#but i am actually relieved they’re not recasting

[behindthesefangirleyes]

Who’s going to tell Nick: “Love can’t cure a mental illness” now? 😭😫

[angelsfalling16]

From that quote-prompt list...

Have you done "I'm not leaving you here"?

Been needing some angst. XD

💜

Thanks for the prompt! <3 Sorry it took me so long to complete it; I wanted to make it a little bit longer and make it part of my 20fk series. I hope you like it! Also, I just saw that it was your birthday yesterday, so happy belated birthday!! :)

You can also read this on ao3

---

Baz

Simon gets called out at the beginning of class to go on a secret mission for the Mage, and even though it has happened before, it seems to irritate me more today. Why does Simon keep allowing the Mage to use him as his pawn?

He is more than a bomb that the Mage can point at one of his many enemies and allow to go off. He’s a person, a boy, and he doesn’t deserve to be treated like this, like he’s expendable. I don’t understand how I am the only one who sees this. Surely, even Penny would be wary of this. But I guess no one is willing to go up against the Mage like that. (Except maybe Fiona.)

One of these days, he is going to get himself killed, and I will not sit idly by and watch that happen. I have to make Simon see that he’s being used, that he doesn’t have to keep doing this. As soon as this class lets out, I take off in search of Simon. Maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll be able to catch up with him before he gets too far away.

He isn’t in our room, but his scent is strong here, which means he was here not long ago. I rush over to the window and look out of it over the grounds to see if I can see him walking away, but he isn’t there. I’ll have to cast a spell then.

It works instantly, and I can feel Simon. He’s close. The spell starts to pull me towards him, and I take off out of our room, practically flying down the steps. I’m not sure my feet even touch the ground, but I don’t have time to stop and think about that because I have to reach Simon before it’s too late.

The spell is leading me towards the gates. I’m not sure how I’ll be able to get through with one of the Mage’s gates standing guard, but I will do whatever it takes, including spelling the idiot out of my way if I have to.

I don’t have to worry about that, though, because there’s no one there.

That’s strange, I think. There has been someone standing there every day since eighth year began, so something must have happened if the station has been abandoned.

I slow as I reach the gates to open them, and I take a moment to recast the spell to strengthen. It feels like I’m close to him, but it doesn’t feel like Simon has moved any farther away since I initially cast the spell. If there was a threat this close to the school, you would think that the Mage would have raised some kind of alarm, but he doesn’t even have anyone at the gate. It just goes to show how terrible he is at his job.

I continue to follow the pull of the spell, and it brings me to the road, then across it, then to the woods on the other side.

I can hear some sort of commotion now, and I pick up my pace. I have to help Simon. He probably won’t want it, but that’s too bad. I would die a thousand times over in order to protect him. I will not let him die if there is any way that I can prevent it.

When I reach Simon, there is no sign of the Mage of any of his men. It appears like they abandoned him here to handle this threat on his own. It’s unbelievable.

Simon is being surrounded by dozens of goblins, all of whom are vying for his head. He is doing his best to fight them off with his sword, but it isn’t enough. He’s fighting a losing battle.

One of the goblins has managed to get behind him and has a knife raised over him, ready to attack. Before I even have time to think about it, I have summoned a ball of fire in my hand, and I send it soaring in the goblin’s direction. It makes a contact, and with nothing more than a shriek, the goblin catches fire then disintegrates into ash.

Simon spins around to see what happened, and he’s understandably shocked to see me. “Baz?”

“Watch out!” I shout, rushing forward to cast a spell at a goblin that lunged at Simon as soon as he turned his back.

I keep casting spells and sending fire at the remaining goblins, and once Simon recovers from his shock, he turns to fight with me, swinging his sword wildly about, beheading one gobbling after another. He’s brilliant at it, and I almost wish I could stop and watch him in action.

We fight side by side, killing goblin after goblin, but our efforts seem futile because the goblins just keep coming at us, spilling through the trees on all sides, forcing Simon and I to stand back to back. It doesn’t look like we’re going to make it out of here alive, but we can’t give up.

One of the goblins manages to knock my wand from my hand, and I curse under my breath. I can summon my fire without it, but as the goblins close in on us and I start to grow tired from so much use of magic, I’m not sure how longer I can keep doing it.

The goblins manage to get a few good hits and cuts on us, and the smell of Simon’s blood forces my fangs to push through my gums. I could bite them, but goblins are foul and bitter tasting beings. Plus, it would leave me open to attacks from the others if I got distracted by one of them.

“You should go,” I hear Simon say behind me.

“What?”

“You’re stronger than I am. You’ll be able to make it out of here alive. Just go!”

“I’m not leaving you here! You will never be able to defeat them all on your own.”

He’s quite for a moment, and I hear a demon cry out as Simon stabs at the same time that I shoot some more fire at the ones in front of me. It’s getting harder to summon it; my magic is starting to run low. But I won’t run. I won’t leave Simon behind. I could never live with myself if I left him here to die.

“We just have to keep fighting. Someone will come help us eventually.” I don’t even believe it as I say it.

“Who? No one even knows we’re here.”

“What?! I thought the Mage sent you here.”

“He did, but he said that he had a more pressing matter to attend to. There were only a few goblins at the time, and this is my responsibility. It’s me they’re after. Which is why you should go. It’s not you they want. They’ll probably just let you leave.”

If I make it out of this alive, I am going to murder the Mage.

“I’m not leaving you!” I repeat. I look around for my wand, but I don’t see it. The next flame I summon is barely more than an ember, and it only injures the goblin in front of me, rather than killing it.

“I’m sorry, Baz!” Simon shouts, and the tone in his voice worries me.

“Why are you sorry?” I shout back, whirling around to see what he’s about to do.

That’s when everything goes black.

***

When I come to, all I see is trees.

With a groan, I force myself to sit up. There is a pounding in my head, but most of my other injuries have already started to heal. I look around and am relieved to find that Simon is lying beside,

“What happened?” I asked. “The last thing I remember is you apologizing.”

“I went off,” he says, grimacing like he hates to admit it. “I tried not to because I was worried that you would get hurt. That wouldn’t have been a problem if you had run like I told you.”

“I couldn’t leave you there!” I say, angry because he actually believes that I could just abandon him like that.

“Why not?”

“Because I--.” I cut myself off before I can finish that sentence.

“You…what?”

“Nothing. I just didn’t want you to die, alright?” I look away, but then a thought occurs to me. “Why did you care whether or not you hurt me?”

“If you died because of me, I would have a lot worse problems than a horde of goblins attacking me,” he says, but the blush on his face tells a different story.

He’s right, though. If I had died, Simon would have instantly moved to the top of Fiona’s list, right above the Mage, who is coincidentally now at the top of my own list.

“Look,” Simon says, “none of this matters. We made it out alive. Now, we can go back to trying to kill each other instead of nearly getting killed by other things.”

“I don’t want to kill you,” I mutter under my breath as I push myself to my feet, but somehow, Simon hears me.

“What?”

“It’s nothing.” I start to walk away from him, back in the direction of Watford, but Simon stops me by grabbing my arm and pulling me around to face him.

“Baz…. Why did you come out here? Why did you try to help me fight the goblins when you could have let them kill me and been rid of me for good?”

“Because I don’t want you to die,” I hiss. “I actually care about whether you live or not. Unlike the Mage.”

He makes a face at that last remark but apparently decides to ignore it for now.

We’re standing barely a foot apart, and his hand is still on my arm. I could turn and run from him, but instead, I allow him to pull me closer. Because I’m weak.

“For what it’s worth, I don’t want you to die either.”

My breath catches, and my heart skips a beat. I know that it doesn’t necessarily mean that he likes me, but it’s progress. It’s better than him hating me.

