant so much to him, but at the same time he was scared. Danny wants to stand up to whatever he feels, but the one thing that scared him was losing Roy. He wasn’t joking when he told Roy that he wouldn’t know what to do if Roy wasn’t there.

The sound of an alarm emerging from Roy’s pants on the floor woke Danny from his thoughts. He got off the bed quietly to turn off the alarm. He found Roy’s pants pooled on the floor and grabbed the phone, turned off the alarm right after. Before Danny placed the phone back, he accidentally unlocked the phone and noticed that his home screen wallpaper was Danny and Dede. Danny couldn’t help but smile at the picture and the memory. Danny was visiting Roy for the first time after the season end of Drag Race. Roy introduced Danny to his dogs, Danny immediately falling in love with them. He grabbed Dede and started singing along with the pup, Dede was howling and barking along with Danny’s melodic singing. It was a good memory for Danny, finally seeing Roy relaxing and enjoying himself. Danny was thankful that he got to spend those days with him and he knows Roy was thankful as well.

Danny locked the phone after and placed it on the bed counter, he plopped back in bed with Roy. Before he could nestle his head on Roy’s neck, he gave Roy a soft kiss on his forehead and smiled at him. Hoping that Roy was having good dreams, he lies back down and lets himself drift off to sleep. He has a whole month to look forward to, and hopefully more mornings where he would wake up to Roy sleeping.

———————————————————————————————————

December 2, 2016 1:25 PM

The morning has past, Roy and Danny woke up together when Shane and Dan kept knocking on their door. The two feeling like they lack sleep since they both woke up really early and Danny wasn’t aware that Roy had another alarm for 7:30 and 8:00, which made Danny very upset. The friends got ready and went to a little restaurant down the street from the hotel and Roy enjoyed it since it had vegetarian options. They went on about how Aaron and Willam shouldn’t have gotten Roy so drunk since he wasn’t really looking very well during lunch. But Roy had to assure them that he wasn’t going to drink that much like that if they’re gonna be traveling.

They all ended up in a coffee shop right after lunch, which is nearby Aaron’s apartment. It was the same situation like last time. Roy, Shane, Dan and Aaron inside the shop while Danny was outside smoking. Willam went off to meet someone and Justin emerging from the bathroom, he decided to sit with Danny outside.

“How you feeling?” Danny asked his friend, taking a drag from his cigarette. Justin looked solemn, he wasn’t sure if he was angry or sad or anything, he just didn’t want to feel too much at that moment. He shrugged at Danny and tried to laugh it off.

“I don’t know, Danny.” He finally said. He buried his hand inside the pockets of his jacket, the weather was getting colder as days were going by. Both friends were trying to get warm, but Danny was being stubborn about it and just braved it.

“At this point I’m not sure what to say about this anymore.” Danny said, finishing his cigarette.

“I honestly still love him.” Justin silently said. He looked down on his shoes and played a little with the snow that got kicked into the sidewalk. Danny looked at him and gave a soft scoff.

“Well I know that. It’s obvious.” He said, he gave his friend a smile and offered a hug. Justin was sunken into Danny’s body, accepting that he needed one. Danny knows how hard it was for Justin to go through something like this. He pulled away gently and placed a hand on his shoulder. “You’re fierce and you know that.”

Justin gave him a weak smile, he wasn’t sure what was going on his head. Danny couldn’t help but feel worried as well. Because he knows Aaron and Justin started off as great friends before diving into a romantic relationship and that it ended badly. Aaron was supposed to get married to Chad but had to call it off because of personal reasons from Chad. Danny swallowed hard at the thought of Roy in that situation as well. Danny was afraid things might end up that way if they do get into a relationship. He wasn’t sure how to feel if he finds out that Roy would be with someone else. It was hard enough already with Jason, but Danny had to stop overthinking things because he doesn’t know what Roy feels towards him. He also had to concentrate more on his friend who needed comfort.

“I’m sorry that your stay here was more of taking care of me.” Justin said, breaking Danny’s thoughts. Danny gave a look at Justin and smiled again.

