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tswiftdaily · 6 years

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TAYLOR SWIFT: 30 THINGS I LEARNED BEFORE TURNING 30

According to my birth certificate, I turn 30 this year. It's weird because part of me still feels 18 and part of me feels 283, but the actual age I currently am is 29. I've heard people say that your thirties are "the most fun!" So I'll definitely keep you posted on my findings on that when I know. But until then, I thought I'd share some lessons I've learned before reaching 30, because it's 2019 and sharing is caring.

ONE: I learned to block some of the noise. Social media can be great, but it can also inundate your brain with images of what you aren’t, how you’re failing, or who is in a cooler locale than you at any given moment. One thing I do to lessen this weird insecurity laser beam is to turn off comments. Yes, I keep comments off on my posts. That way, I’m showing my friends and fans updates on my life, but I’m training my brain to not need the validation of someone telling me I look . I’m also blocking out anyone who might feel the need to tell me to “go die in a hole ho” while I’m having my coffee at nine in the morning. I think it’s healthy for your self-esteem to need less internet praise to appease it, especially when three comments down you could unwittingly see someone telling you that you look like a weasel that got hit by a truck and stitched back together by a drunk taxidermist. An actual comment I received once.

TWO: Being sweet to everyone all the time can get you into a lot of trouble. While it may be born from having been raised to be a polite young lady, this can contribute to some of your life’s worst regrets if someone takes advantage of this trait in you. Grow a backbone, trust your gut, and know when to strike back. Be like a snake—only bite if someone steps on you.

THREE: Trying and failing and trying again and failing again is normal. It may not feel normal to me because all of my trials and failures are blown out of proportion and turned into a spectator sport by tabloid takedown culture (you had to give me one moment of bitterness, come on). BUT THAT SAID, it’s good to mess up and learn from it and take risks. It’s especially good to do this in your twenties because we are searching. That’s GOOD. We’ll always be searching but never as intensely as when our brains are still developing at such a rapid pace. No, this is not an excuse to text your ex right now. That’s not what I said. Or do it, whatever, maybe you’ll learn from it. Then you’ll probably forget what you learned and do it again.... But it’s fine; do you, you’re searching.

FOUR: I learned to stop hating every ounce of fat on my body. I worked hard to retrain my brain that a little extra weight means curves, shinier hair, and more energy. I think a lot of us push the boundaries of dieting, but taking it too far can be really dangerous. There is no quick fix. I work on accepting my body every day.

FIVE: Banish the drama. You only have so much room in your life and so much energy to give to those in it. Be discerning. If someone in your life is hurting you, draining you, or causing you pain in a way that feels unresolvable, blocking their number isn’t cruel. It’s just a simple setting on your phone that will eliminate drama if you so choose to use it.

SIX: I’ve learned that society is constantly sending very loud messages to women that exhibiting the physical signs of aging is the worst thing that can happen to us. These messages tell women that we aren’t allowed to age. It’s an impossible standard to meet, and I’ve been loving how outspoken Jameela Jamil has been on this subject. Reading her words feels like hearing a voice of reason amongst all these loud messages out there telling women we’re supposed to defy gravity, time, and everything natural in order to achieve this bizarre goal of everlasting youth that isn’t even remotely required of men.

SEVEN: My biggest fear. After the Manchester Arena bombing and the Vegas concert shooting, I was completely terrified to go on tour this time because I didn’t know how we were going to keep 3 million fans safe over seven months. There was a tremendous amount of planning, expense, and effort put into keeping my fans safe. My fear of violence has continued into my personal life. I carry QuikClot army grade bandage dressing, which is for gunshot or stab wounds. Websites and tabloids have taken it upon themselves to post every home address I’ve ever had online. You get enough stalkers trying to break into your house and you kind of start prepping for bad things. Every day I try to remind myself of the good in the world, the love I’ve witnessed and the faith I have in humanity. We have to live bravely in order to truly feel alive, and that means not being ruled by our greatest fears.

EIGHT: I learned not to let outside opinions establish the value I place on my own life choices. For too long, the projected opinions of strangers affected how I viewed my relationships. Whether it was the general internet consensus of who would be right for me, or what they thought was “couples goals” based on a picture I posted on Instagram. That stuff isn’t real. For an approval seeker like me, it was an important lesson for me to learn to have my OWN value system of what I actually want.

NINE: I learned how to make some easy cocktails like Pimm’s cups, Aperol spritzes, Old-Fashioneds, and Mojitos because…2016.

TEN: I’ve always cooked a LOT, but I found three recipes I know I’ll be making at dinner parties for life: Ina Garten’s Real Meatballs and Spaghetti (I just use packaged bread crumbs and only ground beef for meat), Nigella Lawson’s Mughlai Chicken, and Jamie Oliver’s Chicken Fajitas with Molé Sauce. Getting a garlic crusher is a whole game changer. I also learned how to immediately calculate Celsius to Fahrenheit in my head. (Which is what I’m pretty sure the internet would call a “weird flex.”)

ELEVEN: Recently I discovered Command tape, and I definitely would have fewer holes in my walls if I’d hung things that way all along. This is not an ad. I just really love Command tape.

TWELVE: Apologizing when you have hurt someone who really matters to you takes nothing away from you. Even if it was unintentional, it’s so easy to just apologize and move on. Try not to say “I’m sorry, but...” and make excuses for yourself. Learn how to make a sincere apology, and you can avoid breaking down the trust in your friendships and relationships.

THIRTEEN: It’s my opinion that in cases of sexual assault, I believe the victim. Coming forward is an agonizing thing to go through. I know because my sexual assault trial was a demoralizing, awful experience. I believe victims because I know firsthand about the shame and stigma that comes with raising your hand and saying “This happened to me.” It’s something no one would choose for themselves. We speak up because we have to, and out of fear that it could happen to someone else if we don’t.

FOURTEEN: When tragedy strikes someone you know in a way you’ve never dealt with before, it’s okay to say that you don’t know what to say. Sometimes just saying you’re so sorry is all someone wants to hear. It’s okay to not have any helpful advice to give them; you don’t have all the answers. However, it’s not okay to disappear from their life in their darkest hour. Your support is all someone needs when they’re at their lowest point. Even if you can’t really help the situation, it’s nice for them to know that you would if you could.

FIFTEEN: Vitamins make me feel so much better! I take L-theanine, which is a natural supplement to help with stress and anxiety. I also take magnesium for muscle health and energy.

SIXTEEN: Before you jump in headfirst, maybe, I don’t know...get to know someone! All that glitters isn’t gold, and first impressions actually aren’t everything. It’s impressive when someone can charm people instantly and own the room, but what I know now to be more valuable about a person is not their charming routine upon meeting them (I call it a “solid first 15”), but the layers of a person you discover in time. Are they honest, self-aware, and slyly funny at the moments you least expect it? Do they show up for you when you need them? Do they still love you after they’ve seen you broken? Or after they’ve walked in on you having a full conversation with your cats as if they’re people? These are things a first impression could never convey.

SEVENTEEN: After my teen years and early twenties of sleeping in my makeup and occasionally using a Sharpie as eyeliner (DO NOT DO IT), I felt like I needed to start being nicer to my skin. I now moisturize my face every night and put on body lotion after I shower, not just in the winter, but all year round, because, why can’t I be soft during all the seasons?!

EIGHTEEN: Realizing childhood scars and working on rectifying them. For example, never being popular as a kid was always an insecurity for me. Even as an adult, I still have recurring flashbacks of sitting at lunch tables alone or hiding in a bathroom stall, or trying to make a new friend and being laughed at. In my twenties I found myself surrounded by girls who wanted to be my friend. So I shouted it from the rooftops, posted pictures, and celebrated my newfound acceptance into a sisterhood, without realizing that other people might still feel the way I did when I felt so alone. It’s important to address our long-standing issues before we turn into the living embodiment of them.

NINETEEN: Playing mind games is for the chase. In a real relationship or friendship, you’re shooting yourself in the foot if you don’t tell the other person how you feel, and what could be done to fix it. No one is a mind reader. If someone really loves you, they want you to verbalize how you feel. This is real life, not chess.

TWENTY: Learning the difference between lifelong friendships and situationships. Something about “we’re in our young twenties!” hurls people together into groups that can feel like your chosen family. And maybe they will be for the rest of your life. Or maybe they’ll just be your comrades for an important phase, but not forever. It’s sad but sometimes when you grow, you outgrow relationships. You may leave behind friendships along the way, but you’ll always keep the memories.

TWENTY-ONE: Fashion is all about playful experimentation. If you don’t look back at pictures of some of your old looks and cringe, you’re doing it wrong. See: Bleachella.

TWENTY-TWO: How to fight fair with the ones you love. Chances are you’re not trying to hurt the person you love and they aren’t trying to hurt you. If you can wind the tension of an argument down to a conversation about where the other person is coming from, there’s a greater chance you can remove the shame of losing a fight for one of you and the ego boost of the one who “won” the fight. I know a couple who, in the thick of a fight, say “Hey, same team.” Find a way to defuse the anger that can spiral out of control and make you lose sight of the good things you two have built. They don’t give out awards for winning the most fights in your relationship. They just give out divorce papers.

TWENTY-THREE: I learned that I have friends and fans in my life who don’t care if I’m #canceled. They were there in the worst times and they’re here now. The fans and their care for me, my well-being, and my music were the ones who pulled me through. The most emotional part of the Reputation Stadium Tour for me was knowing I was looking out at the faces of the people who helped me get back up. I’ll never forget the ones who stuck around.

TWENTY-FOUR: I’ve had to learn how to handle serious illness in my family. Both of my parents have had cancer, and my mom is now fighting her battle with it again. It’s taught me that there are real problems and then there’s everything else. My mom’s cancer is a real problem. I used to be so anxious about daily ups and downs. I give all of my worry, stress, and prayers to real problems now.

TWENTY-FIVE: I remember people asking me, “What are you gonna write about if you ever get happy?” There’s a common misconception that artists have to be miserable in order to make good art, that art and suffering go hand in hand. I’m really grateful to have learned this isn’t true. Finding happiness and inspiration at the same time has been really cool.

TWENTY-SIX: I make countdowns for things I’m excited about. When I’ve gone through dark, low times, I’ve always found a tiny bit of relief and hope in getting a countdown app (they’re free) and adding things I’m looking forward to. Even if they’re not big holidays or anything, it’s good to look toward the future. Sometimes we can get overwhelmed in the now, and it’s good to get some perspective that life will always go on, to better things.

TWENTY-SEVEN: I learned that disarming someone’s petty bullying can be as simple as learning to laugh. In my experience, I’ve come to see that bullies want to be feared and taken seriously. A few years ago, someone started an online hate campaign by calling me a snake on the internet. The fact that so many people jumped on board with it led me to feeling lower than I’ve ever felt in my life, but I can’t tell you how hard I had to keep from laughing every time my 63-foot inflatable cobra named Karyn appeared onstage in front of 60,000 screaming fans. It’s the Stadium Tour equivalent of responding to a troll’s hateful Instagram comment with “lol.” It would be nice if we could get an apology from people who bully us, but maybe all I’ll ever get is the satisfaction of knowing I could survive it, and thrive in spite of it.

TWENTY-EIGHT: I’m finding my voice in terms of politics. I took a lot of time educating myself on the political system and the branches of government that are signing off on bills that affect our day-to-day life. I saw so many issues that put our most vulnerable citizens at risk, and felt like I had to speak up to try and help make a change. Only as someone approaching 30 did I feel informed enough to speak about it to my 114 million followers. Invoking racism and provoking fear through thinly veiled messaging is not what I want from our leaders, and I realized that it actually is my responsibility to use my influence against that disgusting rhetoric. I’m going to do more to help. We have a big race coming up next year.

TWENTY-NINE: I learned that your hair can completely change texture. From birth, I had the curliest hair and now it is STRAIGHT. It’s the straight hair I wished for every day in junior high. But just as I was coming to terms with loving my curls, they’ve left me. Please pray for their safe return.

THIRTY: My mom always tells me that when I was a little kid, she never had to punish me for misbehaving because I would punish myself even worse. I’d lock myself in my room and couldn’t forgive myself, as a five-year-old. I realized that I do the same thing now when I feel I’ve made a mistake, whether it’s self-imposed exile or silencing myself and isolating. I’ve come to a realization that I need to be able to forgive myself for making the wrong choice, trusting the wrong person, or figuratively falling on my face in front of everyone. Step into the daylight and let it go.

ELLE

#taylor swift #elle #article

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ljones41 · 5 years

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"MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS" (2001) Review

"MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS" (2001) Review There have been more adaptations of Agatha Christie's 1939 novel, "And Then There Were None" than any of her other novels. That is quite an achievement. The only other novel that comes close to producing this number of adaptations is her 1934 novel, 'Murder on the Orient Express".

Christie's 1934 novel managed to produce four adaptations, as far as I know - two movie releases and two television movies. The least famous of this quartet of adaptations was the television movie that aired on CBS in 2001. This version is famous or infamous for one thing - it is the only one that is not a period drama and set in the present day. "MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS" made a few other changes to Christie's narrative. The television movie's beginning established a complicated romance between Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot and a sexy younger woman named Vera Rossakoff. The number of suspects was reduced from twelve to nine. And the Orient Express was stalled by a mudslide due to heavy rain and not a snowbank caused from an avalanche. Due to the film's setting, some of the characters' backgrounds and professions had been changed to reflect the late 20th century and early 21st century setting. "MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS" begins in Istanbul, Turkey; where private detective Hercule Poirot had just solved the murder of a dancer at a local nightclub. After a brief quarrel with his lady love, Vera Rossakoff, Poirot sets out to fly back to London. But an encounter with his old friend Wolfgang Bouc, an executive with the the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits, leads Poirot to return to London via the famed Orient Express train. During the eastbound train journey, an American millionaire named Samuel Ratchett tries to hire Poirot to protect him from a potential assassin who has sent him threatening letters. However, Poirot refuses the job due to his dislike of Ratchett. During the second night of the journey, heavy rain causes a landslide, blocking the train to continue its journey. And Rachett is found stabbed to death inside his compartment, the following morning. Bouc recruits Poirot to solve Rachett's murder. I have a confession to make. I had disliked "MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS" when I first saw it on television all those years ago. My main reason for disliking the television movie was the fact that it had a modern setting, instead of one set in the 1930s. It was not a period movie. And for a story like Christie's 1934 novel, I resented it. However, I do believe the film's modern setting provided one major flaw for its narrative. Since the late 20th century, passengers for the Simplon Orient Express have to book passage on the train long before the date of its departure - six months to a year, more or less. The idea of Poirot managing to get a compartment aboard the Orient Express at such short notice in 2001 strikes me as pretty implausible. And when one adds to the fact that the train travels to and from Istanbul at least once a year, makes this narrative in a modern setting even more implausible. Another problem I had with "MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS" was it made the same mistake as the 2010 adaptation from "AGATHA CHRISTIE'S POIROT". They used the wrong rail cars. The 2010 television movie used the blue and cream Pullman cars for the journey from Istanbul to Calais. The 2001 movie used the brown and cream Pullman cars, usually reserved for the Orient Express from London to Folkstone, as the main train, as shown below:

Do I have any other problems with "MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS"? Well . . . yes, I have one further problem. But I will address it later. Aside from these problems, did I enjoyed this recent re-watch of the television movie? Yes, I did. More than I thought I would. Which is ironic, considering that I disliked the movie so much when I first saw all those years ago. I finally realized that I had automatically resented the film for not being a period drama. And over the years, I had erroneously believed that the movie was set aboard a modern train and not on a restored one from the past. It took my recent viewing of the television movie for me to realize I had been wrong. However, I did noticed that the sleeping compartments did look surprisingly bigger than usual. Despite some modern updating in the film's visual look, the characters' background and dialogue; "MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS" did a first-rate job of adapting Christie's novel. What many might find surprising is that screenwriter Stephen Harrigan and director Carl Schenkel did not inflict any drastic changes to Christie's plot, unlike some recent Christie adaptations from the "AGATHA CHRISTIE'S POIROT" series and one or two miniseries produced by Sarah Phelps. Harrigan and Schenkel did not drastically change the movie's narrative, aside from reducing the number of suspects and having the train delayed by a mud slide, instead of a snow drift. Yes, the backgrounds and professions of the characters were changed due to the modern setting. And characters also change nationalities - like Bob Arbuthnot, an American tech CEO (British Army colonel in Christie's novel); Senora Alvarado, a widow of a South American dictator (a Russian princess in the novel); Phililp and Helena von Strauss, a German or Austrian couple traveling the world (the husband was a Hungarian diplomat in the novel); and even Wolfgang Bouc, the Franco-German Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits executive (who was solely French in the novel). This version of "Murder on the Orient Express" was not the first or last time when some of the characters' backgrounds and nationalities were changed. All four adaptations (including the highly regarded 1974 version) were guilty of this. But despite these changes, Harrigan and Schenkel stuck to Christie's narrative. And thanks to Harrigan's direction, this version proved to be a lot better than I had originally surmised. I certainly had no problems with most of the film's performances. "MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS" provided solid performances from Amira Casar, Kai Wiesinger, Dylan Smith, Nicolas Chagrin, Adam James, Tasha de Vasconcelos, and Fritz Wepper, who managed to create an effective screen team with star Alfred Molina as the investigative pair of Poirot and Monsieur (or Herr) Bouc. I thought David Hunt did an excellent job of conveying the aggressive, overprotective and slightly arrogant traits of American CEO, Bob Arbuthnot. I enjoyed Leslie Caron's colorful, yet autocratic portrayal of Senora Alvarado, the widow of a South American dictator. Meredith Baxter was equally colorful as an American character actress, traveling around Europe as a tourist. Her portrayal of Mrs. Hubbard reminded me of a younger version of a character she had portrayed in the 1980 miniseries, "BEULAH LAND" - but without the Southern accent. And I was really impressed by Natasha Wightman's performance as British tutor Mary Debenham. What really impressed me about Wightman's performance is that her portrayal of Miss Debenham was the closest to the literary character than any of the other versions. There was one performance that fell flat with me and it came from Peter Strauss, who portrayed the victim, Samuel Rachett. If I must be brutally honest, I found it rather hammy. Strauss, whom has always struck me as a first-rate actor in other productions, seemed to be screaming in nearly every scene. However, there is one scene in which I found his performance impressive. The scene involved Rachett's attempt to hire Poirot as his bodyguard and with a performance that permeated with subtlety and menace, Strauss reminded audiences of the excellent actor that he had always been through most of his career. I have never come across any real criticism of Alfred Molina's portrayal of Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. Well . . . I did come across one article that discussed Molina's performance from Vulture magazine. But the critic seemed more focused on the movie's modern setting and Poirot's relationship with Vera Rossakoff, than Molina's performance. Personally, I thought the British actor did a superb job in portraying the detective. He managed to capture all of Poirot's intelligence, mild eccentricities, slight pomposity and talent for emotional manipulation. One thing I can say about Molina's portrayal is that his performance as Poirot was probably the most subtle I have seen on a movie or television screen. Whether someone would regard this as good or bad, is in the eye of the beholder. But I feel that this subtle performance suited Molina's style. Some have commented that Molina's Poirot was more "youthful" than other portrayals. Hmmmm . . . how odd. Molina was in his late 40s when he shot the television movie (perhaps 47 or 48 years old). Yet, Albert Finney was a decade younger when he portrayed Poirot in the 1974 film and his Poirot came off as a middle-aged man. David Suchet was five or six years younger when he began his twenty-four years stint portraying the detective for ITV's "AGATHA CHRISTIE'S POIROT". And during those early years, his Poirot also seemed slightly middle-aged. Because of this, I find this observation of Molina's Poirot as "youthful" rather questionable. It is a pity that the "official" opinion of "MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS" is so negative. I used to share this opinion until I did a re-watch of the television film with a more open mind. Like others, I had been dismissive of the 2001 version, due to its modern setting. I now realize I had been rather narrow-minded and prejudiced. Despite its flaws - and it had a few - "MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS" proved to be a lot better than I had originally surmised, thanks to director Carl Schenkel, Stephen Harrigan's teleplay and an excellent cast led by the superb Alfred Molina. I hope that one day, other Christie fans would dismiss their prejudices against the movie's setting and appreciate it for the entertaining production it truly is.

#agatha christie #murder on the orient express #murder on the orient express 2001 #alfred molina #hercule poirot #peter strauss #meredith baxter #leslie caron #david hunt #carl schenkel #natasha wightman #fritz wepper

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deathdroprp · 4 years

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Character Intro 🤟

Eden (`idən) - "place of pleasure, delight"

Michelle ( mɪˈʃɛl) - "who is like God" Pendavis (pɛn-’ d`eɪvəs) - “of the earth/of the world”

Eden moved to Juniper as an nine year old when her father got a job in the area. When she left home for the first time and began to attend school in the city, initially she had a hard time adjusting to university and quickly began to fall behind in grades and attendance before going on to drop out. A lot of her early twenties were spent tearing up the city for the best it had to offer in nightlife which coincidentally happened to push her towards the career she was made for.

Starting from the bottom she's come far in the Juniper’s comedy scene in the past nine years; she just signed a contract for a residency at one one of Juniper's most well-known comedy club. So, I'm coming onto the site with her and would love to have tons of things to do when we start. We can talk about plots over discord if you'd like, but I really just want to expand her friend’s and family group and make solid connections over all.

Family 👪

Family plots are great and always help to develop a character especially when referencing their past. They can also be a great source of muse for the present. Eden is the youngest of five kids. So if you have a character who fits; from siblings, to cousins and sister/brother in laws and nieces and nephews - all is welcomed in the Pendavis family! Her father is a non-denominational Christian pastor who has moved his family all across the country and the kids come from a middle class background. We can talk deets later if you choose to join and get a better feeling for the family as we flesh them out with characters.

Friends & Acquaintances 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

Eden has lived in Juniper since she was thirteen. Odds are in that time she’s made many connections, some deep and others a little more shallow. A sprinkling of childhood friends would be awesome. She also attended school locally if there is a university and would have maintained a lot of relationships from her time away at school. Other avenues include fwb, unlikely friends, other comedians, and just about anyone who can put up with her. I plan for her to be a socially mobile person.

