#feel like claire to me and i have this weird disconnect when i see her because it just. doesn't fit. and i had that whole rant before i

[arklay]

oh shit i just realised i didn't post my modded claire screenshots here... i made a whole thread on cursed bird app lmao but mayhaps i do a lil recolouring of my favourite ones and post them all nice 🥰🥰

[fairycosmos]

what do you imagine death feels like? you know that feeling when you're extremely tired and worn out and sleepy but you try to keep yourself from falling asleep and then at some point you do without noticing and you don't even realize you fell asleep until you wake back up and you're like fuck i fell asleep. that's what i imagine death to be like. like just falling asleep without dreaming.

i think it massively depends on how you die, but i've also often had the thought that the actual moment would just feel like being really tired too. like the type of tired where you can't even keep your eyes open. just like going to sleep but without the realisation that that's what happened whenever you wake up.

this is a bit of a tangent, but this question reminded me of this brilliant youtuber i used to watch who did a video on what it feels like to die. claire wineland - she had cystic fibrosis her whole life and she sadly died really young a few years back, and before that had had many brushes with death. i think her experience is largely informed by her age and her specific illness, but she had incredible insight and incredible compassion for her viewers who were interested in this subject. heres a link to the vid. and heres some excerpts from it that i think about extremely often.

from 14:30 she describes death feeling like this: everything felt like it was under water. but not like how you see it in the movies (...) it's like your actual thought process is underwater. like you're disconnected from your own thinking. and you start to not have any control over your own mental processes. which is weird because i think throughout our life we don't realise how close we are to losing control of our own brains. (...) a lot of it is on autopilot. and we don't even realise it's on autopilot. and you don't realise it's on autopilot until you start to actually have to man the ship for yourself and you realise you don't even have any idea what the controls even look like or mean, and you feel like you can't man the ship.

from 17:10: it's so freaky to me how much of the way you feel when you're dying is instinctual. and how much of it is your brain trying to save your ass. your brain is scrambling to try and protect you and to make you want to be alive. so it doesn't matter how many times you've thought about death, how many times you think you're okay with it, when it happens every single cell in your body is telling you go back to being alive. to stop this bullshit. pull yourself together. fight for your life.

from 20:00: the whole point of being alive is that you are alive. and that you can make something with this. that we’re in a tangible – we’re literally the manifestation of some kind of underlying brilliance to how everything works, right? we are in physical form. and we’re relating with the physical world around us. but at the same time, we’re consciously relating to the world around us. and consciousness in and of itself is just a physical manifestation, right? it’s neurons firing, it’s chemical synapses, it’s all of that, right? so, that’s incredible! it’s incredible. and you feel that it’s incredible when you’re dying. and that’s the most difficult part about it, is that you’re laying there, and you’re a little kid and you want to hold your mom’s hand, and you want to cry and you want to hold on because you feel how incredible it is to be alive. and not in a corny way, not in a stupid fake inspirational bullshit way, in a genuine i-don’t-want-to-give-this-up kind of way.

[the-sound-of-her-wings]

I Am Not Starfire, And That's Okay

I recently read I Am Not Starfire and I had lots of thoughts, which are under the cut. It is spoiler-heavy and an analysis of the main character, who I find to be a charming, flawed, and incredibly human character.

Mandy is a fascinating character and a great look at a teenage girl who feels ostracized by the people around her and who feels disconnected from her parent. Mandy is by no means flawless, and that's what makes her very interesting. It also makes her relatable.

Mandy starts by talking about how she's noticeably different from her mom, being the "Anti-Starfire". She's a regular kid, can't fly, and doesn't own a swimsuit, while her mom is a superhero, can fly, and always wears bikinis.

On page 11 she mentions "her mom hasn't liked how I looked since I was twelve. She wears less than a yard of fabric every day, yet somehow, I'm the one who's dressing weird". While I understand people who call this slut-shaming, and I'm inclined to agree, but I think it's a little more nuanced than that. The next page reads, "My friend Lincoln convinced me this is the cultural divide that happens between family generations born in different countries or universes. His parents were born in Vietnam." This tells me that the authors intended to point out the difference in dress more as another difference between Starfire and Mandy, and less as a reason to blatantly slut-shame Starfire. I think there's absolutely a conversation to be had about why the authors decided to use this language instead of conveying the point differently. I also think it speaks to how Starfire has more or less been sexualized from inception, and how people look down upon her character because of that. In the context of this book, though, it's one of Mandy's character flaws that I think fits her both as a character and reflects what I've seen from actual teenage girls. Our society coaches us to view women who dress a certain way as less than women who don't and unlearning that takes time and effort. I don't think this comment about her mom should have been put in there by the authors, but I do think it fits in with the values American society in particular teaches about women.

Page 15, 16, and 17 all point to a far more complicated state of existence than Mandy points out within the first few pages. For one thing, Mandy has to deal with people who love her mother and only want to use her to get information about her mom and the other teen titans. This is shown by the "Titan groupies" who ask her to tell Starfire what they say about her. Another thing she has to deal with is the expectation to be a superhero and have powers like her mom, and the questions about who her dad might be. She gains her first real friend, Lincoln, because he tells the people asking about her parentage that they are assholes.

It is revealed that Mandy has a crush on Claire after she gets assigned a group project with her. Mandy is in denial over the crush. She thinks about the fact she's meeting Mandy at the end of the day throughout the rest of the school day, causing her to explode something in Chemistry Class. I find this to be highly relatable and gives her character a softer side to the edginess she desperately tries to portray herself as.

While talking about the project with Claire, it is revealed that Mandy ran out of her SATs and didn't complete them. While Mandy tries to paint this as a cool badass moment, the way the comic artist portrays the scene makes me think Mandy had an anxiety attack. Mandy didn't run out of her SAT because she's some kind of alternative badass who doesn't need to take them. Mandy ran out because she got overwhelmed by the sounds of people chewing and the pressure of the test. While she frames it differently, it's clear to me that Mandy is avoiding taking the SAT again because she doesn't want that to happen again.

When Claire invites her to hang out with her friends, Mandy gets treated like she isn't there, or as some kind of unwanted outsider. The topics they discuss seem to be specifically made to make Mandy uncomfortable, like mentioning how stretchy jeans are only made for fat people, and asking if aliens don't go to college. Jaded by this, Mandy makes up that aliens actually have to go through this huge blood right and battle to the death, but tells Claire's two friends she was joking before leaving. This tells me that Mandy deflects her pain by using humor to cope and has no issue clowning on people who are trying to belittle her for being an alien.

Starfire tries to bring up going to college after this, and Mandy just flees to her room. She hasn't told her mom she didn't take the SAT yet or that she isn't going to college. She feels distant from her mom, which is explained further through a montage of birthdays where she never got her powers. Her mom expects a lot from her, and Mandy thinks Starfire is disappointed about her lack of powers.

Later, Mandy invites Claire over to her house to complete the project they are working on. The Titans are still there when Claire arrives, but she seems to ignore them, as they leave shortly after. Mandy and Claire bond as they continue the project. Mandy reveals to the reader that she's never had a girlfriend, except for one time at sleep-away camp where she kind of dated a girl for four weeks. She didn't tell her who her mom was because she was tired of living in the shadow of a superhero. But the relationship ended because Mandy had lied about who her mom was, and the girl she was dating didn't understand why she would lie. I think this really shows just how much Mandy actually wants to be a normal girl like everyone else, to the extent that she'd lie about who her mom was. Her edgy demeanor at school and around town where her mom is known to be her mom is a defense mechanism to having lived under the shadow of a superhero her entire life.

When it's revealed that Claire took a photo with the Titans at Mandy's house, Mandy is understandable heartbroken, and furious. She thought she had been making a real connection with Claire, but this photo makes her think she's been used, again. Claire seems genuinely baffled by Mandy's reaction to this, thinking little of it. But to Mandy, it is a breach of trust from someone she thought cared about her. I think her angry reaction to Claire makes sense because of this, even if it might have been disproportionate to the offense.

On top of this, Starfire has discovered that Mandy walked out of the SAT and doesn't plan to go to college. After a heated conversation, she runs away, but her mom finds her. And then Blackfire finds her. Turns out the fake story she told Claire's friends earlier in the story was actually true, even though Mandy didn't know it.

Since Claire actually cares about Mandy, she tracks down Lincoln who explains to her why Mandy reacted badly, and that she should probably apologize for taking the photo. Claire also admits that one of the friends from earlier, Deb, actually dared her to take the photo. Claire is a good person at heart, but this action shows that she can still be influenced to do something that would hurt another person. And while she might not have known it would hurt Mandy, Deb probably did.

Starfire and Blackfire fight since Mandy has no powers, but Starfire gets injured causing Mandy to realize just how much she loves and cares about her mom, even though they don't see eye to eye on most things. This finally unlocks her powers, as she's let go of most of the resentment she's held against her mom. She even gets asked for an autograph by someone in the audience after the battle.

The story ends with Mandy training her powers, studying for the SAT, and reconciling with Claire, sharing a kiss, and becoming girlfriends.

I've seen a lot of discourse that frames Mandy as being "not like other girls". I don't believe this framing actually fits Mandy very well. The only girl Mandy ever says she is not like explicitly is her mom. She is the only woman she compares herself too, and the only person who she seems to have a lot of resentment for, aside from people who use her to get to Starfire. Additionally, Mandy falls for someone who is what a stereotypical, normal popular girl is often portrayed as. She's preppy, wears makeup, gets good grades, has friends, and runs a fairly popular Instagram account. If Mandy was extremely into the "Not like other girls" rhetoric, she would've made fun of Claire for all those things. Instead, she admires her for them. Mandy is fat, has acne/freckles, dresses goth, and wears a nose ring. If this is the reason people are identifying her as a "Not like other girls" girl, then they don't understand that trope. Simply dressing differently from your peers, being fat, and hating your mom does not make her the "not like other girls" trope. It actually makes her like other, real-life girls who dress and act similarly, because that's who they are, not because they somehow think they are better than other women.

I'd also make the argument that, fundamentally, Mandy IS different from other girls on the account of having a superhero mother and potentially a superhero father. Her life is completely altered by Starfire's existence as her mom and is likely only relatable to the children of other superheroes and celebrities. She is not like other girls because of her mom, and that still doesn't make her someone who falls in line with the conception of being "not like other girls".

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and hope others do too. I read Mandy as a flawed character who was trying to figure out how to exist outside the Shadow of her mom- and eventually succeeds, by learning to embrace her mom. I would've preferred if Mandy had a slightly darker skin tone, as her features seem black-coded to me and Starfire is also often black-coded. Otherwise, I do think this was one of the best DC Graphic Novels for Young Adults I've read, alongside Teen Titans: Beast Boy and Teen Titans: Raven.

[funny-house]

What do you think happens during the aggressive sequence when opal’s mom was singing her song?

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa I have technically answered this before!! but since it was always always always attached to another post or rushed and summarized blah!! I will make this post

The Official

Opal Wine Mom Flashback Analysis  tw: spousal abuse, drug use, etc 

ok

insert that Always Sunny meme of the disheveled guy at the cork board cause we are going in---

First things first!! Flat answer, then explanation so the answer is: The mom was having memory flashbacks to events within the house, one if not all of them, depicting her being physically abused by her husband, mirror man! A lot of people find that shocking to hear at first, but let me explain I got a lotta proof !!!

Let’s start from literally the tippy top The sequence starts by zooming into the mom’s eye. This represents that whatever is taking place in this flashy sequence is all about her, what she’s been through, and what she’s seen. It’s her perspective. That, combined with how it seems to paralyze her while she’s going through it and her eyes roll to the back of her head until it ends, implies it’s something she’s trying to force away or doesn’t want to think about!

So frame by frame analysis, this is film theory now!!  first mental image: A windowpane at night that resembles jail bars. ( maybe the one seen on the bottom floor of the house in outside shots? ) A parallel to Claire’s window and a symbol for her feeling of being trapped-- something she brings up multiple times in her dialogue. She’s stuck here. She doesn’t want to be here but something is holding her by force and she feels helpless to escape it.  

Next scene! Hard cut to rapidly trying to call on the phone. They type 9-1-1. The music starts to fade into screaming.  Next scene! The mother’s head is in the far corner and the window is seen behind her, a reminder that she feels trapped, as she is literally seen being slapped in the back of the head by a hand. Next scene! A shot of their bedroom(whatever room she’s in!) door as her face melts across the screen Next scene! The mother screaming in a way that flaps her mouth in crazy waves and reveals her teeth and gums exactly like how Claire yells near the end Next scene! She’s shown laying down with pills dancing over her head. Next scene! her face melting below a distortion of multiple shots of her room’s door  Next scene! A whole bunch of stuff in rapid fire!! An array of eyeballs and slapping palms and her face distorting and pills and something being thrown and shattering overlayed on her face and then a zoom out from the prison bar-like windows and more screaming bleh Starting to form a picture here, right? Somebody has been very badly abusing this chic. Bad enough that she’s called the police... probably for a domestic dispute, I bet. You can even see a very nasty wound/bruise on her head, just like she’s depicted being most often hit in her flashback!! On the face!!

And in higher quality than this little picture i resize so it doesn’t take up the screen lol, you can pretty clearly see reddening and discoloring-- that’s not just another dent in her weird shaped head, she’s been hit! No other character has visible wounds on their design like that, not even Claire. So why do I assume it’s Mirror Man?  Well first, this world exists on a little set yknow they make a point of zooming out and showing as much, all their world is that house and that billboard. If someone not in that house was damaging her, they’d have to establish their existence or this would be.... a weird artistic choice tbh? The visual equivalent of randomly changing the subject lmao So it’s gotta be the dad or the grandpa heck-- it might be both, but I think it’s more likely the grandpa is a passively unpleasant company to her. He’s probably very mean and unstable- like he is to Claire, and-- honestly, for reasons i mentioned in a different post-- probably not even her grandpa but someone she was saddled with--  BUT he’s not the person in power. It’s just not likely she’d be afraid for her life enough to call the police on a badly disabled grandpa who can barely move without falling. Above all? He couldn’t be the one holding her hostage in a loveless marriage. 

LET’S jump to the very very start of the short! Every character has a montage of items that represent their problems as people. Mirror Man is obsessed with self image and is shown frustratedly throwing a tissue at a fashion magazine of a ridiculously exaggerated man’s face, the grandpa is shown putting out a cigarette but he’s missing his cigarette holder and just dabbing it on a TV program list, which is reckless and dangerous and shows a little disdain for TV itself. The mom? She knocks her wine..... onto a romance novel. A novel Jack Stauber deliberately drew the cover of himself about loving a serial killer that depicts another exaggeratedly idealized hot dude... strangling a woman whose smiling and dying in his arms. A toxic relationship, I imagine! Looks like someone!!! is having!!    relationship problems, maybe So let’s listen to how the mom describes the problem to her daughter “ It’s a virtuous cycle ” “ And they never repent how I want them to ” “ Our adversaries are in denial ” So it sounds like to me...... not only is she prone to being too forgiving of a certain someone, and that’s why she stays in a horrible situation in a horrible relationship... but that certain someone both gives insincere apologies... and denies that their actions are severe enough to be criticized.

Sound familiar? Maybe it sounds like the insincere apology of a certain mirror loving duderino who insulted his daughter’s ankles and promptly excused himself for having a brain that likes fixing mistakes without ever taking back what he said? And then promptly said this habit of his was uhhhh

“ That’s just a part of my journey, yknow? I’m like a tiny growing thing.” “ Everybody’s so mad at me, like, i’m growing though-- why be so negative? Why do people look at me-- like you probably are right now?” Feign innocence, empty promises to improve, reflect all attempts to convey that you’ve hurt someone? All without even being asked about it, btw lmao? It sounds like someone has something they should be apologizing for...   ( You’ll also notice all the 3 adults have a way of talking as if speaking in general terms-- like they’re talking about everybody in the whole world or to an audience rather than to... a little girl they have a personal relationship with-- but i think that’s just expressing how disconnected and self interested they are. You kinda have to read between the lines to get what they’re saying. )

ANYWAYS this is all my take on it, at least ! Hope it made sense!! If... any of you actually read all this junk lmao

[tiriansjewel]

Rating All The Main Little Women Adaptations

Little Women (1933)-

This is probably my least favorite adaptation, not because it’s strictly bad, but mostly because it’s so old. You can definitely tell that this was made for an audience in the 1930s. Katharine Hepburn plays a very stereotypical, tomboyish Jo, and her performance is good, but in general I’ve only seen this movie one time and don’t have any desire to repeat the experience. However, if you like old films, if you like Katharine Hepburn, or if this movie is simply nostalgic for you, I can see how this would be something you might pop on every now and again. 5.5/10

Little Women (1949)-

So... I have a lot of mixed feelings on this adaptation. This is the adaptation of Little Women that I grew up watching, so I’ve seen it many times, and it has a huge nostalgia factor for me. I really love June Allyson’s Jo. Again, you can tell that this movie was made for an audience in the 1940s, but I connected a lot more with Jo’s character development in this as opposed to 1933. Peter Lawford was okay as Laurie, but I can’t get over the fact that he looks 35 and he’s supposed to be 16. Jo and Laurie do have lovely chemistry in this movie however, and I love the scene when they meet. I quite enjoy Janet Leigh’s Meg, although her character is rather poorly developed. Elizabeth Taylor’s Amy... is... not my favorite. I don’t hate it, but she always felt very artificial to me. Lastly, the decision to make Beth drastically younger than the other sisters was not good in my opinion. She just felt like a little fragile baby bird the whole movie, like they were setting her up to die, rather than being one of the sisters. All in all though, this movie is good if you want to watch a nice feel-good film. It has nostalgia factor for me and it’s definitely a fun movie if you can look past the humanity of the story and get lost in the music and joy. 6/10

Little Women (1994)-

Where to even begin... There are so many things I love about this movie, and so many things I dislike. Firstly: likes. I love Winona Ryder’s Jo. It’s the first time we’ve seen an on-screen Jo portrayed as a human and not just as a tomboy. She is clearly the hot-headed, independent intellectual that we all know, and yet she does have a kindness about her. Claire Danes is easily my favorite Beth in any adaptation. The emotion she shows when given the piano, when she is handed the sick baby at the Hummels, and when she is dying and Jo is at her side... completely unmatched. Her delivery of the line “I shall be homesick for you, even in heaven” always makes me sob. I also love Susan Sarandon’s Marmee, although at times it feels like her character is trying to be a bit of a political statement. Christian Bale as Laurie was also a good decision for the most part. I like that they made Amy an actual child in this film, so that her spoiled brat actions actually make sense, plus Kirsten Dunst is fabulous. I don’t have much positive or negative to say about Meg. I also like the subtle details about the time period, like the insinuation that the March’s were transcendentalists, because it shows that we’re really in the 1860s. All in all, the setting, aesthetic, and soundtrack to the film are very good, and it’s nice to finally see an adaptation that is filmed outside of a set. Now, dislikes. All of the relationships in this film and their portrayals, except for Jo and Prof Bhaer, are... not great. Firstly, Laurie’s proposal to Jo is so weird and creepy and not at all what I imagined reading the book. Sure, the first two proposal scenes from 1933 and 1949 were very overdramatized and obviously acted, but the first thing Laurie does to reveal his feelings to Jo in this film is to kiss her, after she repeatedly says no. Then after this, we get an extremely out-of-breath Christian Bale (rather poorly) delivering lines to an exasperated Jo. The way they film this entire movie also paints Jo to be in love with Laurie, and so when Jo refuses, it feels like she’s just making excuses. I do not like it. The other creepy thing is (again) an obviously adult Laurie bringing an obviously child Amy to Aunt March when Beth is sick. During this carraige ride, Amy remarks that she doesn’t want to die without having been kissed, and Laurie promises her that he will kiss her before she dies. I know this is meant to be “cute” and if Laurie had looked 17 and Amy had looked 14 I probably would have agreed, but Christian Bale looks 25 and Kirsten Dunst looks 12. That entire scene was weirdly sexual and made me very uncomfortable. In addition, John Brooke and Meg full on making out in the front lawn during the family Christmas dinner. I just... did not find any of this charming and wish that these scenes hadn’t been sexualized like they were. Am I crazy for thinking they are? Anyways, besides this, I enjoy this film, it’s a good movie to watch over Christmas or in the spring when it’s raining. I love Winona Ryder with all my heart and soul and this movie will always have a special place in my heart. 7.5/10

Little Women (2019)-

Finally, we arrive at the newest, and in my opinion, best adaptation. Firstly, the cast for this film is amazing, with Saoirse Ronan as Jo, Emma Watson as Meg, Florence Pugh as Amy, Eliza Scanlen as Beth, Timothee Chalamet as Laurie, and Laura Dern as Marmee. This was made with a non-linear narrative, meaning the story isn’t told in order but instead in corresponding scenes that are years apart. At first, the format confused me, as I did not expect it, but on a second viewing, I appreciated how genius and subtle the parallels from scene to scene are, and how they really enhance the movie as a whole. This movie also brings in the most scenes from the book, showing Meg in her marriage to John Brooke, Amy’s buildup to her marriage to Laurie in Europe, and Mr. Laurence and Beth’s fatherly friendship. I feel that, in general, the way the characters were written was very accurate to the book, even if some scenes and plots were slightly changed for time and continuity. Again, Jo has the duality of hot-headed, wild, independence and kind-heartedness seen in the 1994 movie, but I really appreciate the way Jo was written in this movie. I never feel like she sees Laurie as anything more than a brother, and I feel like her transition from an idealistic teenager to an adult dealing with the loss of her sister is way more human and natural. Her relationship with Marmee is much better developed in this movie, which leads to scenes of Jo confiding in her mother, and these felt very realistic and reminded me of my relationship with my mom. Emma Watson is my favorite Meg, and this is probably because Meg’s character is so much better developed. Her shame when telling John Brooke about the dress fabric is palpable, and her discontentedness with being poor is very obvious. In other films, Meg has been pragmatic and has borne her troubles easily, but here we find her struggling, and it makes her more human. I also love how she realizes that she is truly happy with her husband, not money, and I really love how they wrote Meg in general. Beth’s character arc was great, although not as good as Claire Danes’s Beth, in my opinion. I love how they build Mr. Laurence and Beth’s relationship, and I love how you can tell that Beth is just as strong-willed as her sisters, she is just more quiet about it. She has a strong conviction to do what is right, like going to the Hummels, and the scene of her and Jo by the sea was one of my favorites in the film (and in the book!).