“Girl, it’s fine. You’re like, one of my best friends. I can’t let you do this to yourself and I know you need someone to be there for you.” He said and looked out on the road. “But you know, I’m glad I was able to be there for you.” He finished looking back at Justin and smiling at him.

Justin finally gave Danny a sincere smile, the usual smile he gives when he’s Alaska and when he’s being a happier Justin. Danny couldn’t help but feel a warmth in his chest seeing that he made Justin smile proudly again. Justin gave a big hug to his friend and gave out a sigh.

“Okay, I’ll try to be better at this.” He said, pulling away. “I mean, if I don’t jump in I might regret it forever. I’ll take whatever he has to offer me.” He said to Danny. Danny froze a bit, replaying the words of Justin. Maybe he should do the same, or maybe he shouldn’t. But he knows that Justin has a point, if he didn’t take a chance with Roy, he might lose it forever. He could take that risk, because he wants to be honest with Roy and he also needed to take that chance.

Danny and Justin stood up and both agreed to go back inside. Danny was still happy that Justin is in a better mood than the past few days. The two rejoined the friends from inside, Danny immediately sat next to Roy and Aaron offered Justin the seat next to him. The friends were in a middle of a conversation, and Danny was trying to tune in to see if he could relate, but the moment his eyes glanced at Roy’s perfect face, he couldn’t seem to turn away.

This time, Danny wasn’t going to look at him for his flawless features. The moment Danny looked at Roy’s smile and his eyes that sparkled, he just felt nothing more but love for him. He was thinking about the great age gap between them, but it couldn’t discourage Danny. He learned from RuPaul that the greatest thing you could do was love yourself and love others, no matter who they may be. Even if Roy was around 14 years older than Danny, Danny still wanted to love him and he wanted to give Roy the love that he deserves.

———————————————————————————————————

December 5, 2016 3:26 AM

The friends spent the remaining days in Pittsburg together, Aaron brought them to a ski lodge where they spent the day playing in the snow. The nights were spent in their hotel where they would all sleep in Roy and Danny’s room to play poker on the floor and Willam would sneak in drinks and get either one of them really drunk.

They already left Pennsylvania and landed in Delaware, Ohio. It was a late travel since Willam couldn’t seem to say goodbye to them and Danny couldn’t stop going to the nearest Domino’s for another slice of pizza. But eventually they left Pittsburgh at around sunset and managed to arrive Ohio safe. The four decided to stay for one night in a small motel and get back to traveling first thing in the morning.

Shane decided to be cheeky again and made Roy and Danny stay in a room with only one bed again. But sadly the last room available had only a single bed. Danny and Roy went on an hour long argument on who sleeps on the bed, since all they did was insist the other would take it. Roy didn’t argue anymore and immediately set up his own bed on the floor, Danny had no choice but to take the bed.

Roy was still awake, he couldn’t seem to sleep. It was soothing to hear Danny’s soft snoring though, Roy couldn’t help but be lulled by the mundane sound. He couldn’t take the separation from Danny, his body was aching for the younger man to cuddle up to him again. Roy had half the mind to climb up on the bed and just wrap himself around Danny, at least he knows he could be safe, both of them actually. Roy stood up from his bed on the floor, he grabbed his jacket, wore his shoes and stepped out on the balcony of their room. He sat down on the small lawn chair and stared out into the sky. The weather was cold, the feeling of the icy breeze caressed his tan skin, Roy inhaled deeply and gently exhaled, he watched his breath float through the air.

Roy contemplated, was he really liking Danny or was he just repressing things about Jason and wanted a distraction. Roy flinched at that idea, he didn’t want to make Danny a distraction, Danny deserves so much more than that. It confuses Roy because when he thinks of Danny, his heart warms up and his thoughts seem to clear up. He wanted to be with Danny, but he felt himself holding back because he didn’t want to hurt Danny. Roy had a hard time being with someone, he has admitted to his friends that he had commitment issues and that Jason was his first serious relationship. He remembers D.J. and Willam saying that if it was that serious why wasn’t he affected by the break up. Roy admits that he hasn’t shed a single tear for Jason, but he knows how much it hurt him. Roy couldn’t say he still had feelings for him, but what he’s been through with Jason was valuable and nothing can take that away from him.