Work Life 🎙️

As a comedian Eden has done a wonderful job establishing herself in the local nightlife scene as a performer and artist. Working most nights of the week, she is a busy woman who sometimes lets work get in the way of her personal life. What I’m hoping for most is that she can cultivate a wide pool of friends and contacts from the nightlife scene. Not just comedians either - like literally anyone who would be serving drinks at the clubs she performs at or keeping the rift raft in check. Throw your babies at her please and thank you!

Love and Sensuality 💑

Eden has never had a serious romantic relationship in any sense of the word. She’s perfectly capable, yes, and probably had a few flings here or there, but her love life is completely boring when it comes to drama and she keeps it that way on purpose. I may request a manager in the future as that has been on my mind, but as of right now I’m just playing it by ear and seeing what people throw my way so hit me up if you want to plot some stuff out.

Contact Me 💬

So at long last we’ve come to the end of this character intro. If you feel that you might want to plot with Eden then please don’t be shy to send me a DM or ask over tumblr and I’ll drop you my discord username.

Don’t forget to check out my promo for my other character Cecil Boone!

#chmemrp #character intro #hit me up pls #im super chill and nice

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scvereignty · 5 years

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introduction iii.

P E R D I T A D E H A V I L L A N D ( p r i m a b a l l e r i n a )

exposed décolletage waiting to be bruised, a corset pulled to the point of breathlessness, fairytales with a grisly end, pale ornate ceilings, gilt chairs with frayed cushions, a basket full of inedible mushrooms, cold cheeks with pink spots, marble statues with carved veils, the draft through an open window, a child in lipstick, swans on the morning lake, a knife hanging from the ceiling, raw and calloused feet, a small cluster of stars in a blank sky, a fox snared by a jagged fence, straining muscles, canopy beds, honey slow-falling from a spoon, tulle skirts, lingering perfume in an empty room, ice baths, bills left on the bedside table, white-heat from a spotlight, the indent of teethmarks on skin, flowers in an elaborate updo, chilled white wine, a perfect fouette, wooden slats painted to look like an enchanted forest, lying in pink silk on someone else’s bed, blood in pointe shoes, an extended hand with no one reaching back, lovely girls lined in a perfect row, a poisoned apple.

age: twenty-nine

nicknames: dita, dot

sexuality: heterosexual

gender: cisgender female

title: lady

UNDER THE CUT : HISTORY & TRIVIA !

ya girl back at it again

this time with WAY MORE DRAMA… and a lot more extra

in a tl;dr version of the de havilland family history, some king of genovia way back in the day gave a marquis title to one of his buds - as kings are ought to do. for a time they flourished while they were in favour, but it was brief compared to how they faded over time until they were left a half step away from Nothing

quick cut to now: they have a huge, beautiful-but-extremely-run-down house, no actual money, and 0 prestige. so literally, the title is just a prefix at this point and nothing else

i like to envision perdita’s mother as a mix of mother gothel, mrs bennet, and the evil stepmother -- so it should be no surprise that in her youth, she pursued princess ariadne renaldi’s husband despite their recent marriage

they had a brief affair which resulted in her pregnancy with perdita, which was in the plan. what was not was him then ending the tryst and insisting she leave the genovian court and return to her family home. she has 4 more daughters, each but the last 2 from different fathers in her chasing of nobility

her desire for Money Power Glory was pushed onto her 5 daughters. despite the shambles of their home and growing debt, she continually found ways to finance them in an effort to restore their family to its former status. they’re given homeschooling in the “art” of courtly life, preservation of beauty, and most importantly how to attract a man. they’re dressed up to look far older than their age and know things should not

dita was drawn to ballet organically, but it was only approved as an extracurricular of hers because her mother felt she could shoehorn this into an avenue for her to receive male attention. which did, work -- because performances were often attended by aristocracy, she would meet and have varying relationships with these attendees or nobility. nearly always at the push of her mother. i’m also not gonna get into it but i’ll say it’s... waned dangerous close to being pay for play

was given the title of prima ballerina close to five years ago! she’s now 29 and will inevitably only have a handful of years left pushing her body in the extreme way she does before retirement. there is a delicate balance between perdita feeling it has been her choice to pursue something she loves vs. feeling it was the ministrations of her mom

in terms of her status as mignonette’s sister, she is an ill-kept secret to the locals of the genovian court. because her mother is... many things, not least among them big-mouthed, most everyone is aware she’s an illegitimate child

it ceased being a scandal looong ago; in her childhood when there was a chance she would be a threat to the throne (at least insomuch as the peace surrounding it, not necessarily that she would vie to be legitimized), there was hesitancy and tension when she was brought to the palace. she had little to no communication with any of the royal family until she was promoted to prima, at which point the unease had settled

was her naming a deliberate reference to shakespeare’s perdita, and would her mother love for her to somehow become legitimized for the throne? absolutely.

will she take a royal marriage as substitute? surely and without complaining. sugar daddy? fine. as long as she’s bringing in something

especially seeing as she’s closing in to thirty -- an age her mother sees as retirement from ballet and viability for marriage -- there’s been increasing stress and hysteria over her most profitable daughter running out of time. mignonette’s courting was a blessing for the de havilland matriarch as it was exposure to an array of foreign monarchs

dita is a soft girl, and filled with a great deal of sadness over the things she’s done and is meant to do - still she’s hopeful and kind, curious and bubbling. but the effects of her upbringing are there too -- the ability to lie and manipulate, the (mis)conception that her worth is her looks (and subsequently how tightly she clings to her status as prima ballerina --a solid thing that proves there is something else about her worth admiring), the love-and-run mantra, the willingness to let her body be used and be charming despite it

ok this is terrible but i cant keep rewriting it so i guess this is done now pls love her

TRIVIA !

was known as “dot” as a kid because she was so teeny and adorable

rumoured to be the mistress of a visiting prince

has a v sensitive scalp due to years of her mother bleaching her hair improperly at home

definitely has a thing for older men. we call that symptomatic of daddy issues

her relationship with her eldest sister is wrought with tension, trauma and the carnage of competition laid out by their mother -- perdita has done better than her socially, and for that she’ll never be forgiven

#genoviaintro #• 𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐃𝐈𝐓𝐀 — an exquisitely performed daydream.#allp.p #this is long and terrible but i cant seem to edit

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adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction · 5 years

Text

Some thoughts on Spider-man: Far from Home

In no particular order. Some significant spoilers below.

1. I love the face that the events of Infinity War/Endgame are referenced multiple times. I thought it was going to be a bit of hand-waving at the start and then ignored, but no, it kept coming up. May was running a charity for people left homeless after they came back, the kids discuss how weird it was that a guy who used to be five years younger than them was now in the same class, the teacher talking about his wife, MJ tattling on Flash when he was being served alcohol (“He’s actually sixteen, not twenty-one”). Given the comment about how they were forced to restart the school year and that it’s now summer vacation, this film presumably takes place a good nine or ten months after the events of Endgame. People have settled into a new normal, but everyone’s still feeling the impact of what happened and it’s nice that that got acknowledged.

2. The Getty Images watermark in the stock footage during the memorial video. :)

3. “You speak really good English.” “Welcome to the Netherlands.”

4. Peter and Happy’s relationship was awesome. The change from Homecoming is noticeable, but it makes so much sense. And the hug in the tulip field! Amazing.

5. That said, I really wish Happy’s speech about how Tony wasn’t perfect included the words “Remember Ultron?” Peter was fretting about how he’d screwed up in a major way and wasn’t a worthy successor, etc. Happy should have said something along the lines of, “Yeah, you screwed up, kid, but you’re a kid. Tony build a robot that tried to drop a city from orbit to wipe out humanity and he didn’t have that excuse and people still thought he was a hero. You’ll be fine.”

6. On the subject of still thinking Tony was a hero, the EDITH acronym!

7. MJ hitting the drone with the mace. I liked MJ in general in this. She’s intelligent, she acts independently, she was responsible for Peter figuring out what was really going on. She felt like a person and not just a designated love interest.

8. On the other hand, I wish Betty had gotten more character development. She and Ned were adorable together, but I didn’t really feel like I knew her at the end of the film. Ned made a comment about how they had a lot in common. Like what? Other than a propensity for cutesy nicknames and matching hats?

9. Mysterio to Peter: Never apologise for being the smartest person in the room. *Hill gives him a dirty look*

10. That little moment with Mysterio felt genuine. He seemed to actually like Peter, which gave his character some depth. I couldn’t help thinking of the parallels to Thanos and Gamora and Mysterio’s “He was a nice kid, I didn’t want to kill him,” felt more real than Thanos crying about killing Gamora. Maybe it was because the way it was framed made it clear we weren’t meant to sympathise with Mysterio.

11. Mysterio was just a good villain in general and I liked his interactions with his crew.

12. I kinda love that Mysterio’s villain origin story was basically, “Tony gave my tech a stupid name.”

13. The Iron Man zombie was seriously creepy. That thing was in shot for, what, about ten seconds? But those ten seconds were seriously disturbing, especially with the spiders crawling all over it.

14. I was a bit annoyed while watching this by Fury’s characterisation. He was very hard on Peter, pushing him to save the world when he’s just a kid, putting so much pressure on him, snapping at him, etc. Then you have things like Hill saying Fury wasn’t at all suspicious of Mysterio, despite Fury being one of the most suspicious people in existence. Then the post credits scene! Suddenly all that made sense. He wasn’t really Fury, he was a Skrull shapeshifter who was only supposed to hand over the glasses to Peter and then found himself caught up in all of this mess. He clearly didn’t have any clue what to do and was just winging it, and so putting pressure on Peter makes sense because he’s there going, “Fury didn’t tell me how to deal with this and I’ve no idea where the other Avengers are, you’re the only one I can find, please fix this for me.” He was completely out of his depth the whole time and that explains everything. It also retrospectively makes the line about Captain Marvel all the more meaningful. (I now want an AU where Peter figure out that Fury is acting out of character, thinks he’s another illusion, and then the Skrull guy is forced to come clean).

15. Mysterio’s first fight against Peter was really cool, with Mysterio messing with Peter’s head in so many ways and using their surroundings to mess with him physically.

16. Happy’s little smile when he sees Peter using Tony’s tech.

17. Happy announcing he’s in love with Spiderman’s aunt when they all think they’re going to die (made even better by the fact that only two of the people present know exactly who that is).

18. Happy: “I work with Spiderman not for him.”

19. Happy in general.

20. Flash getting so excited when he finds out that Spiderman watched his live stream.

21. Flash getting London Bridge and Tower Bridge mixed up.

22. I really want to see how Flash reacts now that he knows who Spiderman is. It’ll probably never be shown in the films because presumably there will be another large time skip between the end of this one and the next one, so I guess fanfic will have to fill the gap, but I would love to see who Flash takes the news and what he does with the information. “This is clearly an effort to discredit the greatest hero there is by comparing him to a puny wimp like Parker. It’s obviously a lie. He’s a hundred reasons why you can tell the video is faked.”

23. The constant interruptions when “Fury” was trying to talk to Peter in the hotel room.

On the whole, I very much enjoyed it. It’s not up there with Thor Ragnarok or Black Panther, but it’s a solid, enjoyable superhero movie and certainly better than Endgame. There were a couple of moments that had me cringing (the drone strike on the bus) rather than enjoying it, but overall it was good and there were a lot of great moments both in terms of humour and drama.

#Spider-man #spiderman #Spider-man: Far From Home #Spiderman: far from home #spoilers #spiderman spoilers #far from home spoilers

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obaewankenope · 5 years

Link

Summary:

“How was your summer?” Harry asks Ron and Hermione when they all settle down in compartment, trunks and pets all politely stowed away. Hermione has a pet cat—a Kneazle apparently—that seems very displeased with its carrier and she is happy to discuss it at length.

“It was brilliant! I asked my parents to get me a pet for at Hogwarts and—after explaining the magical benefits of a familiar—they agreed.” Hermione proudly smiles at them both. “Crookshanks is very young but very affectionate. He’s also an excellent mouser according to mum.”

Read below or on AO3

Arriving at Platform nine-and-three-quarters, Harry makes a beeline for his friends, excited at the prospect of spending another year with them twenty-four-seven[1]. Only Aziraphale has brought him to the station today as Crowley had to go on ahead to Hogwarts and sort out a minor magical creature problem—some sort of wild animal in the forest that Hagrid can’t get near for some reason—but the lack of Crowley at the station doesn’t deter Harry. He knows he’ll see his uncle at the Welcoming Feast if not before at the station—uncle Aziraphale is heading to Hogwarts via the Hogwarts Express.

Apparently he wants to experience a steam engine again. Harry doesn’t really get the appeal of that since he can fly but—well—uncle Aziraphale is weird. Harry loves him for it.

Harry frowns. “How’d she figure that out?” he asks, curiously.

“We had a rat infestation in the gardens at the start of the summer,” Hermione answers. “After a week of Crookshanks there’s no more infestation.”

Harry is surprised and wonders if perhaps there’s no other ‘infestations’ of animals around Hermione’s home too; though he doesn’t voice that. “Cool.”

Ron is somewhat sullen as he has no pet compared to his friends but perks up soon enough when the sweet trolley trundles along and they buy enough sugar to give a diabetic a panic attack. The trio discuss what they might experience in the coming year—from Harry and Ron hoping to get on the Quidditch team to Hermione and Harry discussing what sort of homework they’re likely to get from their professors—until a loud and sudden jolting bang disrupts them.

And the entire train.

The Hogwarts Express is stranded on a bridge just past the border between England and Scotland a little after four-thirty in the afternoon. Hogwarts is informed of this stranding at three-minutes-to-five in the afternoon. Crowley finds out about the train at quarter-past-five, six whole minutes after Aziraphale resolves the problem with a haughty snap of his fingers and a very unimpressed commentary for the culprit responsible.

As such, the Hogwarts Express is a whopping eight minutes later than usual and this apparently leaves the Welcoming Feast in shambles. Evidently no one thought to spell the boats that cross the Black Lake to respond when prompted and not at a specific time. All of the students then are forced to travel to Hogwarts together—though first years are left till last to at least give some measure of time for the other years to rush into the Great Hall and seat themselves[2].

The first years are all sorted neatly and with very little fuss. Dumbledore—in his typical fashion—tells the entirety of the school that they have a new Defence Professor and apparently doesn’t think there is a single bit of a problem with this new appointment. Considering that the headmaster seems to rather enjoy twinkling his eyes at Gilderoy Lockhart however—well—perhaps he simply sees him as a pretty face[3].

None of the other staff members—notably McGonagall, Snape, Crowley and Aziraphale—are impressed with the winner of Witch Weekly’s whatever-it-is-smile but they all clap when required. Crowley gives the new professor one clap and a half-smirk half-scowl look that he has worn when feeling particularly disgusted by someone—the last person he directed that look at had been Hastur last time he’d been in hell actually, two weeks ago.

Everyone is sent to bed with full stomachs and promises of classes beginning bright and early—which most students manage a groan at even though they’re stuffed to the gills with food—leaving the staff to retire and do their own thing. Crowley and Aziraphale—being both immortal and not in need of much, if any, sleep—retire together and start Planning[4].

Morning is a dull and tedious affair but the first classes of the year go off without a hitch—that is, until they reach Lockhart and his… interesting teaching methods.

Crowley is called to help wrangle a room full of Cornish Pixie’s and doesn’t bother telling Harry and co off for sticking a lot of them in Lockhart’s chambers—he sends them on their way with a smirk: “off you pop, mind you don’t tell everyone where you put them,” he says and Harry grins at him before escaping the classroom. Lockhart tries to give them detention for his chambers being a bit… roasted but Crowley casually mentions at lunch that he is the cause of the charring as it “seemed like a good idea at the time” and the matter is dropped.

The beginning of the term is nice and simple and not at all stressful excluding Lockhart being stupid and idiotic and Crowley’s increasing contempt for the idiot but then Quidditch try-outs happen and Harry is, as always, smack-bang in the middle of drama.

Oliver Wood is ecstatic to have Harry as seeker for the team. He’s so ecstatic he actually kisses one of the Weasley twins—no one quite knows which one since both are equally shocked—and does a jig on the spot[5]. On the way back to the school, Harry, Ron, and Hermione come across Draco Malfoy and his two ‘friends’—if one can call the bodyguard-style boys whom Malfoy rarely talks to friends—and end up in a small tussle after rude and frankly offensive words are slung.

Crowley comes across the ruckus—along with Aziraphale—and is just not quick enough to separate them all before Lockhart—in typical idiot-fashion—blunders in and causes more problems.

It really is understandable that Crowley loses his temper and teleports the useless excuse for a wizard to somewhere in the Amazonian rainforest to be terrified by the larger cousins of Crowley’s houseplants. It really, really is.

“What—how did you do that?” Hermione exclaims wide-eyed as she stares at Crowley who is trying very hard not to hiss at everything in existence. No one notice the grass in the courtyard starting to tremble.

“Because I wanted to!” Crowley snaps, watching Aziraphale kneeling next to Ron and murmuring soft words to the boy. “Of all the stupid bloody things! That—he—I’ve known demons with more sense than him!”

“Now darling, do be fair,” Aziraphale says, glancing over his shoulder at Crowley. “Some of those demons were angels once, they had to have some intelligence.”

“Not enough not to go and be stupid and Fall, angel,” Crowley responds and Aziraphale can’t argue with that. “Yes, that includes me shut up.”

Aziraphale wisely shuts up.

Ron is gifted—as a result of Lockhart’s truly horrific magical ability—with coughing up slugs every few seconds until Aziraphale thinks of the right way to word the miracle and clears up the bout of gastropod mollusc indigestion.

“Pessstsss,” Crowley hisses at the slugs that are on the ground even after Aziraphale miracles Ron slug-free. The demon snaps his fingers extra hard and the slugs pop out of existence with a kind of quiet little echoey-scream more suited to a horror movie than the Hogwarts courtyard.

“Now, now, Crowley,” Aziraphale lectures, “they’re only doing what they were made to do.”

Crowley doesn’t respond to that—though any other time he probably would, with expletives—because his attention is drawn to the three Slytherins trying to not-so-subtly sneak away from punishment. “Detention,” Crowley drawls, looking at Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle with a not-so-nice smile. “Hagrid needs help with the dung heap for classes next week. He’ll be ecstatic for the help[6].”

“Wh-what about Potter!” Draco half-whines half-wails and it’s truly extraordinary the pitch the boy reaches. “And Weasley! And Granger! They attacked us!”

Crowley—in typical Crowley fashion—tilts his head a little and raises an eyebrow. It’s an interesting sight considering his sunglasses obscuring his eyes—sunglasses he hardly takes off outside of class unless he’s with Harry or Aziraphale—and lends itself to intimidation quite effectively. “They defended their friend from a bully—nothing wrong with that in my book.”

“Bu- wha- that’s not fair!”

“You called me a Mudblood, Malfoy!” Hermione shouts at the Slytherin boy who gives her an angry, ugly look. “You’re lucky I didn’t knock your teeth out!”

Crowley smirks. That would have been a sight to see, really.

Now, objectively speaking, children who get into physical fights are punished equally because—as they always say—two wrongs don’t make a right. Crowley thinks that is absolute rubbish. If someone is being a dick to someone and insulting them then the person being insulted is well within their rights to shut up the dickish person with a solid punch to the jaw or solar plexus. Of course, Crowley prefers words first but he’s decked a couple of demons before in the past and he’s perfectly happy and willing to deck a few more. If and when required, of course[7].

At Hogwarts, had it been any other teacher besides Crowley who’d caught them fighting, there’s no doubt both parties would have detention. Because that makes sense, right? It doesn’t matter who’s in the wrong if they’re fighting—except that it does.

Especially when the fighting is caused by stupid idiocy of a child who has no understanding of anything except his horrifically narrow worldview and likely could stand to benefit from a few smacks upside the head by people with some common sense.

Besides—Ron has been belching up slugs and he’s the one who was about to hex Malfoy so, in Crowley’s eyes, Ron’s already received his punishment. Now it’s Malfoy’s turn.

The Slytherin boy obviously dislikes Crowley’s logic but doesn’t argue much further beyond a “my father will hear about this” as though that’s going to intimidate Crowley into changing his mind. The day Crowley fears a pompous, stuck-up, entitled prick of a parent is the day Crowley starts simpering at Beelzebub’s knee.

So basically never.

Dinner is a simple, enjoyable affair without Lockhart at the staff table and Crowley takes great pleasure in being able to relax and lean against Aziraphale in his chair and not give a flying fuck what Dumbledore or any of the other staff think about it. If Crowley wants to sit next to his angel—or half sprawl across him as it is—then he’ll fucking well do exactly that.

Propriety be damned.

Of course, then Dumbledore ruins it all by dragging the staff to his office after and ‘politely’ demanding to know where the hell Lockhart is and what they’re going to do with Defence classes until he returns. This prompts Aziraphale to give Crowley That Look he does—the one that ended up with Crowley making bloody Hamlet popular—and the demon just groans.

“Hagrid can cover until Lockhart—uh—probably—returns,” he says, only a little bit reluctant. “I’ll take over Defence.”

“Preposterous!” Snape snarls, robes swirling in a swirly manner as he stalks across the room and stands directly opposite Crowley. “I am more than qualified to teach Defence, headmaster! Not this—” he gives Crowley a particularly nasty look that makes Aziraphale bristle “—child snatcher.”

Most would be forgiven for assuming Crowley to be the one who takes offence at people insulting him. It’s an easy assumption to make since he is, indeed, intimidating and quite vain. But they’d be wrong. Crowley can take name calling and insults and threats to his person and not give a damn—it’s very much par the course of being a demon—but insult someone he cares about—like Harry or Aziraphale—and Crowley takes every aspect of his personality, his past, everything he is and has been and May Yet Be and he turns it on the person being stupid enough as to insult what he loves.

Severus Snape assumes Crowley will hex him, curse him, shout at him, or even—perhaps—take a swing at him.

Severus Snape is wrong.

Big shock there.

“How dare you!”

You see, the mistake Severus Snape makes—that everyone makes—is thinking Crowley will defend himself. He won’t. Not unless he has to. But the thing is—he doesn’t necessarily need to. Not when he has an angel standing next to him bristling with anger and indignation and no small amount of wrath to do it for him.

