#my biggest thing is that she’s very disorganized. like she tried to set up a structure for this year

[prettyboywhump]

i have once again procrastinated an entire essay to the night before it’s due

[silv3rswirls]

Slow Dance

Anon asks: HI! So I’d like to make a request of Jimin and reader. Jimin has always liked reader but just never told her. She’s getting married soon and Jimin stops the wedding. He tells her how he really feels... and you can decide the ending! 😉 thank you so much x

Note: Thank you for requesting and apologies for the wait! I really enjoyed writing this, so I hope you enjoy it just as much.❤️

Warnings: Non-idol, she/her pronouns used, angst

Music Recs: | ruined your life | Moving On | less and less |

“Do you ever regret it?”

There’s a long pause of silence between the two young men. The crunch of browning leaves and patter of their footsteps filled the space between them. “Regret it?”

“Yeah, telling her how you felt that night.”

There’s a scoff, a small smile wearing Jimin’s lips as he looks over at his best friend. A dreary fall sky hangs over them as they cross an intersection. “Regret” Jimin repeats, the gears in his mind turning slowly as he again looks at Taehyung. Confusion clouded his eyes as he tried to recall that night and how he felt.

It’s a requirement to be happy and supportive on your best friend’s wedding day, at least, that’s what Jimin has been telling himself the past twenty-four hours as the event inched closer and closer. When you told Jimin of your engagement just a year ago, he had been happy of course. He was your best friend and had been since childhood. To not react with a gasp of excitement and offer to do anything and everything he could to help with the wedding was, frankly, a crime in his book. He was your supportive best friend. He helped you through thick and thin and you did the same. He was one of the first people you told about the proposal, there when you went dress shopping, stepped in on every step of the planning that your fiancé couldn’t be a part of.

He was your best friend, your support to fall back on. He was…

He was in love with you.

No, Jimin didn’t come to this conclusion after you told him of the proposal and showed off your new ring. He had known for a long time now. Two years at the very least, right after you started dating your current husband-to-be. He hadn’t confessed, one of these biggest regrets to date. To be fair, he hadn’t thought the two of you would last at all; how was he supposed to foresee you marrying him? As bad as it sounded, Jimin had been waiting for the day you broke up with him. Then maybe he would’ve confessed and you would be his right now.

“Ah, I did it again” Jimin grumbled as he tore at his tie in frustration. How many times had he almost choked himself out tying this damn thing too tight?

“Need help?” Taehyung teased, appearing beside him in the mirror.

“No” Jimin snapped, retying it again.

“Your hands are shaking,” Taehyung commented. “You look nervous- the sick kind of nervous. If I didn’t know better I’d think you were the one getting married this evening.”

“Don’t start this again” Jimin pleaded, “I can’t and I won’t say a word to her about my feelings. Not today, not ever.”

“You’re just going to hold it for the rest of your life? Jimin, can you live like that?” Taehyung’s tone demanded an answer. Jimin pursed his lips, could he live with this secret? It couldn’t be fair- telling you about his feelings today of all days. “I’m your best friend, I’ve watched you pine for her all year. Are you sure you want to let this go without trying?”

“Tae-”

“Jimin?” Their attention turns to the girl peeking her head into the room. “Jimin, she really wants to see you right now.”

He quirked a brow, “Really? I thought she didn’t want anyone to see them until she walked down the aisle-”

“It’s serious Jimin,” the woman presses, “she really needs you.”

Jimin nods and leaves Taehyung to finish getting ready, the service was set to start in about thirty minutes.

When he makes it to your room Jimin finds the door ajar as he gently knocks. With your okay, he steps in, the room a bit disorganized from you and your bridesmaids getting ready. He found you sitting at the vanity, shoulders shaking slightly as you kept your head down. “Hey” Jimin cooed, coming to your side with a small frown. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

“Jimin” you choke out, “I don’t think I can do this.”

“Why not?”

Is it because you were in love with him? You couldn’t bear to marry your fiancé and now you were ready to come to terms with your long-felt feelings for him?

“It’s just, this is such a life-changer. I mean, we’re moving to an actual house now and this is such a big commitment, I rushed it didn’t I? I totally rushed it Jimin, god I feel like I’m going to vomit-”

“Hey, hey” Jimin soothed, “you’re not rushing, this is a big thing it’s normal to be nervous, okay? As long as you think you’re making the right choice then…then it’s okay. You do love him don’t you?”

Jimin felt awful as he hoped you would say no, but his stomach only twisted more as you nodded. “Of course I do, I guess the nerves are eating me up, huh?” You laughed it off. “I’m excited and nervous for the future, but-”

“You’re sure you love him?” Jimin could stop himself from asking. Seeing you there- the soft white twirls of your wedding dress, how beautiful you looked, and how the breath was squeezed from his lungs every time he met your eyes.

“I do” you confirm, brow scrunching together in confusion as he purses his lips.

Jimin had told himself he wouldn’t, he had been telling himself that he wouldn’t ruin your big day or complicate anything further with a confession. But the moment Taehyung told him he needed to come to clean almost a year ago the thought of telling you just how strongly he felt hadn’t left his mind. The painstaking moments of helping you plan, the way he had to bite his tongue so hard as you pondered wedding dresses. Gnawing until the inside of his cheeks and lips bleed as he watched with envy as your fiancé got to go through these motions with you. Not him, who had imagined these things for years now. He knew it was his fault, he had grown too comfortable in hiding his feelings for you, so naturally, you let other lovers come into your life.

“I need to tell you something” Jimin finally whispers, the silence in the room thick. He could see the concern pooling in your eyes, thoughts racing and you tried to finger out just what secret Jimin could possibly spill to you. “For a long time, before you even meet him and everyone before him, since school I think.” Jimin began, pausing to wet his dry lips and contemplate what to say next.

He paused, granting himself one last chance not to go through with this.

“I love you. I’ve always…”

Jimin trails off at the sight of you raising your hand to stop him from going any further. “Don’t-don’t say that.” Jimin can see the silver hand of your engagement ring on the hand you’ve raised. He shakes his head, going to say more but you stop him. “Jimin, please don’t do this.” Your eyes are blown wide, nerves clear in them, and the way your hand shakes as you drop it in your lap. The look on your face is a dangerous mix of confusion and growing anger, but he can read the growing sadness twinkling in your eyes.

You want to say more, you have to want to say more than this; Jimin tells himself.

“I’m getting married, I’m getting married Jimin” you laugh as you repeat it. Disbelief is clear in your tone. “You can’t just say that, you can’t.” You’re speechless, confused, and look like you want to cry. “You should go, I need to get ready.”

Jimin leaves the room wordlessly, heading towards the ceremony hall where all the guests are beginning to file in. Excited chatter hangs in the air as he sits down beside Taehyung, who doesn’t say a word at the sight of his friend’s stoney expression. Jimin stands and watches as you walk the aisle, though his face is heated in slight embarrassment. He sits through his vows, envy filling the hole in his heart as he listens but can’t bring himself to object or interrupt. There’s a pit growing in his stomach, hallowed with shame and anger. Guilt setting in as he watches you. He knows you well, too well. The way you speak, the way you carry yourself. He knows when things are wrong and right now all he can do is pick out the slight discomfort as you try to shake your nerves, the way your eyes shift over the crowd and linger on him. The slight hesitation in your voice as you say “I do” that he’s sure no one else had picked up on it.

You looked like a subtle wreck up there and all Jimin could think was that it was his fault.

Which, it was.

When the reception rolls around Jimin is glad that everyone is moving outside now. It’s evening, the sun ready to set as the party only just begins. He sticks by Taehyung’s side and avoids you and your new husband at all costs. He doesn’t know why but it feels like everyone’s gaze holds shame in him- as if they knew of the attempted confession and were condemning him for it. As the night gets later the more he takes to sipping on his drinks. He wants to just give in and get drunk, but he knows that nothing good will come of it. He’ll act stupid, make a scene- he’s sure of it.

He’s a bit tipsy, resting his head in his arms as the venue slowly begins to clear out. Taehyung leaves along with everyone else. Just a few people remain, helping the cleanup and chatting here and there. The groom has gone back inside the hotel, changing and getting ready to leave but Jimin catches sight of you still lingering on the patio. He rubs an eye, you’re still in your dress, and are sparing small glances to where he’s harboring a small headache.

“Hey” he murmurs, shuffling a bit awkwardly to your side. “The evening was beautiful.”

“Yeah, everything I dreamed of.” You sighed, “except,”

Except what? Jimin cringed, except you hadn’t imagined your best friend would try to swoop in with romantic feelings and an optimistic idea that you’d accept them.

“We didn’t dance together as we practiced.”

Oh.

“We didn’t” Jimin scratches his head, “sorry, I just got caught up I guess.”

“Want to now?”

The music is still going and with your request of one more song before the DJ packs up a slow song begins to play. Pretty piano and violin great Jimin’s ears as he walks with you to the dance floor and gently he takes your waist and you drape your arms over his shoulders. You move effortlessly without much thought, but Jimin seems to have a hard time. “I’m sorry” he murmurs at some point, fingers gripping a bit harder at your waist. “Earlier, I’m sorry about that. I just had to…I ruined your night.”

You stay silent and Jimin takes it as confirmation that he had.

“I should’ve told you sooner, I just- god I can’t believe I did that.”

“Jimin, I just- you had to know I wouldn’t…”

“I guess I just thought it would be like in those stupid movies” he laughs, but it mellows out into a soft sniffle. Jimin’s arms tighten around your waist in a hug, and his face pressed into your shoulder. “I’m so sorry, I love you so much.” He cries, tears dripping down his face and rubbing into your skin. You’re quiet, still guiding him every slightly through the slow dance.

As the music fades to an end and the lights begin to dim, the two of you remain there. Jimin sobbing quietly, getting out small I love you’s as you let him get it all out.

“I do” Jimin hums slowly. “I regret telling her all the time.”

Taehyung tips his umbrellas slightly to bonk Jimin’s head, “don’t feel bad, It’s been a long time.”

Three years to be exact and you were still happily married and thriving through your new life. Jimin hadn’t spoken to you since that night, going home after breaking down and giving you space. Except for one time you had called a few months later. Drunk and regretting getting married, upset that he hadn’t confessed sooner, crying because you hadn’t been able to bring yourself to be with him back then. But you never called again after that, embarrassed maybe. Maybe you just didn’t want to stay in contact when your feelings were so messy.

“I still love her, always will.” He smiles.

[fakecrfan]

could i prevail upon you to analyse Basira’s short-tempered paranoid phase ?

---

Okay I put off answering this for a while because I wanted to make it Super Well Researched and perfect and everything like that. But it seems my perfectionism has stopped me from like, actually making significant progress so!! Instead I am just going Blab all of my Basira thoughts in a disorganized manner without worrying about being perfectly insightful. 

So HERE IS THE THING. 

Most of the criticism I see of Basira is around her Being Mean To Jon in season 4, of her being too Cold. Like this comment on the wiki.

Anyway, this is really frustrating to me because in my humble opinion:

1: Basira’s flaw is not “too mean, too cold, and too practical.” It’s passivity and numbing down her own reactions to things. Therefore,

2: Her expressing anger and coming down hard on Jon is actually a positive development in her arc, even if not everything she does during this phase is the greatest. 

To elaborate on Basira’s flaw being passivity: When we are introduced to her, one of the things that came up in her statement is that another officer was racist to her, and she let it slide.

Basira is later revealed to--not have direct confirmation of Daisy killing, exactly. But she has a pretty good idea of what’s happening and she doesn’t rock the boat by trying to find out more. But I think the biggest glaring sign of her passivity is the fact that she gets basically forced to join the Institute on the threat of death and she just… goes with it?

MAG 102

MARTIN

Basira’s the only one doing – well, she seems weirdly calm about the whole thing. Like it’s… like she’s on a vacation or something.

ARCHIVIST

Maybe she just suits the academic life.

Basira, when threatened and forced to work for an obviously evil institute just… rolls over and shows her belly. Immediately starts to just sit in the library and read so quietly that Martin completely misses that she’s there. Passivity. Acceptance. Her philosophy, as she tells Martin, is that if you can’t change it you just hunker down and make the best of it.

Of course, the problem with this is… she hasn’t tried to change things very hard before shifting into Acceptance mode, has she? In her statement before the season three finale, we get her briefly talking about why she behaves like this.

MAG 116

My dad would hate me talking like this. He couldn’t stand people who just passively moaned about their problems. He always said, if you don’t like something, you accept it and you adapt, or you fight and you change it. Whining doesn’t help. I always tried to live like that. But I think sometimes you feel like you’re adapting, but it’s just denial.

But not anymore. I’m going to fight, and change it.

Regardless of Basira’s dad’s intentions, he raised her in a way where expressing discomfort is not allowed. You either change things, but if you can’t change them then you shut up. Which of course, if you are powerless and disenfranchised that’s just setting you up for a life of biting your tongue at every injustice that you face, every police officer who sneers “diversity” while giving you a significant look--because you don’t have the power to change it, do you?

But right after that acknowledgement, we get her resolution for moving forward: She’s not going to shut up anymore. She’s going to fight.

I think we really need to keep this resolution of hers in mind when we analyze her season 4 behavior. Yes, her s4 behavior is influenced by other factors: grief at losing Daisy, paranoia after getting attacked by monsters who are after the Institute, guilt at not being able to stop Martin from going with Peter Lukas. 

But more than anything, I think her fierceness in this season is fueled by this rock hard resolution to stop rolling over and fight back. 

If you’re someone who is passive and enabling in this way, and you’ve worked to change yourself, you might be aware of how easy it is to either fall back into old habits or overcorrect. Sometimes it feels like you have to be as direct and harsh as possible because you’re scared that it’s only option besides falling back into passivity. I think that’s what a lot of Basira’s aggression comes from. She wants to be someone who fights but she’s still figuring out how.

So she overcompensates, and she scrambles for how to accomplish this, and she sort of falls back to the example set for her--the one person she saw as resolute.

MAG 116

At least Daisy’s coming. I mean, I know she’s… difficult. Everything they say about her, it’s true, it’s fair. But, she’s solid. She’s a… a fixed point, and if she’s there, I know exactly where I stand, exactly what I’m doing, relative to her. She has no doubts.

Basira wants to be someone who fights. So in season 4, as she’s trying to reconstruct her whole ethos, she latches onto Daisy’s example. But so much of it is a facade, so much of it is her trying to… not be someone she can’t be, exactly, but to become something that she doesn’t know the shape of, yet. 

It’s difficult for her to sustain because it’s so different from her usual mode of interacting with the world. For example, people make a big deal of her threatening to kill Jon if he feeds on people again but… remember her first reaction when she directly saw Jon doing it right in front of her the first time?

MAG 141:

ARCHIVIST

Floyd Matharu. Served on the Dorian from 2011 to 2014. With Salesa.

BASIRA

John, I’m not sure about this.

ARCHIVIST

I am.

Tell me what happened.

Basira gets passive again. Politely indicates to Jon he should stop without raising much of a fuss. And how does Jon respond to Basira when she taks this passive, polite route to trying to stop him?

BASIRA

It wasn’t right.

ARCHIVIST

You could have stopped me.

…

But you wanted to know as well, didn’t you?.

Jon tells her that she could have stopped him. Implies that she’s just as much to blame as he is for what he did, because she didn’t try harder to stop him. And, well. The thing is? Basira believes him. Agrees with him. She’s clearly already trying to become someone who fights and she just rolled right over when an ally did something wrong. So the next time Jon does this she sort of rises to his challenge here.

MAG 148

BASIRA

Yeah. John, We’ve been over this. the key is to not force people to feed you their trauma. You know – just don’t do it?

ARCHIVIST

It’s not that simple.

BASIRA

No. It is. Or I put you down.

She fights him. Pushes back instead of rolling over and being nice and polite. And of course, the blueprint she has for this is Daisy. Using threats and blatant intimidation. 

But you know? Even though she’s not doing things entirely right here, I actually think this is still better than where she was in season 3. She’s seen where she has gone wrong in the past, and she’s struggling to turn herself into a different, better person who actually fights back against wrongness in the world instead of passively accepting it. She’s not there yet, but this? This is still progress.

[yes-these-obsessions-are-healthy]

Late-to-the-party disorganized reflection of Jessica Jones Season 1, sue me

One of the biggest things that bugs me about Jessica Jones Season 1 is... and this isn’t me attacking the writers.. but it’s the fact that Jessica is so dismissive of other peoples’ trauma at the hands of Kilgrave when she’s asked to include herself in the group therapy sessions. It’s a deep character flaw that I dislike but I’m still somewhat glad exists. It makes her more believable, but in exchange it makes me dislike her more than if she were to say nothing. She refers to them as “whiney”, which..no offense Jessica, but if what they’re doing is whining, then what are you doing when you bring up your trauma to Kilgrave? 

To him, she’s whining just the same as them, only being far more unreasonable, and she uses that sentiment as an excuse to not go to the talks. She says to Malcolm at one point the equivalent of “Someone will always have it worse, so why should I air my dirty laundry out when I probably had it better than someone else”, as if it’s a suffering contest. The nature of victimization, the quality of it, the quantity of it, is what Kilgrave, and ultimately Jessica, are overly-fixated on.

For Kilgrave, the suffering of another person is fine by him because he doesn’t give a shit, but at the same time he thought he was being a great lover to Jessica by taking her all over the world and letting her wear fancy clothes and eating in the finest restaurants. What girl wouldn’t be happy about that? She’s just being ungrateful, she’s just being hysterical, he could have been so much worse to her. It’s a chilling thought process. “I COULD, but I won’t, and you should be thankful.” It’s the threat of a bad time that gives him power, and it is his frequent demonstration of how much of a bad time he could give someone that keeps him powerful.

