#in the manager's office at work there's two pages from a magazine taped to the door and it's of megan thee stallion

[autistic-shaiapouf]

Be like a termite.... be a king

[jawbreakervault]

An article by Linda Simensky on Ed, Edd n' Eddy, published in the summer 1999 edition of Take One magazine. Full issue here. Transcript under the cut.

One day in 1996, I got a fax at the Atlanta head office of the Cartoon Network where I am vice president of original animation. It was from Vancouver animator Danny Antonucci. Danny had sent me a drawing of threee goofy looking guys, with the title Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy, and the tagline: "They're friends because they have the same name." "What do you think?" he wrote. Hilarious, I remember thinking. I remembered that back in 1974, I used to hang out with two girls in my neighbourhood, Linda J. and Linda V. We didn't have much in common other than living in the same neighbourhood and having the same name. I immediately identified with the concept and series as a whole.

Well, actually there were several more steps before that last part happened but they were easy. I showed the fax to Mike Lazzo, the senior vice president of programming and production at the Cartoon Network, and he laughed. "Can we see more? Is there a bible?" he asked. The series bible came through by fax, a few pages at a time, over a period of the next few months. After an affirmative response from Betty Cohen, the president of the Caroon Network, the legal paperwork and deal making began. Not long after, a start-up meeting was held poolside at Chateau Marmont, the one moment of Hollywood glamoue we'd experience. "How soon can you have it ready?" asked the general manager and I watched Danny's eyebrows go up. Thus the Sisyphean task of producing the series began. Up to that point, the Cartoon Network had only produced shows through Hanna-Barbera in Los Angeles. Even shorts that were produced in smaller studios in other cities were produced through Hanna-Barbera. This would be the first show to be produced outside that system and the first to report directly to the Cartoon Network. The fate of our working with independant studios rested with this show. Nothing like a little pressure! In addition, every series we had done had started with a seven-minute short, but this time we were so sure we were on the right track that we jumped right in to serious production.

At that point in time, the Cartoon Network had been putting a great deal of effort into finding properties that weren't just animated sitcoms but were actually cartoons. Visually eyepopping, gag-laden, character-driven and most importantly, funny. Those were our cartoon goals. We were also trying to produce the cartoons by setting up units which would be creator-driven and self-contained. The old Warner Bros. "Termite Terrace" was our model since, as far as we were concerned, that's how the best cartoons were made. In the mid-1990s, Hanna-Barbera produced a series of 48 cartoons. The Cartoon Network went into series production on three of those shorts: Dexter's Laboratory, Cow and Chicken, and Johnny Bravo. We were in development on our next show, Powerpuff Girls, with the Dexter unit, and were starting to put several other projects into development, when we decided the Eds should have their own series.

Antonucci's earlier projects had made him a household name among animators. Lupo the Butcher, his animated short from the lates 1980s was, to some degree, the South Park of its time. I can remember a tape of Lupobeing passed around the office back in 1988, as people told each other, "You got to see this!" A few years later, in 1994, Antonucci started up his own studio, a.ka. Cartoon, in Vancouver to produce his show The Brothers Grunt for MTV. Following that, he spent the next few years doing commercials, promos, network IDs and the opening for MTV's Cartoon Sushi.

He decided to remain in Vancouver and expand his studio to accommodate series production. After working out of a small, five-person studio, a.k.a. Cartoon moved into a loft in the Gastown section of Vancouver and began hiring a full staff to work on the first 13 episodes. Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy is the story of three best friends bound by the same name, gawky social graces and an overwhelming desire to fit in. The series takes place during summer vacation, as the Eds search the cul-de-sac where they live for adventure, acceptance and money to buy candy. Ed is into monster movies and model kits. Edd is the really smart, really quiet and the unnatrually polite one. Eddy is the ringleadrer who loves being the centre of attention. The Eds are driven by their constant quest for cash, mostly for buying jawbreakers.

Their schemes -- childhood ventures -- optimistic profit margins -- and oddball twists.

The other neighbourhood kids round out the stories. Sarah is Ed's whiny younger sister. Rolf is the first-generation immigrant of unknown origin who eats strange things and has a pet goat. Jimmy prefers hanging out with Sarah and finds the Eds too rough. Kevin, the neighbourhood cynic, finds the Eds' ideas stupid. Nazz is the neighbourhood heatthrob and the mysterious Jonny 2x4 has a best friend that is a wooden board named Plank. Rounding out the cast are the neighbourhood bullies, the dreaded Kanker Sisters. The characters are loosely based on Danny's two sons, assorted friends and people he's known throughout his life.

Each half-hour episode is comprised of two, 11-minute cartoons. Typical episodes range from the Eds crashing Nazz's sprinkler party, to dealing with cycles of fads that blow through the cul-de-sac, to Sarah's newfound crush on Edd. Each cartoon is produced "the old-fashioned way" to guarantee the maximum number of laughs. Danny works with the story editor/head writer Jono Howard and a few other writers to generate the story ideas. Each writer then produces one-to-two page outlines with the beats of the story. The outline is handed to two storyboard artists who work out the actions and the gags. The storyboards remain up on the wall for the big pitch, at which point the artists pitch the storyboard to Danny and everyone else in the studio. The receptionist, the accountant and any visitors that day are all included in the pitch audience. The gags and beats that get laughs are keepers. The ones that fall flat get feedback or are reconsidered.

Season one, which premiered January 1999, is doing remarkably well in the ratings. Every now and then the Cartoon Network produces a show that has an impact on popular culture or day-to-day life. Recently, a journalist in Tallahasse, Fla., wrote a column in his local newspaper about his search for the huge jawbreakers his kids saw on Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy. In the April 19 issue of People magazine, in the crossword puzzle, the clue for #45 down was the cartoon show, Ed, ___ 'n' Eddy. Fan Web sites are starting to spring up.

The show has started to appear in other countries via international cartoon networks. A second season has already been ordered for a November 1999 broadcast date. Apparently, puberty is as international as it is unforgiving. Will the Eds ever be shown in their own backyard? Will Canadians ever get to see the "Canadian Squirt Gun" episode in season two? Probably. While Ed, Edd, 'n' Eddy will hopefully be acquired for air on one of the Canadian cable channels, for now you will have to rely on tapes from friends in the United States.

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

summertime sadness .3.

first day

Sequel to kiss me in the d-a-r-k

Part 1 Part 2 (masterlist under construction)

Warnings: dub con sex (intercourse, oral)

This is dark!(dad)Steve and dark(professor!)Bucky explicit. 18+ only.

Summary: You start your new job as you juggle the men in your life.

Note: back at it again with part 3. I'll keep y'all updated about a possible new posting schedule and an announcement regarding Patreon. Apparently writing every day and stressing myself out is not good for my mental health lmao. But I'm enjoying this one and I'm not sure yet if we're gonna be able to stick to 6 parts. Bon appetit. 💋

<3 Let me know what you think in a reblog, reply, or like. I'm loving the feedback from y'all and the excitement! You guys are gold. Also as always, memes accepted.

💋💋💋

You woke to the buzzer. You rolled over and grabbed you phone from the table. Your voice was thick and groggy as you answered it. 

“Hello?” You nearly coughed through your dry throat.

“Delivery,” The monotone response came.

“Okay,” You shook your head confused and hit the button to let him up. 

You dragged yourself from the bed and staggered to the door. You watched through the peephole as the carriers appeared at the top of the stairs. The two men in their brown uniforms carried a large box between them. They knocked once before you managed to unhook the chain and opened the door. 

“Um?” You stared at them confused.

“Delivery for apartment 6,” The man read off his tablet. “Signature?”

He turned it toward you and you read your name across the top. You hadn’t ordered anything. You couldn’t afford to. You signed, still confused, and held the door open for them to drag the box inside. You thanked them and watched them go before you shut the door. You crossed your arms as you stared at the package. You needed coffee.

You brewed your usual morning potion and sipped it slowly as you paced around the box. It took up much of the space you had left. You set your mug down and grabbed your keys to slice through the plastic tape. Within was an instruction booklet and a litany of boards and screws. It was a desk.

Your phone vibrated on your night table and you stood. You grabbed your coffee and sat on the edge of your bed as you opened your phone. 

‘You got your present?’ Steve’s message popped up.

‘You?’ You responded with an O face.

‘Figured you needed something better than that lumpy double,’ He returned and you tutted.

‘Thanks’ You replied with heart eyes.

‘Don’t worry. I ordered the smallest desk I could find.’

‘Still don’t think it will fit.’

‘You should be used to a tight squeeze.’ He kidded and you finished your coffee.

‘Uh huh. Well I guess I gotta day ahead of me, don’t I?’

‘Good luck.’ He sent a winky face alongside the taunt.

You returned a smiley and tossed your phone on the mattress. You stood and sighed as you once more ruminated over the box. Well, a little something to keep your mind off your nerves on your last day of freedom.

💋

You were pressed, preened, and as professional as you could get. Button up blouse patterned with small daisies, blush-toned blazer, and ironed beige pants. In your bag, you had a fresh notebook, your laptop, and about a dozen pens, including the golden on gifted to you. 

You strode through the front doors of the city tower as your nerves jittered in your chest. You hadn’t been there since the workshop. You and the other students had gone on a tour of the offices and your submission earned you a page in the company’s Sceptre Magazine. It also gained you the unexpected offer for this job.

After an elevator ride which seemed to make time stand still, you stepped off into the shining offices of Adder Press. It was just as you recalled only even more intimidating. You approached the receptionist’s desk tentatively and resisted your habit of wringing your hands. The buoyant redhead greeted you with a bubbly smile.

“Hello, you must be the intern,” She chimed.

“Um, yeah, I guess that’s me,” You answered.

“Well, I’m Stacey, I don’t know if you remember me, and you can just head on over to his office. He’s waiting for you.” She clicked something with her mouse and hit the intercom button on her phone. “Mr. Laufeyson, your 8 a.m. is here.”

“Very well,” His voice replied from the speaker.

She nodded for you to you pass her desk and you ducked your head down as you left her. You vaguely recalled the layout of the office. The round desks and the cozy seating all around. You bit the inside of your lip as you wandered cluelessly through the maze of employees who knew what they were doing.

You looked up and a familiar slim figure appeared in the doorway of the office along the back of the immense space. Loki Laufeyson, the editor and owner of Adder Press, greeted you with a handshake as you neared. His green eyes sparkled above his trademark smirk. In your brief introduction, you found he always looked as if he had a secret.

“Good morning,” He let go of you and stepped back to let you into his office. “You’re early.”

“A habit,” You assured him as you entered his roomy office.

“An admirable one,” He followed and passed you as he rounded his desk. “Sit,” He waved to the seat across from him before he took his own. “First, we’ll go over the job and your expectations. Any questions you have…” He checked his watch as he crossed his legs and leaned back. “And then we have a long day ahead of us.”

“Okay,” You said as you cradled your bag in your lap.

“You’ll be shadowing me for the most part. You’ll get an idea of how the business works and everything that goes into publishing.” He explained. “And we’ll get a taste of your editing skills. I’ll hand you a few minor pieces and go from there. Meetings, pitches, and so on.”

You nodded and listened to him as you sat on the edge of the chair. 

“I trust you will attune well. Your article was exceptional and I have no doubt there is a place for you in this business. Literary or otherwise.” He continued. “You are the first intern we’ve had that wasn’t a fourth year. I hope you realise the gravity of this position. Of this opportunity.”

“Of course,” You assured him. “And I’m am grateful for it.”

He tilted his head and squinted at you as he thought. He sat forward and smiled again. 

“Well then, we should get started. I’ll show you your desk before we attend the morning meeting. Then you can sit in on my next. The board must select the winners of the contest for our Pride Issue of Sceptre, among other significant decisions.” He stood and tapped his desk with two fingers. “Tomorrow, we’ll deal with the marketing side of things. Just as important as the content itself.”

“Alright,” You rose, excited though too nervous to show it.

He seemed amused and turned to guide you out of his office. Your stomach flipped a second time that day and you swallowed down the storm. You had to keep reminding yourself that this was what you wanted. An actual dream come true.

💋

Your first week flew by. The workload kept you busy and your desk was quickly cluttered from it; both at work and at home. Your nights were late and mornings early. The true university experience but not for the usual reasons, though it was just as thrilling as any party.

To your surprise, Loki was an accommodating boss; in his own way. His expectations were clear but not easily met. His standards fueled you; encouraged you to fight harder to meet them. And when you didn’t, he wasn’t disappointed; rather encouraging in his singular discerning manner. That he did expect so much of you, was flattering on its own. 

And your first edited piece, a quarter page review, had passed his grueling rounds of criticism. You couldn’t help but beam as he read over your final submission and uttered that single word, ‘adequate’. He looked up from his screen and across his desk. “It’ll print.”

You were still smiling as you walked out onto the street. You took out your phone, long ignored for your work. The screen was filled with notifications. Both Steve and Bucky sent identical messages; ‘How was your first week?’

You answered Steve first. ‘It was good. I think I’m getting the hang of it.’

Then Bucky. ‘Great! I’m learning so much.’

‘Awesome. Facetime tonight?’ Steve replied and you accepted the invitation.

‘Have you eaten?’ Bucky’s text popped up.

‘Not yet.’ You answered.

‘You still downtown?’ He asked. Another confirmation sent.

‘I’m at the Beer Garden. My treat. They have amazing tacos.’

‘Ten minutes,’ You promised and opened up your Maps.

When you got there, Bucky was waiting. A pitcher sat before him and two glasses; one empty, the other half-finished. You neared and set your bag on one of the tall chairs as you climbed up on another.

“Hey,” You greeted. “Didn’t think I’d ever be here again.”

“Why not? Good beer, good food,” He poured you glass as he spoke. “Good men.”

“Sure, sure,” You laughed as he set the pint before you. “So, how are classes?”

“Ugh, can we not?” He grumbled. “I didn’t come here to think about school.”

“Only to get me tipsy, eh?” You sip from the foamy stout.

“It never takes very much,” He grinned. “And I figured, we could take a walk after. There’s a nice little bookshop down the street.”

“Books? So this night will be worth it after all?” You kidded.

“Free food,” He reminded as he slid a menu over to you.

“I can get food at home, cozy in my bed with a good doc on my laptop,” You chided. “But new books? That’s better than--”

“Sex?” He ventured coyly.

“Almost.” You answered as you lifted the menu. “Though the more I think about it, free food might just change my mind.”

💋

Your stroll to the bookshop led you past Adder Press once more. It was a small nook between a cafe and a foreclosed business. As you entered a bell chimed and the smell of aged paper filled your nostrils. The walls were lined with shelves and small desk sat along the left side of the store. Books; used, new, rare, surrounded you.

You followed Bucky to the back of the shop and perused the non-fiction section as he looked over the military memoirs. The shelves between you and the front of the store blocked the view of the street through the wide bay window. It seemed darker back there; quiet.

As you scanned the back of a book on the old studio system in Hollywood, you felt a tickle along your side. Bucky’s hand gripped your hip as he turned you and slowly edged you back against the shelf. He glanced towards the front desk but cared little as he leaned in. He took the book with his other hand and blindly put it aside.

“Long week,” He purred.

“It was,” You said. “But I think you can wait a little longer.” You patted his chest and tried to push him away. “Maybe until we’re somewhere more...private.”

“Ah come on, have a little fun, miss priss,” He rubbed his nose against yours. “Just a kiss.”

He pressed his lips to your and you squirmed. You kissed him back as he trapped you in the corner. His arms wrapped around you and he slid along the shelves. Several books fell behind you noisily and he pulled away at last. You sneered and bent to pick them up as the cashier craned to look around the shelves.

“Sorry,” You waved to him as you gather the books. “Clumsy.”

You put them back on the shelves as you stood and Bucky watched you with a smirk. You growled and grabbed his arm. 

“Fine, let’s go,” You snarled.

“You want that book, baby?” He teased as you dragged him back down the aisle.

“I want sleep,” You said. “And the quicker we’re out of here, the quicker I get my wish.”

He chuckled as you shoved him out onto the street. “You’re sexy when you’re mad.”

“I’m not mad.” You insisted.

“Sure,” He slung his arm over his shoulder and led you back down the street. “Don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll find a way to cheer you up.”

💋

Bucky had never been to your apartment before. You always met at his; it was bigger, cozier, and less stressful. When he pulled up to your building, he killed the engine but you didn’t say anything as he followed. Surely he knew a student couldn’t afford a condo.

When you showed him into your meagre flat, he glanced around and smiled. “Quaint.”

“Affordable,” You said as you set your bag on the chair. 

“Cute.” He commented as he neared your desk.

“New addition,” You explained. “Steve sent it last week.”

“Of course he did,” He mused. “Always practical, isn’t he? Well, in most things.”

“Mmm,” You grumbled and took off your blazer. “I suppose.”

“Did you send him a pic?” He asked and you lifted a brow. “Of the desk?”

“No,” You said. 

“Well, why don’t you?” He winked. “We can do a little photo shoot for him.”

“I don’t think so,” You scoffed.

“For me too,” He said. “Sexy school girl. Classic.”

“Stop,” You neared him as he pulled out his phone and tried to take it from him. “Or I’m gonna send you home early.”

“Take your clothes off,” He held his phone above you. “Come on.”

“No,” You squealed. “Now put that away.”

“You can keep your panties on,” He bartered. “Just give a smile.”

“Bucky…”

“Hey, if it’s gonna be another week, I need something to keep me from getting lonely.” He argued. 

You stepped back and stared up at him. You sucked your lip in and nibbled on it.

“You’re thinking about it,” He said. “I know that look.”

“One photo. That’s it.” You sighed and unbuttoned your blouse. “And it stays between you and Steve.”

“You have my word,” He grinned.

He watched you undress until you were in nothing but your bra and panties. You went to the desk and stood in front of it stiffly. You smiled. “Okay?”

“I said panties,” He intoned. “Nothing about your bra.”

You frowned and swiftly unhooked your bra and tossed it aside. 

“Up,” He gestured with his hand as he held his phone up. 

You pushed aside the chair and turned to clear a spot for you to sit before you climbed up awkwardly. You turned back to him and leaned on your hands.

“Stick your chest out a little,” He directed. “Good, and cross your legs. Mmm, yes. Like that.” He hit capture and lowered his phone. “Wow.”

“What?” You leapt down and scrambled over to him. “I must look awful.”

“You look… hot,” He growled the last word. “Fuck. Get those panties off while I send this to Steve.” He rubbed his crotch as he flicked his thumb over his screen. “I can’t wait much longer.”

You rolled your panties down your legs as you turned away from him. You heard him set his phone down as you neared the bed. 

“No, I want you back on that desk,” He said. “Now.” You spun back and put your hands on your hips. He shook his head in warning. “You know what happens to bad girls.” He warned.

You strutted over to the desk as he pulled his shirt over his head. He kicked off his shoes as he slowly closed in on you. He stripped deliberately until he was before you, naked and hard. You stared up at him and he lifted you up onto the desk. He pushed your knees apart and stepped between your legs.

“Do you remember that first time? On my desk? Hmm?” He inhaled your scent as he dragged his nose along your cheek. “I’ve been thinking about that all week.”

“Oh yeah,” You breathed as you felt along his sides and around his broad back. “Do you think about me when you teach?”

“Always,” He snarled. “I think about fucking you, front and centre, right in front of everyone.”

“Really?” His lips tickled your temple as he plied kisses one at a time. You leaned back and bared your throat.

“You know, what I really want,” He nuzzled your neck as he spoke. “I want you under my desk as I mark… help keep me focused.”

“Oh?” You moaned as his fingers inched along your stomach. “When do you mark?”

“Whenever you’re free, baby,” He nibbled at your skin between words.

“Tomorrow?” You felt long his thigh and brushed your fingertips along his sac. He shivered.

“Tomorrow.” He gulped as you gripped him. “Meet me at my office.”

“Mmm,” You pulled him close as rubbed his tip along your folds. “What about tonight?”

“Tonight,” He lifted his head as you guided him to your entrance. “Tonight I’m gonna fuck you till you scream.”

He pushed into you and you gasped. You wrapped your arms and legs around him, hungry for him. Each time he thrust, the desk wobbled and clattered against the wall. You clawed at his back as you curled your pelvis towards him, longing to take every inch of him. You moaned and locked your legs around his ass.

“Make me scream,” You taunted.

He grunted and plunged into you harder. You were at the edge of the desk, entirely at his mercy. He pushed his hand between your bodies and pressed his thumb to your clit. He rubbed you roughly, painfully almost, yet the thrill of it was delicious. Your moans grew louder and louder.

He reached back with one hand and tore your arm from around him. Your other arm slipped as he pushed you onto your back and pulled your ass over the edge of the desk. Your grasped onto the desk above your head as he crashed into you. Your body jerked across the painted white wood and you gritted your teeth as your voice rose.

“Come on, baby,” He rutted into you, harder and harder. “Come on.” He hissed as his thumb worked your clit. “Scream.” 

He impaled you entirely and you obeyed. He wrenched your orgasm from you and your legs quivered around him as you shrieked. Your head lolled and you covered his hand with yours as his thumb kept its motion. When it stopped, he dug his fingers into your hips and began to thrust again.

His own climax was barely smothered as he hung his head back and bit down on his lip. He pulled out and his cum spilled onto your vee and dripped down your cunt. You gulped and gasped as you tried to catch your breath and he lowered your legs back to the floor. Your sat up as his cum cooled along your thigh.

“You still mad, baby?” He asked as he framed your face with his hands. 

You pulled his hands away and placed them on your tits. “You still have some work to do.”

[fractionallystruckout]

Second String (Part 2)

(Part 1 - Part 2)

Inspired by @rainbowjunko's great drawing of Jun and Tetsu playing guitar and bass, respectively.

AU: rock band!AU

Also on AO3.

Jun's band practices every day except Monday and Thursday. Yuuki shows up on Monday.

—

Jun stood with the door open, staring at Yuuki on his front step.

"What are you doing here?" he asked. "It's Monday."

He was pretty sure. He hoped it was or the date he'd written on every receipt at the bookstore was wrong.

"I know," Yuuki said, easing some of Jun's concerns. He shifted the bag on his shoulder. "I was wondering if I could practice here."

"Why here?"

"I live in a 1K and the walls are thin."

Jun wanted to say no.

It was Monday, that much was confirmed. Monday was Jun's day to catch up on everything that had fallen by the wayside during the previous week like grocery shopping and laundry. It was why he was standing in front of an unexpected guest wearing a threadbare shirt and a pair of old sweatpants. Yuuki's neatly pressed office attire, including an expensive looking coat, made Jun feel underdressed in his own home which was ridiculous and annoying.

He wanted to say no.

His stupid, stupid dream said otherwise.

You'll only be better if he gets better.

"Fine," he said, stepping back in reluctant invitation. "Come in."

Yuuki nodded and stepped inside, setting his case down so he could take off his shoes. Jun watched him put shined dress shoes down next to his own scuffed boots. Yuuki picked up his case and moved towards the stairs, pausing for a moment to glance at the hallway leading to Jun's kitchen.

"You know the way," Jun said, pushing Yuuki on the shoulder.

They went downstairs, the short trip lit only by ambient light falling down from the entryway until Jun reached out to turn the lights on. Everything was still set up from their practice yesterday, for their practice tomorrow. Yuuki stepped over the cords strayed across the floor as he took up his usual spot, stage left of Miyauchi's drums.

Jun leaned against the wall.

"There's a metronome in that box somewhere," he said, pointing to a box in the far corner behind Miyauchi's seat. It was a mess of cords and tape and anything else that didn't have a proper place. "If it's dead, there's a pack of batteries in the closet."