Aziraphale stalks forward, placing himself between Snape and Crowley, his eyes blazing and they’re much brighter than usual because he is angry and they Know It Now. He raises a hand and pokes Snape in the chest. “Harry was being abused by his relatives and Crowley rescued him! You dare accuse him—him of all people—of snatching children! You have—you have no idea the lengths he has gone—what he’s been through—just so a few children can live when they were—when it was—when they weren’t supposed to according to the Almighty! How dare you!”

Crowley reaches out and touches Aziraphale’s arm, trying to calm the angel because he can feel how angry Aziraphale is. It’s too angry for this enclosed space with humans with magic that can possibly sense What They Are if they show too much. Aziraphale needs to reel it in.

“Angel, angel,” he says, pulling a little on Aziraphale’s arm and the angel turns to look at him. Crowley shakes his head ever so slightly and Aziraphale—understanding the demon and respecting him—backs down.

It’s clear in the way Aziraphale gives Snape a look that is only a second away from a Smiting that he really wants to keep going, but reason and common sense regain traction in Aziraphale’s mind and the angel steps back to stand flush against Crowley’s side. It’s obviously for his own reassurance as much as it is to send a Clear Message to Snape and the others that Aziraphale will not stand for someone threatening Crowley.

Perhaps that is why, then, Dumbledore doesn’t push the issue. The headmaster accepts Crowley’s solution but stresses that it is only until Lockhart returns or they need to find another replacement as Hagrid is still not fully qualified[8].

Some idiot—probably Lockhart before he was sent to only Crowley knows where—suggests a duelling club at some point and a gang of seventh years take it to the headmaster who—after some consideration—decides that it’s a splendid idea so long as there is suitable oversight. This results in Crowley—as the temporary Defence Against the Dark Arts professor—being roped in to oversee the entire fiasco. He opens it up to the rest of the school after a fifth year tries to sneak in to practice with the seventh years and only comes to regret this decision when Harry, Ron, and Hermione show up.

More specifically, he comes to regret it when they get it into their heads that he—as the defence professor—surely must be a skilled duellist and therefore can probably wipe the floor with Aziraphale—only a simple librarian—as well as the rest of the staff.

Harry, the absolutely unrepentant little brat, is grinning when he says, “you can probably beat the headmaster too.”

Now, considering Crowley is a demon, he obviously can best any human in near enough any avenue but, since the entirety of the school doesn’t believe he’s a demon, there’s an assumption that he’s just rather good at magic and probably is a dark wizard with less-than-dark-morals.

The irony of that belief is fucking hilarious, really.

Unfortunately for Crowley, Aziraphale shows up at the duelling club to watch it all and offer help with sourcing research for improving duelling skill. This means that the angel overhears—it’s not really ‘overhear’ since Harry and his friends seem to purposefully pitch their voices to carry—the remarks about Crowley obviously being a better dueller than Aziraphale.

And this is the point where Crowley wishes he’d never thought to visit Surrey that day—it’s only for a moment, but he wishes it nonetheless and has a jarring moment where the wish takes and he’s in an entirely different place, with strangers, and feels so painfully alone, before he banishes the wish and reality reasserts itself.

“It’s boring if you watch us adults do all the fighting!” Crowley exclaims, making sure his voice carries. “Oh sure! We have practice and we have skills but the best weapon you’ll ever have in a fight is imagination! What’s imaginative about watching us fight—” he gestures at himself and Aziraphale who has come to stand beside him “—when you could watch each other fight and use your imaginations to shape the magic instead of just copying us?”

“What do you mean?” One of the Ravenclaw fifth years asks, frowning. “We have to know spells before we can duel effectively,” she argues and—well—she’s right, you do need to know Stuff before you can Do Anything but sometimes… sometimes that Stuff is a barrier to what you can Try First.

“Yeah but you didn’t know spells when you were babies and you still did magic,” Crowley points out. “You learn stuff—words and numbers and maths and about places and spells—and that just—it limits your imagination—tells you what is and isn’t—all that sorta thing!” He looks at Aziraphale who is giving him his best Oh You’re On Your Own With This look and Crowley rolls his eyes. “Instinct and imagination are the best things you have—even when you probably think they aren’t—because one keeps you alive and the other makes you feel alive!”

“So—I don’t know—don’t think about spells and words and what charms suit whatever! Imagine you can make magic do anything for you—the language is meaningless; it’s human and limited! Magic isn’t limited! Magic is—it’s—well it’s—” Crowley stumbles, trying to think of a word, a way to explain what magic is.

Aziraphale comes to his rescue. “Ineffable.”

None of the Ravenclaw students really seem to get what Crowley means—well, some do, but most of them are as confused as the rest of the students from the other houses—and Crowley wants to sigh. He should have known trying to explain magic—just another form of Divine and Infernal power—to humans wouldn’t go well. They just can’t comprehend it.

Still. He tried.

“Pair up, try and disarm, tie up, trap each other. No maiming, no killing, nothing dark, and no torture—of any kind,” Crowley sighs, giving up.

The students all scramble to pair off and—unfortunately—Hermione and Ron pair up before Harry can snag either of them. Someone shoves into him and he ends up tumbling into Malfoy who gives him a dirty, haughty look before it switches to a horrified expression when Crowley declares: “you’re all paired up. Get duelling.”

Neither Harry or Malfoy have any real chance of grabbing different partners—especially since everyone around them is paired up and already throwing spells around like they have the magical equivalent of semi-automatic weapons and not single shooter wands—but this doesn’t stop them from at least trying. It fails—naturally—since they’re both second years and the students around them are fifth year and up and don’t want to be saddled with babies when duelling.

This leaves them both reluctantly accepting they are stuck with each other until they have a real chance of swapping with someone else. Unfortunately, this ends as most of their interactions usually do: badly.

“Serpensortia!”

A large black mamba erupts from Malfoy’s wand, propelled by whatever force the spell creates in the air directly toward Harry. It lands a few feet from him and hisses angrily at the landing.

Snakes, as a general rule, do not enjoy being dropped, thrown, dragged, or any variation of these. It is perfectly reasonable then for the snake to be Most Peeved and wanting to lash out at anything near enough for it to sink its fangs into.

The nearest thing just so happens to be Harry James Potter who also just so happens to be a parselmouth.

“Are you okay?”

The snake hisses confused because here’s a human talking to it after it’s been dropped into this place from where it was very nice and comfy in the forest curled up in a patch of sunlight. “I am not! I have been attacked in my sleep!”

“Attack- oh, Malfoy summoned you from somewhere?” Harry looks surprised for a moment before he decides to focus on the fact that the black mamba is still Very Annoyed. “It wasn’t an attack, it was a spell. He used it to summon you in a duel. Probably thought I’d panic and run away from you.”

“Why aren’t you?” The snake asks, curious and calming down more and more as it listens to Harry speak to it.

The entire hall has fallen rather silent around them but Harry is focused on the snake because he doesn’t want it to hurt anyone. He does wonder if uncle Crowley is going to arrive soon. It would be nice, he thinks, for the snake to have someone else to reassure it.

“I like snakes,” Harry says, shrugging. “My uncle is one.”

“What kind of snake is he?” The black mamba slithers towards him now, curiosity outweighing its anger because—well—it’s curious. “He should be a strong, large snake. I might like him if he is.”

Harry smiles. “Any kind of snake he wants to be.”

Obviously that statement nonplusses the black mamba but before it can hiss out anything else, Aziraphale and Crowley are there, students moving further away from their professors who stare at Harry kneeling near to the black mamba.

The very venomous snake that is now rearing back in alarm.

“It is not possible!” The snake exclaims, and its blinking in the way snakes do but if it were human the expression on its face would be very close to fearful respect and awe. “You are—it is—creator!”

Aziraphale smiles. “And another one recognises you, dear,” he says to Crowley who rolls his eyes.

“Shut up angel,” Crowley says before he steps forward and focuses on the snake. “Yes yes, it’s me, I know, bit of a shock. Come here—I’ll get you back to where you belong after a check-up. Silly boy using a snake-summoning spell like that.” He kneels down and holds a hand out for the black mamba to slither toward and around. “He could have hurt you.”

“I am strong!” The black mamba says, curling up his arm and slithering across his shoulders. “He did not hurt me, just startled me. I was sleeping!”

“Well that was rude of him,” Crowley says glancing at Malfoy who looks shockingly pale—well, more pale—and flinches when the demon looks at him. “You woke her from her sleep—can’t blame her for feeling bitey for that. Horrible thing to do.”

This—apparently—is some sort of Signal for the entire hall to lose its collective mind as students either scramble for the door or badger Harry and Crowley with questions and accusations. Aziraphale silences the lot of them with a snap of his fingers that has the hall of students staring at him dumbfounded.

“You’re scaring her with your shouting,” Aziraphale says, reaching out to pet the black mamba on the head. She allows his touch, leaning into it and Crowley doesn’t give Aziraphale a slightly jealous look for the attention he’s bestowing on the snake—but it’s a near thing. Okay so he does. He does and Aziraphale just smiles at him in return.

Dumbledore is informed later on at dinner of the events of the duelling club when Crowley shows up to dinner with the black mamba still on his shoulders. His explanation for why she’s still around is a simple, “she wanted to sight see” and none of the staff are willing to question that any further[9]. The whole school is abuzz for days with rumours of Harry, Crowley, and Aziraphale being a trio of dark wizards—even though Aziraphale is literally a being of light and purity and charming awkwardness—because they’re parselmouths. These rumours all conveniently leave out the source of the summoned snake and the technicality that Aziraphale doesn’t speak parseltongue, he can simply be universally understood by all animals and can understand them in turn.

Of course, these are teenagers with teenage imaginations and they run absolutely wild with it all. Considering the attack on Mister Filch’s cat that occurred only a month or so prior, it’s not entirely surprising that Crowley is dealing with petrified students—not literally—in his classes until the Fear aspect wears off when he loses his temper, transforms into an abnormally large python and sulks at his desk for an entire class. Apparently something about Crowley becoming a snake to avoid the fears of his students strikes them as inherently illogical and totally in-character for the professor they’d come to know in Care of Magical Creatures.

This action helps settle down the fears and rumours of the students toward Crowley and, jointly, Harry and Aziraphale. It is a relief considering the Christmas holidays are just around the corner and he has no desire to deal with a glum angel or depressed son while they’re in London.

Thus it is that Christmas begins with Harry rushing for the train, Monty the snake wrapped around his arm and Dog-the-mongrel—who has deigned it necessary to not live in the forest any longer at the moment and thus is willing to be With Her Human—loping along beside him in a stride that could be maintained for hours.

“I’ll see you guys over Christmas right?” he asks, the moment he’s comfortably seated—Dog-the-mongrel curled up at his feet and Monty asleep in his lap—on the train. “Uncle ‘Zira told me that you guys are totally welcome at the bookshop.”

“And Professor Crowley?” Ron asks, wary and a little bit afraid still. He has accepted that Harry can talk to snakes and Doesn’t Think It’s A Big Deal but the ginger is still wrapping his head around their temporary defence professor being a parselmouth as well.

Harry shrugs. “Uncle Crowley wants to take me to the reptile house at London Zoo,” he says, “I don’t think he’d mind if either of you came along. He wants to see how they’re taking care of the snakes, he says.”

“You don’t believe him?” Hermione asks, frowning.

“No, I do,” Harry says, “but I think he might want to—I don’t know—I think he wants to just see them. Maybe they’re his friends?”

The idea that Crowley is friends with snakes on display at a zoo is—apparently—not as mind-bogglingly shocking as him declaring himself to be a demon and never being believed by anyone he tells except Harry.

Harry’s Christmas is relatively normal for the most part. He enjoys his gifts from his friends and his adoptive parents—Crowley and Aziraphale both give him gifts that are very expensive and cost more than it did to build Hogwarts but they’re immortal and money is no consequence to them. Hermione gets him an eagle feather quill that looks fantastic but won’t get used as much as it might have considering one of the gifts he received from Crowley was a single black feather quill that looked like it belonged to a giant swan but was, in fact, from Crowley’s own wings. It was a treasured possession and one Harry would always favour above and beyond any other quill he’d ever receive.

Ron’s gives him a book on the Chuddley Cannons that is an obnoxious shade of orange. Harry is pleased with it regardless of the colour scheme and settles down to read it while waiting for the Christmas dinner he can hear Aziraphale and Crowley bickering over as they make it. Hagrid’s tin of treacle fudge is expertly dished into a baking tray by Crowley and shoved in the oven after dinner is ready so it can be somewhat edible by the time they’ve finished eating.

Overall, Harry’s Christmas is as pleasant as ever and he is forever grateful that Crowley took him away from Number Four. It’s why he gives Crowley and Aziraphale gifts of his own that are—to some—rather tacky but have a lot of meaning behind them. This year, Harry gives them both a copy of the first picture he ever took of the three of them when he was ten and Aziraphale gave him a camera. The image moves like a magical photo because Harry had done what no one in the duelling club had thought to; he’d imagined it to be moving and pushed magic at the photograph until it did exactly that.

Aziraphale is prone to tears when he’s happy, sad, or any sort of emotion besides angry, so Harry isn’t surprised to be swept into a hug by the angel and see tears in Aziraphale’s eyes. He is surprised to see Crowley wiping a tear away from his eye just moments before he gives Harry his own hug—one that is just a bit too tight to be a casual embrace. Harry doesn’t entirely understand what he’s done to elicit such emotions from the two but he understands that they love him. They love him enough to have fought off Voldemort last year. They love him enough to argue with Dumbledore all the time. They love him enough that they chose to raise him and don’t regret making that choice.

And all of that—that all means the world to a boy like Harry James Potter. He has a family and it’s a little bit odd but it’s still good—and bad—and he is forever grateful for it.

He doesn’t realise that Aziraphale and Crowley are grateful for the same thing.

But he will. In time. He will.

[1] He acts as though he hasn’t seen them the entire summer when he has—no less than two dozen times in total, including the week-long visit to the bookshop by Ron and Hermione, and also Harry’s own week at the Burrow. This is standard behaviour of children however, and thus doesn’t really require any commentary beyond a “thought you ought to know” feeling by the author.

[2] Everyone’s luggage is left on the train except the basic necessities like medication at the polite but firm orders from Aziraphale. He snaps his fingers moments after the students have all left the platform at Hogsmeade and the luggage is promptly delivered to their correct locations with the exception of a few select objects that Crowley will take great pleasure in making inert before returning them to their original owners.

[3] Heaven- and hell-know that’s all Gilderoy Lockhart really is. And even then, it’s not a particularly pretty kind of face. More smarmy and irritating and obviously plucking of the eyebrows to the point of problems. But each to their own Crowley and Aziraphale both figure—well, who are they to judge?

[4] It is worth noting that neither of these two absolute morons know what they’re actually planning for and, rather, this is more an excuse for them to spend time together. Of course, since they’re both in love with each other to a sickening degree, the fact that they still pretend otherwise at times—and, indeed, seem to embrace the ruse—really says a lot about them both, doesn’t it?

[5] Not—to clarify-an Irish jig. No. That would be stereotypical and not at all okay. No, Oliver Wood does the equivalent of jumping up and down very quickly and with barely any actual height attained because he’s so full of energy and joy and cannot adequately channel it. This is—incidentally—why he kisses one of the twins; they’re the nearest to him and simply a victim to his manic happiness. Not that said twin complained after the shock wore off.

[6] In truth, Hagrid will not thank him in the slightest for sending three annoying, whining Slytherins to come do manual labour but the groundskeeper-assistant-professor does take a certain amount of glee in witnessing Draco Malfoy falling into said dung heap no less than three times in one night.

[7] The irony of this is not lost on the author who has finally decided that this entire series is set in the 90s as a sort of middle way for the Harry Potter novels technically set in the 80s and Good Omens set in the same period, but then there is the TV version of Good Omens which the author loves and is set in the bloody 2000s+… honestly, the author is past the point of caring here, but since they shot themselves in the foot with mentioning the 3 Ninjas movie (well done, you utter fool), it is decided that the year of Our Lord is 1992 at this point in the story. The irony then—now the context is explained—is that Crowley is very well going to fight some demons about twenty years from this point and be very tired of himself and circumstances as a result. Also, this author staunchly argues these two idiots are A Thing from day one and they just have periods of Denying It For Political Reasons. Like idiots in love tend to do.

[8] Crowley gives the headmaster the middle finger at that remark. Aziraphale doesn’t even bother to pretend to be shocked by the action, too busy still being angry and wrathful.

[9] The black mamba had eventually returns to whence she came after meeting Harry’s own snake and deciding he had adequate protection as the chosen child of their creator. It leaves Harry a little bit confused as to why he needs protection but his snake—thusly named Monty for Reasons that Harry refuses to explain to any pureblood wizard including Ron—but Crowley distracts him with the story of How He Made Snakes For God and Harry quickly forgets what the black mamba was talking about.

#Good Omens #Good Omens Spoilers #Ineffable husbands #Crowley #Aziraphale #HP #Harry Potter #Absconding with Harry verse #Year Two #2nd chapter #Fic update #GOmens

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cinema-tv-etc · 5 years

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Leading Men Age, But Their Love Interests Don’t

Yesterday, Kristen Stewart fell out of the con-artist comedy Focus after Will Smith replaced Ben Affleck as the male lead; according to Variety, she was nagged by "the feeling that the age difference between the two would be too large a gap." For the record, Smith is a mere four years older than the 40-year-old Affleck, and if it seems a little odd that either of them would be considered a romantic partner for the 23-year-old Stewart in the first place … well, welcome to Hollywood. It seems like time and time again, male movie stars are allowed to age into their forties, fifties, and even sixties while the ages of their female love interests remain firmly on one side of the big 4-0, but is this a perception borne out of reality? To find out for sure, Vulture has analyzed the data of ten middle-aged leading men and the ages of the women they've wooed onscreen; you'll see the results in the charts below.

How'd we arrive at our conclusions? For each of our leading men, we tried to pick a representative sample of films — usually ten — where that A-lister had a notable love interest or wife, then we plotted the age gaps on our charts over the course of that star's career. (Because production dates for older movies can be hard to come by, we measured the stars' ages on the day the film in question was released.) The results confirmed our suspicions: As leading men age, their love interests stay the same, and even the oldest men on our list have had few romantic pairings with a woman their own age (or even one out of her mid-thirties). If our actor was sharing the screen with an A-lister of commensurate star power like Julia Roberts or Angelina Jolie, the age difference would drop somewhat, but in movies that relied solely on our guy's big name, the lesser-known love interests would nearly always be decades younger.

Scroll down to check out our findings in-depth.

DENZEL WASHINGTON Denzel Washington's pushing 60, but you wouldn't know it from his love interests, who tend to stay 35 and under. Perhaps that's because Washington rarely gets to romance an actress as formidable as he is (a fact of life that may owe more to Hollywood's racial prejudices than gender inequality), because when he went toe-to-toe with Angela Bassett for Malcolm X and Whitney Houston in The Preacher's Wife, the age differences weren't quite as egregious. (He did pair with Julia Roberts and Angelina Jolie when they were newbie superstars, but those films — The Pelican Brief and The Bone Collector — were cautious and chaste when it came to suggesting a love connection). The older Washington gets, the less it seems to matter to his love interests, as the last three notable ones — Paula Patton, Lymari Nadal, and Kelly Reilly — were all more than twenty years younger than he was.

HARRISON FORD Ford rose to stardom in his late thirties, but the first time he had a notable love interest in her late thirties, it was in 1999's Random Hearts … when Ford was an age 57 to Kristin Scott Thomas's 39. The vast majority of Ford's love interests have been at least fifteen years younger than him, and some were far younger than that: When Six Days Seven Nights came out in 1998, pundits debated whether the sexuality of Ford's co-star Anne Heche might prove a distraction, paying little mind to the fact that Ford was 26 years older than the woman he was supposed to woo.

JOHNNY DEPP Johnny Depp likes 'em young: Nearly all of his notable love interests have been 25 or under, and a few of them — including Winona Ryder, Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci, and Keira Knightley (who shared a kiss with Depp in the second Pirates film) — would have been carded at the time they swapped spit with the star. In fact, the cradle-robbing Depp has only had two notable love interests in their mid-thirties, and all Juliette Binoche and Angelina Jolie had to do to make that cut is win an Oscar beforehand. Easy!

TOM CRUISE Tom Cruise has had an interesting romantic trajectory onscreen: At the start of his career, almost all of his love interests were older than him. Shelley Long in Losin' It, Rebecca De Mornay in Risky Business, Kelly McGillis in Top Gun … time and time again, an older woman would seduce the sexually inexperienced Cruise onscreen. It's no wonder women used to love him! In the nineties, though, Cruise began squiring the five-years-younger Nicole Kidman, and he's remained the older man in all of his romantic encounters since. From Vanilla Sky on, the closest Cruise will let a woman get to his age is ten years; in the new Oblivion, he's a full seventeen years older than his female lead, Olga Kurylenko.

GEORGE CLOONEY Compared to Cruise, the women that George Clooney screen-dates are a smidge more age-appropriate (most of them are only eight or nine years his junior), and twice he even wooed actresses who were three older than him: Michelle Pfeiffer in One Fine Day and Holly Hunter in O Brother, Where Art Thou? When it comes to co-stars, Clooney tends to have his pick of classy actresses in their mid-thirties, though as he gets older — Clooney will turn 52 in May — the age of his love interests still seems to have plateaued.

RICHARD GERE Former Sexiest Man Alive winner Richard Gere is a good-looking 63, but his love interests haven't aged much in the three decades he's been a star: From Pretty Woman on, Gere's female co-stars have been 10 to 30 years younger than him, a trend that shows no signs of abating now that he's in his seventh decade. To be fair, he's played husband to the three-years-older Susan Sarandon in both Shall We Dance and Arbitrage … but in the former, he spends far more screen time with the much younger Jennifer Lopez, and in the latter, he's stepping out on Sarandon with supermodel-turned-actress Laetitia Casta, who's separated in age from Gere by a solid 29 years. At least Gere had the tables turned on him somewhat in Unfaithful, where his fifteen-years-younger screen-wife Diane Lane had an affair with a younger man, Olivier Martinez. How much younger than Lane was Martinez? Well … one measly year, actually.