Moving on to Amy. I am SO happy that we finally have an Amy that everyone loves. I had always felt frustrated because previous adaptations have focused so much on the earlier parts of the book that viewers only ever saw Amy as a childish little brat who burned Jo’s book, not as a girl who grows up to become an elegant, strong, and graceful woman. Although Florence Pugh is clearly a 24 year old woman, I did not feel a disconnect when she was trying to play a 12 year old Amy. She was so hilarious and endearing, especially as her little crush on Laurie is so obvious. And the typical sister fight between her and Jo is so accurate to real sibling fights (my favorite line being “Don’t look at me like that!” to Beth). You dislike her for burning Jo’s book, but you also want to accept her apology. And her calm, yet firm attitude towards Laurie when they’re adults is beautifully done, especially as she’s so obviously in love with him. In short, Amy finally got what she deserved. Lastly, Laurie. Timothee Chalamet is my favorite Laurie, hands down. First, he looks the part, because he seems to be 19 instead of 35, and also, he acts like a typical teenage boy. When he confesses his love to Jo, you can tell that he truly cares for her and is experiencing his first heartbreak. It isn’t full of lust, rather it’s full of genuine emotion and raised voices and talking over one another, and this was truly needed after so many weirdly overdramatized proposals. You can also see that his love for Amy is real, and that she’s not just a replacement for Jo. Finally, he grows into a man, who has a wife and a child seen at the end of the film, something that I feel has not happened in previous films. In general, I felt like this adaptation did a PHENOMENAL job of portraying human relationships. The way the sisters talk over one another and tussle around the floor and hug one another and are just in relationship with one another is so natural and realistic. Marmee’s relationships with her kids. The romantic relationships are healthy and loving and yes, have chemistry, but aren’t sexualized or over the top. This movie is a new classic, and I plan to watch it many more times. I highly recommend this if you haven’t seen it yet. 9/10

So anyway, if you read this far, wow. I hope you enjoyed my opinions and found them useful. Have a good day.

[zulies-doodles]

Thoughts on Tales of Arcadia: Wizards 

Tl;dr Similar to 3 Below, I thought it was good and really enjoyed it but had some issues with pacing and decisions made with some of the characters

WIZARDS Spoilers below the cut

Things that I liked!

-The world building, I really loved the introduction of the arcane order and the whole plot within Camelot and how the war of the trolls and gum gums played out and also diving deeper with magic in the world

-Douxie is now one of my favorite characters. I love his design and personality and generally really enjoyed him this season. Also seeing him try so hard to become someone to be proud of before finally accepting himself and his ways of doing things made me happy. 

-Archie is just, so good. He’s a dragon cat what do you expect

-I liked seeing more of Morgana and Merlin and having more depth to their characters. Also Merlin and Douxie’s relationships was interesting  and even made me cry a bit. (I do wish we had more time to explore that relationship tho)

-I love that Jim and Claire and others in the trollhunters main cast were brought back cause well, I loved Trollhunters so much and im glad I got to see more of them! Especially seeing more troll Jim in action.

-troll jim troll jim troll jim troll jim

-Claire’s new hair, just thank you. One of my main pet peeves was how odd claire’s hair looked in troll hunters. I’m pretty sure no teenager uses that many hair clips like that, im sorry. 

-I loved that we got to meet Deya, she was a good character

-The visuals in this show were sooooo good, the designs (especially the arcane order cause holy shit) and the opening and the creative ways to show magic and how to fight with it. 

Now onto things I think could be improved/didn’t like much.

-The pacing was soooo off in the second half of the season, like damn? The conflicts after the time travelling stuff felt so random and disconnected all of a sudden and it felt very messy even if it had very cool moments in between. Like 3 below I think wizards would’ve benefited from another season. Have the first season be the time travelling stuff and have the second season be the arcane order conflict. It would also give us more time with the characters all together again, especially since some were thrown in last minute like krel and also maybe even time to explain who the heck that pink-haired girl was???? like seriously???? and also more time with Douxie and Merlin cause from archie’s comment apparently it was supposed to be almost a father-son relationship?? and i really didn’t feel that part of it. Just mentor and apprentice.  

-Steve, just, damn. Like, I get they wanted comic relief but steve wasn’t even funny, they just made him act like an idiot and scream all the time and not even finish off the character development that had been building from before.  

-I did mention i was happy with the art and designs but one thing bothered me, why’d they give lancelot the same model as steve. like its fine if it was just a one-off gag but then he stayed as an actual character so it just became... weird i guess??? I’m not sure why they made the decision

-also Deya’s design was fine except the green color and her haircut, it just didn’t look that great to me personally

-One thing I’m veryyyy unsure about is Jim being human again. Though I like to see him back to himself and it’ll probably make him happy, I’ll have to see what they do with that in the movie to know how to feel about it. Especially since they made such a huge deal about Jim making a huge sacrifice to become a troll and save humanity so they’re gonna have to give us a very good reason to just reverse that decision. ((though, even if it might be a bit of a cop out, I wouldn’t fully mind Jim having troll form when he dons the trollhunter armor and having human form when he doesnt.)) Also, I’m not sure what they’re gonna do with the amulet but I hope he’s still trollhunter?? it just feels odd after having a whole series about him growing into the role to suddenly not have it anymore. I hope they don’t go that route.

Those are my main thoughts for now. In general I enjoyed it but I think it needed things to improve, especially the pacing. Trollhunters is still my favorite of the 3 and in my opinion, the best executed. I ended up liking Wizards more than 3 Below but I think thats mostly cause the finale didn’t make me upset like 3 Below did and I enjoyed the setting a bit more since it felt more connected to trollhunters. Also having Jim and Claire in the spotlight again probably helped too. But I don’t think it was bad, It’s strength was definitely the characters and setting, it just couldve been better in terms of storytelling.

[hellyeahomeland]

“Two Minutes”: an  HYH recap

The episode opens as Carrie takes a we-should-really-retire-this-phrase-but “whore’s bath” in what has to be the most poorly lit bathroom in the history of the universe. For some unknown reason she’s watching the news, which is definitely a thing one should do in a crisis to relieve stress. Side note but throughout the show’s entire run they’ve had a fake cable news station called CNB and I appreciate that it’s stuck it out in this imaginary universe for as long as we have.

Somewhere in the Korengal, Max is very sweaty and very tired and—surprise!—still carrying around that flight recorder in his backpack like a hero. The Taliban soldier stops their mountainside trek for a bit to pee. Max sees a plane (or drone?) flying overhead and begins shouting and runs off. A scuffle ensues, Max kicks him flat on his back. We are surprised Max has it in him but, again, hero. All this comes to a gasp-inducing end when the Taliban shoulder shoots Max from behind in the shoulder, the place where everyone on this show ends up getting shot (literally, left shoulder, what is it with this??). He falls to the ground with a thud.

Back at the White House, HIOHHP steps into the Oval Office to give a short address. Linus touches every inch of his face while he looks on.

HIOHHP: Good evening, America. In the words of Shaggy, it wasn’t me.

It’s over after about 20 seconds and HIOHHP and Linus get the fuck outta there and head into the situation room and everyone gets up when he enters and blah blah blah. They’re having technical difficulties connecting to Kabul station, which I take it is something that happens quite frequently at the CIA.

In Kabul station, Carrie asks Saul—for what is probably the eleventy hundredth time—where is Max and is he alive and who is looking for him?? Carrie has no concept of making herself less annoying while everyone is still wondering why the heck she’s stuck around in Kabul this long but THAT IS WHY WE LOVE CARRIE.

Carrie goes and finds another person to annoy, this time poor Lonnie in the computer room. Lonnie is, what’s the phrase, Totally Over It. She badgers him with questions about the phone calls they’re listening to, wanting to know if there’s been anything about Max. She asks for the keywords in the audio that trigger some sort of automated something or other. The words on this list are the names of various mass transit systems in America (??), countries in the Middle East, and ominous noun/verbs like “bomb,” “murder,” and “attack.” Carrie quite astutely points out that they’re NOT THAT DUMB. Lonnie is basically like, “if you want to add more words, be my guest. Also who are you again??”

Keyword list in hand, Carrie heads back onto the main floor just in time to eavesdrop on the arrival of Vanessa Kroll, who is leading the FBI investigation of Just What the Fuck Happened Out Here, Guys?! We can tell right away that she Means Business because she asks for a room with doors that close. Shouldn’t this be every room in Kabul station? Anyway, Carrie overhears the whole thing and has a bit of an “oh shit” look on her face, probably because she’s been meeting with Yevgeny in secret for God knows how long and oh! the CIA are thisclose (actually they’re finished, but she doesn’t know that) to learning what was actually said at her meeting with Yevgeny a few days ago.

Despite all of this, Carrie could really use some fresh air, so she hops on her motorcycle. I know it’s a stunt double and not actually Claire Danes riding this thing but IT IS SO BADASS THAT CARRIE JUST KNOWS HOW TO RIDE A MOTORCYCLE. And she really does. She weaves in and out of traffic with ease. And she also has to reroute herself several times, which is how we know she’s been to the place she’s going at least a few times before. And where is that? YEVGENY’S PLACE, which would be a cool name for a mid-90s sitcom. Anyhoozles, he opens the door like, “oh, you again?” and she barges right in because—I repeat—they’ve done this before.

Carrie: First things first, this is definitely the beginning of an arrangement, despite what I’m saying now. Yevgeny: I’m so tall that I’m literally leaning my elbow on this china cabinet. Carrie: Remember that time you took away my meds and I went totally crazy and then tried to kill myself? Yevgeny: Yeah, I saved you. Carrie: Ok, well saving me wasn’t the actual favor. What I’m asking for now is. Yevgeny: I’m listening. Carrie: My friend, Max, my ONLY friend, is missing. I think the Taliban have him. I have to save him. Yevgeny: Damn, I’m surprised you have a friend. Carrie: I know you have contacts in the Korengal. Can you figure out where he is? Yevgeny: On one condition! Carrie: Which is? Yevgeny: You need to break into the computer room at the CIA and cut off the surveillance over the region, otherwise my contact is gonna get bombed to oblivion right after I call him. Carrie: First, I’m amused you think I even know how to do something in a computer room. Second, no way! Yevgeny: Ok, then I can’t help you. Carrie: But—! Yevgeny: Look, you came to me. I’m not making you do anything. It’s a phone call, two minutes. All I’m asking for is two minutes. Carrie: Hey, I said that line once… I can’t fucking believe this is happening to me and I further can’t believe how attracted I am to you right now. I need to take a few steps backward otherwise I don’t know what might happen. Yevgeny: I’m just gonna lean over here since I know you like when guys lean. Carrie: FINE. I’LL DO IT. Be ready at 3pm. I hope our watches are synchronized.

Over at the presidential palace, G’ulom is asking Saul and resident hottie Scott Ryan where Haqqani is. He’s convinced the Americans have him. They go back and forth about the 300 Taliban soldiers G’ulom has locked up in a soccer stadium without food or water. He’s gonna murder them all soon, they’re pretty sure. Anyway they all hate each other and Saul doesn’t even have the will to pretend anymore. He straight up accuses G’ulom of crashing both the helicopters so he could become President. Phew! G’ulom says they can both gtfo and they do.

Carrie returns to Kabul station for her interview with Vanessa Kroll, which lasts about 30 seconds and she stops just short of being like, “wait you’re not gonna arrest me now?” Give it time, Carrie. Give it time.

…Because Mike is finally listening to the recording of Carrie’s conversation at the mosque with Yevgeny. And it’s even worse now, mostly out of context, and given that Carrie fully lied on her contact report. Mike says things like “fucking Christ.” Jenna, God bless her, thinks maybe Yevgeny is lying and also totally understands why Carrie would lie about all this. Mike wants to report this up the chain but decides to sit with it a while.

Somewhere in Afghanistan, Max is—thank God!!!!—still alive, asleep on a mattress in some random dude’s house. The Taliban soldier picks up his backpack and takes it into town to sell off some of those Hot American Goodz. But not the flight recorder! No one knows what that weird red box even is for. It’s promptly moved to the back of the shop and put on the junk shelf.

In Kabul, Haqqani remains hidden, also in some random dude’s house. Random dude informs him that G’ulom has a million dollar bounty on his head and if he doesn’t turn himself in he’s gonna murder everyone in the soccer stadium, so Scott Ryan was correct. What a quandary!

HIOHHP is in the Oval Office and Linus has rolled up his sleeves so you know shit is getting real. Saul and Scott inform them that G’ulom is gonna murder all these people without due process, which is totally against their constitution. If that happens, they’ll see a wave of insurgency that will once again completely destabilize the country. Which means more troops. Remember two days ago when we were so close to peace? HIOHHP needs to get on the phone with G’ulom ASAP to make sure this doesn’t happen and he can start by threatening to withhold all aid from them.

He agrees to get on the phone and then has a highly hilarious exchange with Linus where they say the word “G’ulom” over and over and fuck, this show is funny again!

The phone call, however, is a bust. HIOHHP plays right into G’ulom’s hand. He says things like “no” when he really means “yes” and just repeats Saul’s talking points, only less coherently, and by the end G’ulom gets him to agree that they gotta murder all these Taliban soldiers immediately since it will be a defining ~presidential moment~. Linus nearly falls out of his chair. Bet Elizabeth Keane is looking pretty great now, huh? I hope she’s enjoying an extended Caribbean vacation.

It is 14:52 which means Carrie has eight minutes until she needs to do something with computers. Jenna attempts to follow her, but Carrie catches on. Jenna is actually inches away from Carrie’s door when she opens it, asks smartly if she needs anything, before Jenna makes up a lie so bad Carrie could have come up with it. I am starting to feel badly for Jenna because she cannot do literally anything she’s supposed to.

Carrie makes her way to the computer room and once again we are treated to some high comedy. She gets Lonnie to print something for her and purposely causes a paper jam in the computer. Lonnie remains Totally Over It but Carrie causes just enough of a diversion to cut off the surveillance to the Korengal region. I know what you’re thinking: this is so unbelievable! The wires would never be out in the open, unlocked, where just anyone could disconnect them. Unfortunately, I totally believe this is how the CIA operates. And also, Carrie could never do something with a computer! On that point, you are right. Anyway, two minutes pass and she reconnects the wire and gets her stack of paper so it was a pretty good day for Carrie!

Oh wait…. Mike decides to bring his concerns to Saul. Carrie and Yevgeny have met, he recorded their conversation, she fully lied about what they said, and it’s all Very Concerning and he thinks that Carrie may have unwittingly helped Yevgeny assassinate Beau! Saul very evenly says “I am going to have to listen to that tape.”

Haqqani decides that he will turn himself in, only to the Americans, not to G’ulom. Because then he’ll get a trial, and everything always turns out cool when you trust the Americans. He must not know Saul’s not running this dealio anymore. Everyone looks at him like he’s crazy and I must stress that this show making me feel badly for Haissam Haqqani is messing with me.

Later, Saul, having just listened to The Tape, knocks on Carrie’s door.

Saul: Let me cut to the chase. What the fuck’s going on with you and Yevgeny? Carrie: Did Mike brainwash you? Saul: Just answer me. Carrie: Lies, lies, lies, more lies. Saul: I know you just said lies. I heard the tape. Carrie: Fuck, the tape. You heard all of it? Saul: Yes. Look, this is all my fault. Carrie: Yeah, I know. Wait, how…? Saul: It was my idea to bring you here and now look what’s happened. Carrie: Jesus, can we stop talking like I’m a child? Saul: No we cannot! Look, here are the facts. You had a relationship with Yevgeny complicated enough to lie about. We’ve literally been here before. Secondly, he saved your life. Even you would feel indebted to him an eensy bit. Carrie: Ok when you put it that way, it sounds really bad. Saul: You told him about Franny. That you thought you were a danger to her. Is that true? Carrie: Goddammit, Saul, you know that’s my trigger… Saul: You never told me these things! How can we be in a codependent relationship if you keep from me things that you know I would absolutely judge you for? Carrie: I’m still putting the pieces together. I’m not trying to be evasive, I literally don’t remember everything. Saul: Yeah, that’s why you have to leave, pronto. Back to Germany. Say hi to Otto for me. Carrie: Absolutely not, I can’t leave Max behind. I sent him here. I mean, actually you did, but I have a thing where I feel guilty about things that aren’t really my fault. Saul: CARRIE, PLEASE JESUS. You look guilty AS FUCK. You talked Warner into coming here. You knew for an hour after meeting him where he was going. That’s enough time to make a phone call! Carrie: This is bullshit. Saul: Of course it’s bullshit, but the FBI needs a scapegoat and baby, you’re it! Carrie: Idgaf. Doing everything we can to find Max means keeping me here because Yevgeny has a lead, I just talked to him. Let me call him back! Saul: I want… to take a nap.

It’s… a devastating, climactic scene. In the way Saul pleads with Carrie, and she pleads back with him. So layered in all they’ve gone through the last seven seasons and beyond…

He thinks Yevgeny is trying to recruit her, just telling her what she wants to hear. She says that’s not what’s happening. They’re at an impasse and Saul finally just tells her she’s getting on that fucking plane to Germany willingly or in handcuffs. (There’s a third option he doesn’t yet know about.)

Thirty minutes later, Carrie does have her shit and is ready to leave. She smiles at Saul, which is how he should have known something was up. She gets in the car and, would ya look at that! Haqqani is surrendering himself in front of the embassy at this exact moment! Guess we’ll see where that ends up.

Elsewhere, Max has finally woken up. No he’s not ok. He was just shot! But his backpack is gone and he needs it back. The flight recorder! Cut to a long procession of donkeys carrying cargo through a mountainous valley. They have all sorts of stuff strapped to their backs including one red flight recorder! And the Emmy for Best Comedy Series goes to… Homeland!! Much applause!!

At the airport, Carrie wishes Jenna good luck, which is Carrie code for “fuck you and lose my number.” She scans her boarding pass and goes onto the jetway with the other passengers. Jenna continues her string of having one fucking job and failing at it because she departs soon after.

Right on cue, Carrie activates the aforementioned third option and makes a sharp right turn off that jetway, down a staircase, out onto the road below. and into the car of Yevgeny, ever punctual. He gives her a look like “damn I missed you,” before they both speed off.

[clive-owen-and-the-knick]

https://www.popmatters.com/123302-second-sight-the-complete-collection-2496189035.html

Clive Owen is, as they say, a tall glass of water. Ruggedly handsome, with sleepy, sad eyes, a deep rich voice, and cool and charisma to burn, he seems cut from a classic, if anachronistic, Hollywood mold. Combining a sort of arched-eyebrow knowingness with a heavy-browed brooding vulnerability, he is one part dashing leading man, two parts smoldering noir hunk.

I’m not sure the current film world quite knows what to do with him – though he is generally great in everything he’s been in, he always seems slightly out of place or time, like he just time warped from a late'40s noir that would star Robert Mitchum or William Holden. Perhaps the proper vehicles for Owen's talents and persona just don’t exist anymore, though some films have come close – Sin City and the vastly underrated Duplicity come to mind.

So it’s no surprise that his best work, and the role that catapulted him to fame in the UK, came in a millennial British mystery series, in which he plays a brilliant but brooding, sharp but tortured detective. Second Sight belongs to the same rich tradition of British mystery series as Prime Suspect, or Cracker, or any of the superior police procedurals that wash up on US shores on PBS. Conceived and written by veteran TV writer Paula Milne, Second Sight offers few actual genre surprises, but boasts a central character so richly developed (in such a short space) that he almost deserves equal footing with Helen Mirren’s iconic Jane Tennison.

Like Tennison, Ross Tanner is a brilliant DCI with London homicide. In the titular first “series” (oh the confusion trying to get around what to call each installment of these things, which are called series in the UK, but are more like TV movies by US sensibilities), Tanner is called in to investigate the mysterious death of a young college student visiting home for the weekend. He quickly begins to uncover a story more complex and sordid than it first appears (shocking, that!). Further difficulties arise as Tanner begins to experience various ocular disturbances – blurred vision, seeing things that aren’t there, a weird sort of starlight pixilation of the world around him.

A car crash lands him in front of an eye doctor, who diagnoses him with a rare, degenerative disease (AZOOR, an acronym for a lot of medical gobbledygook, but a real condition) of mysterious origins. Though not resulting in total blindness, the main characteristics, as portrayed from Tanner’s point of view with chintzy camera tricks here, are a certain fuzzed out quality to seeing the world, like it’s been made both super-bright and wrapped in gauze. Occasionally, certain things – faces, key objects – will come in to sharp focus. Or Tanner will see things that should be in a certain place but aren’t, his brain completing the image that is expected.