Roy scrolled through the photos in his phone, it was filled with selfies, his dogs and dresses. He also noticed there were a lot more photos of Danny than Jason. Roy scratches his head at the fact, he confessed to himself at that moment that he prefers to have more memories of Danny and Shane than anyone else. He had to admit that being with Danny was a breather for him, even if all that Danny does is get drunk or high, smoke cigarettes and eat pizza. It was worth it for Roy, he wouldn’t want to miss a chance to spend with Danny.

His thoughts were interrupted when he felt a small vibration from his phone.

Danny: [3:48 AM] What are you doing outside? Come in please?

Roy couldn’t help but smile, he kept his phone in his pocket and opened the door slowly, seeing Danny still on the bed. He sees Danny lift his head and rubs it. He gestures Roy to come over and he followed.

“Why are you awake?” Roy said sitting next to Danny. Danny was obviously still sleepy, he could barely open his eyes at Roy.

“I should ask you that question, what are you doing outside?” He tried to shift his position, his hand meets Roy’s, his eyes shot open and grabbed them, they were as cold as ice and Danny started rubbing them. “You’re freezing, Roy.”

“I’m fine. It might just be my hands.” Roy said, feeling the warmth from the friction. He was watching Danny trying his best to warm him up. Danny let go of his hands and grabbed the hem of Roy’s jacket and gently yanked it off. The action was a bit fast and it shocked Roy, his heart started to pick up pace and he swallowed hard when Danny’s face was close to his again. Danny realizing what was happening, he left the jacket half way through Roy’s arms and covered his mouth.

“Oh my god. I’m sorry.” He stammered. “I thought removing your jacket would work since it has a bit of snow in it.”

“No worries, I can do it.” He said. Roy stood up and removed his jacket. Danny couldn’t help but stare at him, he had an admirable physique and he just wanted to remove the rest of Roy’s clothing. Danny had to snap out of that idea, but he couldn’t help it because he’s been wanting to jump at Roy ever since their first night in Pennsylvania.

Roy sat back down beside Danny, he shifted his position to face him. Danny grabs Roy’s hands and rubs them again. “Still cold?” He asked, rubbing them more. Roy gave a soft nod, he looked up at Danny and smiled. Danny felt his cheeks warm up, he lifted Roy’s hands and placed each on his cheeks. Roy’s eyes slowly widened seeing himself hold Danny’s face, it was a bit scruffy from his growing beard but it was warm for Roy.

Danny could still feel the cold from Roy’s hands, Danny was still blushing from the situation. He wanted Roy to pull him into a desirable kiss. Roy locked his eyes on Danny, they both felt this connection at that moment, it’s like Danny could sense that Roy wants the same thing. Roy wanted to kiss him, but he wasn’t so sure, he did have the same sense, that Danny wants it too but maybe he was just overthinking it. Danny felt his breathing go deeper, his eyes were just locked into the chocolate eyes that he’s fallen in love with. They both moving closer to each other, their lips almost touching again. Danny felt like there was music playing in him, the vibrations are escaping his skin and Danny wants more of it. Roy felt his hands pull Danny closer but his lips still hovering over, his hands slid down from Danny’s face to his waist. Roy couldn’t seem to control himself anymore the moment his arms lowered and Danny slid his hands on Roy’s face and neck. Their foreheads leaning on each other, Roy was waiting again for Danny to make a move, he couldn’t help but feel impatient. He was aching already, his lips were craving for Danny’s. He wanted to dive in already.

Roy wants this so badly, he’s already in a situation where he could just do it right then and there. But knowing himself, he’s gonna start questioning the situation again. Which was what he was doing, Danny was waiting for a kiss but Roy was stuck in his thoughts.

“What if he’s just doing this for fun or what if he doesn’t know what he’s getting into.” Roy thought to himself. “I want this so badly but what if I hurt Danny. I can’t hurt him.” Roy’s eyes lingered through Danny’s face. It was perfect for him, his skin was soft, and the growing beard made him look very handsome and his scent. Roy has never admitted it but he loves the way Danny smells, if he’s not bathed in cigarette smoke and alcohol, he has a familiar and pleasant scent that Roy loves.