The very character of Kilgrave is someone who is preoccupied with his wants and needs, like any psychopathic man-child who is desperate for a hit of serotonin that comes from having his whims met or doing what he feels like doing in the moment. His perception of things is the truth, his opinion of someone is how it actually is, and anything to the contrary is just a way for people to try to cage him in and control him. Everything is semantics, negligible, unimportant. The man can feel bad, but it’s self-pity or shallow concern. I think he does tiptoe close to feeling remorse for what he’s done to Jessica, but he stopped just at the ledge, looked down, saw the words “Accountability” and “Responsibility” emblazoned on the trampoline, and went “lol nope”. Because that would mean feeling bad, that would mean changing his self-serving behavior, and that shit is lame. Why would he make himself feel bad? He felt bad in the past, he felt tortured and traumatized by his parents (whether a psychopath or not, the experiments forced upon him would have made any child his age feel like a lab rat, I think, especially since they were so painful-looking..).

Where am I going with this...Kilgrave hits that sweet spot of 1% tragic villain and 99% horrible. He’s a nutter, he may have always been a nutter, or the experiments messed up his head. Whatever the case, his obsession with Jessica is the first time he’s ever felt infatuation for another person. He could list off all the things that fascinate him about her, and in the police station he tries to explain why he can’t stop thinking about her. She represents a challenge that half of him hopes to conquer, and the other half doesn’t. An eternal struggle between them to keep him entertained as he floats through life getting everything he wants. She can be his fiery woman, but she is his woman. She is a weapon he uses as he likes. And somewhere down the road he decided he was genuinely fond of her, but fondness does not translate to kindness and compassion when it comes to guys like Kilgrave, it just means you are too valuable to murder. Most of the time.

What strikes me the most though, is that I don’t know where the manipulation ends and where the self-delusion starts.

The manipulative explanation: Kilgrave is genre-savvy and knows what to say to make him out to be a psycho with a crush--i.e., oh he can’t comprehend what he’s doing is wrong! he didn’t choose to be crazy! He's only just now realized that this thing he feels is love and it may be the thing that he needs to help him become a better person! He wants to love someone and this is how he thinks he should go about it! Jessica, why would you give up on a chance on rehabilitating someone by teaching him the error of his ways? uwu. And he’ll pounce on those doubts and reel her in the first chance he gets. If he has to, he’ll use any innocent bystander as a way of getting her to go along with his bullshit. Maybe he’ll ease up on the criminal bullshit just to get her off his back, but...

The self-delusion explanation: He didn’t mean to hurt Jessica. Well, he did mean to hurt her on numerous occasions, but he didn’t want her to get mad or upset over it. He just wanted her to obey him and do what he said. Everything would be better if she just did what he wanted. Granted, he might have been a bit too harsh on her, but he never did it out of hatred! He has no concept of the depths of pain someone might feel; he’s quite skeptical of the idea that someone could be suffering so much under the surface while displaying the opposite sentiment on the outside. His psychopathy fuels, informs, and reinforces his powers, and vice versa. He doesn’t care about empathizing with others, so he will freely use his powers in a way that disregards them. He will go so far as to use his powers to make someone do something because he knows they don’t want to do it. With Jessica, I think he used his powers to force her to be someone he wanted her to be, but because the very nature of his powers are so pervasive, it truly is difficult for him to determine if someone is doing something against their will because he ordered them to, or if they are doing something because they were willing to do so anyway/agreed with him.

 At some point Kilgrave, for whatever reason, came to believe Jessica was following his orders but had also internalized them. He probably thought Stockholm Syndrome had set in and she was happy. He saw what he wanted to see, because the alternative was ugly--someone he was really keen on didn’t truly like him back, and that revelation would’ve broken his underdeveloped heart. Yes, she was being controlled but she wanted to be controlled, she was fine with being compelled to do things because it was him giving the order. In his sad little head, he thought he had a chance to “Win” her back, and his efforts to not be a horrible human being in her presence for a day-and-a-half should have been enough for Jessica to realize he was serious. If anything else, he would try to ape the behavior of a “normal” human being for as long as he thought he would get rewarded for it in the end. He genuinely thought he was doing what she wanted while they were living in her house. He thought that he was truly on the path to redemption in her eyes, that his crimes could be forgiven or overwritten if he did enough good things (regardless if he did them for altruistic reasons). That was why he was so distraught and felt so betrayed. He didn’t understand that that is not how it works. Even if Jessica did forgive him, that still doesn’t change the fact that he hurt scores and scores of people throughout his life. The fact that he most certainly wouldn’t care says enough about how screwed up he is.

On a single, tissue-paper thin level I can empathize with Kilgrave when it comes to not understanding why people are making such a big deal about things like “peoples’ feelings”. When you are not in touch with your sense of compassion, or you do not know how to empathize with people, people berating you about your insensitivity and callous nature is like being berated in a foreign language. You hear the upset tone in their voice, but the points being made don’t make sense. While anyone who disregards someone’s bodily autonomy and displays a lack of remorse for their crimes (or fails to see why something is a crime) is repugnant, it’s a testament to the writers and David Tennant’s portrayal of Kilgrave that actually made me feel bad for the bastard for a few minutes. He’s so twisted, he’s done so much wrong, but he wouldn’t have done any of these things if he hadn’t been granted powers. He terrorized his parents until they abandoned him. If he had been a normal boy there might have been hope for putting him in an institution or something, but no, not with his powers of compulsion/persuasion. If you took either one of those features away--Psychopathy or Persuasion Virus--he would have not gone down the path he had. It was a perfect storm, it was inevitable he would have become a fully-fledged criminal after being abandoned by his parents before he even hit puberty. I truly believe that. You can pull up the “well not every psychopath is a criminal” but how many psychopaths have this sort of superpower IRL? I’m not talking the glib charm and persuasion, I mean forcing people to do things they don’t want to do as if they’re robots and he has a remote control.     

 His self-entitlement is off the charts, but it’s someone who didn’t choose to be crazy or choose his power but has come to be this way for whatever reason and  I really, REALLY don’t want to use the word “gaslighting” because that word is overused to shit on the Internet to just mean “trying to lie your way out of a situation”, but I think that Kilgrave was trying to delude himself. He’s good at doing that, since it is impossible to talk to him without him being able to shut you up and make you cut your tongue out with scissors for angering him. Jessica was potentially the only person in the world who could maybe possibly get through to him, or at least deflate his bubble a bit. I know that Kilgrave would only allow it if he thought it would lead to Jessica giving him “another chance”, and when it didn’t happen he would accuse her of lying and trying to lead him on, as if she owed him forgiveness. That’s the kind of man he is. Quid pro quo and all that.

Going back to the very first paragraph, though...I don’t cite this writing as a mistake, but rather a deliberate effort to write her as someone whose response to trauma is not nearly as often seen in media. The pervasive image of a victim that has suffered what Jessica has suffered is someone blubbering in a corner and essentially wrecked, afraid of men, afraid of people, afraid of life in its entirety. ‘Someone who cries is exposing weakness.’ is the underlying message. Jessica nearly cries on many occasions after suffering a flashback or a nightmare, but she centers herself and shakes herself out of it because doing so comes more naturally to her than it may for others. I don’t really know how to explain it, but it’s not that people who “allow” their trauma to affect them are weak, but rather some people are able to mentally shake themselves out of its hold if given the proper tools to do so at a steadier clip than others. Predisposed skill level at processing trauma, and it’s a skill you learn and develop as time goes on, hopefully. Not all minds react to trauma the same way. Jessica fears Kilgrave, but she also hates him, she hates him in a way that translates to “I would lay my hands on you to remove you from my presence”, i.e. physical, verbal confrontation and rebuffs,  whereas other forms of hatred that stem from trauma seem to be “I would do everything in my power to remove myself from your presence”, i.e. avoidance, hiding. Season 1 to me felt like a war between both instincts, and ultimately Jessica chose the former. 

This isn’t to say that one must always choose to directly confront the source of their trauma and terminate it, since I think people can recover   Jessica has shades of that, and it is a battle throughout the season of “Do I avoid him or do I confront him?”  

She is a very shut-off person, really compartmentalizes everything while trying to make it seem like what happened to her doesn’t affect her, but only in front of strangers. When she is with Kilgrave she goes out of her way to remind him “Hey, you fucked me up, did you know that? YOUR CRIMES AGAINST MY PERSON FUCKED ME UP.” And he doesn’t know how to comprehend that. He expresses his disgust for the word “rape” because he believes the myth that rapists are the kind of people that hide in dark alleyways or skulk around skeevy dive bars. They’re cowardly, pathetic little men that resort to force because they can’t seduce a woman properly. But he! He is a suave well-dressed man with refined tastes! Women fall head over heels for him (until they realize he’s a horrible person, then they try to leave only to find they can’t). How many rapists attract the number of women he does? How many rapists are able to get a woman to say ‘yes’ without laying a hand on her? How many rapists shower their victims with expensive gifts and attention? How many rapists love their victims? 

Zero! So that means he’s not a rapist, obviously! To be accused of rape is a big existential threat to him. It would mean challenging the nature of the relationship that he has created in his mind between him and Jessica. He came to think there was genuine love between them and he somehow lost her, or he failed to pick up on something and she ran away. He blames her for breaking his heart, but at the same time he comes close to admitting that maybe he did something wrong and it made her angry, so he should at least try to fix it to make her happy, as if she got fed up with him coming home late from the office one too many times. You know, something objectively minor but still considered important in her overdramatic female mind. I should note that Kilgrave does not come off as a man who thinks less of women for being women, but believes they are a bit different from men ala “Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars”. Women require different handling; they don’t always say what they want because they don’t want to admit that they want things. That ties into Jessica’s statement that she doesn’t flirt, she states what she wants. But Kilgrave demonstrates that even when a woman states in plain terms what she wants, men assume the woman is lying, in denial, means the opposite, or she can be persuaded... 

It’s the discounting and downplaying of Jessica’s claims that really sell how far up his own ass Kilgrave really is. 

So in short:

Psychopathy + male chauvinism + Unfettered infatuation + Persuasion virus = The Biggest Recipe for Disaster in the History of Gender Relations Ever

[titanias-stolen-shoes]

so this ended up being super long (2605 words) anyway it’s a good place au about ayda talking to the previous incarnations of her enjoy

read on ao3!

---

Ayda didn’t understand how it was possible for all of her past lives to be here. Because they were her as much as she was them, however different they grew to be. They were all the same Ayda Aguefort—but somehow, they were here.

When Ayda first arrived in the Good Place, there had been little more shocking than seeing herself sitting on one of the couches of the common area. She didn’t look exactly like her what with her having a beak and no wings. But there was still the same strong resemblance to Arthur in her strong jaw and steely black eyes that she saw when looking in the mirror.

This version of her looked up from her novel and smiled, launching herself at Ayda in a hug. She was stiff in the woman’s arms, not knowing what to do or say.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” The other Ayda pulled away with her apology, hands still resting on Ayda’s shoulders. “You probably think I’m weird.”

“No. I think you are very forward.”

She laughed. “You wouldn’t be the first to say that. I’m Ayda Aguefort, but I’m sure you knew that.” She gave a small curtsey. “You can call me Nix though. I’m the one right before you.”

“Did you change your name to Nix?”

“Oh, no. It’s just a nickname Rawlins gave me since we’re half phoenix. It ended up taking so it’s what I go by now. Convenient for us, huh.”

“Quite. May we sit and continue talking?”

“Oh, of course. You can come to my room and we can chat about everything I’ve missed.” Together they walked through a door, just a random door it seemed, and walked into what looked like her room at the Compass Points Library. It was messier than she had left it—books were in haphazard piles around the room, pictures lined the walls but placed with no rhyme or reason. It was bright and airy and made Ayda realized she missed it more than realized. She sat at the desk, looking at the knickknacks that littered the surface.

Nix bounced onto the bed and crossed her legs, leaning forward. “So. How do you wanna do this? I ask all my questions and then you ask all yours? We ask one back and forth?”

“I would like to ask one and then you ask so it remains equal.”

“Sounds good. Since you already ask one—my name, yeah?—I’ll go first. How’s Garthy doing?”

“They’re doing fine. When I last spoke to them, business was booming and they were quite happy with their life.”

“Really?” The smile on her face was one of contentment Ayda had seen so few times, she almost couldn’t place it. “That’s wonderful to hear. I always worried they’d get themself in trouble one of these days. Though I’m sure they already have!” Nix laughed. “Your turn.”

“Did you add the expansion of the Friendship section in Compass Points?”

“I did! There were so many pirates that would come looking for ways to cheer up their friends, but they didn’t know where to start. I would give them as much advice as I could, but I can only do so much on my own. It was fun to put together and something I worked on the most.”

Ayda smiled, remembering the rough and tumble pirates that would come in looking for a way to help their friends.

For hours, they say in Nix’s room just talking. Talking about Nix’s life and Ayda’s life and the similarities between. They talked about the Good Place and how it came to be and how ‘the six kids who changed the system are all still around if you want to ask them anything’.

It was a long time before Ayda took a breath and said, “Do you know about the iteration of us that burned the journals?”

Nix’s smile dipped for a moment and she tilted her head to the side, hair falling off her shoulder. “Yeah, I know her. She goes by Red. It took a long time and a lot of talks for me to forgive her for what she did and honestly it still hurts sometimes when I think about it. There’s this whole section of our life that we just don’t know about. I didn’t realize how old we were until I died.”

“Yes, I am very angry with her. She made a decision that the rest of us weren’t there to decide. Because of her, I didn’t understand why Arthur was never around. Why he was so powerful and so affluent and yet he never even looked at me. How could I forgive her for that?”

Nix shrugged. “I just know I found a way to forgive her. Maybe you can too, but I… I was never that angry in life. I accepted that Arthur either didn’t want me or didn’t care and I found happiness without him. I found happiness in the Compass Points and in raising Garthy. I know you’re young and you wanted him to be there, but now you have the benefit of knowing why he wasn’t there.”

“It was Red’s fault that he wasn’t there. She didn’t even write down why he wouldn’t come around.”

“I know, sweetheart. Maybe if you talk to her, you’ll know.”

“Perhaps. But I will talk to her on my own time.”

---

Ayda had traveled around the Good Place in search of the six who had changed the after-life system. She questioned them as much as they would allow. At first, she found their rowdiness a little bothersome—they were all doing so much it was hard for her to keep up. But upon spending more time with them, and learning more about them individually, she grew to really like them.

Adaine was the first to call her a friend. The first of her many transitive friends to do so. She was kind and powerful—a wonderful person to be her first friend her age. It didn’t take long for the rest of the “Bad Kids”, as they called themselves, to reaffirm her feeling of friendship. She enjoyed their company dearly and enjoyed their advice just as much.

Gorgug was sitting in the common area when Ayda asked for his. “Are you busy? I require your advice.”

He sat up, folding one leg beneath him. “No, I was just sitting here. What’s up?”

“How did you forgive Aelwen for what she did to your girlfriend Zelda?”

His relaxed demeanor shifted, and Ayda could barely tell he was more alert than before. “Oh, uh, well, I tried to put myself in her position. Imagine what it would be like if had grown up the way she had. I know from the fights that we had and from talking to Adaine, and eventually Aelwen, what it was like to grow up the way she did. It was hard and she made some bad decisions. It was easier to forgive her once I understood her.”

“I see.” Ayda sat quietly for a moment. “What if… What if I’m still angry with her after I understand her?”

“That’s okay. You don’t have to forgive someone just because they apologize or you understand them. They hurt you and how you feel about them is valid. It’s up to you whether you forgive them or not.”

“Thank you, Gorgug. It means more than I can articulate that you would give me advice on such a subject. I will see you at the show tonight.”

“It’s no problem. And Fig saved you a seat in the front.”

Ayda’s flame glowed just a little brighter upon hearing Fig’s name as she set off to find Red.

She hesitated for a moment, then knocked on the door. She waited, thinking once again about how odd it was that any door would lead her to where she wanted to be. The door she was at was just a door from the common area, yet it would take her to where she wanted to go. It was the one of the things she would always have to remind herself—

A soft, “Come in!” made her stomach lurch as her thoughts were interrupted. She took a steadying breath, glanced back at Gorgug who gave her a big smile and thumbs up, then opened the door.

Red’s room was, like Nix and herself, was of the Compass Points room they’d all once inhabited. Red wasn’t disorganized like Nix, but it wasn’t as neatly organized as Ayda’s. The walls, unlike the bright white of Nix’s room or the pale blue of her own, Red’s was a harsh mash up of red and yellow stripes that hurt to look at.

Red was sitting on her desk chair, one leg up, her chin resting on her knee, twirling a pen between her fingers. When she swiveled in her chair, Ayda was taken aback by just how much this iteration looked like her. The same talons and wings and flaming feathers by her ears. The biggest difference were Red’s bright orange eyes.

“Oh!” She smiled. “I don’t think I’ve seen you before. I’m Red.”

“I know.” Ayda stood by the door, shifting her weight as she took in her doppelganger. “I’m Ayda. The most recent incarnation. I’m still angry with you, but I want to understand why you chose to meddle in the lives of those after you.”

“Oh, uh, well, I…” She trailed off, clearly unsure of what to say next.

“Because you burned up our notes and left the rest of us clueless about our own lives. We didn’t even know our father because you didn’t deem it fit to include in your notes.”

Red sighed, leaning heavily on her desk. “We spent lifetimes, and I mean lifetimes, barely doing anything in fear of messing up for the next in line. I was overly careful, and cautious to a fault. I did everything right, but I was unhappy. Actually, I was completely miserable. I didn’t want to do anything and I didn’t understand why that was. What I wanted was out of reach and I did everything I could to reach it.”

“You must have known that your actions would have consequences.”

“I didn’t care about them.” Her answer was quick as she took in a sharp breath. “I didn’t care what would happen so long as I got what I wanted. And I did. For a bit.”

Ayda leaned against the door, wondering how Nix ever managed to forgive her when she was like this.