Tanner’s condition is the crux of the entire series, informing the show’s every aspect – and of course giving it its title. On a practical level, his waning eyesight is a seemingly insurmountable hindrance to his investigatory skills… or is it? There are hints, as the series progresses, especially in its later installments, of AZOOR granting Tanner some sort of mystical insight, allowing entry in to the minds of killers, or making connections in the chain of events that other detectives can’t see.

However, Second Sight never really commits to this angle, on how much importance to give to the quasi-supernatural aspects of his vision problem. It always just pulls back (rightly) from fully turning Tanner into some sort of mystic. It wants to have its cake and eat it too, presenting Tanner as both a dogged, rigorously intelligent investigator on the one hand, and as sort of a more dour, haunted Special Agent Cooper (minus the cherry pie and coffee obsession) on the other – solving cases more on luck, intuition and out and out hallucination, than because of any obvious sleuthing prowess. It’s an odd disconnect, the series at war with itself at what it wants its central character to be, and what do with its central gimmick.

The real surprise, though, is that this disconnect almost don’t matter. In fact, it dovetails nicely with what is really the key strength of Second Sight - the noirish mood of the series, and the richly realized psychological conflicts simmering within Tanner himself. Ultimately, the series is about a man at war with himself as the world he is accustomed to dealing with – a stark world of fact and certainty – crumbles away from his grasp.

His struggle to cope pulls him in every direction, and his pride and self-reliance take the biggest hit as he comes to have to depend on his comely new assistant, Catherine Tully (Claire Skinner), to literally be his eyes and support (and confidant, as she is the only one on the force in the know, at first). Throw on top of this custody squabbles with his ex-wife over his young son, and Tanner is slowly cooking to some sort of breakdown. Only focusing on the cases keeps him on track and from flying apart.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the mysteries themselves are incidental – there are four total, including the title series. They are more than mildly intriguing, if ultimately slight. They work best when they complement Tanner’s inner conflicts and personal problems. In this way, the later installments are actually better than the first one, which, though the longest and most complex of the lot, is the weakest.

“Second Sight” (the first, titular “episode”, as opposed to the series as a whole) suffers from too many red herrings, too much padding, and an overly chatty villain. The eventual solution is pretty well telescoped from early on, and only the constant degeneration of Tanner’s vision and his attempts to keep his condition secret keeps the ship afloat.

Much better is “Parasomnia”, the episode which best captures the noirish vibe the show is aiming for and highlights Tanner’s new unconventional investigatory skills. A gory murder, an amnesiac somnambulist femme fatale, and 90 minutes of Tanner slowly losing his mind to insomnia, paranoia and mounting frustration, this is the high point of the series, a riveting mini-film that would actually do well as a theatrical release.

The other two installments are engaging if not quite as enthralling. In “Hide and Seek”, Tanner is promoted to the head of a new crack unit of homicide, tackling stubborn and/or sensational cases. The first is a cold case of a murdered violinist, the unsolved status of which is a black eye on the face of the London PD. Meanwhile, Tanner and Tully’s relationship starts to buckle under the weight of his condition (how no one else notices on the staff that their chief is blind is beyond me – a great running gag if deliberate, a brutal oversight if not)

“Kingdom of the Blind” strains for political and personal poignancy with the case of a murdered black community leader, a decrepit old white supremacist, and Tanner’s finally coming to terms with his professional and personal life. The series ends here (for now), on an ambiguous note, Tanner striding forth into a blurry, hazy future (there are talks of reviving the show as a feature film, though details are… blurry for now).

Second Sight is finally collected in one DVD set a good decade after it went off the air. Previous releases of the individual installments had no special feature, and this has not been rectified with this collection, which is as bare bones as it gets. Spread out over five discs, the programs are slightly grainy, which actually enhances the look and feel of the show. I would have wanted something, anything, with Clive Owen talking about his first big starring role, before Hollywood came a calling.

[eisforeidolon]

Episode: Back and to the Future

I get why, thematically, they chose that song for the previouslies that kick off the final season. However, from my perspective I just do not think it actually works at all.  It is far too sedate for the action it’s recapping and the scene it cuts into.  The juxtaposition of such different paces is just ... odd.

I guess I'm supposed to feel all sad and shit from the lingering shots of dead!Jack's burned out eye holes?  Maybe if he'd had a personality other than being an amorphous shifting blob of unbelievable power and permanent intellectual infancy I was supposed to care about because of the number of times they had the other characters say he was their son/family/awesome.  As is?  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I wish I could say I was surprised that the veritable army of animate corpses making a beeline for the Winchesters and Cas just … somehow … let them escape and run away.  I'd have been a lot more surprised if the writers had actually bothered to do the work to get the characters out of the corner the last finale put them into, at this point.  Then there's the bit where the writers shove some nonsense into Dean's mouth to try and make it seem like this whole thing with Chuck isn't a sudden random asspull to go for the most absurdly overpowered villain they could think of for the last season.  Totally believable, oh yeah.

Although the idea of a sewer running through a graveyard including right to the wall of a crypt does not exactly seem likely to me, I do actually give the writers points for having that not actually work as an escape route.  Also awarding some points for them remembering that as an angel, Castiel should be able to see demons.

As other people have already pointed out, considering what he did to the Novak family and how haphazardly he handled Claire, especially?  Him bitching about any other creature defiling somebody's corpse is pretty fucking hilarious.  Though I'd possibly be more sympathetic if demon!Jack didn't already show a 500% more interesting personality in thirty seconds than actual!Jack did in two seasons.  So far as I’ve been concerned, the only think Jack has really had going for him is Alex, so Alex as a different character, even a demon, I’m calling a win.

I honestly do not get the decision of trying garner fan nostalgia by bringing back ghosts from previous seasons if they're just going to arbitrarily make them kill anyone at random for kicks.  Would it have been that hard to have shown “Bloody Mary” killing one person who might have had a secret where someone died?  Because I could buy it for one of those teen girls, but not both.  Or limiting the “Woman in White” to attacking men along highways who might possibly be unfaithful?  Maybe we're supposed to believe that they're all just so pissed off at having spent all that time in hell that they have completely lost touch with what originally tied them to earth and drove them to kill in the first place?  I don't mind them no longer being tied to a physical location since they were banished and unnaturally returned, but to be so disconnected to what drove them to become angry spirits seems much more intrinsic to who and what they were.  I guess even the ghosts lose their personalities to become cardboard in the hands of Dabbernatural.  

Oh, look, mysteriously, big G God's tantrum opening up hell is not actually big enough to impact the whole planet – or even, you know, more than the literal next town over.  This is my surprised face.

Then we get to the bit where the Winchesters find an abandoned car with a bloody mess inside and are all, “Look at this Woman in White kill!  Obviously it was a Woman in White!  Totally the specific one we sent to hell!  Because … car!  And, uh, blood!  And, oh, because the fucking script says so.” REASONS, YO.

Aren't all garage doors required to have an emergency pull for if the power goes out?  Obviously the script required the pair of VotW end up stuck hiding in the garage, which, uh, a ghost can't find people hiding now?  Did I miss something in there that explained that silly convenience that makes the ghost even less spooky in an episode that really really fails on that count even more later on?

I guess maybe I should be happy that it's Castiel that gets hit with the dumb characterization stick to necessitate Sam & Dean not work together to clear out the town? Look, at this point, considering the way the writers have had him act as a constant disaster zone of idiotic choices and betrayals for several seasons now, my ability to sympathize with Cas is a wee bit limited.  To have him now sulk like a toddler and refuse to work with the demon to help the Winchesters save an entire town full of people and prevent the spread of angry hell ghosts to the world beyond that? Because oh noes it's wearing Jack's face and he was just sooooo attached?  Even though all of them supposedly thought of Jack as their kid?  He doesn't even try to offer up alternatives to working with the demon with the very convenient solution, just whines about it? 

So basically this billions of years old angel somehow has less fucking practicality than the Winchesters (despite how easily he killed the shit out of his fellow angels when it suited his plans).  Not to mention that by refusing, he's saddling Dean with having to work with demon!Jack. The human guy who was just recently convinced he had to kill Jack for the good of the world after Jack killed his mother, only to have a change of heart when he saw Jack’s understanding, only for Jack to end up killed anyway – you know, emotions a hell of a lot more conflicted about their supposed kid's than Castiel's?  Castiel is just fine with that!  What a self-centered dick.

I liked Dean's conversation with Rowena on the phone and his response to her presumable demand to ask more nicely.  I laughed at Sam accidentally shooting Cas and Cas' resultant reaction.  I thought it was curious that they had the demon bring up Dean's time as a torturer in hell, though I'd be pleasantly surprised if it was anything but a way to segue into the Cage getting opened.  One utterly wasted Michael storyline is apparently not enough for Dabb!  Maybe it's just supposed to be some kind of weird demon idea of flattery, but I did find their interactions interesting.  I would be intrigued by the weird flashes when Cas was trying to heal Sam (Another angel power that actually works for once?  Wow!) … if Dabb hadn't already yammered on about what it means in an interview.  That dude is absolutely allergic to leaving any kind of major storyline an open mystery or letting it retain any intrigue for fans to speculate about.  I was not impressed with Sam getting damsel-ed to be saved by Castiel at least twice.  Come on, show.

As I speculated before and said above, I’m fine with the Chuckified nature of their release meaning some rules don’t apply.  I could maybe even understand the thought process that them being out in the daytime, without being limited to darkness, was scarier? I just wish anyone behind the camera was awake enough to actually look at the aesthetics of what they did here and realize that no, it's really really not.  The whole thing just looked so embarrassingly mediocre - pantomime actors in bad bargain basement costumes silly.  I think it was @hippychick006 that suggested gifs of the whole end portion looked like they should be set to Yackety Sax?  The context of the episode does not in any way negate that. Just … wow.  Like with the wire fight, I am flabbergasted that this made it to air without somebody finding the brakes.

I'm not sure if the writers actually made a failed reference by having the Woman in White say Dean was the one who took her home when it was Sam, or if they meant to imply he and Sam together had been there/responsible and Dean was the one she was addressing.  Regardless, I'm not impressed with how all the ghosts Sam & Cas were being confronted by just … stood there to be shot one by one for a while.  And then … ran … literally ran … chasing them down the street instead of doing the whole ghost teleport thing.  There are way, way too many times in this episode where the guys get away or win a fight because reasons and there is absolutely no tension in that.  Even if it didn't also look ridiculous.  Dean’s part of the confrontation was a little less absurd in that respect, at least.  And the spell effects actually looked reasonably cool.

I'm a little annoyed at myself that the obligatory brother scene at the end of the episode kind of works on me.  Though I’m not particularly impressed with Sam's conclusion that God is totally going to leave them alone now.  Sure, Chuck has a long habit of leaving when he's bored, but he isn't leaving this world because he's bored.  You guys actively pissed him off!  Yet Sam treats it like a foregone conclusion Chuck will have buggered off instead of sticking around to watch his previously favorite but now uncooperative toys suffer and die first. Though I'm not sure if that's a writer issue, actually, or just a legit choice I don’t care for.  I could see Sam insisting on trying to sell a potential positive side with no room for doubt with as fatalistic as Dean is being.  I could also see it just being one of those things Sam convinces himself must be true because he's reasoned it out in his head and refuses to consider alternatives may exist.  Like how he was so convinced it could only be God planting visions in his head back in season 11.  Still, I like the callback and I can even see why Dean is the most immediately cynical and pissed off, so hey!  There was actually one whole entire scene I enjoyed in there!

[nikkiwriteswords]

Family Portraits, Parallels and Expectations

Anyone else notice how often Reginald looms over the shoulders of the siblings in episode 1? Not long after Pogo and Vanya talk in front of Five’s portrait, we have Klaus and Allison’s reunion in Reginald’s study, before Luther joins them. As Luther and Klaus clash, look how Allison is standing in the background:

The similarity in her stance to Reginald in the portrait (which, easter egg, is actually a frame in the comic I think?) is uncanny. It sets her apart from her siblings, placing her on the periphery during petty arguments, and it won’t be the last time. During the fight between Luther and Diego at the funeral, she backs off with an eye roll that says, ‘Here we go again, I’ll have no part in it.’   But that’s not the main point I want to make, anyway. Reginald will loom over the shoulders of the siblings at various points throughout this episode (if not more), symbolising his lasting influence on their relationships - which is, in some ways, the core theme of the show. 

As Luther asks Allison, ‘Where are Patrick and Claire?’, Allison replies:

See how Reginald is placed almost centre-screen, over Allison’s shoulder? It’s a position that is echoed multiple times in the later exchange between Luther and the rest of the siblings as well:

Also, notice how Diego is sat in the exact position Grace was when Vanya first entered the house - staring into the fire:

Also, his body language is very brooding and closed-off - arms folded across his torso, leg cross away from Luther. At this moment, he’s worried about Grace and Luther’s incessant need to find out the truth. Interestingly, as he stands up to confront Luther, Five’s portrait is positioned over Diego’s shoulder. Almost as if it’s an echo of the logic Five would’ve said. Reginald was a paranoid old man:  

(Meanwhile, Allison is perched on the arm of the other chair?? Weird detail, but it does emphasise how she’s tuned into the conversation, angling in towards Luther rather than closing off like Diego. It feels active, ‘perched on the edge of the seat’, ready to intervene, converse, etc. Also, that chair is ornate. That’s got to be uncomfortable.)  Also, the antlers at opposing ends of the room (behind Luther, and behind the bar) as well as the mounted deer give the room an uncomfortable, aggressive vibe. Crowded, thorny, butting heads.

And of course, there’s Grace and Reginald’s wife (I assume this is a portrait of his wife, because of a similar portrait in the comics):

This is the most telling parallel by far, because we watch as Grace looks to the portrait, to position herself exactly how the woman she (or more accurately, Reginald) aspires (her) to be is sitting. She wears a black dress with the same neckline, similar hair and pearls. 

Portraits speak of ideals and of legacies. Think about the moment in 1x03, when Vanya says to Diego:

“Do you ever wonder... All those moments with mom, the things she said. Like, was it her or was it really Dad?" “What are you talking about?” “Well, he built her. And he programmed her to be a mom, to be our mom. Sometimes when I look at her I just see him.”

So when Diego asks Grace, “Everything you did for us when we were kids, for me... Why’d you do it?”:

the doubt that Diego feels - “Is that you saying that?” - is actually heightened when you consider that Mrs. Hargreeves is centre-screen in the background. It... is actually quite sad. Not just for Grace (”I wonder if she’s lonely?”), but because of the disconnect her very existence tries to bridge between Reginald and the kids. I’ve got a post coming... sometime, maybe... about the overtures the show makes towards empathy for Reginald. The idea that we grieve for Grace, and through Grace we grieve for the father figure the kids never had - or the father figure Reginald failed to be - ties into this scene.  

Finally, there’s also the barber shop scene with Klaus and Reginald. Just look at how the portraits of the other brothers and Reginald himself are lined up behind Klaus in a facsimile of salon portraits: 

This scene in particular has a lot to do with Reginald’s expectations and standards. Click through [x] for a better scene analysis about these portraits in particular (and if you spotted Dave in there, well, stay tuned for that post too.)

Anyway, I’m sure there’s a lot more that I’ve missed as I’m only really branching off from the first episode here apart from these last two examples. Feel free to add more, or let me know so I can update with more of this portrait motif. (If anyone has some actual film theory or analysis to add, too, I’m all ears.)

[thewanderingace]

I just finished watching the newest episode of Hawaii Five-0 and I HAVE FEELINGS!!! So here's just a dump of all my thoughts and feels in no order.

There's a lot here and it is very spoiler heavy so beware:

Can we talk about both Scott's and Claire acting because when they were running towards the ambulance I quite literally burst into tears. My heart was pounding and I felt their fear. Even knowing OF COURSE GRACE IS GONNA BE OKAY!!! I was still terrified! Claire screaming out Graces name and the panic in Scott's voice got to me!

And all of the emotion Danny showed during the whole episode just broke my heart.

STEVE! UNCLE STEVE! I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS OVER UNCLE STEVE!!!! The hug when he arrives at the hospital! Physically shoving the dude away! How adamant he is that Grace was not drunk (because duh it's Grace! She wouldn't drink and drive!). Taking the creep on that ride of doom and CALLING HIMSELF THE UNCLE OF ONE OF THE GIRLS!!! HELL YEAH YOU ARE STEVE!!! I LOVE THAT!!! And then he was included in the graduation video as uncle steve and my heart burst!!!!

Steve supporting both Danny and Rachel was so wonderful because it showed much of family they actually are. Like the final hug when they got the news that Grace was okay was showed so clearly that these three people are Grace's parents. And that Danny reached out and pulled Steve in was beautiful for my McDanno loving heart.

I love Grace. So much. Look at this amazing girl stand up to bullies and creepy dudebros to protect someone else. I'm so proud of her.

I still hate the idea of Danny and Rachel getting back together but this episode made me mildly okay with it. That look Steve gives them both made me smile. I just liked how he noticed them getting along and that it made him happy to see Danny happy.

I was trying to figure out why this episode and Rachel was cool with me while last episode with Steve and Catherine just pissed me off and I think it's because this week made a point of including Steve with Danno and Rachel. He was there the whole time. It was obvious that Steve is important to Danny and that Danny needs him, needs his support. The Steve/Catherine episode shoved Danny aside when Steve clearly needed his support and then had Catherine be okay with and encourage some really not okay behavior. That's not okay with me. Danny should have been there while Steve grieved. Just like how Steve is always there for Danny.

I liked the Tani and Koa story as well and that it didn't feel separate from the main story. It didn't take away from Grace like sometimes the stories/episodes end up doing. One story feels disconnected from the other. This didn't feel like that. Which was good :)

Noelani watching Charlie was adorable!! Also I thought they had forgotten him so that was nice.

Kamekona bringing a giant food spread to the hospital!!

I REALLY LOVED THE FINAL PARTY SCENE!!!!! Everyone being there, the talk Steve and Lou had with Grace was perfect, Koa saying he's grateful for this weird family. It was great and I loved it

SO I loved this episode. I'm am a happy fan. Don't burst my bubble please.

[idkthisisjustforfanfic]

Part V - The Untimely Downfall of Strangers

THEN - Day 1228

Being home from rehab was like when you faked sick as a kid. Your parents would let you stay home, but soon you realized that you were so bored, school sounded fun.

There were days where I didn’t leave the house--maybe Sinead would bring me a smoothie or I’d sit on the deck. I did a lot of swimming, I spent time in the waves and I spent time just watching them crash.

When I first got back I immediately bought an easel. I bought paint brushes and paint and canvases and paper and I even bought an apron to wear--it made it feel more authentic.

I probably painted a hundred different ocean scenes. Some were stormy, some were calm, some were blue and some were gray. I’d drink coffee and watch netflix and I read 27 books.

I went through my clothes and organized my bathroom. I googled recipes and cooked enough food for six people, even though it was just me. Maya would come over after school some days--she’d have coffee or we’d maybe go to Geoffrey’s.

I wasn’t afraid to leave the house--I just knew that it was safer inside. I knew that if I went somewhere big and loud I’d get recognized, I’d get mobbed, even, and I just wanted a break.

I took naps and I’d drive to my mom’s house for dinner sometimes. I’d watch movies with her and Pete and Maya would get home late from being out with friends. I’d play with my mom’s dog and I’d play basketball in the driveway with Ben when he came home. Sara would have a glass of wine with me if she came, too.

At times I felt lonely, but it wasn’t the same lonely I felt before I went. It wasn’t the empty, hollow, aching feeling that lurked behind every corner and every forced smile. It was a lonely that came and went--sometimes it would be worse and I’d cry myself to sleep. Other times it would be short lived, tolerable, and even normal. Those nights I normally called Sinead and ordered take out.

I didn’t have a plan--I didn’t know what I’d do next and for the first time, that felt okay. I didn’t know what I wanted and no one else did, either. All I knew was that I loved to swim and I could make a mean stir fry.

NOW - Day 1706

I stood behind Nathan, listening to another mix of the song in my headphones. He was sat at the board, his fingers on the different levels to adjust them manually. The rest of the band had long gone home--Nathan and I were mixing the pieces we’d done.

“Lower,” I said, my eyes on the soundwave that crawled on the computer screen. Nathan adjusted the level of the bass, his fingers pulled the level down a tiny bit. “More,” I laughed, giving him a soft punch on the shoulder.

“You’re literally so anti-bass lately,” he paused the song and turned around, a smile on his face as he teased. “Rehab really changed you,” he said dramatically.

“Fuck off,” I laughed. I wasn’t anti-bass, I just didn’t think that the level needed to be that loud at that part of the song. The piano in the background was barely audible, I wanted to find the right mix.

I told Nathan earlier that I’d been seeing Harry. I told him about the burgers and the release party and the day we had lunch. He seemed intrigued and curious but he didn’t press.

We’d left things kind of ambiguous the night before--I told him I’d tell him if I got any questions about the album and I told him I’d run my statement by him before making it. Claire was planning on doing it soon.

He asked me to have lunch again and I agreed, but we hadn’t set a date.

Nathan had turned back to the board and started the song again. My voice came through my headphones and I listened to the words.

There’s always silence in the void and I kinda miss the noise of having you around.

I’d written the song at the one year mark. One year since I’d left and one year since I’d seen him, yet I still thought about him every day and I still felt like our story followed me around.

I was angry--I had been, at least. I was mad that he left and mad that I left and I missed him even though I didn’t want to. I was alone and okay with it for the first time, but I was still learning how to live with the loneliness.

There might as well be space right outside my window, is there anybody out there? Is there anybody out there?