Yuuki looked up from unpacking his bass. "You're not staying?"

"No," Jun said, shaking his head. "It's Monday."

The day Jun caught up on everything he hadn't had time for during the previous week.

The newest issue of his favorite shoujo manga was calling his name.

Not that Yuuki needed to know that.

"Have at it," he said, starting back up the stairs. "Give a shout if you need anything."

Yuuki nodded. Jun heard him searching through the box as he left.

He walked past his kitchen, letting out a heavy breath as he sat down at the small table next to his bed. In terms of space and rent, Jun technically lived in a 1DK but he'd given up the bedroom to use as a practice space, shrinking his actual living space down to a single studio room. It was fine on most days. He didn't spend a lot of time at home not practicing or sleeping.

More importantly, it was what he could afford.

Jun pushed away the meager remains of his dinner - day old fried rice from the convenience store Ryousuke worked at - and picked up his manga.

He heard the metronome start up below him, sharp electronic beeps measuring out a quick beat. He shook his head at Yuuki's insistence on always playing at full tempo. He chose to ignore it in favor of finally finding out which of the suitors Mariko, the manga's heroine, would pick. The climactic decision was coming and he was only pages away.

Yuuki started to play, pulling Jun's eyes down to the floor.

He could hear the low notes of Yuuki's bass. He could hear the rhythm and the constant beep of the metronome.

He could hear Yuuki being wrong.

Jun lasted ten minutes and two pages before he threw the manga onto his bed and marched downstairs.

"They're upbeats!" he shouted, taking the stairs two at a time. Yuuki looked up at him as Jun stalked over to where he stood, pointing at the rhythm in the music. "Upbeats," he stressed.

Yuuki frowned. "I know."

Jun bit his tongue.

He knew Yuuki knew. They played a surprisingly good set only two days ago. That didn't make waiting for the rhythm to sink in any less tortuous.

He picked up the metronome and turned it off before tossing it carelessly at the box. The beeping was starting to hurt his head and he could only tolerate one persistent annoyance at a time. He grabbed his guitar, keeping his back to Yuuki as he plugged into an amp.

Jun eventually met the subtle question in Yuuki's gaze.

"Next time, bring food," he said, pointing a pick at him.

Yuuki nodded easily.

"Okay," Jun said. "From the top."

—

Jun remembered to put on better clothes before answering the door the following Monday.

There wasn't a lot to choose from. He still hadn't done laundry but the jeans he wore all day and a relatively clean shirt made him feel better when faced with Yuuki's neat, pressed professionalism.

Yuuki stood on his front step, holding his case and a plastic bag in either hand. He held the bag out to Jun.

"Ryousuke said you like oyakudon," he said.

Jun laughed which made Yuuki frown, his hand dropping a little.

"Do you not?" he asked.

"I do," Jun said, holding his hand out to accept Yuuki's offering. He stepped back to let Yuuki in, peeking into the bag as Yuuki took off his shoes. There were two bowls and two sets of chopsticks. "I'm just surprised Ryousuke told you the truth. Saying I like goya or something just to mess with me is more his style."

Yuuki picked up his case. He frowned hard like he was struggling with a rhythm.

"Do you not like goya?"

Jun scrunched up his face. "I hate it."

"I see," he said.

Jun shut the door, suddenly feeling uncomfortable being the topic of conversation. He glanced down at the bag in his hand, the floor, and then the hallway to his kitchen.

"Do you want something to drink?" he asked, changing the subject. "I have water and... water."

"I'll take water," Yuuki said, without a hint of judgment. "Thank you."

"Sure," Jun said. "Go ahead. I'll be right down."

Yuuki nodded and headed downstairs.

Jun went to his kitchen and set the bag of food down on the counter. He searched through his limited collection of dishware, selecting two cups that were the most presentable, meaning clean and not cracked. He filled them with ice and water before grabbing the bag and going down to the practice space.

Yuuki had cleared a stack of books and magazines off a neglected end table and placed it between the couch and a chair. Jun set the cups down on the table and began unpacking the food. He handed Yuuki a bowl and chopsticks before taking the other for himself and dropping into the chair.

Jun was three bites in when he had to stop.

"This is really good," he said.

Yuuki set down his water. "It's from a shop in the train station by my office," he said, as if he was considering it for the first time. "It's very popular."

"I can see why," Jun said. Yuuki smiled as Jun ate vigorously, too caught up in the satisfaction of good food to be bothered with polite pacing. He paused about halfway through and sat back in his chair. "Thanks for dinner."

"Thanks for letting me practice here."

Jun shrugged. His letting Yuuki practice wasn't exactly altruistic. If Yuuki got better, the band would be better. It was all in service of Jun's dream.

He set his bowl down and looked at Yuuki.

"So, what else do you do?" he asked. "When you're not butchering our music?"

Yuuki frowned.

Jun laughed.

—

Yuuki liked routine.

He was consistent and predictable. Jun could set his watch by him, if he wore a watch.

It was something Jun learned, gleaned, picked up over time and shared meals eaten in their practice space. He also learned that Yuuki had a degree in management and had been at his job since he graduated from college. He liked it well enough, it paid the bills. He learned Yuuki had a younger brother who was still in college. They talked regularly, on Thursdays, coincidentally, which was probably the only reason Yuuki didn't show up asking to practice on those days too.

But most of all, Yuuki liked routine.

It was that preference towards routine that brought him back to Jun's front step, week after week, Monday after Monday, always with food in hand. After oyakudon it had been curry, paitan ramen, yakitori, and shio salmon.

Today it was okonomiyaki.

And beer.

"Don't make that face!" Jun said, pointing at Yuuki.

In Yuuki's defense, the range of his expressions was small but Jun could tell. He had the advantage, the high ground, standing while Yuuki sat on the couch. He also had years of experience with people's opinions on shoujo manga.

He could tell.

"What face?" Yuuki asked.

"That face," Jun said, stepping up to the end table that separated them, pointing at the amused tilt to Yuuki's mouth. "That 'shoujo is for girls' face."

"But it is? It's in the name."

Jun groaned, his body drooping in disappointment.

"A target demographic doesn't define the entire audience!" he said, gesturing a bit too widely given the beer in his hand. "They're still good stories, they just focus more on people than action. It's like a kids movie," he argued, approaching the table again. "Are you never going to see another kids movie just because you're not the target audience?"

Yuuki blinked, the amusement subtly falling off his face.

"No," he said slowly.

"Exactly," Jun grinned. He took a long, victorious drink from his beer. "It's the same thing."

Yuuki stayed quiet as Jun returned to his seat. He had no rebuttal for Jun's bulletproof argument.

Jun dropped into the chair as he surveyed the remains of the food. He turned at an angle, throwing his leg over the side arm, giving him leverage to reach across the table and pick a neglected piece of pork off Yuuki's plate. He righted himself as he put it into his mouth.

Yuuki didn't seem to notice the theft.

"Do you have a favorite?" he asked.

"I can't pick just one," Jun said, between chewing.

"Which would you recommend?"

"It depends on what you're looking for."

Yuuki frowned, which was a weird response.

It made Jun want to press his finger to Yuuki's brow to see if the crease would go away.

"What's your favorite manga?" he asked instead.

"Lone Wolf and Cub."

Jun laughed.

"Of course it is," he said, not noticing when his laughter floated almost into giggle territory. He tried to take another drink, peering into the bottle when it came up empty. He put it down on the table with the others. "You seem like the type that likes sword fights that go on for a hundred pages."

"It's a story about sacrifice and determination-" Yuuki started.

"It's people fighting with swords," Jun moaned, dragging the words out.

Yuuki smiled, which was a weird response.

Jun narrowed his eyes at him.

"If shoujo is more than just a genre for girls," Yuuki said calmly, "then Lone Wolf and Cub can be more than just people fighting with swords."

Jun stared at Yuuki as he considered his argument.

The stark professionalism that gave Yuuki an untouchable air was gone, shed slowly, piece by piece, over the passing weeks. His tie was gone, the top two buttons of his shirt were undone, and his long sleeves were folded up to his elbows. Jun could see his watch, the calluses on his fingers, the flex of his forearms as he turned his beer in his hands. He could see the flush of alcohol that warmed Yuuki's face, the color running down his neck to where lines were still drawn.

It made Jun wonder if Yuuki felt as warm to the touch as he looked.

"I guess you're right," he said, turning his attention away. Having nothing to do with his hands, Jun crossed his arms over his chest. "Maybe we can swap later. You can read some shoujo and I can find out what's so good about sword fights."

Yuuki laughed, brief and soft.

"I'd like that."

"Me too."

Jun glanced at him, feeling his face warm when Yuuki smiled.

He blamed the alcohol.

"Although I expect you to take good care of my books, Yuuki," he said, forcing the usual edge to his tone. "Some of them are out of print."

"I will," Yuuki said with a nod, unquestionable as always. He looked at Jun for a moment before adding, "And Tetsu's fine."

Jun fought the smile trying to overtake his face.

"Jun's fine too."

[reading-writing-revolution]

Heather Cox Richardson

May 6, 2020 (Wednesday)

What a difference a day makes. Yesterday, Trump was talking about disbanding his coronavirus task force because it had outlived its usefulness and the administration was going to go full speed ahead on rebuilding the economy; today, Time magazine issued this week’s cover: an “OPEN” sign with the N ripped off and put in front of the other letters to spell “NOPE.” The administration’s attempt to pivot from a focus on the botched response to the virus toward a triumphant story of the economy has foundered as reality has caught up with Trump’s cheery narrative.

Yesterday we learned that Rick Bright, the scientist who directed the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), the federal agency charged with developing a vaccine for this coronavirus, has filed a whistleblower complaint. The complaint alleges he was demoted for refusing to spend his agency's money on developing hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malarial drug the administration was promoting for use against Covid-19. But the complaint goes on to charge that the administration pressured him “to ignore expert recommendations and instead to award lucrative contracts based on political connections and cronyism.”

In a very detailed 63-page report, Bright claims that he warned the leadership at Health and Human Services about the coronavirus on January 10, but was first ignored and then ostracized for his insistence that action to prepare for an epidemic was crucial. He says the everyone in the administration except trade advisor Peter Navarro simply refused to take his warnings seriously. Throughout February, Bright peppered administration officials with memos, begging them to secure medical equipment to prepare for the epidemic. Finally, they lost patience with him in March, when he refused to back hydroxychloroquine when the president was touting it as a possible cure for Covid.

Bright told a reporter about the dangers of the drug, and days later was removed from the directorship of BARDA to a post at the National Institutes of Health, because political appointees Alex Azar, the head of HHS, and Dr. Robert Kadlec, Bright’s immediate boss, suspected him of being a source for the article. Bright claims to have been retaliated against for his role as a whistleblower, and is demanding his old job back.

Bright’s whistleblower report was only one of two that offered a window into the administration’s fumbling of the epidemic. We learned that on April 8, a volunteer on Jared Kushner’s coronavirus task force, filed a whistleblower complaint with the House Oversight Committee. Kushner's group took the place of established channels staffed by experts in order to coordinate a private sector effort to find the medical supplies America needed. The complaint, supported by anonymous individuals in the government, says that the people working with Kushner were young volunteers from consulting and private equity firms with no significant experience in health care, procurement, or supply-chain operations, and had no knowledge of relevant laws or regulations. They were ill equipped to do their jobs, and were also ordered to pay particular attention to tips from “VIPs,” including conservative journalists like Brian Kilmeade and Jeanine Pirro, as they searched for medical equipment.

Today, Politico published a story based on audio tapes leaked from three conference calls between HHS and Federal Emergency Management Agency officials and federal officials around the country fielding calls from governors trying to find medical equipment. The calls highlight that as Trump was saying the nation had plenty of equipment, his officials were scrambling to try to provide it. The leaked tapes also show officials privately acknowledging that reopening the states would lead to a higher rate of coronavirus infections.

In an interview with ABC News yesterday, Trump himself admitted the reopening of states for business could cause people to die. At a briefing, when reporter Jim Acosta asked why it was important to end social distancing right now, Trump told reporters "I'm viewing our great citizens of this country to a certain extent and to a large extent as warriors. They're warriors. We can't keep our country closed. We have to open our country ... Will some people be badly affected? Yes."

But Trump didn’t offer much to provide confidence that the government was on top of the ongoing coronavirus response. In the ABC News interview, when Trump blamed President Barack Obama for leaving the “cupboard” of the Strategic National Stockpile “bare” of medical supplies when he left office, anchor David Muir asked him what he had done to restock it in the three years he’s been in office. The question appeared to catch the president, who is accustomed to a friendly audience on the Fox News Channel, off guard. “Well, I'll be honest,” he said. “I have a lot of things going on. We had a lot of people that refused to allow the country to be successful. They wasted a lot of time on Russia, Russia, Russia. That turned out to be a total hoax. Then they did Ukraine, Ukraine and that was a total hoax, then they impeached the president of the United States for absolutely no reason.”

A Washington Post article by Dr. Zack Cooper, associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health and Yale’s Economics Department, says that we do, in fact, have the ability to test at the rate of 20 million tests a day, which is what experts say we need in order to reopen the economy safely. But the rub is that it would cost about $250 billion, and there has not, so far, been sufficient political will to spend that kind of money on testing, especially when those most affected by the reopening of states have been poor Americans and workers who are disproportionately people of color. A Rockefeller Foundation committee on reopening the economy has published a report on how to do so safely; Cooper was a member of the committee.

But for all these events undercutting Trump’s push to reopen the economy, what got under his skin most dramatically was an advertisement released Monday by the Lincoln Group entitled “Mourning in America.” This one-minute spot plays on President Ronald Reagan’s famous “Morning In America” reelection campaign ad, showing Trump’s term as the opposite of the rosy vision people associated with Reagan. “There’s mourning in America,” the voice in the ad intones over shots of Covid-stricken patients and folks in unemployment lines in masks, “and under the leadership of Donald Trump, our country is weaker, and sicker, and poorer. And now, Americans are asking, ‘If we have another four years like this, will there even be an America?”

It took Trump four tweets to express his fury adequately, calling Lincoln Project founder George Conway a “deranged loser.” Ten hours later, he was still fuming, and ranted about the Lincoln Project to reporters for two minutes on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews. This gave Conway the opening to hit him again in an op-ed in the Washington Post today. The article used Trump’s behavior to illustrate Conway’s usual concerns about Trump’s fitness for office, but it began with a new focus on the coronavirus: “Americans died from Covid-19 at the rate of about one every 42 seconds during the past month. That ought to keep any president awake at night.”

[valenjuls]

that that is, is, that that is not, is not

words: 2k

chapters: 1/5

She was going to kill her and if not kill her then give her the ultimate silent treatment, something she knows would drive her crazy. Juliana glances at the clock right above the far wall, her annoyance mounting as the clock continues to tick without any sign of her boss coming in. Despite the fact that she called this morning to make sure she was getting ready and she called an hour and a half later to make she was actually on her way. Both times Valentina had said she was on her way.

On my way, my ass.

Juliana sighs as she steels herself in front of Valentina’s office, already preparing a speech in her mind, the third time she’s about to enter without their desired person. She glances at the clock again her annoyance growing larger by the second.  As she’s about to open the door, excuses at the ready, she hears the elevator ding and Valentina steps out in her perfectly pressed pantsuit, not a hair out of place, her expensive handbag that was probably the equal cost of two months rent for Juliana slung over her shoulder,  clutched in her hands were two cups of iced coffee from that place just around the corner that was usually out of the way

Juliana glares at her, not reaching out to take the peace offering that Valentina was holding out. She grabs the purse though to stash it under her desk. “Where have you been?! I’ve been stalling your brother and sister in there.”

Valentina continues to nudge the cup of coffee towards her, her blue eyes were bigger than usual, knowing the effect it usually has on people. “I got you your favorite.”

“My favorite is when my boss is on time so I don’t have to hold a fucking concert in her office!” Juliana says, her earlier annoyance already evaporating as she takes a sip of the vanilla latte.

Valentina perks up at that. “I missed your singing?”

"So not the point." She pushes Valentina towards the boardroom. “Now go and play nice. We need them to approve the latest project.”

Valentina grabs Juliana by the arm when she turns to go back to her desk, catching her off guard, so much so that her heels squeak against the floor too loudly. “Wait, you’re not coming in there with me?”

Juliana shakes her head. “Somebody-” she emphasizes, raising an eyebrow at Valentina, knowing exactly who she was talking about, “-kept me up with their rambling last night that I couldn’t exactly finish my portfolio.”

Valentina has this thoughtful look on her face at the mention of their night. “But it’s not my fault!”

“I know you can’t control your sleep talking,” Juliana interrupts before Valentina can get off track as she pulls the door open before pushing Valentina into the room. “Have fun!”

-

-

-

Juliana was finishing up the sketches in her portfolio, making sure the shading was correct as well as what pattern she intended she was going to use with each piece, trying to provide as much quality work as she can at such a limited time. She hears the door to Valentina’s office open and the other two Carvajals leave, but her eyes never lift from her work. She needs all the time she can get with this.

She feels her presence first before she sees her. There was something in the air that was pressing against the room, one that wasn’t there before, she couldn’t figure out what it was so she ignores it (a tactic that she’s learned to use whenever the young CEO was around). Without lifting her eyes from her work she asks, “How did the meeting go? Did you take notes?”

She was met with silence from her. Juliana stops scribbling and looks up to see Valentina propped up at the corner of Juliana’s desk, her finger pinching the bridge of her nose, eyes closed, neck tense and her shoulder basically bracketing the sides of her face at how high it was.

Juliana puts down her work, uneased at the sight of her easy-going boss looking so stressed from just one meeting with her siblings. “It’s okay if you didn’t take notes,” she jokes, hoping to lighten her mood.

She finds their relationship weird. They were so formal with each other, often refraining from talking about their feelings. They were ultra competitive and the few lunches or dinners that Juliana had been too was usually spent bragging about their separate companies, one-upping each other. They even made it into a game, which was bizarre to Juliana.  But usually, it’s when their older sister was present. When it was just Valentina and her brother, they were far more human (maybe it’s because Eva hates Juliana for unknown reasons.)

Instead of the usual sass that Juliana has been accustomed to after working with Valentina for almost 2 years (being friends for more than 3 now) all she hears is a deep sigh and sees her fingers seeming to dig even deeper into her face.

Her worry spikes. Juliana stands in front of Valentina. She gently takes her hands from her face, and holds them in her own.

Valentina groans as she slumps forward, her face immediately burrowing itself on her chest, finally taking her hand from her face. She sighs once as she straightens. Juliana immediately recognizes that sigh as her cannot-deal- anymore sigh She nods at the planner on Juliana’s desk. Her anxiety jumps at seeing the different colored inks littering the page. She turns to Juliana, her voice almost a plea. “Wanna play hooky?”

"Only if we do it at my apartment," Juliana answers.

Valentina raises an eyebrow, grinning slyly. "You're demanding today,  Juliana Valdes."

"C'mon let's take your clothes off so you can relax," Juliana says, tugging Valentina from the desk to help her pack up.

-

-

-

"You know when you told me you were going take off my clothes, this wasn't what I was expecting," Valentina says as she holds her arms out for Juliana to take her measurement. Her clothes were indeed off, hanging over Juliana's couch save for her underwear.

"I told you I have to finish my portfolio," Juliana says around the pencil that was between her teeth. She puts her measuring tape around her neck as she writes the measurements down. She shoots Valentina a bright smile, the corner of her eyes crinkling. "Thanks, boss."

Valentina covers her chest, squirming at Juliana's words. "I feel dirty," she jokes. She side steps to the couch to grab her clothes. She throws her shirt on before walking down the hallway to Juliana's closet, shouting over her shoulder. "I'm grabbing some sweats."

"Whatever!"  Juliana yells back as she sits on her desk to try to figure out how much fabric she's going to need.

Juliana hears Valentina heave an end-of-the-world-inducing sigh as she settles on Juliana's blue couch that she got from the dumpster almost a year ago. Juliana freezes at the sound, torn between finishing her assignment and actually comforting her boss. She waits, pencil in her grip to see if Valentina was going to make any more sounds that make you wonder if your heart was supposed to respond that way.

Valentina heaves another sigh, this time bigger and much more prolonged.

Juliana takes a deep breath and puts her pencil down. She pushes against her desk, rolling and turning her chair, deftly to face Valentina. She wanted to groan, not out of exasperation at how dramatic Valentina was being but at how cute she looks, curled up on the couch, her face free of makeup and wearing slouchy clothes that just about swallows her.

"Out with it," Juliana says scooching Valentina even more on the couch, almost crowding her.

Valentina turns and leans against Juliana, her head dropping to Juliana's shoulder, another sigh leaving her, but this one was almost out of relief.

Juliana feels a slight, weird tug at the pit of her stomach at that. She always felt her reactions super endearing. "What happened at the meeting?" she asks as she strokes Valentina's hair, smoothing it away from her face.

She knows their relationship is…weird, for a lack of a better word. It's not your typical working relationship.

They were friends, first and foremost. They met under unlikely circumstances thanks to Valentina’s sleazy boyfriend who thought he could have a side chick in Juliana. Needless to say, Juliana didn’t take a liking to that and immediately went to Valentina to tell her that her boyfriend was a douchebag. They’ve been friends ever since. Though Juliana was working part-time as her administrative assistant, once she graduates, she’s going to assume her proper vice president role of their magazine, that they’ve put blood, sweat, and tears in to make sure it actually succeeds in a world where print was steadfastly getting buried.

Valentina lets out a slight growl (more of a cute baby lion growl than a threatening growl really). “My abuelito  is an asshole.”

“Your family is full of assholes,” Juliana replies, the insult coming out so easily that it made Valentina laugh. “That’s like a rich thing right?”

“Am I an asshole?”

“You’re the biggest asshole, brat,” Juliana teases, her fingers curling around her hip, tickling at the spot she knows would receive the biggest giggle.

“Stop that!” Valentina squeals in between the giggles that Juliana managed to draw out of her, squirming away from Juliana’s touch. “I’m trying to be sad and angry!” When Juliana doesn’t stop her merciless tickling, she grabs her hand in frustration. “Let me be angry!”

“That’s not allowed in my crappy apartment,” Juliana says but stops her attack, resting her hand on Valentina’s stomach, lightly drumming her finger, letting Valentina focus on that instead of her anger, knowing her next question will probably set her off. “Now what makes your grandfather an asshole other than being rich?”

“Marriage,” Valentina says, her tone darkening.

“Alright, cynic, what about marriage?”

“He has a stupid clause in order for me to have full reign of my company. I have to marry before I can fully become CEO of the company,” Valentina says, the anger in her voice was growing larger.

Juliana knows that she should’ve tried to calm her down. She knows that but just hearing something so outdated and so archaic had her angry too. It undermined everything they established and worked hard for.

“That’s fucked up,” Juliana whispers, trying to keep her voice calm since Valentina has already moved to the deep end of her anger, which included gripping Juliana’s arm harder than she should. Juliana shakes it to remind Valentina there’s a human being behind that was currently attached to the arm. Valentina’s grip lessens, but her hand never moves from Juliana’s arm.

“I know!” Valentina huffs. “Papi’s lawyers are looking over it to see if there’s any way I can get out of this dumb clause without having to just be an interim CEO.”

“And?”

Valentina shakes her head no. “That’s why Guille and Eva came. They wanted to look over it too.” Her hand clenches into fists against Juliana’s arm. “Guille didn’t have to do this and I can’t accuse him of being sexist because he didn’t do this with Eva!” She raises her fist, angrily shouting at the ceiling. “Fuck you abuelito!”