His eyes concentrated on the plump lips, Danny licked his lower lip making it glisten under the moonlight lazily shining through the windows. Roy swallowed hard at the sight. “Fuck it.” Roy thought, his lips crashed onto Danny’s. It was electrifying for both of them, Roy’s nerves were shocked to life. He never had this feeling before, feeling his body melt under someone’s lips. His hands gently exploring Danny’s back, his body going closer, he couldn’t figure out what he was thinking at that moment. Things went hazy and all he could register was Danny’s lips.

Danny deepened the kiss, one hand on Roy’s nape and the other going through his hair. Danny could sense it, the reaction they both had. It was compatible, like it was meant to happen and that it should happen. It came to a shock for him when Roy plunged in and kissed him and Roy never hesitated at all. Danny felt like Roy was eager, his hands were exploring a lot.

Danny let out a moan through the kiss when he felt Roy’s hands on his bare skin. Roy had his hands in Danny’s shirt and started feeling every inch of skin that Danny had. Roy was eager, he wanted to know more.

Roy felt his body go closer to Danny, their bodies shifted together making Danny lie under Roy’s. Their lips still locked on to each other, Danny started to become restless, it felt intense for him when Roy started going rough on his lips.

He pulled away for a bit, his lips felt a bit sore but he wanted more of Roy.

“Is something wrong?” Roy panted, he couldn’t explain it but he wanted to kiss Danny again. He wanted to explore Danny again. He removed his hands from Danny’s shirt and leaned on the bed. Danny looked up at the older man and caressed his cheek.

“No, nothing is wrong.” Danny smiled at him. His eyes narrowed on the thoughts that started flowing in his head. He bit his lip and looked at Roy again. “Do you find this weird?”

Roy paused a bit, he rested his hands beside Danny’s head. “I… I’ve always wanted to kiss you.” Danny’s eyes went wide and his cheeks turned warm, he felt like Roy was gonna see Danny turn red with the comment. Roy brushed the hair away from Danny’s face and dropped a soft kiss on him again. “Are you okay with that?”

Danny didn’t hesitate to answer, he grabbed Roy’s face again and kissed him hard.

The two were sinking in with each other. Their bodies intertwining. Both of them don’t know that the feelings were mutual, but Danny is in love with Roy. Roy is still figuring out his feelings but he knows that he wants to be with Danny, he wants to find love with him but there’s that one thing that’s making him hesitate. At that moment, them feeling and tasting each other for the first time, Roy doesn’t want to care about anything but Danny.

#biadore #adore delano #bianca del rio #courtney act #milk #alaska thunderfuck #fluff #china #rpdr fanfiction #never too old #canon compliant

54 notes · View notes

iamderreck · 7 years

Text

Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Moonlight (2016)

Created for The Film Experience’s Hit Me With Your Best Shot series.

Previous Entries:

Film: The Wizard of Oz (1939) Double Indemnity (1944) Sunset Boulevard (1950) The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) Gentleman Prefer Blondes (1953) Roman Holiday (1953) To Catch A Thief (1955) Some Like It Hot (1959) The Sound of Music (1965) Mommie Dearest (1981) The Color Purple (1985) Paris is Burning (1990) Death Becomes Her (1993) Jurassic Park (1993) Trevor (1994) [Short] Pocahontas (1995) Jackie Brown (1997) L.A Confidential (1997) The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) Moulin Rouge! (2001) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) Mean Girls (2004) Atonement (2007) Bright Star (2009) Magic Mike (2012) Under The Skin (2013) Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) World of Tomorrow (2015) [Short]

The Batman Films (1989-2012) TV: Orange is the New Black [Season 2] (2014) Daredevil [Season 2] (2016) The Get Down [Part 1] (2016)

–

and we’re back!

Another season of Hit Me With Your Best Shot begins with....

God, I love this poster. That fusion with the Chirons is basically seamless.

I do remember that at first the tagline caught me off-guard. I was like “story of a lifetime? Calm down, A24. The movie probably isn’t even--OH I GET IT YOU FOLLOW HIM THROUGH STAGES OF HIS LIFE.”