STEVE CARELL When your breakout film is called The 40 Year Old Virgin, it ensures that audiences will forever be aware of your age … even if you were actually 43 when it came out, as Steve Carell was. In that movie, he fell in love with the three-years-older Catherine Keener, and ever since, Carell has looked most at home with romantic partners nearer to his age, like Lauren Graham, Tina Fey, and Julianne Moore. Every so often, though, Hollywood will insist at throwing a twentysomething starlet at Carell, and it's just awkward: Movies like Get Smart, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone had more than a few problems, but the main issue in all three is how ill at ease Carell seems when romantically paired with an actress who's twenty years younger. Let's hope Carell got the memo and will continue to be the rare male star who mostly sticks to love interests in their forties (as his new screen paramour Kristen Wiig will be when Anchorman 2 comes out this winter).

BRAD PITT Brad Pitt began his career as a romantic idol by taking a page straight out of the Tom Cruise playbook: After his roll in the hay with the eight-years-older Geena Davis in Thelma & Louise, he then began screen-dating the much younger women he was seeing in real life, Juliette Lewis and Gwyneth Paltrow, who were both around a decade Pitt's junior. (That's apparently his sweet spot, as Angelina Jolie would later be able to attest.) The rest of his romantic history runs the gamut, though Pitt did once take a screen-wife his own age: Mary-Louise Parker, who only got a handful of lines in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

LIAM NEESON Remember how Depp only allowed a love interest within striking distance of his own age if she was an Oscar-winning actress? The same more than holds true for Liam Neeson, who was partnered with older Oscar winners Jessica Lange and Meryl Streep in the mid-nineties. Aside from that brief moment in time, Neeson usually robs the cradle by wooing actresses around fifteen years younger than him, and ever since Taken reestablished his box-office virility, the age of his love interests has dropped precipitously: More than two and a half decades separated Neeson from his screen-wife January Jones in Unknown, and in Paul Haggis's next film, Third Person, the 61-year-old Neeson will bed 29-year-old Olivia Wilde.

TOM HANKS Well, here's something novel: an A-lister whose leading ladies actually age alongside him (though they still tend, on the whole, to be a bit younger). There aren't any egregiously age-inappropriate pairings in Tom Hanks's portfolio, since Hanks keeps his love interests within at least ten years of him at all times. He also aims high: Most of his female co-stars are Oscar winners or nominees, from Helen Hunt to Halle Berry, and he'll co-star with two-time nominee Catherine Keener (who's only three years younger) in this year's fact-based drama Captain Phillips. Then again, maybe it shouldn't surprise us that Hanks is an A-list aberration in this group: For 25 years, he's been married to the same woman, actress Rita Wilson … and both Hanks and Wilson are 56.

* The charts for Steve Carell and Tom Hanks have been updated.

By Kyle Buchanan

http://www.vulture.com/2013/04/leading-men-age-but-their-love-interests-dont.html?mid=twitter_vulture

This is neither perfectly accurate nor complete, but here is a rough comparison with Susan Sarandon and Meryl Streep: Susan Sarandon OLDER THAN HER LEADING MAN 2009- The Greatest: Susan, 63 / Pierce Brosnan, 56 2007- In the Valley of Elah: Susan, 61 / Tommy Lee Jones, 61 2007- Mr. Woodcock: Susan, 61 / Billy Bob Thornton, 52 2004- Shall We Dance: Susan, 58 / Richard Gere, 55 1998- Stepmom: Susan, 52 / Ed Harris, 48 1988- Bull Durham: Susan, 42 / Kevin Costner, 33 YOUNGER THAN HER LEADING MAN 2009- Solitary Man: Susan, 63 / Michael Douglas, 65 2002- Moonlight Mile: Susan, 56 / Dustin Hoffman, 65 1992- Lorenzos Oil: Susan, 46 / Nick Nolte, 51 1987-Witches of Eastwick: Susan, 41 / Jack Nicholson, 50 In Summary: in 10 movies spanning 22 years, Susan Sarandon has been OLDER than 6 of her leading men (including Tommy Lee Jones, who is 1 month younger than she), and YOUNGER than 4. In the films where she is OLDER than the actors, the biggest age difference was 9 years (Bull Durham). In the films where she is YOUNGER than the actors, the biggest age difference was also 9 years (Witches of Eastwick & Moonlight Mile). Meryl Streep OLDER THAN HER LEADING MAN 2009: Its Complicated: Meryl, 60 / Alec Baldwin, 51 2009: Julie & Julia: Meryl, 60 / Stanley Tucci, 49 2002: Adaptation: Meryl, 53 / Chris Cooper, 51 1998: One True Thing: Meryl, 49 / William Hurt, 48 1996: Before and After: Meryl, 47 / Liam Neeson, 44 1990: Postcards from the Edge: Meryl, 41 / Dennis Quaid, 36 YOUNGER THAN HER LEADING MAN 2012: Hope Springs: Meryl, 63 / Tommy Lee Jones, 66 2009: Its Complicated: Meryl, 60 / Steve Martin, 64 1995: The Bridges of Madison County: Meryl, 46 / Clint Eastwood, 65 1994: The River Wild: Meryl, 45 / David Strathairn, 45 1991: Defending Your Life: Meryl, 42 / Albert Brooks, 44 1986: Heartburn: Meryl, 37 / Jack Nicholson, 49 1985: Out of Africa: Meryl, 36 / Robert Redford, 49 1982: Sophies Choice: Meryl, 33 / Kevin Kline, 35 1981: French Lieutenants Woman: Meryl, 32 / Jeremy Irons, 33 1979: Kramer v. Kramer: Meryl, 30 / Dustin Hoffman, 42 In Summary: in 15 movies spanning 22 years, Meryl Streep has been OLDER than 6 of her leading men, and YOUNGER than 10. In the films where she is OLDER than the actors, the biggest age difference was 11 years (Julie and Julia). In the films where she is YOUNGER than the actors, the biggest age difference was 19 years (Bridges of Madison County).

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lianneoelke · 5 years

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Yukon Gold, Part 2: An Involuntary Dismount From the Canoe

Good morning from Fort Selkirk!

With bellies full of hearty chilli and a sky full of smoke, JJ and Falcon Heavy were ready to hit the river for our fourth day of canoeing down the Yukon River.

We were only five minutes past Fort Selkirk when JJ realized we forgot a radio and both cans of bear spray. We couldn’t just turn around and paddle upstream, so we had to land so Brian could run up the beach and grab everything (which was left on the above picnic table). After that, we were well on our way to an 80km day.

We spotted a black bear munching berries on an island.

We weren’t the only group on the river making a pilgrimage to Dawson City for the music festival. We’d play leapfrog with the same groups so often we came up with nicknames:

Spanish Armada: the group of nine Spaniards that made giant Spanish omelettes for breakfast and tied two canoes together because they had an odd number of people.

Walmart: the family that travelled with camping chairs, big tarps, and coolers. JJ disliked Walmart. JJ thought Walmart was American. Those are two separate sentences. Walmart was actually from Whitehorse.

Gold Diggers: a husband and wife that would set up on islands and pan for gold. Or so it seemed.

Reckless Youth: a handful of twenty-somethings from UBC with an aversion to life jackets.

Father & Son: they had little to say, to us or each other.

Frenchies: two French guys. That’s it.

Christmas Trees: a red and green boat of women having a jolly old time.

We learned the Spanish Armada planned to camp at the site we were aiming for that night. We could have joined them, but I, for one, did not travel all that way to the middle of nowhere to make new friends. So we had to find somewhere else. We came across another good campsite early in the day, but the weather was beautiful and we wanted to get more kilometers in, so we kept pushing. This moment would be remembered as the time we “got greedy”.

Storm clouds blew in fast. When thunder started booming, Brian told us all to get off the river. So we did. And we waited. Then the rain started. And we waited some more.

Brian (very reasonably) didn’t want to get back on the water until thirty minutes after the last thunder, but the thunder wouldn’t let up. Things were looking grim. Then we remembered we had snacks. We survived on gummy bears, chips, tea, toasted pita and hummus, and craft hot chocolate from Portland, for the two and a half hours it took for the storm to pass.

Spirits wavered but never failed.

By the time the storm passed, we still had another ten kilometers to paddle before we reached our goal of Brittania creek, and we found ourselves in the curious position of chasing the storm we had just weathered. When we finally arrived, the site was full of bugs, but at least there weren’t any new friends buzzing around.

For dinner I made a bastardized version of Pad Thai, using the canoe as a table while being swarmed by mosquitoes. I quickly realized why this particular packet of curry paste was left untouched in our cupboard for years.

By this point JJ had given up on the trappings of individuality and had matured into a fully realized single entity. So when JJ cast a line and caught their first decently sized fish at 11.36 pm, the three of us celebrated the incredible testament to JJ’s speed, momentum, and finesse. Considering all the rain we endured, we figured it was safe to build a small beach fire to cook the fish.

We all came to regret this decision, as the fish remains and fish-smoked clothes had to be dealt with before we could finally go to bed, in order to minimize bear attraction. However, since I cooked that night, I was able to dodge clean up. I went to bed without a care in the world.

Day five dawned sunny and misty. We knew this would also be a big day, but for a very different reason. This was the day we’d reach the bakery. Yes, somehow there was a bakery in the middle of nowhere on the Yukon River.

Power strokes would get us there quicker.

Of course we had to stop whenever we came across moose trampling through the bushes, beavers smacking their tails, and bears ambling down the beach.

The bakery turned out to be less of a bakery and more of a family home that sold $18 omelettes and saran-wrapped cookies (we bought them all). We payed $8 each to stay the night. Camping in someone else’s backyard to listen to their kids blast music and play in their pool felt strange after the solitude of the river, but we knew the daily thunderstorm would hit us soon and the last thing we needed was to “get greedy” again. So we settled in, washed up, and tackled laundry.

JJ waiting out the 6 o’clock thundershowers.

Of course, no camping trip with JJ (formerly Rob) would be complete without curry. JJ made us a heaping pot, just in time for more rain showers.

The next day we found ourselves fresh out of fresh ingredients, so we climbed aboard the COUS COUS train and headed for dehydration station.

Rafting up for snacks and map checks.

We had lunch at the island right before the White River, which poured all its glacial silt into the Yukon. The two rivers blended like miso soup. JJ made ramen while Brian flew his drone for a better view.

After lunch, we found a short but steep trail to hike.

After the merge we could no longer filter our water from the river, which was so thick we couldn’t even see our own feet when we dipped them in. All the silt brushing against our canoes made a constant fizzing noise, like a never-ending glass of coke being poured.

Just a couple bros enjoying happy hour with river-chilled beer.

After the relative business of the “bakery”, we decided to camp on an undesignated island covered in moose tracks. While the views and privacy were top notch, all the silt made for very muddy shores.

Brian made delicious minestrone soup for dinner, then treated us to freeze-dried ice cream sandos in honour of the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.

You can only get dishes so clean in the silty water, but on day six, cleanliness was no longer a priority. Brian had bought a last minute gold pan in Whitehorse, and while it didn’t find us any gold, it did make an excellent vessel for washing dishes and laundry.

The sky was still light at 1 am, because the sky was always light. We went to bed when it was light. We woke up when it was light. Time had no meaning on the river. It created (for me, at least) a sense of security. Openness. Like the Yukon had nothing to hide. But the truth was, we were in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of kilometers from the nearest town, on a muddy river where every island was covered with bear, wolf, and moose tracks.

We woke to the sound of splashing outside our tent. I immediately thought the moose had come to do us in, but instead of moose on the loose, we saw a gaggle of goose.

These banks were home to countless cliff swallows that zipped along the river, eating bugs. Yum.

“JJ first.”

There’s gold in them there hills. But not really.

Our last night on the river was spent at the Mechem Creek site. We set up camp as Brian howled in the cold cold creek, washing off the heat of the day.

Fire bans don’t count on the last day of the trip. Not if it’s been raining every day and you’re careful. JJ struggled to get the fire going (which Brian and I found slightly concerning, considering how dry the sticks were), but all’s well that ends well.

I made a pesto surprise COUS COUS dinner with brownie bear poo for dessert. Everyone saved some sort of fun surprise for their last meal.

“Very good food on this trip. Every meal has been at least a solid 7.5 out of 10.” - JJ

The site at Mechem creek turned out to be my favourite camp site, not least because we saved a bag of wine for that night.

We woke up at 6am up to a brilliant, clear sky.

JJ treated us to one last meal on the river.

There’s nothing better than a well packed canoe!

River travel is tiring work.

We rafted up for one last ceremonial flip of the map, which brought us to our final page. Spirits were high. Jokes were shared. We were finally on the home stretch of our 8 day, 400 km paddle through the Yukon wilderness.

Minutes away from Dawson City, disaster struck.

Brian wanted to stop for a drone shot of Dawson before we paddled in, so we radioed JJ to let them know to land at the tip of the next island. Unable to reach the point in time, JJ decided to land mid island, where the strong current had eroded the bank, causing several trees to topple. It was a bad place to land, and they came in hot hot hot.

Official statement from JJ:

“JJ experienced an involuntary dismount resulting in minor losses from the deck and a minor intake of water. However, the landing was successful.”

JJ thought the word “capsize” was too passionate for the encounter, but Falcon Heavy disagreed. When JJ’s canoe met land, the current hit from underneath, tipping the canoe and its contents upstream. Brian turned to me and said “They capsized. They did exactly what I told them not to do.” No one was injured, although Jordan’s solar panel and Rob’s hat and beloved binoculars were lost to the water. Falcon Heavy found a safe eddy to pull in, then Brian brought out the drone while we waited for JJ to get their shit together.

The paddle of shame.

We had just got back in the water when we heard the unmistakable rumble of thunder. We were faced with a dilemma: get off the water, like all Brian’s experience suggested we do, or “get greedy” and paddle hard to race the storm.

We paddled hard...

... but not so hard we didn’t have time to admire the first and only fox we saw on the river.

That’s Dawson City at the top.

This time our gamble paid off, and we made it to the docks with nae drama (except for the paddleboat that honked at us to get out of its spot).

Safe and sound in Dawson City, it was time to look back at our favourite and not so favourite moments of the canoe trip.

JJ (Jordan)

Highlight: Fort Selkirk. Just the whole fort. So cool.

Lowlight: Involuntary canoe dismount and loss of solar panel.

Gold Star: Gold Pan/Brian Shaw for getting the gold pan.

JJ (Rob)

Highlight: The River (as a tangible entity and metaphysical being) The colours, the current, the curves...the feeling.

Lowlight: Involuntary canoe dismount and loss of binoculars.

Gold Star: JJ. The physical embodiment of speed, momentum and finesse.*

*In all my years of highlight/ lowlight/ gold star, I have never seen someone award the gold star to themselves.

Brian

Highlight: All the Yukon cabins. The history of the Yukon Crossing, the trees growing out of Thom’s Location cabin roof, the historically intact cabins of Fort Selkirk (inside and out), and all the private cabins we saw in between.

Lowlight: Cleaning up the fish & fire at Britannia Creek between midnight and 1am, exhausted from the long day, swarmed by bugs, still stinking of fish, right into the tent.

Gold Star: Jordan, for making the trip (and JJ) happen by stepping in at the last minute and filling the spot, prepared and enthusiastic, and a strong paddler.

Lianne

Highlight: The beautiful site and tasty food at Mechem Creek. Also the fact that none of the canoeists that stopped by the creek for water decided to stay the night, because sharing the site would have really killed the vibe.

Lowlight: Spending hours waiting out the day four thunderstorm under a tarp.

Gold Star: The map. Following along and “staying found”, as Brian would say, was easy and delightful.

Bonus Gold Star: Brian Shaw. The unofficial leader of our canoe trip, Brian looked after us all with his experience, well-muscled arms, moon landing trivia, sexy beard, and positive attitude.

As always, most of the good pics were taken by Brian. He put together an album of the 2019 Yukon River greatest hits:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22674099@N08/albums/72157710102335767/page1

Stay tuned for the third and final part of Yukon Gold. Dawson City will bring a music festival, rowdy casino, epic hike, and a real life Yukon character known as “the Ghost”.

#yukon #yukongold #yukonriver #canoe #canoeing #canoecamping #exploreyukon #dawson #camping #canada #explorecanada

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wistfulcynic · 6 years

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Another Brick In The Wall: Chapter 14

It’s the end! I can’t believe it. This story that started out as a snotty protest against high school AUs somehow ended as my second longest MC and something that I’ve immensely enjoyed writing. It's been so interesting imagining these characters and the events of their lives through this lens, I just hope in the end I've done them justice. Thank you all so much for reading it, and for your lovely comments, without them this story probably wouldn't have happened. Love you all ❤️❤️❤️

Tags for: @darkcolinodonorgasm @jennjenn615 @hollyethecurious @resident-of-storybrooke @kmomof4 @bonbonpirate

Chapter 14:

Nine and a half years after the morning after her senior prom, Emma arrived home at the end of another exhausting day to find a thick cream envelope in her mail slot addressed to “Dr Emma Swan-Jones.” The Storybrooke High seal was pressed into the flap, and Emma knew immediately what it was.

She sifted through the bills and junk mail seaching for another envelope, addressed to Killian. There wasn’t one. Perhaps that wasn’t surprising, though, she reasoned. He hadn’t technically graduated with her, just passed his AP exams and gone on his way.

When Killian came home half an hour later she was sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the card the envelope had contained with a small scowl. He gave her a quizzical look and she handed it to him, without comment. He looked at it and laughed. “Of course,” he said. “The final stage in the American high school drama. The one wherein we return to the old alma mater, triumphantly to lord our brilliant success over the poor sods we went to school with.” He sat down across from her and handed the card back. “I suppose you’ll want to go?”

Emma shrugged. “I don’t know. Do we have any brilliant success to lord over anyone?” That afternoon she had given expert testimony in the trial of a sixteen year old boy accused of sexually assaulting his twelve year old sister. He’d been acquitted. The girl had grabbed Emma’s hand and begged her with terrified eyes not to make her go back home. But there had been no other option. Watching that poor child be herded away by her parents had made Emma feel precisely the opposite of brilliantly successful.

Killian gave her the soft, sympathetic look he always gave when he could tell she’d had a particularly bad day, and reached out to take her hand. “‘Brilliant’ may be too strong a word, but we’re certainly well on our way to where we want to be,” he said. “Don’t you think so, love?”

Killian was a junior professor, teaching all the hours God sent while simultanously participating in a major research project and writing the book he hoped would get him tenure. She was a forensic psychologist with the Boston PD, handed all the worst, most difficult cases by her superiors, coming home each day exhausted and ready to weep for humanity. They lived on the ground floor of a draughty old house that they paid way too much rent for, trying to save for a down payment on their own place, which at the rate they were going would only take about thirty years provided Boston house prices remained at their current stratospheric levels. She had wrinkles on her forehead now that didn’t smooth out when she stopped frowning and last week she had found a grey hair. Were they where they wanted to be?

She looked at her husband. The years had certainly been kind to him. His lanky frame had filled out and he had grown into his face, which was now covered with stubble from the thick beard he was usually too busy or tired to shave regularly. The scruff suited him, though. Everything suited him. Killian at seventeen had been a cute boy with eyes a bit too big and limbs a touch too long, teetering just on the precipice of his potential; Killian at twenty-seven was breathtaking.

She realised he was waiting for an answer to his question. “I guess. I don’t know. Oh, I can’t think about things like that now, I’m in too much of a mood.”

Keeping hold of her hand he stood and pulled her up into his arms, wrapping them tightly around her and stroking her hair. She sighed as she leaned against his solid, comforting form, drawing strength from his presence.

“Rough day?” he asked.

“When isn’t it?” she replied, unable to keep the frustration from her voice.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

She shook her head as much as she could with her face buried in his shoulder. “Not really. Maybe later. Right now I just want to sit and do something mindless. Just not think for a while.”

Killian kissed her gently on her hair and then on her lips. “Why don’t you find something on Netflix and I’ll pour us some wine,” he said.

She nodded and went into the living room, collapsing on the sofa and putting her feet up on the coffee table. Killian hated when she did that, but sometimes she wanted to stretch out, she thought grumpily.

“Anything you want for dinner?” he called from the kitchen.

“No, just whatever.” She picked up the remote and began scrolling aimlessly through the options.

He joined her a few minutes later, handing her a large glass of red wine and sitting down next to her, sighing as he did. He looked pointedly at her feet, but said nothing. She felt a brief flare of guilt. His days were hard too. She took her feet off the table and curled them under her as she tucked herself against his side and he put an arm around her.

“I think ‘whatever’ is going to be pasta and a salad tonight,” he said, kissing the top of her head.

“That sounds fine. What do you want to watch?”

“Oh, whatever,” he teased, using his ‘American’ accent. She gave him a small slap, rolling her eyes.

“The Good Place?”

“Yeah, go on then.”

It was a show they’d watched a hundred times, but after their stressful days they needed some comfort viewing. They watched two episodes as they drank their wine, then Killian went to make dinner and Emma checked her email. Five messages from her boss already, and she’d barely left work two hours ago. On a Friday. Firmly she closed the app and turned her phone upside down on the table. She’d deal with work later. Now she was going to have dinner with her husband and enjoy his company.

They chatted about odds and ends as they ate, the everyday, random subjects that are common in long-term relationships.

“By the way, you never answered my question, love,” said Killian, after a short silence.

“Hmm? What question?” Emma twirled pasta around her fork.

“Do you want to go to the reunion?”

She frowned. She’d forgotten about it, and wasn’t sure she wanted to open the subject again. “Eh, I don’t know,” she said. “I guess it might be nice to see some people again. We don’t really do any visiting when we go back to SB.”

They went back regularly of course, to see Liam and Belle, who were married now with three small children, and her parents, who had a small child of their own— a surprise baby (very surprising, Snow had laughed) called Leo, who was now eight. But their trips were usually over holidays and they were so busy with their families, nieces and nephews and baby brothers, that they didn’t take much time to see old friends, especially since Ruby had moved to China and hardly ever came back.

“I’ll leave it up to you,” said Killian. “I was only at that school for a year, and everyone I really came to care about I still see frequently. Even Whale, who I in fact see far too much of for anyone’s liking.”

Against all odds Killian and Victor had remained friends of a sort and since Victor had moved to Boston three years earlier they went out together fairly regularly, though from what Killian said they spent most of that time bickering and needling at each other. Still, they seemed to enjoy it.