“Woah, a little harsh there, Val?” Juliana says.

“Please,” Valentina says, dismissing her concerns. “This is how we talked to each other when he was alive.”

“He never talked to me that way.”

“Yeah because he liked you,” Valentina says. “He said you reminded him of his little sister.”

Juliana feels oddly flattered. “Oh.”

“Yeah, even dead he’s still ruining my life,” Valentina mutters. “Why?” Valentina groans, throwing back her arm over her eyes. “Did he really think I would end up alone that he needed to meddle like this?”

“Have you been seeing anyone?” Juliana asks. 

Valentina gives her a look, raising an eyebrow. 

Juliana shrugs. “Maybe you’ve been hiding him from me.”

“Unless you count our late nights in the office, then the only one I’ve been seeing is you,” Valentina reminds her. “I have no time to date when we’re preparing to launch the teen magazine.” She sighs deeply again, tilting her head to reach Juliana’s neck before burying her face against there, breathing in deeply to calm her down. Valentina had told her repeatedly that Juliana’s scent for some reason just helped her. “I don’t know what to do,” she whispers against her neck.

Juliana’s hand tightens around her stomach. “You sleeping over?”  She feels a small nod. “Then c’mon, let’s think about this tomorrow.” She pushes against Valentina gently to let her up. 

Valentina waits as Juliana gathers their stuff. She lets herself be tugged to Juliana’s bedroom, immediately going to the right side if the bed and slipping under the covers, watching as Juliana puts their dirty clothes in her laundry.

“Turn off your brain,” she says as she turns off the lamp before climbing into bed. She pats Valentina on the small of her back, trying to reassure her. “We’ll find your prince charming tomorrow.”

-

-

-

“How was the date?” Juliana asks as Valentina groans, launching herself on Juliana’s bed. Juliana complains at having the little nest that she’s built on her bed disturbed at Valentina’s movement.

Valentina grabs the pillow hugging it to her face and screams in it. Once done with her screamfest, she gives it to Juliana and lays down on the bed, blinking up at her, her blue eyes practically begging.  “If you really are my bestest friend in the whole wild world, you’ll suffocate me with this.”

“I should suffocate you for using the word bestest,” Juliana jokes, passing the pillow back to her. She rearranges the pillow around her to make it comfortable again after Valentina grabbed one of the support pillows. “Date that bad?”

“I can’t marry Sergio,” Valentina says. She cringes in disgust. “He’s like my annoying little brother that shows up when he’s unwanted.”

“Then why did you go out with him?”

“Do I need to remind you of that stupid clause that I’m pretty sure is illegal?”

Juliana shakes her head. “Yeah, but what if you just pay someone off?”

Valentina’s eyes widen as if she remembered something. “Right, you’ve been out for a week.”

“It’s not my fault! I’m sick!” Juliana defends, coughing for good measure.

Valentina waves off her concern. “It’s not that. You just missed a lot. So they couldn’t find a way to get me out right? But they also found that I have to be with someone for at least three years and ten months. Or at least have known them for three year and ten months.”

Juliana’s brows furrows at her words. “That’s oddly specific.”

“Right?”

“Your grandpa really was weird,” Juliana comments. “Sergio was the only one that fit that criteria?”

Valentina's eyes look down as she plays with the pillow as a sure sign that she’s thinking. She doesn’t have a lot of guy friends, really. She doesn’t have a lot of girl friends either. “Unless you count…” her voice trails off, haltingly, when she realizes it.

Juliana waits for Valentina to come to whatever conclusion she suddenly came to, eyes still watering and nose running. She coughs.

Valentina looks at her pointedly.

“What?”

Valentina keeps looking at her, a slow smile forming on her face. Her eyes were bright and shining as she stares at Juliana’s sniveling form as if she held all the answers in the world.

Juliana’s eyes widen as it suddenly dawns on her why Valentina was looking at her like she was the most refreshing drink in the world that she’d love to take a sip of. “My brain is a little dumb right now but are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?”

“We literally met three years and ten months ago,” Valentina says as if everything was falling into pieces. She can practically see her bouncing. “You fit the criteria!”

“But wouldn’t your abuelito have something against same-sex marriage?” Juliana asks. “Like c’mon, he wanted to marry you off that screams traditionalist than anything.”

“I don’t remember there being a specific part on gender,” Valentina admits as she takes her phone out as she starts texting their company lawyer. “Let me ask them and see what they say.”

“Val…”

Valentina looks up at Juliana’s tone, thumbs hovering over the keyboard. Her tone makes Valentina still. She turns to Juliana, making her blue eyes bigger and even managing to make it fill with tears. She kneels on Juliana’s side, her palms pressed against together. I know this is asking a lot. I know that and I usually wouldn’t ask something this big, but please?”

Juliana sighs, finger and thumb going to the bridge of her nose, eyes closing as she thinks.

“Jules, please,” Valentina whispers, grabbing the other hand that was not on her face and tugging on it. She places their entwined hands under her chin, imploring. “You’re the only one I could trust and we can’t let the board appoint another CEO when we’ve worked so hard for this.”

Juliana looks at the pleading in her eyes. She closes her eyes again before opening them again, sighing. She nods at her, raising an eyebrow. “This is the proposal I get?” She teases.

Valentina squeals throwing her arms around Juliana. “Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou.”

“You sooooo owe me,” Juliana whispers, a smile on her face, Valentina’s relief and happiness were contagious. 

[scribeofmorpheus]

Dangerous Liaisons Part 6

Catch Up here!

Pairing: Billy Russo x Reader

Words: 3888 (It’s a long one guys)

Rating: L for Strong language! Is that even a rating?

A/N: Okay, this took me a while to finish because I kept getting distracted. Editing? What editing? Just ignore my errors for now! But! I really enjoyed the dynamics in this one. Writing for Karen and Ward was the most fun I’ve had in a while. Especially, the dark side of our heroine! Not a lot of Billy sadly, but he’s front and centre in the next chapter... and so is the prickly family dynamic! (I also tagged some new people to this update, hope you don’t mind). Don’t be afraid to ask to be tagged! Sidenote: I’ve been waiting forever to use this gif.

***

You made your way through the busy offices of the Bulletin. The room was buzzing with life. Employees in middle-class dress smarts hovered around from desk to desk. Some had files in hand, others typed away brutally at the clunky, old computer keys. The atmosphere was electric… productive. As a kid, your father had spent many hours dealing with interviews and alike, but always in the comfort and security of his own home. He always liked having the high ground, made reporters feel uneasy in unwelcome spaces. Except for this one reporter, Ben Urich.

You had been barely out of your teen years when you had watched through ajar doors as your Father lost his iron-clad composure after being accused of something malicious by the straight-shooting reporter. You had never seen anyone rattle your Father to that extent. Ben Urich had gained your respect in that moment, and it wasn't until this very moment that you realised just how much you admired him for that. The irony of Karen Page working for the same newspaper as the one reporter you respected did not escape you.

"Can I help you?" asked a balding man with a salt and pepper beard and drooping eyes. He was cleaning his glasses using his tie as he stood like a man of authority next to a door labelled:  'EDITOR' with a name underneath written: 'Mitchel Ellison'.

"Mitchel Ellison, I presume?"

"Just Ellison," he extended his hand once his glasses were fixed back onto his face. You shook it. "Still haven't answered my question." He said plainly.

"Ah, yes sorry. My name is Y/N Y/L/N." He raised a brow at the mention of your last name. He recognised you then.

"Ah, the elusive heiress to Armistice Security," he said knowingly.

You shouldn't have been surprised. Your Father was Carl Kurogawa, CEO and founder of one of the leading military contracting companies. The press loved him and after Henry's death… well, more and more people were digging into your family's history. That's one of the reasons you legally changed your last name to your mother's maiden name.

"Since my Father and I don't share the same last name, I'm inclined to correct you on that front. I have no affiliations with Armistice Security," You said rather harshly.

"If that were true you'd have sold your shares a long time ago," he retorted quickly. No doubt Ellison had a hard time trusting people, but at least he called things as he saw them.

You sighed, "I'm here to see Karen Page. I called earlier about giving her an exclusive."

"What about?"

You smirked, "Sorry, that's privileged information. You'll just have to find out about it in the editorial room." Ellison huffed lazily, you amused him a little.

"Her office is right through there," He pointed down the hall and to the right.

"Thank you." You smiled flatly.

You knocked on the door with a sign covered by masking tape with the name Karen P. written on it. It was obscuring the name of whoever owned this office space before her.

"Just a second," a soft female voice spoke out.

Impatient, as always, you opened the door anyway. Karen was about to speak from behind her laptop screen, but upon seeing you, her face had a confused look plastered on it.

"Who?--" She squinted her eyes trying to remember. She didn't seem to recognise you. Being in a room full of reporters who usually could pick you out in a crowd, this was certainly a refreshing first. A laugh tried to trickle out of you but you held it back and instead chose to introduce yourself.

You held out your hand, "Y/N Y/L/N. We have an appointment today..." Karen still had a hard time placing you, this time you did giggle. "The Rand Enterprise exclusive about expansion in Hong Kong."

And suddenly, like lightning hitting its mark, Karen finally put two and two together.

"Of course, sorry," She returned your handshake. "I've been swamped lately, and as you probably deduced for yourself, I'm a little new at this." She gestured to her desk filled with overflowing, loose paperwork.

"Reporting or an efficient filing system?" you joked. She laughed awkwardly.

"Both," she sat down and gestured to the chair in front of her desk for you to have a seat. "Which is why I am a little apprehensive as to why you chose me to handle such a story. In fact, why the New York Bulletin? Isn't the Hong Kong expansion something a business magazine would kill to get an exclusive on?"

You smirked, "Oh, it is. Which is why I'm not giving the exclusive to a business magazine. Also, I read some of your other stories. You tend to be discrete about who your sources are when they want to keep things hush, hush."

Karen pulled out a notepad and pen, clicking it once to jot down something on her notepad.

"Why the secrecy? It's not like you're reporting on anything the company doesn't want the world to know… right?"

"I'm just… beating a colleague to the punch," You felt proud at the prospect of Ward reading this exclusive in a small newspaper after he had spent months preparing to give this exclusive to the Wall Street Journal. The look on his face when he finds out he doesn't have an exclusive anymore filled you with delight.

"Sounds alarmingly ambiguous."

"It sounds like an exclusive."

Karen took hint of your tone and cleared her throat, "Okay, so what can you tell me about Ward Meachum's new merger deal?"

You crossed your legs and leaned back, but made sure not to look too comfortable. "For starters, I can tell you it's not Ward Meachum's merger. He shook hands and posed for photo ops but they were my contacts and it was my project. I worked in Hong Kong for several years before I returned. Suffice to say, I had the means, Ward had the poster boy look."

Without skipping a beat, Karen jotted down on her notepad in shorthand. You were curious to read what she had written down, but this story wasn't what was important right now. You needed to gain her trust and get her guard down before asking about the incident with General Schoonover.

"Why did you leave Hong Kong?"

"I'm sorry?"

Karen plastered on a genial smile, "You mentioned your posting in the Hong Kong offices as being your primary qualification for spearheading this merger. If you managed to accumulate such good connections, why leave such a promising post? Wasn't accepting the post at Rand a step down?"

Karen was a sly one, this explained why someone with no background in journalism got ahead so quick. She was fishing for two stories in one interview. The Rand scoop and why you were offering her the Rand scoop. You made a mental note not to underestimate her. "This story isn't about me, Miss Page."

"Is it not? You’re not a disgruntled employee as far as I can tell. And giving a small newspaper access to such an exclusive doesn't make much sense unless you're trying to gain all the credit, but that wouldn't exactly help moral at the workplace if they found out you leaked the story. And unless you're Mr Meachum's scorned lover--"

You snorted a little at the insinuation of you being Ward's scorned lover. "You want to know what I get out of this. What my angle is."

"To be frank, yes."

"That's easy Miss Page. An ally at a respectable paper. That's something of great value in my line of work."

"In corporate legalities or military law?"

You smiled. Karen had just given away her ace in the hole. She had done research on you, which meant she knew exactly who you were when you walked into her office. She really was a sly one. "In a competitive corporate world."

You both exchanged a look that carried the fake pleasantry smiles not uncommon with most of your social interactions, but both you and Karen's eyes held a glare that spoke volumes. It was a look of respectful rivalry and cautiousness.

"Look, Miss Page--"

"Karen is fine."

"Okay, Karen. We can spend hours going round in circles, continuing this verbal detente with one another, or you can ask what you really want to ask me and save us both some time."

"It's the same question. Why me? And no bullshit. Why come to me, out of all the other more qualified and respected reporters? Why come all the way down to Hell’s Kitchen?"

"To be honest. My father hates this newspaper. And my boss is an ass. So if I can manage to serve a big ol‘ 'fuck you' to the both of them, it's a win-win for me." Karen seemed pleased with your answer. "But, there is one other reason."

"Yes?"

"The Punisher."

Karen froze for a second, you noticed her battling for control to remain unreadable.

"Whatever do you mean?" She asked, trying to seem oblivious to what you were implying.

"You are the one who wrote of his demise, did you not? It was quite the… unexpected angle. You framed his narrative to be more sympathetic than most other news outlets."

"I wrote Frank's story. Everyone else had already written about the Punisher."

"And weren't you assigned his case when you worked for… Oh, what was their name again? Murdock and Neilson?"

Karen's brows knitted together and she straightened her back to appear slightly taller than you, "Nelson and Murdock." Karen huffed. "And here I thought I was the one conducting the interview here."

Strong-arming Karen was proving to be ineffective. It was time to play a different angle. You sighed and stood from your chair, gathering a file from your purse and presenting it in front of Karen.

"Look, Karen. I'm not here to accuse you of anything. If anything I commend you for writing the real story about Frank Castle. It shows your willingness to bring the truth to light. It's the reason I thought you could help. You worked with him and I know you were at the scene of General Schoonover's murder."

"How?" Her eyes skittered between you and the file.

"I also know that you've read up on me. You and me have something in common." Karen broke eye contact for a brief moment. "I just want closure. And I think… I think you knew the Punisher better than you let on. And everything that happened, all the people he killed… I think they were part of something bigger. Schoonover, Frank and… my brother’s death." You had to pause to take a breath. "It's all connected. And I've hit a dead end. You're the last thread I can pull. I know you know something. I'm just hoping..."

Karen looked at the file you gave her. It had your brother’s name printed on the yellow jacket. She sighed and slid it back to you. "I don't know anything. I'm sorry."

You smiled with disappointment, sliding the file back to Karen. "I've got more copies. Keep it." You grabbed your bag and headed for the door. "My numbers on the back. In case you suddenly remember something." As you walked out the door, you caught a glimpse of Karen burying her head in her hands and whispering a soft "Fuck" under her breath. That made you smirk slightly. Now you just had to wait and see if she'd call.

Even though you knew full well that you and Karen had kept your voices more than professional, you couldn't help but feel eyes on you as you walked out of the Bulletin's doors. Specifically, the judgmental eyes of Mitchel Ellis.

***

When you got into your car, you finally let the tough as nails act slide away and suddenly you felt limp. You closed your eyes and looked up at the car's roof feeling particularly aimless. As the seconds turned to minutes, your mind kept trying to make sense of all the puzzle pieces that didn't fit together in your investigation. Then, your phone chimed from inside your pocket. You half expected it to be Cecil and the other half… well, you reprimanded yourself for wishing it was Billy. What you didn’t expect to find was an email from Ward. Not just any email, a letter of notice.

He was firing you.

Over a fucking email.

The damn merger story hadn't even been put to print yet, even if it had, your name would remain anonymous. Which leaves the very probable reason for your contract termination being the result of a hurt ego and rejected advances.

"Asshole!" You swore. Rage bubbling to the surface, you typed away at your phone and sent a message you knew you'd come to regret, but your anger had gotten the best of you.

"Karen. About keeping my name anonymous, don't bother." You hit send and without missing a beat, you dialled Cecil's number. If Ward wanted to play dirty, you had no problem playing it his way.

"Heyyo," Cecil answered in a drowsy tone.

"Hey, I need a big favour."

***

You stormed your way up to Ward's office, ignoring the protests of his assistant clomping after you in heels she wasn't comfortable running in.

"Ma'am!" She whisper-shouted frantically after you as you burst into his office. Ward had turned to you with a shocked expression mid-sentence. A room full of important busy-bodies craning their necks to look at who cause this disturbance. Ward glared at you menacingly and then eyed his assistant who swallowed loudly. "I'm sorry Mr Meachum. I tried to stop her."

"That's quite alright. We're just finished in here," Ward buttoned his three-piece suit-jacket and motioned for the men to exit the room. A fake smile tugging at his lips. When you were finally alone, Ward closed the door behind him before walking over to his desk. He leaned his tall frame against it languidly. When he didn't speak, you did.

"A fucking text, Ward? You don't have the balls to fire me yourself, you had your assistant type up the fucking thing?" You tried to keep a handle on your temper. "What was the reason? Please tell me there's a better reason than your hurt pride!"

Ward gave you a cheeky smile, enjoying your anger a bit too much. "Well, you mean despite you showing up late to the meeting the other day, then feeding me some bullshit excuse of traffic being the reason you were late? And don't even get me started on all the other times you've put off work hours to do God knows what!"

"You're firing me for tardiness? I'm the one who spearheaded this expansion project in the first place. Without me-"

"I'm firing you for unprofessional conduct. You can do whatever you please after office hours, but social calls the same day you're late to the closure of the project you were in charge of? That's unacceptable."

"So this is about your dumb fucking ego!"

Ward's eye twitched and you could all but see his professional disguise begin to crack, "I expect you to remove yourself from the premises immediately before I call security. You can collect your things from rece-"

Before Ward could finish his threat, you took out your phone and pressed send on a video file. In an instant, Ward's phone chimed from his desk. He glanced over at it and saw your name on the email.

"The fuck is this?" Ward asked, an eyebrow arched.

"This is me choosing to stoop to your level, Ward." Your words were saturated in disgust.

"Is this a threat?" He gawked at you, completely surprised.

"Open it and find out."

Ward did as you suggested and his face went pale. The video showed him rifling through his desk drawer and pulling out a small tin, before proceeding to empty it of its contents and snort the white powder that came from it.

"I think that camera angle suits you. Does those cheekbones of yours the justice they deserve." You held up your own phone which played the same video.

"You bitch!" Ward snarled.

You took a step back and held up a single finger, "I'd be very careful about what you do next, Ward. One press of a button and I send this video to a very respectful reporter whom I was just in talks with a few hours ago. Then the whole world will know that the respectable and business savvy, Ward Meachum has a coke problem."

He clenched his fists till they went white, "How the fuck did you get your hands on that? Are you spying on me now?"

You laughed, "I have better things to do, Ward. But don't forget, I'm great at making connections. And this is a video from your security cameras in your office. I just know a guy who's good with computers."

"What do you want," Ward's words came out hesitantly.

"My job back for starters. I've worked too hard for someone like you to get in the way of it. Shouldn't be too hard to do, I'm guessing you hadn't consulted anyone about it. We can just keep your email between you, me and your lovely assistant."

Ward folded his arms and took a tentative step forward. He was trying to reassert his position of power, but you didn't budge. "And how do I know you aren't bluffing? I have a PR department available around the clock. We can spin this video however we want."

"Read tomorrows paper," you said snidely. "And once you realise I'm not bluffing. Add a raise while you’re at it." You added before walking out of his office. Adrenaline soaked your muscles and you felt powerful. As the door closed behind you, you heard a crash coming from Ward's office. His assistant looked at you with wide-eyes.

"Might want to hold off Mr Meachum's appointments for the day. Something tells me he won’t be in a very cooperative mood today." You winked at the assistant and rode the elevator to the carpark.

***

As you walked to your car, your phone rang. You sighed and rolled your eyes. "Jesus, I can't catch a break today." When you saw the caller ID you were pleasantly surprised. "Mom?"

"Honey, hey! I was worried I wouldn't get a hold of you, busy schedule of yours and all that," she rambled quickly in that shaky tone that had become her new default in the last couple of years. "I- Uh…"

Your heart began to race with worry, "Is everything okay?" You interjected.

"What? Oh, oh, yes! Everything's fine. Why wouldn't it be? I'm calling because there's something important I have to… Umm. Why don't you come home for a bit and I'll explain everything."

"Mom, what is this about?"

"See you soon," she said hurriedly, cutting the line straight after.

"What?" You stood dumbfounded and slightly worried. You made your way to your car at a jogging pace and set off for the family mansion.  

When you arrived, you were surprised to find a car parked by the driveway. You didn't pay it much attention, you were more preoccupied with finding out what that weird phone call was about. You rang the doorbell and the house butler answered the door. He seemed baffled to see you. To be fair, you were surprised you hadn't talked yourself out of driving through that accursed gate brandished with your father’s initials.

"Weathermire." You greeted him professionally.

"Miss Y/N. It's been a long time. I last saw you at the--"

"Gala. My mother called me. Do you know where she is?"

"The kitchen I believe, miss."

"Thank you," you made your way through the grand opulent mansion with familiarity.

"Would you like me to inform your Father-"

"No," you said almost instantly. "It’s better he doesn't know."

When you got to the kitchen, you were greeted by the image of your mother and several cook staff preparing food.

"Oh, Darling. You got here quicker than I expected," your mother said gleefully. She walked over to hug you, wiping her wet hands on her apron. She looked elegant as usual. Weathermire entered the kitchen just then and with a simple glance, she instructed him to go off and do something. He complied with a simple bow.

"Mom, what's all this? When you called, I thought…" You didn't know what to say, you honestly didn't know what to make of her phone call. You shook your head. "Why did you call me here?"

"Oh, well I figured we could have a little family dinner. I have been sat at an empty table for weeks now. Your father always has his meetings, you always have yours. I figured today there would be no excuses for you to be antagonistic towards each other."

You snorted, "Whatever brought that idea on?"

Just as your words escaped your mouth, Weathermire opened the doors to your father's study and your father and his guest stepped into the kitchen. Everyone's expression -except for your mother's- was that of being caught unawares.

"Billy?" You asked in shock. But as soon as you said his name, you regretted it.

"Do you two know each other?" Your father asked with a stiff tone.

You shot Billy a look you hoped mirrored 'Don't tell them about us'.

Billy, like the chameleon he was, flawlessly kept his composure and replied, "Yes, we had the pleasure of meeting at your Gala a few weeks ago." He smiled at your parents dashingly.

"You never told me you knew my daughter," Your father said.

"Your daughter?" Billy pretended to be caught off-guard. Now it was Billy's turn to shoot you a knowing look, "It never came up."

"We only talked for a brief moment. There wasn't any polite way to bring up my parentage to a complete stranger." You said through gritted teeth.

Your fathers eyes squinted in your direction and your mother cleared her throat, "Come now, we can all get to know each other better over some food."

Billy and you simultaneously tried to object but your mother interrupted, "Hush, you're both staying for dinner and that's the end of it."

You put on a painful grin. Something in Billy's expression found this whole exchange humorous.

"You two go set up the table, we'll be right over." You mother ushered them out of the kitchen.

You sighed when it was just you and your mother in the room. "How long have you known?" You asked her, not even bothering to deny you were more than acquainted with Billy.

"Since I saw the two of you leaving the Gala together." She had a smile on that showed she was proud of her meddling. "When he came over to discuss business with your father… well, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to have a reason for the both of you to be civilised and enjoy a meal with your mother while she got to know this very nice man I've heard nothing about, by the way."