He gives my arm another tug, and we’re so close now that I have to tilt my head down to look at him. He brings a hand up to rest gently on my cheek, and I can’t help the sigh that escapes me at his touch. I lean down until our noses brush but stop there, meeting his eyes. The world seems to have disappeared around us, and it’s just him and me.

Whatever happens next could change things forever. I just wish I knew what he was thinking.

“Can I kiss you?” He asks, and then I know exactly what he’s thinking.

“Yes,” I breathe.

Then he kisses me.

It’s soft yet passionate, fast but gentle. His lips part around mine in a sigh, and it is the best thing that I have felt. I feel like I’m flying for the second time today, and I wonder at how Simon can make me feel like this. Like nothing else in the world matters, which feels so true.

I love Simon. He is the most important thing in my life, and I will never let anything bad happen to him for as long as I can help it. I will keep loving him and protecting him until the day I die.

[shihalyfie]

Also, another question (if you dont mind...): do you think there will be also a 02 reboot? Would it be a good ideia or is better to just let it the way it is right now?

I personally don’t want it, especially not if it uses the style of writing the current reboot has right now, in which its priority is far more about plot advancement than it is about characters. Mainly, for a lot of reasons:

I stress a lot that 02 wasn’t a great time for its characters themselves, and that a lot of what everyone striving for was to be happy after said events. Even if it only ends up being a mild rehash, I don’t want to see things like Ken suffering as the Kaiser again (not even in a different universe), because it was so important that everyone find a way to move on. In the case of Adventure, it’s much easier to make a reboot that’s only similar in surface details but is mostly something new because Adventure’s plot was relatively linear, and it’s possible to have the kind of relationship with the original series the current reboot has, but 02 has that kind of hardship as so intrinsically related to it that I’m not sure what you could do with it by taking its surface glosses.

I’ve been pretty blunt about the fact that most of us weren’t really watching 02 for the plot, and the reason the series has so much appeal is because of its character relationships and high thematic value. The bias towards that aspect is way more severe than it was in Adventure (where, again, the plot was mostly kind of linear and there was more emphasis on the “wonder of the Digital World” rather than so much human drama). I don’t want to see these specific characters recasted in a different context, and I also don’t think the series would have any appeal left if you did something completely different with a different style the way it’s being done with Adventure’s reboot.

This is a very personal thing, but one thing I noticed (and one reason I started writing very regularly for this blog) is that, when the reboot started airing, a lot of people would make comparisons with the older characters, but it turned out that people very often misremembered what actually went down in Adventure (ranging from minor misreadings to genuine factual errors). It’s something I don’t necessarily begrudge them for; Adventure is the kind of frustratingly subtle series that you forget a lot of if you haven’t seen it recently, and even more of that was lost in the American English dub, but it nevertheless led to a very frustrating experience where sometimes you’d see people take those reboot characteristics and talk about the original series characters like they’d always been like this or that, when in fact the original characters weren’t like that at all. This problem is bound to be multiple times worse with 02, where the characters are so often accused of being flat and lacking in development (they’re not!!), and 02 also had an even worse subtlety problem and an even more liberty-taking dub, and even the Japanese side of the franchise hasn’t exactly been delicate about handling their characters, and I am terrified that this kind of problem where people think of them inaccurately or badly might potentially get worse, because of a potential reboot take on them that would accidentally validate all of those misconceptions. You have no idea how relieved I was that Kizuna shows the 02 quartet at their best and in a way true to the spirit of the original, because I was really worried about how people would retroactively see them based on their portrayal there. (Also, unfortunately, there are a lot of people who pathologically hate 02 on principle, and even if a potential 02 reboot were the worst anime in the world, those kinds of people would be all too happy to yell “still better than the original!” regardless of anything, and I don’t think I’d have the patience to endure that...)

I honestly would just rather have new material than a reboot of anything. I’m not averse to the concept of a reboot per se, mainly in the sense that I do appreciate the fact that the current reboot isn’t just doing a “worse rehash of Adventure” and is clearly doing its own thing beyond the surface details, but I obviously would have vastly preferred doing something genuinely new. If they want to make a sequel anime to this reboot, why not make up some new characters exclusive to this universe? I think that’d be fun. I know a lot of 02 fans would see this as a dodge or spurn, but this is just my personal, very strong feeling as a 02 fan who thinks that the best thing that can happen with the characters I love so much would conversely be to let them move on. (I was already kind of amused at the fact they already made a few 02 references in the existing series, like Yamato’s bass guitar or Pegasmon.)

I know some people have suggested a reboot to “fix” 02′s plot writing issues, but I love it a lot as it is -- a lot of the things that were “problems” were conversely able to give it a certain flavor you’d never be able to get in a more conventionally written series -- and I think it’s indeed a very flawed series in the sense that there’s no such thing as a perfect Digimon series, nor a perfect piece of media at all, and even if you “fix” one flaw you’re inevitably going to get another. It’s been 20 years and I’ve come to terms with all of the things I didn’t care for as much, so I don’t think it’s all that productive to dwell or fixate on “we should redo this again” instead of appreciating what it did give us 20 years ago and producing newer content instead. I mean, if I want to watch 02 again, I can just rewatch it, and if there’s something I want to explore that canon didn’t give me, I’m happy being a fanfic writer, and this experience of writing this blog has made me realize that it’s incredible how much you can still extract out of this series even 20 years later. I think it’s much more productive to try and cover new territory with things rather than constantly trying to redo the same thing over and over again. I suppose I took the theme of the series a bit too seriously?...

Whether they will actually do a 02 reboot or not, I have no idea. I think they’ve certainly learned their lesson that 02 has a diehard fanbase that hates to see it treated badly (after, ah, recent events), but it just doesn’t carry the same notability and branding that the original series does, and its critically controversial status means that their names and faces don’t do nearly as much by itself. (Reboot merch can sell because people will project the original characters on them, but Miyako and Iori merch especially tends to sell abysmally poorly even now.) I feel like the actual Digimon from 02 sell better than the human characters, to be honest. And it’s a new universe; 02 fans get upset when the juniors aren’t involved in the lives of their seniors when those relationships were a big deal (series about relationships, et cetera), but if those specific relationships don’t exist in the first place, I don’t think most of us really care as much to the point of getting upset because of the omission.

[pikapeppa]

Abelas/Lavellan smut: Ma’av’in

An older piece that I never posted on Tumblr! 

Ma’av’in: an elvhen term, from @fenxshiral​, that literally means ‘my mouth’, but is also a very personal and slightly sexual endearment meaning “I love and desire you so much that my mouth tastes like yours,” but also “we understand each other on such a personal level that you could talk for me”.

In which Athera Lavellan and Abelas sneak into the kitchen for some cake and run into Solas, who is doing the same thing. Oh, elves with a sweet tooth.

Read on AO3 instead. 

************************

Athera poked her head cautiously into Skyhold’s kitchen. “Hello?” she called softly.

When no one replied, she relaxed and turned to Abelas with a smile. “It’s clear. Everyone’s gone to bed.” She scurried into the kitchen and made a beeline for the large icebox that held the leftover sweets.

Abelas followed her at a more decorous pace. As Athera opened the icebox and poked around, he studied the icebox itself with clear disapproval. “This cooling spell is inefficient,” he said. “The magic is slowly dissipating. It will need to be recast in less than a year.” He frowned at her. “Who was the spellcaster here? Someone on your staff is in dire need of training.”

Athera shot him an exasperated look. “Who cares about the icebox? Look at what’s inside!” She enthusiastically pulled out a platter, then removed its metal lid with a flourish to reveal a selection of bite-sized desserts.