By the time Emma and Killian had finished eating and cleaned up the kitchen it was past nine and their eyelids were drooping. “Do you want to watch anything else?” asked Killian.

“No,” said Emma, around an enormous yawn. “Let’s just go to bed.”

She was so old, she thought. In bed by ten on a Friday night. But it was better than falling asleep on the sofa five minutes into a movie.

They brushed their teeth and washed their faces, then got undressed and before putting on pajamas they wrapped themselves around each other as they did every night, sharing a deep kiss as they each mentally played a round of the debating game they called “Are We Too Knackered For Sex Or Not?”

To her surprise, Emma discovered that her answer was “Or Not.” She was exhausted, mentally and physically, but as much as she wanted to sleep she wanted to feel that closeness with Killian even more, wanted the warmth and comfort that she always felt when making love with him. Wanted proof that human relationships could be positive, nurturing things, not like that hellishly twisted nightmare family she’d seen today. Sometimes she felt that without her loving marriage, without Killian’s unwavering support, doing her job might come at the expense of her mental health.

She signalled her intent by letting her hand slide down his back to cup his ass and pull his hips into hers, rocking her own against him.

He hummed against her mouth. “So it’s an Or Not for you, then?” he murmured.

“Yeah. You?”

“I’m certain I can summon the energy to ravish you, love,” he growled, hoisting her up against him. She shrieked and wrapped her legs around his waist, laughing as he tumbled them both onto their bed.

Later, Emma lay with her head on Killian’s chest, listening to his heartbeat and the soft flow of his breath as he slept. She was tired in a more pleasant way now, sated and content and much more at peace than she had felt earlier, yet still she couldn’t sleep. Her fingers sifted through the abundant hair on his chest, one of her favourite things to touch, and she remembered with a smile the first night she’d spent in his arms. How she’d woken on that shining morning to the thought of how hairy he’d be one day. He had surpassed her expectations on that front. On most fronts, honestly.

She indulged in more memories of that morning, of the two of them eating pancakes and bacon on the boat, laughing, talking about nothing, getting lost in each other’s eyes. They had been so in love, so happy. So full of bright optimism for the future. They’d thought they had it all figured out.

A decade later they weren’t any less in love. If anything their feelings had only deepened and strengthened as their relationship matured. But life had not turned out to be quite as easy as they had envisioned it in that sparkling memory. She supposed it never really did.

She thought about going to the Storybrooke High reunion, seeing the people she hadn’t seen since graduation. People she had ruled back then as Storybrooke’s princess, shallow and carefree, beloved and ever so slightly feared. People who had remained in the small town they’d been born in while she had moved to New York, travelled far and wide with Killian, seen and done so much that had changed her, then finally settled into a job that exhausted and depressed her even as every day reinforced her conviction that what she did was essential work, helping people as much as anything could. What would Storybrooke think of its princess now?

Human nature being what it was, she of course wondered sometimes about the life she could have had if she’d returned after college as her mother had wished. What she would have ended up doing, who she would have been with? Would Killian really have returned with her, given up his own future for her? Even odder to imagine, what would have become of her if she’d never met Killian at all? He was such an integral part of her existence, her husband, her best friend, the love of her life, that she was literally unable to imagine herself without him. Had Killian never come to Storybrooke Emma would have grown up to be a wholly different person, one unrecognisable to the person she actually was. Whether she would have been happy in that other reality, in her ignorance both of true love and of the frustrations of the life she’d chosen, she couldn’t say. All she knew was that despite everything she was happy in this one.

Killian shifted in his sleep, his hand sliding over the bare skin of her hip and onto her lower belly as he unconsciously cuddled her closer. Her skin tingled in its wake with the low-level arousal always ignited by even his lightest touch. He was the only man she’d ever slept with, something her friends hadn’t hesitated to tease her about over the years, like it was something they thought she would be ashamed of. But Emma always just laughed, letting the mockery roll off her back. She was more than satisfied with her sex life, certain that she wasn’t missing anything she couldn’t do without. In fact, hearing her friends’ stories of unsatisfying one-nighters and awkward morning-afters and the challenges of dating in the modern world just made her even more grateful for Killian, who still looked at her like she was the centre of his universe and whose hands on her never failed to send sparks dancing across her skin even after ten years together. Why would she want to go out looking for meaningless sex with men whose faces she would barely remember just for the sake of “wider experience” when she had the sexiest man she’d ever seen already in her bed, waiting to worship her and pleasure her and love her? Why go out for hamburger, as the saying goes, when you have steak at home?

Though she’d be lying if she didn’t admit, if only to herself, how deeply she’d enjoyed the look on her college friends’ faces when they’d met him for the first time. After all the teasing she’d endured about her boyfriend who was actually a boy and about her turning down men old enough to buy her alcohol for the sake of a boy who wasn’t even eighteen yet, she had revelled in their shock, their disbelief, and yes, their outright envy. He’s mine, bitches, she remembed thinking, with her newfound college-student affinity for swearing. And you can suck it.

“All right, all right,” Tiana had said. “I get it now. You’re a dark horse, Emma Swan.”

“Does he have a brother?” Ariel had asked innocently.

Maintaining their relationship during their college years had, she realised now, been pretty easy. Alhough at first they had struggled with the distance, as they’d settled into college life and found their friends and routines and formed a routine for their relationship, texting throughout the day and FaceTiming in the evenings, they had learned to handle it. She’d missed him, of course, as he had her, but they’d always visited each other without fail twice a month, the only exception being during finals when they needed the time to study and didn’t wish to spend it on the train. Their winter and summer breaks had also been spent together, first in Storybrooke and later in either New York or Boston, working summer internships to help them get a leg up in their future careers.

After graduation, Killian fulfilled his promise to go to Oxford for three years of graduate study while Emma, hating the idea of being so far away from him for so long, had impulsively applied for a master’s programme at the London School of Economics and to her surprise been accepted.

“It’s for social and cultural psychology, which isn’t directly applicable to what I want to do,” she said. “But it sounds fascinating and it’ll give me a broader understanding of the field which can only be an advantage. And I should be able to start a PhD immediately when it’s finished.”

“I can’t say I’d be sorry to have you near,” said Killian. “I haven’t been back to the UK in five years, I’m a bit apprehensive about it. And of course not having an ocean between us is never a bad thing.”

Emma of course had never been to the UK at all, and so they took three weeks before the start of their courses to travel around the country, everywhere except London and Oxford, as they had agreed that every time they got together (trading visits every two weeks as they’d done in college) they would do one touristy thing, reasoning that this ought to give them enough time to see the major sights of both cities during Emma’s year-long programme.

Because life was insane and coincidences were real they actually ran into Milah one afternoon in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. It was early November and they were sitting on the grass enjoying an unseasonable bout of warmth and sunshine when Killian suddenly went stiff as a board, drawing in his breath sharply.

“What is it?” asked Emma, concerned, following the trajectory of his gaze to a tall woman with long, dark hair tumbling down her back in wild curls who was walking along the path nearest them, a cell phone at her ear.

“That’s her. Milah.” Killian’s voice was strained.

“Really?” Emma leaned forward for a better look.

“Yeah.” Killian’s hand tightened in hers, squeezing her fingers painfully. “Don’t stare, I don’t want to catch her attention.”

“Are you sure? We could go talk to her, if you want.”

“Definitely not.”

“It might be good, Killian, to talk about—”

“No, love, please. I’ve worked hard to put it behind me, I don’t want to dredge up old emotions that are best left in the past.”

She snuggled closer into his side. “As you wish,” she said, stealing his line, and he smiled and kissed her. When they looked up again, Milah had gone.

That night when they made love there was something almost frantic in the way he held her and touched her and thrust deep within her, as though he needed her to anchor him in the place he wanted to remain. Normally their lovemaking was very much a pair activity, but that night Emma lay back and let him take what he needed, knowing that his fingers would leave bruises on her soft skin but that she would never reproach him for them. And when he clung to her in the aftermath and she felt his tears dampen her hair she held him close and whispered that she loved him and always would, soothing him until he slept.

The next morning he was lighter than she’d ever seen him, smiling brightly as they did their touristy thing —a trip on the London Eye this time— laughing freely when she held tightly to his jacket at the top, wrapping her securely in his arms. “I’ll never let you fall, Emma,” he murmured in her ear, and she smiled. She wouldn’t let him fall, either. She hadn’t, and she never would.

When she saw him off on the train back to Oxford that evening she knew that he had left Milah and the trauma of his past behind, completely. Finally. He was free.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

When Killian awoke the next morning Emma was still asleep, curled up on her side and snoring lightly in the way he’d always found adorable. She still had shadows under her eyes but her face was relaxed and peaceful, which eased some of his worry about her state of mind. When Emma was particularly stressed she frowned even in her sleep, so her soft expression was a good sign. He hated seeing her so strung out but knew there was little he could do to help. It was simply her nature. She was incapable of not getting emotionally invested in the people she counselled; she cared about them and took it very hard when she wasn’t able to give them the help they needed. He couldn’t change that, nor did he really want to; her generous heart was one of the things he loved most about her. All he could really do was just be there, just offer his support and listen whenever she was ready to talk.

He stroked her cheek with his thumb and kissed her softly on the forehead, and when she didn’t waken he slid carefully from the bed, pulling on his old Harvard sweatpants as quietly as he could. She seemed pretty deeply asleep and frankly, he thought, she could use the rest. It wasn’t often she had a chance to sleep in, even on a Saturday, but today, he silently decreed, she would. She would sleep late, and when she awoke he would have breakfast waiting for her.

Pancakes, he thought. We haven’t had those in ages. And bacon. Like they’d had the morning after the prom. He smiled to himself at the memory, one that hadn’t crossed his mind in years. So many good things had happened since that when it came to happy memories he had a true embarrassment of riches, and sometimes things got lost in the shuffle. The arrival of the reunion invite had it seemed shuffled them to the fore again.

Although he could certainly understand Emma’s reluctance to go to her high school reunion and be faced with having either to hide or to explain the stresses and frustrations of the life she’d chosen to people who already struggled to understand why she’d chosen it, Killian knew she wouldn’t change a thing about their life, as he wouldn’t. All things considered they had been almost unbelievably fortunate. Finding the love of your life at sixteen or seventeen was vanishingly rare; even rarer was that relationship surviving years of separation, the stress of pursuing advanced degrees and of working long hours for low pay and little appreciation, and actually growing stronger with each new challenge thrown at it. He was immensely grateful for the last ten years with her and for all the years they had to come, for the children they hoped some day to have, for the life they would continute to build together. All they needed was each other, the rest of it—the jobs, the kids, the house— would work itself out. And if those things never came then they’d still be happy because they’d be together.

Feeling cheerful at the prospect of surprising Emma with a nice breakfast, Killian opened the refrigerator, only to discover that that they had no bacon. And no milk. Sighing, he quickly peeked into the bedroom to check that Emma was still sound asleep, then tossed on his jacket, zipping it securely as he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and slipped from the house as quietly as possible. Twenty minutes later he was back, armed with bacon, milk, and some good coffee, plus chocolate chips for the pancakes. Emma permitted him to feed her healthy food these days as long as he prepared it, but she still held on to her childhood preference for sickly sweet breakfasts. He mixed the pancake batter and set it aside to rest while he cooked the bacon and then finally put the coffee on. Breakfast was nearly ready, and if anything would lure Emma out of bed it was the smell of good coffee.

Sure enough she appeared in the kitchen moments later, wearing an old t-shirt of his and rubbing her eyes sleepily. “Is that the Guatemalan coffee I smell?” she asked, “I thought we’d run out.”

“I went to the store. It’s been a while since we’ve had a nice breakfast, and you seemed like you could use it.”

She came up behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist as he tested the heat of the griddle and poured out the first batch of pancakes. “God, I love you,” she said against the bare skin over his shoulder blade.

“I hope you’re not just saying that because I got chocolate chips for the pancakes,” he teased, picking up the bag to show her before sprinking a generous handful over half the batch.

“Well, I can’t deny that’s a major factor,” she replied, deadpan.

“I knew it.”

She gave a light laugh and squeezed him tightly before heading for the coffee maker. “It’s ready,” she said. “Do you want a cup now?”

“Yeah, please.” Killian deftly flipped the pancakes. “These’ll be done in a minute, you go sit down and I’ll bring it all in when it’s ready.”

Emma poured coffee for both of them and took their cups to the table. Sitting, she sipped at hers, letting the rich flavour and the caffeine kick both soothe and jolt her into full consciousness. She’d nearly finished the cup when Killian placed a generous stack of pancakes in front of her, oozing melted chocolate and accompanied by a pile of bacon. She laughed, the first free, happy laugh he’d heard from her in far too long.

“Are there three of me?” she asked.

“Now, darling, don’t pretend that you can’t, or won’t, eat all of that yourself,” he said, refilling her coffee cup. “Need I remind you of the Naples Pizza Incident?”

“I was twenty three then!” she protested, “The calories burned off a lot faster in those days.”

“It was only five years ago, love, not fifty.”

“It feels longer,” she said, the grim mood falling back onto her face.

He sat down and picked up his fork, deliberately casual. “Do you want to talk about it?”

She nodded. “Yeah, I think I’m ready.”

As they ate she told him about the case, the testimony she’d given, how her best efforts had seemed to make no difference, and how she’d had to send a traumatised little girl right back into the same terrible situation she thought she’d escaped.

“That fucking judge, he cared more about ‘ruining the future’ of the brother than about protecting a little girl from a predator,” she fumed. “Of course a sexual assault conviction would ruin his future, it should.” She took a large bite of pancake, chewed and swallowed before continuing. “I think the worst thing was that the smug little shit knew there wouldn’t be any consequences for him. His parents knew what was going on, they did nothing. The judge did nothing. What’s even the point of a justice system if it doesn’t protect the people who most need protecting?” She bit down on a piece of bacon with a vicious crunch.

Killian knew this was a rhetorical question; she didn’t want his help or his opinion, just his ear and his shoulder. So he said nothing.

Emma swiped her plate with the last bite of pancake and popped it in her mouth. “Looks like you were right,” she said. “I did eat it all.”

“I knew you could do it,” he replied, smiling at her. “I believed in you. I always believe in you, Emma.”

In more things than just eating pancakes, he meant, and he could tell she understood. She gave him an odd look, half soft smile, half inner turmoil.

“Let’s go,” she said suddenly.

“Where?”

“To the reunion. Let’s just go. I don’t care if we’re brilliantly successful or not, I’m happy. I’m exhausted and frustrated and sometimes I feel like all my efforts are for nothing, but then I come home and you pour me wine and fuck me senseless—”

“Um, make passionate love to my beautiful wife, I think you mean—”

“—then you make me pancakes for breakfast and listen to me complain about my day and even though that doesn’t make the problems go away it makes me feel like I can handle them. I can handle anything as long as you’re with me, and I’m happy, Killian.” She reached out and took his hand. “This is happily ever after,” she said softly, smiling into his eyes. “Everyone seems to think that that means your life is perfect but it doesn’t. It just means you’re happy despite the imperfections.”

“I’m happy with you, Emma,” he whispered, kissing her, leaning his forehead against hers, breathing her breath. “You're all I need, and I will never stop loving you.”

“I’ll never stop loving you,” she whispered back. They kissed again, deeper this time, a kiss tasting of pancakes and bacon and the years and years of joys and frustrations, triumphs and struggles, small victories and petty annoyances that they had to look forward to together.

In that moment, despite the imperfections, they were perfectly, truly happy.

#cs ff #high school au #teenage captain swan #happily ever after #and what that really means #happy ending #another brick in the wall #profdanglaisstuff #bittersweet

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cowandcalf · 6 years

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About McDanno - what’s new

My day started with a text I received from a friend, who’s dying to talk about the new episode. So, when I’ve watched it I should let them know because - urgent. I got already nervous about H50 9.15.

I watched it and I normally don’t ponder for too long. There is always this instant instinct, hitting me with the right notion. So, I sat down and wrote my post about Danny and Rachel.

I need to lay my soul bare for a moment here. Today I’ve discussed Danny and Rachel, Danny and Steve and I can’t stop thinking about certain points and topics that I touched during my discussion with other shippers and friends. It’s about Steve and Danny, the past and the future in H50 and maybe this is just a summary of my racing thoughts with not much sense in it. But I have to get it out of my head.

It’s especially about the development of the show. What was then and what do we have now. Past and future. I read so often how much everyone misses the good old days. And let me tell you something, I miss them, too because the good old days are always better. Everything was new and unknown and not worn, or well fitting, or we weren’t used to it. We’re nine years later and evolution and change can’t be held off.

Okay, here we go.

Do I miss the old days from season1 to season 4? Yes, I do. I rewatch all seasons, currently occupied with season 2 and I’m excited and pumped with adrenaline. I’m full to the brim with this spirit, this intensity that the guys create in my heart whenever I see them on screen.

Yes, it was an awesome time when Wo Fat was a long plotline, when cliffhangers were so effing good, that my heart stopped in the middle of trying to jump out of my chest.

Yes, I miss the seasons where a plot lasted not only for one or two episodes but for a whole freaking season.

Yes, I miss the way Steve and Danny were glued together. I miss how their friendship and their love was in the making, building, forming, getting a solid shape.

Yes, I even miss the drama and the revelation about Catherine, about Doris. All the shit that went down with Danny and his women.

I miss Chin and Kono and this undestroyable ohana feeling. I miss that so fucking much.

I miss, that they were so young, everything seemed possible and reachable.

I miss knowing that there was this knowledge in my heart that Steve and Danny would never grow older, would never change.

I miss the beginning because I knew there could be years to come!

And here we are and everything has changed and I hate it sometimes. I feel bereft and I want all the old, great days back and I don’t want to deal with ‘now’. But that’s not possible.

Steve and Danny are tired. They work in the line of duty for years now. Danny soon has filled his twenty years. They have been through so much, emotionally and physically.

The restaurant plot was good because it was a project where Steve and Danny were involved, again glued together with the same goal. This is no more. They realized what a toll it took on them. They realized that the only aim they have is to be a member of Five-0, working cases.

Steve is sick. He takes medication on a daily bases. He has to, with radiation sickness and a transplanted liver he doesn’t go without meds. He feels this change and as I see it, his way to delegate, to pass work on and to pass on responsibility has to do with his sickness. He never would admit it, but his strength fades. He’s still super fit, but physically not in peak condition. This boat has sailed and this right here...this makes me sad and angry and pisses me off because it tells me time passes.

Danny has thought about retirement already in season 7. He has had his wild days, his determination, his passion for his work. He’s not young and hungry anymore. Other priorities count and take over first place. Police work ruins your health and if Danny wants to get older with decent health, just like Steve, he has to reduce the workload.

Steve and Danny love each other. Their friendship and relationship are rock solid. They don’t need to work on that. It is! They always have each other’s back, they don’t have to prove that always. They can take it easier.

This means I don’t see them so often together as I wish I’d see them. They prioritize each other always but it also means that they’re off to do other things without the other. When it really counts, like in 9.11, Danny always backs Steve up and he’s always right by Steve’s side.

Season 9 is a season with different rules. Each episode is a closed case, a closed story and there isn’t a plot line arching over the whole season. Different times, different rules.

I love the show with my whole heart. It’s my happy place, no matter what. New team members are there, they are young and eager and Danny and Steve are ready to step back a little. It happens even if I don’t agree.

I always will see McDanno in every episode. I hate to know that the guys getting older, changing, having different goals.

I hate to know the spirit from the beginning is gone to never return because of the simple reason that time passes. It’s nine years later. Nothing ever stays the same.

I keep up, I stay with them - and I accept the changes.

That’s the reason why I deal with every episode the way I deal with. My glass is always half-full and there will always and forever be McDanno moments because their love is real to me.

Shit happens, that’s life. So Danny and Rachel? That’s shit but I can deal with it.

But at the end of the day, I long for the old days and I accept this hurt and this loss and I try to cope with the new days.

End of message - Roger and out.

Jesus, I’m seriously so churned up and it feels as if I have some heartache because my guys grow older and everything changes and it sucks.

#cowandcalf rambles #mcdanno #my thoughts #when time changes #i don't like it #i always want the beginning back #it was so thrilling #but that's life #let's deal with it #fangirl thoughts

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pass-the-bechdel · 5 years

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Crazy Ex-Girlfriend season three full review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

100% (thirteen of thirteen).

What is the average percentage per episode of female characters with names and lines?

41.16%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Seven, so just over half. Three of those are 50%+.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Zero.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Twenty-four. Thirteen who appeared in more than one episode, five who appeared in at least half the episodes, and two who appeared in every episode.

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Thirty-nine. Eighteen who appeared in more than one episode, seven who appeared in at least half the episodes, and one who appeared in every episode.

Positive Content Status:

Not nearly as good as you might expect or hope. As with previous seasons, the show’s most impressive content is not the feminist stuff at all, and on the feminist front it feels sometimes as if the show spends more time denouncing different aspects of the feminist movement as ‘the wrong kind of feminism’ than it does declaring and upholding the aspects it does approve. I tend to feel that it spends time talking the talk on women’s issues, but doesn’t often get up to walk the walk (average rating of 3).

General Season Quality:

Easily better than the previous two seasons, despite a deflated ending. It takes a much more focused approach to its storytelling in the beginning of the season, in a manner which briskly becomes refreshingly confronting and leads in to a powerful middle. Unfortunately, it never sustains quality for very long, and overall the show still suffers for being too easily distracted. It’s not infuriating, but it can be frustrating.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

Ok, let me explain something about myself first, something I’ve mentioned in other (non-Crazy Ex) posts which have gone live long before this one will, but for anyone who missed it in any of those other places, here it is: I am, right now, pregnant. In fact, I am pregnant with a child conceived non-traditionally with a gay friend of mine, and as such, Darryl’s non-traditional quest for biological parenthood in this season struck a very personal chord (though, unlike Darryl, I used the phone-a-friend option as my first choice, not a fallback. Would recommend, if it’s ever relevant to your life). I bring all of this up because I can categorically declare that there are certain plot threads that you absolutely will NOT have the same reaction to if you don’t have that very personal chord being struck, and even moreso if that chord is relevant to your life right now, rather than being something that you’ve experienced in the past but has since slipped from the forefront of your attention. Thus, when I talked about feeling like the emphasis was in all the wrong places for Darryl’s part of the narrative, and expressed irritation with Heather’s pregnancy and birth? I sure ain’t mad about it for no reason. I am extremely, extremely aware of what those processes are actually like right the heck now.