"There's nothing to say. We went out for drinks once."

Your mother eyed you for a moment, not believing you for a second.

"Okay, maybe twice. But he's not--"

"I'm not what?" Billy asked.

Chapter Seven!

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[chaotic-woso]

Is It Okay if I Call You Mine - Ch. 2 - CarolxMaria fic

Cross-posted from AO3

First chapter here

Fandom - Captain Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe

Ships - Carol Danvers/Maria Rambeau

Characters - Carol Danvers, Maria Rambeau, Dr. Wendy Lawson, Monica Rambeau

Rating - T

Summary - Multi-chapter fic exploring the relationship between Carol Danvers and Maria Rambeau as they become the Rambeau-Danvers family. Spans across different moments in the Carol-Maria relationship, from before they get together (because let’s all agree, they are t o g e t h e r in this film even if Marvel won’t come out and say it), to various milestones and slices of life in their relationship after they start actually dating, living together, mutually pining for each other, etc.

Ch. 2 - Carol embraces the role of supportive best friend and lots of mutual pining occurs

Maria decides to have the baby and she finally convinces her (begs endlessly) to join Dr. Lawson’s project, knowing Lawson will be far more supportive of Maria's choice than any of the officers at Maria’s current posting. But if she’s being honest with herself, her motivations are totally selfish. She misses working alongside her best friend, misses hearing her voice over the comms while she flies, misses the way everything between them just comes naturally, like they were born in sync with one another.

They don’t talk about the baby’s father and they don’t talk about that morning in the kitchen where Carol knows they were on the precipice of something. She throws herself into the role of supportive best friend and pretends that everything is normal, everything is fine. Her priority is Maria and the baby, not her own emotional turmoil.

After two months of long drives from Maria’s place to Pegasus, multiple doctor’s appointments that she insists on accompanying Maria to, and less and less time spent at her own place, Maria moves and Carol moves with her.

“It’ll be just like in Basic!” she says excitedly when she gives Maria her long spiel on why they should become roommates again.

Maria narrows her eyes at her.

“You mean you pounding on my door every morning before the sun was up so we could go on an extra run before everyone else was up? Or do you mean you snoring so loud I could barely sleep cuz it sounded like someone was running a chainsaw in our bunk? Or --”

“I did not snore.”

“You do snore, Danvers. Let’s not pretend it’s something you’ve grown out of.”

“I’ll be in my own room, down the hall, behind a closed door. You’ll never hear a peep.”

Maria crosses her arms, extremely skeptical.

She straightens her back and gets ready to play her trump card.

“I’ll do the dishes,” she says, waits.

Maria quirks an eyebrow.

“Every night,” she adds, waits again. She puts on her best pout, tries to look as endearing as possible.

Maria makes her suffer for a few more moments and then sighs. It’s the sigh she makes when she knows she’s lost and there’s no sense in arguing any further.

“Okay, fine. You can move in with me.”

“Yes!” she exclaims and pumps her fist in victory. She throws her arms around Maria and hugs her tight. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

Maria’s arms are trapped at her sides, her barely-there bump nestled between them.

“Don’t make me regret this already, Danvers,” Maria warns.She releases Maria immediately and steps away, snaps to attention.

“I won’t let you down, ma'am,” she responds and mock salutes.

Maria rolls her eyes but can’t hide the smile on her face.

“You’re a fool, Carol Danvers.”

She smiles back at Maria, can’t stop the feeling of happiness that spreads through her whole body.

“That may be true, but I’m your fool and that’s all that matters.”

Maria shakes her head and holds her hand out to Carol.

“Come on, let’s go find us a house.”

They find a small place not far from base - two bedrooms, a decent kitchen, tiny backyard, enough for now. It’s not the place Maria plans to raise her child, but it will get them through the next year or two.

Time passes and they fall into an easy routine, both at work and at home. It shouldn’t surprise her just how smoothly it comes together; they’ve always made a great team. Maria has always understood her, knows how to handle her on good days and bad days. She lets her be herself, no questions asked. And she tries her damnedest to make sure she does the same for Maria.

At night she sneaks Maria’s copy of ‘What to Expect When You’re Expecting,’ reads about trimesters and prenatal care, the size of the fetus at each weekly milestone, how to handle morning sickness and prevent stretch marks. A lot of the stuff in the book freaks her out, especially the chapter on childbirth, but it also reinforces what she already knows to be true - Maria is a goddamn badass warrior woman.

She keeps the house stocked with saltines and ginger ale, goes on late-night runs for bizarre food and ice cream combinations (the baby apparently likes Rocky Road with Cheetos, something Carol tries once and never again). She rubs Maria’s feet when they get sore after a long day working on Dr. Lawson’s planes, buys her extra pillows so she can sleep more comfortably as the baby grows. She cries when they hear the baby’s heart beat for the first time, even more than Maria does. She keeps an ultrasound photo taped to the control panel of her bird and another copy tucked in the visor of her Mustang.

Maria teases her and calls her a big ol’ sap, and she can’t even argue back because it is so damn true. She is in deep.

She decides to start a college fund for the kid but doesn’t tell Maria. She hates having a secret between them, but she knows Maria would adamantly refuse any kind of monetary help, would see it as a sign of weakness. She starts it off small with a couple hundred dollars and contributes to it every month from her paycheck.

She figures in eighteen years she’ll have come up with a good enough argument as to why she did this, and Maria will be unable to refuse. What she doesn’t know, has no possible way of foreseeing, is that Maria will actually find out about it in just six years’ time when a lawyer goes through Carol’s will and lists a bank account with one Monica Rambeau as the beneficiary, to be made accessible on the day of her eighteenth birthday.

Maria will both loathe and love Carol in that moment, will hate her so strongly for leaving them, for her life being reduced to a series of objects and documents. But she will also love her, will always love her, for thinking of Monica as her own, as someone worth investing in and caring for even before she was born, before they were together, before Monica became Carol’s in every way but biologically.

But Carol has no idea that's what lies ahead. Right now everything is pretty damn near perfect she thinks, and she doesn't see how anything could ruin it.

“Have you thought about names?” Carol asks Maria one evening while they're sitting in their tiny backyard watching the sun go down and sipping iced tea.

“I got a couple in mind,” Maria answers but purposefully doesn't elaborate.

Carol tilts her sunglasses down and looks over at her.

“You gonna share or just keep 'em to yourself?”

Maria gives back her own sassy look over the rims of her aviators.

“You just want to know if 'Carol’ is on the list.”

Carol places a hand to her chest and gasps.

“I'm wounded you think I'm that vain.”

“You are that vain, Danvers. You spend ten minutes every morning checking yourself out in the bathroom mirror - don't think I don't know what you're up to in there when I'm trying to get your ass out the door.”

“Can't help it that I look so damn good I distract myself sometimes,” she smirks back, her cockiest grin in full effect.

Maria rolls her eyes (probably for at least the tenth time that day) and she definitely does not let them fall back to Carol and linger on the exposed curve of her neck that glows golden in the setting sun, and she most certainly does not notice the way Carol's arms flex as she grips the arms of her chair, projecting strength and power even when she's at rest.

Maria gulps her ice tea and turns away, misses the self-satisfied look that crosses Carol's face.

That woman is such a damn tease sometimes. It's gonna get her in real trouble one day.

“Well if you won't share your list, I'll tell you mine,” Carol pipes up.

Maria's head whips back to Carol.

“You have a list?”

“Sure I do,” Carol shrugs. “I kinda got bored the last time we were at the doctor's and I was waiting for them to finish all your tests and stuff. They had one of those baby name books lying around so I flipped through it.”

Maria's eyes narrow suspiciously.

“You mean the baby name book you gave me last month that you said you picked up at a used book shop?”

Carol has the decency to look slightly ashamed and shrinks back in her chair.

“Uhhhh….no?” she replies, very unconvincingly.

All she can do is shake her head. There's never a dull moment with this woman.

“Carol, you have to bring it back next time.”

“But you already marked it up! They'll know.”

“I didn't write in it, I just have sticky notes marking the pages with the names I like.”

Carol sighs.

“Fine, I'll bring it back. But promise you won't make me confess? The receptionist lady doesn't like me very much as it is.”

She rolls her eyes - again, make that eleven times today - and pinches the bridge of her nose. People ask her if she’ll be able to handle a child on her own; she lives with Carol Danvers - she’s got loads of experience, she’ll manage just fine.

“Maybe if you stopped rearranging her magazine display every time we go there and didn’t steal their books, she’d find you a tad more endearing.”

Carol crosses her arms and huffs.

“It’s not my fault she can’t take a joke.”

If her child ends up half as stubborn as its Auntie Carol she’s in for years of trouble.

“Just bring the damn book back, you goof. Now are you gonna tell me your names or what?”

Carol pouts a bit longer and ignores her question. She sips her iced tea and waits, knows Carol will come around in her own good time.

A few more moments of scowling into the distance later, and then Carol mellows back out, sunny disposition restored.

“Well...I think an M name would sound good,” Carol starts. “Then you two could match, ya know? M and M Rambeau.”

“You've really thought about this.”

Carol's cheeks pink in embarrassment. It makes her look cuter than she has any right to be.

“I...I guess, yeah.”

Maria smiles at her encouragingly.

“Well, whatcha got for M names?”

Carol perks up.

“You really want to hear?”

“I asked didn't I? But I still get final say when the big day comes.”

“Of course, of course,” Carol agrees. “It's your kid after all, I'm just the cool aunt.”

Maria wonders if Carol knows she's so much more than that.

Carol launches into her list and Maria listens, nods at some and grimaces at others.

“Well for boys there's Michael, Marcus, Mitchell, Matthew, Mark, Malcolm, Marshall, Martin, Marvin, Max, Maurice, Melvin, Miles, Murphy, and Murray.”

“Marvin?”

“That one was a joke,” Carol admits. “Can you imagine? Baby Marv?”

They both dissolve into laughter at the thought.

“But you're convinced it's a girl, so there's a bunch of those - Melissa, Megan, Michelle, Melanie, Mackenzie, Maya, Madeline, Madison, Maggie, Mandy, Margo, Marisa, Melinda, Melody, Mikaela, Mindy, and Morgan,” Carol rattles off, letting out a breath.

“Oh, and Monica,” she adds.

She doesn't tell Carol that her own list is full of M names, too. And she's definitely not going to give her the satisfaction and unnecessary ego boost of knowing that 'Carol’ has floated across that same list several times as an option for a middle name. She’d be downright insufferable if she knew.

“Those aren’t half bad,” she says. “I thought for sure you were just going to say ‘Maria Junior’ for a girl’s name.”

“I’m not going to say I didn’t consider it.”

Maria laughs and tilts her head to the sky. The first stars have come out and the moon has risen, its crescent shape a sliver of white against the purpling dusk.

“We should head back in,” Carol suggests.

“Probably,” she agrees, but makes no move to get up.

Carol stands slowly and stretches, tucks her sunglasses into her t-shirt and steps toward her. She extends her arm out and Maria looks down at it in mock disdain.

“I can get out of a chair on my own, you know.”

“Eh, I know. Humor me?”

She accepts Carol’s arm and pushes herself up while Carol gently pulls her. She puts a hand to her back and Carol gives her a knowing look.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she insists, waving Carol off. “Those chairs aren’t that comfortable even when I’m not five months pregnant.”

“Uh huh,” Carol replies, smart enough to know not to argue. She follows Maria into the house, locking the back door behind them.In the kitchen she stretches, works the kink out of her back, and yawns. She feels a telltale flutter in her abdomen and grabs for Carol.

Carol whirls around, startled and confused.

“What is it?” she asks, a slight panic in her voice.

Maria presses Carol’s hand to her stomach in the spot where she just felt movement. They stand there for a few seconds and nothing happens. Carol’s palm is warm and wide across the curve of her shirt. Even through the fabric she can feel the heat that emanates from her.

“What are you -”

And then she feels it again and Carol must feel it too because she stops mid-question and her eyes widen.

“Oh,” Carol breathes out. “Wow.”

Carol blinks down at their entwined hands, her whole body still, and waits for the baby to do it again. It happens once more and Carol laughs in amazement.

“Hey there, Trouble,” Carol whispers with a reverence Maria’s never heard in her voice before.

Her best friend looks up at her, keeps her hand tucked beneath Maria’s. Carol’s eyes are shiny and her face is full of awe and wonder and adoration. It overwhelms her, how much she sees reflected in Carol’s expressive brown eyes. She wonders what Carol sees reflected back in her own, if it tilts her world on its axis like it does to Maria.

There's a beat of silence and Carol looks like she's about to say something, but then the baby kicks again, harder this time. Carol pulls her hand back in surprise.

“Dang, kid. Take it easy in there.”

Carol still grins widely and her eyes still sparkle with pure happiness, but whatever else Maria saw revealed briefly in the depths of her eyes has been subdued and pushed back down where it's no longer exposed.

She wants to ask Carol what she was about to say before the baby assertively reminded them of its presence, but she knows she won't get a straight answer. She doesn’t want to risk ruining the night by calling her out on it either.

They'll have this shared moment of joy, and for now that's enough.

[mylonelyangel]

Good Omens: A Study in Comedy

A couple years ago in my senior year of high school, my English teacher had told us for our last essay of the year, to pick any novel by any notable author, and write about it. I picked Good Omens cause i happened to be reading it at the time, but this essay was legit the most fun I’ve ever had writing an essay. I figured with the show coming out at @neil-gaiman being on tumblr, I might as well post it here were people might enjoy it.

Its about why Good Omens is successful as a comedy. It’s kinda long so it’s gonna go beneath a cut. But yeah here it is. (Also apologies for the formatting I cant figure out how to make this thing readable. rn it looks a lot better on desktop than mobile. Any suggestions on that are welcome)

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In the world of entertainment-- be that film, TV, literature, etc. -- comedy is hard. It’s hard to act, it’s hard to write, and it takes real talent to do comedy well. Often, comedy goes underappreciated in the professional world; however, Good Omens seems to be an exception. In writing the forward to their book, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman describe the many well-read and deteriorating copies of Good Omens that they have had the pleasure of signing. From books dropped in bathtubs and puddles, to pages being held together by packing tape, clearly, the book is well loved by many. The unique quality of this novel is that rather than a “laugh-out-loud” humor, Pratchett and Gaiman aimed for a more subtle, ironic humor adding up to a satire that teaches a lesson on the importance of humanity and compassion. All in all, Good Omens is a delightfully witty and entertaining book that is sure to please any avid reader.

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Biography

It was the year 1989 when Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett decided to combine efforts in writing Good Omens. At the time, Gaiman was 29. He was born in Hampshire UK in 1960 and grew up frequently visiting his local library, developing a life-long love for reading. After briefly pursuing a career in journalism, he soon became interested in writing comic books. The Sandman is one of Gaiman’s most notable graphic novel works. It won several awards including three Harvey Awards, nine Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, and the 1991 World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story, becoming the first comic to every receive a literary award.  After gaining this success, Gaiman has gone on to expand his resume by working in film and television. He’s written and directed two films: A Short Film About John Bolton (2002) and Statueque (2009). Most recently, Gaiman is writing for the television series adaption of his book, American Gods, set to premier on April 30, 2017 on Starz.

Gaiman’s writing companion, Terry Pratchett, was born in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire in 1948. He had a passion for writing from a young age, publishing his first story, “The Hades Business” in his school magazine at age thirteen. Four years later at age seventeen, Pratchett dropped out of school to pursue journalism. It was in this line of work that he came into contact with his first publisher, Colin Smythe, and through him published his first book in 1971, The Carpet People. Smythe remained a close friend of Pratchett and in 1983 published the first book of Pratchett’s phenomenally successful series: Discworld. At this time, Pratchett worked for the Central Electricity Generating Board as a press officer. Four books into his Discworld series, Pratchett decided to become a full time writer. After a long and successful career, unfortunately in 2007 Pratchett was diagnosed with a rare form of Alzheimer’s called Posterior Cortical Atrophy. He lived the last years of his life very well; in 2009, he was knighted by the Queen for his services to literature and in 2013 he presented a documentary discussing the controversial topic of assisted dying. Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die won both an Emmy and a BAFTA. Despite campaigning for assisted dying, Terry did not choose to take his own life and died peacefully surrounded by family in March 2015.

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Extended Analysis

The comedy collaboration Good Omens has been deemed by many to be a great novel. Critics praise the unique blend of writing styles for making this novel a success, but to understand what makes the comedic genius of Good Omens, one must ask what precisely makes it funny. This novel is a satire; it comments on existentialist ideas surrounding humanity and the responsibility humans have over their own actions for better or for worse. In order to emphasize their novel as an unexpectedly witty and socially relevant satire, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett use several literary devices such as repetition, mood, and irony. In a remarkable world belonging to angels and demons who wish to bring about the apocalypse, the air of abnormality must be maintained throughout the novel; comedy only follows naturally.  

In order to emphasize the absurdity of the events in Good Omens, the authors often used repetition in describing people or events. Given that this book revolves around the events of Armageddon, absurdity is not hard to come by; it is precisely what enforces the satire nature of the novel. For instance, the Antichrist is first described to the reader as “a golden haired male baby we will call the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of this World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan, and Lord of Darkness” (Gaiman 27). Not only does the baby have this long list of titles, but he is referred to as such several more times in the next few pages. This description is a means to bring attention to the oddness of the situation and the repetition serves to emphasize it. Another interesting use of repetition is a scene in which the events of the evening are being narrated by an irritable man named R. P. Tyler; a man who not only believes himself to be the sole decider of right and wrong in the world, but that it is his responsibility to pronounce his wisdom unto others via the letter column of the Tadfield Adviser. This man is the epitome of arrogant old men and on the afternoon of Armageddon, finds himself directing several parties of odd people to the same location. In the eyes of the reader, all of the characters introduced thus far are arriving to the small English town of Tadfield for the start of the apocalypse. The events are rumored to take place at the Lower Tadfield Air Base and in succession, R. P. Tyler encounters four groups of people going to the Airfield within a span of 30 minutes (Gaiman 325-336). The result is a comedic effect that brings all separate storylines back to the same page. The repetition of events is what brought to R. P. Tyler’s attention to the odd occurrences in Tadfield. As the man met group after group, he quickly becomes more flustered and his figurative bubble of normality is cracking until Crowley’s arrival: “There was a large once-black car on fire in the lane and a man in sunglasses was leaning out the window, saying through the smoke “I’m sorry, I’ve managed to get a little lost. Can you direct me to the Lower Tadfield Air Base? I know it’s around here somewhere”” (Gaiman 334). One can safely say that after this event, R. P. Tyler no longer has a figurative bubble of normality.

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One of the highlights of Good Omens is the comical language in which it is written, setting an air for the absurd to be normalized and the mundane to receive an exaggerated retelling. An ambiance of abnormality is maintained throughout the entire novel through methods of over-explaining minute details. For instance, as the first proceedings of Armageddon are set into motion, the scene is set with the following depiction:

“It wasn’t a dark and stormy night. It should have been, but that’s the weather for you. For every mad scientist who’s had a convenient thunderstorm just on the night his Great Work is finished and lying on the slab, there have been dozens who’s sat around aimlessly under the peaceful stars while Igor clocks up the overtime” (Gaiman 14).

This description of the setting contributes to a lighthearted mood despite the impending apocalypse. It feels as though the authors are making polite conversation as the story progresses, and this style of writing is used throughout the novel. Later on, a scene occurs in which a demon kills a room full of telemarketers and the aftermath is described as follows: “. . . a wave of low-grade goodness started to spread exponentially through the population and millions of people who ultimately would not have suffered minor bruises of the soul did not in fact do so” (Gaiman 308). The elegance in which that sentence is written gives the reader a sense of understanding in that the authors are not technically wrong in their description. The line is satirical and for many readers, felt on a personal level. The witty line does not fail in upholding the absurd and exceedingly nonchalant atmosphere. This style brings to light underlying truths of humanity that one may not acknowledge in a day to day basis, but are true nonetheless. Through this recognition of distinctly human emotions and struggles, Gaiman and Pratchett succeed in creating an engaging environment in which the reader is both reflective and entertained by their story.

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The irony in Good Omens lies within the ongoing discussion of humanity and the importance of free will. As Heaven and Hell prepare for Armageddon, the key to its commencement lies in the hands of the Antichrist. However, the Antichrist ends up being much more human than either side predicted. As usual, the demon Crowley and angel Aziraphale come to this conclusion long before their superiors:

““Because if I know anything,” said Crowley urgently, “it’s that the birth is just the start. It’s the upbringing that’s important. It’s the influences. Otherwise it will never learn to use its powers.” . . .

“You’re saying the child isn’t evil of itself?” [Aziraphale] said slowly.

“Potentially evil.  Potentially good, too, I suppose. Just this huge powerful potentiality, waiting to be shaped.” said Crowley” (Gaiman 58).  

Given that Adam the Antichrist grew up in the absence of any supernatural influence, he naturally became a very pure and innocent child who only wanted save the environment and read conspiracy theory magazines. In fact, unaware of his power and heritage, he was involuntarily at fault for the rise of Atlantis and the visitations of aliens. His deep love for the planet also allowed for his subconscious to grow rain forests in the thick of cities and to turn 500 tons of Uranium into a lemon drop. In a book that satirizes the meanings of good and evil, it is very ironic that the Antichrist has the greatest amount of love to give. As observed by local witch, Anathema: “Something or someone loves this place. Loves every inch of it so powerfully that it shields and protects it. A deep-down, huge, fierce love. How can anything bad start here?” (Gaiman 229). It is reiterated several times throughout the book that humans are their own worst enemy. They are the ones who have free will, therefore they choose whether to act good or evil. Demons and angels have no choice in this respect. Gaiman and Pratchett make clear to their audience that humans must value their free will, spread love and live life to its fullest. If the Antichrist can do it, so can you.

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When reflecting on the comedic success of Good Omens, one can conclude that Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett are masters at their craft. This wonderfully composed work of fiction succeeds in satirizing the inner workings of human nature in that the supernatural can do no worse to humans than humans already do to themselves. Stylistically, Gaiman and Pratchett create a casual environment that highlights the absurd events by using techniques such as irony, mood, and repetition. The result is a clever and profound lesson on the importance of love in the human experience taught not by those who are human, but those who act with the most humanity.

[haltandcatchfiretothemax]

FEMSLASH FEBRUARY 2019 #19: In which Cameron reads a book

[CW: mentions of food and eating]

Things had gone back to what she and Donna apparently both took for granted as normal. Or, not really, Cameron had decided. There hadn’t been any sort of going back, things had just continued forward after that Sunday night, both of them seemingly comfortable, at least for the time being, with not talking about why Cameron had brought up the realtor. Cameron thought of that night often, she’d dreamed more than once of Donna’s chicken pot pie, probably because she habitually thought about that evening, about how warm and bright Donna’s kitchen was, and how relaxed she’d felt there even when she was self-conscious and afraid of upsetting Donna, when she was trying to fall asleep. 

In the mornings, Cameron thought about work: if she should follow through on designing the game she’d been imagining for a year, whatever freelance project was paying the bills that week, and Donna’s idea. Donna was always one of the first things to cross Cameron’s mind when she woke up. But, that was how it had always been: when she’d been recruited to Cardiff, she’d thought of whatever game she was playing and the alterations she’d make to it if she were a game designer, the Giant’s software, and J*e. At Mutiny, she’d thought about whatever game they were in the middle of writing, their user base, whatever she and Donna were arguing about that week, and then, Tom. It took a long time for her to stop thinking about Mutiny and Donna after she relocated to Tokyo, or maybe she never really had. She’d never thought to question any of this. It was easy to think of it as thinking about work, rather than thinking about Donna. 