Abelas’s disapproval melted into a tiny smile, and Athera’s cheeks warmed with pleasure at having wiped away his frown. She happily set the platter on the table. “Those cakes I gave you were the first kind of Orlesian dessert I tried when I first started hanging out with humans,” she said eagerly. “They all have funny names.” She pointed to each of the desserts in turn. “This is a macaron. Chocolate-raspberry, it looks like, and this one is… a blackberry macaron, maybe? This cake is called ‘le coup de grâce’. It’s made with a lot of brandy - they’ll actually make you drunk if you eat enough of them. This one is ‘la langue fourchue’ - I think it contains dragonthorn, it’s weirdly spicy - and this one is ‘la belle rose’. It’s made with rosewater. That’s what Josie said, at least.”

Abelas listened carefully as she named the various cakes. Then he selected a small square cake with pink fondant icing and a tiny flower on top.

Athera wilted slightly in disappointment; the cake he’d picked was the same kind she’d given to him when he first arrived at Skyhold. “You don’t want to try something new?” she asked. “You’ve had that kind already.”

He settled his gilded gaze on her face. “I am fond of this kind. They remind me of you.”

The tips of Athera’s ears suddenly felt hot. She bit the inside of her cheek to hide her stupid grin, then selected a rosewater cake for herself. “Well, I guess that’s all right then.” She lifted her cake and gently touched it to his. “Cheers.”

“On’enansal,” he murmured, and Athera smiled and popped the whole cake into her mouth.

Abelas, on the other hand, took a small bite of his cake. Athera covered her full mouth self-consciously while she chewed, feeling boorish compared to her lover’s dignified munching.

He studied the cake as he chewed. “What is the name of this confection?”

Athera swallowed hastily. “It’s called ‘la petite bise’. Leliana said it means ‘the little kiss’.” She leaned back against the table as she watched Abelas enjoy his cake. “It’s named after this weird thing the Orlesians do. They kiss each other on the cheeks as a greeting. They even do it to people they’ve only just met.” She remembered the first time someone had greeted her this way; it was one of Josie’s contacts from Val Royeaux, Madame la Marquise of Something-Or-Other, and Athera was shocked when the woman leaned in to bump her cheekbones against Athera’s face. She was still grateful that her surprise had made her freeze like a rabbit instead of flinching away from the Marquise; she didn’t want to imagine the kind of unintentional offence a flinch would have caused.

Abelas’s gaze slid from the cake back to her face. “The little kiss, you say?”

His eyes dropped to her mouth, and Athera bit her lip coquettishly. “Yes,” she confirmed.

He swallowed his tiny bite of cake, then tilted his head thoughtfully. “I would like a demonstration of this strange custom.”

His face was serious, but his golden eyes were warm and playful, and Athera grinned. “All right,” she said. She took a step closer to him and placed her hands on his shoulders, then lifted herself onto her tiptoes and leaned in to graze his sharp right cheekbone with a kiss.

He turned his head at the last second and met her lips with his own.

Athera smiled against his mouth, then wrapped her arms around his neck as he deepened the kiss. His sculpted lips gently coaxed hers apart, and Athera released a shivery little sigh as he lightly nipped her lower lip with teeth.

His unoccupied hand curved around her waist, then up along her back to pull her flush to his body, and Athera happily pressed herself against his chest. He tasted sweet and fruity, a warm reflection of the cake in his hand, and she shamelessly savoured the smooth feel of his tongue caressing her own, the exciting feel of his hard and muscular thigh sliding between her legs-

“Oh,” a surprised voice said, and Athera sprang away from Abelas as the mild-mannered voice continued. “My apologies. I, er, I did not think anyone else would be here.”

“Solas!” Athera gasped. She covered her burning cheeks with her hands and stared at the apostate in complete mortification. The pinkness of his cheeks was evident even in the warm orange light of the hearthfire, and Athera couldn’t decide if she was more or less horrified to find him looking as embarrassed as she felt.

She glanced up at Abelas, and was further ashamed to see him looking as discomfited as Solas. Desperate to smooth over the awkward moment, she focused on Solas again. “What, er, what brings you to the kitchen?” she stammered.

Solas cleared his throat. “I believe the same thing that brought you here,” he said, then gestured at the platter of desserts on the table. “An insatiable taste for all things sweet.”  

At his words, the thought of Abelas’s sugar-laced tongue in her mouth flashed through her mind, and Athera cringed as her face became even hotter.

Fortunately, Abelas seemed to have recovered his aplomb. Unfortunately, his aplomb was far too polite for Athera’s liking. “Please, join us,” the Sentinel said, then gestured to the platter of sweets.

Solas shot her a quick glance, and Athera’s face and shoulders performed some kind of strange combination of grimace-and-shrug. Solas slowly made his way into the kitchen. “Thank you,” he said with a gracious nod to Abelas, then selected a small cylindrical cake enrobed in dark gray fondant and painted with intricate red curlicues.

Solas took a delicate bite of cake, and Athera watched the two men with increasing discomfort as they ate their cakes in excruciating silence. She twisted her fingers together as she desperately cast around for something to say.

“How about the paint job on that, huh?” she finally said with a nod to the elaborate swirls on Solas’s little cake. “Must take a long time to paint each one. No wonder they’re so expensive.”

“Yes, it is its own form of artistry, is it not?” Solas replied eagerly, clearly relieved that she’d broken the silence. “I must admit that this particular kind is my favourite. Do you happen to recall what it is called?”

Athera narrowed her eyes. “That’s the one with the slightly bitter filling, right? I think it’s called ’le souffle du loup.’ It means ‘breath of the wolf’.”

Solas suddenly went still, and Abelas coughed loudly. Athera turned to him in alarm as he continued to cough into his hand. “Are you okay? You’re not choking, are you?”

“He is fine,” Solas said hastily, then patted the coughing Sentinel on the back in an oddly fraternal manner. “Perhaps I will leave you in peace. It was not my intention to interrupt. Not that you were doing anything that - I mean, that is -”

“No, you stay,” Abelas rasped. “Please. I insist. The Inquisitor and I will go elsewhere. It would not do for us to, er - that is, we will take ourselves to a more private, er…”

Solas’s cheeks reddened further, and Athera wondered wistfully if she could just melt into the floor right now. “Yes, perhaps that would be wise,” Solas replied weakly, and Abelas nodded brusquely before taking her hand and tugging her toward the door.

Athera glanced over her shoulder at her apostate friend. “Sorry,” she squeaked. Then Abelas pulled her out of the kitchen.

The Sentinel whispered a quiet word in Elvhen, and goosebumps ran down Athera’s arms as his fade-cloak spell settled over them both. “Come,” he muttered, and he laced his fingers with hers as he led her back up the stairs.

The further they got from the kitchen, the more her humiliation began to melt into humour. She had to bite her lip to stop herself from laughing as they traversed the Great Hall. By the time she had unlocked the door that led up to her quarters, her shoulders were shaking with suppressed mirth.

She opened the door and let Abelas in before her, then closed the door behind them both and slumped back against the wall, her hands clapped over her mouth to prevent an outburst of glee.

“Dread Wolf take me, that was horrible,” she wheezed. “It’s like being caught in the act by an older brother. Oh gods.” Then she finally broke into a storm of nervous laughter.

A reluctant little smile lifted Abelas’s cheeks as she continued to helplessly laugh. “I can see how it would feel that way,” he murmured. He slowly stepped close and brushed his thumb over her smiling lower lip. “We should be quiet now,” he whispered. “I do not think you want to wake the rest of the castle.”

Her laughter hitched in her throat as his knee brushed against her thighs, and her amusement slowly faded and deepened into the foiled desire that had begun to brew in the kitchen. “Maybe you need to find a way to keep me quiet,” she breathed.

She watched with interest as he inhaled deeply, then smiled more broadly at her. “Veraisa,” he whispered. Then he slanted his mouth over hers.