I’m followed by your ghost, I’m stepping on your shadow, is there anybody out there? Anybody out there? I need you now.

We listened to the end of it--Nathan stopped the track and turned around. “Have you told him that you’re recording stuff?”

I shook my head, removing the headphones and walking to sit on the couch behind him. “It’s not serious yet,” I shrugged.

Nathan looked thoughtful as he swiveled in his chair to face me. “When will it be?”

I laughed--Nathan was my biggest fan. He loved every second of writing and recording and rewriting and rerecording. He loved when I found a weird noise by slamming a book to add to a track or when we came up with the right harmony.

“I don’t know, I can’t even think about that until the dust settles from his album.”

The first thing Nathan brought up when I walked in earlier was the article someone retweeted about it--the headline said something about my cold and heartless escape and Harry’s painful recounting of the break up.

Sinead had texted me about meeting with Claire tonight--Nick was eager to release something. My instagram had been bombarded to the point that I turned off comments--I figured it was best to just keep quiet for now.

“You seem pretty chill even though you’re getting the shit end of the stick,” he remarked, turning back around to click away at the computer.

I didn’t really feel like I had any control over the situation, and for once, that didn’t bother me. Harry’s album was done and written, and whether or not I liked how he portrayed me, it gave me insight to how he felt, what he thought, and what he wanted. At the end of our relationship it felt like we were totally disconnected--like we’d lost all communication and there was no way to fix it.

I felt more on the same page with him now than I ever had.

“It’s hard to be mad when there’s so much history,” I said honestly.

At this, Nathan turned around and eyed me skeptically. “Are you still in love with him?”

I rolled my eyes, leaning my head against the back of the couch as I let out a laugh. Nathan was always blunt and honest and I liked him that way.

“I don’t think I ever stopped.”

THEN - Day 1154

I was sat in my hotel room, a cup of coffee on the table in front of me. I was sure there was a piano somewhere in the hotel I could get my hands on, but I didn’t want to leave the room. For some reason, the walls surrounding me felt safe and comfortable.

It was almost midnight, I’d given up any hopes of sleeping when I laid in bed--staring at the ceiling for 45 minutes--without the slightest bit of fatigue.

Harry hadn’t questioned my request for separate rooms lately--sometimes I wondered if he felt the same way I did, but mostly I thought he just didn’t have the energy to fight.

I was hung up on the idea that I couldn’t talk to him--I couldn’t tell him how I felt, I couldn’t ask him what he thought was going on. He was someone I’d previously felt so connected to, someone who knew me so well and who could break through a lot of my walls.

I don’t think anything changed in him, really, I think I just started building them taller and thicker and stronger. The worse my feelings got, the more risky it was to tell him. The more I had to lose.

I strummed at the guitar in my lap, frustrated with the fact that I couldn’t articulate the flood of thoughts I was having. It felt confusing, like loving him was stupid and problematic and like it was time to give up.

It was rare that I wanted to write--most nights I went to sleep and ignored the guitar that was never too far away. At points this summer I’d gone weeks without writing, the thought of sitting at the piano and plunking out some chords felt draining and wasteful and pointless.

“I wish I was sleeping, black coffee in the evening,” I sang quietly, laughing a bit at the words. I strummed again, staring at my phone that sat open to a blank note.

“You know I’m not sleeping,” I sang again, tweaking the words a bit. “Black coffee in the evening, hands ticking past midnight.”

I reached for the phone, thumbing out the words to remember them before singing through it again. “I even miss the fighting.”

I kept playing, finding the logical progression for the chorus, but still unsure of the words. I knew I wanted to convey the idea that I was stuck--stuck in a spot of confusion and uncertainty.

“It’s a fool’s love, such a cruel love, loving you.”

NOW - Day 1706

Sinead was already at my house when I got back--she’d brought dinner and wine, and Claire and Nick both arrived shortly after I did.

We were sat at the dining table now, Nick finished stacking his plate with sushi before he came to sit. “So, where do we want to start?”

I looked to Claire--unsure of her plan. I mean, this was her job.

“I think we want to be honest, right?” She looked to me for confirmation before turning back to Nick. When I nodded, she continued. “We want to address the release and wish him luck--that kind of thing--but also address that songwriting is an honest thing. Some of those emotions might involve Margot.”

Sinead looked from Claire to me, waiting for my input. Nick nodded slowly, popping a piece of sushi into his mouth as sipped my wine and set it down.

“Margot is thrilled for Harry and the release of his album, but she wants you all to know that she’s not a complete asshole,” I spoke, earning a laugh from Nick as he rolled his eyes.

“Maybe not that blunt,” Claire shrugged. “More like, Margot wishes Harry the best of luck with the release of his debut album. While she realizes that songwriting is an honest expression of emotion,” she paused for a second, closing her eyes to think. “She asks for privacy and respect in relation to her previous relationship with Harry.”

I ran over it again in my head--it was honest, it was straightforward, it set a limit. I was sold. “Sounds good to me.”

“I can send it to People and Us Weekly,” she said. “I’ll tweet it too from the headquarters account.”

“Your comments are still disabled on instagram, right?” Nick asked, speaking around the sushi in his mouth.

“Yeah,” I nodded, poking some sushi on my own plate. “I think I’ll leave it for a while.”

Sinead ran a hand through her hair, “I think that’s a good plan.”

Claire pulled out a laptop and set it on the table, clearly ready to type up and release what we’d just come up with. Nick adjusted in his seat across the table, smirking at me over the vase of fresh tulips that sat in the center of the table.

“What?” I narrowed my eyes at him, unsure what he had on his mind.

He shrugged his shoulders, looking at his phone when it lit up on the table. He clicked it shut and then looked to Sinead. He smiled, looking to me once more before speaking. “You just seem in a good mood--you’re handling this well.”

I knew what he was implying, the smirk on Sinead’s face confirmed it. It wasn’t a secret that I’d seen Harry--I mean, Nick and Sinead watched me run off with him the night before to sit in a drive through parking lot.

Sinead--and her sometimes overbearing but in a good way nature--had asked me to text her when I got home, just to be safe.

“Alright, well, who knows where it’ll go--let’s just relax.”

Nick continued to smirk, still eyeing me and Sinead and Claire typed away at her computer. She looked up suddenly, intrigued by the silence, but just as amused as Nick.

“Are you going to tell him you’re making the statement?”

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah, I forgot. I can text him.” I reached for my phone on the table in front of me, pulling up the message thread with Harry and typing out my message while Sinead eyed me curiously.

“How’s the studio been?”

“Good,” I smiled and looked up at her. “It feels good to be in there--the songs are sounding really different.” I looked to Nick as the words left my mouth, wondering if he’d have a problem with a change in sound.

Nick had been my manager for five years--there was a woman named Nicole that I worked with for the first two years, but when I started writing more of my own music and breaking away (as much as possible) from the TV show, my label suggested Nick.

I didn’t think he’d necessarily have a problem with my music feeling a little different, but I knew he’d have questions.

“Different as in?” He crossed his arms, still peering at me over the vase that sat on top of the glass between us.

“A little edgier--I mean, it kind of reflects the last two years,” I laughed, earning a smile from him. I knew he didn’t expect the album to be all love songs and rainbows--that was the farthest thing from my experience over the last 24 months.

“It’s good,” Sinead nodded, reassuring Nick. “It’s kind of more alternative, still pretty pop, though.”

I nodded, agreeing with her description. “You’ll hear something soon, we can talk about plans.”

“Plans?” He raised his eyebrows, clearly excited at the mention of it. I guess I’d yet to really say if I had any plans, or if I even wanted any plans.

I rolled my eyes, not really that annoyed, but more amused by how supportive and eager he was. “We’ll see--I’m going slow.”

“Alright,” he held his hands up. “Slow it is.”

THEN - Day 1292

The water was cold and the sky was gray. It took a minute to get used to--at first. The waves were big for late March, the one piece I had on didn’t do much to keep me warm. I’d been staring at the ocean since I moved in at the beginning of February, but I hadn’t yet made the plunge--literally.

I’d never been much of a swimmer--in fact, the fact that you couldn’t always see the bottom kind of freaked me out. I had no idea what was there, what would happen. I wasn’t in control and I didn’t know how to fix that.

I guess I was kind of bored. I’d been painting and painting and reading books and watching movies. I was sick of sitting in the house, I felt the anxiety bubble up in me when my feet hit the floor, and I stared at the waves while I sipped at my coffee and ate my breakfast, I knew today was the day.

But here I was, floating in the same spot as different waves carried me closer to shore. I couldn’t touch, but I could see the spot on the beach where I’d dropped my sweatshirt and towel.

I felt alone, maybe more than I did before all of this--before leaving him, before rehab, before the summer, even. The sky was quiet and the beach was quiet and my mind was quiet.

I looked out to the horizon, there was nothing as far as I could see. The water met the sky in a transition of gray-blues, I wondered where he was.

If I closed my eyes it felt like I was just floating--maybe in space, maybe among the stars and hundreds of thousands of miles away from anyone I knew.

He didn’t love me--he couldn’t. If he had, he would have called, he would have asked, he would have done something.

He would have done something.

NOW - Day 1707

“You’ve got to stop doing this,” I said as I opened the door. I couldn’t help but smile, he had a baseball cap on backwards, sunglasses over his eyes as he strolled up the driveway. I’d heard the alert, I was making a smoothie in the kitchen when he pulled up.

“Right, sorry. You’re a planner, how could I forget?”

I rolled my eyes, stepping aside to let him in. My stomach felt nervous--not the bad kind, really--as he lifted his sunglasses to look down at me. “How are you?”

“Good,” I nodded. “I was making a smoothie. Is everything okay?”

He laughed, dropping his keys on the console table behind us. “Yes, Margot, I just came to see you.”

I smiled slightly--it felt strange, it felt like we were starting all over, and it felt scary a little, too. I headed towards the kitchen, happy that he followed behind me. “How’s everything going? You had more promo yesterday, right?”

“Yep,” he said, watching as I opened the lid of the blender to peak inside. The pink liquid seemed good enough, I popped it off the base. “Radio stuff, another talk show, the usual.”

I reached for two glasses--I knew he wanted some based on how he looked at it. He was quiet for a second, watching as I poured it into two cups and then let the blender rest in the sink. I slid a glass across the island to him and sat at a stool.

He came for something, he had a reason--but I didn’t know what it was.

I sipped at my smoothie, feeling more awkward as the seconds ticked by. He tasted it, raised his eyebrows in a compliment to my smoothie skills, and then set it back down.

“What’s up?” I asked quietly. “What is it?”

He watched me for a second, almost as if he were contemplating telling me what was on his mind. I knew him too well, I knew just by the look on his face that he had something to say but was nervous to say it. He did this when he was worried I’d be mad, upset, anxious.

He sucked in a breath and cleared his throat. “Well--I was finalizing tour plans with Jeff the other day, y’know, just looking over all of them.”

I nodded, my hand around the cold glass, my fingers almost felt tingly from the temperature. I knew that was coming--I knew he’d go on tour. I knew he’d have to leave, it’s not like his time in L.A. was endless.

“Okay,” I said slowly. “Is that all?”

He nodded, keeping his eyes locked on mine for a second. It was sunny outside--the morning clouds had given way to the 10am sun. “Yeah, I just--I hadn’t mentioned that I was leaving.”

“I knew you would be,” I said quickly. I didn’t want him to feel bad--I mean, it was expected, really. I knew the business like I knew the back of my hand, I knew that was his next step. “Why were you so nervous to tell me?”

I think my bluntness surprised him, he pulled his head back and blinked a few times, but then shook his head. “I just didn’t want to like--stress you out. I’m glad that we got to talk the other night. I guess I was worried that me leaving would--ruin this.”

This. I knew what he meant--this new thing we were doing. Talking like friends, him showing up at my house. Acknowledging the fact that the other exists and not pretending like the last four and a half years hadn’t happened.

I was annoyed, really, by the fact that he didn’t want to stress me out. There wasn’t much he could do about that. I also suddenly felt like if that were true, he wouldn’t have written an entire album about how much of an asshole I was.

Sure, maybe he had his own feelings about my anxiety and our relationship, but I knew that this wouldn’t go well if he was still tiptoeing around me.

My silence was telling, he let out a breath and met my eyes when I looked up. “You don’t have to be so afraid of me, you know.”

“I’m not afraid of you, Margot.”

“Well, then why would you come over here to tell me that? I know you have to go on tour. Why were you so weird about that?”

It felt strange to voice all of my questions for him out loud--this would have been the type of thing that I would be angry about but wouldn’t bring up. Harry and I--for as long as we were together--didn’t talk much about our feelings, no matter how much I think he wanted to.

Sure, we’d talk about things and sometimes those things would be stuff that pissed us off, but it was never very deep.

He seemed annoyed--he looked away from me for a second and took another deep breath. “Margot--I don’t know if you know this, but stressing you out or making you nervous isn’t fun.”

I rolled my eyes--it’s not like I thought it was fun for him. It’s not like being stressed or nervous or in that state of paralyzed uncertainty was fun for me. “I’m aware. And believe it or not you’re not the only person who actually has had to deal with that.”

He watched me for a second, his eyes narrowing as he got more annoyed by my anger.

“I know you wrote a whole album making yourself the victim--but have you ever stopped to think about how terrible it was to be me throughout all of that? I know I hurt you--I know you were in pain, and I’m sorry for that,” I nodded at him, pausing for a second to see if he’d try to cut me off. When he didn’t, I continued.

“But I was hurt too. I didn’t know how to deal with the fact that I felt like I was suffocating. Feeling that way wasn’t fun and not hearing from you wasn’t fun.”

I stared at him for a minute--the emotion so raw in me that I needed a second to catch my breath. It was exhilarating, really--I’d never been so honest and I’d never been so blunt about it. Despite the fact that he looked upset, it felt good.

“I know it wasn’t fun for you,” he said, his hand still around the half drank smoothie in a glass. “I was always trying to figure out how you felt, Margot, but you never told me. What was I supposed to do? Not feel my feelings because you couldn’t feel yours?”

“Do you see what you’re doing?! You’re making this my fault!”

This made him pause for a second, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, as if he desperately wanted to reroute the conversation. “I thought we were on the same page, Margot. What do you want me to do? You broke my heart and now you’re upset because you have to face the music--literally.”

I rolled my eyes at his words--of course I was upset, of course I was angry that I was being painted as the villain in a story where I was out of control. Of course that bothered me.

Whether or not I felt bad for Harry--whether or not I was sorry that I hurt him, I was hurt too. He walked away and didn’t look back--he let eighteen months pass without even a text to say happy birthday or to ask how I was doing. Maybe I started it, but he didn’t stop it.

“We’ve never been on the same page, Harry.” My voice was quiet, almost emotionless, just like before we’d broken up. I think this scared him--the words seemed to make him raise his eyebrows, he looked confused.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you should go.”

THEN - Day 1521

I was spending a lot of time at my mom’s. Maya was happy to have me around--when she wasn’t taking part in junior-year activities and hanging out with her friends, she was suffering as an only child with my mom and Pete. Me and Ben being out of the house meant they focused all of their attention on her.

I sat on the floor in the living room--I was painting my toenails on top of a magazine with my face on it. My mom had a habit of keeping those types of things, even though I didn’t want her to.

They were out for dinner, my mom and Pete, and when Maya had told me that she’d be home alone, it sounded like a good time for a sister’s night. She stared up at the TV, we’d had on the news, but it had just changed over to Entertainment Tonight.

The woman who spoke into the camera was someone I recognized--I was sure I’d met her somewhere, but I didn’t know her name.

I looked back down to my feet, making sure I was doing a good enough job.

“New tonight in One Direction news--Harry Styles is single and ready to mingle. The former One Direction pop star was seen out in London over the weekend, with a mystery blonde on his arm.”

I stared up at the TV while Maya stared down at me. “I can change it,” she said quickly, the nervousness clear in her voice.

“No,” I shook my head, my eyes glued to picture on the screen. His hair was short--I hadn’t known he’d cut it. He was with a woman in a short blue dress. She looked familiar, maybe someone he knew through the label.

“Some sources report that the blonde is just a friend, but it’s been almost a year since Harry and Margot Jones called their famous romance quits after nearly three and a half years.”

The picture of Harry and the girl disappeared, the shot went back to the woman with her male co-anchor. He smiled at her as if she’d said something hilarious.

“Probably time to move on, right? A year’s a while to pine after someone.”

“I agree, you can only be broken hearted for so long,” the woman said, her white teeth almost blinding on the screen.

It was then that Maya changed it--she flipped only a channel up, which was in the middle of some action movie. I turned to look at her, anger clear on my face as suspenseful music played in the background.

“Why did you change it? I wanted to hear what they said.”

“You don’t need to hear what they said,” she rolled her eyes. Maya’s hair was much curlier than mine--in fact, mine was almost flat and straight unless someone pumped hairspray into and worked at it with a curling iron. She tugged at the bottom of her ponytail and kept her gaze on me. “Is torturing yourself thinking about him your new past time?”

“No,” I said quickly. “Is it so wrong to want to know what he’s up to? I haven’t spoken to him in a whole year.”

Maya never wanted me to break up with Harry--and not because I was her ticket into every One Direction concert on the planet. Once Harry and I started dating, the band kind of lost their shock value to her--they became a mainstay in our life and in our house, really.

Maya used to spend her summers on tour with me and my crew--sometimes she’d tag along to see Harry, and she loved bringing her friends backstage at his shows. Now, however, at 17, Maya was the age I was when I’d first met him. She was mature and smart and she wanted to go to school for psychology.

“If you really want to know what he’s up to you should just call him.” She put the remote down and picked up her phone, obnoxiously making it clear that our conversation was over.

I felt the familiar feeling in my chest--the feeling like I’d soon be glued to the floor without any hopes of moving. I stood quickly, leaving her alone in the living room as I made my way towards the kitchen. I hadn’t seen much about him in the last year--I’d pretty much made a point to avoid that.

I didn’t look at the magazine racks in stores, I didn’t google him, I didn’t read things about him on the internet.

“Margot,” I heard Maya’s voice call after me, but I didn’t want to hear what she had to say. I could still hear the movie playing in the background, I went to the kitchen and hoisted myself onto the counter.

It was in this very kitchen that Harry had stood the day we met--the counter where Maya did her homework and through the window, I could see Ben’s basketball hoop.

“Margot,” Maya said again, she now stood in the doorway, clad in her favorite baggy sweatshirt and leggings. “I didn’t mean to be a dick, I just don’t want you to obsess over him.”

I felt the tears on my cheeks, and for some reason, I didn’t feel too embarrassed to be crying in front of her.

I didn’t have words to respond--I was too sad. I was sad for the fact that I lost him, sad because it had been a year, sad because he still hadn’t called, sad because I was still alone.

Maya walked over and rested her head in my lap. She didn’t say anything, she just let me sit there, and for a while, I just cried.

NOW - Day 1708

I was sat at the piano in the studio, playing over the bridge of a song to make sure it was right. Nathan was in the other room with Nick, I wasn’t really sure what they were talking about, but I knew it was about me.

Sinead had stopped by to see us--but now it was just me alone with the piano.

I was angry, angrier than I’d been with him before, mostly because this time, I was feeling everything. It bothered me that he didn’t understand--it bothered me that he couldn’t see things from my point of view. I knew he worked hard on is album and he knew I was happy for him, but he had to understand that I didn’t like being painted as the bad guy.

That had always been the consensus. That had been what the media decided when I went away and when Harry said something in an interview that he “wasn’t pleased with my choice” to end the relationship.

I wasn’t around to defend myself.

Now--this music, these songs, the potential album that I could make--I could defend myself with my version of the same story. My experiences and my feelings that people hadn’t heard.

Harry had every right to experience--he had the right to be upset that I left, he had the right to be hurt. But I had the right to mine--I had the right to feel left and to regret things and to be mad that I was the one who’d been deemed guilty.

The door to the board room opened, Nick came in with Nathan behind him. “How’s it coming?” Nathan asked, his hands on his hips as he stepped around Nick.

“Good,” I nodded--even though I’d yet to really finalize anything. “I have a question, though, Nick.” Nick looked up from his phone, almost surprised, but nodded for me to go ahead. “Can I do an interview about his album? Can I talk to someone about it?”

“An interview?” He asked--he seemed to be confused and unsure of my request. “What do you mean?”

I shrugged my shoulders, kind of processing my own request out loud. “I don’t want to be a silent bystander--I don’t want to sit here as if his side of the story is the only one.”

“You want to tell your side?”

“Isn’t that what we’re doing with the songs?” Nathan chimed in, his fingers tugged at his strawberry blonde beard.

“The songs are my side, and those will come out when I’m ready--but for now, I want to say something.”

Nick let out a sigh as he thought over my request. Nathan looked from me to Nick and then back. I sat on the piano bench, my eyes on Nick as he seemed to scan over our options.

“If we do that--and I said if--we’d have to go with someone who will respect your limits. We’d have to do it with someone who won’t go off script and will only ask the questions we approve.”

I nodded, I completely agreed with him. I’d never given an interview about it--I hadn’t given any interview since the fall of 2015. I was sure to be a little rusty, and I knew that people would be dying to hear anything I had to say about it. Finding the right person would be key.

“What about Ryan? We could have you do a thing on the phone--he’d definitely stick with a script if we asked him.”

Ryan Seacrest was part of the same management company I worked with--we’d done plenty of events and interviews together, and I’d come to know him well enough over the last seven years. “Yeah--I could call him with you to discuss it.”

Nick let out a laugh and rubbed at the back of his neck. “You’re doing this, aren’t you?”