With as ‘normal’ as things were, Cameron couldn’t get through a day without wondering, what if she wasn’t ever ‘ready to talk’ about everything that had happened with the realtor, with Simon, with her entire relationship with Donna over the past ten years? She wasn’t usually really asking, on most days, she worried about this instead of really considering it. She wasn’t even really sure what she was worrying about when she asked herself about this. It was a knee-jerk thing she did that she couldn’t help.

Over one of their regular dinners, Bos had asked her, “Well, that’s a good question. What would happen if you two never have that conversation?” Eyes narrowed in bafflement and slight irritation, Cameron had said, “I don’t know? I’ve never thought about it?” Bos had responded with a fatherly but gruff, “Well think about it now, then!” With minimal effort, Cameron imagined driving to Donna’s house to write code and eat various kinds of takeout every night until they were in their 80s. She knew that it wasn’t realistic, but it sounded incredibly appealing. It maybe sounded perfect. 

For some reason, Cameron was afraid to say this out loud, even to Bos. She admitted that it wouldn’t be the worst thing, for things to stay as they were between her and Donna. “So then there’s no reason to worry,” Bos said. Pointedly, he added, “No need to borrow worry, get all worked up over a hypothetical conversation.”

Which made sense. So why did it feel like something was still bothering her?

The next day, Cameron got up, got dressed, and went to a bookstore.

Cameron had become a reader in Tokyo. She’d been too anxious, too full of nervous energy to enjoy it as a kid, and even a good story with an interesting lead couldn’t soothe her the way that taking apart and reassembling a computer always did. She’d gotten into the habit of visiting libraries and bookstores, mostly because Tom had given her a strict ultimatum about how she needed to get up, get dressed, make their bed, and go outside every day. The result was that she’d spent a lot of days sitting in libraries and cafes, where, if nothing else, she managed to significantly improve her Japanese reading comprehension. Sometimes Joanie sent her new paperbacks from California, and she’d usually devour them in a few days; they were one of the few things she’d regretted losing in her move back to the states. Books became a sort of security blanket, an escape that gaming and game design couldn’t be anymore, and reading became Cameron’s most reliable method of self-soothing. 

She had anxiety about accruing too many books, especially after having gotten so attached to the Joanie volumes, so Cameron also finally got a library card from her local branch, and got into the habit of stopping there whenever she was out. She didn’t need to buy books, she just needed to always have something to read, a novel or essay that she could grab when she started to worry about ‘things with Donna,’ and a place to go on days when her trailer felt too small, and sitting outside, or weeding her flower beds wasn’t enough of a distraction. 

On her third bookstore trip, Cameron went to a large chain bookstore that she’d been to with Haley. Feeling strangely lonely, she wandered through the same sections they’d browsed, the magazines, the bargain books, the art books, the science fiction section, where Cameron stopped to look for a short story collection by Ursula LeGuin, but didn’t find it, and the cookbook aisle, which had become Haley’s favorite section of the store. Cameron looked idly at the cookbooks in stock, wondering which aisle she should try next, or if maybe she should go somewhere else altogether. She turned around, and then she saw it, in the next aisle — a copy of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe.

Fried Green Tomatoes had been one of the movies that Cameron had gone to see at one of the few theaters that showed English language movies in Tokyo. She’d gone by herself on a rainy afternoon after yet another battle in the cold war that her marriage to Tom had become since her last COMDEX trip, and then she’d gone another time, and another. She managed to find a vhs copy, and watching it had become another kind of security blanket, like the books, a weirdly comfortable space that felt like going home, even if temporarily, even if Cameron had never actually been to Alabama, or had fried green tomatoes. She put it on when she couldn’t sleep, when she got sick, whenever she needed background noise to make household chores and tedious bookkeeping-type work tasks go more quickly. She’d worn out her tape, another thing that had been either left behind in Tokyo or in the dumpster behind the Mutiny/Calnect/Comet office, but hadn’t known that it was based on a book. 

Cameron took a giant, slightly frantic step across the aisle and grabbed the book off its shelf. It was from a more recent printing, it had the actresses from the movie on the cover. She flipped through it, and went straight to the end, and saw that there were recipes in the back, for the titular fried green tomatoes, both milk and red eye gravy, cornbread, biscuits, snap beans, creamed corn, pork chops, fried chicken…Cameron’s stomach growled, and she suddenly realized just how hungry she was. She decided to buy the book.

She looked up at the shelf where she’d found it, vainly hoping that there was some kind of Fried Green Tomatoes series, and at least 4 other novels about Ruth, Idgie, and the rest of the Threadgoode family and Whistle Stop Cafe staff. Instead, she saw the placard announcing the section: LGBT Themes. Confused, Cameron looked back down at the book, had there been ‘lgbt themes’ in the movie? Did they mean Ruth and Idgie? A tiny voice in the back of her brain said, Of course, Ruth and Idgie. Cameron felt the most bizarre combination of surprised panic and overwhelming relief. It was like making it to the next level of a game after days of trying, only to realize that the next level would be harder, but that it was okay because that was made the game worth playing. She took the book up to the register and paid for it before she could talk herself out of it. 

She wound up reading the first 100 pages in one sitting, and would have gone farther, if she hadn’t had to stop and make herself breathe. At 80 pages, the book finally described Idgie, Cameron’s favorite character in the movie: “Some people are like that, you know…run from you, won’t let you love them.” “She wouldn’t let anybody get too close to her. When she thought somebody liked her too much, she’d just take off in the woods.” “But when Ruth came to live with us, you never saw a change in anybody so fast in your life.” A few pages later, Idgie was charming the honey out of the oak tree for Ruth, and eating a picnic lunch with her, "happy as anybody who is in love in the summertime can be.” A few pages after that, Idgie was pitching a fit over Ruth’s decision to marry a man from her hometown, and then she was crying and drinking and carrying on, living down at the river for the next five years with a well-known prostitute that Idgie’s brother had wanted to marry. And all of it made sense to Cameron, even more than Idgie had made sense to her all those times that she’d watched the movie.

The passage that had really gotten to her was from Ruth’s perspective, though: “When Idgie had grinned at her and tried to hand her that jar of honey, all these feelings that she had been trying to hold back came flooding through her, and it was at that second in time that she knew she loved Idgie with all her heart….she had never felt that way before and she knew she would never feel that way again…. She had no idea why she wanted to be with Idgie more than anybody else on this earth, but she did.” Lying on her bed, in her pajamas, in her trailer parked out in the middle of nowhere, Cameron thought about Tori Loman, her first friend, her only real childhood friend, who she’d wanted to be with at all times. She was never happier than when she was at Tori’s, she stayed at her house as many nights as the Lomans would have her. As an adult, it had been easy to think that of course she’d loved visiting them; she’d hated being at home after her father’s memorial service. But Cameron vividly remembered playing with Tori every day after school before her father had been redeployed. She remembered telling him, “Tori is my best friend, she’s my favorite person after you.” 

Cameron pushed that out of her mind and made herself read a little more, but she couldn’t concentrate. She closed the book, and holding it in her left hand, she reached for the cordless phone where it sat on her nightstand. She started to dial Donna’s number, but when she realized that she had no idea what she would say. She didn’t know how to tell Donna about Tori, either. I wish I knew what to say to her about Tori, Cameron thought, unable to imagine how that phone conversation might go — hey, did I ever tell you about Tori, my friend who I used to play house with? And how I didn’t realize I was playing house with her until Joanie pointed it out to me? As soon as she thought this, she realized how badly she wanted to say exactly that to Donna. 

That was when Cameron decided that she needed to quit reading for the night, and put herself to bed.  

[albaxsutton]

I Hate Tuesdays || A Self Para

*TW: Mentions of abuse, mentions of violence

Alba decided she hated Tuesdays.

She tipped the wine bottle upside down, emptying the last few drops into her already full glass. To say that her day had gone badly was an understatement. Her day had to have been constructed specially by the universe to completely f her over. She had woken up that morning optimistic; she had a nice, long shower, her train came on time and she even managed to get a free coffee from the barista she frequently flirted with at the coffee shop a block up from the Rail.

But then she saw the dismayed looks on most of her colleagues faces. The same colleagues she had been competing with for the head writers position for the past few months. It was all friendly, of course. She only truly hated one or two people on staff and that was only because they were privileged idiots and constantly lorded it over the rest of them. The others she tolerated enough to smile and greet as she walked to her desk. Her desk, like most on their floor, was a tornado of organized chaos. Anyone would look at it once and wonder how she ever managed to get any work done. For her, she knew where everything was. She could navigate with her eyes closed and most of the time, was able to grab whatever she needed without looking away from her computer.

So, when she saw the bright, yellow sticky note taped to her computer, she frowned. ‘Come see me in my office, thanks, Xavier”. Simple and ominous. She plucked from her blank monitor and glanced around to the others, who all seemed to be trying too hard to avoid looking at her. Alba rolled her eyes and set down her coffee, purse and shrugged off her jacket before traveling the sea of desks to get to the editor’s office- which she hoped would be hers one day. It was situated on the corner of the building with windows on all sides looking out at the city. The only downside was that it had a pretty open view to the entire floor, meaning no one could pull any  while he was sitting pretty at his big, modern desk with a cup of coffee and a perpetually dissatisfied expression.

She knocked on his door and entered when she heard the gruff, “come in” from the other side. Xavier was pacing behind his desk, his blue tooth on his ear. He gestured for her to sit at one of the leather chairs in front of his desk, which she did without hesitation, watching as he ushered whomever was on the other line off the phone.

“Yeah, I got it Janine… Yep… No, we can’t do that piece next month, we had to move it to December… Look, at this point, I don’t care. Let him know we have a circulation of 500,000 issues and about a million plays to review in New York. He wants an interview? Tell him to get available.” With that, he tugged the headset from his ear and tossed it on his desk. “Swear to god, these new age playwrights get a sold out opening night and suddenly they think they’re the god damned Shakespeare of their generation. Didn’t you deal with that wannabe last year, Sutton? The Italian guy, what was his name?”

“Phil Columbo?” Alba answered, obviously amused. “Yeah, I reviewed his one-man musical about the gentrification of Brooklyn Heights. Not subpar, but not the next Jonathan Larson of Alphabet City.”

Xavier shook his head and plopped down in his large, comfortable looking chair. “Yeah, you’re gettin’ him in December. I can’t deal with divas and you seem to like em’.”

“I like talent.”

“That’s what I said, didn’t I?” he shot back offhandedly before clearing his throat and settling into his desk properly. “You do good work, Sutton.”

Alba’s brows shot up in surprise. Getting a compliment from Xavier was like getting a blessing from the Pope at the Brooklyn Rail. His word was bible. “Thank you.”

“And you’re talented. I don’t say that a lot.” Yeah, no shit. “You’re the youngest writer on my staff, you outwork most of the people who’ve been here for years and you consistently give this magazine great content.”

She should have been basking in the praise, smiling like some idiots who got a gold star in Kindergarten. But something felt off. Something about the way he said the words set up an expectation for something bad to come. “I feel a “but” coming on…”

“That’s because there is.” Xavier said, his face both remorseful and disappointed. “If it were up to me, you’d be getting that head writers position. But unfortunately, it’s not just up to me.”

It took a few moments for her to grasp the words completely. There was always a good chance that she wouldn’t get the position, she knew that. But hearing it and expecting it were two completely different things. She felt like cold water had been splashed over her body, igniting every nerve in her body and making her fully aware of just how much that single sentence hurt. “Oh…”

Xavier sighed and sat back in his seat. “I could dance around with numbers and give you some sugarcoated excuse as to why you’re not changing your title, but I know you’re too smart for that. The fact of the matter is that you’re young and you’re not as tenured. Mikey, he’s been with us 11 years. It’s a matter of who is going to get the most respect and right now, that’s not you, kid.”

She wanted to yell at him and tell him that Mikey hadn’t written a good article since the West End run of “Cats”, but she knew that would leave her without a job and possibly blackballed in the New York journalism circuit. She wanted to tell him that she could get respect from anybody she talked to because that was just the kind of person she was. Instead, she sat and listened, her eyes not really focusing on Xavier or anything for that matter.

“I don’t have these conversations often because I don’t feel like I need to explain myself, but you’re different.” He said, his lips pursed in a thin line. “You wanted it. You worked for it and I saw that. I appreciate it. It’s just…”

“Nobody respects me.” She finished for him, her tone a tad bitter.

“Nobody respects you as supervisor material.” Xavier admitted. “Not now anyway. We respect the hell out you, you know that. Now’s just… not the time for you.”

The conversation had ended after that and she dragged herself through the rest of the day with as much grace as she had mustered. But of course, life hit her. Hard. Her interview with a rising, prominent artist had been cancelled, she spilled coffee all over her new shirt and just when her incredibly shitty day had come to an end, she missed her train and had to wait an hour for the next one. By the time she got home, she was a walking ball of nerves and irritation.

She drank from her wine glass and started to settle into her couch for a night of tipsy Netflix watching and trying to forget about the incredibly terrible day she had when a knock suddenly sounded at her door. She frowned. She hadn’t texted Mari, Terry or Siobhan about not getting the promotion yet, so it wouldn’t be them and Raul would never come over without texting first. With a heavy and irritated sigh, she stood up and crossed to her door to look through the peep hole. She froze as a face she hadn’t seen in a very, very long time appeared on the other side. Without another thought she reached forward and yanked her door open to glare at her mother on the other side.

Yelena smiled at her as if they hadn’t not been in contact in over ten years. She was exactly as Alba had remembered. Beautiful, long dark hair and big brown eyes. There were a few wrinkles on her face that weren’t there before, but she looked as if she had stepped out of a page of Alba’s memory. Or a nightmare of hers.

“Alba…” She started, looking her over. “It’s been a long time.”

She wasn’t sure what to say to the woman before her. She could feel the angry glare burning on her face, a distinct feeling of rage creeping up within her that she wasn’t sure she was going to be able to hold in. “12 years.”

Yelena nodded. “Yeah… how have you been?”

Alba stared at her in disbelief. “How have I been? That’s it?” She rolled her eyes and then squeezed them shut, a headache forming at the stress of her day. “What the f- How did you find me?”

“…I hired a private investigator.” She admitted, her smile turning sheepish. “You changed your last name, so-“

“Yeah, so that you wouldn’t find me.” Alba snapped at her. 

Yelena sighed, adjusting her purse on her arm and Alba realized, suddenly, that it was designer. In fact, everything she wore was expensive, from her shoes to her coat and even her hair cut. Alba blinked at her, wondering how her mother -the woman who couldn’t hold a job to save her life- could afford those kind of things. “Alba, sweetie, I don’t want this to be antagonistic-”

“Oh wow, “antagonistic”, that’s a big word, Yelena.” She said sarcastically, crossing her arms over her chest. “It’s good to see that the drinking didn’t completely destroy your brain cells.”

“I didn’t come here so that you could insult me, Alba.”

“Then why are you here?”

Yelena sighed and looked down at her hands, perfectly manicured and weathered at the same time. “I... just wanted to see you. See how you were doing.”

Alba raised an eyebrow at her, completely skeptical. “You wanted... to see me?” She scoffed and cast her eyes to the ceiling in exasperation. “Ten years and you’re still a terrible liar. You wanted to see me? Where were you when I was in the hospital for a month after you set our apartment on fire?”

Yelena cringed at the words, at least having the decency to look ashamed. “Alba...”

“Where the hell were you when I was put into foster care? Where were you at my high school graduation, or my college graduation for that matter? You know I worked three jobs to put myself through school because I had nobody and ten years later, you want to see me?” Alba didn’t realize that half way through her rant, tears had started to pool in her eyes. Not because she was sad, she would never give the woman in front of her the satisfaction, but because she was angry. “Pick another lie because I don’t buy that shit.”

Her mother sighed. “I deserve that... Believe what you want, it’s true. I’ve.. done a lot  of growing up and I just want to make amends.”

Alba, with a bored and disbelieving expression, scoffed at her words. “Cry me a river.”

“Why are you acting like I don’t know I made mistakes?” Yelena said, the words coming out quickly and with an emotion that made them waiver ever so slightly. She looked close to crying too, her eyes red and her lips forced into a thin line. “I did, Alba. I made a lot of them, most of them with you. I don’t know what you want me to say!”

“An apology would be nice.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Fuck you.”

To Alba’s surprise, Yelena gave her a sad smile in return. “Crazy thing is, you sound a lot like me.”

“No, I sound a lot like Alba.” She shot out, shaking her head. “You don’t get to take credit for anything but a strong liver, great hair and childhood trauma.” She leaned against her door and shrugged. “So last chance. You tell me why you’re really here or I slam the door in your face. Your pick.”

Yelena stared at her for a moment, looking unsure of what to say. Alba couldn’t really blame her. If she had been a bad mother, she wouldn’t be sure what to say to her kid either. The fact that she even had the gall to knock on her door would have been impressive if Alba hadn’t hated her so god damn much. She reached in her expensive purse them and pulled out a small, rectangular piece of paper and held it out for her. Alba glanced at the paper and then back at her, slowly taking it and looking it over. It was a check, one with her name and “$25,000″ in the amount line. Alba’s eyes widened as she stared at hit and she looked up at her mother in shock.

“Why the hell are you giving this to me?” She said, hastily putting it back into the woman’s hand. 

The older woman took the check back looked at it, smoothing it over with her fingers as she spoke. “I got married five years ago. He’s... a really good man. He helped me get sober, get back on my feet. He paid for the private investigator to find you. He’s... going to be running for political office soon.”

Alba raised a brow at her. “And... what the hell does that have to do with you handing me a check for $25,000?”

“...He had a lot of my criminal record sealed, including the neglect and arson charge from... that day.” Yelena explained to her, clearing her throat uncomfortably. Alba didn’t know what pissed her off more. That she wasn’t exactly the woman she was from all that time ago, or that she was trying to act like that person was long gone. “I’m his wife, we can’t have any... scandals, affecting his campaign. If anybody found out that I had a daughter that I left behind... it wouldn’t be good for him.”

It slowly pieced together. And when the puzzle was complete, Alba was filled with an anger she hadn’t felt in a very long time. The anger that only came from a frustrated kid who just wanted somebody to come and whisk her away from her horrible life. Yet no one ever came. It was an anger with her mother as the singular focus. “You’ve... got to be out of your god damned mind.”

Yelena clenched her eyes shot and cringed. “Alba, just think about-”

“Oh, I don’t have to think about anything!” She yelled, not caring if her neighbors heard her rage filled words. Yelena had the good sense to take a step back as her daughter unleashed her anger. “Do you even remember all the shit you did to me? Do you remember all the times I had to defend myself when you went on some drunken episode? I had to lie to my teachers and tell them I fell. There were times I had to stay home from school because sometimes I couldn’t hide the bruises.”

Yelena listened to her with tears in her eyes and shame on her expression, but it wasn’t enough for Alba to feel satisfied. She wanted the woman in front of her to hurt just like she did. “I think we should take this inside-”

“You’re out of your fucking mind if you think you’re stepping foot in my house.” She snapped, her words low and vicious. She scoffed lightly and shook her head. “Years of court ordered therapy by CPS and I still can’t function properly.” She sounded hysterical at this point, letting her words move out of her without thought of consequence. It was like a dam had been broken and there was no way to stop the rushing waters from flowing free. “I spent a lot of time wondering what I had done wrong. Because what kind of child couldn’t be loved by their mother?”

Yelena tried to reach forward, her hand open in a caring manner that Alba wasn’t used to. “None of that was your fault!”

Alba ripped way from her. “How the hell was I supposed to know that? I was a kid trying to raise myself. You know, because of you I’m just some hyper sexual, asshole whose walking around angry all the god damned time with absolutely no decent moral compass and a deep embedded distrust of men. Because you had guys coming in and out of our apartment and more times than not, I had to lock my bedroom door because some of them would try to get in. You took everything that was good and decent about my life and you crushed it with your bare hands.” 

They were both crying now. Yelena stood silently, tears running down her face while Alba had to catch her breath. “The only thing I hate more than you is the fact that deep, deep, deep down, I still wish we could have been different.” Yelena started to open her mouth but Alba cut her off. “And don’t you dare say that things can be different now, because I know you’re not that naive so... just go. We don’t have anything else to talk about.”

Her mother pressed the check forward again. “Alba, I know you have student loans and bills-”

“Which I will take care of, I don’t want your money and I don’t give a fuck about you or your husband, so just fucking go.” She sounded exhausted by the end of the sentence, emotionally and physically done with the small conversation. 

Yelena, stubborn as stubborn was, leaned down and placed the check on her doormat between them, putting a business card along with it. “That’s one of two. I can give you the other half when you agree not to say anything about... that.”

“Woman up and say it.” Alba spat out with a shrug. “Your incredibly shitty and abusive attempt at being a mom.”

“...If I could take back everything I did, I would.” Yelena admitted, her tone close to a whisper. “I want you to know that.”

Alba didn’t respond, just stared at her dead in the eye and glared. “Go, before I call the cops and have them wheel your unconscious body out of my hallway.”

The threat was sharp and enough to make Yelena jump slightly. She gave her one final look and turned on her heel to leave. Alba wasted no time in slamming her door shut, her vision blurred with angry tears. She managed to stomp back over to her wine, not realizing how badly her hands were shaking until she brought the glass to her lips. Everything that she had repressed and forgotten about in the ten years since she had last seen that woman rushed forward to the forefront of her mind. She was suddenly a little girl again, scared and curled up in her bed. She was that little that she thought she had grown up from. But here she was.

With an angry cry, she threw the wine glass across the room and watched it shatter against the wall, red wine splattering across her furniture and floor. Her chest heaved up and down, trying to take in air that just wouldn’t come. After awhile, her legs were unable to hold her up and she crumpled to the ground, crying and feeling sorry for herself and the girl that she was.

She really fucking hated Tuesdays.

[sherlollyandspoilers]

Isn’t She Beautiful, part one

Sooo, I have rewritten big chunks of this fic...I hope the rewriting has fixed issues with the dialog, some plot holes, and some big canon divergent issues with some character’s backstory. Anyways, I hope you enjoy!

Part Two Part Three Part Four

"I don't want you to do this out of pity." Molly breathed heavily as she spoke. She sat on his lap, running her hands over his bare chest taking in everything she could before it was over. He didn't respond but just watched her. "Sherlock?"  

"It's not pity." He ran a finger down her spine causing her to shiver. "It's not pity," he whispered again before turning over and swinging her under him. He hovered over her, their noses brushing against each other. "I'm going to miss you."  

"I thought caring was a weakness?" She still couldn't process everything that was happening. 

"It is." 

 Molly kept her eyes closed, trying to remember as much about the previous night as she could. The way he smelled, how his chest heaved as he sank into her, the smile he gave her as she tightened around him, how perfectly their bodies fit together as they lay afterwards.  

She rolled over and found that the only thing on the other side of the bed was a note:  

          Molly, 

           Thank you. 

                 Sherlock 

 "Good-bye Sherlock Holmes." 

Present: 

Molly shuffled down the hall to the locker room; it had been a long day and she hadn't slept well the night before.  

"Have a good night, Molly." One of her coworkers smiled as she walked by.  

"You too." She managed a half smile that didn't reach her eyes. 

She walked over to her locker, mind completely on the things she had to finish that night, and opened it. She looked up into the mirror that hung on the small door and gasped, spinning around on her heals. She looked him up and down three times before speaking. 

"Sherlock!" She squealed and threw her arms around his neck. He was hesitant but hugged her back. "Sorry, sorry!" She stepped back, her whole face bright.  