She smiled, but there was something off about it. It wasn’t happy. “I traveled the world and got into fights and got stronger and did everything I wanted. I did it all and it ended faster than I would have liked. A few decades later and I had nothing I wanted to do. I was unhappy again and all that traveling meant almost nothing. It was a nice escape. When I realized this, I was in Leviathan. The floating pirate island that had no real fixed point. And then it hit me: I wanted roots in something more permanent. Compass Points isn’t that old because when I started building it, I was well into my sixties.

“Once it got going, I was happy. Maybe for the first time in my life, I was really and truly happy. And with old age, comes a lot of understanding. When I started the library, I started writing again, keeping notes for the next one of us.”

A heavy silence started to fill the space between them as Ayda absorbed the information. She went over her words, trying to find something she could relate to, something she understand.

She spoke slowly, as she gathered her thoughts. “You made a decision that would affect possibly hundreds of future iterations on a whim that ultimately didn’t make you happy… because you are rude and selfish.”

“Hey!” Red stood, and Ayda felt odd, watching her own face contort into a sneer from across the room. “I did what I had to in order for me to be happy. I’m sick and tired of you all barging in here and being mad at me for something any of us could have done. I made a mistake and that’s all there is to it.”

“Please do not yell at me.” Ayda pressed herself firmly against the wall. She wanted to leave, but there was more that she needed to say. “There are different degrees of mistakes, Red. And your mistake it… it hurt us. That’s what it means when we are angry with you. I grew up not understanding why our father didn’t love me. I didn’t know and I was always too afraid to ask him myself. I would have had that relationship if you hadn’t burned those notes.”

“It’s been so long,” Red sighed, rubbing her temples. “It’s been decades, why is this still such a problem. You figured it out, so the next incarnation will have that relationship.”

“And I’m very happy for her, and will continue to be happy for her, but this wasn’t decades for me. It was up until a year before my death. Only sixteen years for me.”

The flames of Red’s wings got brighter as they fluttered in irritation. “Yes but think about it from my position. It’s been over a century of—”

“I don’t want to.” Ayda said, standing up straight. She usually never interrupted when people spoke because she hated when people did that to her, but right now she couldn’t stand the thought of hearing Red say another word. “I don’t want to think about it from your position because you wouldn’t do me the same courtesy. You’ve yelled at me and made me feel like my feelings weren’t worth consideration. That’s not how I learned this was supposed to work. Goodbye, Red.”

Ayda turned and left without saying another word.

---

Nix stood next to Ayda at Fig’s concert, bouncing on her toes. “I’ve never gotten to get this close before,” she said, smiling. “It’s a good thing I don’t need to worry about my ears hurting in the morning.”

“Yes, it’s good.”

She stopped bouncing for a moment and turned to face Ayda as the lights started to dim. “I heard through the Ayda grapevine you were talking to Red.”

“The Ayda grapevine?”

“Another Ayda told me.”

“Oh. Right. Yes, I did talk to her.”

“How did it go?”

“I tried to understand her and I couldn’t. I don’t want to sound vain, but I don’t think I would ever be so selfish with our lives, so I don’t understand how she could be.”

Nix looked at the stage, shadowed figures moving around. Ayda quickly locked onto Fig, knowing her horns and bright feather earing anywhere. “That’s fair. Like I said, it took me a very long time to forgive her.” She elbowed Ayda gently and smiled again. “Well, let’s not talk about her right now. The show’s about to start.”

The lights of the stage blinked on and there was Fig, bass resting in her hands, mic pressed to her honey soft lips, and eyes so beautiful Ayda could spend a lifetime falling into her gentle pools of starlight.

Ayda couldn’t understand how Red could live so long and never find happiness. In Leviathan there was happiness in being raised by Garthy and happiness in building up Compass Points. And now, here in the Good Place, there was happiness in her friendships with the Bad Kids and in her paramour. There was happiness everywhere. Red just didn’t know where to look.

---

just tagging the people who liked my post here we go: @allsevenmaidens @peach-colored-sun @figueroth-fig-faeth @shitposb @aberfaeth @thenextgirlwaiting @cdragontogacotar @wonderfulobsessions @gabrismella-eve @lightspeed777 @baddialogue @natheere711

[scnnyfm-old]

chicago’s very own sunshine ‘sunny’ carmichael has been spotted on madison avenue driving a bmw 3 series , welcome ! your resemblance to dua lipa is unreal . according to tmz , you just had your twenty-third birthday bash . your chance of surviving new york is uncertain because you’re sensitive , but being altrustic might help you . i think being a cancer explains that . 3 things that would paint a better picture of you would be the scent of bubblegum, an abundance of house plants, and freshly baked cookies . ( cis female + she/her ) 

helloooooo ghouls, goblins, and everything in between. it’s ya girl aneesa or whatever fun nickname you wanna call me, and this is my child sunny! you can reach me via ims or catch me on discord at 𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐬𝐚 🦋☀#5408

* && 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐬

full name — sunshine carhmichael

nicknames — sunny (preferred name actually)

birthday — july 15

height  — 5′ 8″

age  — twenty-three (23)

pronouns — she/her/hers

occupation(s) — singer, record executive, fashion/cosmetics brand ceo, fashion designer, reality show star, & model

languages spoken — english (barely)

orientation — bisexual

* && 𝐛𝐢𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐡𝐲

‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎ 𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑺𝑻𝑶𝑹𝒀 𝑺𝑶 𝑭𝑨𝑹...

sunshine hawthorne grew up in the foster care system, according to the letter her mother left her, she was just a teenager with strict religious parents who threw her out the minute they learned of her pregnancy, and sunshine’s father was nowhere to be seen, and giving sunshine up was easier than living on the streets trying to fend for herself and a child

SEXUAL & PSYCHICAL ABUSE TW growing up in the foster care system was a lot, she bounced from family to family, and the things that happened were unspeakable. sometimes the abuse was physical, emotional, or sexual and it just caused a lot of deep personal trauma for herself that was never resolved

this caused her to become reserved, stuck up for the underdog even if it was at her own expense, just intrinsically unselfish, has always been the mom friend to a fault

she was 10 when she got adopted into an extremely wealthy family, like i’m talking top ten wealthiest families in the states, and suddenly sunny hawthorne became sunny carmichael 

so let’s take a minute to talk about the carmichael’s 

they originate from old money, i’m talking so far back it’s unclear whether or not the money they have was obtained legally or not, this caused her parents to be a little reckless w their spending

her father: sebastian carmichael is the one who inherited the wealth from his father, who inherited it from his father, and the cycle continues, he was addicted to gambling add that to the fact that he was a serial cheater and you have an extremely poor father figure

ALCOHOL & DRUGS TW her mother: davina carmichael was a drug dependent alcoholic who spent all of husband’s money to makeup for the fact that he was cheating on her, started her own billion dollar company from scratch, plans on ‘giving it’ to sunny

the carmichaels were very problematic and all of their scandals were extremely public, in fact the only reason they adopted sunny in the first place was so that they could appear more well-rounded then they were

after that would come give siblings, and it fell upon sunny to take care of all of them, so from a young age she acted extremely mature, learned to fend for herself, and still managed to have a soul flourishing with tender spots

sunny was a gifted kid, not academically, she struggled A LOT, she had trouble paying attention, couldn’t read as well as the other kids. she got teased a lot for being ‘dumb’ and honestly hated it, it’s one of her biggest insecurities to this day. but what she lacked academically she made up for artistically, she was musically inclined, and it was clear that she loved to draw (apparent from all the doodles in the margins of her notebooks)

her family capitalized on this as if she were some sideshow attraction, come see our daughter! look how good she is at painting and doodling! pay us money! and although it made her feel like some trophy the could polish and show off, and this messed up sunshine even more because she knew deep down they didn’t love her

in high school she was the bubbly ditzy popular girl, chewed on enough bubblegum to finance a new mercedes, and just was that stereotypical girl ripped straight out of an early 00′s movie

was on the cheerleading team because again i tell you she was just living her best teen life! having an amazing time! vibing!

although her parents could give her anything they wanted and were decent enough to pay the bills for her and her siblings, she wanted to provide for herself, not have to depend on her parents for anything

she got into modeling! and although t took her a while to find her footing eventually she did, and it was a great time! but eventually parents got jealous and made her quit modeling altogether, because god forbid that she get more attention than they did

eventually (and to everyone’s surprise lmao) she went to college, and somehow got accepted into an ivy league....for art! not as surprising, but her family lied and said she went to business school bc of course they did

she went to harvard and majored in visual arts, she got her degree, and got her her happy ass out of there, mostly stayed focused on her studies, occasional party here and there

she was extremely worried about her siblings and she immediately went back home to them, surprisingly they were in one piece, not surprisingly they were being raised by nannies

she applied her visual arts degree and started designing clothes, then modeling said clothes, because although her parents had enough money to get her company off the ground, she wanted to do it by herself

and she did! finally bringing a decent name to the carmichael family!

was a guest judge on a bunch of modeling/runway shows, occasionally starred in her family’s reality tv show against her will, and was so dynamic she would be offered her own, and of course she jumped at the opportunity! 

her mother tried handing off the company to her, and she declined! instead she opened up her own company selling her designs and was very hands on in learned to make cosmetics, and her company has been doing extremely well so far, it’s set to surpass her family’s company in a couple of years

as if she didn’t have enough on her plate she wanted to pursue her singing career, ended up having a whirlwind romance w a singer that she collaborated with, they were pretty serious and talked about being engaged, but eventually things fizzled out

said romance inspired a lot of her music, and encouraged her to keep going with her music career, she even worked her way up to the title of executive of their label, she’s on top of the world

she’s come a long way from the shy girl from foster care who afraid of her own shadow, but she’s lost none of her softness!

still extremely charitable and even started multiple charities all ranging from helping fund the foster care system to providing more funding for no kill shelters (she’s a vegan!) all of her charities are nation wide and oh boy does she have a lot on her plate

has....literally no time for anything else....still tries to prove to herself that she’s definitely not stressed and has so much free time! sdflksj tries to party and have fun, but mostly craves staying inside and takes baths with scented candles and just watches the same romcom over and over again 

* && 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐭

....okay so maybe it’s not completely believable that she got into an ivy league with her own merit, after all she’s not the sharpest tool in the shed and spoiler alert she didn’t

her parents bribed an admissions counselor to let their daughter in their visual arts program, they even donated enough money to renovate the art museum 

all of this happened without sunny’s knowledge and she continues to live in blissful ignorance about the whole thing

* && 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲

zodiac — cancer rising, cancer sun, & scorpio moon

alignment — lawful good

mbti — infp-t

enneagram — type 2 ( the helper )

temperament — phlegmatic

house — hufflepuff

positive traits — ( + ) altruistic , committed , conceptual , curious , courteous , determined , generous , humble , inventive , imaginative , loyal , loving , organized , passionate , playful , reliable , selfless , supportive , thoughtful , and trustworthy

negative traits — ( - ) anxious , cautious , compulsive , critical , disorganized , dogmatic ,, hyperactive , indifferent , insecure , impulsive , logical , oblivious , pedantic , protective , and resilient

* && 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬

please don’t feel limited by this list because i have a brain the size of a walnut and this is all i can think of these are almost all ripped off ryker’s intro bc i’m not creative

‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎ 𝑭𝑨𝑴𝑰𝑳𝑰𝑨𝑳....

family friends  maternal or paternal cousins

‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎ 𝑹𝑶𝑴𝑨𝑵𝑻𝑰𝑪...

past crush  current crush  flirtationship except she prolly doesn’t realize bc head empty  unrequited love ( on either side )  fwbs  will they? won’t they?  someone her friends are trying to set her up with  forbidden love of some kind idk maybe not  exes on good terms  exes on bad terms  first love high school or college romances  summer romance  childhood crush friends to lovers  pr relationship somebody who leads her on 

‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎ 𝑷𝑳𝑨𝑻𝑶𝑵𝑰𝑪...

BEST FRIEND / ROOMMATE PLOT BASED ON NEW GIRL OR FRIENDS PLS I WILL GIVE YOU MY EVERYTHING  best friends  confidants  ride or die sibling like friends  close friends  neighbors??  enemies to friends  reunited childhood friends drunk / party friends  someone she’s a good influence on  bad influence  unlikely friends  secret friends, aka friends who do not hang around in the public eye as their family or friends may not get along  #married....just they argue and love each other like a married couple

‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎ 𝑵𝑬𝑮𝑨𝑻𝑰𝑽𝑬...

enemies  former best friends  frenemies

[parisfms]

hey legends . im kelly and this is my absolute trash bag of a baby paris . im going to give you a heads up now she is the worst , like just horrible but like she can be fun sooo , wooo .  honestly i’ll probably add more to this at another time because i have so much to say about her? but i also wanna get to plotting with all you beauties! so if you would like to plot you can give this post a like or you can shoot me a message over on discord ( 𝓽𝓲𝓬𝓴𝓮𝓽𝓼 𝓽𝓸 𝓶𝔂 𝓭𝓸𝔀𝓷𝓯𝓪𝓵𝓵#6229 ) if you prefer chatting over there <3

the   tahan   family name is one that carries alot of weight . coming from incredibly old money , dating back over five generations . their wealth is rooted in the oil and gas business . although her father ( daveed tahan ) decided to take a different route to his family and in 1990 he and his friend co-founded interscope records ( yes i am mirroring her father’s career after jimmy iovine , don’t sue me ) where he has been a executive producer since the labels founding . he was a perpetual player who truly soaked up the attention he received within the limelight from women . ivy krige was no different , ivy was an up and coming model born to a wealthy family ( the   krige’s   had been paid off in the early 1800s by the british royal family to hold the secret that one of the krige sons was actually the heir apparent to the throne , they took the money and curated a luxury fashion line that still holds up today with the chanels & diors or the world ) in the netherlands . when she met daveed she was infatuated . they dated for about a month before he moved on to another . he assumed that would be it of him and ivy but weeks after the break up she came to him with news that she was pregnant . although the two no longer saw eye to eye , they agreed that the best thing for their future child was to have both of them in their life . 

although paris was born in   amsterdam   , the second her mother received the okay for the newborn to fly they went home to   manhattan   where paris would be raised . not even a full year after paris’ birth , ivy was offered a reality tv show on e! ( how very keeping up with the kardashians of her ) that would follow herself and her two siblings , all of which lived in the city . 

paris’ entire childhood was put on display and god she hated every second of it . she attended regular schools all her life so kids weren’t the nicest and teased her alot . because of the lack of friends she had growing up paris got into alot , she did equestrian , learned how to draw , play guitar , piano , and the drums , as well as how to speak arabic , dutch , spanish , and french . 

she also spent alot of time with her parents , she and her dad got along like two peas in a pod but he was either in los angeles or jet setting across the world so it wasn’t all the time that she got to see him . meanwhile she and her mom had all the time in the world to spend together and in all honesty paris just really isn’t a big fan of her mom . she even calls her ivy instead of mom , it’s likely resentment for the reality tv show as well as her mom always trying to be her friend instead of her parent .

as she got older things started to get easier with kids her age and paris really started to find herself in the whole nyc scene . she was never the nicest girl around . if anything paris and the word nice were never within the same sentence as one another . during high school she gave   regina george   and   blair waldorf   a run for their money . she was and still is the queen of icing people out , ruining their social standings , and manipulating people into thinking she has their best interest in mind .

the biggest note i can give you on paris is that she is not innately a good person , she does not have your best interest at heart no matter how much she manipulates you into thing she is/does .

by the end of highschool she was president of the model un , captain of the mock trial , and valedictorian of her class . paris has never just been a pretty face , she is incredibly smart and takes a certain enjoyment from learning new things . she inevitably decided to attend   georgetown university   in the nations capital . her boyfriend at the time wasn’t very happy about it but she was able to hop on a quick 3 hour flight back to the city every other weekend to see him . that was until they broke up . by then paris had picked up modeling and so she was in the city really whenever she wasn’t in class . 

her modeling career really started to take off but some how she was able to focus on both her blossoming career as well as her education . after just three years at georgetown , paris received her   bachelors in philosophy with a minor in film and media studies   . she was supposed to go straight to law school afterwards but decided to fall head first into the modelling world . she walked for some of the biggest designers , multiple times , starred in some musicians music videos , in just one year she’d surpassed all the modelling goals she had left . in a bit fo a limbo , unsure where she’d take her talents ,   karl lagerfeld   whom she’d grown close to over the years , invited her to come live out in france and he’d take her under his wing .  so she moved out to france . loving every waking moment of becoming his protegee , she wasn’t necessarily sure what he’d seen in her that he hadn’t in renowned designers but she surely was never going to question him . after his unfortunate passing , it came out that he’d wanted paris to take over as creative director of chanel but after one month she stepped down from the position claiming   “i took on this position while they sought out a true replacement for karl, i know he wanted me here but having to carve out my own lane in his shadow is all too impossible, if you ask me”   months later , it was announced that paris would be the   creative director of givenchy   , beating out oliver rousteing for youngest appointed creative director . 

she’s very recently back in new york city ( like it’s so new that she’s living at the plaza hotel while she’s still looking for a permanent place to live ) she loved living in france but honestly it was starting to get to her a bit with karl’s one year coming up .

𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐄

a total daddy’s girl , yes she is the type to say   “my father will be hearing about this“ 

the type to talk you into making a fool of yourself with her and then the next day you find a recording of yourself circulating and she’s nowhere to be seen in it

a total schemer , like blair waldorf level

loves her psychedelics and weed but not big on really any other drugs 

she has a small collection of cars a black range rover , silver bmw i8 , and a silver volvo xc90 and although she has a driver she does actually driver herself most of the time 

her moms reality show is still going and honestly gets really good ratings still ? it’s called    life with the krige’s : fashion royalty   ( normally abbreviated to lwtk )  and paris is on the show by default any time she’s around her mom , her aunt , or uncle . 

very bisexual and notoriously bad at relationships 

she certainly doesn’t have a pristine reputation , how could you when you grew up on reality tv though ? she wouldn’t change her reputation for anything though . the media surprisingly kinda loves her despite calling her an   ice queen   at times . the media sees her as  “authentic”   even though paris couldn’t find an authentic bone out of a haystack .

she can come off very funny but it’s because she has absolutely no filter and just really doesn’t care about hurting your feelings . the best way to sum up her personality is  “im actually not funny , im just really mean and people think im joking” .  

she has two pomeranians ( hi jeffree star , she’s coming for your brand ) named archie and joey . 

despite now being a creative director , img still has her signed on as a model , so maybe you’ll catch her pulling some wild shit like walking in her own shows in the future who knows

has a serious resting bitch face issue and honestly , it’s fitting

𝐒𝐄𝐂𝐑𝐄𝐓

so just a week before she was set to move out to france , paris attended a house party . her best friend was there and was being a total drag all night . paris was honestly sick of whatever funk the girl was in and so when the girl wasn’t looking paris slipped molly into her drink . not seeing any repercussions or even caring about them until the next morning when her friends body was found in the hudson river . someone who’d tried to get the girl down from the bridge claimed she’s shown serious signs of depersonalization as well as  disorganized thoughts ( both side effects of molly ) . paris decided to never fess up about her part in her friend being under the influence that night , letting it go down in history that the late model had a drug problem . of course , paris felt bad , no matter how horrible she can be her goal is never to assist in someones death let alone someone she genuinely cared for but she wasn’t going to let both of their lives come to an end that night by turning herself in .

[marcothehobbit]

OC Facts feat. Hadrian Trevelyan

Thank you so much to @merrybandofmurderers​ for tagging me in this! And I’m sorry it took so long for me to complete; I just finished moving across country so I had to work on it here and there when I wasn’t packing boxes.

Here’s my lovely Hadrian, including a second shot where you can see his broken nose better (and somehow both of these screenshots are him talking to Dorian?? idk man):

I’m gonna put this under a cut because it’s  v e r y  long! Enjoy :)

PLACE IN SOCIETY 

✖ FINANCIAL – wealthy / moderate / poor / in poverty

Hadrian comes from House Trevelyan, and though he is the youngest child in his family and therefore not the heir, he certainly does not want for anything. He frequently donates to Chantry efforts to help the poor and disadvantaged members of society, but other than this, he’s never been a big spender like others in his family.

✖ MEDICAL – fit / moderate / sickly / disabled / disadvantaged

At the Siege of Haven, Hadrian suffered a concussion, a few broken ribs, and an overextended right knee in his altercation with Corypheus. These injuries took a while to heal, and Hadrian tried to patiently wait to get better, but his sense of duty to lead the people of the Inquisition to safety led him to push himself a bit too far at times, and though he tried to hide it, some of his followers spied him hunched over in pain. After some time and rest, Hadrian is back to peak physical health, though he still suffers some difficulty sleeping and sensitivity to loud noises as a result of the concussion.The only indication of past injury anyone can see on his person now is a broken nose he received many years ago that didn’t quite heal straight.

✖ CLASS OR CASTE – upper / lower / middle / working / unsure

Overall, Hadrian is definitely a member of the upper class in society. He was destined, as many younger Trevelyan family members are, for the Chantry; Hadrian had welcomed this as an opportunity regardless of its cost and even if he’d have to reject wealth and status. However, what with being sent to the Conclave and subsequently becoming Inquisitor, he once again found himself assuming his previous role, using his noble status as leverage for the Inquisition as needed.

✖ EDUCATION – qualified / unqualified / studying

Hadrian’s family places a big importance on giving a good education to all Trevelyan children, so he received a full set of courses from private tutors in every relevant subject from rhetoric to mathematics, including special lessons on the Chantry since he was originally destined to take vows there. Hadrian’s favorite subject to learn was history, especially about past heroes and battles. When he was younger, Hadrian looked up to many of the figures he read about in old stories, and he also enjoys listening to Solas’s accounts of the battlefields and conflicts the latter has witnessed in the Fade.

FAMILY 

✖ MARITAL STATUS – married, happily / married, unhappily / engaged / partnered / divorced / widow or widower / separated / single / it’s complicated

Hadrian and Cassandra got engaged a few months after the Exalted Council, and his proposal was a very romantic event. One day, the advisors summoned Cassandra to an impromptu meeting in the Skyhold armory on the pretense of touching base with her before she left to go find some of the missing Seekers. When she left the armory about an hour later at sunset, she found a path of flower petals lined with candles, and every 10 feet or so was a basket with a piece of paper inside detailing one thing Hadrian loves about her or a happy memory from their relationship. Cassandra followed the path, which led up the steps into the great hall and out to the garden. Here, she found Hadrian by himself dressed in his best ceremonial armor flanked on both sides by flowers, and from the trees were hung over a hundred glass baubles, each one containing a brightly burning candle. Once Cassandra was close, Hadrian took her by the hands and recited a romantic poem that he’d been writing for her, and then got down on one knee before asking her to marry him. With tears in her eyes, Cassandra accepted, and as they kissed cheers erupted from above. The couple looked up in surprise to see the ramparts filled with as many Inquisition members as would fit (plus the advisors, obviously), and Hadrian shouted up amusedly at them that he’d told them not to watch. Leliana shouted back that “They couldn’t help themselves,” and Hadrian and Cassandra laughed and kissed again.

The two have talked a bit about their future wedding, the main sentiment being that they’d like it to be as small as possible. They both come from big noble families and know that a) they don’t necessarily get along with a lot of their relatives, and b) once you start inviting people it can get out of hand very quickly.

✖ CHILDREN – has children / no children / wants children / adopted children

Hadrian has always known that he wants children, but he and Cassandra have agreed that now is not the time. What with her efforts to rebuild the Seekers to be more just (especially towards mages) and his continued efforts on behalf of the Inquisition, the two are simply too busy working and traveling for the time being.

✖ FAMILY – close with siblings / not close with siblings / has no siblings / siblings are deceased / it’s complicated

Hadrian is the youngest of 5 siblings, and he has three older brothers and one older sister: Lawrence is the oldest, Arianna is the second child (and only girl), Wilmar is the third, and Rayner is the fourth. He is only regularly in touch with his sister, Arianna, as she is the only one of his siblings that he is still close with. Hadrian has never particularly gotten along with Rayner as the latter is overly competitive and resentful of his lot in life as the fourth child, and he’s always been jealous when his siblings get more attention and recognition than he does. Wilmar and Hadrian were close as children, but after the former began showing signs of magic, he was taken to live in the Ostwick circle; Wilmar stayed in regular contact with his family, but they haven’t heard from him since that circle rose up. Hadrian thinks of his mage brother frequently nowdays, his brow creasing with worry as he wonders what has become of his sibling. Lastly, like with Wilmar, Hadrian and Lawrence got along when they were young, but the latter has become quite shrewd in adulthood and concentrated almost entirely in managing the family’s finances. Hadrian and Varric bonded when they first met over having boring, overly business-focused older brothers.

On the other hand, Arianna and Hadrian remain close despite their distance (Arianna still lives in Ostwick), and they regularly exchange letters to update each other on their respective lives. Arianna is happily married to her wife Antonia, who is originally from Antiva, and they have an adopted daughter named Amelie, whom Hadrian has only met once due to his duties with the Inquisition. Hadrian actually got his broken nose by defending Arianna from a distant Trevelyan relative--a very bigoted one--and getting smacked hard across the face with a full wine bottle as a result. His nose has never been the same, but Arianna has always been grateful to her little brother for standing up for her.

✖ AFFILIATION – orphaned / adopted / disowned / raised by both parents / it’s complicated

Hadrian has a pretty average relationship with his parents, Cadencia and Rowan Trevelyan. When he was a child, they certainly doted on him since he was the youngest, and as he got older they tried to make sure that he was prepared for life in the Chantry. Hadrian’s parents were certainly surprised when their youngest son became Inquisitor and commanded an army seemingly out of the blue, but they are proud of what he has achieved, and they try to stay in touch with him often to make sure that he is getting enough vegetables.

TRAITS & TENDENCIES 

✖ disorganized / organised / in between

Hadrian is definitely more on the organized side of things. One of the first things he did when he got access to his new quarters at Skyhold was to alphabetize all the books on his shelves; it always baffles him that though Dorian’s bookshelves always seem to be chaotically unorganized, the latter can always find what he’s looking for. Hadrian may not be the biggest perfectionist when it comes to organizing, but his quarters are certainly always tidy when he has visitors (and especially when Cassandra drops by).

✖ close-minded / open-minded / in between

In most situations, Hadrian is ready and willing to listen to and entertain new ideas unless they’re coming from someone he really doesn’t like and/or trust. The main exception to this concerns the Chantry. Hadrian comes from a devoutly Andrastian family, and there are so many members of the Trevelyan family that have taken holy vows that he is on first-name basis with most of the Ostwick Chantry. Moreover, Hadrian himself had not only supported the institution’s efforts to help the poor and needy for years but also looked forward to taking vows himself. Because of this, he respected the Chantry a lot, and after joining the Inquisition and learning of things like the abuse of mages and longstanding oppression of nonhuman races, he had a hard time letting go of the perfect image of the Chantry he had in his mind. With time and considerable thought, not to mention conversations with other faithful Andrastians like Leliana, Hadrian’s view has changed considerably, and he now not only acknowledges that serious changes need to be made but also tries to advocate for the historically ignored and oppressed members of society.

✖ cautious / reckless / in between

The best example of Hadrian’s cautiousness comes from early in his relationship with Cassandra. Both of them agreed that they didn’t want others to know that they were together at first since they’re both quite reserved when it comes to talking about romantic relationships. When Cassandra would go to Hadrian’s quarters to spend time with him in private, she’d knock on his door at the end of the great hall and, once he opened it, say something about wanting to talk through tactics (rather loudly and awkwardly, I might add, since we all know Cassandra isn’t the best liar) before following him inside. The couple waited a few months before telling people or showing any PDA, but Hadrian suspected that Varric had known after Cassandra’s second or third visit due to the dwarf’s asking suggestively in passing how Hadrian and Cassandra’s “tactical meetings” were going.

✖ patient / impatient / in between

Hadrian is generally very patient. He’s usually the last person to (stifle a) yawn during long, tedious war room meetings, and Josephine often goes to him to vent about nobles that are distressing her since he’s a good listener. 

✖ outspoken / reserved / in between

Hadrian is definitely a mix of outspoken and reserved. He typically doesn’t mince words, but when he’s drunk (which doesn’t happen often), he can get quite loud and talkative, sometimes saying things out loud that he’d otherwise keep to himself. If someone is speaking negatively about him, he won’t react, but if they attack someone he cares about, he will speak out decisively in support of his friend/loved one.

✖ leader / follower / in between

Most people that knew Hadrian before the Conclave--including perhaps Hadrian himself--were taken aback when he wholeheartedly accepted a leadership role as significant as Inquisitor is. Everyone close to him and his family in Ostwick knew that he’d been destined and prepared for a life of service with the Chantry, so his subsequent unflinching acceptance of his new role surprised many people from his old life. But Hadrian has proven to be a patient, fair, and merciful leader who uses his faith and the words of his advisors to guide him. And despite his usually more taciturn nature, he’s a surprisingly rousing public speaker as well.

✖ sympathetic / unsympathetic / in between

Unless he’s dealing with a complete trash fire of a person like Erimond, Hadrian is willing to listen to just about anyone to try to understand them. Hadrian is a very good listener, and he’s more than willing to listen to anyone close to him that has a problem they need to get off their chest. He’d probably be willing to do this for any fellow Inquisition member at Skyhold to be honest, but most of them would likely be too scared to take him up on it merely because of his being The Inquisitor™.

✖ optimistic / pessimistic / in between

Hadrian is more on the optimistic side, but this is definitely tested at times. His companions tend to reach out to him when they’re feeling down about life because he can frequently offer a different (and brighter) take on their situation.

✖ hardworking / lazy / in between

Hadrian is hardworking almost to a fault. He is no stranger to late, candlelit nights, poring over letters to important noble allies or old tomes he is using to help Dorian research. It certainly doesn’t help that he tends to have trouble sleeping anyway, and if he wakes up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep, his first instinct is to be productive with his time. Hadrian can have trouble shutting off and relaxing, and Josephine, Cullen, and Leliana have actually had to order him to rest on multiple occasions.

✖ cultured / uncultured / in between

Part of Hadrian’s education when he was growing up was learning about other cultures. Hadrian can remember sitting wide-eyed as his tutor taught him about Orlesian fashion, Nevarran dragon hunting, Dalish deities, dwarven provings, Ferelden mabari, Tevinter architecture, Antivan trade, Rivaini seafaring, Avvar hold beasts, and Qunari vitaar. But reading about a culture is very different from meeting people to whom that culture belongs, and before going to the Conclave, Hadrian never had much occasion to interact with many other cultures, especially the nonhuman ones, aside from some traders, refugees, or city elves that he knew casually from Ostwick’s alienage. Hadrian always felt nervous before meeting someone new from a culture that he’d only read about, mainly afraid of being unintentionally offensive. Since joining the Inquisition he’s gotten a lot more experienced and has met at least a few people from each of the above cultures. He’s also gained friends like Dorian, Iron Bull, and Varric that he can exchange cultural knowledge with, so he’s learned a lot and become more culturally aware, but he’s definitely still learning.

✖ loyal / disloyal / in between

Hadrian is fiercely loyal. Once someone gains his trust, he will stay by their side through anything. This isn’t to say that he won’t question friends’ problematic decisions, but he doesn’t like to even gossip, and if someone is saying something negative about someone close to him, whether it’s behind their backs or to their faces, he will absolutely stand up for them.

✖ faithful / unfaithful / in between

Hadrian is absolutely faithful, and he would never dream of cheating on someone that he was in a relationship with. This has never happened to him, but if he were in a relationship and met someone else that he wanted to pursue, he would be sure to break things off with whomever he was seeing first so as to remain faithful.

SEXUALITY & ROMANTIC INCLINATION 

✖ SEXUALITY – heterosexual / homosexual / bisexual / asexual / pansexual / omnisexual / demisexual / queer

Based on his past crushes, romantic interests, and partners, Hadrian would consider himself (at least in modern terms) pansexual. Though he is currently engaged to Cassandra, he doesn’t particularly have a preference in terms of gender.

✖ SEX – sex repulsed / sex neutral / sex favorable

Hadrian definitely enjoys sex, but for him it’s reserved for committed relationships that he’s in. He of course doesn’t think any less of other people who do have casual sex, but it’s just not for him. His first time with Cassandra was actually the first time he’d even had sex on a first date, but he’d also never been so sure of his feelings for another person before her.

✖ ROMANCE – romance repulsed / romance neutral / romance favorable

Hadrian is a bit of a hopeless romantic. He loves the practices of giving flowers, reading poetry, and other romantic gestures, and he enjoys both giving and receiving these. Hadrian was very happy to find someone like Cassandra who has a similar interest in being swept off their feet, so to speak, and the couple has had a lot of very cute, very romantic dates over the course of their relationship.

✖ SEXUALLY – sexually adventurous / sex experienced / naive / inexperienced / curious / uninterested

Hadrian is sexually inexperienced because of several factors. The main one is that because he was supposed to take holy vows, he was preparing himself for celibacy by refraining more from romantic relationships in the few years before he was supposed to join the Chantry. As a result, he was only in two relationships, both with other guys. And combined with his preference to only have sex with those he is committed to, he hasn’t had many opportunities for learning, but he’s certainly eager to try new things.

ABILITIES 

✖ COMBAT SKILLS – excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

Hadrian is an excellent marksman and very skilled with a bow. While wooing Cassandra, he participated in the archery contest thrown at Skyhold and won handily; he probably wouldn���t have participated otherwise as he’s not much of an attention lover or showoff, but he definitely wanted to impress her. Also, if he’s had a bit to drink, he and Sera try to do trick shots. This little practice of theirs arose originally out of Sera tipsily saying something along the lines of “Hey Trevelyan, bet you can’t shoot one of those banners outside the great hall while doing a backflip off a barrell.” These bets of theirs have gotten more outrageous over time, resulting in a few that seem near-impossible, like trying to shoot an arrow onto Hadrian’s balcony from the sparring area during heavy winds. But aside from these, Hadrian practices every day to make sure his skills are as sharp as his arrows.

✖ LITERACY SKILLS – excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

Hadrian isn’t too voracious a reader, but he has great reading and writing skills due to the customary education he received as a noble child. When he has some quiet time, which isn’t very often since he spends most of his time working or training, he enjoys reading about history. He’s also read some of Varric’s romance serial after catching Cassandra reading it just to see why she likes it so much, and he secretly quite enjoyed it.

✖ ARTISTIC SKILLS – excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

Hadrian has never been very artistic; even as a child he never had much of an interest in learning an instrument or drawing or anything like that. But one thing he does enjoy is writing poetry for Cassandra; he’s not the best at it, but he knows that she loves it, so he enjoys trying his hand at it on special occasions. 

✖ TECHNICAL SKILLS – excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

The same aptitude that made Hadrian good with a bow and arrow also makes him pretty good with his hands. He asked Blackwall to teach him woodworking when he saw the latter working on a little gryphon rocking horse. Since then he’s learned and created a lot, including a few bottle racks for all of the bottles of Thedas and Grey Warden ritewine that he’s found and some sliding bookshelf organizers.

--

Please let me know if you read this and have any comments/questions/feedback! I’m very new to all this so I’d appreciate anything you have to say!

[queencatherynerhys]

Tell Me You Love Me - TRR AU Part 3

A/N: I tried so hard to wait to post this, but I couldn’t. I love this chapter! I have been in a writing high these past couple of days! Let me just say how fun this was for me to write! It is the longest one that I have written so far, 4043 words! Crazy! I had fun with this emotional ride! I hope you do too! Thank you for all the love, encouragement and kind words!