I smiled--he was referring to all of it. The writing, the recording, the coming out of the shadows. He’d long been waiting for the day I wanted to do something--I mean, his job kind of depended on it.

Nathan, who was excited from the first day I came in to write two weeks ago, simply clapped a hand on Nick’s back. “We’ve got work to do.”

THEN - Day 1589

Ben was mad at my mom because she wouldn’t let him drink, especially because she’d finally let him have a few beers with Pete over the holidays. We were all out to dinner--me, my mom, Maya, Ben, and Pete, for Pete’s birthday, a fancy restaurant in West Hollywood, we had the back room to ourselves.

A few of Pete’s friends were with us--along with two women that he and my mom spent time with. I’d had a glass of wine, and Ben was really just jealous that my mom used to let me drink before I was twenty-one. Ben, who would be 21 in a matter of weeks, was going the typical thing he did--making me seem like I was the favorite.

“Margot gets to do everything she wants,” he rolled his eyes. My mom--who was annoyed that Ben was putting up a fight in front of her friends--gave him a threatening look. “Princess Margot.”

“Fuck off,” I said. “Don’t drag me into it.”

Ben had long made comments about me being the golden child--he’d get annoyed that I got special treatment by people and that my mom and I had a different relationship. Despite the fact that my mom would help manage my events and tours, she was still my mom. She still told me to clean my bedroom and she wanted to go on every house tour I went on before I bought mine.

But I think Ben had a point--it must have been hard to be either him or Maya. In a way, their world revolved around me. I was their older sister who everyone knew--they had people pretend to be their friends just for perks, for tickets, or for the chance to meet me. It sounds kind of dumb--to them I was just the annoying sister that made them play dress up or was too cool to help them with homework.

Ben refused to go to school for a few days his sophomore year of high school when pictures of me and Harry first surfaced. He claimed he couldn’t handle one more question about me from his teachers or peers--I couldn’t really blame him.

“Can you both just be nice to each other?” My mom asked, holding her wine glass in her hand as Pete placed a hand on her shoulder.

“If you both behave I’ll let you have some of my cake when we get home,” Pete raised his eyebrows, using humor to lighten the mood. Ben cracked a smile and I couldn’t help but laugh--Pete’s approach to parenting his step-children was to treat us like we were little, mostly because it made us realize how immature we were being.

I stood from the table to go to the bathroom, but I added, “I dibs a piece with the most frosting,” before turning away.

Ben let out a laugh behind me, “of course you do.”

Ben wasn’t wrong--he did have a tough go of it. He was the only boy, the middle child, and he had to deal with me being his older sister. He loved it in middle school--he loved the fact that all the girls really wanted to date him just in hopes of getting concert tickets, but the novelty of that soon wore off when he realized that he’d always have that label: my fame wasn’t going anywhere.

I rounded the corner of the hallway and walked straight into someone. When I looked up, a familiar pair of brown eyes smiled down at me.

“Liam? Hi!” I hugged him. “What are you doing here?”

He was dressed up--dress pants and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, exposing more tattoos than the last time I saw him. “I’m in town for a few days, having dinner with a friend,” he told me. “How are you, though? How’ve you been?”

I forced a smile--the translation of his question was: how was rehab? Are you still fucked up?

“I’m good,” I told him. “I’m really good!” It wasn’t necessarily false--I was doing much better than when he’d last known me. I wasn’t as nervous and I wasn’t as sad. “I heard Cheryl’s pregnant, she’s due soon, right?”

He nodded, his smile stretching from ear to ear. I knew that Liam had long had a crush on his present-day girlfriend, but when they finally got together, I figured it would be weird to text him and congratulate him.

“March,” he nodded. “Can’t believe I’ll be a father--it’s weird, really. So much has changed since 2015.”

I looked up at him, a sudden wave of emotion washing over me. Liam had known me well--we’d spend nights playing video games on the bus and he taught me how to ride a segway on tour. He was right--so much had changed since then, so much was different and so much was lost.

I smiled again, but I think he knew he’d hit a nerve.

“Have you heard from him at all?”

I swallowed and shook my head. “No--I haven’t.” He was quiet for a second, almost as if he didn’t know how to respond. “Have you talked to him much?”

He shrugged at this, laughing a little. “We text here and there--we all have, even Zayn once in a while. I saw him over the summer--he wasn’t doing too well.”

My curiosity was getting the best of me, even though I knew it probably didn’t help to focus on what he was doing, how he was doing, and how he felt. “What do you mean?”

Liam rubbed a hand at the back of his neck, the look on his face told me he was contemplating how much to divulge. “He was pretty depressed for a while, after it happened--he didn’t talk to any of us until after the new year.”

I nodded, staying quiet in hopes that he’d say more. Niall had always tried to avoid the subject--he’d gotten so used to me shooting it down that he barely bothered now. Of course, as soon as he stopped bringing Harry up, I got more curious about him.

“We spent a few days with Niall in the states in July--he said that he’d thought about reaching out a few times but he figured you didn’t want him to.”

I bit my lip at that--he couldn’t have been more wrong. My mouth felt dry--I knew that emotion was threatening to bubble over.

“Who are you here with?” He asked suddenly, I wondered if his topic change was an attempt to avoid my tears.

“My family--” I pointed to the room they were in. “Pete’s birthday--you should go say hi. I was heading to the bathroom.”

“Yeah, I will,” he smiled at me. “I’ll go say hi.”

I nodded, offering another smile as he wrapped his arms around me.

“It’s good to see you, Marg. We should get lunch.”

The truth was that I would love to--I’d love to sit and talk and hear about how he’d been. Hear about his future baby, hear about his family and his songs and just talk.

The truth was that it’d be too hard--I couldn’t handle hearing about the life of his that had existed in the span of time since I’d walked away from Harry. It’d only remind me that I chose to leave him, to leave his friends, to sequester myself away from the people I’d loved most.

Instead of saying that, though, I forced another smile and walked away.

NOW - Day 1709

My cell phone sat on the dining table in front of me--Sinead and Nick were stood in the kitchen and Claire sat beside me. I’d spoken with Ryan about the interview--he’d ask me just a few questions about the album, about our break up, about my time off.

It would be short and sweet, I’d be able to say a few things, let people know that yes, I’m alive, and most importantly, I’d get to address the untimely downfall of Harry and I for the first time.

Seda, a production assistant for Ryan’s radio show, had called and told me I had a few minutes before they’d bring me on--now, she spoke into the phone saying that I’d be live in thirty seconds.

“Margot Jones, thanks so much for taking some time to chat, how are you doing? It’s been forever since I’ve talked to you!” Ryan’s voice came through the phone, immediately bringing a smile to my face.

“I know, I’m good, I mean, it’s honestly been forever since I’ve spoken to a lot of people.”

Nick rolled his eyes at this and laughed, leaning on the counter and watching one.

“What have you been up to? You’re in L.A., right?”

“I am,” I answered. “I’ve been taking a lot of time to relax, really. When I originally went on my break I had no idea how long it’d last, but it’s been really important for me to just kind of recenter and do a lot of reflection over the last few years.”

I smiled at Claire--reflecting on the last few years had been one of the phrases she’d helped me come up with.

“I think that’s great, I really do. I think it’s so important for celebrities to take time off when they need to,” he replied.

“Right, and I kind of learned the hard way, but I’m doing really well.”

“That’s so great to hear--but listen, I hate to do this to you, but I’ve got to ask about Harry’s album--I mean, you’ve heard it, right?”

Just as planned.

Claire nodded in encouragement, Sinead watched me closely and sipped at a cup of coffee.

“I have, yeah.”

“How do you feel about it? I mean, it’s gotta be tough to hear all of that--assuming that a lot of it is about you, you know.”

“Right,” I said, hoping that I could answer the question well enough. Claire and I had gone over all of it--we trusted that Ryan wouldn’t press too hard or go too deep. The topic was still strange and hard and weird. “You know--it would be extremely hypocritical of me to be upset with someone for writing a song about an experience we’ve shared or the way I made them feel.”

“True,” Ryan laughed. “That’s fair.”

“So, you know, if there are pieces of Harry’s album that are inspired by our time together, it’s flattering that I meant enough to him for it to be something he wanted to write about.”

Nick gave me a thumbs up, Sinead smiled enthusiastically.

“Of course, I get that--I mean I’ve never had a song written about me, I don’t think, but I can imagine,” Ryan laughed.

“How does it feel to be kind of painted as the bad guy--I mean, as we said, we don’t know for sure if these songs are about you--but it’s clear that people have kind of run with the idea that you broke his heart.”

“Yeah, I mean, I’ve long known that I can’t really control the way the media portrays me or what people say--but it’s definitely weird sometimes. I guess I just want people to remember that there are two sides to every story.”

“Well, and speaking of that--what’s you side? Are we going to be hearing about that any time soon?”

I laughed, I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist asking what I was up to now musically.

“We’ll see--there’s some movement, but we’ll see how everything goes.”

“Well, Margot--thanks so much for talking with us. It’s great to hear from you. You definitely know we’ll all be excited here in the studio if you release anything in the future.”

“I do, thank you so much, good to talk to all of you.”

We said our goodbyes and Claire was quick to hit the end call button, a smile wide on her face when I let out a deep breath.

“Was that too much? About multiple sides of a story?”

“No,” she exclaimed, “I think it was great!”

“It was fine, Marg, it was honest and real but very polite and professional,” Nick reassured me. He walked around the island and came to sit with Claire and I. “Good job.”

I knew it would get back to Harry--he’d likely hear it and send me some kind of text. I was still riding high on the anger--I was suddenly feeling empowered and strong and like maybe it was time for me to tell my side of the story, even if I didn’t know how it ended.

NOW - Day 1710

My phone rang in my pocket in the middle of the song. I normally wasn’t one to have it in the booth with me, but Maya had been having a bit of crisis over her two roommates. Sister duty called sometimes, even if you were busy recording your comeback album.

Nathan cut the track when I raised my hand, pulling my phone out to see the screen--but it wasn’t Maya. Harry’s name was on the screen--the same three emojis that he’d put in his contact one night in London the our first winter together stared me in the face.

“Hello?” I answered, pulling the headphones off and bringing the phone to my ear.

“Hi--have a minute?”

I looked at Nathan through the glass--whether or not I was technically busy, his tone told me that he was going to talk regardless.

“What’s up?”

“You talked to Ryan Seacrest,” he said, his tone straight and unamused.

“I did.”

He was still in town--he had tour rehearsals for a few weeks before he left for the overseas leg. Frankly, I was surprised he didn’t show up in person and burst into the booth. That seemed to be his M.O. lately.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to talk about the album?”

I walked over to the door--trying to get away from the microphone so Nathan didn’t have to hear my call. “I didn’t know I had to run everything by you,” I was defensive, and I figured he expected it.

“You don’t have to run things by me, Margot--I just wish you’d told me. I thought we were trying to be on the same page.”

That was news to me. I told him the other day before I made him leave that we’d never been, and with the way he was acting, I wasn’t sure if we ever would be.

“I don’t understand how you’re allowed to write a whole album about me being a terrible girlfriend and now I do one stupid interview and you’re bent out of shape--”

“I’m not bent out of shape, I’m trying to communicate with you.” He cut me off, “I want to be able to talk and to actually know how you feel.”

I let out a sigh--his words and the way he said them told me he was serious. He wasn’t trying to fight, he was trying to figure this out.

I didn’t say anything, mostly because I didn’t know what to say. I felt a heat in my chest that made it clear--I wanted to figure it out, too, even if his album made me sound like a jerk. I wanted to laugh with him at the stupid things his friends said, I wanted to drag him along to a family holiday party. 

“Where are you? Can we talk?”

I looked around the room suddenly--I’d yet to tell him that I was recording. Telling him that I was in the studio would likely lead to him wanting to hear some songs. That didn’t feel fair--the only warning I got about his music was an email.

“I’m at Sinead’s house,” I lied--Nathan looked up from the computer and soundboard. I offered him an ass-kissing smile.

“Can I come over?”

“No,” I said quickly.

“Where are you?” He asked again--his voice sounded suspicious, he knew I was lying.

I let out a dramatic sigh. “Harry, I’m busy, can we just talk later?”

“Well now I kind of just want to know where you really are since you’re a terrible liar,” he laughed. I almost made a comment that he’d half-believed my lie that I was ‘fine’ for six months, but I didn’t really want to open that can of worms.

“I’m in the studio.”

Silence for a second.

“With Nathan?”

I rolled my eyes, pressing a thumb up to the sound-proofed walls. “Yes, with Nathan.”

“Are you recording?”

“Harry, can we just talk later?”

“Right, yeah, okay. Can I come over tonight? I’ll bring dinner.”

“Dinner?”

“Yeah, the meal after lunch and before bed.”

Smartass. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll see you then.”

THEN - Day 1627

The driveway alert chimed--I lifted my head, so much for relaxing yoga.

I wasn’t expecting anyone, but I figured it was Sinead. She normally came unannounced--and based on the fact that it was 8:15pm and I was hungry, I was hoping she brought dinner.

“Hi,” she called from the foyer.

I stood from my mat and started to roll it up. “Hey,” I said back, looking up to see her sticking her head around the corner. “What’s up?”

“Just wanted to stop by, see what you were up to.”

I leaned the mat against my couch, walking over to greet her. She had a takeout container in her hands. “Marty’s?”

“Marty’s,” she smiled, holding it up to my face so I could smell the food.

I turned to walk towards the kitchen. “How are you on this beautiful Tuesday evening?”

“Fine,” she said, placing the takeout on the counter as I turned around. The sun was setting outside the windows that looked over the water. I put my elbows on the granite--she was doing that thing where she had something to tell me but wasn’t telling me.

“What is it, Sinead?”

She smiled, momentarily contemplating if she should actually divulge whatever secret she had. A sigh escaped her lips, and then she spoke. “I saw Harry post something on instagram about a single.”

“Like a music single?”

She nodded. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I figured--with all the time off--that’s what he’d been up to. I looked down to the granite and traced a pattern with my finger. “I guess that’s not shocking.”

Sinead shrugged, “I guess not.”

He’d been saying at the end of the band that he wanted to do more music--something more him, more deep and raw and real. Unfortunately, at this point in the game, I think deep and raw and real would probably be about me and the way our relationship crashed and burned.

“Are you nervous?” She asked me, opening the lid on one of the containers. Steam from the food wafted up into the air in my kitchen as rain pattered on the deck outside.

“I mean--I’m not excited. I guess I’m kind of expecting the worst.”

I had no idea what to expect--it’s not like I’d spoken to him at all, so I had no idea how he was feeling and what he was thinking. Liam had barely given me much last month when I’d seen him, so I felt in the dark about the coming song.

Sinead walked over to the cabinet to get us plates. “It’ll be okay--I’m sure it won’t be that bad.”

I hoped she was right, but something in my chest told me that all the feelings I’d kept at bay for so long were about to come rushing back in.

The truth was that sometimes things don’t go the way you planned. Sometimes things don’t last and sometimes things just end. I stared out the window, watching as the sun slowly slipped beneath the horizon, fading out of sight, just like I’d done to Harry.

THEN - Day 1026

I thought that winning a Grammy would be the happiest day of my life. It was something I’d dreamed of for years--something that felt so surreal and so out of reach that sometimes, I told myself I shouldn’t even bother.

If it weren’t for the most monumental meltdown this morning, I’d ask Sinead to leave me alone, but I think she thought that if she took her eyes off of me for even a minute, I’d find a building to leap from or poison to drink. I was far from suicidal, I was tired and sad and nervous and done.

I considered not even coming--I considered not getting in the car to come down here and I considered just going home to my mom’s to sit on the couch and eat cold pizza. That was the only thing that really appealed, lately.

But here I was, sat in some sort of home library in someone’s fancy house in Beverly Hills--Sinead was staring down at her phone. Harry was off somewhere, three glasses of champagne in and with his tie untied around his neck.

The three Grammy’s were mine--but the excitement didn’t belong to me at all. Harry was thrilled, my mother cried, Nick was over the moon. Sinead was proud and my dad even showed up with his girlfriend. But here I was, sitting alone in a quiet room in a big house on a hill while everyone else celebrated me.

I played a E chord with my left hand. “I feel your arms around me, I think I’m giving up,” I sang quietly enough that Sinead wouldn’t be able to make out the words. It sounded okay, but the words weren’t right. I hit the keys again.

“I feel your arms around me, you say you feel the love, but oh, I feel alone.”

Sinead didn’t even look up from her phone--she was probably scrolling over the same email, pretending to be busy so I’d feel like for a second, the world actually was paused.

“You think you understand me, but I don’t even understand me at all,” I played an A chord now, “I feel alone.”

“Hey,” Harry’s voice sounded from the door--he stepped into the room and shut the door behind him. I stopped playing, bringing my hands to my lap and offering him a small smile.

“Hi,” I said quietly.

He walked around the pool table in the middle of the room and came to stand near the piano. “What are you doing in here? Everyone out there is so excited and happy for you!”

“I know,” I said quickly. “I was just--just taking a second.” Sinead had looked up, but when I met her eyes, she looked back to her phone.

“Why don’t you come with me?” He held out a hand for me to take. I only looked at it.

“Could I just have a second, actually? You can go with him, Sinead--I’ll be out in a few.”

At this Sinead looked up--her red lipstick matched the red of her dress. Her hair was curled and pulled to one side of her head. Harry paused for a second, almost as if he debating whether or not to argue my request. After a second, he turned to Sinead, held a hand out to her, and smiled.

“At least I’ll have someone beautiful on my arm tonight,” he joked. Sinead walked to meet him and offered me a smile over her shoulder.

“Come out in a minute, okay?”

I nodded, watching them walk away and close the doors--leaving me alone again.

I let out a sigh--sometimes a minute like this felt fleeting. Sometimes a moment like this felt uneasy, like I was waiting for someone to tell me I had somewhere to be, like if I closed my eyes and opened them, I’d wake up from a dream that thirteen-year-old me was having in Raleigh.

I played an A, hoping to have something of a verse for the chorus I’d just found.

“The rain starts falling when you’re calling me, why can’t you see?”

I liked the transition from A to E, the reverse progression of the chorus.

“I’m diving under water just to breathe,” I sang in the empty room, my voice echoed off of the walls and met my ears with emotion.

I’m feeling lonely, I’m feeling blue, won’t you please give me something?

Cause I don’t believe in your sweet nothing.

THEN - Day 168

I wiped at the mascara that was wet beneath my eyes--locked inside an arena bathroom in London as I cried into my hands. He was out there somewhere, out there with all of the people smiling, laughing, as if I wasn’t angry and upset.

I knew it was a thing--I knew he had fans that loved him and cared about him and wanted to meet him and hug him and tell him how important he was. My mom had brought it up early on--I’d talked with Sinead about it a handful of times.

I just didn’t know if would make me feel like this.

He’d acted as if I was crazy, as if every girl on this planet was fine with her boyfriend flirting with other girls, kissing them on the cheek, giving them a piggy back ride in a meet and greet. The problem was that not all girls were me, and not all boyfriends were him.

It’s not like I expected him to not be nice to them--it was his job to thank them and smile and pose and act as if he were just as excited to see them as they were to see him. Trust me, I get it. I’d been doing the same thing for four and a half years.

I’d asked him to just be mindful--he didn’t have to be a jerk or be rude or anything like that. I just wanted him to put himself in my shoes, to think about how he’d feel if I was constantly taking photos with guys and kissing them on the cheek or letting them pick me up. He rolled his eyes and said it was different.

What really did it, though, was when I told him that it made me feel insecure. I was honest, I was being real with him--it made me worry that one day, maybe, he’d look out into the crowd and find someone that he liked better than me. Someone who was more available, someone who could drop her life to follow him around the world.

He said I was being stupid. He said I was annoying him. He said I was being ridiculous.

If he’d wanted to tell me that I didn’t need to worry about that, there were certainly other ways to say it. There were ways to be reassuring.

I blew my nose once more and walked out into the hallway. They’d need to be on stage soon--I didn’t even know if I’d see him now until almost midnight when he was sweaty and too tired to talk.

“Margot? Y’okay?” Niall’s voice sounded from down the hall. Harry was stood next to him--his expression unreadable as I took a few steps towards them. Niall looked to Harry as if he were waiting for him to say something to me.

“I’m fine,” I nodded at him, offering a small smile in hopes of being convincing. He looked between the two of us for a moment but then made an excuse to leave. Something about checking the battery in his mic.

“You don’t have to make a scene,” Harry’s voice was low enough so others didn’t hear him.

“Excuse me?”

He let out an annoyed sigh. “Margot--I get that you’re upset, but what am I supposed to do?” People filed past us, the pre-show energy in the halls was up, people were getting ready for the show to start. He’d soon be whisked away by their stage manager.

“I don’t know Harry--I was telling you how I feel. It’s hard, you know. I just wish you would figure out a way to balance it.”

He didn’t say anything, he just stared at me as if I were speaking another language. I loved that Harry loved his fans--I loved that he was so excited to go on stage and to be able to make people happy, but it felt like he could only make one person happy at a time. And unfortunately for me, his job depended on him making other people happy every single day. It was never my turn.

“You have nothing to say?”

“If you can’t deal with my job then maybe this won’t work,” he said with a shrug.

My stomach seemed to drop, my heart beat immediately quickened and my mouth felt dry. It’d only been a few months--could we not even manage to get this off of the ground?

“You can’t handle my feelings so you want to walk away?” I challenged him, crossing my arms.

“Five minutes, places!” someone called from behind us. His eyes darted down the hall--Liam and Zayn fell into step with each other as they made their way toward us.