"Molly Hooper,” he gave a small smile as he said her name, “you look…well." 

"There is no need to lie, I know how I look!" She laughed. "But you, you do look well." 

"It is nice to be back in London." He took a step towards her and her mobile rang.  

"Sorry! I have to get that." Her face flushed, embarrassed.  

"The world goes on." He nodded. She nodded back and grabbed her mobile, looking at who was calling.  

"Hello?....Can you give me a minute? I'll call you right back." She hung up and stared angrily at her mobile. "I actually have to go.” She looked back at him and smiled again. “It was good to see you." She shook her head. "No, it was great! I mean, I'm, I’m just glad you're alright. Of course I knew you were alive but – " Sherlock leaned down and kissed her cheek lightly, stopping her ramblings.  

"It was good to see you too." He gave her another small smile and walked out of the locker room. She watched him go, wanting to run after him, knowing she couldn't. Instead she hit dial on her mobile.

"So what's up?" Molly grabbed her things and shoved them in her bag. "Oh, yea, those are her favorites. I'll pick some up on the way home….I'm leaving right now."  

 Two Years Previous: 

"No…no…no!" Molly sat on her couch crying. "He has to see me now!" When his secretary had declined her request again she threw her mobile on the ground. "He is going to see me now!" She grabbed her purse off the hook and slammed the door of her flat closed behind her.  

 "I'm here to see Mr. Holmes." Molly stood in front of the secretary she had most likely been talking to on the phone.  

"Mr. Holmes is busy at the moment. But you can make an appointment." She talked into her magazine. Molly rolled her eyes at the girl and walked around the desk, towards his office. "Miss! You can't go back there!" Molly closed the office door in the girl's face. 

"Molly." He only looked half as surprised as Molly thought he would. 

"Mycroft." She sat down in the chair across from him. "I need to talk to you about Sherlock."

“Miss Hooper, as far as everyone is concerned, my brother is dead.” He tone was hard and his look piercing.   

"Mycroft, this is important."

"You know I cannot disclose any information.” He closed the file he was reading. “That was part of the deal.”

"But I don't know what to do!" 

"About what?" He folded his hands on his desk. 

"I really need to talk to Sherlock!" She bounced her legs and ran her hands through her tangled hair. 

He stood and leaned across his desk.

"You need to forget about Sherlock."

"I can't!" She cried. 

"And why not?” He walked around his desk as he talked, “The rest of London has and it's only been a month."  

"Because I'm pregnant."

 Present:  

"Mummy!" Molly was greeted by her daughter as soon as she walked through the door.  

"Mina!" She put her stuff down on the ground and scooped her up. "I missed you!" She kissed the little girl all over her face, making her giggle.  

"Kathy and I drew today!" She pointed to the coffee table where her nanny sat.  

"Good for you." She gave her one last kiss on the head and sat her down. "How was she?" 

"Good, as always." Kathy stood up and put her books in her bag. Molly stared down at Mina with a sad look. "Molly, are you okay?"  

"Oh, yea, just a busy day. Thank you again." Kathy nodded her head and started for the door. "Oh, did Mycroft get you -" 

"Yes, and as always, thank you. I would watch her for nothing. You know that, right?"  

"Yes." Molly smiled appreciatively at her.

“Good.” Kathy waved at Mina before shutting the door.

Molly sunk down on the couch and watched as Mina continued to draw on an already too full page. 

"This is for you!" She held up the scribbles with a big grin on her face.  

"Oh, thank you! I'll hang it in my office at work." Molly put the drawing in her bag, temporarily forgetting about Sherlock Holmes.

 Two Years Previous:  

"Oh." Mycroft walked back to his chair and sat down. "I didn’t know you two were involved.”

“We weren’t.” Molly sighed and she could feel her cheeks getting warm. She looked down at her hands. “It was just the one time.”

“I see. Are you sure it’s Sherlock’s?” The causal tone to his question infuriated her.

“Yes!” Her head shot up irritated that Mycroft would insinuate that she would sleep around. “It’s Sherlock’s.”

He held his hands up, as if the mere act would calm her. “I just wanted to make sure.”

“It’s Sherlock’s.” She said again. “And, I just thought…I don’t know what I thought.” She dropped her head into her hands, hiding the few tears that were escaping from her eyes.

“You can have no contact with him. He cannot know.”

“I know.” She whispered. She wiped her eyes and looked back up. She straightened her shoulders and brushed her hair out of her eyes. “I just needed to tell someone. Someone who knows that he’s alive. I needed someone to know.” Mycroft pursed his lips at her words.

“Are you going to keep it?”

“Yes.” She replied quickly. Mycroft looked at her for a moment longer before nodding.

“Congratulations then Miss Hooper,” he said before turning his attention back to his work.

“Thank you.” She pushed herself up and turned for the door.

“Molly, I think it best if you and I have no more contact either.” She left without responding.

 Present:

“Did Mina draw that for you?” Molly turned and saw John standing in her office doorway.

“Yes.” She rubbed her forehead. “I assume you’re here because you know.”

“Yes.” He sat down in her spare chair, but stood right back up again, gripping the back of the chair until his knuckles were white. “How could you not tell me? After everything you and I have been through together?” He threw his hands in the air as his voice got louder. “I was there for you but you kept the fact that my best friend was alive a SECRET!?”

Molly was quiet while the last of his words finished ringing in the small office.

“Are you done?” Molly asked as John breathed heavily through his nose.

“Yes!” He dropped down into the chair and groaned.

“Mina just got done with her temper tantrum stage, looks like you might have found it.” Molly giggled at him and John couldn’t help but chuckle back. “John,” she reached out and grabbed his hand, “I couldn’t tell you…I promise you I wanted to and I came so close so many times…I am sorry.”

“I know you couldn’t. And I know you are.” He squeezed her hand before letting it go.

“I heard you were almost smoked to death.”

“And yet no flowers? They don’t have sympathy cards with ‘sorry someone tried to kill you’ written on them?”

“Couldn’t fine one.” Molly smirked. John smiled back and stood up.

“Are you coming for dinner tonight? Mrs. Hudson is cooking.”

“Maybe.” She hadn’t been planning on it. Sherlock didn’t know about Mina yet and this wasn’t how she wanted him to find out.

“Well I hope you make it – Mary is having Mina withdrawals.”  

 “Hey Kathy!” Molly spun in her office chair. “Do you think you can bring Mina to Bart’s around 5?....Thank you so much...We were invited to have dinner with John and Mary…yes, Mina withdrawals…Okay, see you soon.”

“Who are you seeing soon?” His dark voice stirred something in the pit of her stomach. She inhaled slowly and turned her chair to face him.

“Sherlock! What are you doing here?” She put her mobile on the desk and stood up, walking around to lean on the front of it, blocking the many pictures that Mina had drawn that were taped there.

“New body Lestrade wanted me to have a look at.” Molly stared at his lips as he talked. “Would you mind?” He pointed to the morgue.  

“Oh!” She snapped out of her head and moved around him. She found the body and the paper work on it, male 52. She rolled it out for Sherlock. “Here you go.” He moved around her and started his examination.

Watching him work was too much for Molly. The way his hair fell in his face as he moved took her right back to that night, the feeling of his hands on her skin, his breath on her neck…she couldn’t. She had to focus.

She quietly walked back to her office and started peeling the pictures off the front of her desk, a pang of guilt hitting her.

 “All done.” Sherlock popped his head into her office not too much later. “…Thank you.”

“Oh, you’re welcome.” Molly nodded and got up to take care of the body. “Just doing my job and letting you do yours.” Her mobile went off in her pocket. She grabbed it, a text from Kathy saying they were in the lobby – they would be to the morgue any minute. “Okay, well, lots to do.” She hurriedly put the body away and took the paperwork back to her office.

“Will you be at dinner?” He leaned in the doorway to her office.

“Yes. We’ll be there…I’ll, I’ll be there. We will be there.” She pointed between herself and Sherlock, mentally wanting to slap herself. “For dinner.”

“Yes.” He said as he raised an eyebrow at her but didn’t question it. His mobile pinged and he pulled it out of his pocket, pulling his attention away from Molly.

“A lead?” She asked.

“Of sorts.” He shoved his mobile back into his coat. “I’ll see you later then.”

“I guess, yeah.” She nodded nervously. She watched him leave and waited until the morgue door was closed before slapping Mina’s artwork back onto the front of her desk. She had just sat back down when Kathy walked in with Mina.

“Hey! There’s my girl!” Mina ran around the desk and jumped up into her mum’s lap.

“Kathy gave me a lolly!” Mina held out the blue candy, as if it were treasure.

“I hope that was okay.” Kathy handed over the bag with Mina’s stuff in it.

“Of course. Thank you for bringing her here. Do you need fare?” Molly grabbed her purse.

“No! You and Mycroft pay me enough. Have fun tonight!” Kathy ran out of the office before Molly could force more money on her.

“John and Mary?” Molly sat her daughter on the desk facing her.

“Yes, we are going to have dinner with them tonight. And Mrs. Hudson.”

“Mrs. Hudson!” Mina squealed in delight.

“Lestrade too.” Mina bounced her little feet. “Mina, how would you like to meet a new friend of mummy’s?” Molly’s eyebrows were raised together.

“A new friend?” She mimicked Molly.

“Yes. His name is Sherlock.”

“Sher-lock?” Mina’s tiny voice went up on the last syllable of his name.

“He solves crimes.”

“Like Lestrade?” Mina licked the lolly.

“Yes, like Lestrade.” Molly kissed her tiny daughter. “I need to finish some paper work and then we can go, okay?” Mina bobbed her head up and down.

 One year and six months previous:

“Mycroft?” Molly stood at the door of her flat, wrapped in a blanket that barely covered her belly. “It’s one in the morning.”

“I know. May I come in?” Molly moved aside and let him in. She motioned to the couch and Mycroft sat. She took the chair across from him.

“Why are you here? I thought you didn’t want to have contact with me.” Molly shifted in her seat, as the baby kicked her ribs.

“I have been thinking a lot about you and your baby.” Mycroft cleared his throat. “Without Sherlock all I have are my parents.”

“Okay?” Molly asked when he paused.

“I would like to be involved.”

“Well, you are her uncle.” Molly rubbed at the spot she had just kicked.

“A girl?” Mycroft’s eyebrows went up in surprise.

“Yes.” Molly smiled.

“Here.” Mycroft held out a set of keys to Molly.

“What are these for?” Molly rubbed at her eyes.

“Your new home.”

“What?!” She stared in shock at the shiny keys in front of her face.

“I want to help you financially. I will never have a family of my own and I have more money than one person needs.” He continued to hold the keys out to her.

“Mycroft, I can’t accept this.” Molly pushed his hand away.

“The deed is in your name.” He left the keys on the side table when he stood up. “I have also hired you a moving crew – they will be here next week.” With that he left.

“Well,” Molly picked up the keys, talking to her belly, “this could be worse.”

 Present:

As Molly and Mina arrived at Baker Street all of the reporters where leaving and she could see John and Sherlock heading back up to the flat.

“Uncle John! Uncle John!” Mina chanted as Molly got her out of the cab. She took a deep breath before she ascended the stairs. At the top she slowly pushed the door to Sherlock’s flat open.

“Molly! Finally! I was beginning to think Sherlock and John were lying to me.” Mrs. Hudson got up and gave Molly a small hug. “Oh Mina, you are getting so big!” Molly looked around the room and gave Mina over to Mrs. Hudson and Mary. John and Lestrade sat in the chairs, but Sherlock was nowhere to be seen.

“Where…where is Sherlock?” Her voice caught in her throat. She hung her coat on the last empty hook and sat Mina’s bag on the ground before closing the door.

“Right here.” He walked in from the kitchen, wearing the deerstalker hat.

“For goodness sake, take that thing off!” John chuckled at him.

“Molly.” He smiled and gave her a small kiss on the cheek. She gave him a worried look as he tossed the hat to John.

Molly motioned for Mina to come to her. She picked up her daughter and turned to face him. “Sherlock, this is my daughter, Mina. Mina this is mummy’s friend Sherlock, can you say hi?”

“Hi.” She batted her long eye lashes at him as he stared speechless at the little girl in Molly’s arms. Her hair was dark and curly. She had Molly’s eyes and smile, there was no mistaking that, but her face, her defined cheekbones, those were his.

“Hi.” He finally managed. “Molly, can I talk to you a minute?” Without waiting for her response he walked to his bedroom.

“Mina, go see Uncle John.” Molly put the girl on the floor

“What’s wrong?” John asked as Mina settled on his lap. Molly just shook her head and followed after Sherlock, closing the door behind her.

“Sherlo- ” He held up his hand stopping her from speaking. He just stood staring at her, looking her up and down.

“How did I miss it? It is written all over you...you’re a mother.”

“Yes,” she said quietly as she sat down on the edge of his bed.

“Mina is short for Willamina, I presume?” He was no longer looking at her.

“Yes.” Molly fidgeted with the bottom of her blouse.

“Named for her father?” Molly nodded. “Why didn’t you tell me?” He sat down next to her.

“I didn’t know how to.” Tears started to cloud her vision. “I should have told you earlier today – I shouldn’t have sprung her on you.” She wiped the tears away with the sleeve of her shirt. “Honestly, I’m surprised Mycroft didn’t tell you.”

“Mycroft knows?” The irritation in his voice was evident.

“He was the first person I told…he’s actually very involved with her – they all are.” She motioned to the door and to the group of people on the other side of it.

“Is Mycroft the only one who knows?” She nodded yes. “Molly, I don’t want to be a father.”

“I didn’t ask you to be!” She stood up, her frustration building. “This isn’t some plea for you to come into her life – she has more than enough people who care about her.”

"The people out there that have no clue that I’m her father?” Sherlock scoffed at her.

“Yes! Those people!” Molly stomped her foot. “Those people are her family and they know her value, her beauty.” She sighed and knelt down before him. “Sherlock,” her voice was quiet again, “if you just get to know her, you will see – ”

He cupped her face and brushed his thumb over her lips before gently kissing her.

“Molly,” her name sounded like a song on his lips. “Molly, I, just…” She gripped the front of his shirt tightly.

“She is so much like you.”

“I,” he cleared his throat, “I already told you,” he stood up abruptly, dragging her to her feet, “I don’t want to be a father.”

Molly nodded sadly.

“She is amazing, Sherlock, and I promise you that you will want to know her.” She walked past him and opened the door, back to reality.

“Mummy! Uncle John said I could have ice cream for dinner!” Mina sat in Mary’s lap playing with cards.

“Oh did he? Well, Uncle John was wrong.” Molly sat down on the arm of John’s chair and gave him a shove.

Sherlock walked silently to his chair and sunk down in it, his eyes on her. She felt her face growing red and turned her attention back to Mina.

“But, Uncle John is never wrong.” Mina’s big brown eyes glassed over, looking like she was going to cry.

“Willamina, do not even think about making a fuss.” Molly stared her daughter down. “Is that how we behave?”

“No.” Mina pouted but said nothing else.

“Thank you.” Molly could see Sherlock watching her out of the corner of her eye.

“Maybe we could get you to use your “Mum” voice on Sherlock.” John nudged Molly’s leg and she gave a little ‘Yea’, extremely thankful when Mrs. Hudson called them all to the kitchen for dinner.

“Mummy, can I sit next to Mary?” Mina’s eyes shown up at her like little stars, she was really hard to say no to when she was being an angel.

“If Mary wants you to sit next to her.” Molly wiggled her nose against Mina’s, feeling Sherlock’s watchful eyes on them.

“Of course I do!” Mary patted the seat that Mrs. Hudson had gotten for her. Molly popped her in between Mary and John and got her a plate. Unfortunately, by the time she had gotten Mina settled for dinner, the only seat left was between Lestrade and Sherlock. Molly did her best to ignore him, but his presence was hard to overlook.

 “Mina, I know your mother taught you how to use a fork.” John said quietly as he pushed the utensil towards her. Molly watched from down the table as the conversation continued around them.

“Fingers are more fun!” Mina picked up a potato and squished it between her thumb and pointer.

“I know your mum prefers you to use your fork,” John looked down at his ‘niece’, “so please do so.”

“But I don’t want to.” The tiny girl continued to pick at her food, wearing thin on both her Uncle John’s nerves and her mother’s.

“Willamina, you have been asked to use your fork.” John’s voice was louder this time. Molly could see Sherlock watching the two of them.

“No.”

“Willamina Scotia Hooper.” The table fell silent as Molly used her full name. “Your Uncle has already asked you to use your fork and if he has to ask you again, you will not be getting desert.”

Mina picked up her fork and started eating again. John smiled encouragingly at Molly as the conversation started again.

“You call John her uncle?” Sherlock asked low enough that only Molly could hear him.

“Yes, he’s been there for her since the beginning.”

  A year and six months previous:

“Wow! This place is great!” It was the day after the movers had brought all of Molly’s stuff and the only thing set up was her bed.

“It is, but I have no clue how to set up house.” Molly sat on the couch with her feet propped up on a box. John turned to her and she gave him a look.

“Oh. Oh no! I don’t know how to do this either!” He backed up a few paces, arms out in front of him.

“Well who else am I supposed to ask?” He was the only ‘family’ she had left.

“Not me!” John spat back. They were both quiet for a minute, thinking. “Mrs. Hudson?” He offered.

“Do you think she would mind?” Molly didn’t want to be an inconvenience.

“She’ll love it! I’ll ring her.”

 “Thank you both so much!” Molly, John, and Mrs. Hudson sat in Molly’s fully decorated and arranged living room. It had taken them a few weeks, but the house was fully moved into.

“Oh it was nothing!” Mrs. Hudson beamed. “As long as you promise me that I get to see that baby growing up here!”

“Of course! I am going to need both of you!” She grabbed their hands and squeezed them.

“Have you thought of a name yet?” John asked. Molly nodded.

“What do you think of…Willamina Scotia?”

“It’s perfect.” John nodded.

 Present:

After dinner Mina got her ice cream as Molly had promised. And after the ice cream the girl snuggled with her Uncle Lestrade and nodded off in his arms. Molly couldn’t bear to wake her up yet, she looked so adorable and she was enjoying the adult conversation for once.

Until Sherlock started being a prat.

Molly wasn’t even sure what they were arguing about when Sherlock sunk down into his chair, seething. She frowned at how much he reminded her of Mina.

“I have not missed this!” John threw his hands in the air, but Sherlock ignored him. “You’re acting a little dramatic.” John sighed and sat down in his chair, across from where Lestrade and Mina were. Molly watched as John frowned, studying Mina’s face. He looked to Sherlock and back to Mina and back to Sherlock. “Or maybe you’re acting like a child.” Sherlock sat up straighter and folded his hand in his lap. “Throwing a temper tantrum.”

“John,” Sherlock warned.

“No, no!” John sat forward in his chair. “What was earlier about? Between you two?” He pointed to Molly.

“John, I didn’t…I didn’t know how to tell you.” There was no use in lying now.

“Well, shit,” Lestrade looked down at the girl sleeping in his lap, “she definitely looks like him.”

“You knew the minute you saw her, didn’t you?” Mary asked Sherlock, but he didn’t say anything.

“Mycroft didn’t think – ”

“I always wondered why Mycroft cared.” John gave a laugh. “It���s all starting to make so much more sense.”

The room was silent for a moment and no one knew what to say.

“So, are you two a…thing now?” Lestrade asked.

“No!” Molly and Sherlock responded together.

“Oookay.” Lestrade tried to hide the laugh that was rising in his throat.

The conversation in the room started back up, slowly, making Molly feel more at ease.

“John?” She stood up and motioned to the door. He nodded and followed her out. “I really am sorry.” He didn’t say anything but just gathered her in his arms, hugging her tightly. “You’re not mad?”

“I mean, a little bit.” He let her go but he was still smiling. “I still love you both.”

“I wanted to tell you…especially the day she was born.” John wrinkled his brow in confusion. “When you held her for the first time, you said, ‘Look at those cheekbones! She looks just like……she’s beautiful.’ And then you smiled at me.”

“I forgot about that.” He laughed.

The sound of Molly’s ringtone filled the small landing. She dug her mobile out of her pocket.

“Mycroft.”

“It all makes sense.” John muttered to himself as he went back into the flat.

“Hello?”

“Molly, you must still be in town. You didn’t pick up at home.”

“Yes, Mycroft I am.” She sat down on the top stair and rested her head against the wall.

“Do you need a ride home?”

“Actually, yea, that would be great.” Molly rubbed at a stain on pants.

“Where are you?”

“Umm, I’m at…221BBakerStreet.” She rushed.

“Baker Street?”

“I’m at Sherlock’s,” she admitted.

“I will be there in ten minutes.” He hung up without saying goodbye and she slid her mobile into her pocket. The door of the flat opened and Mary came out.

“Hi.” She sat down next to Molly. “How are you?” she asked as she wrapped her arm around her.

“Umm, okay?” She rested her head against Mary’s shoulder.

“She is so much like him.”

“Yeah.” Molly nodded in agreement. “She…she is.” The tears started streaming down Molly’s face and Mary held her as she cried, rocking her soothingly. “He..he doesn’t want…want to be a father.” Mary rubbed Molly’s back as her tears turned to hiccups.

“Did you want that?” Mary asked when Molly’s hiccups finally subsided.

“I don’t know…I never expected him to come back…and now here he is.” Molly sat up and wiped her face.

“Here he is.” Mary patted her knee. “But you’ve got us.”

“We’ve got you.” Molly nodded.

“Come on.” Mary stood up and helped Molly to her feet. She followed her inside where the conversation had turned to old cases.

Molly pulled her coat on and slung Mina’s bag over her shoulder.

“I have to steel her back,” she said as she walked over to Lestrade.

“I guess I understand.” He stood and handed the girl off to Molly.

“Leaving?” John asked.

“Yeah, Mycroft is coming to get us and he will be here any minute.”

“Mycroft?” Sherlock’s voice was coated with venom for his older brother.

“Ah, yes. He is taking us home. I have to go.” Molly avoided Sherlock’s gaze. “Good night.” She addressed the rest of the room and fled the flat as fast as she could. She felt the door catch as she tried to close it. She turned to see Sherlock’s fingers curling around the edge of the door.

“Need a word with my brother.” Sherlock said with an air of lightness, but Molly knew it was a façade. “Can I walk you down, Molly?”

“Looks like I don’t have a choice.” She turned and started her way down the stairs, slowly. Molly was clumsy on a good day and even worse on a bad day, especially while carrying Mina.

“Here.” Sherlock stepped in front of her and slid Mina out of her arms and into his before Molly could object. He walked down the stairs just as gracefully as normal and still beat her to the bottom by half a stair case.

When Molly reached the bottom of the stairs she couldn’t stop the tears from falling again. One look at Mina sleeping in Sherlock’s arms, her father’s arms, did her in. She turned away from Sherlock and took a few steading breaths, wiping away the tears.

“Molly.” He stood right behind her. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“Well you did!” She gave up on trying to clear away the tears and turned back to face him. “You tell me you don’t want to be a father and then you kiss me?! And now, you…you think you can just carry her, hold her, and think it won’t affect me?”

“Mummy?” She rubbed her eyes. “Are we going home?”

“Yes. Uncle Mikey is taking us home.” She wiped at her tears again.

“Uncle Mikey.” Sherlock laughed at the thought, but stopped short when Molly gave him an icy glare.

“Mummy, why are you sad?” Mine reached her tiny hand out and touched Molly’s face.