She parted her lips instantly, granting access to his delicious tongue. He still tasted of fondant, a hint of fruit and sugar, and Athera eagerly suckled his tongue as though to steal his sweetness for herself.

Abelas groaned against her lips and pressed his knee between her legs. She gasped and released his tongue as the hardness of his leg rode against the vee of her thighs, sending a shock of sensation from her groin up to her nipples and throat.

His hands were suddenly cradling her neck, his fingers cupping the back of her skull as he stole her breath with another kiss. Athera wrapped her arms around his lean body, pressing her chest against him and spreading her legs more widely to welcome the muscular bulk of his thigh. He delved his tongue into her mouth, and with every lap of his tongue and every gentle pull of his lips against her own, her desire surged like the eager rising of high tide.

Finally Abelas broke their kiss to gasp against her cheekbone, his fingers still tight in her hair. He breathed hard for a moment, the heat of his lustful breaths sending a delicious shiver down her spine. Abruptly he lifted her chin with his fingers and kissed her hard once more, then knelt at her feet.

A mewl of desperate want escaped her lips, and she slapped her hand over her mouth to stifle herself as Abelas slid his hands under her nightshift and peeled her smallclothes down to her ankles. “If this is your idea for keeping me quiet, I’ll have you know it’s a terrible idea,” she whimpered.

Abelas shot her a quick look, and the intensity of his expression stopped her breath again. “Solas was right,” he told her. “I hunger for something sweet. But it is not some mere shemlen confection that I want.” Without further ado, he gathered the fabric of her cotton shift in his fists and pinned her skirts to the wall, then slicked his tongue between her legs.

Heat and pleasure rippled through her blood at the sleek stroke of his tongue. Athera took a shuddering breath and fisted one hand in her hair, then bit the back of her other hand as Abelas diligently stroked her plump folds with his full lower lip before sliding his tongue over the swollen button of her clit.

Her hot breath ghosted across the back of her hand as Abelas continued to work his talented mouth at the apex of her thighs. The lapping of his tongue was voracious yet tender, very much as though he was savouring a favoured treat, and Athera’s thighs began to tremble with the strain of holding herself upright as he stroked his tongue along the length of her cleft, caressed her clit with his lower lip, drank in every drop of her heated arousal from her exquisitely sensitive folds-

She gasped in a faltering breath, then muffled her pleasure against the back of her hand as Abelas brought her to a scintillating peak. Her fingers were twisted painfully in her hair, her teeth pressing ruthlessly into the skin of her hand, but she was numb to it all, numb to anything but the blissful feel of her lover’s tongue between her legs.

Finally Abelas rose to his feet and wrapped her in a tight embrace, his body hard against her own as he kissed her. His lips held the perfume of her own arousal, tangible and earthy evidence of his carnal devotion, and the familiar musky scent drove her desire to a fever pitch.

Her fingers clutched his arms convulsively; she was internally at war, mired in the dual desires to have him right now and to have him as freely and loudly as she liked. Finally she pushed him away, only to tug him toward the stairs up to her bedroom. “I can’t keep up this quiet thing. Let’s hurry,” she urged.

He huffed with amusement as he followed her hasty steps up the stairs. “I admire your discipline,” he said.

She stopped on the first landing, then pulled her shift over her head and flung it to the floor. She shoved her long dark hair back, then faced him boldly. “Trust me, my discipline is hanging by a thread,” she said bluntly, then turned on her heel and ran up the stairs.

Abelas caught her on the second landing. She gasped as he penned her against the wall, his hands cradling her neck as he pressed his forehead to hers. “As is mine,” he breathed. “I want for you so strongly, and it… it is not enough.”

“What’s not enough?” she asked breathily, her fingers digging into his arms.

“Everything,” he replied instantly. “Every moment. Your skin, your taste, your voice. Every moment we spend together until… until the time comes. It will never be enough.”

Athera closed her eyes to block out the reminder of his eventual departure. She knew ecactly how he felt, and it was so incredibly bitter.

She shook her head, then gently pushed him away. She wrenched open the door to her bedroom, then she strode up the final set of stairs and waited impatiently until Abelas drew level with her. Then she flung herself at him in a storm of longing and lust.

He grabbed her naked body, lifting her and wrapping her legs around his waist. She gripped the back of his neck and stared desperately into his eyes as he walked them toward the bed. “Abelas,” she pleaded. “I… maybe I shouldn’t say this, I don’t want you to think poorly of me, but… You make me want to throw this all away. I can’t do that, I know I can’t, and I know you can’t either. But it’s my imagination, it’s a fantasy or an amazing dream or something, and I just…” She gulped in a breath and stroked his face. “I hope you don’t think less of me. I just-”

“No,” he interrupted. Then Athera’s breath left her in a rush as they tumbled onto the bed, his reassuring weight between her legs.

“I understand how you feel,” Abelas breathed. “I…” He pressed his lips together in a seeming struggle for words. “Ma’av’in,” he finally blurted. “This is the only term I can think of. I do not know the word in your language for this. Just know that I feel as you do.” He stroked her cheekbones with his thumbs. “I see this dream, just as you do.”

A scalding tear wended its way down her cheek, and she gasped in a tiny sob as he wiped it away with his thumb. “No more talking,” she begged. “No more, please. Just…” She trailed off and tugged futilely at his strange ancient armour.

He swiftly responded to her wordless command, sliding off the bed and shedding his armour with practiced ease. When he settled himself between her legs again, Athera didn’t hesitate; hesitation left room for words and heartache, and she couldn’t have that right now.

She reached between his legs and grasped his cock, then slid his length against her cleft to spread her heat across him. Abelas hissed in a sharp breath, his fingers tightening in her hair as he rocked against her slick folds; then, with a quick shifting of his hips, he sheathed himself inside of her.

He moaned longingly against her neck, and Athera mewled in kind, a long and pleading keen of pleasure as she savoured the perfect pressure of his cock. He moved against her in a slow and sinuous thrust and she happily arched into him, her hips a perfect cradle to meet the confident curving of his hips.

Within seconds, she and Abelas were moving together in perfect harmony. His palms were hot against her own as he pressed her hands into the bed, her fingers laced and clenching against his own as she lifted her hips to meet his every careful thrust. Even their breathing was synced: they gasped with need as he withdrew, then burst out an exhale as he tenderly delved back into her heat. His cock was utter bliss, the perfect length of steel to fill her up and stroke the pleasure from her core.

When he began to increase his pace, his fingers tightening in her own and his face twisting with rapture, Athera eagerly met and matched him, the hardness of his thrusts wringing her nerves beautifully raw. “Kiss me when you come,” she begged. “Abelas, please-”

“Yes,” he gasped, his hips pistoning into her with passionate zeal until he finally groaned and captured her mouth in a ferocious kiss. He thrust his tongue into her mouth while thrusting his cock as deep as he could reach, and Athera wrapped her arms around his neck, clinging tightly to his lean muscled shoulders as he shuddered in completion in her arms.

He pressed his cheek to hers as he grew still, but his fingers remained clenched between her own, and an overwhelming burst of tenderness bloomed in her chest as he braised the pointed line of her ear with gentle kisses. This perfection couldn’t last, and she knew it; they were doomed to end, and that fate was far too close for her liking. But this ancient warrior filled her heart as readily as his cock filled her body, and she was suddenly desperate to tell him so.

I love you, she thought with a heartwrenching burst of longing. She wanted to say it, it was on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t shake the sense that saying it would only hurt them more.

Then Abelas spoke against her ear. “Ma’av’in, ma vhenan,” he whispered. “I cannot explain it better than this, but I promise you, I feel as you do.”

Athera swallowed hard, then hugged him closer. He might as well have been reading her mind. “Okay,” she whispered. “I’ll take your word for it.”