“I can’t talk about this now,” he said, adjusting his hair. “I’ve got a job to do.”

“No, you’ve got people to please,” I corrected him.

NOW - Day 1710

Harry showed up at my house at 7pm--I was hesitant at first when he brought take out and wine, I felt like I was standing on the edge of a cliff being pulled and pulled and soon I’d be free falling towards the bottom.

It was strange for a bit--he plated dinner and opened the wine while I sat at the island and watched the sun make its way towards the horizon. I could tell he wanted to know about my time in the studio, but he did a good job of playing it cool. He asked how it felt, he asked how Nathan was, and he even joked that it was only fair for me to write about him and to return the favor.

I was waiting for him to bring it up--the fighting we’d done the last two weeks, the fighting we’d done back then, the way we desperately searched for words to wound and heal each other at different times in life.

I’d brought him into the living room to show him a painting I’d gotten from Nathan as a gift when I got home from rehab, and we soon found ourselves sat on opposite couches. I was curled into the corner, resting the glass of pinot noir on my knee as I watched him.

“I mean, that’s the thing--right? I don’t think I’ve been in a place where I didn’t know the next step for the last five years. It’s nice to feel less pressure now, at least.”

I nodded--the feeling was one I knew well, but he knew that without me saying it. It almost felt like we were pretending--living in a world of make believe where I hadn’t left and he had called.

He was quiet--and I think it was the alcohol--but he rested his chin in his hand for a minute and stared at me. He had a look on his face like he did the night we hung out in my mom’s driveway.

“What?” I asked, adjusting on the couch. I sipped at my wine, busying myself to avoid the flush that threatened to find its way to my cheeks.

He shrugged, his smile tugging at his lips more than it had before. “Nothing--I don’t know, it’s just,” he paused, pulling at a tassel on the throw pillow beside him.

He stared intently at it, hoping to find the words to finish his sentence. I took another sip of wine, the smile on my face that mirrored his slowly faded--he looked upset and angry.

“I wish we could rewind and do all of it over.”

I nodded slowly--I’d been feeling regret since the day I left, but for the longest time, I didn’t have the words to use to express it. Here I was, sitting across from him in my living room--in a house I bought and lived in alone--and now I knew I could tell him.

The idea of talking about it--talking about my feelings and the thoughts I had--didn’t seem as terrifying as it used to. It didn’t feel like they were suffocating me with every passing second, and it surely didn’t feel like I’d be met with judgment or ridicule.

“I wish we could too.”

He stood from his spot across from me and crossed over, sitting on the same couch, careful not to spill his red wine on the beige cushions. “What were you thinking that day?”

“Which day?” I asked without thinking, but I had a feeling I knew.

“The day we broke up.”

I licked at my lips--my cheeks felt warm under his gaze as I let out a sigh. What did I think?

“I thought that you deserved better than someone who couldn’t even be grateful for all that she had.”

He tugged at his lower lip, his eyes still on me as if he knew I had more to say.

“I didn’t want to feel the way I felt--I remember thinking all summer that if I just felt okay about us then maybe I’d be okay,” he nodded, the look in his eyes told me he was hanging on every word I said. “But I thought that I had to do it alone--I didn’t think you’d want to help.”

He closed his eyes and hung his head, shaking it slightly. “Margot,” he said my name quietly, as if his volume held the potential to break me. “I’m sorry you didn’t feel like you could talk to me.”

I nodded--immediately feeling the tears pooling in my eyes when he looked up at me. It felt, in a matter of two seconds, like every fight we ever had was washed away, like every fear of my world imploding simply disappeared.

Maybe I needed time alone to find myself--maybe I needed days in the ocean and nights painting at my dining table to really feel the sadness and the fear and the worry.

Maybe I needed to hear his side of things in order to piece us back together.

He took my wine from me and set it next to his on the coffee table, moving forward to wrap me in his arms. As soon as my face was in his neck, I could feel the water on my cheeks, I could feel the pit in my stomach that I’d known so well.

“I’m sorry I didn’t let you help me,” I said, my words mumbled through tears and into the cotton of his t-shirt. He ran his left hand through my hair, pressing kisses to my forehead every few seconds.

“I love you,” he said quietly. “I always have and I always will.”

Hearing the words leave his mouth made me cry harder--it made me curl into him more and it made me cry like I hadn’t cried in years. It’s like all at once the floodgates opened, and for a while, we stayed like that.

He held me and we sat on the couch, our abandoned glasses of wine sat on the coffee table, the tears on my cheeks were a reminder of the emotions I’d felt and the waves that lapped at the shore outside.

And I knew that no matter how big the waves could be, that they were just a part of the ocean.

THEN - Day 1

Waking up at 6am every day was a lot like high school, at least, that’s what my friends told me. My feet would hit the floor in my bedroom and I’d have breakfast, brush my teeth, get dressed, and head out the door.

The main difference between me and my friends, though, was the fact that while they rode a bus to school, I got picked up in an SUV by a man named Ron and driven to set. Then someone would do my hair, do my makeup, I’d get dressed up like a doll, wash, rinse, repeat.

Maya was thrilled--today was finally the day. She’d asked me to text her pictures before I walked out the door to a waiting Ron, but I told her that waiting to see them in the flesh would probably be more exciting for her little 13-year-old heart.

It was louder than usual when I walked in--there were more people around. Probably theirs, I assumed--they struck me as the type of boy band that traveled with a posse. Maya had been quizzing me the night before--there was Liam, Louis, Harry, Niall, and Zayn. Niall was her favorite, I knew that. His cardboard silhouette smiled at me from the corner of her bedroom every time I walked in.

They were nowhere to be found, but it wasn’t like I looked that hard. I got whisked away to hair and makeup and had another cup of coffee while I looked over the script--we’d already done a read through the day before without the guys, but today was the first day of filming.

Life at seventeen was different than it was for most people. I had people to drive me places, a financial advisor, and someone whose sole job it was to make sure I had all of my belongings after a concert. Sometimes I felt like a normal person, and sometimes I didn’t.

This was one of those times--I had people all around me, brushing things on my face, asking me questions about a shirt I’d be wearing in scene 4. It was all part of the job--but it sometimes got to be a bit much.

Sometimes after a show or after a week of filming I’d think about what life would be like if I’d never moved here. If I never begged my mom to let me audition for some talent show and if I hadn’t gotten so far. I wondered what it would have been like to have to go back to school in Raleigh and admit that I didn’t make it through.

But that didn’t happen.

I was grateful--despite the late nights and the long days and the hate mail and the bad photos and the lack of privacy. I had fun each and every time I came to set and I had fun on stage and I had fun when I was recording and writing.

I still got to go home and help Maya with her homework or tease Ben about whatever girl he had a crush on. As long as I had that, I think I’d be fine. There were some days where I was glad it was the last season of the show. Whether or not I knew what I was doing after this chapter was closed, I was glad that the 6am wake up call would be a thing of the past.

“Margot--” I heard Dave’s voice behind me. Bonnie took the curling iron out of my hair so I could swivel around to face him. “Do you want to come with me to meet the guys from One Direction?”

I nodded, standing from the chair--if I’d seen them before I would have introduced myself. They must have been hidden away like the precious gems teen girls thought they were. “Sure,” I followed behind him as he walked back into the hall.

A few production assistants rushed by, hurrying to place props and cue cards in their spots before we started rolling. I followed Dave a few doors down to a dressing room that was usually empty--inside there was laughter. They all smiled like it was the greatest day of their lives. One of them--with the dark hair--was getting a comb brushed through his hair while someone brushed bronzer on Niall’s face. He was much more three-dimensional in person.

“Guys--this is Margot,” Dave held a hand up to me, they all smiled--the one with dark hair waved. “Margot, meet Niall, Louis, Liam, Zayn, and Harry.”

I offered a wave, looking over each one of them. I’d seen their faces in magazines and heard their songs blasting from the bathroom whenever Maya took a shower. “Nice to meet all of you.”

I wondered what they thought of me--I wondered what they’d read in magazines and what they heard on TV. They were still new--their second album was soon to be released, according to Maya, and I wondered if they were still in love with the job.

That’s how it worked--you had a honeymoon stage where the fame was exciting and exhilarating, where everything felt amazing and it felt like you were on top of the world.

My show was successful, my concerts were sold out, my albums sold millions of copies. It looked like I had it all--but what I really had was a headache and feeling in my chest that I wouldn’t last forever, at least not at this speed.

But I was fine--nothing was wrong. I think I just needed a change of scenery. I think I needed a vacation and a nap and then I’d be ready for the third world tour and life after the show.

Niall came to shake my hand--he complimented the series and thanked me for having them on. “You should thank my little sister,” I told him. “She’ll be here later. She’s been begging my mom to get out school.”

“That’s amazing,” the one with dimples spoke, his green eyes were inviting and I felt a wave of adrenaline pulse through me. He sidestepped Niall and offered me his hand. “I’m Harry, it’s nice to finally meet you.”

[aleatoryalarmalligator]

Life Story Part 91

My mother decided to move out of Wes's. She ended up getting in some kind of fight with him right before he had got sick in the hospital. There wasn't enough room for us four to live in that basement and she was suffering financially after a combined thievery from my sister and niece and from the fact that when Wes went to the hospital, she was temporarily out of work until he came him. This time though, he was really sick. It didn't look like he would be coming back. He wouldn't stop eating food that was bad for him. When my mother prepared him healthy dishes he would eat them, and then pay people to bring him sugary snacks that he couldn't eat anymore. He had lost his second leg. And every time he caught a cold or a flu it came close to killing him if he didn't go to the hospital. So the facts of the matter were that taking care of Wes was going to prove a very unstable income for my mother and there just wasn't enough space for all of us.

After the fight, I had just gotten home from learning Zack had feelings for Sarah. My mother came down the steps and had started screaming and throwing things at me. I remember I feeling awful. I wasn't angry at her. My heart was confused. It didn't help to have small items and articles of clothing being tossed at me. I couldn't even hear what it was she was yelling about, and I didn't care. Zack's affections were for Sarah. And of course they were. Sarah was beautiful, charming, she was hilarious and had an accommodating personality. If Sarah had been born a snaggled tooth she still would have reeled people in with the sheer brilliance of her personality. For some reason Sarah was trying to fog my vision. Perhaps she didn't want to hurt me. In any case, I was hurt. I waited seven years, so I reasoned. Seven years. Even when I had moved on, my heart still must have carried inside of it, some fragment of my love for him. And then he had come back to me, and I had been so certain that my life had made sense again – even though it wasn't making any sense it all. Where would this all lead?

When I absently didn't respond to my mother's fury, she took note and stopped throwing things at me. I distantly told her that Zack didn't love me, flatly. For what it's worth coming from my mother of all people, she felt as badly as she was capable of feeling. She didn't understand what it felt like of course – she had never really been in love, but she knew I had told her was something of that was pretty big for me.  I had to swallow my pride I guess. Life wasn't going to stop just because I felt badly. Sometimes continuing to try felt dizzying and it was hard to see to what means I was doing anything. It was coming to the periphery of my realization that I was on my own. Sarah said she was with me, but how could she really be with me? She was no longer really listening to me. Even though she showed no indication of it, I knew we weren't making a connection. I couldn't really be mad at her though. She had spent the last two years trying to make me a functioning cog in society so that I could climb out of the hole that was my family.

Some part of me was going limp. Twenty pounds had fallen off my that month due to stress. My clothes were fitting better. I had moments where I looked in the mirror and it please me that I was getting so much thinner. But if someone had given me a way to escape my own brain I would have taken it without thought. I felt emotionally drained.

Wes was in the hospital, which was a short walk away from the house. My mom told us that Wes would be cheered up if we went to the hospital to say hello. It was a beautiful day outside, so David and I got our shoes on and headed up to the hospital. When we got there – Wes was asleep. He was too ill and tired to receive guests, so we turned around and decided to walk back home. As I was walking, suddenly I felt this achy feeling in my chest. At this point, feelings of this nature were commonplace with me. I was constantly hurting in some form or another. This was who I was now, and I was trying to adjust to being sad and happy and feeling crazy all the time without bothering everyone around me with it.

Sarah had given me a friendship ring that winter. She had bought it for me before I had gone up to visit my grandma and I was feeling like giving up, as a reminder to stay strong and remember there was something worth not giving up for. It reminded me of Sarah. It meant a lot to me, and I wore it everyday. It was made of thick plastic, it probably came from a venting machine or from the front counter of a trinket store. It fit well – it wasn't hard for me to slide on and off. As I was walking down the road, feeling the strange ache in my chest, I suddenly felt this weird burst around my ring. I looked down and it had shattered. The plastic had shattered into six pieces. David and I looked at the wreckage of my friendship ring with confusion. At first all I could try to make out was that something must have hit it or there must have been some kind of extreme pressure that made the ring break. But none of that had been the case. I had been walking down the road and the ring had just burst.

I didn't want to be superstitious, or to assume anything about it. It was so weird though. I couldn't help but connect it to the dream I had had where Sarah and I were disconnected. I wrote Sarah and told her about it. It was not lost to her that this seemed connected to what I had told her of my dream. She was coming into town that next day – and she told me she was going to stop at a store and buy another one. There was no way she was going to let some supernatural force break our friendship rings. She would bring Zack with her.

I waited the next day that morning for Zack and Sarah to show up. I was always so happy to see them, and some melancholy feeling of dread took over at the same time that was mysteriously repelled. I couldn't figure it out, but I didn't have much choice in the matter. Maybe it was the knowing that Zack was interested in Sarah and not me. Maybe it was garden variety jealousy and I was just making it into something far more profound then it actually was. Their car showed up and I walked out onto the porch. It was beautiful outside. As Sarah and Zack got out of the truck, something hit me. I couldn't explain it. Neither one of them had said or done anything directly strange. And yet there was something about the way they had gotten out of the truck that spoke a thousand words. Both of them were wearing sunglasses bought from Claire's. Zack had rainbow sunglasses on. He was looking pretty cool. Sarah had bought herself a pair of heart sunglasses. Something had struck me as strange about their mannerisms, or their appearances. Something about the very minute details of their exit from the vehicle told a story I didn't know I wanted to hear.

Sarah had to go to work. It would be one of those days that Zack drove me around. We drove out of town. We listened to one of Johnny Cash's 'American Recording' records. Then we were silent. Zack started talking about the normal stuff – the phoenix, the fact that we were family. Some God stuff that I drowned out. At this point I knew that talking about Sarah was going to be an inevitable part of our discussions. He was obsessed with her. There was a neediness in his obsession I didn't care for. The idea that Sarah could cure him of drugs the way a holy man could cure someone of leprosy or blindness wasn't something I could be obliged to believe. Plus, I knew Sarah. She was definitely not holy. She'd been a great friend and she was a good person and all that. But she wasn't capable of really understanding the depths of addiction. She didn't really understand my weight loss and all the struggle that had been for me – so I knew she wasn't going to grasp Zack's addiction to methamphetamines. I wanted to argue this point, but I didn't.

In any case, he started talking to me in this cryptic way about all sorts of stuff. We were on the outskirts of some small town with maybe one hundred people living in it. He started talking about how – him, me, Sarah, his sister Whitney and his stepbrother Josh – who had dated Whitney off an on for several years now before and after their parents decided to date and marry (more explanations on that later), where all going to live in a house together and it was going to be essentially utopia. This was the first time I had heard some specific goal like this. I didn't even know what to say.  Obviously Zack didn't understand what it meant to pay bills. I wondered if this had been his plan all along. Where was this idea stemming from? I told him I didn't believe him and I laughed it off. But he had a dead certainty in his eye.

He then started talking about Sarah. I had anticipated this. It felt like getting hit with a hammer when he talked about her to me. There is something about listening to somebody you are infatuated with talk lovingly about your best friend with you in this way. I felt ugly and awkward and belittled – but at the same time I didn't have the right to tell him to stop. Nobody owed me anything. He was doing nothing wrong. But then he started talking about how him and Sarah were already together. I looked at him confused. They weren't together! What was going on here? My first thought was that Zack was crazy. The second thought I had was that Sarah didn't feel that way towards Zack, and third, she had a boyfriend, and fourth, even if she did have feelings for Zack, she would never act out on them because a. I was her best friend and she knew doing something like that would destroy me, and b. Zack was a meth addict.

But here Zack was, telling me anyway. I began to panic in silence. I slouched in the passenger seat. I frowned with frustration. I put my head in my hands. A little voice that lived in my thoughts took hold – the one that I thought I should ignore since I thought that being suspicious would make me seem crazy. I started going over every action and indirect action said and implied in every moment with Sarah and Zack since his arrival. Individually each piece fit together to make what Zack was saying true. It would make sense with what I had picked up off of Sarah.  It all made horrible sense when I thought of all the times I just thought I was sensing something but couldn't put a name to it, and yet when I thought of it in terms of one lump reality, the whole thing seemed profoundly unlikely. There were so many safeguards I thought, that would prevent something like this from ever becoming a thing. It was the same baffled horror I felt when Donald Trump would be elected six years later.

Zack was still talking about it all. Against my strong need to be composed, I was beginning to curl up into a ball in the passenger seat. Zack's eyes glowed indifferently as he continued to drive and dreamily clarify cryptically, how it all was going to be now from here on in – for him, me, Sarah. He didn't just stop at telling me about him and Sarah – he started talking about me as well. He had plans for me – so I had nothing to worry about. I couldn't talk anymore. I was afraid if I started I would just begin to scream or laugh or cry. I didn't want to fly into hysterics. Maybe Zack was telling the truth – and Sarah and him were a couple. Sarah had kept it from me, but now Zack had been sent to tell me all about it because Sarah was too cowardly to look me in the eye and tell me herself.

Zack told me that my place was to serve him and Sarah. I had no other purpose outside of him and Sarah. My old life was over. My sole purpose was to be there for them. He told me that everything I had fought for and believed in up to this point in my life had been to get to this point so that Sarah and him could be together and now that it had happened my role was to essentially be their servant, pet, maid. My individuality was nothing. Zack and Sarah had decided this for me. Was I not excited? Why was I crying? Why was I not happy for him and Sarah? Didn't I love them both?

It was awkward to be crying in the passenger seat, holding my head, slouching and half dead. I didn't care. I wasn't crying because I was losing Zack. At this point, I had to face the reality that I just couldn't care about ninety percent of whatever it was he was saying. It was Sarah. Sarah had been my true friend. She was one of the only people I had ever trusted, and the only person I had trusted when I had woke up that morning. I could never even have imagined any of this happening. She was the last person I ever would have suspected. She knew everything about me. I thought she respected me. She had helped me grow as a person for those years. I had been so open with her – I had been vulnerable. And she had stepped on me to get to Zack – if what Zack was saying was true. She hadn't even really waited. If what Zack was saying was true, she either intended on a. going along with exactly what Zack wanted, or b. she was willing to lose me as a friend in order to keep him. It had only been three or four weeks since Zack had even shown up. She had passively shut me down every time I felt weird about something. She had promised me, desperately to trust her. And why??

So everything I had been relying on, everything I had been standing on was a lie. I had nobody. I was nobody. I felt like I was dying. Zack didn't get why I was upset. He told me he knew that I had feelings for him, that Sarah had told him. I felt betrayed by this as well, violated in fact – and the believability of this whole ugly mess was starting to sink in. I had no dignity left to even pretend anymore. Sarah had told Zack everything. She told him about my feelings for him. She had likely seen it as a romantic hurdle that was preventing them from being able to truly be together, not as very real feelings I was having. I was dehumanized. And every time in the last several years where she had supported me and tried to debunk any self loathing I had been feeling or doubts – every time she had gone above and beyond to make me feel like I had value, it had all been one big lie. It was humiliating. I couldn't believe I had allowed myself to trust someone so openly.

Then Zack started to tell me that I should have suspected this. He explained that in high school Sarah and him had been super close. About how he had written her letters and sang to her. This was false! It was me! Zack and Sarah didn't talk much in high school. Zack and I had been the ones who were close. I felt strangled with fury and frustration. He could take my identity from me, my self worth, my friendship – but now the past was being altered. And Sarah knew he was intentionally or unintentionally misremembering how this had all started seven years ago. Those had been my years. Zack had written those letters to me. He had sang in my ear. It had been me! And she had gone along with it when he talked to her about it – she had knowingly pretended that it wasn't me that had all happened to. She knew perfectly well the truth. I remembered on the phone, going long back to the dim age of fifteen when I had asked Sarah if she would take my place with Zack if she could – and all the things he said to me had been to her instead. She had said yes. She had said yes. I couldn't believe it. I never forgot that moment, but seven years on and I thought we were done with that. Had this been the plan all along – all the way since high school? Who knew that this would be playing itself out in reality seven years later. As hideous as it all was, it felt poetically to absurd for what little things we had said and done in school to be mangling our adult lives.

There were so many ugly new realities coming to light at once while I sat there. I continued to slouch in a ball and hold my face. Zack wouldn't stop talking. I wanted to ask him specific detailed questions, but I also wished he would just shut the fuck up. He wasn't overly concerned with my emotional state. He was mostly excited to talk about his views. I tried to tell Zack that it was me that he wrote letters to, but he dismissed what I was saying. And why not? Him and Sarah both had me pegged as their child-servant. I wasn't to be taken seriously. Then Zack started saying something that hit me with disgust. It's probably the grossest thing anyone has ever seriously said to me, and for what it's worth, in that moment, fifty percent of the love I had for Zack mysteriously dissolved in me. I felt like shit, but never again would I take him seriously. He had gone too far.