“I’m not sad honey, I just have something in my eye.” Molly wiped away the last few tears and gave her daughter a smile. “See? All better!” She reached out and took Mina from Sherlock and hoisted the little girl up on her hip.

“Sherlock?” He flicked his eyes away from Molly’s face and down into Mina’s. “Mummy says you solve crimes.”

“I do.”

“Are there dead bodies at crimes, like at mummy’s work?” Molly shook her head as Sherlock gave the little girl a genuine smile.

“Yes.”

“When your mother is a pathologist nothing really scares you.” She saw Mycroft’s car pulling up. “Thank you for...an evening.” She gave him a tight smile and opened the door when the car stopped, putting Mina in her seat that was permanently there. Mycroft emerged from the other side.

“Sherlock. I see you’ve met Mina.” A sadistic smile sat on his lips.

“Yes. I have.” Molly closed the door and turned in time to watch Sherlock punch Mycroft in the face.

[artdjgblog]

Innerview: Tom Biederbeck (Editor ) / STEP Inside Design 

October 2008 

Image: NA

Note: Email Q&A

Question:

Rumors of your absence from STEP magazine’s Design 100 competition MUST be exaggerated! I’ve been impressed with your work in past Design 100s, but it doesn’t look like you’ve entered the 2009 competition…at least so far. ​

Answer:​

STEP. I think you’re living up to your name…well, maybe with an adopted “E” in the middle to get it right, as I’m watching every year for rising prices on your competition fees. How many rungs will I climb? I’m not even sure if I entered last year as the years are running together now for me, but I’m leaning towards “nope.” I’m for certain it was due to billfold blues, but another reason is because I lost interest in what I was doing so why blow money on it and share it? I’m a little more upbeat this year as I’m turning the corner on 30 and another round of “more-more-more-more”. Still, I almost didn’t enter this year until the last check of my online bank account. Next year, who knows? I’m just curiously concerned as to what is going on in dollar signs? My aim of intent is not for this choppy letter to sound wrong or biting or ouchy or itchy or immature or nasty…worshiping of St. Upid*, a big yes…frustrated and humiliated on my end, perhaps a tad bit? Whatever, I’m a happy camper and thanks for making it this far. High competition prices are weeding out the little guys who scrape by. Personally, I know that I’ve barely cleared 80 dollars all year from clients, which is the price for me to only submit 2 entries. So, I think I qualify for “little guy”. The 2 entries I’m forking over are pretty much bending over my billfold and breaking it in two. In previous years I’ve been fortunate to dump 80 mades-a-milking, unlimited on your doorSTEP for a reasonable sum of money, a sum I’m now seeing with double vision. I’m a bit perplexed at this current flex. In a time where I feel the idea of the “Mom & Pop” design house is a mockery of every high-price Tom, Dick and Church Secretary who bang desktop decorations out because they have access to a computer (which, sometimes I find their work more charming and immediately served)…it’s the design magazines of all people who should be rewarding (in lower entrance pocket book exams) those who work on top of work, get up early and stay up late making basement donuts (notice here we don’t spell it with “dough”). Even though I still have a goal to do what it is I do for full-time income some day, it’s never really been about the money and I knew that at the starting line of my design odyssey. Though, I think rising competition prices finally just made it be a money case. I think that in the past seven years I’ve spent more on competition fees than what I’ve actually saved. I know I don’t spend much on tape, cutting blades, spray paint, glue sticks and construction paper. It might not be a wise business venture, I get that, but it’s the glossy recognition that helps get the work out and sometimes gets work that pays more than one cheeseburger. Recognition helps a young struggling kid tickled on both ends of the scroll and I’m thrilled to think that some of the magazines and whatnots might even eventually become shredded to either evolve into other books or poster papers or the lining of a puppy carrier somewhere this side of Deer Creek Falls, Cornwall. Making things for me isn’t about winning prized ponies, beer helmets and cotton candy, even though those things are nice added bonuses to parade with. Awards certainly don’t get me to point C, but they might get me to B or B-thirty, which in-turn might mate with C to get me out of my day job, in some sort of mutated moody Monday morning, if I’m caught in the right spirit. Which, in-turn might finally get me the urge to shout, “Look Ma and Pa I’m no longer a college drop-out failure.” I’d like to say I stay in my basement full-time, but that’s not the case as I’ve previously put it. I realize that everything is rising in cost, the economy stool is flowing over and we’re all doomed. I realize that it takes a large amount of good money to make, distribute and payroll a major magazine, especially orchestrating special awesome issues like the STEP 100. But, I can’t help but feel it’s just getting ridiculous. Not to mention, I think you’d get a more well-rounded selection of work, from people you wouldn’t expect if entry prices were lower. I’m 0 for 4 with Algebra classes, but I tend to think more money could be made in the long run if competition entry fees were cheaper. Ya know? This is similar (for me at least?) to raising the price of vending machine items. I’m not saying your design magazine is as cheap, non-nutritional and throw-away as junk food, though it’s fueled many great and passionate design adventures in my world and I’m a big fan. I’m saying that it’s like hiking up all the items in a vending machine to where you can only get one over-priced thing for a dollar, when everything could easily be made 50 cents or cheaper. In such a world I know that everybody would spend their whole dollar, maybe even a Lincoln to feed the family. Money would be made and one more child could be fed. I’ve never understood this. On another end…I was the small town grade-schooler who couldn’t wait to “git” and get tucked into that slip of 40 minute-onct-a-week art class to finally execute the creative rights that were squandered to the back lot of my brain while managing to make it through the school day blues (and I’m still there now in the day job tune). Though it was definitely in my own private Missouri, of bedwoom and backwoods, where the real goods were got at…it was in this makeshift “art” room where I learned to work together with my fellow makers. It was here I hunched happy and content, saliva dripping, with a meager box of 24 colors, as the uninspired jerk wads with the biggy-size box of a hundred (plus a pathetic built-in sharpener) spent the entire period breaking in-half a wide assortment of made-up B-Side rainbow colors to toss at me in order to beat my day. But, it was brighten, what they did. You know why? Because at the end of each class with each week, I raked up all the extra orphaned bits and pieces, saw their potential and fed them to my newsprint paper, which in-turn has lead to some ideas that eventually wound up on your well-printed pages. Now, what exactly am I trying to say? Not sure, and that ‘n’ this is something I have to put up with every second of back ‘n’ forth with the upstairs. I’m not trying to win hearts or exercise my patriotic spew. I’m not saying I wouldn’t be opposed to some sort of bonus points program, rewards system, price cutting card or a salary cap thing with competition fees. What I am saying is what all I just said and to add that through it all as we quickly unravel this ball, I’m not giving up on you and your fantastic design coverage. I love STEP. I can’t afford a subscription and barely look at it, but I love it. I barely look at any design magazines, but I love them, mostly just love “it”, design. Even when I think I don’t, I still do and it still comes back to poke and prod me in the night. Back to you, I love every piece of person at your offices and beyond who have helped me and my little makes in some way. I even salute those who may curse my name in the after-hours as they sift through and catalog my design dumps and read/see my silly testimonials, interviews and now…this electronic sampling. Please tell me you have lent all the poster piles of competitions’ past to those who truly need warmth to burn or sleep beneath? Add this letter to the pile under the overpass or please tack it with the other junk above your own bunk? I originally had intentions to drop this into my entry package that I AM sending, but then I had second-thoughts about writing a letter as my writing is quite foolish and the whole idea is quite selfish and sloppy. Then again, I thought I could just typewriter it, bang it out in the morning dew, and mail it out with the postal blue. But, then I thought that idea was still ignorant and arrogant. So, finally I just put my gut in the cage with my heart and let them duke this out. I appreciate everything that you’ve done for me in the past whether it’s your kindness on the phone or email or with appreciating my piles of work and saving several pages of glossy wow-wow space for me. That’s great stocking stuffer for this kid and I am sure tickled to know it’s trickled into other people/peep holes, places and things. That means so much to me that you helped play second stork. I appreciate the present day email check-ups and multiple mailings to my door, wondering what the heck I’m doing. This means a ton to me that you care enough to give me a free check-up. I hope we can further extend this appreciation on both ends as the paper trail extends and meanders. I realize my little silly stink might cause me to gamble with “the system” a bit and if I’ve wronged you, then I’m sorry. But, please laugh as it is way better to do so. Heck, this letter might even cause me to lose my ’08-80-Bucks and have my work be swept into a janitor’s broom closet (which is a location I’ve made many a poster and a working location I prefer than my present stab at data entry / STEP letter writing). Maybe just put your trust in your fellow makers, and they will come, clinching Lincoln’s nonetheless. Logs, letters, rainbow stumps or dollar markers, you make that STEP. -djg * Please Note: The phrase St. Upid is the intellectual property of writer and pop-culture analyst, Chad T. Johnston. It was borrowed for this essay.

[junker-town]

The Girl in the Huddle

How Elinor Kaine Penna became a pioneering pro football writer in an industry where women weren’t welcome

“I didn’t know you were a big sports fanatic,” says a server named Ellen, wandering over to Elinor Penna’s table after overhearing her story about visiting Baltimore Colts training camp. “I know the Indianapolis Colts, but … the Baltimore Colts!”

“Well, I was,” Penna replies. “That was one of the most interesting things that ever happened, how they got the Colts out of Baltimore.”

We’re sitting in the dining room at the Garden City Country Club on Long Island, where she eats often enough to greet the staff by name — and to know what she’ll order. So instead of looking at the menu, Penna, 83, has started laying out a slew of old photos and magazines featuring a common subject: her.

“Ellen, look at this — this is 60 years ago,” she says, holding up a photo of her and Johnny Unitas. “The reason we’re having this lunch is because I was writing about football for 40 newspapers and I wasn’t allowed in the press box, being a female.”

“Really, back then?” Ellen replies. “Oh, my God.”

“Now look at all the women on the sidelines,” says Penna, a bemused smile crossing her neatly painted red lips. “It’s so easy for them — I’m so jealous.”

To say Penna was a pioneering woman sportswriter is an understatement. Working under her maiden name, Elinor Kaine, through the 1960s and early ‘70s, she was a bona fide sports media phenomenon with the syndicated columns, TV deals, book deals and trash talk from disgruntled peers to prove it. Though she’s intermittently remembered today for her widely publicized fight to get inside an NFL press box, Penna’s work meant so much more than that.

She was written up in Harper’s Bazaar, Women’s Day, Newsweek and Vogue (which called her football writing “funny, gossipy, frank and technical”) while getting bylines in Esquire, after that magazine called her “the best fortune-teller in pro football.” Her challenges to the sportswriting establishment were twofold: first, she was a woman, and, second, she refused both reverence and jargon, favoring a gossipy, bright tone that had more in common with contemporary blogs than it did the work of her stodgy peers. Fans treasured Penna’s fearlessness and wit, her willingness to comment on both what other writers wouldn’t think to (players’ marital status and pregame rituals) and what they wouldn’t dare to (juicy rumors about front office discord and trades). As one admirer put it, “She must have blood-stained shoes from stepping on so many toes.”

Skeptics — and sexists — dubbed her “pro football’s Tokyo Rose,” a nickname that unfortunately stuck: “the only woman in what was designed as a man’s game, and like Rose, an irritant.” In short, as one fellow columnist surmised, “Women like these hurt the men’s ego.”

But 50 years after what her friend Larry Merchant dubbed “The Kaine Mutiny,” Penna lives between Long Island and Miami in relative obscurity. Her very active Twitter account (@NFL_Elinor) has 329 followers; she plays in survivor pools (she won $3,000 a few seasons ago) and watches all the games — just on a substantially bigger and more colorful TV than in her early days covering the game.

“Imagine looking at a game on a 10-inch black-and white screen, you’re not going to see any of it again, the announcers are boring and that’s that,” Penna says. “It’s so much more fun now! You have a lot of replays. You can even tape a game and save it for later.”

It’s true that sports have changed dramatically over the course of Penna’s life. She was born Elinor Graham Kaine in Miami Beach in 1935, when there were just nine teams in the NFL. She grew up between Chicago and Miami — or between Wrigley Field and Hialeah Racetrack, as she tells it. Her well-off family owned horses, and racing was Penna’s entrée into the ever-entwined worlds of sports, gambling and high society.

After barely graduating from Smith College in 1957 with a degree in mathematics — where she had spent most of her time convincing boys to drive her to nearby racetracks, and playing pranks on her classmates — Penna spent a year working in an aeronautical engineering lab at Princeton while taking flamenco guitar lessons on the side (a clause that doesn’t sound real but somehow is).

Meanwhile, she began to see the appeal of the NFL: friends would come to visit her in New Jersey on Sundays since from there she could get Giants and Eagles games. Once she moved to New York a year later to become the librarian at an advertising agency in the then-brand-new Seagram Building (essentially living the plot of a minor character on Mad Men), Penna immediately fell in with the classy and sports-crazy crowds at places like P.J. Clarke’s, the now-defunct Toots Shor’s, Gallaghers Steakhouse — Midtown institutions that were, at that point, still hip.

Clarke’s, a famed destination for movers and shakers from Sinatra to Steinbrenner, was a particular favorite: she briefly dated the restaurant’s late owner Daniel Lavezzo Jr. (“It wasn’t really a huge romance, but he would be my best friend to this day if he was still alive”).

Among the monied, cosmopolitan crowd at Clarke’s, Penna’s sports fandom flourished. The Giants would come after home games: Charlie Conerly, Frank Gifford, Dick Lynch, Emlen Tunnell. The panelists of What’s My Line?, like Dorothy Kilgallen and Random House co-founder Bennett Cerf, made up another table. “Sunday night at P.J. Clarke’s was really something special,” Penna says, “and with all those people, at least half of them were interested in football.” The restaurant even fielded its own touch football team for a very casual league in Central Park, and Penna played: one column explained she “can throw a football 35 yards, has great hands, and describes her running style as ‘very Mel Triplett.’”

Going to Giants games at Yankee Stadium was an event: “I remember that we would wait and plan our hats, and suits, and high heels!” she says with a laugh. “People dressed to the teeth — they weren’t just in sweatshirts. It’s so awful now.” Her roommate briefly dated Tim Mara, so they could get season tickets on the 50-yard line (which they paid for, Penna notes: at one point the price went up from $20 to $25, and “we used to crab about it”). There was the game, and then the game after the game: “Everybody waited in the Stadium Club [a VIP lounge, basically] for Frank Gifford to come and pick up his wife Maxine,” says Penna. It was also where she started meeting the people who would become her sources.

Penna, who had grown up around gambling because of her family’s racing bona fides, recognized a market inefficiency and saw an opportunity. Plus, she was tired of her day job at the agency. “There were bookmakers in all the sports restaurants in New York at that time, and they were all taking football bets,” she explains. “Nothing was legal, and so at that point they didn’t put the line in the newspaper — I don’t think it was allowed.”

So in 1961, she decided to go it alone and start a weekly newsletter called Lineback. First, Penna befriended a bookie in Vegas, who she would call every week to get the following Sunday’s lines. Then she would type them up and add the most interesting news from around the league, which she gleaned by subscribing to the local papers in every single city that had an NFL team — so many papers the post office wouldn’t deliver them, and Penna had to walk to Times Square and haul them all back to her apartment at 69th Street and 2nd Avenue. Then she would make 500 copies or so, and by Thursday, five or six select restaurants (which would each pay $10 a week) had a stack of copies of Lineback on the bar.

In other words, she was aggregating. “In the New York papers, they covered the Giants; In Chicago, they covered the Bears,” she explains. “They would write one article about the visiting team — like on a Friday — and that was it. But just think about it: 12 teams and no national news about them at all. No TV, no radio.” The paper had two droll slogans: “America’s oldest and only pro football newsletter,” and “You don’t have to like football to like Lineback.”

Penna began to meet more and more people in sports after she started the newsletter, and got better and better intel from fans, avid gamblers, team staff and players. She may not have been allowed inside the press box or in the locker room, but as one anonymous editor put it, “She can gather more inside information, without venturing inside a single locker room, than J. Edgar Hoover, Walter Winchell and Louella Parsons combined.”

She started selling subscriptions — $3 each — and counted Yankees manager Casey Stengel and Ethel Kennedy among her readers. (Penna was particularly proud of her incarcerated subscribers: “Send a subscription of Lineback to your favorite convict,” she told one paper.) Even NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle eventually got onboard, despite the fact she continually ribbed “The Big Bopper,” as she called him, in Lineback’s pages. Her readership started in the hundreds, and would eventually grow to thousands — all served by her and a group of friends stuffing envelopes in her living room.

By the mid-60s, it was a cult favorite: “Religiously read by the George Plimpton set,” as one paper described, though Penna says she never met the Paris Review co-founder. “The foremost, chicest professional football newsletter in the land … that is becoming the rage of the game’s emerging social set,” said another. Esquire called it “the most accurate and interesting inside information about professional football.” It was even called “sexy.”

“But it wasn’t!” Penna protests with a laugh. “Just to be the only girl made them think it was something.” She pauses. “When a football newsletter’s sexy, that’s going to be the day.”

It’s true, though, that Penna delivered football news with a rare humor and irreverence. Before pundits, Twitter and blogs made them sports’ most valued currency, she understood the power of a quick, bold take — especially when accompanied by a good one-liner. She described Vince Lombardi, for example, as “the Sophia Loren of football: top attraction, big on top, very volatile but warm of temper.”

“My aim is to go against the public relations garbage, which makes every team sound like it has 40 All-Americans in perfect health waiting and ready to go,” she told one reporter.

Some of her peers reviled her unorthodox approach. Others, like Larry Merchant, who was a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News when Penna came on the scene, relished the way she turned things upside-down. “She had a take on what was going on in pro football that lined up with the direction sportswriting was starting to go into in the ‘50s and ‘60s,” says Merchant. “Dealing with professional athletes like they were 6-feet tall, not 10-feet tall; talking about their backgrounds and personalities, not just how many yards they gained that day. It was also a time when pro football was starting to emerge as a very powerful force.”

“The human interest stuff is what I was interested in, and that goes across genders,” Penna says. “When television came, instead of reporting the game the way it had been done for centuries, they had to look for another dimension — so people became writers. Old sportswriters weren’t writers.”

Uncovering trivia about player’s personal lives was one thing, but it was Penna’s accuracy and scoops that wound up getting her widespread attention. A big break came when she was one of the only sportswriters to pick the Browns over the Colts, who were 7-point favorites, in the 1964 championship game. What made her do it? She leans over confidentially: “Nobody else did.” After that, she was regularly called Nostradamus.

She was the first to posit that Lombardi would leave the Packers in 1968 (though she had guessed he would come home to New York), and she scooped the location of the 1969 Super Bowl by calling hotels in New Orleans and innocently asking for Super Bowl-weekend reservations. At the same time, she was reporting on how Donny Anderson was the only man on the Packers who wore black silk underwear and compiling lists of football players “with first and last names which could pass for first names.” She loved Steve Stonebreaker: “the ultimate in names.” Nothing was off-limits, and everything was at least a little bit funny.

Soon, she started getting punnily titled spots in papers around the country: “Female on the Fifty.” “Girl in the Huddle.” “Powder Puff Picker.” “From the Weak Side.” “Beauty and the Beef.” The one that eventually stuck was “Football and the Single Girl.” Despite their gendered titles, the columns had the same peppy mix of football miscellany found in Lineback — and were certainly too insidery for the novice.

Penna was also commissioned by teams and papers around the country to write guides to football specifically for women, including one that was syndicated nationally before the very first Super Bowl, and a chapter in the 1968 Encyclopedia of Football. Somehow, though, rather than patronize her audience, Penna proffered entirely lucid, often hilarious and highly educational introductions to the gridiron.

“Men pro football fans have certainly made it hard for a girl to enjoy the game,” one began. “They pretend football is too complicated for a female to understand, hoping to keep the gridiron a no-woman’s land. Beat them at their own game!” It proceeds to instruct women to do exactly what men do to this day: note extremely obvious facts about the game as though they are revelatory, and use well-worn football cliches to sound in the know:

“Before the play you might volunteer the fact that third down situations (and use the word — it’s very ‘in’) make you terribly nervous. If the team makes a first down, say, ‘I was worried they might not make it. Football is such a game of inches, isn’t it?’ and smile.”

Another evergreen tidbit: “Any girl who wants a sophisticated football fan to fall in love with her should talk about the offensive line. That is one line that is guaranteed.”

She started doing additional widely syndicated columns just to pick the following week’s games, touted with full-page advertisements insisting “Elinor Kaine can outpick ANY MAN!” while challenging readers to not “let her get away with it.” There was another column for Football News, and racing coverage in the offseason. Regular local TV appearances followed, and by 1966 she was making picks weekly on NBC’s Today.

“Most of the time when I was on television, I was not on television because they wanted me personally as a football writer to be on,” Penna insists now. “They wanted a girl, and they didn’t care what I said. I made the picks because nobody else wanted to.” She appeared on What’s My Line? and To Tell The Truth, always stumping the panelists who could never fathom that a woman would write about football.

Penna generally downplays the sexism she faced, or deflects with jokes — but there’s no question it was inescapable. There’s how she was constantly introduced: “Pert,” “pretty,” “reasonably pretty,” “nicely developed intellectually and otherwise,” etc. In the early days, when she was trying to get on the mailing list for NFL’s weekly press releases, the head of PR told her he couldn’t send them to her because “you don’t work for a newspaper and you’re a girl.” So each week, he left a copy at the reception of the NFL headquarters, and she went to pick it up. Eventually he decided it would be alright to send them — as long as he addressed them to “Mr. E. Kaine.”

At one point, she applied for a press credential for a Giants game. “Listen, girl: the turf at Yankee Stadium is sacred,” the team PR rep told her. “No female is ever going to put her foot on it — at least as long as I’m here.” Penna recalls the incident with typical good humor: “Through the years, the Giants have been the most old-fashioned, backwards organization possible — and here they are in New York City, which is a shame.”

She sent application after application to the Pro Football Writers of America, which were ignored until Rozelle invited her to dinner with the head of the organization and insisted they allow her in. She never met most of her newspaper editors, never went to the offices; at that time, there were almost always two papers in every city, and the more prestigious ones would never pick up her column.

Penna got a slew of hate mail — “and they aren’t all love letters either,” she joked at the time. It may have been less profane than the responses women sports reporters get now (though Al Davis was known to refer to her as “that bitch”), but it was certainly no less mercurial. “I get a royal ribbing on how a woman can be expected to know, comprehend or delve into the man’s world of professional football,” she told one interviewer. “They say I ought to get married and go to the kitchen because they don’t agree with what I write. They’re people who are stupid or don’t have a sense of humor, or both.”

Then there was the fact she was single for most of her professional life. When I ask if she ever felt pressured to quit and get married, she interrupts me: “No, no, no. I never wanted to do that. I don’t know what I wanted to do ...”

Penna was asked about it at the time, too — specifically about what her parents thought. “They think I should be married,” she said. “You know, we are a square family, and they think I should be married to an executive and having children. They don’t say anything, but they seem to be puzzled by my entire life.”

Most of the time, her personal life was just one more source of jokes. One anecdote that appeared over and over quoted a nameless escort as saying, “I thought I was out with [storied journalist and racing fan] A.J. Liebling.” Penna dryly insisted she had “army of beaus,” all of whom she told to buy a subscription to Lineback. “Nobody ever said no,” she added.

Looking back on it, she sighs. Penna doesn’t have much patience for self-indulgence or over-seriousness, but the realities of what she went through are still daunting. “Some of these things are just so incredible,” she concludes.