I’m not going to linger on all the details, but I am particularly annoyed at the writers for dropping the ball on the pregnancy/birth part, specifically because it’s something which is so often badly dramatised in tv and film already, and the writers not only know that, they openly reference it as if they’re somehow doing better. The same way that medical professionals sometimes find it too frustrating to watch hospital dramas because of all their inaccuracies, or someone in law enforcement might cringe their way through all the egregious breaches in procedure in a cop show, there’s always a significant risk that anything depicted in fiction will make you want to tear your hair out over the way the plot warps or disregards reality that is pertinent to your life, either through a lack of proper research or understanding of the subject matter, or a conscious choice to prioritise desired storytelling beats/developments over actual logic and realism. Suffice to say there are a LOT of concessions Crazy Ex-Girlfriend asked me to make to their storytelling with this little subplot, some of which most people who have never been pregnant wouldn’t notice, and yes, some of which I would probably dismiss if I were not in the midst of the reality right now. I’m someone who has been present at actual births before and has been raised with an above-average understanding of what’s involved, so I’m used to gritting my teeth and hoping to just not be too annoyed by the way pregnancy and birth is typically depicted on screen. The fact that I am currently immersed in the reality of preparing to give birth makes me less forgiving of fictional contrivances, yes, but in the case of this show’s approach, it’s also more than that: it’s the fact that this show actively promotes itself as a feminist text. And if you’re gonna do that, and criticise the way other things (”written by men!”) depict labour, but then you also choose not to include any education/empowerment of your pregnant character, rattle off a variety of (uneducated, disempowered) cliches anyway, and then handwave it all with ‘nevermind, she just got an epidural!’ as if that ‘solves’ the difficulties of birth (and post-birth recovery, for that matter), frankly that’s just...a really unimpressive failure of feminist storytelling. Congratulations, you neglected the subject completely, at the same time as actively claiming your intent to do better than all that written-by-men schlock out there! What a tiresome charade this turned out to be.

Setting that aside though (difficult for me, as I am...very preoccupied with it), there was actually a good lot of things to like about this season, even if I do still feel that I ultimately have more criticisms than I do praise. Having Rebecca actually reach crisis point in the form of a suicide attempt, and consequently getting a diagnosis for her mental disorder and finally being able to move forward in learning to live a balanced life with BPD? Frankly, it’s not a move that I anticipated, and if you’d asked me where I thought Rebecca’s mental health plot was heading, I probably would have just shrugged it off as an unfocused thread where the ultimate goal was just ‘figure out how to be happy on your own terms instead of defining happiness through someone else’ (which is solid advice, but generalised advice, not something that would require the show to commit to a genuine mental illness). Acknowledging that Rebecca’s behaviour comes from a more distinct source than just the nebulous idea of being ‘crazy’ is a vitally important development, and it ushered in some of the best storytelling the show has offered thus far, at least when the plot maintained steady focus and made an effort to be responsible and mature in its exploration of the issue. As ever, there were still times when the show used Rebecca’s mental state for comic relief in a manner which made me uncomfortable, and times when I couldn’t interpret the intentions of the narrative - I have come to the conclusion that this show and I are on completely different wavelengths, which makes us a bad match, regardless of any elements which I do appreciate.

On the subject of things I appreciate, I’m going to discuss the true character highlight of the show, someone I wanted to talk about after last season, not realising that if I held off until this review instead, he was gonna wind up so terribly underused in the meantime that it’s almost weird that he’s still technically part of the main cast at this point: Josh Chan. Josh Chan is...kinda the most believable part of this show, both in the bumbling good-natured balance of the character himself, and in other character’s feelings about him. Being able to buy the idea that someone would give up their whole life as they knew it to chase after this guy is kinda important to selling the concept of the show from the outset, and honestly, Josh Chan is the only time I’ve ever seen a central male love interest for whom the hype seemed to make sense. Is he perfect? Not by a long shot, but that’s fine because ‘perfection’ is as conditional as it is unattainable. The problem with male love interests, often, is that they’re written by heterosexual men who treat the character as some kind of masculine wish-fulfillment, a combination of ‘guy I wish I could be’ and ‘guy I think women should want (me)’. Josh Chan is a great example of a love interest written by women for women: he displays positive masculine-coded traits (protective, physically capable), while rejecting negative, toxic-masculine elements (aggression, possessiveness), and he embraces key ‘feminine’ traits (non-threatening, kind, soft, emotionally expressive, family-oriented), while his flaws are unobtrusive and potentially even endearing (the main one is that he’s quite stupid, which is something a lot of straight women will happily admit to liking (at least in theory), and other traits such as Josh’s childish streak can be a source of joy under some circumstances, as well as being something Josh mostly keeps a hold on so that it doesn’t become a burden to his partners). Also, it would be remiss of me to neglect to mention how refreshing and meaningful it is to have an Asian male love interest. I really enjoy not being bored to death by Josh Chan, and I am annoyed at how little of him we got this season while we wasted time with that generic slice of white bread, Nathaniel. Bring back the Chan plots, season four. Do it for me.

#Crazy Ex-Girlfriend #Crazy Ex-Girlfriend season three #Bechdel Test #female representation #full season review #Crazy Exgirlfriend

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let-it-raines · 6 years

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Second in Command (Ch. 12)

Summary: Life as the "spare to the heir" isn't all that it's cracked up to be when you're the supposed screw-up of the family, but people don't know what really happens behind closed doors.

Rating: Mature

The entire story available on ao3 | HERE |

A/N: I like to think that this chapter has it all. Romance, drama, witty banter, Christmas-themed celebrations...murder. Just kidding, there’s absolutely no murder. I haven’t quite branched out into the crime-solving branch of story-writing yet :D So enjoy a Christmas in October. I hear it’s even better than Christmas in July and that more words than usual are involved.

PS: This is now over 100,000 words, and I don’t know how that happened. Part of me wants to do something special like write a long part from Emma’s POV or ask for prompts from you guys, whether they be for different things you want more detail on in this story or maybe just general prompts for anything. I don’t know when I’d even get around to them, but I think I may still like to try. I don’t know. Let me know if that’s something you guys want :D

Tag list: @resident-of-storybrooke @kmomof4 @wellhellotragic @profdanglaisstuff @ekr032-blog-blog @bmbbcs4evr @onceuponaprincessworld @jennjenn615 @a-faekindagirl @mayquita @captainsjedi @captswanis4vr @teamhook @skyewardolicitycloisdelena91 @branlovesouat

Killian hates flying. It’s not that he’s nervous about being suspended thirty thousand feet in the air with mountain ranges or deserts or entire fucking oceans beneath him. If he thinks about it too much, that does cause him a wee bit of concern, but he mostly hates flying because more often than not if he’s flying somewhere, he’s going to be away from home for long periods at a time. He’s thankful and appreciative of the fact that his life affords him the luxury of not just seeing the photogenic parts of the world, but also the parts that are struggling to survive. It allows him different perspectives, and he’s nothing if not someone who is willing to broaden his horizons. It’s just that those horizons take him away from home, from Emma, and there’s no place like home, especially now.

There’s also the fact that he’s on a plane for over ten hours right now, and while he’s not stuck in economy with cramped legs and a snoring neighbor who doesn’t know what deodorant is, he’s ready for his feet to touch the dirt, solid and firm.

He spends his time reviewing his itinerary for his next few weeks and brushing up on the wildlife preservation efforts. He’s done a few of these trips before, but it’s mostly Liam who has handled them. He’s happy to do it, though, so that Liam can spend time with his family and his newborn daughter. Killian cannot imagine ever having to leave a child of his own for over two weeks, let alone one he’s just now been able to meet like Liam has with Elizabeth. He knows that it’ll happen one day, though. He’ll have to be the dad whose children learn to kiss computer and phone screens while he’s away from them on these kinds of trips. They’ll tone down for him once he has an official family of his own, but they won’t stop until his hair looks more like salt and pepper than inky black.

His text chime goes off from his phone’s place on his table, and while he expects it to be Emma telling him something she forgot to mention before he left, it’s his mother.

Allison: I realize that you’ve just gotten on a plane, but the jewelers have finished Emma’s ring. They need your approval before it’s completely set.

Well, shit.

Would it be too much to turn this plane around?

Killian: Will you go look at it for me? I’ll check on it as soon as I get home.

Five hours later his mother texts him again, just as the plane is making its descent, touching ground in Africa while his mind is in England.

Allison: It’s beautiful, my boy.

His week seems to pass by slowly and all at once. He spends his days waking up early to go on expeditions, astounded by the beauty of the wildlife reserve as miles of open land extend beyond him with the sun rising and coating the grounds with an orange glow every morning before the crackling heat takes over. On the days he doesn’t spend observing nature, he works with the people who try to preserve this land and these animals every day. It’s work that he could never do, but if he can support them in their endeavors and bring light to both the struggles and the successes of their organizations, it would be a win for everyone. Sometimes he feels like he’s simply a poster boy, and while that can be true, his name and his face help people by merely being there and showing his support.

One day, though, he’s lucky enough to visit an underfunded school where the Royal Foundation is providing new supplies for both the staff and the children. He’s thrilled that he can help out, but he’s also been told that these children have a particular fondness for football even with their total of two outdated, deflated balls. So he arranges with his aides to get new balls and jerseys for the children. It’s the least he can do, and the way the children squeal when he brings the mesh bag full of balls around causes him to throw his head back in laughter.

He’s dressed casually enough in his slacks and loose button down, so when they ask him if he’d be willing to play with them, he can’t help but comply.

“How old are you, Prince Killian?”

“Twenty nine.”

“You’re out of breath like you’re much older.”

He’ll have to make sure to tell Emma about that when he finally gets to call her later.

And when he catches his breath.

He and Emma have either been totally missing each other on their nightly calls, or he’s been falling asleep either before a call starts or in the middle of it. Thank the heavens for texting, but reading words on a screen don’t bring quite the same sense of comfort that actually being able to hear her voice does, let alone seeing her face, even if it’s just through their computer screens. Maybe he’s already a bit like the man whose loved ones have to kiss him through a screen.

He runs late that day, keeping to how this week has been going, getting caught up talking to some of the teachers at the school before he has another engagement that night, and by the time the car pulls up to the house he’s staying in he’s practically sprinting inside and running to his room so that he can get to his laptop, quickly opening it and dialing Emma twice before her face finally showed up on the screen.

“Hi,” Emma greets, waving her hand at him like she’s not sure what to do with her hands, and oh is he so glad to see her.

“Hello, beautiful. How was your day?”

“Oh good,” she laughs, tucking that loose strand of hair behind her ear. “My dad apparently threw out his back, though I do think he’s being a bit dramatic, so I spent the day restocking the shelves and doing inventory at the pub before we open since Will has the next two days off. So that would explain,” she picks up her computer and moves it around to show him where she is, “why I’m sitting in my very empty old room with sheets that have clouds on them.”

“So you’re staying with your parents tonight?”

“Tonight, maybe the next few days.”

“Why aren’t you sleeping at home?”

“My bed here is much more comfortable than our couch. Plus, you know, people who talk about more than if a baby is eating enough.”

“Why are you sleeping on the couch?”

She simply stares at him, her lips in a straight line as she quirks her eyebrow. Oh, she’s not sleeping in their bed because he’s not there. That’s…love. Maybe a little bit crazy, too. But what is love without a little crazy? That’s love to not want to sleep in their bed when he’s not there when it has to be infinitely more comfortable to sleep in a bed alone than with him.

Though he will wake up in the middle of the night here, eyes flashing open as he worries that he’s rolled a bit too far to the right and on top of Emma only to realize she’s not there and his body is only meeting more mattress.

“I love you, Emma. More than anything.” “I love you, too. Infinitely or whatever since you stole the ‘more than anything’ line.”

He chuckles at the indignant look on her face. She’s never been one to verbally express her love as explicitly as he does, but even if her words aren’t as eloquent or as often, he still knows that she means them. “Now tell me about your day.”

“So I began the day looking at a herd of elephants and in the middle there was this lad who called me both old and out of shape.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, we were playing a bit of football, and I guess I lost my breath. They all got a kick out of it. Pun intended.”

They talk for a bit longer, but before he manages to wish her a goodnight, she’s fallen asleep sitting straight up against the headboard of her old bed, her head drooping forward to rest against her chest.

“Ten more days, my love.”

He caresses her face through the screen, his fingerprints marking up the laptop, before shutting the device and shutting away Emma.

By the time his two and a half weeks are over, he’s exhausted, the long days and physical treks having him be completely knackered on his plane ride to London as well as in the car back to his actual, physical home in Kensington. He’d meant to have a look at Emma’s ring, give it the final approval, but he simply couldn’t force himself to go anywhere other than home. He cannot wait to see Emma, and he knows from their sporadic talks that she’s had a difficult few days without him. But he’s home now, just feet away from her, and that’s the only thing that really keeps him from falling out as he walks through their front door.

“Emma,” he calls as he steps into the apartment, the one bag he managed to bring from the car trailing behind him until he drops it against the hardwood. “Darling, are you here?”

He’s checked both the living room and kitchen, walking through the dining room and sitting area as he goes, and there’s no sign of Emma anywhere, just boxes of Christmas decorations they need to put up. He knows she should be home. He texted her as soon as he landed, and she said she was.

It’s then that he sees her bounding down the stairs at breakneck speed and before he knows it her arms are wrapped around his neck and her legs wrapped around his waist as she peppers kisses everywhere she can reach. It’s bloody wonderful, and he can’t help but nuzzle his face into her hair and breathe her in.

He’s missed her.

Bloody hell, he’s missed her.

“Hello, love,” he laughs after she’s cupped his face and planted a smacking kiss on his lips, his arms now completely supporting her weight under her thighs. “Did you miss me?”

“Not at all,” she jests as he walks them to the kitchen, setting her down on the countertop so that he can stand between her legs and give her a proper kiss, his tongue edging into her mouth and tasting the peppermint he smelled on her breath a moment ago.

“I missed you like crazy, my love,” he sighs against her lips while he runs his hands up and down her biceps over the softness of her sweater until his hands find the exposed skin at her stomach and he trails his hands under the material until he’s brushing the sides of her breasts through her bra.

She cups his face again, running her thumbs underneath his eyes. “You look tired.”

“I’m not that tired,” he protests, running his thumbs over the flat of her stomach while his other fingers work at her back.

“Killian.”

“I’m bloody exhausted.”

“You should go to bed, at least a short nap.”

“I’d really rather take you to bed.”

He begins kissing at her neck, mapping her skin with his tongue in the way he hasn’t been able to do in over half a month, until she pushes at his shoulders and he rests his forehead against her collarbone.

“Later. After you sleep.”

When Killian wakes up from what turns out to be a much more rejuvenating nap than he was aware he needed, he and Emma finally begin decorating the apartment for Christmas. They’d gotten everything out of storage before he’d left, but the only thing up was the tree, which was still bare of all lights and ornaments. Emma’s got a Christmas playlist playing on speakers throughout the apartment, and she most definitely spiked his hot chocolate with rum, not that he’s complaining.

Growing up, his family would never personally decorate a Christmas tree because their staff would always do it for them to make sure the trees were decorated the same every year, and then the children would add a few ornaments at the end. It wasn’t until Emma that he began decorating on his own, and it wasn’t until his third Christmas with Emma and the Nolans that he got to celebrate in the way that most people do, having been unable to be with her for the first few.

They’re decorating the Christmas tree that’s currently situated where his favorite couch in the Nolan’s apartment usually resides. Actually, no. They’re trying to decorate the Christmas tree, but the lights are tangled and every time he manages to get one string undone, Emma’s handing him another thread of colorful lights that are twisted into knots that shouldn’t even be physically possible. What the hell happened in these boxes over the past year? Did the lights come alive?

“So you’re telling me that you’ve never gone to a Christmas tree farm?”

“When would I get the opportunity to go to a Christmas tree farm? I have to go through secret maneuvers just to get here, inside a private apartment, just to see you, love.”

“I don’t know?” She shrugs, taking the current string he’s working on out of his hands and messing with it because apparently he’s taking too long to untangle it. “Sometime in the dark of the night with prosthetics on your face and a blonde wig?” “Well that’s an image of myself I never wanted.”

“What? You don’t like blondes? There are a lot of us out there.”

“Don’t I know it?”

“Hey,” Emma protests, tossing a plastic candy cane in his direction, “there better only be the one blonde in your life.”

“Aye,” Killian acknowledges before standing from his spot on the floor and pulling Emma toward him so that their bodies are pressed together and her arms are around his neck, her hands playing with the tips of his hair. He just got it cut, and whenever he does that Emma’s hands always manage to find their way into it to test out the new length. “You’re my favorite blonde, darling.”

“And don’t you forget it,” she laughs before capturing his lips with hers, a leisurely sway of lips turning into a passionate dance of tongues, and before he knows it he’s got Emma pressed against the remaining couch while his body covers hers.

Her hands have just reached into the back of his jean’s pockets, squeezing his ass and aligning their hips better together, Killian rolling his to get some friction for his growing hardness, when both of Emma’s parents walk in the room.

“Hey, do you two want to…what are you doing?”

“Good heavens, Mary Margaret. You have eyes. You know what they’re doing.”

All Killian knows is that he wants to melt into this couch right now and take Emma with him. He hasn’t moved off of her yet, and she’s most definitely using his body as a shield from her parents. Oh shit, her hands are still grabbing his ass.

“Right,” Mary Margaret stutters, and he can see the flush against the white of her cheeks, “we’re just going to go back to our room now. We forgot some decorations, didn’t we, David?”

He’s not quite as mortified as Emma is, though he is a tad bit embarrassed that her parents just caught them dry humping on the couch. He’s a twenty-six year old man, and his girlfriend’s parents should never even really have the option of knowing about his sex life. Of course, her parents’ room is right across the hall from Emma’s, and they’ve probably heard a lot worse than what they’ve just seen…not that he would ever dare point that out of Emma. He might be out of both a girlfriend and sex all in one sentence.

“I really need my own place,” Emma mumbles as he pulls away from her so that he can look down at her. He was right. She’s gone red as Christmas.

“I’d probably help if you had taken your hands off my ass at some point.”

“You’re being an ass.”

“I’m simply stating the obvious.” He pops his hips up to point out the fact that she’s still very much feeling him up, and she finally gets the hint, removing her hands so that he can climb off of her to try to go back to decorating and to get his still tight jeans situation under control.

David and Mary Margaret eventually come back out into their living room after texting Emma to make sure that the room was safe of all plundering, and the four of them finish decorating the tree. Most of their ornaments are homemade, things that Emma made for them in primary school. He finds several that are pictures of young Emma in what seems to be a snow globe made of colored construction paper, and he wishes that they had things like that in his home. He’d of course made crafts in primary school, and while the occasional few would go on display around the house, it was never in the way that the Nolans keep all of Emma’s work. Mary Margaret basically kept them in as pristine of condition as she could, and even if Emma is embarrassed by having some of the items on display, he is simply glad to know that Emma’s always been loved.

None of them are working in the pub that night, Emma only sneaking down to get a bottle of whiskey clad in her pajamas, when her parents begin telling him stories of Emma as a teenager. Even if he’s heard them all before, he still takes delight in how embarrassed Emma becomes over them, her cheeks flushed with both the alcohol and the desire to never hear about when she was a cheerleader for two weeks before quitting the team.

“Do you still have that uniform, love?”

“Yeah, you interested in seeing if it’ll fit you?”

That night he watches as the Nolans lounge about in their living room, Emma’s hair messy and un-brushed as she lies with her head in his lap, and not a one of them caring how they look or if they meet the right dress code and eat their food the right way. Not every one of his family’s Christmas traditions are stiff. Some are quite fun if he’s honest with himself, but they would never dare to lounge in front of the television in their mismatched pajamas, drinking whiskey out of coffee cups and Chinese food out of the cartons. Instead they sit in a great hall watching a movie on a projector, drinks served in fine stemware.

David and Mary Margaret fall asleep around eleven, snoring on the couch in a position that he knows will hurt them if they stay that way all night.

“Put your coat and shoes on, Killian.”

“Why?”

“Just trust me.”

He does as Emma says while she stuffs her feet in her boots, throwing on her insulted jacket and a beanie before walking down the hallway and turning into her parents’ room, unlocking the window before climbing up the escape ladder. It’s freezing outside, a slight bit of snow falling, and he has no idea what could possibly drive her to want to go up to the roof. But he’s not going to stay inside and never find out.

“Emma, what the hell are we doing up here? Are you going to freeze me to death?”

“No,” she deadpans bending down and picking up an outlet and an extension cord, “we have a heater and the rest of that bottle of whiskey.” She finishes making sure that the electric heater is working before walking over to him looking more like a human snowman than Emma, and grabbing his hand to lead him to the edge of the roof. “Look,” she points to the road below, “you can see all of the other people who have decorated from up here.”

She’s right because when he looks down onto the cobblestone street he can see that different businesses and homes have lights brightening up the place more than the usual streetlamps, and if he looks carefully he can see Christmas trees inside the upper floors of the buildings where most of the business owners reside, some of the lights flickering off the later in the night that it gets as the light snow continues to fall, painting the rooftops in a faint dusting of white.

“Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Aye.”

“It’s one of my favorite things about moving to London.” He nudges her shoulder. “I mean, besides you. At home we’d go on car rides around the town, looking at the neighborhoods and downtown just to see what decorations people came up with that year.” She sighs before she moves to stand in front of him, his arms over her shoulders as he rests his chin on the top of her hat and she reaches up to rest her hands over his. “Mom would make to-go cups of hot chocolate.”

“With cinnamon?”

“Sometimes with peppermint. And we’d drive and drive until I’d seen every house in the town at least once before Christmas. There was this one…oh my God, Killian. It was amazing. It was like something out of a movie, the way the lights were strung around the trees leading up to the house and these giant wreaths that are bigger than me.”

“That sounds wonderful, darling. Like a real winter wonderland.”

“Yeah,” she exhales, leaning back into him even more, “I miss being able to do that since at least one of us is working most nights, so I like to come up here and watch the neighbors…which sounds creepy now that I say it out loud.”