I can be a bit dense sometimes.

Plus, my first impression may have been more apt since:

When I re-watched Moonlight looking with an eye for Best Shots, I realised so much little subtle details that I missed on the first time around.

Like what? Well...

Shallow Observations:

What the fuck. I could sell my pure soul to Satan for abs like that and STILL not be able to reach that sort of definition.

I can’t even lie. This felt good. Early 2000′s High School Me only wished he could have done this.

The song, yes, but that hand caressing his chest evaporated any doubts I may have had about Kevin’s motivations.

It’s hard to really describe this from a still but I loved the way Teenage Dream Kevin grazed his thumb across Chiron’s head as he was tending to him. Subtle and intimate.

Runners-Up:

A father figure to save you from drowning.

A neon demon. Lit by harsh light as she heads back into her lair.

A striking way to end the movie and a callback to the title.

But more on this later...

Decided to pair these two together (ha!) for obvious reasons.

The unspoken thoughts, words and desires are between them. In the second shot with the kids pictures on the wall, there’s more that’s keeping them apart than before.

Beautifully composed. Something to hold on to as something kept inside gets released.

Becoming Black. Building that armor.

BEST SHOT:

Disarmed. No need to wear the macho “trap king” Black costume.

Unburdened. No more holding back or carrying the weight of what’s been unsaid. But most of all,

Safe. After hiding him away, he’s free to be Chiron again.

For me, this is the real money shot. Chiron is safe in the arms of the one person who truly understood and accepted him for who he was and not who he tried to be. A great deal of people can’t find such solace but Chiron did.

It’s almost the same way that Kevin held him all those years ago at the beach but this time, it’s different. It’s more quiet and mature. In this shot and in this moment, they have all the time in the world.

While I do appreciate this shot, I STILL have issues with how this was the final scene between the two before the ending. Bear with me.

The last 20-30 minutes of the film is where Chiron goes back to settle those unresolved feelings he buried deep inside of him when he donned his Black persona to survive. He obviously never forgot that night or what Kevin meant to him for all those years.

Kevin didn’t either. One song and the memories come flooding back. He somehow finds a number for Chiron and gives him an opening which Chiron (”Black” began to wash away as soon as he picked up that phone and heard Kevin’s voice) takes with a reckless abandon.

They meet up, connect, and they aren’t strangers anymore. Kevin later asks Chiron what brought him back and gets that characteristically Chiron response of a few words and silence.

Kevin already knows the answer anyway.

Kevin then invites him to stay over at his place for the night. The tension between them lingers and permeates the air to the point where Chiron finally can’t hold back anymore. He’s shaking as he goes back to being the Little boy he’s locked away for so many years and admits in so many words that Kevin has been the only man for him. This revelation lights a fire inside Kevin and then...

It ends with that shot.

COME ON.

How are you going to build up so much sexual tension between these two and end without a proper fulfilment? You may argue that this movie isn’t solely about Chiron/Kevin or sexuality. Ok, I get that. You may also say that this film thrives on subtlety. Fine, I can agree with that too.

While I personally believe that Chiron/Kevin had some sort of sexual encounter/connection that night (Kevin gave off so much vibes to attest to that fact), I still feel as if their reconnection could have been way more rewarding for the audience who traveled along with Chiron for this journey. For instance, we know Chiron isn’t fond of words and that Kevin was the one to initiate that encounter all those many years ago. At the moment in Kevin’s apartment where Chiron uses so few words to tell Kevin how he feels, what if Chiron then grabbed Kevin’s hand and then lead him towards the bedroom? Chiron gets the autonomy that he shied away from when him and Kevin first got together and it would show him being more in touch with that sexuality that he was so reluctant to expose or confront.

I’m not saying that ending on this Best Shot was completely insufficient but I do remember wanting so much more after watching such a enchanting encounter take place.

Ah well. At least someone got satisfied.