The incident that Penna is, unfairly, best known for is her battle to get in the press box at the Yale Bowl, where the Giants and Jets were slated to face off for the first time in a 1969 preseason game. She had been admitted as working press for the first time at Super Bowl III earlier that year, though relegated to an auxiliary press area in the stands. Otherwise, she had been paying to get in alongside the fans.

Penna met a lawyer who offered to file a show cause order in New Haven Superior Court against the Jets, the Giants, Yale, and the New Haven writer who was managing the press box, demanding an explanation for why a registered member of the Pro Football Writers of America was not being admitted to an NFL press box.

What followed was a media firestorm: Penna’s challenge was covered from coast to coast. “I don’t want to take over the press box, I just want to sit in it,” she said at the time. “It isn’t fair to base the availability of press box credentials on the gender of the applicant. I mean, we were all born by the luck of the draw, weren’t we?” Eventually, the teams and school acquiesced and gave her the credential — but not before smearing Penna and claiming the case was a publicity stunt backed by the publisher of her upcoming book. “But wait until she sees where she’s sitting,” the press box coordinator sneeringly told one paper.

“So LeRoy [Neiman, the artist and Penna’s close friend] and I hop into my car — I had a Cadillac convertible that was just incredible — top down, drove up to the Yale Bowl, parked, and when I got to the bottom of the stairs to the press box, they said, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, we don’t have any seats — we’re totally full.’ This was about 11 in the morning,” Penna remembers. “They showed me to … I think it was probably a newsreel photographer press box under the regular press box, which had like four folding chairs and no place to type. They said, ‘We’ve saved this for you.’ That was the story.”

There were empty seats in the press box, as Penna’s writer friends relayed to her, but she still wasn’t allowed in. The game was a big deal because the Jets were the reigning Super Bowl champions and it was the first time the New York teams had ever played each other, so she had a tighter deadline than usual — but Penna couldn’t file on time because she couldn’t type.

“It was the writers who were against me, the teams didn’t give a shit,” she says now. “They didn’t want me in there. No girl. They wanted it just for themselves.”

So, for the first time, she wrote about what it was like to be a woman sportswriter. “The Establishment, the New Haven sportswriters, the Jets and the Giants conspired yesterday, and yours truly watched the Jet-Giant clash practically by my lonesome in a separate and very unequal situation,” she wrote as the lede for that week’s column. “I’m not crying,” she told another writer who interviewed her about the incident. “I’m just tired of getting treated like garbage. I hate to get kicked around by such little people. I really don’t know what I’m going to do — I don’t want to be made a fool of any more.”

Fighting to get inside the press box unintentionally brought Penna an entirely new degree of visibility. It also inspired more ire from both women and men, including other women sports journalists of the era who saw it as attention-seeking. The attention, though, finally got her inside a press box at the Orange Bowl by the invitation of the Dolphins — generally, she just stuck to watching in the stands, where one peer described her as having a transistor radio in one ear, a portable television in a shopping bag at her feet and a thermos of martinis. “If you got right down to it, I never particularly wanted to go into the press box especially since I wasn’t writing about the game itself — I was just annoyed that I couldn’t,” she says now. “Wouldn’t you rather sit in the stands at Yankee Stadium?”

“I’ve yet to find a writer with a sense of humor who wanted to keep me out of their press box. And I’ve never met a good writer who didn’t have a good sense of humor,” she wrote about her press box battle later in 1969 for Quill, the magazine of the Society of Professional Journalists — the same month that organization admitted women for the first time. “I’m lucky I’m not a baseball writer. If it sounds like football is conservative, provincial and full of old fogeys, baseball has a mind that’s strictly centuries B.C.”

At the time, going into the locker room as a woman was a complete nonstarter, as one might imagine. “Some of the guys said they would come out [of the locker room], the ones I knew — all I had to do was come down and ask,” she says now. “The whole thing about going into a locker room is so overrated. What those players say in the locker room is so boring, when you think about it — unless it was that Rams[/Saints] game last year with the foul, and you interview the guy who says he didn’t do it but he did, or something like that. But otherwise there’s nothing that comes from the locker room that’s interesting, and never has been.” At the time, of course, she had a quip: “They give you the same answers whether they have their pants on or off.”

Her book, Pro Football Broadside, came out that same year and was widely serialized in early 1970. Ostensibly framed around the idea of presenting football from a woman’s perspective, in reality it was just a smartly written survey of the state of the league, filled with both the basics of the game and anecdotes from some of its most memorable characters (the image of Joe Namath shaving his legs in the middle of the locker room stays with you).

“There is something basically discomforting about a gal sportswriter,” one review began. “Too many times it’s just a gimmick; in Elinor Kaine’s case, though, it’s downright embarrassing. She’s good.”

Pro Football Broadside begins not with an explanation of the game or a list of the teams, but in the locker room, where Penna vividly describes various players’ pregame routines and superstitions based solely on secondhand observations because, of course, she wasn’t allowed in. She talks about the pharmacy used to get players through the season, from vitamins to morphine and amphetamines, as breezily as she does the preferred cologne of the New England Patriots (Estée Lauder Aramis).

She describes the game in thoughtful, fresh terms: “If it is taken two at a time, football can be broken down for spectating purposes into 11 individual duels. Watching one duel at a time is absorbing. Superb athletes, football players use finesse, quickness and cunning as much as size and strength. The mini-wars are violently sophisticated and highly unpredictable.”

And within the book, there’s no concession to the amateur: Penna covers the pros and cons of “establishing the run,” the futility of prevent defense and punting (“super conservative” but “[Don] Shula would rather eat worms than run on fourth and inches”), while explaining Norman Mailer’s theory of the hypersexualized relationship between the center and the quarterback and allowing one center to describe the way different quarterbacks’ hands feel against his inner thigh. Penna describes spirals thusly: “The ball is never served with an olive. It’s always served with a twist.”

Penna covers racism and segregation in college football and the pros in frank terms, even explaining it wasn’t easy for Black players in Green Bay to get a haircut. She cites renowned sociologist Harry Edwards’ assertion that “[B]lack athletes have long been used as symbols of nonexistent democracy and brotherhood.” The book concludes with a call to get women in football: “According to doctors, who claim that nature made women the hardy sex as an ally for childbearing, women are physically as well as emotionally suited for football.”

“I don’t think it sold 10,000, but I may be wrong,” she says now. “When they’re on eBay for $2, I always buy them. I have two or three in my kitchen.”

By 1971, Penna had been invited to be on the CBS pregame show, NFL Today with Pat Summerall and Jack Whitaker. She’d known them for years prior to getting the gig, where she would just make the weekly picks — despite that, she says they barely greeted her when she came on set.

She’d already found warmer reception, though: Penna married an Argentinian horse trainer named Angel Penna in 1971 in a surprise ceremony at a dinner party she threw in New York. Angel had just gotten a job managing the stable of a French countess, so at the end of the 1971 season, Elinor decamped alongside him to live in a castle. “Perhaps it’s our male chauvinism, but we are glad to hear that Elinor Kaine has departed to become one of the newer Americans in Paris,” the Daily News wrote upon her departure. “Her track record as a cutie-pie, self-styled football expert was a low-class, put-on performance.”

At 35, her career as a sportswriter was over.

Penna looks at me skeptically over my salad. “You’re going to have too much stuff.” She’s right.

Epilogue

These days, Penna watches football more or less like the rest of us. From a big, comfortable office chair, she has access to both a TV set to RedZone and a desktop computer with Twitter open.

“You’ve gotta be careful,” she says, opening a tab up to check on the state of her survivor pool. “I’m trying not to tweet, but I can’t help it — I could do it all day. It’s exactly what I was doing 60 years ago: a gossip column.”

Penna’s a prolific quote-tweeter, particularly when it comes to her longtime home team, the Giants. She speaks — and tweets — with the easy assurance of a born pundit. Her commentary ranges from “terrible snap” to various critiques of players’ and coaches’ hair: Kliff Kingsbury’s hair is too short, Ryan Fitzpatrick’s beard is too long. She likes Andy Reid because he doesn’t have those “Adam Gase eyes.” “Isn’t it amazing that Belichick doesn’t open his mouth when he talks?” she’ll ask out of the blue, flashing a grin, ever observing the details that other sportswriters ignore.

“I think that reporters are missing that now — the gossip angle,” she says. “Now they would over-do it — take the fun out of it. And there’d be [law]suits.” When Penna was working, the league was still sort of the Wild West: in the middle of rapid expansion via the NFL-AFL merger, and only very recently a mainstream phenomenon. Monday Night Football, for example, was born in 1970. Now, the amount of money and power at stake makes playfully prodding players, coaches and owners seem impossible, especially if you want to maintain your sourcing.

“It’s so big. Think how big it is!” Penna says, reminiscing about the era when all the games were on one day. “And the London stuff — completely ridiculous. It’s not good for the players or for the home fans, who can’t go unless they’re really rich.”

After spending almost a decade in France (where she couldn’t watch football), she moved with her husband to the same house she lives in now on Long Island, spitting distance from Belmont Park. They started antique shops in Connecticut that have since closed, but she still sells 19th century English pottery online; Angel died in 1992.

I ask the woman Merchant had described as the “female Grantland Rice” if she had ever thought about returning to writing. “Never,” she replies. “Sometimes I say, ‘That would be a great idea for a column, but not for me to write about.’ Think about Jerry Jones. You wouldn’t want to interview him, because he wouldn’t tell you anything. But you could write columns about him, by reading what other people say.”

“Elinor laughed at the pretensions of men who patronized women with their pseudo-expertise,” Merchant wrote on the occasion of Penna’s retirement from sportswriting. “She poked fun at the juvenile antics of grown men who played, coached and owned. She fleshed out the people hidden under all that armor and money.”

“She would come up with these anecdotes that ordinary sportswriters at the time wouldn’t care about, would never find out about,” he says now. “It tickled me that this woman had created a space for herself. One of the reasons I love New York is because I met so many people who had sort of made up their lives in different ways that nobody could have anticipated.”

Penna had made something entirely new with her newsletter and her columns, not only because men wouldn’t let her in the room but because she didn’t like the rote, dull writing they were doing in that room anyway. She exposed the fallacy of football’s mystique with frankness and humor, while encouraging women to participate with the confidence of a man: knowing next to nothing about a topic (especially one as ultimately inconsequential as football) and loudly sharing opinions on it anyway.

“I don’t know what my goals were then,” says Penna. “I wasn’t trying to lay any new roads. I didn’t give a shit about that. Trailblazing...that had nothing to do with it at all. I was having fun.”

It’s perhaps because she’s so resistant to the idea of being labeled a pioneer that Penna’s accomplishments have been mostly forgotten; quitting the industry and changing her name also likely had an impact. She remembers being asked to sit on one panel about being a woman in sports media with a shudder. “Natalie, they were the most boring people,” she says. “You wouldn’t want to sit with them for five minutes. They had no sense of humor and took themselves so seriously.”

That’s what Elinor reminded me: This is supposed to be fun. Yes, 50 years later, women have only made it to the men’s professional sideline, not onto their gridiron as she called for all those years ago. But as I try to guess how she might end this piece, I have to laugh — that’s probably a lot closer than they’d like us to be.

[justgotham]

It’s a beloved DC comics supervillain that made a huge resurgence in 90s pop culture with peak Uma Thurman and Joel Schumacher’s oh-so-campy! Batman & Robin. She’s Poison Ivy, a Gotham City botanist who moonlights as the most seductive eco-terrorist the world has ever seen.

One exciting creative decision made by FOX on Gotham’s just-wrapped third season was the abrupt aging up of Ivy Pepper—renamed for the series, in a departure from her comic book alter ego Pamela Lillian Isley—in the premiere episode, setting the stage for the orphan girl’s gradual transformation into the villainess Poison Ivy we’re all familiar with. In what’s lovingly referred to as “SORASed” (Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome) in the world of daytime television, 15-year-old actress Clare Foley bowed out with 28-year-old newcomer Maggie Geha assuming the mantle.

Geha’s career is still very much on the up and up. After getting her start in the business as a recurring guest star on the soap All My Children and featured roles on 30 Rock, in Beyoncé’s “Pretty Hurts” video—she’s also a model, duh—and Ted 2, Gotham is her biggest score to date.

Anthem met up with Geha for an intimate photoshoot in New York last week in advance to our interview. In the kind of rewarding chat where we know very little about the person going in, we sit down with the actress to discuss her early days, the big career lessons, and season four of Gotham.

Gotham returns for season four with its premiere episode “Pax Penguina” this fall.

To start, tell me about this table read you were at today.

So I just got back from the table read for Gotham season four, episode one, which is very exciting. We start shooting the very first episode tomorrow. The gang’s all back together. We had a great hiatus. I think everybody was really happy to see each other and get the new season underway.

It must be a different feeling coming back to a show as opposed to starting on it fresh.

Yeah! It kinda felt like coming back from school vacation and seeing all of your friends on the first day. I look forward to seeing how the writers evolve Ivy’s character for season four.

Do you have a pretty good sense as to what your character arc will be this new season?

You know—I think that varies per character, per show. In my experience, it’s always a different story. I didn’t know too much going into season three. Occasionally, you’ll get bits of information from a producer here and a writer there. I think that’s because it’s very much a collaborative effort. I mean, obviously, there’s a method to the madness. Some of it’s like, we’re all trying to figure it out as we go along. So I don’t know anything at all about what’s going to happen in season four—for Ivy, at least. I’m just kinda figuring it out as we all get the scripts.

I would think not knowing where it’s going leaves room for both anxiety and excitement.

Totally, yes. It’s mostly excitement for sure. It’s just really fun getting the scripts and being surprised to find out what happens. And then it’s like, “Oh my god, I can’t believe I actually get to do this.” You read it on the page, we do the table read out loud, and for a lot of us, it’s the first time we’re finding out about things that happen. It’s just exciting!

The scope of TV is obviously so big nowadays. There’s so much good stuff out there. Does it feel like you’re shooting a really long movie when you’re on a show like Gotham?

[Laughs] Yeah! Well, we have 22 episodes in each season. That’s a long season, with a pretty short hiatus. I think Gotham is very cinematic. It’s shot like a beautiful film. So yeah, in some sense, it does feel like an extra long film, which is nice! You just have a little longer to enjoy it.

You were on All My Children and soaps are very fast-paced. Gotham must be very different.

Oh yeah, very different. I have endless respect for actors that work on soaps. I only worked very briefly, but I can tell you that those actors probably work harder than anybody else in the business in terms of how fast-paced it is. Their memorization muscles must be really strong because they learn all their lines and then immediately shoot them. You get one, two takes—tops. For Gotham, we shoot smaller sections, we have to know less lines day of, and we get several takes. And on a movie—usually, depending on the schedule—you get even more takes and even more time.

How did you get Gotham? Did you go through a traditional auditioning process?

Yeah! I was out in L.A. for a couple years just auditioning. I also moved out there for a change of scenery from New York. I got the self tape [audition] request from my agent, so I just put myself on tape in my living room and that was pretty much it. I met with the casting department at FOX in L.A. I went into their office and had a meeting. Essentially—they actually said this—the meeting was just to make sure that I was a real person and looked the same as I do on tape. [Laughs] And that was it. There was a little bit of a waiting period and then I got the call nine o’clock at night from my team that I got the job. About a week later, it was back to New York to start working.

It’s crazy what Marvel and DC has become in our culture. It was big when I was growing up, but in the ways of cartoons and action figures. The live action stuff we get now—to this extent—were really unthinkable. The fanbase for Gotham must be pretty intense.

Oh yeah, it really is. One of the nice things about being a part of the comic book world now is that, as actors, we get to go to these awesome conventions where we get to meet fans of the show that we’re on. And not just the shows, but also comic books in general. We get to meet die-hard comic book fans. They dress up in these incredible cosplay outfits. The whole comic book world is fairly new to me and I just find it fascinating. It’s amazing to meet the fans because they’re incredibly loyal and some of the sweetest people I’ve ever met, honestly.

So you’re going back to work on Gotham tomorrow. What’s the shooting schedule like?

We wrapped season three at the end of March, so we were off in April, May, and part of June. We pretty much shoot all year. We have two-and-a-half months off, basically.

How do you like to manage your day-to-day, given the erratic nature of an actor’s life?

That’s one of the hard parts, at least for me. I can’t really speak for other actors. It really depends on what project you’re working on. For Gotham, it’s an ensemble cast and there’s 15 series regulars so there’s a lot of us. It’s not like every single one of us is working every single day. It depends on your role, where your character is in the storyline, and what they’re exploring at the moment. I personally did have a lot of downtime, so it is important to sort of structure your day and make sure you use your downtime wisely. It’s tricky not having structure in your day—a nine to five or something like that—because you can find yourself becoming lazy or unproductive or twiddling your thumbs not knowing what to do with yourself. But I think it’s something that you get used to as an actor. You do learn how to structure your own day and be your own boss, basically. I mean, I fill my time with other creative endeavors like auditioning for other smaller roles if I can do them outside of Gotham. Friends, family… Trying to make myself a better person… [Laughs] Studying, working on your craft, always trying to learn and grow and be better… With these conventions that we do, we have to travel and stuff like that. There’s stuff to do outside the actual shoot. Even today, there was the table read. We have fittings and stuff like that.

What one big realization have you made while working in the industry?

That there’s no limit to what you can achieve in life. Growing up, for some reason—I don’t know why or where I got this from, and I don’t blame my parents or my upbringing—I had an inferiority complex. Like I said before, I didn’t think becoming an actor was an attainable goal for me. It sounds cliché, but going through my career thus far, it has taught me that the sky’s the limit. A dream that might seem out of reach really isn’t. You just have to take risks and work hard and be patient. Anything is possible. I’m throwing around clichés, but that’s the biggest thing that being in this business has taught me. You can do whatever you want to do if you put your mind to it. There’s no reason to assume that something’s out of your reach.

All clichés are born out of truth—including what I just said.

If you had told 13-year-old Maggie that she would be playing Poison Ivy on FOX with Warner Brothers, I never would’ve believed you. I would’ve laughed at you because, at that point in my life, I just couldn’t imagine that I could actually do something like that. We can really do anything we want, anything that we set our minds to, as long as we work hard and believe that it can happen.

What kind of roles, stories, and genres do you hope to explore going beyond Poison Ivy?

Well, I love this question because I’m at the beginning of my career and I feel like I’m sort of a newbie. [Gotham] is my first television role as a series regular, so I have pretty much everything else in front of me to do. I would love to do something involving my musicality. I love to sing and I love music. I also love dancing and grew up with it. I would be head-over-heels excited to do something like La La Land. I’ve always wanted to do a Western. I would love for my work to allow me to travel. I would love to do a period piece, more than one period piece—every period piece. I would love to do a good comedy where I can play a weird supporting character, kinda like Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids. I also love sci-fi: Alien, stunts, fighting… I would love to do something “badassery” à la Wonder Woman. I definitely don’t limit myself to one type of genre or character. I can only hope that my career will bring a whole lot of versatility, and help me to grow and challenge and stretch myself as an actor. I can’t think of too many things I’d turn down.

I have a lot of respect for actors because so much is at stake for the individual. It could all go so wrong. There’s compulsion to it. For a lot of actors, they have to do it.

Totally. So much of our job is dealing with rejection, too. You and I both, man. I also have a lot of respect for actors. I ask myself this constantly: “How… Why am I doing this?” [Laughs] It can be maddening being an actor. But like I said, I think it’s just embracing the fact that whatever role that’s right for you is gonna come your way as long as you put in the hard work. That’s what I always tell other actors. If you give up, you’re never going to work. Don’t give up.

[jeremystrele]

5 Ways to Stay Organized While Building a Home

Let’s face it: building a home comes with a lot of paper. Whether it’s rough plans drawn on a napkin, pictures torn from magazines or a receipt for that perfect neutral gray, it’s easy to find yourself buried in important documents. Then, when it’s time to find the info you need, you’re left paging through a mountain of paper – sometimes to no avail.

Staying organized during your build doesn’t just help you keep your desk clean – it’ll save your sanity. From communication with your contractor to finding your dream cabinets, the construction process means you’re constantly checking and rechecking information. By putting a system in place, you’ll easily be able to locate what you need when you need it. Organization doesn’t have to be complicated. Try these five tips to help yourself stay organized so you can easily access everything you’ll need for a smooth build.

Getting organized keeps your vision in sight. Image: New River Building Co.

1. Delineate between wants and needs

The first step for an organized build is making sure you know the difference between wants and needs. With all of the inspiration, trends, materials and ideas available, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. The fastest way to gain control of your build is to know where you stand on wants and needs. Take the time to write a list of five to ten must-haves. These should be items that your home needs for you to be happy with the end result. Then, do the same with a few nice-to-haves: things that you’d like, but won’t make or break the experience. By knowing the difference and creating a strict line between the two, you won’t get sidetracked by tasks that don’t really matter in the long run.

2. Create a build binder (or board)

Building a home is an exercise in collaboration. You’ll be working with a myriad of professionals, from interior designers to concrete workers. A build binder helps you stay organized and on track no matter who or where you’re meeting. A build binder is simple: just use tabs to organize your home into different categories. One way is to split your home into different rooms. Or, if you find it easier, go by categories, such as cabinetry, flooring, countertops, paint and so on.

If you’re more comfortable going digital, use a tool like Pinterest to create inspiration boards and invite your contractors to collaborate. Your interior designer can show you some of the hottest trends while you keep all of your favorite layouts, colors and materials in one place.

Create a filing system that goes from the office to your phone. Image: Donald A. Gardner Architects

3. Organize receipts and documents

There’s no shortage of receipts and docs during the build process. You’ll have land contracts and build contracts, material receipts and floorplan print-outs. If you don’t stay organized, you won’t be able to easily refer to them as needed. While you should always keep important home document hard copies in one place, you’ll need mobile versions, too. If you don’t want to find yourself lugging a file cabinet to every build meeting, use your phone as an organizational tool. Create a folder in your phone’s photo album for home documents and snap a picture anytime you receive something important. You’ll have easy access to all of your contracts, receipts and other important docs on the fly.

4. Create email folders

While the building of your home happens on your lot, the logistics will happen in your email inbox. Don’t lose important communication among your work and junk emails. Create a space for home-specific mail.

You can easily create custom folders within your inbox. If you use Gmail, for instance, you’ll click “Settings,” then “Labels” and “Create New.” You can then name your new label anything you want and use that new label to file important messages. If you really want to stay organized, you could create an entirely new email address for your build and create folders for the different categories of your build. Whatever you decide, it’s about having organized and easy access to all of your communications throughout the process.

Keep a tape measure handy 24/7. Image: Covenant Kitchens

5. Carry a home kit

If there’s anything you should know about building a home, it’s that a meeting can spring up anytime, any place. Whether you’re visiting your home site, dropping by the cabinetry showroom or running into your contractor in the grocery store, you might find yourself making decisions on the fly. That’s why you should stash a home kit in your car at all times. It doesn’t need to be fancy, but should include:

A tape measure

A notebook

A pencil

Your build binder

A pair of shoes you don’t mind getting dirty

Wondering if a light fixture will work in your home? Grab your tape measure! Think you might have found the perfect shade of blue for your front door? Scribble it down. Schedule an impromptu walkthrough? Throw on your shoes and take a look. With a home kit, you’re never caught without the tools you need to keep the build moving.

It’s all too easy to feel overwhelmed by the logistics of building a home. There are a lot of moving parts and contractors to manage. By getting yourself organized, you can feel more in control of the process and easily identify areas that need a little more work. Stay organized and you’ll keep your build on schedule (and the end in sight).

The post 5 Ways to Stay Organized While Building a Home appeared first on Freshome.com.