Summary: Liam and Catheryne’s friendship have been strained by her revelation. Is there hope for them?

Song Inspiration: Tell Me You Love Me by Demi Lovato (can you tell that I’m a fan of her?)

Tag List: @captainkingliam @decisso @devineinterventions2 @madaraismtheroyalweisme @drakewalkerwhipped @laniquelove @drakesfiance @hhiggs @hellospunkiebrewster @alicars @mrswalkerreynolds @mfackenthal @simplyaiden-blog @hopefulmoonobject @blackcatkita @cocomaxley

Previous Parts:

Ruin the Friendship – TRR AU Part 1

Delicate – TRR AU Part 2

Panic starts to rise in my chest. Why the hell am I on boat? Where in the hell am I? I can’t breathe. Strong winds hurtle my hair, slapping me in the face. Water enters the ship and the terror from my impending doom engulfs me. Waves upon waves crash against my craft. I hang on for dear life against the railing, but to no avail.  I am thrown off violently crashing into the merciless ocean. I swim to the top for air only to be met by another violent wave submerging me underwater. I rise to the surface once more, locating my raft in the darkness. I catch a glimpse of the sail and I put all my energy into my strokes. The current is so strong. I’m almost there. The boat is within arm’s length. I’m almost there. I was about to grab hold when the current sweeps me underneath pulling me into its ruthless clutches. No, please, no. I scream with all the energy and breath I had left. I scream my pain and anguish. I am swept undersea, letting go of the tiny ember of hope I had held onto, I submit into my despair with open arms.

She jolts awake, breathing hard. Her head pounded, and she can feel the intense throbbing pain behind her eyes. She’s been in Hana and Maxwell’s apartment plenty of times that she knew where they kept their pain meds in their kitchen. She notices a note on the kitchen table with her name on it. She recognizes Hana’s elegant handwriting immediately. Hey Cath, Maxwell has headed into class and I left for work, but I made you some breakfast before leaving. You can find it in the fridge. You can also borrow some of my clothes just in case you want to take a shower and get out of your nasty ones. I’ll talk to you later. Love, Hana. Responsible to a fault, that girl, this is a trait of hers that she is grateful for. She took advantage of her offer and hopped in the shower. She took a long shower, staying under the stream water so long that her fingertips turned prune-y. She had hoped that the hot water would cleanse away all memory of the previous night. It didn’t.

She stepped into living room after getting dressed and checked the clock in the living room. It read 9:23am. He should be in class by now. She felt relieved knowing that she won’t have to face him…yet. I’m not ready. I don’t think I’ll ever be ready to face him. She steps into the lively streets of New York City, slowly treading the path back to her apartment. She arrives at the flat she shared with Liam. The internal storm of misery and torment finally subside, leaving nothing but a scar tissue where her heart used to be in its carnage. She is numb, and she is actually thankful for that.

She makes her way to her room, passing Liam’s on the way. He left his door open. His usually very neat, making his bed every day before he left. Today was the exception, his room was a mess. Blankets and pillows strewn about as if he had a restless night. His uniform thrown on the floor messily, as if he woke up late. Her best friend was never the one to leave things disorganized. I wonder if he slept alright. Probably not. He found out his girlfriend was cheating on him, then I had to go and be a drama queen and tell him how I felt. Worst anniversary ever. Fucking whiskey! I should really learn to not mix anger with a bottle of Jack Daniels. She shakes her head to put a halt on her train of thoughts as she continues to make her way to her room.

She didn’t have classes today, so she had a few hours to herself before she had to get ready for a long shift. She decided to pour herself into her homework and finishing the papers for her finals to distract herself from Liam. It’s so difficult to do when she’s surrounded with pictures and memories of him. Every where she looks, there he is. He’s even on her nightstand. It was a picture of the 15-year-old version of them. She grabs the picture and gazes at it. She couldn’t stop herself from flashing back to that memory.

It was the first birthday she was celebrating after the death of her parents. Catheryne was two days younger than Liam, so it became a tradition to celebrate their birthdays together. For once in her life, she was sad that their birthdays were during the summer break. At least if she was in school she could be distracted with work, but there was no escape. She dreaded this day. She missed them. She missed their mini traditions; her mom was a great baker and always made her a cake, her dad would sing to his own version of the Happy Birthday Song with his guitar.

She had asked the Rhys’ to not throw a celebration for her birthday. For this birthday, all she wanted was some time alone. No friends to entertain, no fake smiles, no pity looks from everyone. “Liam, you can still throw yourself a birthday party. Don’t let me sour your special day.” She felt awful for ruining their tradition, but she just couldn’t do it this year. “Ryne, you are not souring anything. You’re my best friend and I can’t imagine not celebrating our birthdays together. So, whatever you wanna do, we will do.” She looked at him with grateful eyes.

She will never forget that birthday. She was awakened by the sounds of a strumming guitar. Liam walked into her room singing happy birthday. He didn’t have her father’s angelic voice, but it sufficed. What in the world is he doing? He finishes the song as she sits up on her bed. “Happy Birthday, Ryne.” Upon hearing her nickname, her eyes welled up. There were only two people in the world who called her by her nickname, her father and Liam. She misses her dad.

“Liam…” she was left with absolutely no words. “Is…Is this why you asked for my dad’s guitar two weeks ago?” asking him with her early morning voice. “Yeah, sorry I lied about my reason. I really wanted to surprise you. You don’t wanna know how many YouTube videos I had to watch to learn this simple song,” He says, sheepishly. She stared at him, awestruck at the effort he has put into this. “Oh, wait here, I have to get the second part to the surprise.” He ducks out of the room. There was a second part? How much work did he put into this? Her trance was interrupted when he walked in with a birthday cake in his hands. It was chocolate, just like her favorite, and it was topped with 15 lit candles. It didn’t look store bought so she asked, “Liam, did you make this?” She inquired her friend. “My mom guided me through it, but it was mostly me. Well then, make a wish.” She closed her eyes and thought of a wish, I wish to never forget this day or this feeling, and with that in mind she sends it to the universe with a blow of her candles.

“Liam, thank you, seriously, this means more to me than you could possibly know.” He grabbed her hands with his and replied, “You’re very welcome, Ryne, but the day is only getting started. Now, go get a shower and get dressed. I’ll be down by the beach when you’re done.” He squeezed her hand as he stands up to leave.

She met him down by their safe haven. She was so thankful that their little beach, the small place where she found peace, wasn’t a tourist spot. They had the freedom to run around, their parents never had to worry about them disappearing for hours when they go off on their explorations. She stood there admiring his tall physique, his blonde hair being ruffled by the summer breeze. She thinks to herself, He looks like a prince from a book when he stands there like that. I think if he desired it, he could be a Disney prince, he definitely met all the criteria. He had the biggest heart out of everyone I know. And not to mention he was incredibly handsome! She feels a stirring in her heart, something she’s never felt before, but she didn’t dwell on it. She walked up beside him and said, “So, what now?” He jumped when he heard her; he was so concentrated on the horizon that he didn’t register her presence at all. “Well, I have one more surprise for you, but we’re gonna have to travel there.” His eyes twinkled, just like it always did whenever they were about to embark on an adventure. “Liam, seriously you’ve done enough for today.” “I am not taking a no for an answer, Ryne, now follow me.”

They marched back up to the house. He instructed her to wait out front while he grabbed something. A few minutes later, he shows up with a bicycle in tow. “Is that Leo’s bike? Why is there a basket attached to it?” He holds up a picnic basket to answer her question. “Uhhh, why do we need to go somewhere to have a picnic when there’s a perfectly undisturbed beach right here where we can do the same thing?” He heartily laughs at her and replies, “Ryne, would you just trust me for once in your life and get in the back.” She shakes her head and hops on the bicycle’s pegs. Demanding, as always, somethings never change.

She wrapped her arms around him as he pedaled their way to an unknown location. After 6 miles, they finally get there. It was the memorial where her parents are buried. They weave their way to their tombstones. Liam sets up the picnic while Catheryne cleaned her parents stone and its surroundings, clearing it of twigs and leaves.

“Hi, Mom, Dad. It’s me, Catheryne,” she felt a little silly talking out loud, but she needed to be close to them. “It’s my birthday today. Liam is here with me. I just want to thank you for bringing me into this world. You’re the best parents a child can ask for. I miss you every day.” She allowed a tear to fall from her eyes as she knelt before her parents. Liam’s hand finds its way to rest on her shoulder. How can this simple gesture bring so much comfort? It’s as if his hand held her, preventing her from being blown away by the winds of her despair.

They sat on the picnic blanket, laughing and talking the day away. This isn’t how she imagined this day would go. She thought she would spend the whole day lying in bed, surrounded by her depression from the loss of her parents, but here she was with the only family she had left. Liam had given her the best birthday gift, and she couldn’t be more grateful for her best friend and his big heart.

They watched the sun set in the horizon. She basked in the last glimpse of the sunlight until it disappeared, signaling that the time has come to return home. He looked at her as she stood there, eyes closed, facing towards the sunset. She looks content and happy. I guess I did my part well. I’m glad to have given her this day. She deserves so much happiness after all that had happened with her family this year. He smiled with satisfaction. He hated to break that surreal moment, but he announced, “Hey, we should head back. It’s gonna get dark soon.” She opened her eyes, acknowledging him and nodding her reply. “Liam, thank you so much for this day. I…It…I’ll never forget it.” She felt embarrassed that she couldn’t find the right words that she was feeling. She admired him in the orange rays of the sunset. He looks like a dream in this lighting. The flutter in her heart and stomach came back. What is that? Stop being an idiot, Catheryne. Liam is probably looking at you like you’re stupid for looking at him with goofy eyes. Her best friend replied by giving her the softest kiss on her cheek. He lingered there for a moment. He pulled away, saying “It makes me happy to see you happy, Ryne, happy birthday.” With that, he walked away to get his bike leaving her all alone to her emotions. The flutter in her heart became an intense warm sensation emanating from her heart. The sudden realization of what her feelings had hit her like a bullet train, quick and sudden. I am in love with my best friend. I am in love with Liam Rhys.

Her loud alarm pulled her back to her reality. It was time to get ready for work. She places the picture back on her nightstand, facing down. She couldn’t bare to look at it anymore. Her birthday wish from that memory, was just that, a wish. Life clearly loved to remind her of her aching heart. She gets up from her bed to her vanity and put on her everyday make-up. She smiles at the mirror, hoping to cheer herself up, but even with effort her smile never reached her eyes. She sighs in defeat.

She grabs her shoulder bag and keys from the hook by her door and heads for work. She loves walking in the midst of the hustle and bustle of New York City. It is where she truly feels like she can disappear.

The mediocre dive bar she works at come into view. Before she entered, she inhales a deep breath steeling herself for the long night ahead. You can do this, Catheryne. Just take it one foot at a time. You can make it through this. She releases her breath and trudges forward, head hanging low. She walks back to the locker area, shoving her items in her locker. She lazily puts on her disgusting apron and puts her hair up in a bun. “Catheryne, stop standing there and gawking like an idiot and get out there!” Her asshole of a manager, Declan, barked at her. She pinches the bridge of her nose and closes her eyes as she uses her hand to lean forward against the lockers. You can do this. You can do this. Even as she repeats it in her mind, her resolve is slowly dissipating.

As if she didn’t have enough on her plate at that moment, life decides to pile on to her mess. “Hey, Ryne.” Hearing his voice made all the blood rush into her face. She balls her fist on her side, remembering the night before and all the anguish he . “I can’t do this with you tonight, Liam.” She whispers through gritted teeth before stepping out into the floor without looking at him. She is already frustrated with her boss. She can’t handle him, too.

She went about the motions of being a waitress. Her feet are screaming with pain from running back and forth to the kitchen and the room, handing and taking orders. Her emotional health is strained from the barrage of harassing customers. It was a busy night. It was a Friday after all. When she would get a break from the flow of customers she had to attend to, she would catch him looking at her from the corner of her eye, concern carved on his chiseled face. She was hanging on by a thread. She didn’t know how long she could keep up the feigned strength she conveyed to the world.

She is making her way back to the kitchen to pick up an order when a loud, rowdy customer stops her in her track. “Hey, doll, why don’t you and your purty self come here and let me tell you somethin,” This is the nature of her job, rude people mixed with alcohol is a concoction for disaster. She turns and makes her way to his table full of raucous men just like him. “Yes?” she replied politely, hiding her anger for his insulting demeanor. “I ain’t never seen someone as beautiful as you. I was wonderin’ if you’d like to come with me to my hotel after your done from here. I think I can blow your mind.” He is clearly drunk off his ass; his slurred country accent makes it difficult to understand him. She was fuming with rage at his insulting comment, but nonetheless she replies with a calm tone, “Thanks for the offer, but I must decline.” She turns to walk away when he slaps her right on the ass.

The tiny thread she held onto finally snapped. She whirls around, letting her anger fuel her. Before she even knew it, she slaps the rude man squarely across the face. Her hand stung from the impact, but it was nothing compared to the fury coursing through her veins. How dare he?! Disgusting, insulting, perverted bastard! The man stands up, hollering at her, “WHAT THE HELL?! I’LL MAKE YOU PAY FOR THAT, YOU BITCH!” His hand recoils behind him, getting ready to take a shot at her

Liam watches her with careful eyes as she goes about this encounter. He has known her a long time, he can read her tells. He can read the anger that was hidden behind her smile and eyes. The way this man is treating her enrages him, but he tries to concentrate back to tending the bar. His work was halted when he sees Catheryne walking back to the man slapping him in the face, she was shaking with anger. What the hell just happened? His instinct to protect her guides him across the bar to where the conflict is unraveling. He steps in front of her, putting himself between them, his arm blocks the blow that he was about to throw at Catheryne. He retaliates by punching him hard on the stomach, and using momentum and rage, he punches the man in the face, knocking him out.

Declan comes out from the kitchen, witnessing the commotion that just happened. “What in the hell is happening? Liam! Catheryne! You insufferable morons! What the hell…” Liam stops him mid-sentence, “You know, Declan,” enunciating the syllables of his name, “you just may be one of the worst goddamned person in the planet. We quit!” He goes to the back to grab his and Catheryne’s belongings. He grabs her hand and pulls her, a little too violently, out of the bar back to their apartment.

When they arrive at their place, she finally speaks up, “What the hell did you do, Liam?” He is making his way to the cabinet where they kept the strong rum. He skips the glass and downs a gulp straight from the bottle. “Liam, what the fuck?! You shouldn’t have done that!” He couldn’t believe what she just said, and he stared at her with incredulous eyes. Is she really angry at me after I just protected her from that god-awful man?

Her body trembles from all the emotions racing within her. What just happened? I’ve never lost my senses like that before. Oh God, what is happening to me? Her feelings for Liam is ruining her. She watches as he sets down the bottle on the counter. She sees his white knuckles gripping the countertop. “What did you want me to do, Catheryne, hmm?” He speaks quietly, his tone almost felt like the calm before the storm. “I don’t know, Liam, but you shouldn’t have interfered. Now, we both have no jobs.” She responded, matching the tone of his voice.

“So, you’re saying I should’ve just let him hit you?! Is that it, Ryne?” his voice gradually rising in volume. “Well, I’m sorry that I couldn’t just stand there and watch him treat you like that. I’m sorry that I couldn’t be a bad friend.” Friend, there is that word again. Such a simple word, but it cuts through me like a double-edged sword. She paces across the room, grabbing the rum and consumes a considerable amount of it. She stomps athwart in their living room. Her panic, rising to the surface. He continues his rant, “I’m sorry that I all I wanted was to protect you!”

“We’re not in high school anymore, Liam, ok,” she snaps at him. “I’m not the weak, little girl you had to protect from her bullies! I can stand on my own two feet!” Her hands flail around her as she speaks, and her tears get the best of her, staining her face.

The storm has arrived as they both explode. “I don’t know what you want me to do, Ryne?! I just want to take the past couple of days and pretend it never happened! Then, we could continue just as the two best friends living in the city of dreams, happy!” He screams at her.

She has taken aback by the timbre of his voice. Not once, in the 16 years, that they have known each other has he treated her this way. Happy, is that what he thought our relationship was? “Happy, really? Liam, have you been really that blind all throughout this years?! I have loved you since we were kids. I fell in love with you when we were 15! Happy, isn’t the word I would use to describe this relationship.” All her frustration and anger poured out of her, she couldn’t keep them in anymore. I am so tired. I am so tired of hurting. She meets his eyes across the room and she let go, “I was miserable, Liam. I am miserable! My heart broke every time I saw you with other girls, wishing I was them, wishing you looked at me like the way you do with them! The anger I would feel towards them for breaking your heart scared me! I don’t know who I am anymore. I lost myself because of you, because of my love for you. I am so tired, Liam. I am tired of hurting. I am tired of crying myself to sleep. Loving you is more painful than when I lost my parents. I don’t know what it is about you. I tried so hard, Liam. I really did. I tried to stop my feelings for you, but clearly it didn’t work.” She laughs bitterly. She was done. She was done waiting for the day he’ll love her, too.

She heads towards the door, leaving to stay at Hana’s for the weekend. He suddenly steps in front of her, blocking the way to the door. She tries to weave her away forward, but his broad physique compared to her petite frame always had her at a disadvantage. “I’m sorry, Ryne! I’m so sorry! How can I make this go away? Tell me, please! How can we go back to the way it was?” He pleads with her. “We can’t.” She simply stated. “No, I refuse to believe that!” He is trying so hard to hang on to his best friend, his confidant. He grabs her arms refusing to let her go. “There must be a way to fix this! There has to be! Tell me how I can fix this! Tell me how I can stop you from hurting.” She wiggles out of his hold, heading out the door. “CATHERYNE, PLEASE!” He is begging her to stay. “Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.” She loses what sanity she has left and yells at him, pouring all of herself and her love for him into her words,

“I WANT YOU TO TELL ME YOU LOVE ME, TOO!” She turns around to look at him. She didn’t need to stay to hear his excuse or whatever retort he has planned. She could see the answer written all over his face, and she finally accepted defeat and walked away.