#moonlight #hit me with your best shot #the film experience #barry jenkins #trevante rhodes #andre holland #jharrel jerome #ashton sanders #naomie harris

10 notes · View notes

periodicreviews · 7 years

Text

RWBY Volume 4 Episode 7

After being disappointed with the quality of the fight in episode 6, episode 7 explains why. They put the A-Team on Qrow vs Tyrian in episode 7 and the B-Team on Tyrian vs RNJR in episode 6. I get it, it’s simple allocation of resources, but it’s still disappointing that the shift in quality was that noticeable. Weiss’s scenes continue to be solid and logical. But the Oscar scene exhibits another example of an emotional rollercoaster that been popping up too often during this season.

Oscar’s emotions

After watching this scene with Oscar for the first time, I thought it was pretty average. But after watching it again, I realized how weird Oscar’s drastic emotional changes were. He goes from denial “I’ve decided you’re not real”, to panic “I’m talking to a voice in my head”, back to denial “I’m done listening to you”, to confusion “Why did I know that?”, to more denial “oh yeah, I must’ve seen it in a picture”, to despair “I never agreed to anything”, and finally anger “Get out of my head!”

It’s hard to really describe this progression in words so I would recommend replaying it and just watching how his emotional state changes. The whole idea they seemed to want to get across was that Oscar is very unstable emotionally due to the presence of Ozpin. But I feel that it would’ve been more effective had the scene been reduced to just two emotional states.

I hate to pull in Evangelion, but I feel if any show knows emotional instability, it’s Evangelion.

After a series of defeats, Asuka’s pride as “the best” has been badly damaged. She's based her entire identity around being the best Evangelion pilot and it is slowly slipping away from her. She was previously able to keep her feelings buried but battle after battle has worn her out and she is ready to snap as soon as Rei tries to give her advice that comes off as an insult.

The scene starts with 40 seconds of silence, simulating the real awkwardness that one would experience trapped in an elevator with someone they hate. Then, Rei says “If you don’t open your heart, your Eva won’t move”, implying that Asuka’s inability to control her Eva is her own fault. Asuka explodes in anger and doesn’t stop yelling until the elevator doors close, separating them once again.

The viewer doesn’t need to see Asuka wavering between listening to Rei, to denial, to panic, etc. Just Asuka yelling at Rei for a minute is enough to show just how on edge she is.

I get that these two situations are very different because we’ve seen very little of Oscar, whereas at this point in Evangelion, the viewer is familiar with Asuka.

The basic message of the elevator scene is that Asuka is on the edge and really unstable. The scene begins in one emotional state, has some sort of progression, and ends in a distinct place. Oscar’s scene seems like it is supposed to convey the same thing, but it feels like it just goes in a complete circle to get that across and ends with Oscar in seemingly the same state he started in. Again, maybe that was their whole point to show he’s so confused and can’t escape this cycle of emotions, but it’s hard to tell.

Ozpin’s Proof

The only new thing in this scene besides showing us that Oscar is unstable, is showing Ozpin attempting to prove he is real. Ozpin asks Oscar if he can describe the headmaster’s office in Haven. Oscar hesitates but begins to describe a room and ends the description with a confused “Why did I say that? Why did I know that?”

My question is, why does this part of the scene exist? In the context of the conversation, it appears to be an attempt by Ozpin to convince Oscar of his legitimacy. At the same time, it also operates to convince the audience of Ozpin’s legitimacy.

But wouldn’t it be even better if Oscar was describing an object or location that the audience was already familiar with? Or does that not add anything to the scene at all?

The audience is reasonably sure that Ozpin is who he says he is since we don’t really have any reason to doubt besides the fact that he “died”. The voice actor is the same and he seems to talk in a way that is consistent with the character. Several allusions were made in past Ozpin dialogue that there was more to him than meets the eye. The whole gears/clock design of his office and “I’ve made more mistakes than any other human” line while talking with Ruby are the only two examples I can quickly think of. These two examples seem to line up with this possession ability shown here.

But if we’re being a little more skeptical that maybe this voice is Oscar just hearing things or it’s a plot by the enemy to manipulate Oscar, what else is there to convince us that this is really Ozpin?