[rosalyn51]

Photo: Matt Smith and Claire Foy in The Crown by Jason Bell  

Peter Morgan returns with Matt Smith and Claire Foy in The Crown from Netflix

The Netflix show is back for season two with a philandering Philip, the Queen in a standoff and all the drama of Suez. The writer tells Stephen Armstrong about his hit ‘deranged institution’.

The Sunday Times, Oct 29, 2017 

Ardverikie Castle perches on the edge of Loch Laggan in the Highlands of Scotland. Here, on the wild moor, part of its extensive estate, everything is breathtaking — especially the cold. It’s April, but there’s still snow on the ground, and the camera crew are wrapped up like polar explorers. In the distance, Claire Foy trudges towards them in the Queen’s country uniform of battered green coat and thick tweed skirt. She carries a shotgun; nearby, a dead stag sprawls on the ground — a successful kill for Her Majesty.

During a break in filming, Foy stares thoughtfully at the animal’s corpse. “This is just not something that has ever been part of my life,” the 33-year-old Stockport-born actress ruminates. “She shot her first stag when she was 21. It’s funny to try and think how that would feel. And it’s slightly odd to think she was so young when she shot and killed something as beautiful as this.”

The “she”, of course, is Queen Elizabeth II. Foy’s delicate portrayal of the young royal as she comes to terms with her father’s death, takes his throne and learns the job — while experiencing the passions, tastes, desires, dislikes and family tiffs any twentysomething modern goes through — made the first season of The Crown, Netflix’s epic drama of monarchy, a huge global hit.

“The first moment I realised how huge it was came when I went to the Golden Globes — somewhere I’d been roundly ignored before — and suddenly everyone was coming up to me,” Foy recalls. “It was a wake-up call. It means I’m probably more nervous about season two than I was first time out.”

When it launched in November 2016, season one provided small-screen comfort food for a world nervous about the future. In season two, there’s little cheer to be had. In the first episodes, we get a mix of the chaos of the Suez Crisis — the inept fumblings of the PM, Anthony Eden (Jeremy Northam), as he tries to wriggle around the disapproval of the UN and the US to fight a small, doomed war — and an affair between Prince Philip and a ballet dancer.

“I wanted to throw light on Prince Philip in a way that hasn’t been done before,” says Peter Morgan, the writer of the series. It’s safe to say he has achieved his ambition. Philip begins season two in a cold standoff with his wife, resentful of her status and losing himself in a boozy lunch club co-founded with Mike Parker, his philandering private secretary. As Philip’s inappropriate relationship with the (fictional) ballet dancer comes to light — presumably based on the real Duke of Edinburgh’s rumoured fling with the actress Pat Kirkwood — he and Parker are packed off on a lengthy, laddish tour of the Commonwealth.

There, Philip is honeytrapped into revealing his dark secrets — his pro-Nazi sisters, his mother’s mental-health issues, his father’s money troubles — to a flirty journalist. Parker’s wife divorces him for infidelity, and everything descends into something of a free-for-all. Season two also follows Princess Margaret, played by Vanessa Kirby with a beautifully judged mix of vulnerable heartbreak and waspish arrogance, as she joins London’s swinging scene, dates the photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones (Matthew Goode), screams around the streets on motorbikes and finally marries the bloke.

Matt Smith plays Philip in the first two seasons. (There’s to be a full recasting every two seasons to keep the actors age-appropriate, with Olivia Colman taking over as the Queen for series three.) He admits that he initially found the storyline tricky.

“Young people think he’s prone to gaffes,” Smith says. “But actually, when you get into the man ... He was revered in the navy. He is very bright. He is a great moderniser. He is incredibly funny. He’s on the front line. He’s in the scrum — obviously he’s an alpha. And then he has to kneel in front of his wife. It’s the 1950s, yet he’s told to give up his job and name — his kids will take his wife’s. You can see how you’d go, ‘Hang on. I didn’t sign up for that.’”

“I thought everyone knew Philip had an affair,” Morgan says. He seems surprised at my astonishment. “Nobody has identified the people involved, and I’m not going to do that. I’m not a vindictive person. I’ve just done my best to stick to the facts as I have them.”

It’s a technique that has served him well. By the time The Crown finishes, assuming it runs for all six of its planned seasons, he will have written more than 60 hours chronicling modern Britain for stage and screen, with Elizabeth Windsor at the heart of most of them. True, it was The Deal, his speculative account of the Granita dinner at which Tony Blair persuaded Gordon Brown to shelve his leadership ambitions and serve as chancellor, that diverted his career away from Richard Curtis-style romcoms. But it was The Queen and The Audience that sealed his paradoxical fate: to be a staunch republican with little interest in the monarchy — who says of his work, “The approval of rabid republicans or anti-monarchists is important to me” — and yet who somehow seems to be the only person who can write a convincing portrayal of Elizabeth Windsor.

“Maybe it’s because I am an outsider — both my parents were refugees.” He scratches his head. “If you had told me I would be doing this, I would have told you it was mad, hallucinogenic conjecture. I wouldn’t have guessed there would be anything more to say about this countryside woman of limited intelligence who would have much preferred looking after her dogs and breeding horses to being queen. But now I’m here. Life is strange.”

Morgan is also writing what will almost certainly be seen as a definitive historical document with global reach. Netflix is notoriously tight-lipped about viewing figures. But its quarterly results show that at the end of June this year, the site had 104m subscribers worldwide; in the US alone, figures from companies that monitor Netflix viewing suggest 3.5m Americans watched The Crown in the first month.

The show is planned as six seasons. Season three will be the Wilson era; four focuses on Thatcher and introduces Diana. Each season needs up to two years to prepare and film, so we’re on course for series six to air around 2025, by which time the Queen will be 99 and Prince Philip 104. In other words, it is highly likely to coincide with the deaths of one, if not both, of them. Millions around the world will undoubtedly be glued to this as if it were the definitive story of the Queen’s life.

Morgan grins as he contemplates the idea that he would end up as the chronicler of the second Elizabethan age. “Authorised royal biographers are so straitjacketed, deferential, fawning and unadventurous that they can only be after a knighthood — or they’re completely scurrilous and insolent, like Andrew Morton or Paul Burrell.”

Whether through deference or insolence, he rarely names the Queen, usually saying “Her”, with an emphasis that suggests capitalisation. “I think there’s room to creatively imagine, based on the information we have about Her,” he shrugs.

It has been reported that he and his producers were relieved that the BBC was not involved with the project, as that would have inevitably meant co-operation with the palace. Morgan has had no contact with the palace at any stage of his career — “And I think that’s great.” He leans back in his chair. “They don’t comment on what we do, there’s no co-operation, and as a result I don’t owe them anything.

“When people ask if She’s watched it, I say I have no idea and I don’t want to know. I mean, She’s ninetysomething years old and barely knows what the internet is, so I live in hope that She hasn’t seen it, never watches it and doesn’t give it the slightest thought.”

The more Morgan writes about Her, however, the more her survival strikes him as impressive. The Suez Crisis marks the beginning of his sense of wonder. “I think Suez is a metaphor or an echo of what we’ve subsequently seen in Iraq and Brexit: a massive error of judgment by a hubristic prime minister who rushed into an ill-considered decision with catastrophic effects and consequences for the country,” he says. “Iraq is obvious — but Brexit probably influenced this season more.”

He remembers meeting George Osborne and David Cameron at a dinner party just after their 2015 victory and thinking: wow, these guys are going to be in power for a generation. “Seeing the deference with which they were treated by other politicians, there was a unanimous acceptance of their authority,” he says with a short laugh. “If I had opened a book at that point and said, ‘Within nine months, this entire political class will have caused total havoc and a political catastrophe as big as Suez,’ you couldn’t have got the odds for that.