He laughs before kissing the material of her hat even if she can’t feel his lips.

“Thank you for sharing and for showing me this. One day I’d like to drive around to look at all of the Christmas lights. With you, if that’s okay.”

“If you bring me hot chocolate with either cinnamon or peppermint, I’m yours, babe.”

“I’ll bring both.”

Between Emma and Killian, they get most of the apartment decorated, the usual shades of gray and blue now replaced with reds, greens, and golds. It’s festive in the way that it should be for those who celebrate Christmas, and as much as he hates that Emma waited on him for weeks to decorate, he’s glad that they’ve gotten it done now and done it together.

Six years together, and it’s their first actual Christmas together. No celebrating a few weeks early or days into January. This is Christmas, completely together.

He’s still bloody exhausted, however, and so he goes to bed earlier than expected that night and doesn’t feel the bed dip until a few hours later when Emma joins him, backing up so that her back is nestled against his front. She reaches back to pull his arm around her stomach, but he’s already there, wrapping himself around her and pulling her closer as he kisses the back of her neck.

“That wasn’t even the longest we’ve been apart, and it felt like forever. Like it was never going to end.”

“I know, darling. I know, but it’s over now.”

He crawls out of bed early the next morning, just before the sun rises, and texts his mum to see if she wants to go with him while he gives the final clearance on Emma’s ring design before it’s fully set in the band. Emma’s still as asleep as she can be, stretching out on the mattress when he moves off of it, and he needs to pick up the ring while he has the opportunity to do so before all of the holiday festivities begin.

It’s beautiful, stunning really, and while he’s never been one to wear much jewelry himself, he’s been raised in a world where his family is in possession of some of the most stunning jewels in the world. This is one of them, and he’s almost giddy with excitement over the thought of it adorning Emma’s finger one day soon.

He doesn’t know where he’ll hide it in the apartment, wary of Emma stumbling across it in her search for one of the items she always seems to be losing, so when his mother offers to keep it with her at home, he doesn’t hesitate to agree to that, handing her the velvet box with his most prized possession inside and giving his mother a kiss on the cheek as they part ways and make their way to their respective homes to prepare for the Christmas gala tonight.

Emma’s still asleep when he gets home, and he lets out a sigh of relief knowing that he won’t have to explain his absence from her. Instead he strips from his clothes and into the shower, trying to get as ready for this evening as he can so Emma and the stylists she’s bringing in can have the bathroom for the rest of the day without his interruptions. She’d protested having someone doing her hair and makeup, but it’s going to become as much of a part of her life as any other weird aspect that comes to being with him. She’s going to have a love/hate relationship with having a stylist. He already knows.

“Good morning,” she yawns when he walks out of the bathroom to see her piling her hair on top of her head, an errant strand sticking to her forehead and the sheets pooling around her waist. “You’re up early.”

“Darling, it’s nearing ten in the morning, and we’ve got a big day today. People, your mum and Ruby included, are coming over in a few hours.”

“I don’t want to get up.”

“You have to,” he leans down to kiss her good morning, lingering against her skin before walking downstairs and getting on with his day while Emma most likely goes back to sleep.

He spends most of his day downstairs, just passing the time by watching the television or last minute Christmas shopping online while Emma and the girls get ready, everyone arriving a little after two. His family doesn’t give each other much, but they do give a little so he needs to finish up on a few items as well as checking that the rest of Emma gifts will arrive on time for their own private celebration in between his family’s celebrations.

Mary Margaret and Ruby come down the stairs, fully decked out in their dresses, hair and makeup done as they settle beside him in the living room, so he knows that Emma must have offered to go last.

“You look beautiful, ladies,” he compliments, taking both of their hands and kissing their knuckles before he makes his own way upstairs to get dressed for the evening. He can’t very well sit around as a slacker all day, now can he?

Emma’s makeup and hair stylists are packing up their bags and their tools when he enters the bathroom, nodding at them before opening the closet door only to have Emma standing there with her hair trailing down her back in loose curls and nothing but lacy black underwear on. His breath catches at the sight before he closes the closet door behind him so that no one out there is privy to this sight besides him.

“You’re not supposed to be in here yet,” Emma protests as he comes to stand before her, one hand running down her side and landing at her hip while the other lightly caresses her face, careful not to mess with her makeup or her hair.

“You look so stunning, my darling Emma,” he breathes, voice deeper, huskier than he intended as he looks into the emerald of her eyes before his gaze flickers down to her bare breasts, her nipples slowly hardening into peaks.

“You only say that because I’m basically naked,” she laughs as her own hands run up his back to rest at his shoulder blades, her breasts pressing into his chest. “But thank you. I cannot wait to see you in your tux.”

“Can I convince you to take me out of my clothes before I put the different ones on?”

She laughs as he backs her up to the island counter in the middle of the closet, hoisting her up by the waist and placing her on the cool marble while he’s busy nuzzling his neck against hers, kissing the skin at her pulse point while his hands trail up at the insides of her thighs, feeling the soft skin over her twitching muscles.

“Baby,” she groans, tilting her head to the side so that her hair falls to her back and he has more access to her neck. It’s almost swan-like in its length when she does this, and he runs his tongue along the straining cords there, the scent of her perfume enthralling him. “Baby, we can’t. I’ve already got my hair and makeup done.”

“I won’t touch your face or your hair.”

“Well it’s no fun that way.”

A chuckle passes through his lips and his hands move from her thighs, painstakingly slowly up her sides while he listens to her breathing deepen, hitching when his thumbs run over both of her nipples in a gentle caress.

“Oh,” she gasps when he pinches her, and the sound goes straight through him just like the blush now gracing her chest. She’s watching his every movement, every inch that his hand moves or every path that his tongue traces until his lips are ghosting against hers. She chases after his lips after he lingers there for too long, but he jerks up to kiss her nose in that moment. “You’re so annoying,” she laughs before she reaches up and runs her hands through his hair, the feeling of her nails scratching at his scalp causing him to gasp as well.

“You still love me though.”

“Always.”

He dips his head to kiss her for real before running his lips down the concave between her breasts before reaching her stomach, dipping his tongue into her belly button so that she has to brace herself on her hands behind her, a folded sweater falling to the floor. When his lips reach the lace, he looks up to see her nod before pulling her forward on the countertop so that her ass is on the edge while he hooks his fingers into the lace to pull them off her legs.

He takes his time, even if they really don’t have any, kissing up the inside of both of her thighs before kissing her mound, building her up as quickly as he can, her whimpers just urging him on while he teases at her, licking long, flat stripes through her folds and circling her bundle of nerves until her whimpers cease and her back arches, her release hitting her while he eases her through it.

“That’s not what I was expecting today,” she sighs as she pulls him up to kiss him, her lips rough as she molds their faces together, her makeup obviously be damned, “but I’m glad even if I am going to be slightly sweaty.”

“I think they call that glowing.”

She laughs against him, pushing at his shoulders until he gets the hint and backs up, helping her off the counter with her legs still slightly shaky.

“This was both a brilliant and horrible idea because,” she shuffles through a draw before slipping into a different set of lingerie while going to unzip the garment bag with her dress, the black material catching the light, “while it was amazing for me, we are officially out of time. And I know for a fact that your tux pants are tight, so you’ve got to get rid of your problem, babe.”

His chuckle is mixed with a groan as he turns around from her to take his tux in the bedroom and get dressed while he calms himself down. She was right. It was both a brilliant idea and a horrible idea, but he doesn’t regret it in the slightest as he gets dressed. He’s got everything on but his bow tie as it hangs loosely around his neck, white shirt unbuttoned at the top, when Emma comes out of the bathroom in a sinful black dress that hugs her top before billowing out at the waist, yards of tulle covering the slit that goes to her mid-thigh. She’s added that red lipstick she loves as well as some of the jewelry he’s given her over the years.

“You look beautiful, Emma,” he compliments as she sits down on the bed to slip on her heels, buckling the straps as she smiles over at him.

“Thank you.” She rises to come stand before him, her palms running up his chest until they land at his undone bow tie. She ties it for him, continuously having to restart because she’s never quite satisfied with how it looks until she finally gets it right, harrumphing in light of her success. “You look handsome. Very dapper and dashing and one hundred percent like you should dress like this more often.”

“Yes, black tie around the house all of the time,” he chuckles before taking her hand and guiding her downstairs, the slight train of her dress trailing on the hardwood enough that he scoops down to hold it for her.

He and Emma, along with Ruby and Mary Margaret load into a car and make their way to Buckingham with David meeting them there. He has to enter separately from Emma, so he leaves her be to go and join his parents and his brother, Abigail not attending as a part of her maternity leave, so that the four of them can wait in a sitting room until all of the guests have arrived and they can make their entrance. He’s always found this to be a weird tradition, entering a room at official events through order of succession so that his father enters last, but some traditions do not fall to the side, and this is one of them.

Once they enter the ballroom, he makes his rounds through all of the people he’s obligated to speak to, government officials, foreign diplomats, the occasional celebrity who he is much more excited to see than the third cousin of the Prime Minister. Killian catches up with a few of his old university friends whose families were invited before he sees a flash of blonde hair in his peripheral only to have her come up to him and wrap her arms around his elbow as Robin regales the group with a story of Killian singing karaoke at a pub one drunken night.

“Please tell me there’s a video of that,” Emma laughs, looking up at him, the black of her eyelashes highlighting the green of her eyes. She’s so beautiful that sometimes he cannot believe it, cannot believe that he gets to spend his days with her by his side.

“Sadly it was before the time of everyone having an iPhone in their palms. I’m Robin,” he sticks his hand out to take Emma’s, “you must be the literal famous Emma Nolan.”

“And you must be the famous through Killian’s stories, Robin Locksley.”

Robin laughs at the two of them as Emma fishes for stories of Killian in his younger days before Killian eventually leads Emma to the dance floor as the music slows and the sounds of soft piano fills the room.

“Are we going to just sway or am I going to embarrass myself by having to do a waltz or foxtrot or something where I don’t know what I’m doing?”

“We’re simply going to sway, darling,” he answers as he pulls her into him and rests his hands around her waist. “But if we were to do one of those other dances, there’s only one rule.”

“What?”

“You pick a partner who knows what he’s doing.”

“And that’s you?”

“That’s me.”

She laughs before resting her cheek on his shoulder, her hands resting at his lower back, and this is a wonderful night. Magical almost under the glistening lights of the towering Christmas trees and chandeliers tinted in silver lights that coat the room.

When the song finishes, he leads her off the dance floor, finding an empty section off to the side so that he can speak without having to raise his voice.

“Do you want a drink?”

“Oh my goodness yes. I’ll meet you at the bar after I run to the restroom, okay?”

She gives him a sweet kiss before they part ways.

“Two glasses of whatever wine you’re serving,” he tells the bartender before resting his back against the counter, watching as people mill around the room, some dancing, others eating, all talking.

“Having a good time tonight?”

He turns to see his father’s younger brother Albert standing at the bar to his right, nursing what looks to be a glass of whiskey. He didn’t even know they were serving whiskey tonight.

“Aye, it’s a wonderful time. Everything is beautiful this year. Mum did a great job.”

Albert laughs before putting his glass on the bar top and turning so that he’s completely facing Killian. His uncle has never resembled his father too much, hair too light and eyes too dark, and even if Albert also grew up as the so-called other spare to the heir, Killian has never found comfort in speaking to him.

“You know, Killian,” Albert drawls, “when you brought these people around for your birthday, I thought it was just a phase. And then you released that statement, and I was sure that you’d lost your mind.”

“Uncle, you’ve had too much to drink tonight.”

“Just the one glass. I’m perfectly sober. Your father, my brother, must be always inebriated though. He’s gone soft, letting you bring your flings to these events. And how rude of you to take the street trash to the hospital for Elizabeth’s birth. Weren’t you taught anything by those tutors and excellent schools you received while my children got your table scraps?”

“What is your fucking problem?”

“What is yours? We are a monarchy. We do not associate with the common whores like you have been.”

Killian’s jaw ticks as he tries to regulate his breathing, regulate his anger. All he wants to do is break Albert’s bloody nose, but he cannot do that. They are in a room full of people, photographers and journalists included, and it would be unwise to assault his uncle no matter how satisfying it would be or how much he deserves it.

He really fucking deserves it.

“Oh yes,” Emma spits, and shit, when did she get here? “I am a common whore, using my vagina and womanly wiles to seduce the prince so that I can have his money and his power. Because isn’t that what I’ve always been, a lying American criminal?”

“Emma,” Killian warns, grabbing onto her hand before she snatches it away from him.

Albert doesn’t say anything else, his heavy breathing increasing as his dark eyes stare into Emma like she’s an antelope and he’s the lion.

“Lass, you don’t belong here. I’d suggest you remember where you come from.”

“The only people who don’t belong here are the assholes who think they’re better than someone just because their parents happen to be royalty.”

“That by its very definition makes me better, makes Killian better, than you.”

“Fuck you.”

“You’d like to do that, wouldn’t you, Ms. Nolan?”

Killian’s not sure if he or Emma are going to punch Albert first, but when he sees Emma’s hand flinch at her side, he reaches to squeeze her side as a silent encouragement not to do anything, relieved that she doesn’t snatch it away from him again. Neither of them get the chance because suddenly Liam is in between the two of them and Albert with his main security detail behind him.

“Albert,” Liam sterns, his eyes cloudy with irritation. “Get the hell out of here. You’re not welcome if you say things like that, you sod.”

“I was here before the two of you were ever born, and all you’ve done is shame this family, especially your spare. I would have never been this disgraceful.”

“You’re being infinitely more disgraceful than Killian has ever been, you prick.”

Albert is discreetly guided away, and Killian thanks Liam, wanting to discuss what the hell just happened, but he can practically feel Emma fuming beside him, her hands clenching and unclenching as she tries to calm herself down while he does the same.

“Killian,” she grits, not bothering to look at him, “I would suggest that you take me to your room here right now before I do something else that I’m not supposed to do.”

He guides her out of the ballroom, through hallways and corridors until they reach the private part of the palace. When they get to the grand staircase that leads upstairs to his room, Emma stops to take off her heels, using him as a base to steady herself as she shrinks four inches right in front of him before picking up the bottom of her dress and walking up the stairs like she has any idea where she’s going while he watches her, frozen in his spot as his mind runs wild.

“Love,” he calls out while trying to track her down, taking two steps at a time and then jogging as she completely passes the door to his room. “Emma, hey. Emma.”

“What?” she whips around, her hands running through her perfectly coiffed hair before she slaps her hands against her thighs and starts pacing again. “What could you possibly have to say to me right now?”

“I’m sorry. I want to say I’m sorry.”

“What the hell are you sorry for?”

“Um, maybe my asshole of an uncle and the former assholes that were my father and brother. And then maybe just all of the collective assholes all over the world that are full of shit and apparently feel the need to pass that shit onto you.”

She stops her pacing when she gets directly in front of him, her head directly under his chin as she looks up at him with much more kindness than she should be capable of expressing.

“First of all, don’t say sorry again. I don’t want to hear it.”

“But Emma – ”

“No,” she raises her hand, “stop. I am fucking livid right now, but in no way am I livid at you or with you or the fact that I’m only in this situation because I’m with you. I’m pissed that someone thinks they have any right to not only insult me like that, but to also have the gall to insult you. I mean, damn. Does the list of assholes never end?”

“I think we produce them in bulk.”

A bitter chuckle passes through her lips before she wraps her arms around his waist and deflates, the anger rushing out of her and simmering down to irritation that could still pack a punch if she wanted it to. He does the same, embracing her before he nuzzles his head against the top of her hair and simply holds her in the middle of an ornate hallway in a ball gown and a tuxedo looking every bit like the magical fairytale couple they claim not to be.

Magic comes with a price in the same way that privilege does and running away from balls to stand shoeless in a hallway may very well be one payment in a line of many.

“I just can’t believe our night has turned out like this. This was supposed to be a good night. We get dressed up, dance for more than one song, I get to take that suit off of you to celebrate you coming home, and now we’re hiding away so that we don’t cause a scene after being basically stepped on and then spit upon.”

“I know,” he exhales into her hair, tugging her closer to his chest and pressing his fingers into the small of her back. Trying to bring back some of the light to the evening because he won’t let this night be ruined, he changes the subject. “Do you want to see my childhood room?”

“You have no idea.”

He guides her back down the hallway until they come to his door, and the smile on her face is more genuine than any that he’s seen since the incident at the bar. He’s going to have to deal with that later, with Albert and any underlying hostility with Emma that still runs in the family. He doesn’t expect everyone to accept her with open arms. He doesn’t even expect them to accept him with open arms. But as long as the ones who matter, his immediate family who he wants to accept Emma and to love her, he couldn’t give a fuck what the others think…as long as they don’t think it out loud in front of Emma again.

Not in front of him again either. He’s having to contain his fury right now in an attempt to salvage this night.

“These books all seem very prim and proper and not at all you,” Emma quips as she runs her fingers along the spines, stopping every now and then to look at a picture frame or trinket that adorns the shelves along with the books.

“I’ve got a different collection underneath the bed, but check the Anna Karenina.”

She does, only to find the cutout with the flask inside. When she pops it open, her lips tug downward, and she was obviously hoping for there to still be something in there. They never did get their drinks earlier.

“This is much more you,” she laughs, holding it up before putting it back in the book with the utmost care. She pauses, obviously running over something in her mind. “Do we need to go back to the gala? People will notice that you’re gone.”

“I don’t care.”

“What if I said that I wanted another dance?”

“Well,” he begins before making his way over to the closet, shuffling through a cabinet before finding an actual, literal cd player, “we could always dance to this.”

“No,” she giggles, and at least she’s still capable of having a good time, “there’s no way that’ll work.”

“Only one way to find out.”

He plugs in the player in an outlet on the wall before sounds of, and he’s only slightly mortified by this, the Spice Girls comes through the shoddy speakers.

“May I have this dance, milady?”

She laughs before nodding her head and placing her hands in his. He moves her from side to side, spinning her around in silly circles that he’d never be able to do downstairs. She laughs the entire time, her chest visibly moving, and he does the same. This night could have turned into an undeniable shit show, and while he’s sure that shit show hasn’t reached its conclusion, he hopes it has for now.

He just doesn’t want Emma to be upset, even if she has every right to walk around this place kicking and screaming.

When they make it back downstairs some of the crowd has filtered out, and the only people who really seemed to notice their absence were their families.

“Did you guys really leave a party this fancy to go do it in a coat closet or something?”

“Rubes,” Emma laughs, glancing over to see that her parents aren’t paying any attention to this conversation. “What have we said about those kind of comments?”

“Sex is a very healthy part of life, my darling Emma Nolan. And you two are so hot that anybody who believes you’re not sharing a bed has lost their mind.”

“Well, of course, I am a common whore after all.”

“Hey,” Killian grabs her arms and holds her so that he’s sure she’s looking at him, “you know nothing about that is true.”

“Emma,” Ruby questions, “what the hell are you talking about?”

“Nothing, Rubes.”

“Ems, it’s obviously something. You don’t make bitterly sarcastic jokes like that if you’re fine. You’re upset about something.”

She shakes her head before turning to Ruby and squeezing her bicep. “We’ll talk about it later, okay?”

He doesn’t miss the look Ruby gives Emma, and he definitely doesn’t miss the look Ruby gives him.

“Darling, why don’t you go dance with your dad? I think I’m going to take Ruby for a spin?”

“Well, aren’t I the luckiest girl at the ball getting to dance with a prince?” Ruby jokes as he leads her onto the dance floor, looking over his shoulder to make sure that Emma has found David. Sure enough she has her head resting on David’s shoulder while they sway to the music.

“Ruby?”

“Yeah?”

“Does Emma talk to you about everything that’s gone on? I know you see it all because you don’t shield yourself away from the media, but does she talk about how she’s feeling about things?”

“Most of the time, yes.”

“She’s doing okay, right?”

“I mean, she’s had some all out rages over some things, but Emma’s a badass, even when she’s vulnerable. Maybe especially when she’s vulnerable.”

“Too true, lass,” he laments before spinning her around and pulling her back to him. “I simply want her to be okay, to be happy.”

“She is. You just have some assholes in your family. Plus all of those other assholes that open their mouths when they should be keeping them closed.”

Asshole is a popular word tonight, and it shouldn’t be.

“I just worry about her.”

“She does the same to you.” Ruby urges him to spin her again, the bottom of her dress slightly moving with the motion. “I think the two of you going away is going to do wonders.”

He pulls Ruby in closer so that his lips are close to her ear for one moment. “I’m going to ask her to marry me on the trip.”

“Well, fuck, man,” Ruby whispers despite her usually loud nature, “finally.”

He laughs, and he can hear the music winding down around them. “It’s not been that long, just six months really since all of this started.”

“It’s been six years.”

He doesn’t say anything else, hugging Ruby when the dance is over before finding Emma and taking her home.

The next few days pass quickly, and before he knows it Christmas Eve has arrived, and he’s loading into a train carriage for Sandringham with Emma, David, and Mary Margaret. They’re technically breaking many a protocol by the three of them attending the Christmas celebrations, even if it’s only the private ones, but he still cannot believe that his parents willingly made the offer for the Nolans to join them for Christmas.

It’s not too long of a train ride, and when they arrive at the estate, Liam and his family in the next cart over from them, he can feel the awe running through Emma and her parents. His family is a lot to take in for many a reason, but stepping foot on the grounds of the estate for the first time is something that would put awe in anyone who didn’t grow up in palaces and sprawling country estates. He simply reaches down to hold Emma’s hand, squeezing her palm through their gloves, as they all walk into the front doors, thankful for there to be no cameras awaiting their arrival this year.

Killian hands off the suitcase of gifts for the extended family to one of their butlers, noting to catch up with all of the staff later this afternoon, before he guides David and Mary Margaret to their suite, dropping them off and promising to pick them up for lunch before taking Emma to their own suite.

Everything is more relaxed here, furniture far lass ornate and much more akin to that of a normal home. Well, as close to normal as they can get. The uniqueness of the estate comes from the way everything is draped in reds and golds for the holidays, the smell of freshly baked pie and apple cider somehow always permeating throughout the grounds.