[theartofdreaming1]

B99 Fanfic Recommendations (Peraltiago Stylez)

Since I’ll be off to visit my sis for about a week now and then will be busy with an internship for the following 6 weeks, I’ll probably not be able to post much during that time. So I decided to assemble a nice, mostly fluffy collection of b99 stories centered around Jake and Amy I very much enjoy :)

Canon (or canon-divergent or possible-future fic... just non-AU ;) :

One-shots

Enigmatic Easter Bunny by huffellepuff (“The Nine-Nine does a Secret Santa of sorts, and Jake gets Amy.Takes place very shortly before 2x21, Det. Dave Majors.” This is so sweet!)

Untitled Prompt 1 by @elsaclack (”What if Amy and Teddy got engaged during Jake’s undercover op and when Jake’s back the wedding preparations are in full swing and he tries to be supportive but can’t bring himself to go to the wedding?“ It’s by em, so of course it’s friggin’ amazing, duh! ;)

Untitled Prompt 2 by @elsaclack​ (”The night of Captain Latvia, Jake talks to Amy about his thoughts on what Boyle said about Jake never becoming a dad.” Aaah, I love this one so much! So great!)

Untitled Prompt 3 by @elsaclack​ (Amy finds Jake’s folder about her Dad while he’s still in prison. It’s... so... great? And the ending is super sweet!)

Untitled Prompt 4 by @elsaclack​ (Jake moves in with Amy and Amy finds a box with his mixtapes... one of them labeled with the date he went into witness protection. Good lord, this is so amazing! Just... amazing.)

Untitled Prompt 5 by @elsaclack (A father’s day fic. I squealed so hard reading this the first time! It’s super cute!)

Oxford Comma by grapefruity (”She’s got a system, and it isn’t going to come to a standstill just because her messy, disorganized, wreck of a partner makes her sometimes feel things.” The evolution of Jake and Amy’s relationship from Amy’s perspective. Really, really great! I also really love the description of their first encounter - heelies are involved; it’s amazing ^^)

Untitled Prompt by @haylestorming​ (”Amy and Jake talking about their future after the Rosa/Pimento (cancelled) wedding” ADORABLE!)

Untitled Prompt by @hotelsweet (”Random girl at bar starts flirting with Jake, Jake is clueless and it all goes right over his head, Amy steps in and gets her to back off” Do I really need to say more? It’s glorious. ^^)

what’s a home without you here? by @jcobsperalta (”amy comes home, jake is still in prison.“ Oh boy, my heart! But great!)

you’re a sky full of stars by @oceanvirus (”Jake discovers Amy's secret stargazing spot, but he can't seem to focus on constellations as much as he can focus on the one excitedly pointing them out. Takes place between Boyle-Linetti Wedding and Det. Dave Majors.” So. Friggin’. Cute.)

it’s amazing what baking can do by @sergeant-santiago (Jake and Amy face their biggest challenge yet: baking a cake for Charles. Whee! It’s super fun and cute and awesome!!)

all the way home i’ll be warm by @the-pontiac-bandit (“We’re in an abandoned lodge in the middle of nowhere. Sure, you’re totally right, nothing bad could ever happen here.” Cute Christmas fic with all the Santiagos and Jake. Sooo adorable! Get ready for pure joy!)

Multi-Chapters

breaking the first rule by @heart-eyes-santiago (“When did Jake Peralta fall in love with Amy Santiago? And when did she fall in love with him?” Soo good! Really sweet insights on Jake and Amy’s thoughts throughout the show. Complete. 4 Chapters.)

and all my world is losing light by @jakelovesamy ("Day one is listening to Captain Holt telling them not to give up hope, but then overhearing him calling Karen, and telling her in a quiet voice that her son has been sentenced to 15 years, telling her not to cry. Day one is spent filled with fear, and tears, and she punches a wall in their bedroom (because it is still theirs) so hard that the skin on her knuckles splits open. Day one is a cold side of the bed and a thick silence filling up the space where Jake used to be. Day one is overwhelming, plain and simple." Amy finds out she’s pregnant after the end of S4. Get ready for an emotional rollercoaster of awesomeness! Incredibly good. Complete. 2 Chapters.)

it’s only me who wants to wrap around your dreams by @oceanvirus (”In which Jake Peralta showing up at Amy Santiago's door in the middle of the night in need of a place to stay is simultaneously the best and worst thing that's ever to happened to them.” temporary roomates... Oh yeah! Excited for more! In-Progress. 1/6 Chapters as of yet.)

Nothing’s Normal in Texas by @okayokaycoolcoolcool (”She started feeling something in Texas. Maybe it was the mind-numbing fear that came with being locked in jail unarmed with murderers.  She probably could’ve blamed how annoyed she was at Jake and his tendency to jump in and make her job harder. Although, now that she thought of it, it was probably just the fake pregnancy that was making her mind funny.  It was probably nothing.” Or was it?! ;) Very cool. Complete. 8 Chapters.)

What to Expect by @three-drink-amy (”After a crazy night together, Amy finds herself pregnant with Jake's baby. They have to learn to be parents while navigating their partnership. Set in season 2.” Really interesting read! In-Progress. 9 Chapters so far.)

AUs:

One-shots

you, me, and the moon by @heart-eyes-santiago (“Amy Santiago's whole world is turned upside when her brother, Manny, invites his best friend and college roommate to stay for the summer. Enter Jake Peralta, his inability to win a game of scrabble, and his ability to win Amy's heart.” Cuuute!)

it’s shaking the sky, and I’m following lightning by @hotelsweet (“jake + amy + meet-cute on a plane = loveliness” Amaazingg! So fun, so cute!)

Untitled Prompt by @the-pontiac-bandit (“Meeting in the ER AU“ Amy is a young doctor and Jake is her patient. *wiggles eyebrows* It’s super fun and flirty, yay!)

Multi-Chapters

if you want me to stay, i will stay by your side by @elsaclack (“For someone whose job requires an unusually large amount of personal risk on a near daily basis, Amy Santiago has not dedicated much time considering how she might one day die. The vague assumption that it will probably happen on the job - via stray bullets or careening cars or massive explosions - has been enough to satisfy any musing.She never imagined doctor's visits or specialist consultations or diagnoses. She never imagined hospital gowns and thinning hair and chemotherapy. And she never, ever imagined cancer.“ 50/50 AU.The Ultimate Angst fic, but it’s amazing! (Better have some tissues ready, though.) In-Progress. 6/11 Chapters as of yet.)

Amy and Jake’s Epic Detour by @hotelsweet (”When 18 yr old Amy Santiago needs to make the trip to New York City for her first year of college, family friend Jake Peralta steps in as a favour- but the week that's about to follow is one that neither of them could have predicted.” THIS. This story is an experience, my friend, and you really should read this because it’s amazing and has an awesome playlist for every chapter and is just AMAZING, okay? Okay. Complete. 10 Chapters.)

everything is easier when you’re home by @sergeant-santiago (”Amy Santiago loves her new apartment. One bedroom, one bathroom, good neighborhood and decent rent. One thing she does not love? Her neighbors. More precisely, whoever lives in the apartment that shares a paper thin wall with hers.” Neighbor AU. Awesome! In-Progress. 4 Chapters so far.)

Camps Safe and Amusing by Talking_Bird (”Amy Santiago was NOT excited to be a camp counselor for a bunch of bratty twelve-year-olds, but she was even less excited to have a jerk like Jake Peralta be her group partner. A fluffy, slow-burn fic with awkward, nerdy Amy and cocky, insensitive Jake.“ Really cool and sweet, it has an awesome bet and everything! Complete. 8 Chapters.)

You’re the Only Song I Want to Hear by Talking_Bird (”Amy is having a really hard time adjusting to college life as an Art Major, but a mysterious pianist in the music conservatory keeps her sane // Jake just wants to do what he loves, but everyone else wants him to be practical. Everyone, that is, except for one person...College AU.” Highly recommended because it’s stupid good. Really. Plus, there is a great piano piece to go with each chapter. Complete. 10 Chapters. )

The Detective and The Squad by @three-drink-amy  (”Amy Santiago is a brilliant detective, quickly burning out on her job. Jake Peralta is a famous actor recently relocated to NYC for his new TV show "The Squad." What will happen when Amy is assigned to be the police consultant for Jake's new show?” Goood... Really good. In-Progress. 6 Chapters so far.)

around my heart like a coronary artery by @the-pontiac-bandit (”Amy Santiago enters NYU Medical School with prep books, a 60-set of colored pens, and a plan. Jake Peralta walks in with gummy bears and orange soda.” Medical students AU. Every chapter represents a year. AMAZING! In-Progress. 2/5 Chapters so far.) 

Sooo... this is a fic rec of quite respectable size, huh? ^^; Would anybody be interested in me continuing/updating this? Let me know! (I assembled this in various stages of consciousness/being awake, so I’m sorry if some of my “reviews/thoughts” on some of the fics are a little too rambly or short - I love them all so much, my dear writers; you are all incredibly awesome! 💕 )

[bellringermal]

What sort of man is Gerhman for you? (Same question as with Maria)

He is a handsome piece of trash and I love him. THE END.

Oh, if only things were that simple! :P I will try not to turn this post into the ramblings of a shameless fangirl but I promise you nothing.

What I want to clarify right here at the start is that Gehrman is, overall, a good man. Yes, he is flawed, yes he is a closet pervert and yes he never really felt guilty for the slaughter of Fishing Hamlet. But all of this is what makes him the more human and relatable character in the Soulsborne series in my opinion and what intrigued me in the first place.

So, lemme give you some juicy and 100% fanmade backstory for this bad boi :P

Gehrman’s character and personality are definitely the results of his upbringing. Born frail and sensitive, he was forced into martial training since a young age and denied to pursue what was probably his true calling in life, that of the artisan. He had to ‘grow up fast’ to help to sustain his family (Gehrman’s childhood/teenage years follow the disastrous conclusion of a war between Carim and a foreign nation) and because of that he never got the chance to assiduously attend school. When he got hired at Byrgenwerth as a handyman at the age of 16, he could barely read and write. This poorly paid job was for Gehrman a pivotal turning point, because it allowed him to escape the clutches of his overly strict father and gain access to a world of higher-cultured people such as the students and personnel of the college.

And as time went on and Gehrman proved himself a skilled and hard-working lad, he forged a long-lasting friendship with the college’s gatekeeper/janitor Edmund and the sinister but caring scholar Dores. These two, are easily the most influential people in his life beside Master Willem. Dores and Edmund encouraged him to get back to study, lending him books and laboratory equipment so that he could put his -rusty, but brilliant-  skills at use in his free time and asked Master Willem to grant him the permission to attend lessons alongside the students. Finally able to express himself without neglecting the martial training he got from his father, Gehrman quickly became essential to Byrgenwerth as a whole, serving both as a groundskeeper (and trust me, you need someone like that when your college is located in the middle of a damn forest!) and custodian. Everything that ever mattered to him, everything good that ever happened to him and that gave Gehrman some sense of pride or accomplishment was tied to Byrgenwerth and to the benevolence of Master Willem who provided him a place where to stay in exchange for his services. No wonder the soon-to-be First Hunter would become fiercely loyal to the Byrgenwerth’s cause to the point of self-detriment.

When the scholars unlocked the entrance to the Tomb of the Gods and faced the horrors of the Labyrinths for the very first time, Gehrman was right in the front line, clueless an unprepared. That first ‘hunt’, that resulted in dozens of students getting killed and our ‘hero’ crippled and scarred for life, was an experience so horrifying and traumatizing that most people would’ve just called it quits “Fuck the college, I’m outta here, I don’t get paid enough for getting my face eat by giant undead werewolves”-style. But Gehrman, somehow, probably out of fear of losing everything he ever cared about now that Willem considered him useless because of his injury, endured. He swore to himself he would find a way to fight the beasts and vanquish them and as his leg healed after the amputation he spent months researching and tinkering with weapons at his (at the time, quite small and disorganized) worktable. During that time, Willem hired several groups of mercenaries hoping that they would be able to clear at least the first floor of the Chalice but obtained no concrete results. Still bound to his wheelchair, Gehrman observed their equipment and strategies, trying to grasp what those experienced warriors were doing wrong and what he himself would do wrong in following his father’s teachings. Once able to stand on his two legs once again, Gehrman asked the captain of the mercenaries to listen to him, offering some advice and explaining what he had learned from the Pthumerian texts Dores was able to translate. The mercenary scoffed him at first, but then decided to listen to what the young man had to say and asked him for a demonstration. Impressed by the rudimental but quite efficient trick weapon (Gehrman’s first creation was the Saif, in my headcanons. Not the Burial Blade) the captain allowed Gehrman to train with his men and share his knowledge and tricks with them. The next expedition in the Chalices would be their biggest success so far and that very night Gehrman would come back to the college with a wide smile on his blood-smeared face and the severed head of a Scourge Beast as a trophy. He was 24 years old :3

But the real story begins almost 20 years later. 20 years that Gehrman spent devoting himself to the Hunt completely, perfecting his techniques, forging new weapons and taking the place of the captain of the mercenaries becoming, in fact, the Hunter Chief of the group, now composed of more than thirty members, all students of his. He came from nothing and crawled his way up to the top, taking pride in his accomplishments despite the fact that he had to put aside everything else, including his private life (which had been quite depressing and lonely since his childhood friend, Therese, married someone else) and with the constant awareness that everything he has is still just a kind concession of Master Willem and that he could lose everything in the blink of an eye. His workshop, his money, even his comfy studio filled with mechanical creations, everything belongs to Byrgenwerth.

Even now, as a grown-ass man with a reputation and devoted students of his own, Gehrman is still very much the same insecure boy he was when he joined Byrgenwerth. He still holds a grudge towards his father (it’s a mutual thing) is a walking disaster around women, is very dependable on Dores and Edmund and never questions Master Willem’s orders, not even the more despicable ones. And trust me, Willem often asked him, Dores and Edmund to do things that are, to put it simply, quite fucked up. For science, of course.

Overall, Gehrman means well. He does his best, tries to be impartial when it comes to his students and genuinely cares about their safety and well-being. He has seen many of them die in the course of his career and always blamed himself for their demise. Even if they signed up a contract knowing what they were getting into, that doesn’t make the departure of a colleague or friend any less painful for him, reason why he takes upon himself the responsibility of finishing off his students on the battlefield if there’s nothing that can be done for them. He is a really demanding teacher (which reminds him of how his father used to treat him and Gehrman kinda hates himself because of that. Yep, he definitely has daddy issues) and someone who wouldn’t hesitate to kick you out if you don’t behave, but he would do this only because he doesn’t want to see you dead.

Surprisingly, all the above also applies to Maria. No matter how much into her he is, during training, he never treated her differently than his other students. Never went easy on her because of her higher social status or the simple fact that she is a woman. (I mean, Gratia, Izzy and Henriett are women as well and they know that Gehrman doesn’t give a damn and they are glad he doesn’t.)

Speaking of which, it’s time to make this post even longer and spend a few words on Gehrman’s mania. He immediately found Maria extremely attractive since their very first encounter, and in a genuinely perverted way at that. He immediately had his mind filled with all sort of naughty thoughts while his reasonable side was there to remind him to “keep dreaming bro, that ain’t going to happen”. And at first, he was kinda okay with that. No matter how beautiful she was, Maria was a real pain in the ass at first and not someone Gehrman would’ve wanted to form any sort of relationship with. So his thoughts were, for quite some time, just thoughts. And not even particularly intrusive ones. But as time went by, the more he got to know Maria the more he realized that she was literally everything he ever looked for in a woman. That was the moment the whole drama began because at that point he became afraid of what Maria would’ve thought of him if she ever found out about his infatuation with her.

That is the point in the story when he began to hide, lie and avoid her while still dying to see her. This part is my favorite because Gehrman is very conflicted and does a bunch of dumb shit in pure cheesy Period Drama style. The worst thing he does is probably idealizing Maria beyond belief, putting her on a pedestal where no one (not even himself) can touch her while gloating about the idea that he is the one responsible for her talent. Which is relatively true, but doesn’t excuse the ‘ownership’ he claims over her skills. On a good note, he is very aware of how twisted his feelings have become and feels guilty about it, reason why he acts cold and distant towards Maria. A behavior that doesn’t fit with that of the other hunters who are now friendly and well-disposed towards her at this point in the story.

His internal turmoil is the reason why I do find Maria’s reaction to his extorted confession absolutely brilliant (props to Daisy who wrote it

Now, I could keep on rambling about these two for hours and about how the Old Blood and its effects on them (and the setting) affected the story but this post is already TOO long XD

[sage-nebula]

Akko/Andrew!

Who’s the messiest one:

I feel like this one has got to be Akko. It’s not that she’s lazy or sloppy so much as it is that she’s extremely disorganized, and tends to jump from one activity to another without thinking about properly wrapping up her previous activity first. As a result, books get left all over the place, she’ll leave the laundry all piled in the basket, she’ll toss her keys on a random chair and then forget she did it hours later when she needs them again. Helping this is the fact that her parents were always pretty easygoing with her, so she never really had a reason or thought to change the way she behaves.

Andrew, on the other hand, might have been messy, but his upbringing was very strict and so he learned early on not to leave anything strewn about, or else he would get it taken away from him. (Sort of a, “Clearly you don’t like or care about this, since you just left it laying out on the table, so you don’t need to have it anymore” kind of deal.) Although he’s very wealthy and there were housekeepers to do some cleaning, what they did was more along the lines of sweeping the floors and wiping down windows. Andrew was in charge of keeping his belongings not just tidy, but put away, so that a guest who dropped by unannounced might not even know that a young boy even lived there. This instilled habitual neatness in him that carries into adulthood, although over the years Akko’s influence does help him loosen up and relax some.