“When you compare that to Her having been in office for as long as She has and the absence of any catastrophic errors ... They’re survival organisms, like a mutating virus. Look at how many prime ministers are wheeled out in coffins, on stretchers, having made fools of themselves: Downing Street is full of sick people. And yet She survives. It is clearly a deranged institution and a completely insane system, but perhaps it’s the insanity that makes it work. Belief in God is so deranged that it makes absolutely no sense, but it holds people together somehow.”

If season two’s treatment of Eden is a guide, Blair and Cameron need to cancel their Netflix subscriptions soon. Eden’s cocky hubris, frantic drug-taking and woeful incompetence are delivered with a withering sneer.

“I’m reliably told Cameron sleeps well at night, which is mystifying,” Morgan shrugs. “Eden definitely didn’t sleep well, he was a broken man. I think Blair manages to sleep well, and we hate him for it. Yet all three are defined by their errors. Cameron will only be remembered for his misjudgment around a referendum, the horrors of which have barely started.” You sense Morgan is looking forward to writing him.

Later, in Lancaster House, the St James mansion that doubles for Buckingham Palace, I ask the producer Suzanne Mackie if she was worried about the public’s reaction to the controversy in season two.

“I think we always worry the British public might reject us because they have preconceptions about the royal family,” she nods. “But I’ve been with the project from the beginning, and I remember Peter saying he wanted it to be deep, dark and truthful. That era and that class were brutal — but I think he finds the humanity and vulnerability in it, and that’s what people see.”

Matt Smith strolls up — he has just finished his final scene as Philip and is preparing to hand over to an as-yet- unnamed replacement.

“It was hard to give up the Doctor —you want to play it for ever. But with this, you know you can’t,” he says. “Peter is writing Thatcher and Diana for season four, and I couldn’t play that era’s Philip, so I’ll just turn into a punter, the way I did with Doctor Who. I’m looking forward to seeing where they take it, to be honest.” He gives a sly smile.

Morgan wriggles a little uneasily when I relay Smith’s praise. “I’m not good at being happy, so if I hear that people like what we’ve done, I’m immediately consumed with fear that they will be let down by what I’m doing now,” he sighs. “I’m a miserable git.

“But in the end, I’m blessed with the richness of the history of the second half of the 20th century. I’m also blessed because the system She is in is so ridiculous and illogical that even just to unpack it from a point of view of reason or logic is such a joy. And that’s why I do what I do and I’ll keep on doing it until they stop me.”

The real-life events of season two

October 1956 The Suez Crisis: the UK, Israel and France invade Egypt, then retreat in defeat 10 days later.

November 1956 Prince Philip opens the Melbourne Olympics.

January 1957 Anthony Eden resigns as PM, citing ill health, after manoeuvres by mutinous Tory MPs. Harold Macmillan takes over.

January 1957 Prince Charles starts school at Hill House.

February 1960 Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones announce their engagement and marry at Westminster Abbey in May.

June 1961 The Queen throws a banquet for the visiting US president John F Kennedy.

November 1961 The Queen visits Ghana.

March 1963 The secretary of state for war, John Profumo, goes before parliament to deny any ‘impropriety whatsoever’ in his relationship with the showgirl Christine Keeler.

June 1963 Profumo admits lying to MPs and resigns.

October 1963 Macmillan resigns, citing ill health. Alec Douglas-Home takes over.

Locations, locations, locations: where the latest series was filmed

Photo: Double whammy: Claire Foy, left, and Vanessa Kirby in ‘Buckingham Palace’ ALEX BAILEY/NETFLIX

Buckingham Palace A number of government offices and stately homes doubled for different parts of the palace — the state rooms were filmed in Lancaster House, in London, now managed by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Wrotham Park, in Barnet, supplied the audience room, and Wilton House, near Salisbury, provided the spectacular ballrooms that hosted JFK’s state dinner.

Royal stomping grounds Ardverikie Castle, in the Highlands of Scotland, provided the exterior, the estate and some of Balmoral’s interiors — the lodge was built in homage to Victoria’s holiday home. Ardverikie has previously been seen in Outlander, Mrs Brown, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and as Glenbogle in Monarch of the Glen. Knebworth House in Hertfordshire filled in the gaps, having already appeared in The King’s Speech and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and doubled as Wayne Manor in Batman. Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire played Windsor with uncanny accuracy – designed, as it was, by James Wyatt, still fresh from working on Windsor itself. Englefield House, near Reading, stood in for Sandringham, and Addington Palace was Clarence House. The Munden Estate in Hertfordshire served as Kensington Palace, and St Albans Cathedral made a rather convincing Westminster Abbey.

London Margaret’s glamorous gadding was shot mainly on the streets of the city: on the Mall and in parts of Mayfair and Soho, says the director Benjamin Caron — it required little CGI. The Gazelli Art House in Mayfair supplied Antony Armstrong-Jones’s exhibition space. And hospital scenes were all shot in Hornsey Town Hall.

Royal Yacht Britannia To capture Britannia’s exteriors, the team flew a camera mounted on a drone over the yacht in Ocean Terminal, Leith. They also used HMS Belfast for the crew quarters and grimier interiors, as well as a giant fake deck constructed on the edge of a cliff in South Africa. The deck hung out over the sea, providing a suitable backdrop for oceangoing scenes on Philip’s world tour.

The rest of the world South Africa provided the locations for the Suez invasion (the team had to build their own tanks), the Queen’s visit to Ghana, and the Amazon — courtesy of the Keurbooms River. South Africa also served as every one of the countries on Philip’s world tour, with the exception of Antarctica, which was shot in a quarry near London. Various locations in Hungary supplied Philip’s links to Nazi Germany.

Everything else Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire hosted the rest of the sets, including the royal family’s private quarters, 10 Downing Street, the gates of Buckingham Palace, the cabin of a private jet and a few rooms on Britannia.

The Crown is on Netflix from Dec 8

[myaekingheart]