The lunch and afternoon tea are much more casual affairs than the dinner tonight, and he leaves Emma to rest in their room, letting her know that she can feel free to wander around the grounds or go visit Abigail and the kids, before calling his father to see where he is at that moment. He finds him in one of the sitting rooms, book in his hands and cup of tea sitting on the side table, exactly how he would portray his father if he had to paint a portrait of the man.

“Happy Christmas Eve, Killian,” Brennan greets before marking his spot in his book and placing it on the side table next to the cup of tea.

“Happy Christmas Eve.” Killian sits in the armchair across from his father, leaning forward and running his hands over his face before he begins what he came here for. “Is Albert coming today?”

“Unfortunately, yes. I’d tried to convince him to go somewhere else, even offered up one of the other estates, but he and his family insisted that they belonged here today.”

“Did you talk to him about what happened at the gala?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“He didn’t seem the slightest bit remorseful, and I know it’s because he and I are cut from the same cloth. He simply never had someone tell him that he was being a certifiable prick all of the time. He didn’t have you to show him the error of his ways.”

Killian smiles before leaning forward and placing his head in his hands, elbows perched on his knees. “I just don’t know what to do, Dad. It’s like we fight one demon and then another one pops up out of nowhere. I mean, first it was you and Liam, and then Neal. All of the press. And then we finally get over all of that, and more comes from this family. I mean, were we all born with sodding asshole DNA? Is there not one of us who hasn’t had a stick shoved up our ass in the last few decades?”

“Probably not. Maybe just you. You’re the exception.”

“What are we going to do, though? I’m going to be married to Emma.” He pauses, smile crossing his face for a small moment. “Hopefully. We’re going to get married, and she’ll never know when a family member will attack her character. Albert fucking called her a whore.”

Brennan grimaces before running his fingers at his temples, seemingly trying to rub out a headache. “I know, son. I know. I’m going to figure it out somehow. Maybe have a talk with everyone. Maybe threaten to cut them off. It’s petty, but I can do that and it would hit them hard. I’d do that for the sake of you and Emma.”

“Thank you. Truly.”

“She’s special to you, and she’s special to your mother and I as well. And one day, hopefully as you said, she’ll be a senior member of this family whether Albert likes it or not.”

His family is cordial at their lunch, Albert purposely seated far away from Emma and her parents, and he only sees Emma tense once when she makes unintentional eye contact with the man. It’s a nice time, one of his favorite parts of their Christmas celebrations, but after tea and opening their friendly, gag gifts, they all play a game of friendly (or not so friendly depending on the level of competitiveness each person possess) football. He and Liam always lead separate teams, picking their members from the family and staff each year in turn. Liam, the bastard, gets to pick first this year, and to everyone’s surprise, he picks Emma first.

It might not be to Emma’s surprise because when she walks to stand next to Liam, she winks at Killian before wrapping her arm around Liam’s shoulder like to two of them are just the best of pals, thick as thieves.

He feels like the wool was pulled over his eyes.

He doesn’t mind at all.

Emma is surprisingly good, her fondness for running helping her even if she’s always claimed not to be too athletically skilled, and she and Liam are kicking his team’s butt. There aren’t enough young people on his team, and try as David might, he’s nothing compared to his daughter’s skills right now.

At one point Emma scores a goal on Killian, and Liam lifts her in the air and spins her around while Killian is left standing in his spot with his arms on his hips.

When the game is over, Killian’s body slick with sweat and his confidence and team totally defeated, Emma makes her way over to him and wraps her arms around his neck, giddy grin on her face as she smiles up at him and he looks down at her with fondness, hands finding purchase on her hips.

“So I just kicked you ass, babe,” she laughs before kissing the underside of his jaw, her lips as soft as ever against the hair there.

“Next year you’re going to be on my side. I pick before Liam, and you, Emma Nolan, are going to be my first pick.”

“Yeah?”

“Always.”

They’ve got a bit of free time between the game and their formal dinner, so after showering and slipping into comfortable clothes before later donning suits and dresses, he and Emma take the time to exchange their own gifts with each other. He’s not the best at gift giving, knowing that he’s more comfortable showing his love and affection through words and actions rather than items, but he does rather like giving things to Emma simply to see the smile that graces her face when she loves something.

They dress for dinner, Emma in another beautiful gown, and he’s not sure he’ll ever get used to her being this acclimated to his life and all of the traditions and customs the his family partakes in. It’s so different than her family and the traditions he’s partaken in with the Nolans for the last few Christmas seasons, but traditions can merge, even if some of them are royal ones.

Everything goes perfectly fine at dinner, the courses served and the conversation flowing like the wine, and there’s something to be said for small miracles like Emma and her parents being able to enjoy a Christmas celebration without something chasing at their heels and nipping at their necks.

No one can retire to bed until his father does, and Brennan seems to have inhaled vats of caffeine today, laughing and drinking and keeping everyone entertained by stories of his younger days mixed in with tales of both Liam and Killian as children. It’s far past midnight, his suit becoming incredibly uncomfortable and his eyes becoming heavy. He can tell everyone else is beginning to feel the same way, and when Emma drapes herself over his lap and buries her head in his shoulder, he knows that she’s struggling to stay awake.

“Are you okay, sweetheart?” He strokes her back, running his fingers across the bare skin exposed by her dress, the bones of her spine protruding from the way she’s hunched forward.

“I really want your dad to go to bed so that we can go to bed. This dress makes me feel like I can’t move.”

“You might not be able to move, love, but you cut quite the figure in that dress.”

“I think it’s more that my bra is cutting me,” she chuckles against his neck, “but thank you.”

His father does eventually retire to bed, and Killian doesn’t even want to think about how few hours he’s going to get to sleep before the Church Service in the morning, instead helping Emma out of her dress and taking the bobby pins out of her hair while she wipes away at her makeup. It’s a long process, and by the time they collapse onto the bed it’s much closer to sunrise than midnight.

In the morning he quietly slips out of bed to get ready for the service, kissing Emma’s temple before he joins his family members on their walk to the church. He walks in behind Liam and Abigail, making sure to wave to the crowd that’s gathered and take some time to speak to a few of them. It’s bloody freezing outside, and these people have decided to spend their Christmas morning simply hoping to catch a glimpse of his family. He doesn’t understand it, but if he can bring Christmas cheer to someone by talking to them for a short moment, it’s legitimately the least he can do.

When they return to Sandringham Emma and her parents are waiting in one of the sitting rooms, David and Mary Margaret laughing at Emma trying to adjust her fascinator on the top of her head since one is required for the ladies at lunch today. She’s been such a good sport about so many things, but he has a feeling it may all come undone by the red hat gracing her hair.

“Hey,” he greets before placing his hands on her hips and pressing his lips against hers, “Happy Christmas, darling. Did you sleep well?”

“I slept great, Killian. Thanks for asking,” David jests, laughing at his own joke.

“Well you do need your beauty sleep, Dave.”

“I slept fine,” Emma eventually answers before reaching up to adjust her hat again, her face forming a scowl that no one should have on Christmas. “Merry Christmas, babe.”

“Emma,” Abigail laughs before handing Elizabeth off to Liam, the one-month old dressed to match her brother in shades of green, “come here. Let me fix this for you, honey.”

“I just don’t understand how I’m supposed to get it situated on the side of my head.”

“Well that’s what hairdressers are for, but luckily for you I have years of experience doing this.” Abigail works with Emma’s hair for a little while longer before finally being satisfied with her work, harrumphing in satisfaction. “There. Now let’s eat.”

That evening they retire to one of the great halls, projector set up on a wall that’s been removed of decorative weaponry that could still be used in a battle, and dining tables replaced with recliners and couches, piles of blankets and pillows kept in baskets at the hall entrances that people can grab before cuddling up into one of the seats. The extended family is invited for this part of the evening, so it’s a much more crowded affair than the last night, children tailing along with their parents and taking up the seats directly in front of the projector.

“This is insane,” Emma whispers to him as they settle into one of the oversized recliners, both of them having changed into joggers and sweaters, Christmas-themed socks gracing Emma’s feet as she wiggles her toes to pull their blanket further down their legs.

“Aye, it reminds me of celebrations with you family.”

“Yeah, but with a much larger screen and a bigger selection of gourmet popcorn.”

“There’s also hot chocolate.”

“Where?” she gasps, hitting his shoulder as she moves from her position like she has to have the hot chocolate right now.

“They’re going to bring it out to us once the movie starts.”

She sighs before settling back down beside him, moving his arm so that it rests over her shoulder while her head rests on his. “What are we watching?”

“It’s a wonderful life.”

And despite everything, it is.

#second in command #captain swan #cs fanfic #cs ff #cs fic

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makistar2018 · 6 years

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30 THINGS I LEARNED BEFORE TURNING 30

BY TAYLOR SWIFT MAR 6, 2019

Lesson ONE

I learned to block some of the noise. Social media can be great, but it can also inundate your brain with images of what you aren’t, how you’re failing, or who is in a cooler locale than you at any given moment. One thing I do to lessen this weird insecurity laser beam is to turn off comments. Yes, I keep comments off on my posts. That way, I’m showing my friends and fans updates on my life, but I’m training my brain to not need the validation of someone telling me that I look 🔥🔥🔥. I’m also blocking out anyone who might feel the need to tell me to “go die in a hole ho” while I’m having my coffee at nine in the morning. I think it’s healthy for your self-esteem to need less internet praise to appease it, especially when three comments down you could unwittingly see someone telling you that you look like a weasel that got hit by a truck and stitched back together by a drunk taxidermist. An actual comment I received once.

Lesson TWO

Being sweet to everyone all the time can get you into a lot of trouble. While it may be born from having been raised to be a polite young lady, this can contribute to some of your life’s worst regrets if someone takes advantage of this trait in you. Grow a backbone, trust your gut, and know when to strike back. Be like a snake—only bite if someone steps on you.

PHOTOGRAPHED BY BEN HASSETT; STYLED BY PAUL CAVACO

Lesson THREE

Trying and failing and trying again and failing again is normal. It may not feel normal to me because all of my trials and failures are blown out of proportion and turned into a spectator sport by tabloid takedown culture (you had to give me one moment of bitterness, come on). BUT THAT SAID, it’s good to mess up and learn from it and take risks. It’s especially good to do this in your twenties because we are searching. That’s GOOD. We’ll always be searching but never as intensely as when our brains are still developing at such a rapid pace. No, this is not an excuse to text your ex right now. That’s not what I said. Or do it, whatever, maybe you’ll learn from it. Then you’ll probably forget what you learned and do it again.... But it’s fine; do you, you’re searching.

Lesson FOUR

I learned to stop hating every ounce of fat on my body. I worked hard to retrain my brain that a little extra weight means curves, shinier hair, and more energy. I think a lot of us push the boundaries of dieting, but taking it too far can be really dangerous. There is no quick fix. I work on accepting my body every day.

Lesson FIVE

Banish the drama. You only have so much room in your life and so much energy to give to those in it. Be discerning. If someone in your life is hurting you, draining you, or causing you pain in a way that feels unresolvable, blocking their number isn’t cruel. It’s just a simple setting on your phone that will eliminate drama if you so choose to use it.

Lesson SIX

I’ve learned that society is constantly sending very loud messages to women that exhibiting the physical signs of aging is the worst thing that can happen to us. These messages tell women that we aren’t allowed to age. It’s an impossible standard to meet, and I’ve been loving how outspoken Jameela Jamil has been on this subject. Reading her words feels like hearing a voice of reason amongst all these loud messages out there telling women we’re supposed to defy gravity, time, and everything natural in order to achieve this bizarre goal of everlasting youth that isn’t even remotely required of men.

EVERY DAY I TRY TO REMIND MYSELF OF THE GOOD IN THE WORLD, THE LOVE I’VE WITNESSED AND THE FAITH I HAVE IN HUMANITY. WE HAVE TO LIVE BRAVELY IN ORDER TO TRULY FEEL ALIVE, AND THAT MEANS NOT BEING RULED BY OUR GREATEST FEARS.

Lesson SEVEN

My biggest fear. After the Manchester Arena bombing and the Vegas concert shooting, I was completely terrified to go on tour this time because I didn’t know how we were going to keep 3 million fans safe over seven months. There was a tremendous amount of planning, expense, and effort put into keeping my fans safe. My fear of violence has continued into my personal life. I carry QuikClot army grade bandage dressing, which is for gunshot or stab wounds. Websites and tabloids have taken it upon themselves to post every home address I’ve ever had online. You get enough stalkers trying to break into your house and you kind of start prepping for bad things. Every day I try to remind myself of the good in the world, the love I’ve witnessed and the faith I have in humanity. We have to live bravely in order to truly feel alive, and that means not being ruled by our greatest fears.

Lesson EIGHT

I learned not to let outside opinions establish the value I place on my own life choices. For too long, the projected opinions of strangers affected how I viewed my relationships. Whether it was the general internet consensus of who would be right for me, or what they thought was “couples goals” based on a picture I posted on Instagram. That stuff isn’t real. For an approval seeker like me, it was an important lesson for me to learn to have my OWN value system of what I actually want.

Lesson NINE

I learned how to make some easy cocktails like Pimm’s cups, Aperol spritzes, Old-Fashioneds, and Mojitos because…2016.

Lesson TEN

I’ve always cooked a LOT, but I found three recipes I know I’ll be making at dinner parties for life: Ina Garten’s Real Meatballs and Spaghetti (I just use packaged bread crumbs and only ground beef for meat), Nigella Lawson’s Mughlai Chicken, and Jamie Oliver’s Chicken Fajitas with Molé Sauce. Getting a garlic crusher is a whole game changer. I also learned how to immediately calculate Celsius to Fahrenheit in my head. (Which is what I’m pretty sure the internet would call a “weird flex.”)

I BELIEVE VICTIMS BECAUSE I KNOW FIRSTHAND ABOUT THE SHAME AND STIGMA THAT COMES WITH RAISING YOUR HAND AND SAYING “THIS HAPPENED TO ME.”

Lesson ELEVEN

Recently I discovered Command tape, and I definitely would have fewer holes in my walls if I’d hung things that way all along. This is not an ad. I just really love Command tape.

Lesson TWELVE

Apologizing when you have hurt someone who really matters to you takes nothing away from you. Even if it was unintentional, it’s so easy to just apologize and move on. Try not to say “I’m sorry, but...” and make excuses for yourself. Learn how to make a sincere apology, and you can avoid breaking down the trust in your friendships and relationships.

Lesson THIRTEEN

It’s my opinion that in cases of sexual assault, I believe the victim. Coming forward is an agonizing thing to go through. I know because my sexual assault trial was a demoralizing, awful experience. I believe victims because I know firsthand about the shame and stigma that comes with raising your hand and saying “This happened to me.” It’s something no one would choose for themselves. We speak up because we have to, and out of fear that it could happen to someone else if we don’t.

PHOTOGRAPHED BY BEN HASSETT; STYLED BY PAUL CAVACO

Lesson FOURTEEN

When tragedy strikes someone you know in a way you’ve never dealt with before, it’s okay to say that you don’t know what to say. Sometimes just saying you’re so sorry is all someone wants to hear. It’s okay to not have any helpful advice to give them; you don’t have all the answers. However, it’s not okay to disappear from their life in their darkest hour. Your support is all someone needs when they’re at their lowest point. Even if you can’t really help the situation, it’s nice for them to know that you would if you could.

Lesson FIFTEEN

Vitamins make me feel so much better! I take L-theanine, which is a natural supplement to help with stress and anxiety. I also take magnesium for muscle health and energy.

Lesson SIXTEEN

Before you jump in headfirst, maybe, I don’t know...get to know someone! All that glitters isn’t gold, and first impressions actually aren’t everything. It’s impressive when someone can charm people instantly and own the room, but what I know now to be more valuable about a person is not their charming routine upon meeting them (I call it a “solid first 15”), but the layers of a person you discover in time. Are they honest, self-aware, and slyly funny at the moments you least expect it? Do they show up for you when you need them? Do they still love you after they’ve seen you broken? Or after they’ve walked in on you having a full conversation with your cats as if they’re people? These are things a first impression could never convey.

Lesson SEVENTEEN

After my teen years and early twenties of sleeping in my makeup and occasionally using a Sharpie as eyeliner (DO NOT DO IT), I felt like I needed to start being nicer to my skin. I now moisturize my face every night and put on body lotion after I shower, not just in the winter, but all year round, because, why can’t I be soft during all the seasons?!

Lesson EIGHTEEN

Realizing childhood scars and working on rectifying them. For example, never being popular as a kid was always an insecurity for me. Even as an adult, I still have recurring flashbacks of sitting at lunch tables alone or hiding in a bathroom stall, or trying to make a new friend and being laughed at. In my twenties I found myself surrounded by girls who wanted to be my friend. So I shouted it from the rooftops, posted pictures, and celebrated my newfound acceptance into a sisterhood, without realizing that other people might still feel the way I did when I felt so alone. It’s important to address our long-standing issues before we turn into the living embodiment of them.

PHOTOGRAPHED BY BEN HASSETT; STYLED BY PAUL CAVACO

Lesson NINETEEN

Playing mind games is for the chase. In a real relationship or friendship, you’re shooting yourself in the foot if you don’t tell the other person how you feel, and what could be done to fix it. No one is a mind reader. If someone really loves you, they want you to verbalize how you feel. This is real life, not chess.

Lesson TWENTY

Learning the difference between lifelong friendships and situationships. Something about “we’re in our young twenties!” hurls people together into groups that can feel like your chosen family. And maybe they will be for the rest of your life. Or maybe they’ll just be your comrades for an important phase, but not forever. It’s sad but sometimes when you grow, you outgrow relationships. You may leave behind friendships along the way, but you’ll always keep the memories.

Lesson TWENTY-ONE

Fashion is all about playful experimentation. If you don’t look back at pictures of some of your old looks and cringe, you’re doing it wrong. See: Bleachella.

Lesson TWENTY-TWO

How to fight fair with the ones you love. Chances are you’re not trying to hurt the person you love and they aren’t trying to hurt you. If you can wind the tension of an argument down to a conversation about where the other person is coming from, there’s a greater chance you can remove the shame of losing a fight for one of you and the ego boost of the one who “won” the fight. I know a couple who, in the thick of a fight, say “Hey, same team.” Find a way to defuse the anger that can spiral out of control and make you lose sight of the good things you two have built. They don’t give out awards for winning the most fights in your relationship. They just give out divorce papers.

THERE’S A COMMON MISCONCEPTION THAT ARTISTS HAVE TO BE MISERABLE IN ORDER TO MAKE GOOD ART, THAT ART AND SUFFERING GO HAND IN HAND. I’M REALLY GRATEFUL TO HAVE LEARNED THIS ISN’T TRUE. FINDING HAPPINESS AND INSPIRATION AT THE SAME TIME HAS BEEN REALLY COOL.

Lesson TWENTY-THREE

I learned that I have friends and fans in my life who don’t care if I’m #canceled. They were there in the worst times and they’re here now. The fans and their care for me, my well-being, and my music were the ones who pulled me through. The most emotional part of the Reputation Stadium Tour for me was knowing I was looking out at the faces of the people who helped me get back up. I’ll never forget the ones who stuck around.

Lesson TWENTY-FOUR

I’ve had to learn how to handle serious illness in my family. Both of my parents have had cancer, and my mom is now fighting her battle with it again. It’s taught me that there are real problems and then there’s everything else. My mom’s cancer is a real problem. I used to be so anxious about daily ups and downs. I give all of my worry, stress, and prayers to real problems now.

Lesson TWENTY-FIVE

I remember people asking me, “What are you gonna write about if you ever get happy?” There’s a common misconception that artists have to be miserable in order to make good art, that art and suffering go hand in hand. I’m really grateful to have learned this isn’t true. Finding happiness and inspiration at the same time has been really cool.

Lesson TWENTY-SIX

I make countdowns for things I’m excited about. When I’ve gone through dark, low times, I’ve always found a tiny bit of relief and hope in getting a countdown app (they’re free) and adding things I’m looking forward to. Even if they’re not big holidays or anything, it’s good to look toward the future. Sometimes we can get overwhelmed in the now, and it’s good to get some perspective that life will always go on, to better things.

PHOTOGRAPHED BY BEN HASSETT; STYLED BY PAUL CAVACO

Lesson TWENTY-SEVEN

I learned that disarming someone’s petty bullying can be as simple as learning to laugh. In my experience, I’ve come to see that bullies want to be feared and taken seriously. A few years ago, someone started an online hate campaign by calling me a snake on the internet. The fact that so many people jumped on board with it led me to feeling lower than I’ve ever felt in my life, but I can’t tell you how hard I had to keep from laughing every time my 63-foot inflatable cobra named Karyn appeared onstage in front of 60,000 screaming fans. It’s the Stadium Tour equivalent of responding to a troll’s hateful Instagram comment with “lol.” It would be nice if we could get an apology from people who bully us, but maybe all I’ll ever get is the satisfaction of knowing I could survive it, and thrive in spite of it.

Lesson TWENTY-EIGHT

I’m finding my voice in terms of politics. I took a lot of time educating myself on the political system and the branches of government that are signing off on bills that affect our day-to-day life. I saw so many issues that put our most vulnerable citizens at risk, and felt like I had to speak up to try and help make a change. Only as someone approaching 30 did I feel informed enough to speak about it to my 114 million followers. Invoking racism and provoking fear through thinly veiled messaging is not what I want from our leaders, and I realized that it actually is my responsibility to use my influence against that disgusting rhetoric. I’m going to do more to help. We have a big race coming up next year.

Lesson TWENTY-NINE

I learned that your hair can completely change texture. From birth, I had the curliest hair and now it is STRAIGHT. It’s the straight hair I wished for every day in junior high. But just as I was coming to terms with loving my curls, they’ve left me. Please pray for their safe return.

Lesson THIRTY

My mom always tells me that when I was a little kid, she never had to punish me for misbehaving because I would punish myself even worse. I’d lock myself in my room and couldn’t forgive myself, as a five-year-old. I realized that I do the same thing now when I feel I’ve made a mistake, whether it’s self-imposed exile or silencing myself and isolating. I’ve come to a realization that I need to be able to forgive myself for making the wrong choice, trusting the wrong person, or figuratively falling on my face in front of everyone. Step into the daylight and let it go.

ELLE

#taylor swift #elle uk #april #2019 #2019.03.06

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