Who feels the most uncomfortable about PDA:

Akko once again! This is a cultural thing; although I hear that some younger generations in Japan have grown a bit more lax about PDA to some degrees, from my understanding Japan is still very reserved about that sort of thing, and so I feel that even though she’s exuberant and verbally affectionate, she’d be a lot more shy about things like kissing in public. Andrew, on the other hand, doesn’t have such reservations himself since western culture is more open about that sort of thing (and even though he was raised in a prim and proper wealthy English household, so long as he’s not sucking face it’s not inappropriate), but he respects the fact that Akko is shy about it, and thus lets her initiate any PDA they have, to make sure she’s comfortable.

Who’s the funniest drunk:

ANDREW. 

First of all, the boy cannot hold his liquor. Let that be known. Champagne is one thing, and a single glass of wine with dinner is another. But start giving him more than that, and it will not take long at all for him to be completely sloshed. And when he’s sloshed? Oh boy. All those barriers come down. See, underneath his aloof and somewhat rigid exterior is a boy that loves adventure, risk taking, and having fun. We see this in his first episode, how he grins when he jumps after Akko as they’re being chased, as he smiles a little as he agrees to keep the misadventure their little secret. Andrew is actually quite fun-loving, beneath it all—and if his inhibitions were dropped I feel like he’d be the biggest goof imaginable. He’d be much more prone to accepting silly, ridiculous dares; he’d stumble over his words and then laugh about it because everything would be hilarious to him; he’d want to show off to others in ways that his father always frowned upon, because if it wasn’t business it wasn’t important. These might not seem too outlandish, but given how straight-laced he normally is, it would definitely be hilarious for those watching. Of that, I’m certain.

Who texts the most:

Hmmm, I’d say it’s about equal? 

Akko’s the double texter, in that she’ll send seven texts in a row to ask a single question (maybe ten if she throws in some emojis in there). But Andrew will send longer texts, using paragraph breaks and everything, and I feel that this means that he’s really sending just as much, it’s just that his texts are slower and longer. So probably about equal; they like keeping in contact even when they’re just friends, even when it’s casual.

Who has the most embarrassing taste in music:

Probably Akko, but she’s not even a little embarrassed. Yes, she will blast the Sailor Moon theme song, and she’ll sing every word, and she won’t apologize for it for even a second. That said, although I imagine Andrew probably wasn’t allowed to listen to pop and the like growing up (you know his dad only ever let him listen to classical), I imagine that when he finally does hear it, he really likes it, simply because it’s so different. So you know, his taste might be a bit embarrassing as well, but he’s also not embarrassed because, hey, it’s his first time hearing it, leave him be.

Who reads the most:

Andrew. We all know Akko hates studying. :P (Like, she studies when she has to, but it’s . . . far from her favorite activity. She’s more of a hands-on learner.)

Who’s better with kids:

Akko! She’s playful, energetic, and loves to make them laugh. Andrew, by contrast, doesn’t really know what to do with them, particularly since it’s not like he has a good frame of reference to go by given what his own childhood was like. I do think, though, that he’d be the better … I don’t like to use the word disciplinarian, but he would be the one better equipped to set them straight when they were misbehaving, to teach them to right their wrongs, et cetera. He’d be better at the less fun aspects of parenting.

Who’s the one that fixes things around the house:

They’re both disasters, are you kidding me? Andrew never learned how because he never had to, and Akko tries to fix things with her magic and just makes it worse. In the end they have to call a third party repair service, like they probably should have done from the beginning.

Who’s got the weirdest hobby:

Hm, I can’t think of anything that would be too weird for either of them! Akko canonically collects Chariot cards, but I don’t think that’s odd, and I feel like any odd hobbies Andrew expressed growing up would have been stamped out by his father, who wouldn’t even let him practice piano because he viewed it as a waste of time. So for this, I’m going to say neither!

Who cooks and who cleans up:

Both! I think Akko would love to cook and experiment in the kitchen, and that Andrew would want to help so that it’s not all on her (and so he can keep some of the more, ah … eccentric recipes in check). So I think this is a responsibility the two of them would share. :)

[mshopamazon]

Hi I am getting my life together one month at a time by following Regina Leeds book One Year to an Organized Life. Regina Leeds breaks down the whole house in 12 months. I read through the book in a couple of month when I first bought it. I didn't follow her all her tips, activities or journal entries. I thought 12 months was too long, so I read though everything thinking I just needed the information to get and organized. It has been a few years now, and I'm more disorganized then ever. The book has ran through my head many times, but I finally decided to find it and crack it open.

I am currently in the month of September, so I wanted to start on chapter 9 September Back-to-School Busy Season. In each chapter she created a habit to work on each month. September's habit is Positive self-talk. This habit isn't so hard because I know I can change, so I don't put myself down for the chaos I created.

One Year to and Organized Life also breaks down the months into weekly assignments. The first assignment is answering some school year questions. I will present the questions and share my personal answers below.

Q: Do you remember your school days?

A: A little, a feel its been a long time ago.

Q: Was this a happy time for you?

A: For the most part. I feel there wasn't a great routine in place.

Q: If this was an unhappy time for you can you be specific as to why?

A: I don't think it was an unhappy time, but I would have liked there to be a routine. I would have liked my mother to help me pick better clothes, and helped me with my hair. I feel my hair was always a mess and my clothes never matched.

Q: If you have siblings, did they experience childhood and school in the same way you did?

A: N/A

Q: How did the similar and difference affect you?

A: I haven't talked to my brother about this yet, but I feel it was a little easier for him because he is older and a male. I'm just saying this as the annoying little sister I am.

Joural: Write a brief summary of your school experience.

Response: I have great mother. I know she tried her best, but we never had great communication. She would work a lot, and she wouldn't have time to teach me many things. I didn't have the greatest hygiene routine. I don't know how to take care of my curly hair. I don't even remember who would wake me up. I'm not sure if I had an alarm clock. I know a few time my brother would wake me up. I know it was a struggle to wake up because I never had a set bedtime. When I finally woke up I would get myself ready in the clothes I had clean and in the style I thought was “cool.” I look back now and see I had a random style. I didn't worry a lot about my hair, because I didn't know to comb it right. I would have tons of knots that one day I cut off a big knot, so who knows what my hair really looked like. I am very luck I wasn't bullied. I had good friends. I had low self-esteem very early in life. It got lower when I realize I was overweight and was a lot darker then my friends. I did like going to school although I struggled with reading. I liked school more in seventh grade. I still had low self-esteem, but I kept myself busy with school activities. I was getting into a little routine, learned a little about exercise, dressing and styling myself a little better. My freshman I had the best routine I would wake around 5 o'clock in the morning take a shower, cleanse my face, blow dry my hair, apply my make-up, fix my hair a little with my cheap straightener and and run late to catch the bus.

Q: Do you have school-age children?

A: Yes, A 5 year old.

Q: Are you unconsciously trying to replicate your childhood?

A: Unconsciously yes. I keep myself so busy I'm not paying enough to my daughter in the morning. I do have her in a bit of a routine of getting herself ready, having her backpack ready, combing her hair and brushing her teeth.

Hi

Q: What causes you the most problems?

A: my biggest problem is lacking energy. It could/probably be from the Sleep Apnea

Q:What concrete things can you do to make this a better year for you and your children?

A: I want to improve my time management; I could try to wake up a little earlier everyday. I want to make more time to help my daughter get ready; I could try finish everything else I'm doing in the morning in time to help her. I can try a practice run on the weekends. Write down a morning a routine, so I don't feel confused when I wake up. I can make a routine and meal prep. My routine will need to have exercising and cleaning scheduled.

Regina's tips

*Plan food menus a week in advance and schedule time to shop for the ingredients

*be sure the pantry is always stocked with basic supplies

*get up fifteen minutes earlier to make breakfast

set-up night before:

*vitamins

*breakfast

*delivery a few time a per week

*freeze food

*chore routine

*make lunches

*wardrobe

*homework

Q:Which activities must be dropped from this years schedule?

A: eating carbs

Q: What's on your personal list?

A: see to do list, write down negative thoughts, carry my notebook to write them down

Q: Are you passing along an army of negative self-esteem belief?

A: more about my looks

Regina's thoughts:

listen to your children speak

change the way you speak

pour into there souls

Activity: Write three positive ways to begin your sentences

Response: Please, can you... I would love it if... could you...

Activity: Three compliments you can pay your children.

Response: You did a fantastic job, thank you.. You look nice.. You're a good listener

“be the change you want to see in the world” -Gandhi

PERFECTION IN YOUR HOME IS NOT AN ACHIEVEABLE GOAL

Q: Have you ever been the mom who did everything?

A: I was when my daughter was younger.

Fear of failure might be the culprit: “if my home isn't perfect, what will people think”

..spend time healing, growing and being an example to all those with whom you share your life.

This charpter was meant to help organize the children's room, but I haven't organized my room. I will be working on chapter 2 February Creating a Bedroom Sanctuary.

One year to an organized life by Regina Leeds

https://amzn.to/2mwvX8u

The complete book of clean by Toni Hammersly

https://amzn.to/2o2HZqA

Clean by Melissa Maker

https://amzn.to/2nqKzXe

[rcsonant-blog]

                                         it was almost too much for my heart to take                                                    but my heart has learned to be                                                          whatever it needs to be                                                                     to survive.                                                        i can get through anything                                                  if i change the shape of it enough.

the picture perfect life. born with no worries, a beautiful surrounding, and a loving family: that was declan’s childhood. having two older siblings whom were incredibly close in age aided in making sure declan never felt alone, despite his reserved and quiet nature growing up. with his older brother, aries, only being 2 years older than him, and his sister, cadence, being one year older than him, the three were as close as close could possibly be.

they brought him out of his shell. they’d walk to school with each other, stopping at the convenience store on their way home to bug the cashier that’s name was brian. they’d always make it a point to go to the neighborhood park that was a block away from home at least twice a week. always the first to tell each other secrets, huddle in pillow forts because the two siblings knew it was declan’s favorite thing to do.

it was because of them that as he grew older, he grew more talkative, more open to other people. his family was adored by all, his parents always volunteering, his sister the star of the school orchestra, his brother the star soccer player on campus. declan wasn’t particularly good at anything but art, but his bright smile and charming personality made him the picture perfect boy-next-door without even having to try.

some envied the family while most adored them, but everyone in town knew them. they functioned like any other family, having their subtle differences and arguments behind closed doors but still loving each other unconditionally. blessed under a roof of love, they flourished with each others support. everything was perfect for them, nothing could ruin it.

until something did.

declan still remembers that day. it was cloudy out, his sister and him sitting by the window next to her bed, counting cars that wizzed by every few minutes as they waited for aries to get home. the clouds were barely parted, sunlight peaking through every few minutes or so to shine directly into cadence’s eyes. just as they were in a heated conversation about the season finale of their favorite show, their mother peaked her head in. she needed bell peppers and rice, two things of which were absolutely necessary for tonights meal. even if she wasn’t asking directly, it was clear what her request was.

declan scrambled off the bed, throwing on a coat and complying without a second thought. cadence offered to come with, no, she was already up getting her coat on under the assumption that she would come, but declan stopped her. the store wasn’t far, and aries would kill them for the undeniable exclusion (he was always petty like that). so instead, cadenced plopped herself back onto her bed, telling declan that if he took too long she’d turn on the wii and destroy his high score on mario cart without him.

he parted from his family, shouting a quick love you before storming into the cold weather towards the store. he wasn’t gone long, perhaps thirty minutes. the broken crosswalk light had taken longer than usual to signal he could walk, and the line at checkout had taken nearly ten minutes to dissipate until he could finally make his way back home.

he walked leisurely, swinging the bag in hand. as he neared closer, he noticed smoke not too far off in the distance, burning dark black and garnering attention. walking closer, he realized that it was a bit too close to where his house should be. he was beginning to walk so fast that he hadn’t even realized he’d slammed shoulders with someone running by, his pace quickening into a run. nothing could mask the horror that he felt when he saw his own house come into view and saw the fire and smoke pouring out of the windows.

nothing was worse than realizing his family was nowhere on the sidewalks.

of course, he dropped his bag and was ready to run into the house himself until some neighbors grabbed him. he tries to fight them off while he screamed, but it was to no avail. that was the most helpless declan had ever felt.

just within thirty minutes, declan’s life became the biggest town tragedy, and he became the biggest sob story. he garnished attention from all corners of the town, everyone now not knowing him as the cute next-door-neighbor but instead the seventeen year old orphan who’s life had tarnished right in front of thousands eyes. it only took so long until the grief subsided into resignation.

he needed to get out of town, out of the watching eyes and the solemn whispers, and so he did. declan moved to the farthest place he could imagine; somewhere more than out of state given the national platform the story had all around america. korea. he changed his name to silas, something of which he has been going by since the age of nearly nineteen.

he is no longer declan yoo, town tragedy with a family of which went up in flames, but instead lee silas, a man who has very little contact with his parents who live in america and has no siblings. he spent years recreating himself and years trying to find the same charming personality that he once had.

he is lee silas, a man with an ability to see the future that he still has no explanation for and a man who has no idea just how entangled his entire life is with another mans.

⸻ THE BASICS

name: lee silas

real name: declan yoo

age: 25

birthday: june 13, 1993

race: korean

gender: cismale

sexuality: homosexual

relationship status: single

⸻ PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

hair: brown

eyes: brown

height: 182 cm (6′0)

build: fit

distinguishing marks: none

common accessories: his brother’s necklace, where the charm on the end is a ring of his sisters. both were salvaged from the fire.

⸻ PERSONAL  

profession: set designer

languages: english, korean

residence: busan, south korea

birthplace: stowe, vermont

religion: catholic

fears: death by fire

disabilities: none

good traits: analytical, brave, cautious, creative, consistent, eager, opinionated, soft-hearted, thoughtful, passionate

bad traits: deceptive, feisty, frustrated, perverse, rigid, secretive, skeptical, hesitant, erratic, anxious

⸻ TRAITS

extroverted / introverted / in between.

disorganized / organized / in between.

close minded / open-minded / in between.

calm / anxious / in between.

disagreeable / agreeable / in between.

cautious / reckless / in between.

patient / impatient / in between.

outspoken / reserved / in between.

leader / follower / in between.

empathetic / unemphatic / in between.

optimistic / pessimistic / in between.

traditional / modern / in between.

hard-working / lazy / in between.

cultured / un-cultured / in between.

loyal / disloyal / unknown / in between.

faithful / unfaithful / unknown / in between.

⸻ PLACE IN SOCIETY

financial: wealthy / moderate / poor / in poverty

class or caste: upper / middle / working / unsure

education: high school / college / dropped out

criminal record: yes, for major crimes / yes, for minor crimes / no

⸻ BELIEFS

monotheist / polytheist / atheist  / agnostic

belief in ghosts or spirits: yes / no / don’t know / don’t care

belief in an afterlife:  yes / no / don’t know / don’t care

belief in reincarnation:  yes / no / don’t know / don’t care

belief in aliens: yes / no / don’t know / don’t care

philosophical: yes / no

⸻ CAPABILITIES

combat skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

literacy skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

artistic skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

technical skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

social skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

⸻ HABITS

drinking alcohol: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

smoking: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

other narcotics: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

medicinal drugs: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

indulgent foods: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

splurge spending: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

gambling: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

⸻ HABITS

nail biting / throat clearing / lying / interrupting / chewing the ends of pens / smoking / swearing / knuckle cracking / thumb sucking / muttering under their breath / talking to themselves / nose picking / binge drinking / oversleeping / snacking between meals / skipping meals / picking at skin / impulse buying / talking with their mouth full / humming or singing to themselves / chewing gum / leg jiggling / foot tapping / sighing / hair twirling / whistling / eye rolling / licking lips / sniffing / squinting / rubbing hands together / jaw clenching / gesturing while talking / putting feet up on tables / tucking hair behind ears / chewing lips / crossing arms over chest / putting hands on hips / rubbing the back or their neck / being late / procrastinating / doodling / shredding paper / peeling off bottle labels / forgetfulness / running hands through hair / overreacting / teeth grinding / nostril flaring / slouching / pacing / drumming fingers / fist clenching / pinching bridge of nose / rubbing temples / rolling shoulders

[reneeacaseyfl]

Boris Johnson to Be U.K. Prime Minister After Winning Party Vote

michael barbaro

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.” After trying and failing to deliver Brexit, British Prime Minister Theresa May will resign this week. Today: The story of how the man expected to succeed her made Brexit, and how Brexit is now making him prime minister. It’s Monday, July 22.

archived recording (theresa may)

I will shortly leave the job that it has been the honor of my life to hold. I do so with no ill will, but with enormous and enduring gratitude to have had the opportunity to serve the country I love.

michael barbaro

Sarah, catch me up on what happened after that moment when Theresa May announces that she’s stepping down.

sarah lyall

Well, it touched off an immediate mad scramble over who would replace her. And under party rules, the next party leader is chosen only by members of the Conservative Party. And it’s they who will be selecting the next leader of the party and thus the next prime minister of the U.K.

michael barbaro

And who is expected to be at this point?

sarah lyall

At this point, it’s a shoo-in for Boris Johnson. Unless something bizarre happens, he will be the next prime minister.

archived recording

[MUSIC]

michael barbaro

And Sarah, who is Boris Johnson?

archived recording

He is the Conservative M.P. for Henley. He’s editor of The Spectator. And it seems he’s 92 times better than me at hosting topical news quizzes. Ladies and gentlemen, Boris Johnson. [CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

sarah lyall

He is a celebrity politician.

archived recording (boris johnson)

This is a totally ecumenical cross-party venture, my friends. Now, this is a once in a lifetime chance.