I swear, I've been in such a weird mood all night and I hate it. I was fine all day but then my parents came home and just started spewing so much negativity. My mom had a horrible day at work and then she was on the phone with my aunt for a good hour and a half while she was cooking dinner and guzzling wine and they were going off about their problems with work and personal lives and all that shit. And then my dad came home and not that he was being negative or anything-- he was actually in a relatively good mood-- my mom was being dramatic enough for the both of them and then the news was on and they kept commenting on shit like two guys who got arrested for trying to bury a body and the incident in New York City which then got my dad going off on a tangent about how much he loathes marijuana and what it does to people (which I think was what really spiraled me into the bad mood because even though I don't smoke pot, my boyfriend is an avid stoner and hearing my dad say shit like that just reminds me how much shit would hit the fan if he ever found out my boyfriend is a pothead). After that, I feel like my mood has just continued plummetting. My mom was hyperactive like she always is when she drinks so when my uncle went live on facebook at the concert he was at, my mom freaked, had her phone on full volume to watch the thing, then got up off the couch to go into the room but forget the dog was underneath the recliner and nearly crushed him which caused him to jolt over to my direction, nearly knock my TV tray over, and send my water spilling all over the tray and the carpet. Awesome. I can't even begin to tell you how relieved I was once they went to bed. I had a day all to myself but once they came home, it was nothing but chaos and I would've given anything for the nice peace and quiet again. Only problem is that even when they're in bed, that doesn't mean I've escaped from my thoughts. Everything that happened earlier (plus one thing that happened before they came home-- I'm reading Nina LaCour's We Are Okay and it's stirring up a lot of dormant memories of things like grief and loss and depression) got me thinking about all sorts of things and next thing I knew, I was in a depressed slump again overthinking all my trouble points. I can't stop fearing what would happen if my dad found out my boyfriend smoked pot, imagining the scene and just torturing myself with it on repeat. If his roommate and his girlfriend slipped up and had a bong or a pipe in front of my dad and he smelled the marijuana on all of us, he'd throw a fit. He'd scream and tear me away from my boyfriend and hold me back from him and call the police and have all of us arrested, maybe even myself if he thinks I've been smoking it, too. If I slip up or, more likely, my mom does after she's had a few and we're at home, he'll fucking lose it. He'll scream and he'll probably burst into my room and tear it apart figuring if he smokes it then I do, too, and am probably hiding paraphernalia behind his back (which I'm not because I don't smoke). He'd scour my entire room for anything weed-related, though, and probably plan to have me arrested. Once he finds I'm innocent, he'll tell me I can never see my boyfriend ever again, he'll try and get him arrested, he'll cause so much shit, and then he'll do his trademark "storm out of the house and drive around town for an indefinite amount of time leaving my wife and child unsure if I'm even ever coming bacK" routine. He always comes back. By now I should know but I still panic every time he does. He's the reason why I'm so scared of people leaving me when I say or do something they don't like, or we're in an argument. I always think they're gonna do the same thing, just walk out on me. Not only that, but I also keep overthinking death and one death in particular, at that. I'm so angry with myself that even after almost a year, I still find myself feeling disgustingly inadequate compared to my boyfriend's dead ex. He's never given me any reason to think that way but for some reason, I just piece little tidbits of information together and make assumptions that I will never be as good as her. That she will always be the supreme, the ideal, and that I'm just second best, the alternative, the recast of a well-known character who nobody likes as much as the original (*cough cough* Fresh Prince *cough cough*). I hate that I think this way all the time but I don't know how to stop it. I always present myself with so many ridiculous what ifs: What if she had never died? Would they still be together? Would he have gone back to her and lived happily ever after together? What if they never broke up in the first place? What if they weren't meant to break up? What if he still loves her? What if he loved her more than he loves me? What if I'm not good enough as her? Kind as her? Sweet as her? Pretty as her? Fun as her? Loving as her? I almost wrote "smart as her?" but then realized my intelligence is the one thing I don't question here since I already know/just assume I'm smarter than most. Or maybe I'm just overconfident in my intelligence. Whatever. It's better that there's at least one thing I'm not questioning. But either way, all the what ifs outnumber the confidences. I just constantly feel like I'm second best no matter what happens, no matter what anyone says, and I hate myself so much for it. I just always feel like I can never compete with her. It doesn't help that she's dead. Everyone always says only nice things after people die. They never focus on any negative qualities to the point where I begin to question whether she even had any to begin with. Probably not. She was fucking perfect. Meanwhile, the only thing I ever feel confident in saying about myself is that I'm intelligent but even then, sometimes I have some doubts about even that. Sometimes I feel like I need a therapist for all of this, though, I'm so fucking ridiculous. It gets to the point where I find myself sometimes asking "Alright, well we're together now but what's going to happen when we die? When we go to heaven and she's there? Is he going to dump me in the trash can and spend the rest of eternity with her instead? Am I just the earth wife and she's the eternal one waiting for him in heaven? And then leaving me to spend the rest of my spiritual life completely and utterly alone?" It makes absolutely no fucking sense. I'm not even that religious. I gave up on depending on God a long while ago. Very seldom do I pray, pretty much only in desperate moments. I don't go to church, I don't like talking about religion like I don't like talking about politics. A part of me is so cynical that most of the time I just feel content with assuming that once we're gone, we're gone and that it's as simple as that. But then Christianity has been so ingrained into my brain by being raised like that that I involuntarily think about "ghosts" or spirits or whatever-- the souls of the lost-- and what heaven is like if it even really exists. I definitely humor the idea of heaven when I think about my grandpop, at least. I don't want to think about the fact that they threw his corpse into a furnace and that the ashes are now in a little wooden box on my grandma's dresser. I don't want to think about the fact that he's not here anymore and that I can't talk to him anymore or hear him tell me stories about how he used to ride the train with his Cocker Spaniel when he was a kid and get cheese sandwiches and how his dog threw up on the train once and how tickets were only a dime and how he used to work on cars as a Chevy mechanic and how he always knew what tools to use and how to fix everything wrong with a car and the way he'd laugh hysterically every year at Christmastime watching Home Alone and how he loved peanuts and Cheetos and Reese's cups and scotch and Guinness (not necessarily all at the same time) and that he always wanted to go back to Ireland and get a red Corvette-- two things that never happened. When you love someone and you've spent your whole life with them, you don't want to think they're really gone forever and just six feet under or reduced to ash. You want to believe their soul flew off someplace nice and that they're watching over you or by your side or whatever. When it comes to my grandpa, it's hard to think otherwise. When it comes to my boyfriend's ex, it's hard to think at all. I just...I don't know anymore. I don't know what I'm doing or how to feel about anything. I'm so tired of feeling like this. I'm so tired of having her constantly at the back of my mind, trying to separate myself from her but at the same time hating myself for having similarities to her. I remember a time when I even tried to be like her because I'd see my boyfriend talking with her over facebook, giving her attention, and I thought that's what he liked/wanted. I don't regret that phase of my life because it was about more than just that, too, and it was significant to my development as a person, but a lot of it was about that. Maybe that's why I feel the way I do, because I never got closure that he wanted me regardless of whether she was in the picture or not. I went three months without speaking to him, just completely cutting myself off from him, when he was briefly dating another girl because I thought he was happy and didn't want to fuck up anything up between them. By the time we started talking again, I thought something was going to happen between us but then his ex, his major girlfriend (they were together for four years) died and everything went to shit. We didn't speak for months afterward, he shut himself off grieving. We didn't get together until months later-- almost a year after she passed, actually. Meaning that I will never know whether he liked me/wanted me before she died or not. I can guess. I can make assumptions. But I will never know for sure unless, maybe, I ask him, but I don't want to bring it up with him. I don't like bringing it up with him. I don't like him knowing how much this bothers me. I don't like breaking down in tears in front of me over something so irrational and stupid. I don't like going over the same shit again and again, shit I should've gotten over a long time ago. It makes me even angrier with myself, to be completely honest, knowing that these feelings are so hard to shake. I mean, from a rational standpoint I have no reason to feel this way. They broke up, she's passed away, it's history. If he didn't want me, he would've been with me for the past year. But then my mind just always comes up with excuses to trap me in this torturous, harmful state of mind. I'm constantly being pulled in two directions: one being the horrible inadequacy and the other being a desperate craving to be with him, to hold him, to feel him. What's worse is that everything I've been overthinking tonight is related to both of those. I feel inadequate because I can't stop thinking about his ex. I'm so scared my dad is going to find out about the pot and force us to break up, therefore leaving me to never be with him and hold him and hug him and feel him ever again (unless I go behind my dad's back and continue a secret relationship with him once I move out, but that's never good and I don't think I could ever stand to disappoint my dad and slaughter his trust like that, especially since that would only be after he potentially finds out about the weed which would damage his trust in me enough already). But to be completely honest, I think the one thing I hate about all of this more than anything else is the fact that none of this is actually a problem (yet). None of this has happened. It's all in my head. My dad doesn't know about the weed (among other things that are far less terrible because they're not illegal), my boyfriend has not broken up with me or given me any real reason as to why I should feel inadequate or less than compared to his ex. This is all in my head. All of these concerns and fears and anxieties, they're not real. They're not tangible. They're not here. Yet how can something nonexistent be so powerful? How is it that this is all still bothering me so much and leaving me so unhinged and such a disaster? Why can't I just feel okay?

[tendaifmp-blog]

When siblings fall out

A hostile relationship with an adult sibling is a heartbreaking reality for many people. After 20 years of frostiness, Sophia Smith went in search of a solution

Her voice sounded so full of vitriol that I could barely make out what she was saying. ‘Hate’, ‘disgusting’ and ‘never want to see you again’ featured highly, though, as did other choice descriptors for me.