What he said to me was something along the lines of the idea he had in his mind that my father and I were soulmates and should be together. It was disgusting. I mean, it was too absurd to even take seriously, which only somehow made it more gross – because Zack meant it. I had thought Zack was my friend. It would have been laughable, if only I hadn't taken Zack so seriously up to that point. It wasn't even in consideration of my father and me that I felt foul about what  he had said. A statement like that is laughable at best in the context of a joke. Zack wasn't making some Freudian observation. He was honestly idealizing some disastrously sick scenario where my father and I got married and Sarah and him got married – like on the same day or something. I think it goes without saying that my father  would both have laughed and called Zack a sick fuck. What grossed me out about it was just how sick Zack had to be for that even to cross his mind. Did he understand anything? Like, did he get that my father was a parent and I was a child? Or that incest is messed up? What part of life was he missing to think that saying something of that nature was acceptable. Sarah's betrayal aside – the whole heartbroken part of it, even Zack's drug addiction laid to the wayside as well as my leftover feelings, the idea that Sarah would give so much up for an idiot who would think that the solution to my life was that I get romantic with my own dad made me feel more than anything, a deep seated embarrassment for even knowing who Zack was at all, and an even deeper seated embarrassment on Sarah's behalf. Because she was the one now who had really given herself over. I had been timidly trying to accept what Zack had put on the table these last weeks – trying to find the right way to take it all in before I decided to sell out entirely, but Sarah had been lunging into her wallet and throwing down big money before she even knew what it was she was buying. We had both been foolish for sure, but Sarah was by far the biggest idiot. Even while I felt hurt and broken, I could see that now immediately.

It was hard to believe that Sarah could actually be a bigger idiot than me. My misgivings had made some sense all along. There was some relief to know that at least one part of me hadn't been crazy after all. I had just been confused because I had assumed Sarah would have been reacting differently to our circumstances. But where I was sensing where this was heading even when I wasn't cognitively able to comprehend it all, Sarah was totally blind. And it was here where I started to see Sarah a little differently. Sarah wasn't all she was cracked up to be. I had underestimated myself and overestimated her capacity to see that deeply. Yes, she was charming, quick witted and despite all the horrors at hand, could be selfless (it was hard to recall those times now that I knew what I was dealing with). But she couldn't see Zack for what he was. The messed up thing about me was that I had seen Zack for what he was and I hadn't flinched like I should have. Maybe my emotional pain tolerance was high. Maybe there were things about Zack's less than stellar character that I was amused by and intrigued by. Even through the psychological issues I had been having, I must have enjoyed the self awareness and duplicity of my circumstances. In any case, in three weeks time I was seeing Zack somewhat clearly – which doesn't bode well for my psychological well being but I wasn't fooling myself either. To a degree I had even come to face that Zack was not the boy I had been in love with in high school. It wasn't a pleasant reality, but I had faced it. The biggest embarrassment would be trying to explain myself. I knew my reasons and my feelings. I knew myself well enough to know that if Sarah and my roles were reversed, I wouldn't have sold Sarah out like she had done me.  

But with Sarah, she saw Zack as someone else entirely. She thought herself invisible. She thought she could fix Zack overnight. She believed what Zack told her at face value. If he said something she didn't like, she pretended she hadn't heard it. She was living in denial. When my feelings conflicted with her feelings she had decided to dismiss me even – her very best friend – as I had become an inconvenience to her. There was something embarrassingly weak about all of that. Desperate, ugly, and stupid. She didn't even try to sort through the conflict or come to any sort of conclusion or acceptance. She ran from herself in fear and when  something didn't go her way she denied all of it. And when reality didn't pan out the way she wanted it to, when she had run from any and all sense of responsibility for her lack of responsibility she would rather cut herself loose than admit she had done anything wrong. Even in admitting she had done something wrong, it felt more like a second rate infomercial performance version of a real apology – something she knew would look good if she did so she could get it over with. She couldn't actually be vulnerable with herself to even process any of it enough to give a convincing or meaningful understanding apology. She had no realization of her own self. It didn't come from the heart. Sarah might have been prettier than me, funnier, more functional in society – a lot of good can be said of Sarah that could not be said of me. But there was something really fucked up about that lack of genuine self curiosity, something messed up about someone who would stab their best friend in the back and not even admit to themselves that they did it, and I wondered how far that personality flaw of hers would drag her down.

I was still crying by the time we got to the Zany's parking lot. The sun had set, but there was an ominous red and orange hue in the horizon that faded into the black of the sky beyond the mall parking lot and the Lewiston hills in the distance. I was shaking all over. I had never felt this way before, even with all the weird feelings I had grown accustomed to. Everything about my body was pained. There was a need to self destruct, but there was also something liberating in my spirit. I am sure I looked a mess, and I didn't even care if Zack saw me like this at all. I was done with him. I had feelings for him still, but I realized something about love in that moment. I didn't love Zack. It had been something. It had been intense. It had brought out the realization that I hadn't entirely gotten over him. But love? It wasn't love. Maybe I had never been truly in love before. I wasn't connecting with Zack at all. At times I had even felt repelled by him but didn't know how to comprehend it. Zack sure as hell didn't love me. I doubted he loved Sarah. This whole thing was selfish and stupid – on everyone's part. I wanted out. If Sarah actually loved Zack, I honestly felt sorry for her. That must suck.

It seemed like such a sick joke all playing itself out the way it had. I had romanticized the idea of Zack for years. I literally had a pile of poetry and handwritten confessions about him sitting in a box in my closet. And it all meant nothing. I had been in love with a ghost. I would have been better off falling in love with a physical object. Zack didn't care about me. If he had cared about me in high school then why didn't he seek me out? And if I had loved him so much, why had I been too afraid to find him? Clearly I hadn't love him enough to step out of my comfort zone. Real love requires that – without question. I had been uncomfortable most certainly, but that didn't mean that I had been drawn out of my comfort zone. There was a distinct difference. I had confused nostalgia for love. It was a terrible mistake, and I vowed never to do that again.

We waited for Sarah to get out of Zany's in the car. She eventually scuffled out of the building as some other workers locked the door behind her. She looked at the car and then down. She didn't want to look at me. She knew what she had done, and was going to continue on doing. I didn't know how I felt looking at her either honestly. I hadn't even processed enough to be angry. My thoughts and feelings were shambolic. I wished desperately that I could be a new person. This life wasn't going well so far. I thought very seriously about leaving. I didn't have what it took I knew but leaving at this point was the only thing that made any sense. Leaving Allison behind would be the hardest, but who's to say I couldn't find her later and bring her with me? Realistically though – it couldn't happen for me. I didn't have the social skills, the knowledge, and probably most importantly the money or the job experience to just get on a bus and leave to a new city. I thought momentarily about leaving for Spokane – staying a year there and then moving onto Seattle, somewhere new. But unfortunately, it was and forever more would be just a dream at this point. I couldn't escape this life. I couldn't escape the skin I was in. If I ran my family would try and find me. It was also in this moment that it became more clear to me the social and emotional implications of having money. If I were rich, I could have gotten through this already. With enough money, theoretically I could escape. I could get the help I needed. I would never have to look at Sarah blank guilty defeated stare or Zack's ugly mug ever again if I didn't want to. But realistically, as much as I didn't want to admit it, Sarah was still the best option I had of getting 'out'. Whatever 'out' even meant anymore. It seems like even when you fought and fought you were still in it.

Zack jumped out of the car to meet Sarah as she was approaching her car. They talked in the parking lot by where he had parked his car, as I stayed in Sarah's car. She and Zack held each other closely. They were having the 'serious' talk about what to do with me. Zack had been instructed to deal with me I guess, to tell me all that he had. Sarah had been too afraid to do it herself. She didn't want to deal with me anymore. She wanted to deal with me through Zack. She wanted to see the version of me that Zack saw, the one that was their back seat bitch or whatever. I knew we would be talking about it soon though. I would be getting in the car with Sarah. Zack was going back to Kendrick in his car. At this point I didn't even know what I was doing. Did it even matter? Sarah and Zack lingered outside for twenty lousy minutes with what can only be describes as self-important cooings towards one another. I sat there silently looking at them, trying not to look at them but at the same time letting myself see the dynamics for what they were.

Eventually Sarah got in the car. I ended up exploding in tears. I had held a lot back for the few hours it had taken for Zack to explain the situation to me. Sarah I could tell felt really bad. I couldn't process that Sarah had betrayed me, what with her being so sympathetic. It was sympathy I should have rejected. If this happened to me I would have ghosted her and Zack both. It was the weak kind of sympathy that wouldn't do me any good. I couldn't reject her though. I was in shock and I wasn't strong enough. As bad as this all was, I reasoned that she was still better for me than my parents. She meant me more well than my father -surely I thought that had to be the case. I couldn't accept she had done this to me. I began to go over the ways it might have been my fault. I had been too needy too emotional. I took and took and there wasn't a lot I could give. I was a bad friend. I had been an emotional disaster all winter. I couldn't even get through a job interview I was so pathetic. I was nothing but a big useless baby. I didn't deserve to be mad at her. If anything she deserved to be mad at me. I reasoned that she had every right to take Zack away from me. He was never mine to begin with. Zack had told me in the car several times, whatever was mine was now his. Maybe he was right. Maybe Sarah deserved to take whatever she wanted from me. Maybe if I gave her more then this whole ugly thing would stop.

Sarah took in my sobbing and my babbling about who deserved what. She was reaching for some excuse for her actions, any excuse really. I think she was tempted to buy in with the idea that I owed her – if it shone a redeeming light on her in some way. She seemed lost. I asked her how it had all happened.

She explained to  me in as much clarity as possible. The second Zack had looked at her when he went up the steps, she had immediately become infatuated with him. She denied it at first, thinking she could control her own emotions, mine, and his. She realized this spelled the sudden death of whatever fragment of a relationship she still had left with Alex. There was nothing left between them. All of this she was going to ignore however, until the day that I had the dream about our friendship. She was constantly stressed out about me. That was very sincere. She wanted nothing more than for me to get a job and get the hell away from my family. It had been front and foremost on her thoughts. She had found Zack and wanted to talk to him about her stress. I imagine she felt lonely in a sense. Sure she had me, but who could she rely on when she was feeling lost?

Zack had comforted her, and patted her on the back. He told her 'everything's gonna be fine'. And I guess she had so readily needed some kind of affirmation – some basic comforting, that she suddenly had decided she would give everything up in her life to be with him. He told her then that he had feelings for her, and that he felt 'their hearts were tied'. Sarah and him agreed to date, just as soon as she formally broke up with Alex and told him the truth – which she then did, and they could figure out that pesky inconvenient little fact that I had feelings for Zack and jumping into this relationship like she had wanted to would be a betrayal of our friendship, which I guess then transformed me into some kind of snag in her unstable need to rush into a new relationship just as soon as she could. And I guess from there they decided to turn me into the family dog to discredit my entire reality. And now apparently, I owed everything to them. The logic wasn't sound – but it was the logic of the group. It was the page we had all turned to.

I went to Sarah's house that night. I cried myself to sleep on the living room floor. I woke up feeling weird. On one hand, I felt a great and odd sense of relief. Zack was no longer my problem. I hadn't been able to admit it to myself, but the prospects of feeling like Zack was my keep, that his addiction issues and his behavior were somehow something that I needed to work with or tie myself with were over. Sure, I guess in his mind I was still the little slave person to him and Sarah or whatever, but I felt that to me he had dismissed me from ever getting or feeling entitled to be close to any of that if I didn't want to be. I didn't feel like there was anything I had to honor. It was all Sarah's problem. Secondly, at least I knew now. At least I hadn't been  half as crazy as I thought I had been. The feelings and thoughts I had had were grounded in something. I felt all kinds of terrible, but I wasn't making things up. I was just extremely sensitive. Third, even though I felt like a lot of things had run their coarse – there had been a loss of innocence with me in this situation, I now felt more compelled then ever to better myself. Whatever this thing was that I was feeling, these conflicted feelings of anger, hurt, bittersweet happiness, remorse, a loss of friendship, emotional alienation and distance, skepticism, misunderstanding and mistrust and now a growing sense of wisdom, I now knew I could grow from it all. I could make lemonade if I had to. I survived. I felt released from a spell. For the first time in my young life, I could finally really let go of everything and everyone around me and simply be. There was nobody in my way from being out in the world. I could experience it all without having to carry anything on my shoulders.

My Life Story in Chapters, PARTS 1-80 (this link below will lead you to a list of all the chapters i have written thus far). 

http://aleatoryalarmalligator.tumblr.com/post/168782771574/life-story-sections-1-90

[thesinglesjukebox]

RAVYN LENAE - STICKY

[7.88]

It's spring, which means it's time for us to like stuff again!

Crystal Leww: Building a career from Chicago is a tenuous and difficult path for every Black girl in a way that feels incredibly unjust given what feels like an endless stream of coverage of the scene. Sure, some of that is media tastemaker hype, but Chicago has an abundance of talent that just seems unjust to keep in ~The Internet~ (no pun intended, even with the Steve Lacy connection here). "Sticky" slinks along, guided along by a groovy guitar and the warmth and weirdness of Lenae's voice. The first bit of this chorus is so choked that I didn't even know she was singing words at first, but these are all atmospherics, a vibe so well constructed and packaged together that it's beyond what a teen should be consciously able to produce. I know that Lenae's been here since 2015 -- all Chicago teens seem to need a ton of lead time -- but I'm still curious to see where she takes this next. [7]

Julian Axelrod: Chicago's golden child sings of an irresistible temptation over lush organs, like the most immaculately produced "u up?" text of all time. Steve Lacy's rich backdrop sounds like blood rushing away from the head, while Lenae's sidewinder vocal coils around it before devouring it whole. Like the tingle under your skin when you're alone with the person you want, this is a full-body experience. If only all bad ideas sounded this good. [8]

Nortey Dowuona: Gooey, shiny and stick. Shimmering synth chords, slithering bass, glittering guitar and sharp, tear-shaped drums anchor the song, while Ravyn swims through the current with confidence and ease. [10]

Alfred Soto: I've got students who adore her. Her ooh-ooh-ooh stutter plays lasciviously against hi-hat, bass, and a church organ. She can't stop singing, no matter how prominent the clatter, and she inflects sex play like "Let's play, let's pretend" with the detachment of a person who knows she's going to immortalize the fling in song. [8]

Claire Biddles: The spacious, steady production is a gorgeous setting for Lanae's unpredictable vocals -- from the jarring cold-open of her whipped-up falsetto to the close harmonies of the chorus that unravel and zip away in all directions. [7]

William John: A loop of the electric organ and Steve Lacy guitar scratches that open "Sticky" would be enough to keep me beguiled for days. But it turns out they're mere prologue: Ravyn Lenae, stonewalled by love, gives the performance of a polyglot, shifting shrewdly from whirling dreamer to jaded enquirer to hopeless devotee; meanwhile, the track rotates around her methodically, keeping her in check. Her use of multiple voices is ingenious, and never reaches the point where it becomes affectedly obtuse; she instead transports us directly to her conscience, which, based on this evidence, appears to be brimming with ideas and predisposed to the sublime. [9]

Maxwell Cavaseno: "Sticky" is a punchier sort of neo-soul/funk jam, reminiscent of Joi or the even more disconnected moments of the Minnie Riperton catalog -- always interesting to hear from a generation that increasingly shirks traditional soul stylings unless reproducing them as a Tumblr-like xerox. It's ambitiously florid and mannered enough that any moments that seem like missteps still show a level of character other acts are scraping the edge of their internal jar to offer. [7]

Will Adams: As sticky as it is woozy, lovesick, sunsick and delirious. Ravyn Lenae's falsetto pierces through the funk syrup in myriad ways: witchy "you-hoo-hoo"s, braided harmonies, and that light-stepping, two-note chorus. Some more contrast via her lower register wouldn't have gone amiss, but a headrush at every turn is enough of a draw. [7]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

[goodfemalecharacters]

Season 12 Codas

Since we’re all deep in hiatus, I figured I would make a master list of my s12 fics for anyone here on tumblr who’s interested. Fic list beneath the cut :)

12x01: Heartbeat

“The souls are gone,” Cas says, breathing a sigh of relief. He’s close enough that Dean can feel it on his face.

Cas slides his hand further back and finds his pulse. A human way of checking. Dean desperately hopes he doesn’t feel his heartrate tick up. They stay there for a heartbeat (Dean knows, he’s counting) longer than they have to before stepping back.

After they get back to the bunker with Mary in tow, Dean and Cas need to talk about the Lucifer thing.

ao3 / tumblr

12x02: On Eagle’s Wings

“So. Mom in action. Weird.”

Not exactly the best word for the utter confusion of seeing his mother a) stab someone and b) beat up on a seasoned fighter like Lady What’s Her Face.

Cas inclines his head. “I’ve found that sometimes the people we idolize are not what we expect.”

12x02 Coda. Sam and Mary go to church, while Dean and Cas have some God talk of their own.

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12x03: Jet Lag

"The thing is, intellectually, Dean knows this isn’t permanent. Because even if he’s never been a parent, he practically raised Sam and he knows what empty nest syndrome feels like. Mom’s out there looking for her kids. Once she realizes that the only place she’ll ever find them is this bunker, she’ll be back. Or, at least, he hopes so. But the emotionally raw side of him, the part that feels like the four-year-old Mary is so desperately searching for, has completely taken over. He sits in the middle of his bed clutching a pillow, fighting the lost-in-the-mall feeling in his chest with all his might.

Cas left. Mom left. He can’t even keep his family together for more than two damn days.

Once Mary leaves the bunker, Sam figures that there's only one person to call that can drag Dean out of his funk.

ao3 / tumblr

12x04: Starting Small

“They’re older than me. How am I supposed to be their mother?”

She’s not running from her sons, she realizes. She’s running from their picture of her, from the woman that they think she is.

Castiel shrugs. “I don’t know. But I would start with trying to be their friend.”

After Mary leaves the bunker, she ends up calling Cas to find out a little bit more about her kids. Mary and Cas friendship fic.

ao3 / tumblr

12x05: Unusually Domestic 

“So,” Cas says conversationally, “you killed Hitler?”

“It was awesome.”

Dean launches into a full play-by-play of the hunt. Cas helps the story along by nodding appreciatively in all the right places. He even goes so far as to let out a gasp at one point, which Dean would not have seen coming.

There are days that I think my life can’t get any stranger,” Dean tells him.

Of course, he’s saying this while sitting in the kitchen of an underground bunker that used to be owned by a group of anti-supernatural geeks with an angel, drinking a cup of coffee. It can’t get much stranger than that.

Cas and Dean chat.  It gets domestic.

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12x06: Chocolate Chip Pancakes

An awkward silence descends. Cas tries to break it.

“Are you and Alex—?”

Oh, God. She can’t have this conversation.

“Are you and Dean?” Claire snarks back.

Cas is heading through Omaha and catches Claire and Alex after the Radiohead concert.

ao3 / tumblr

12x07: The Blame Game

“If Lucifer was still trapped in the Cage, he wouldn’t be out there killing people. Every single person he takes early is on me.”

Sam shakes his head. “If we’re going to be playing the blame game, I’d say that the person who let him out in the first place wins.”

Cas looks miserable. “I was the one who let you out of the panic room.”

“And if you want to get technical like that, you would have never gone to the Cage in the first place if I hadn’t been stupid enough to think that God would bother talking to me.”

Sam and Cas finally talk about the Lucifer thing.

ao3 / tumblr

12x08: The Worst Part

Dean is going to lose his mind in here.

He’d never call himself a people person, but the truth is that he’s lived very little of his life alone. Growing up, he’d never gotten a moment to himself. Back then, it had seemed like a curse, but he’d happily kill right now if it meant he got to spend an hour in a sleazy motel room at three A.M. with Sam and Dad snoring up a storm. Even after he and Dad split up for hunts, he still found himself surrounded by people—the occasional one night stand, thin motel walls, sleeping in the Impala on the side of the highway with the sound of traffic.

The worst part is the loneliness.

It's been thirty-five days. Sam and Dean are trying to cope with their imprisonment, and Mary and Cas are doing their best to get them out.

ao3 / tumblr

12x09: Love and Love

There’s something about the way Cas says his name like it’s a prayer, like it means everything, that makes him snap.

“I’m not worth that! Not worth yanking Mom back into this—this messed up thing we call a life! Not worth upending the entire world for the thousandth time!”

By the time the tirade is over, his chest is heaving like he’s followed Sam on one of his ridiculous runs. Of all things, that’s finally what earns him a response.

“Of course you are,” Cas says.

After they all get back to the bunker, Sam and Mary have a conversation about Hell, and Dean and Cas talk some things out.

ao3 / tumblr

12x10: Red Hands

Cas doesn’t answer. Dean reaches up to take one of the bloodied hands in both of his own. It’s shaking. Gently, Dean moves his thumb in a slow circle around Cas’s knuckles. Some of the tension in Cas’s hands drains away, but his shoulders stay hunched, his eyes locked on something that Dean can’t see.

Cas killed another one of his siblings. Dean steps in to take care of the guilt.

ao3 / tumblr

12x11: More Than His Share

He’s amazed by how much Cas there is in his memories.

The exact fold of his old, ill-fitting trench coat, down to how many buttons chased each other up and down the flaps. The gummy crinkles of his first-ever smile, and how much bigger it’s been growing over the years. The warm steadiness of his hand on Dean’s shoulder, resting where the scorching red handprint used to lay.

Dean’s lived a long life—most of it, admittedly, dead. But Cas takes up so much more than his share of space.