I think that if they had Ozpin describe an object the audience was familiar with, such as the statue at the front of Beacon Academy, it would’ve helped reinforce that this voice really is Ozpin. At the very least, it would’ve allowed the audience to visualize the statue in their head and strengthen the idea that Oscar is seeing the same statue in his head. Using the statue still wouldn’t “prove” this isn’t an enemy plot, but neither does the headmaster’s office.

I suspect at some point in the future, we will get to see this room on screen by Oscar or some other character and maybe they’ll make some reference that “Oh yeah this really was the room”.

Weiss

The issues with this season in general continue to confuse me since at the same time scenes with Weiss are generally very strong besides the weirdness in episodes 1 and 2.

Her actions in the previous episode at the Schnee Dinner Party have led to a reaction that makes sense given what we know about her father. The improved facial animation is used quite well here and doesn’t come off as over the top. Her emotional state throughout the scene also feels very natural going from shock, anger, sadness, and finally resolve. The scene begins in one emotional state, has some sort of progression, and ends in a distinct place.

This scene benefitted from just being between her and her father. The presence of Ironwood or, god forbid, Jaune as a comic relief character, would’ve lessened the emotional impact. Weiss struggles with her family is something that she should resolve on her own, in my opinion.

Even just the simplest thing of her father starting out the scene right next to Weiss and then progressively distancing himself from her so he can exit the room makes me appreciate this scene even more. His movement has a practical purpose in the scene, but one could argue this growing physical distance is a metaphor for the growing emotional rift between Weiss and her father. I could be reading too much into this but given the high level of quality these scenes have maintained, I think it’s more likely.

Qrow+RNJR vs Tyrian

This was a very solid fight in terms of animation and choreography, maybe the best this season. I thought it was better than the Qrow vs Winter fight, but I realize I lot of people like that fight even though it didn’t do much for me personally.

My only problem with this scene is how much it conflicts with the episode 6 fight between RNJR and Tyrian.

In episode 6, right up until Qrow shows up, it appears RNJR has been so badly beaten that all they can do is stand there as Ruby is about to be stabbed or taken. I realize this was done for dramatic effect which I addressed in my episode 6 review.

But now just a couple minutes later, Nora and Ren jump straight into this battle. You could argue that that couple minutes allowed them to recover a bit or they had some senzu beans saved just for this occasion. You could also argue that they had energy to jump in because they weren’t significantly hurt in episode 6. But if they still had energy, why jump in for Qrow and not Ruby?

Later on, this exchange happens.

Tyrian: "Do you WANT to be taken?"

Ruby: "No! But I can't stand by and watch someone get hurt!"

Except that was literally what happened in episode 6. Right before Ruby is about to be stabbed, we see Nora and Ren on the ground looking on helplessly and we see Jaune standing and looking on until he closes his eyes. I guess technically it’s different because Jaune had his eyes closed so he couldn’t “watch someone get hurt” and Ren/Nora were watching but not “standing.” It just feels like a bad joke when I describe it like that.

In real life, this disconnect between how damaged the fighters are and Ruby’s line that almost seems like a reference to the episode 6 fight is most likely just the result of a communication breakdown. The B-Team went off and animated episode 6 while the A-Team went off and animated episode 7. But now when put side by side, the issues become apparent.

At RTX 2016, I listened to one of the panels on animation discuss how important storyboards were to the process in RWBY. In theory, a fight fully mapped out with storyboards would’ve been shared with both teams and they could tackle each half independently to come up with two pieces that fit together when complete. Maybe it wasn’t fully mapped out, maybe time/budget constraints got in the way, or maybe there was a change halfway through and it unintentionally made the B-Team look worse. Maybe the director isn’t doing a good enough job of overseeing the big picture and making sure everyone is working towards a single goal.

All I have is speculation and hope that the situation improves.

After episode 7 or maybe just due to the winter holiday, I feel like I lost interest in the show. But now that the soundtrack is out, I kind of just wanted to finish the show so I could buy the soundtrack. I’m interested in moving on to episode 8 with its title “A Much Needed Talk”. Did the crew have a half-time locker room pep talk over the holiday and address some of the lingering issues? I’m hoping so.

#rwby #rwby4

1 note · View note