When I put down the phone, I was trembling. The shock of being told – no, screamed at – that someone despises you so much that they want to cut you out of their life for good is upsetting enough. The fact that the someone in question is your sister is even harder to bear.

I remained in shock for a few days, playing the phonecall over and over in my head. Waves of anxiety and anger tore through my body as I recalled the sibling venom. I meditated. I cried. Then I got rational.

My sister’s attitude to family has been pretty negative for the last 20 years, even more so since meeting her husband a few years ago. From our teenage years, she started distancing herself, keen to bow out of landmark occasions and holidays, with my other sister and I picking up the pieces of her often-hurtful behaviour.

Our interaction since then has been transactional and perfunctory. We don’t even bother to send each other birthday or Christmas cards any more.

As I emerged from the tailspin, I came around to thinking that actually, this sibling severing would not be such a great loss to my life. The relationship was causing me nothing but stress, irritation and upset so mixed in with the sadness at the fact I’d failed in the big sister stakes was relief. Huge relief. At least we didn’t have to keep up the exhausting sham of forced happy families.

So instead of attempting any kind of reconciliation, I embraced my sister’s proposal of estrangement. It was surprisingly liberating. Perhaps that’s why estrangement is on the rise, say experts in the field, with one in five families in the UK touched by it, according to charity Stand Alone. Many more, if you include people who are in superficial contact, but ‘emotionally estranged’.

Sibling relationships are highly susceptible to this ‘cold war’ type of disconnection, says Stand Alone clinical chair Dr Jason Robinson, where there is ‘increasing frostiness’ between two people. He believes that sibling abuse – physical and emotional – is rife and ‘massively under reported’ but, as a society, we shrug it off by saying ‘oh, that’s just siblings’.

Rewriting the script

I’m still confused about the events leading up to the relationship breakdown. The trigger – seemingly a few careless comments I’d made that she took exception to – didn’t seem proportionate to her extreme reaction. However, shortly after this when her vitriol transferred squarely to my parents, it became obvious the issue ran much deeper; her grievances with us were locked in the past.

Pages and pages of emails and texts, from my sister to my parents, rewrote the script of our childhood, recasting her as the Cinderella-esque character, sandwiched between two evil sisters and neglected by uncaring parents. It wasn’t a fairytale that I, or the rest of the family, recognised. Frustrated and seething, she then ceased all contact with my parents and sister, too.

This scenario is very common, says Robinson, when communication has become superficial, strained or non-existent. ‘We [all parties, not just the estranged] reconstruct a narrative from miscommunication to defend ourselves and reassure ourselves. But we build these stories in the absence of real feedback.’

It’s now been over a year since that phonecall. I’ve not had any further contact with my sister and it’s been a tough 12 months. Not because I’ve missed her, but because I’ve had to watch my parents wither and fall apart, heartbroken. They’ve been living through my worst nightmare: being told by your child that you have failed them as a parent. Witnessing their pain only served to validate my belief that this toxic influence doesn’t deserve to be part of our family. Throughout the year, I was uncannily at peace with my decision to give up on the relationship.

However, that started to change when our estrangement reached its first-year anniversary. As I realise how effortlessly one year could slip into two, 10, 50… I’m nagged by the thought: do I really want to sleepwalk into that? It’s as if I’m edging towards the point of no return with a devil on one shoulder (‘Go! She’s a bitch! You don’t want her contaminating your life!) and an angel on the other (‘What about empathy? Compassion? Where’s yours now?’).

I’ve decided to try and drown out the devil and listen to the angel. Because no matter how liberating, I can’t escape the reality that cutting a blood tie, particularly in such a blasé way, just doesn’t feel right.

Like it or not (and I don’t particularly like it) she is a link with where I come from and who I am. There’s also the guilt that perhaps, ‘estrangement is one of the tools we have in our toolbox as a family member, but it’s played too often and too quickly,’ says relationship psychologist, author and co-chair of the Council on Contemporary Families, Dr Joshua Coleman.

But where do I go from here?

According to experts, the first step in healing a rift is to honestly consider your role in causing and maintaining it. The next step is to try and see the situation from the other person’s perspective. Dr Coleman, for instance, recommends ‘empathy, empathy, empathy’ because ‘you’re not going to get anyone’s attention if you’re only criticising or blaming them; people don’t come back into families because you’ve shamed them to, usually it’s because they feel more understood. If you have it in you, reach out to them and take responsibility, even if you don’t agree with the intensity of their feelings.’

Struggling to take responsibility or empathise, I decided to explore the conflict using an approach called Constellations, where participants assume the roles of the family members, which I’d heard can help you see a wider perspective. Its premise is that deep emotions usually arise because somethingis out of kilter in the wider family dynamic. The process tries to reach a resolution and, in facilitator and philosopher Robert Rowland Smith’s experience, ‘as a general rule, it’s better to include the excluded; the cost of excluding them is heavy for everybody in the family.’

Fascinating insights

It was a gruelling, fascinating, uplifting, surreal hour. It reminded me that, not long ago, I was fighting the same demons from childhood that my sister is grappling with now – low self-esteem, comparison and catastrophism. Hours of therapy had helped me overcome them and see that, while our parents always wanted the best for us, inadvertently their strong influence left me feeling like I wasn’t good enough if I wasn’t achieving. Whereas I got depressed and blamed myself, my sister reacted by becoming aggressive, and blaming everyone around her.

But I no longer feel angry with her – just sad. I know how painful that headspace is.

Rowland Smith noted how much judgement there was loaded in the way I spoke, particularly about what a family ‘should’ be like. He made me realise that, while I may have worked hard to ease my self-judgment, I haven’t done this in relation to my sister.

Take what I said earlier about her not deserving to be part of our family. What gives me the right to decide that? She is part of my family and her relationships with other family members are just as valid as mine. Any fracture damages the whole. Being open about my sibling situation has prompted many friends to share similar woes of unsisterly (or unbrotherly) relationships, revealing a dark, stigmatised underbelly of family life. It’s comforting to know I’m not alone. They may not have severed the link as dramatically as my sister and I, but they’re very often emotionally distanced; the socially acceptable face of estrangement.

Ultimately, however, as Rowland Smith says, any kind of estrangement is ‘a futile gesture’ because even if you cut someone out of your life, mentally they live on in your head, cropping up in your dreams, worries and preoccupations. He offers me comfort, though, with his philosophy that conflicts like mine can ultimately strengthen the family unit if worked through.

‘If we have a completely successful, unblemished personal life we are slightly weightless, less real. We’ve got to learn to embrace the negative; it’s a stage in building ourselves,’ Rowland Smith points out.

‘Perfect family’ pressure

We’ve also got to relieve the pressure to have ‘perfect families’ and accept the reality of messy human relationships. As Becca Bland, journalist and founder of Stand Alone says: ‘It’s worth being open because there will be a huge number of people who may be experiencing what you’re experiencing.’

I like Rowland Smith’s idea that this annus horribilis could be a catalyst for rebuilding my sibling relationship on more solid foundations. If I could go back to my childhood and treat my sister better, I would. Like many siblings, we spoke to each other in a way that I would never speak to a friend and made no attempt to hide the fact we didn’t get on, or try to see the good in one another. She’s also one of the few people I’ve ever wanted (and tried) to physically hurt in my life.

But alas, as a 40-something grown-up who can’t go back in time, I can only deal with the present. I have often wondered what I would do if I saw her in the street. A year ago, I would definitely have walked the other way. Now, I think, I wouldn’t. I’d move towards her, a small step perhaps, and see what happened. That, at least, is progress.

https://www.psychologies.co.uk/when-siblings-fall-out