After Dean gets his memories back, he talks with Cas. 

ao3 / tumblr

12x12: Watching Over You

Dean still grabs him again to lead him into the room. For his part, Cas just lets it happen. Right now, it feels better to have someone else in the drivers’ seat. He does raise his eyebrows when he realizes there’s only one bed, though. He turns around enough in Dean’s grip to catch a glance of his face.

A flush rises in Dean’s cheeks. “I—I wasn’t planning on sleeping.”

He maneuvers Cas until he’s sitting on the edge of the bed. Cas can’t help the tiny smile that tugs on the edges of his lips.

“You were planning to watch over me.”

After nearly losing Cas again, there are some things Dean wants to say. Well, not quite say. But the sentiment's there.

ao3 / tumblr

12x13: Mamma Drama

"He really doesn’t want to have this conversation, but he presses forward anyway.

“Imagine if someone—if God, if your brother—sat you down across from Alastair and told you to buck up, work together, save the world.”

He tries to keep the bitterness from his voice, but that just makes the sentence fall completely flat from his lips. It sounds like someone else entirely has said it. Sam examines his fingernails for a long moment before looking up to check how Dean has taken it."

Sam and Dean talk about Mary working with the BMoL. It goes...surprisingly better than expected.

ao3 / tumblr

12x14: Sales Pitch

Jody Mills likes to think that she has a pretty good BS meter. You have to, in her line of work. (That is, raising two teenaged daughters who think that if they work together, they can outwit her. They can’t. They can try, but they can’t.)

That said, the guy in front of her is off the charts.

“Nice to meet you.”

“Name’s Mick,” he says with a smile.

Mick tries to recruit a couple of hunters by name dropping the Winchesters. It doesn't go as planned.

ao3 / tumblr

12x15: Heaven Doesn’t Come With Keys

“This is Heaven that we’re talking about here, Cas. That worries the hell out of me, okay?”

Cas lets out a bitter laugh. “I don’t think you have to worry about me teaming up with them.”

His wings, still incorporeal, fold in close to his body, even though there’s no one there but Dean to see them. He can’t help himself; he’s pretty sure there’s a slight red tinge to his cheeks despite the fact he should be separate from his vessel. Should be. Maybe that’s why his wings are so—

“Cas—”

The words burst out before he can stop them. “They said I was broken.”

Cas and Dean talk about Heaven and home. 12x15 coda.

ao3 / tumblr

12x16: Parent or Angelic Guardian

Cas’s voice is bitterly cold. “So I should just stay on the job, then. Let you take care of my—of Claire.”

“She’s not your daughter, Cas.” It comes out a little sharper than he’d intended, because he’s thinking of a little boy in Indiana who’d thought that Dean was the king standing on top of the world, not Atlas sweating beneath it.

“She’s not yours, either.”

Dean opens his mouth to speak, but gets cut off by the click of being disconnected.

Dean calls Cas about the incident with Claire. It doesn't go too well.

ao3 / tumblr

12x17: Thank You

“Have you—have you ever—”

Her voice breaks off. Sam leans back on his bed and roots around in the drawer of his bedside table. He’s ninety percent sure he has a tissue box in there somwh—oh. He pulls one out and hands it over. Eileen blows her nose loudly, then crumples the tissue in her fist.

“Yeah.”

God knows how many times. It’s not usually something she talks about, but there are tears in her eyes and she looks like she might need another tissue pretty soon, and there’s a feeling in his chest that hasn’t been there in who knows how long.

Eileen and Sam sort of end up sharing a bed. It's cute.

ao3 / tumblr

12x18: Superdad

When it’s all said and done, Cas has a baby in his arms.

Nephilim, Dean reminds himself, but it’s difficult to think about the kid like that when he’d seen his very human mother bleed out, pleading with them to take care of him. Dean’s seen a whole lot of awful in his time, but that ranked pretty high on the list.

She hadn’t even gotten a chance to name him.

The motel room somehow seems even more suffocating now than it had a few minutes ago. Cas sits perched on the end of the bed where Kelly—yeah. And he has a baby in his arms. What are they supposed to do?

Alternate take on the nephilim baby, post 12x18

ao3 / tumblr

12x19: Come Back to Me

The worst part of all of this is that Dean remembers that look. Remembers the calm, cool certainty in Cas’s eyes when they’d first met. Dean remembers a chiseled piece of granite with ice chip eyes. And he’s nothing like the Cas that Dean knows. The Cas that Dean—

Cas gets kidnapped/brainwashed by a Nephilim. Dean isn't too happy about it.

ao3 / tumblr

12x20: Pick Me Up

By the time Alicia and Tasha have left, there’s a hand on his knee. Dean raises his eyebrows.

“I thought you had a date tonight.”

Max shrugs. “I’m flexible.”

Oh God. Not that Dean hasn’t used bad pick-up lines in his time, but that was pretty damn awful. 

Max tries a few moves with Dean.

ao3 / tumblr

12x21: Collateral Damage

He doesn’t realize that he’s crying until the words in the ASL dictionary blur so completely that it all looks like one big smudge. Before he knows what he’s doing, he’s pulling pages out at random and crumpling them in his fists. They flutter to the floor like snowflakes until they blanket a small circle around him.

Sam finds himself imagining what she would look like with snowflakes in her hair and sinks to the ground. Cross-legged, he sits among the snowdrifts and aches with every gasp for air. When the very last page is clutched between his fingers, Sam finally looks down.

Two signs. Like, and love.

Sam loses Eileen.

ao3 / tumblr

12x22: The Last Man Standing

“It’s us.”

The picture is clearly ripped from the security cameras at the retirement home. Both of their backs are to the camera, but he’d recognize her bun anywhere, and it’s not like his large frame is easily mistaken for someone else.

“Friends and allies,” Sam reads aloud.

They’d gone after her first.  Because of him.

Jody and Sam talk about Eileen. 12x22 Coda

ao3 / tumblr

12x23: Sitting Vigil

“Dean. It’s not like that this time.”

Sam tries to be gentle about it, but it’s like pulling off a Band-Aid, isn’t it? The sooner Dean accepts that none of their usual tricks could possibly work this time around, the better. Chuck and Amara have wandered off on the weirdest family road trip ever. Crowley and Rowena are both dead. Heaven wouldn’t help one wayward angel. There’s nothing on Earth—or above, or below—that can help Cas. Not this time.

Post 12x23, Dean refuses to believe that Cas is gone.

ao3 / tumblr

[irphanfic]

Moonshot - Chapter 9

I’m finally back with Moonshot! Yay! I’m sorry if the updates are getting slower, but this week has been a bit crazy and I’m struggling a bit more than usual to write so I’m sorry.

Anyways, as always, any type of feedback is welcome!

summary: Phil had a feeling that this Friday was going to be different.

That didn’t mean he was ready to meet his favourite baseball player, Daniel Howell, while he was cleaning the windows of a building. 

or the au in which Phil is a shy window cleaner and Dan is a famous baseball player. This is their story.

words: 3.1k

no trigger warnings

Read on ao3 - (x)

Chapters: 1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6 // 7 // 8

Chapter 9: Photographs

Wednesday came and Phil was dreading going to work. Today Dan was leaving for that 'secret project' and Phil didn't want to face the fact that he wouldn't be seeing him in a week.

They spent yesterday night talking over the phone till Phil yawned like three times in less than a minute and decided it was time to say goodbye. A few other 'I'll miss you' and 'have a nice time' were exchanged, as if none of them wanted to stop talking to the other.

Sighing, Phil got ready for day and walked calmly to his work, enjoying the nice morning sun that was colouring the tall buildings in pretty oranges and yellows.

As he had done so many times, he put on his earphones and started cleaning the tall windows that were  becoming too familiar to his liking.

Sooner than expected, Phil found himself at the top floor, smiling a bit at the familiar sightings. Dan had left his flat in a bit of a mess; a few socks, a pair of trousers and two t-shirts lying on the carpeted floor. The blue eyed guessed it was because Dan was such a 'last-minute' guy he probably did his suitcase after their phonecall.

Phil smiled and shook his head, 'This guy'.

Sighing rather loudly, knowing that no one could hear him up there, Phil took out his cleaning products and was about to spray them into the windows when he spotted something stuck to them.

Deciding to investigate, Phil walked towards whatever that was, laughing as he saw a row of polaroid pictures, each one a Dan selfie where he kept making cute or 'ugly' faces, one word written  with black marker at the bottom white space of them, the familiar hand writting bringing a few flashbacks onto his mind.

Admiring each photograph Phil read every word, arranging them into a proper sentece:

'So – you – don't – forget – this – ugly – face. – See – you – soon. – ♥'

Phil wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. This was the sweetest thing someone had made for him.

Dan was such a considerate guy. He kept surprising Phil in many ways no one had ever done before and he really found this details endearing,

''Ugly face, he says, ugh.'' Phil said to himself, still staring at the small pictures, appreciating the  bush of curls and deep brown eyes that he was starting to miss already.

Could this week be over, already?

______________

It was around lunch time when Dan landed in a cloudy Ireland, quickly hoping into the car the company had ready for him just outside the airport and driving to a very lively rural-looking city. Once he left the suitcase in his hotel bedroom, the same driver drove Dan to the location where he would be working.

After almost half an hour, a beautiful landscape appeared in front of his eyes. A hill full of different tones of greens with multiple spots of lilac and yellow flowers that the wind was calmly moving, leaving Dan breathless at the sight.

Dan got out of the car, admiring the scenery in front of him. 'I would love to come here with Phil.' he thought. They would love this, it was so nice. Dan was already thinking of coming here with a blanket and spend the day with his head on Phil's lap as the blue eyed read to him for hours. Yeah, it seemed like a perfect date.

Suddenly, a strong voice startled him, ''Dan Howell, long time no see!''

Already smiling, Dan turned around only to see Peter Wright. He had been the director of the last campaign and it seemed like he was the one for this new one too. Great, at least a familiar face Dan could spot around.

Dan greeted him back which led to a quick conversation while Peter showed Dan around and what he wanted to do for this campaign.

Apparently, he and his modeling partner Claire would be trying different outfits of their new  clothing range. They wanted to keep a 'rustic aesthetic' as Peter described, so that's why the landscape was a must.

''Also, we want you and Claire act like star-crossed lover. Runaways who left their actual lives to continue with their love somewhere else, what leads us to living a non-approved romance in a rural village. Yeah, a bit weird concept but you will see. Expect a few sensual shots in the next few days but nothing that you haven't done before, of course,'' Peter mentioned.

Dan almost frowned but somehow managed to control his hace expressions. He could act like a 'lover' with Claire, he had done that a few times in the past, but would he be comfortable now that he was almost in a relationship with Phil? Well, it was acting. And, believe it or not, acting had always been one of Dan's passions and even though it could be a bit pretentious, he considered himself a pretty good actor at this point.

''We will make a few test-photos today and tomorrow, see what light settings, make-up and more we will work with so we can work properly in the next few days,'' Peter said, finally arriving to an open space with a few tents where a crew was franatically running around.

Peter showed Dan what would be his changing and lounging room and left him for a few minutes till he came back with Claire Vickard, who had been one of the best tennis players in the last three years. It was really a privilege to work with someone so professional.

''Dan Howell, nice to finally meet you. Claire Vickard,'' she showed him a small smile and handed him a hand which he shook.

''Hello Claire, nice to meet you too,'' Dan repeated, also smiling.

Once Peter pitched them three into a conversation Dan's mind wandered till his eyes landed on Claire.

She was tall, not as tall as Dan, but she had a pretty good height that seemed to heighten thanks to her black and sleek ponytail letting him see her face features better, making her clear green eyes look even greener.

'They are not like Phil's' Dan almost groaned at the though. Yeah, her eyes might be greener than Phil's, but her features reminded him so much of the window cleaner it wouldn't be that easy to forget about said person.

It was going to be difficult. Pretty difficult.

______________

The day was finally over. It was 9pm and Phil had managed to have a productive afternoon of developing ideas that had potential to be a proper novel, wiriting whatever came into his mind and writing a few paraghaphs or pages at least. After a nice dinner and some cereal he decided to just lay on his bed watching a movie on his laptop, browsing to see which one he could pick that he hadn't watched yet.

He had messaged Dan earlier, thanking him for the pictures and reminidng him he didn't have 'an ugly face' but he hadn't gotten any response yet, meaning he was busy or simply wanted to disconnect from the world a bit.

As if reading his mind, his phone vibrated, quickly picking it up from his nightsand Phil saw a new message from Dan, 'can you skype? wanna see you.'

'Sure, let me call you.'

Phil closed his movie folder and opened Skype, easily calling Dan who after a minute appeared on the screen, almost in the same position as Phil, leaning against the headboard of what seemed a king sized bed, some pillows supporting his back. Dan's smiley face was tinted with the yellow light coming from a nightstand lamp, making his black t-shirt stand out even more.

''Hi'' Phil said shyly, regarding the old pyjamas he was wearing, not having even tought about changing.

''Hello, how was your day?'' Dan asked from the other side, his voice sounded happy but tired, Phil hoped he wasn't keeping him up even though Dan had been the one to ask to Skype.

''Nah, nothing much, just went to work and saw your super ugly pictures stuck to the windows.'' Phil joked, making them both chuckle, ''But, it was a very nice surprise, so thank you so much.'' he said sincerely.

''You're welcome. I wanted to make something nice for you since you are letting me read your manuscript which, by the way, it's going pretty well. It has me very intrigued.'' Dan picked up the stack of papers from the nightstand and showed it to Phil. He could spot a bright green post-it note marking Dan's reading. He noticed it wasn't very advanced, but enough to at least have read two chapters.

''Yeah? Are you liking it so far?'' Phil asked worried about his response.

''I'm really liking it. It has the perfect amount of mystery and sci-fi elements I like in a novel,'' Dan said.

Phil pulled a surprised face. Dan was enjoying his novel and he couldn't be happier. ''yeah? You really like it? You are not just saying it because it's me, right?''

''Of course not! I think this is your opportunity, Phil. This is good, like, really good.''

''Tell that to publishing houses... All I have received are rejection emails,'' Phil muttered under his breath, not knowing if Dan had heard.  

''Believe me, I think this is your big chance. Just, wait a bit more, I'm sure you will get good news soon,'' Dan said, giving him a smile, hoping Phil would cheer up a bit.

''I hope so, it has been so difficult... I have been writing since I finished my degree and I just don't know anymore... Maybe writing isn't for me, after all,'' Phil didn't really want to make this Skype call so upseting, but he needed to talk about it and Dan seemed like he was willing to listen to him and give him all support he needed.

''Phil, listen, writing is your passion. Writing is your definitely your thing. You of all people deserve to be an author. And you will become one, I know. It might take a bit more of time but believe me, you will make it.''

''Thank you,'' Phil croaked out, his voice a bit emotional. Dan's encouraging words were all he needed, ''I really needed to hear that.''

''You, Phil Lester, will be a future author, okay?'' Dan repeated.

Phil nodded, trying to get those words inside his brain. ''I'm sorry for ranting, I just, I felt like I needed to get that out of my chest...''

''Hey, don't worry, you can count on me for everything.'' Dan said, his beautiful smile not fading from his face. Oh, how he wished he could be with Dan now, cuddling and maybe kissing under the blankets...

''I wish I could hug you right now.'' Phil whispered.

''I wish I could hug you too.'' Dan repeated in the same tone, grabbing one of the throw pillows he had on his bed and clutching it to his chest, yawning in the process.

Phil decided it was time to go to bed. He didn't want to keep Dan up much longer, he must had had a long day in this 'secret project' and sure he needed to rest.

''You're tired, talk to you tomorrow?'' Phil suggested, offering him a small smile.He saw Dan tried to fight his tiredness, but another yawn made him backtrack.

''Okay, good night, Phil.'' Dan waved at him, ''Miss you.''

''Miss you too, Dan'' Phil managed to say before they hung up.

Needless to say they both fell asleep hugging a pillow as close to them as possible.

______________

The rest of the week went calm for Dan. He found it really easy to work with Claire since she was so professional. Peter would shout phrases like 'hands lower!', 'caress each other's face, yeah that's it!' and they acted it as natural as it could get. While they were resting they took time to know the other, bonding so well and quickly at the same time Dan could consider Claire a friend already.

Also, he and Phil had been Skyping each night to speak about everything and nothing. Dan managed to read a bit more of Phil's manuscript everyday, even if it was just a few pages, but he really was enjoying the story.

Phil didn't get enough credit, that for sure. Oh, boy. How much he missed him.

It was Monday evening now and they were going to a lake to shoot a few of Peter's famous 'sensual photos' since he wanted to picture a ''lustful swimming sunset scene'' as he had expressed yesterday.

The lake indeed was also as beautiful as the field they had been working on till now. Dark water reaching the surprising sandy shore with tall rocky mountains to they right and left, making shadows along the water thanks to the now orange sunlight that reached the scenenery.

So, after takinga  few pictures to send later to Phil, Dan did as he was told, put on the swimsuit he was supposed to wear and left his changing room, spotting Claire in her bikini already waiting for him.

''How are you so fast on the field and so slow at changing clothes, uh?'' Claire teased him, making the both chuckle.

''Must be a baseball player thing, I guess,'' Dan replied, not managing to say anything else since Peter called at them both to go into the water.

It was cold (it was freaking Ireland, of course it was cold!) and both of them were shivering at first, but after Peter told them to swim around bit at first it was okay.

''Okay, we will do a few out of the water shots first and them underwater, fine with that?'' eh director said, who received a quick nod from both of the athletes.

Dan and Claire swam around, 'flirting' as they had been doing with the other pictures before, splashing water and giving suggestive glances to each other. Peter shouted from the shore that they needed to get closer and act a bit more 'lustful' so Claire laced her arms around Dan's neck and Dan's hands traveled to her waist, standing up with their feet touching the sand unterwater, the water surrounding them by their thighs.

Claire trailed a few kisses along Dan's jaw, reaching his ear and whispering silly things as Dan tried not to laugh, keeping a serious face for the shake of the shoot and deciding to move his mouth down to Claire's shoulder, leaving a few kisses there. Dan tried to pull her closer but somehow managed to make them both lose their balance, sending them both splashing into the water, instantly laughing.

They heard Peter's laugh cut the repetive clicking of the camera sutter from the shore, probably meaning they should be done with this part of the shot, ''Okay, let's do the underwater shoots before the light fades''.

Peter instructed them once again, meaning one of his helpers would be going underwater with them and these shots would involve kissing, like 'proper kissing, tongue included'.

When Dan heard those words he wanted to believe he hadn't heard the right. 'Proper kissing' meant the opposite to chaste-like pecks on cheeks, of course. It was acting and he knew it but Phil... Dan was sure that by the time the campaign pictures were out he would have already asked Phil to be his boyfriend, he was sure of it, so it should be fine.

''You okay, Dan? I hope I'm not that horrible to kiss!'' Claire said jokingly.

Dan chuckled. He would have told Claire about Phil, he would have, but he wasn't sure if Phil would have wanted that, ''It's just that I wasn't expecting more kissing but yeah, I'm sure you will be... okay to kiss'' he teased, getting a fake offended huff from Claire, who looked like she wanted to say something else but Peter's words cut her off.

''You two, stop bickering and back into the water, you will start kissing out of it and slowly submerge into the water. Once you feel oxygen is necessary, just come up. We can repeat it a few times, understood?''

They both nodded, knowing there wasn't any other alternative to Peter's words. A bit awkwardly, they walked back into the water, swimming further than before and latching into each other for balance, staring at each other's eyes.

Dan looked into Claire's green eyes and wet black hair, her features reminding him once again how much he wished he was with Phil right now... Maybe if Dan imagined he was with Phil instead...

He felt Claire's arms tighten around his neck, bringing him a bit closer so he did the same, pressing their foreheads together and closing his eyes before slowly pressing their lips together. Dan felt Claire bit his lower lip for entrance, which he allowed for a while imagining it was Phil who he was kissing.

Phil and only Phil.

Dan grabbed Claire's hips a bit tighter before sending them both purposely under the water, trying to keep the kiss passionate and professional as possible as long as their lungs allowed them too.

After a while, oxygen became necessary so they separated their mouths and rapidly swam back up, breathing for air as they once again held each other for balance.

Heavily inhaling and exhaling, Dan looked at Claire, remainding his brain that she wasn't Phil.

She. Was. Not. Phil.

Dan's chest felt heavy. He just wanted to see Phil now, be close to him so he could feel better about all of this but he knew that was going to be impossible. He just wanted to arrive to the hotel and curl up under the blankets while he skyped the blue eyed, seeing his tired and sleepy face across the crappy webcam as he had done everyday since Wednesday.

Suddenly he heard Peter's voice calling them, saying that they were done for today so they could go back to their hotel, meaning the day was finally over.

So, with a quick 'goodbye, see you tomorrow' to Claire, Dan walked into his changing room, discarding the wet swimsuit before putting back his comfy sweatshirt and jeans, hoping into the car that drove him to his lonely hotel bedroom.

Once he arrived Dan threw himself on the bed and was ready to text Phil when a new message from said person popped into the screen, 'Work was horrible today, I'm extremely tired to Skype today, I'm sorry :(  but talk to you tomorrow? :)'

Dan was a bit disappointed but he understood. Mondays for Phil were pretty much tiring and he guessed he was going to bed early, so even though Dan felt the need to see him he understood. They could talk tomorrow anyways, he could live with that.

'Sure, no worries. We can Skype tomorrow if you are not that tired.' Dan replied, deciding to type a 'Good night. Miss you. ♥' to finish his message, but no response came in, meaning for sure Phil had fallen already asleep.

Chapter 10