sarah lyall

And he is extraordinarily visible by the way he looks. He has a massive shock of bright white hair.

archived recording

And how long have you been cutting your own hair? [LAUGHTER]

archived recording (boris johnson)

I think that was a low blow.

sarah lyall

He’s incredibly articulate.

archived recording (boris johnson)

Are you saying they haven’t the guts to put questions to me? Great supine protoplasmic invertebrate jellies.

sarah lyall

He’s incredibly funny. He’s incredibly charming.

archived recording

Have you snorted cocaine? [LAUGHTER]

archived recording (boris johnson)

I tried to.

archived recording

You’ve tried to snort cocaine?

archived recording (boris johnson)

Unsuccessfully, a long time ago. [LAUGHTER]

archived recording

Sir, what are you thinking?

archived recording (boris johnson)

I sneezed.

archived recording

What was unsuccessful about it?

archived recording (boris johnson)

I sneezed. [LAUGHTER]

sarah lyall

He’s also incredibly — what the Brits would call shambolic. He doesn’t get to places on time. He’s disorganized. He’s ill-prepared. He can’t remember what meeting he’s at and what he’s supposed to be doing.

archived recording (boris johnson)

We’ve got a fantastic guy called — oh, he’s brilliant. It’s either — he’s a superb man — Sterling, Gurling, something like that. What’s he called? Come on, what is it again? Tell me the name. Come on.

archived recording

You should get it. No, serious, it’s not my job to —

archived recording (boris johnson)

Stop sitting there like a great, big, fat Buddha and tell me the name of this guy.

michael barbaro

Sarah, when I think of British government, and certainly when I think about the prime minister, I think of a certain level of kind of stuffy formality and sobriety. How does this person that you’re describing, how does that person become the first in line to become prime minister?

sarah lyall

So there’s really two ways to look at him. He is all those things. He is bumbling. He is shambolic. But at the same time, a lot of his moves over his career have been quite calculated. It’s often been in the service of either getting attention or getting power. So for example, he started as a journalist.

michael barbaro

What was his reputation as a journalist?

sarah lyall

Well, very entertaining. He’s really funny and inaccurate. And he would write articles about the European Union, where he’d exaggerate and sort of cast the European Union as this terrible bureaucracy, trying to take things away from citizens. It was sort of the stuff that made no sense. It was like, the E.U. was going to regulate condoms and make them all one-size-fits-all.

sarah lyall

And it was going to ban shrimp-flavored potato chips.

michael barbaro

And it was going to really do neither.

sarah lyall

No, it was going to do neither. And the other journalists who were covering the same things would be yelled at by their editors, who would say, why aren’t you covering the same stuff Boris is? And he set a tone for the coverage of the European Union. It was just wrong. And when he was asked about it, he said, it doesn’t matter what the facts are that you marshal in service of that thesis. The thesis is right.

archived recording

[MUSIC]

sarah lyall

And he talked about it once. He went on a program called “Desert Island Discs,” which is a BBC program where you talk about your favorite music.

archived recording

My castaway this week is a politician and a journalist, prone to getting into scrapes, a word that suits his rather Wodehousian image.

sarah lyall

And he was talking about his coverage. And he said —

archived recording (boris johnson)

See, everything I wrote from Brussels I find was sort of — I was just chucking these rocks over the garden wall, and there’s an amazing crash from the greenhouse next door over in England. Everything I wrote from Brussels were having this amazing, explosive effect on the Tory Party. And it really gave me this, I suppose, rather weird sense of power.

archived recording

But this made your reputation as a journalist, didn’t it?

sarah lyall

It started to inform the Tory Party’s attitude toward Europe. And so he was welcomed by them as someone really telling the truth about Europe for the first time.

michael barbaro

So he was finding an audience among Britain’s conservatives?

michael barbaro

And was he himself actually a conservative?

sarah lyall

Yeah, he was always a conservative. But there are different strains in the Conservative Party. And at least in the beginning, it seemed his biggest motivation was to get in Parliament, and that way to start building a base toward having more power. But at that point, it was sort of unclear what his convictions were. And as he said in an interview at the time, when he was asked what he would resign over, if there was any principle that would be so important to him, he said, “I’m a bit of an optimist, so it doesn’t tend to occur to me to resign. I tend to think of a way of Sellotaping everything together and quietly finding a way through if I can.” In other words, he would sort of do what it took to kind of paper over the edges in order to get through it in order to remain in office.

michael barbaro

Which is another way of saying, when it comes to his convictions, they are malleable.

sarah lyall

Yes. And that’s illustrated again when he runs for mayor in 2008, because he refashions himself then. He positions himself as a liberal, urbane man of multicultural London. He’s pro-business, but he’s pro-immigrants.

archived recording (boris johnson)

If you’ve been here for more than 10 to 12 years, I’m afraid the authorities no longer really pursue you. They give up.

archived recording

So should we have that amnesty?

archived recording (boris johnson)

Well, why not be honest about what is going on?

archived recording

So have that amnesty?

archived recording (boris johnson)

Yeah, absolutely.

sarah lyall

Like, he’s this really old-fashioned conservative, who went to Oxford, speaks in a really posh accent, which isn’t supposed to go over well with regular people. And regular people love him. He would walk through the streets of London and people would sort of yell, hey, Boris. Women found him really attractive.

archived recording

Boris says what he means, and he delivers.

sarah lyall

There’s just something about him that made him a really good candidate. So then he gets elected mayor, which was actually an amazing feat. A conservative would never get elected in London, and it was based purely on personal popularity.

archived recording (boris johnson)

I do not, for one minute, believe that this election shows that London has been transformed overnight into a conservative city.

sarah lyall

And then he continued with these sort of funny statements. And he also showed to the world a kind of physical comedy.

archived recording

He got himself into pretty deep water today.

sarah lyall

So he once was at the Thames doing something, and he fell into the river.

archived recording (speaker 1)

Oh, then really badly.

archived recording (speaker 2)

And this is the best bit. This is the best bit here. She pulls down the volunteer with him.

sarah lyall

And then what a lot of people saw was, during the 2012 Olympics, he was trying to promote Britain or promote London or something, and he went down this zip wire. And he got stuck in a zip wire, and he had this sort of wedgie. And he was stuck in the middle.

archived recording (speaker 1)

Hey, Boris, you’re going the wrong way.

archived recording (speaker 2)

This way.

archived recording (speaker 1)

Boris, this way.

sarah lyall

He looked so ridiculous. Look at his little blue hat. He’s wearing the most ill-fitting outfit. Oop, it just stopped. And he’s dangling.

archived recording (boris johnson)

It’s going well. It’s very, very well-organized. What they do — get me a ladder.

michael barbaro

He’s really kind of hamming it up.

michael barbaro

And the crowd beneath him, it seems kind of charmed.

sarah lyall

Look at them all taking pictures of him, laughing. He makes people feel good. He really does.

archived recording (boris johnson)

Can you get me a rope? [LAUGHTER] Get me a rope, O.K.?

sarah lyall

Any other politician, that would have been the end, to be photographed like that. But he turned it into a plus. He turned it into a virtue, and people thought it was hilarious. And they thought he was cuddly and cute. The thing about when he was mayor is the first time he had that much power, and he was fantastic figurehead. He was a fantastic front man.

archived recording (boris johnson)

Finally, you have brought home a great truth about our country, that when we put our mind to it, there is absolutely nothing that this country cannot achieve.

sarah lyall

He was not a details person. He showed up late to things. He was ill-prepared. He wouldn’t read anything. He didn’t know about the policies. And luckily, the mayor of London isn’t that important a job, really. He doesn’t have a lot of responsibility, so he couldn’t really mess it up. But he was not a great mayor.

michael barbaro

So Boris Johnson has been a consistent source of amusement and controversy.

sarah lyall

Boris is constantly getting himself into trouble and constantly finding a way out of it through basically charm and bluster and an ability to talk himself out of any situation.

michael barbaro

And what trouble does he get himself out of?

sarah lyall

Well, there’s been a lot of trouble with women. He fathered a child with someone other than his wife while he was mayor of London and managed to never really have to discuss it publicly. When he was editor of The Spectator, he had an affair with one of his employees, who got pregnant, wrote about it. He denied in the beginning he’d had the affair. He lied to the journalists who asked. He lied to the prime minister. He got fired from his job. And somehow he got out of that, too. And it started to become clear that his disheveled, bumbling persona was calculated. And people have said — and I’ve seen it, too — before he goes on TV, he’ll run his hands through his hair to make it look messier, as if he couldn’t be bothered to ever brush it. He wants to look like that. And someone recently told this amazing story about how Boris came to speak at some kind of civic meeting, or a meeting of some industry group, and arrived five minutes late, right before he was supposed to speak. And sort of got up and looked and said, where am I speaking, what group is this, and told these anecdotes, and how he totally snowed the crowd. The crowd thought it was hilarious. They loved him. And the guy was really happy he pulled it off. Until he saw Boris do the exact same thing at a totally different group some months later, the exact same thing. He came late. He said, where am I? He told the same anecdotes, as if it was just off the top of his head.

michael barbaro

And in fact, it was a routine.

sarah lyall

It was a routine. It was a comedy routine designed to promote this view of him as this disheveled, bumbling person who could sort of pull it out at the last minute. He wants to seem that way.

michael barbaro

So a lot of this is an act. It’s kind of political theater.

sarah lyall

Exactly. And during that whole time, when people asked him, did he want to be prime minister, what was he going to do next? He would always slough it off with what looked like more of an act.

archived recording

Is there a possibility you could become prime minister?

archived recording (boris johnson)

I think that that is vanishing. I’ve about as much chance of being reincarnated as an olive. [LAUGHTER]

sarah lyall

And so meanwhile, though, he is quietly consolidating his popularity and preparing in his head somehow a way to challenge the prime minister, David Cameron. He’s way more popular than David Cameron, though he’s just an M.P. at this point. And the question is, how would he get there? What would he do? And then finally, in 2016, he sees a chance.

michael barbaro

And what is that chance?

sarah lyall

The chance is Brexit.

michael barbaro

We’ll be right back. So Sarah, pick us up where we left off. It’s 2016, and you said that Boris Johnson sees his chance to become prime minister. What’s happening at that moment?

archived recording (david cameron)

We are approaching one of the biggest decisions this country will face in our lifetimes, whether to remain in a reformed European Union or to leave.

sarah lyall

So it was then that the prime minister, David Cameron, called the referendum known as Brexit over whether Britain would leave the European Union.

archived recording (david cameron)

The choice goes to the heart of the kind of country we want to be and the future that we want for our children.

sarah lyall

He and his government were pro-Remain.

archived recording (david cameron)

My recommendation is clear. I believe that Britain will be safer, stronger and better off in a reformed European Union.

sarah lyall

And everyone assumed that the country felt the same way. And he assumes that all his allies in the Conservative Party will follow along with him —

michael barbaro

Including Johnson.

sarah lyall

— including Johnson, to campaign to remain. So Johnson was one of the people who was supposed to support him. And at the very last minute —

archived recording (boris johnson)

We have a chance, actually, to do something. I have a chance, actually, to do something.

sarah lyall

Boris became head of the Leave campaign.

archived recording (boris johnson)

I would like to see a new relationship, based more on trade, on cooperation, but as I say, with much less of this supranational element. So that’s where I’m coming from.

archived recording

Boris, if that’s really what you’ve thought all along, why have you kept your party waiting for such a long time?

archived recording (boris johnson)

The truth is that it has been agonizingly difficult.

michael barbaro

Is it clear at this moment whether Boris Johnson actually wants to leave the E.U.?

sarah lyall

Well, he wrote a famous editorial on the day he made this announcement of how he felt about it, saying, we should leave the E.U. Britain should leave the E.U. But it turned out later he had written an opposing editorial saying the exact opposite thing. It was only at the last minute that he decided to run with the “we should leave” version.

michael barbaro

Suggesting that the depth of his conviction here might have been shallow.

sarah lyall

Suggesting there was no depth of his conviction at all, that it was just political calculation and pragmatism. What would be better for Boris?

michael barbaro

Better for Boris how?

sarah lyall

Better for Boris in that he wanted power. And what he thought would happen, what everyone thought would happen, was the following — that Brexit would be voted down, that they’d remain in the European Union, but that David Cameron would be so weakened by the whole process that he would have to step down as prime minister, leaving Boris in place to take over. And then Boris would lead the country, not through Brexit — because Brexit would have been voted down — but he would have appeased the right wing of the party, and thus consolidated his power better than Cameron ever could.

michael barbaro

So this whole kind of move to backstab David Cameron by supporting Brexit at the last minute is based on his belief that Brexit would not actually happen, until it did.

archived recording

There we are. That is now statistically, mathematically there, that the Leave campaign have won. And we’re expecting at the end of the count 52 percent for Leave, 48 percent for Remain. Quite an extraordinary moment.

sarah lyall

Everybody was shocked. And if you see, there was an amazing moment where Boris Johnson comes out —

archived recording (boris johnson)

Today, I think all of us politicians —

sarah lyall

— the head of this campaign —

archived recording (boris johnson)

— should thank the British people —

sarah lyall

— to give a press conference —

archived recording (boris johnson)

— because, in a way, they have been doing our job for us.

sarah lyall

— to basically reassure the country that he is in control, that he knows what he’s doing.

archived recording (boris johnson)

They hire us to deal with the hard questions. And this year, we gave them one of the biggest and toughest questions of all.

sarah lyall

And he looks so frightened.

archived recording (boris johnson)

I believe the British people have spoken up for democracy.

sarah lyall

He looks like a deer caught in the headlights. He has no plan. It becomes clear he has no plan.

^archived recording (boris johnson)

Thank you, finally, to everybody at Vote Leave for the extraordinary and positive campaign you have run. Thank you.

michael barbaro

Then what happens?

archived recording (david cameron)

It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve our country as prime minister over these last six years.

sarah lyall

So then David Cameron quits. And they’re left with a power vacuum. Who is going to be the next prime minister? And at that point, it looked like Boris was a shoo-in. He was definitely going to get it. He had been the head of the Leave campaign. He was the most popular politician in the country.

michael barbaro

And this is what he’s always wanted.

sarah lyall

Yeah, everybody knew who he was. It’s what he’s always wanted. And he had a colleague, Michael Gove, who had also betrayed Cameron and helped him, helped Boris, with the anti-Europe campaign. And the idea was that Boris would be prime minister, and Michael Gove would be, like, chancellor of the Exchequer or some other really good job. And they’d sort of planned it all out. And there really weren’t any other legitimate candidates at that point. So that was, like, on a Friday, I think. And there was, I think, six days to figure this out, or about a week to figure it out. And they’re campaigning, and everyone’s like, what are they going to do? They have to put out some sort of plan. Boris writes this editorial for The Telegraph that’s supposedly putting out his political plan. There isn’t really a plan. It’s all chaotic. It’s all weird. Everyone’s getting scared. And then the day before Boris is meant to formally announce that he is putting his name forward to be prime minister —

archived recording (michael gove)

I thought it was right that, following the decision that the British people took last week —

sarah lyall

— Michael Gove, his great friend and ally through the whole campaign —

archived recording (michael gove)

And I hoped that Boris Johnson would be someone who could ensure that the government followed the instructions of the British people, and also build and unite a team around him in order to lead this country forward.

sarah lyall

— calls a press conference and says —

archived recording (michael gove)

And Boris is an amazing and an impressive person. But I’ve realized in the last few days that Boris isn’t capable of building that team and providing that unity.

sarah lyall

He doesn’t trust Boris. He thinks Boris would be a bad prime minister.

michael barbaro

Good lord.

sarah lyall

He’s withdrawing his support. Yes. And so —

^archived recording (boris johnson)

Well, I must tell you —

sarah lyall

Everybody who thought Boris is going to be prime minister is now saying he’s not going to be. And Boris has to withdraw from the race.

^archived recording (boris johnson)

I have concluded that person cannot be me.

michael barbaro

This is pretty humiliating.

sarah lyall

Really humiliating, and it felt like everything had finally caught up to him. He’d been exposed. The lying, the blundering, the sort of lack of preparation, the inability to follow through on things had all finally, finally come back to haunt him. He’d always gotten away with everything before. He was like the Teflon politician. And suddenly, he was having to accept the repercussions of what he had done.

michael barbaro

What happens?

sarah lyall

They have to find a compromise candidate. And everyone is sort of poisoned in one way or another, so they settle on this super unlikely figure, Theresa May.

archived recording (theresa may)

I have just been to Buckingham Palace, where Her Majesty the Queen has asked me to form a new government. And I accepted.

sarah lyall

And she tries, and she tries, and no one likes what she does.

michael barbaro

And where is Boris during all this period?

sarah lyall

Well, Boris is a dangerous figure. So she felt, the way Cameron did before, that she could sort of neuter him by giving him a job in her cabinet. So she makes him foreign secretary, another job he’s not very good at.

archived recording

Either they’re dissembling or lying, or you are. Four ambassadors said they heard it said several times. You said it’s not government policy, but you do support free movement. That’s four of them. They’re not lying.

^archived recording (boris johnson)

No, that’s complete nonsense. Yes. Well, I think that they have been misrepresented. And if I may say so, I’m not entirely convinced that your reporter talked to those ambassadors. And I think —

sarah lyall

He’s underprepared. He’s disheveled. He says things that aren’t true. He makes some bad blunders, but he sort of soldiers on.

michael barbaro

Sounds like Boris Johnson.

sarah lyall

Sounds like Boris Johnson. He’s Boris being Boris. And then he ends up resigning from the cabinet over what he says is Theresa May’s poor handling of the Brexit negotiations.

^archived recording (boris johnson)

We never actually turned that vision into a negotiating position in Brussels. And we never made it into a negotiating offer. Instead, we dithered.

sarah lyall

But really what he’s doing is starting to plot his next move.

archived recording

So the nos have it. The nos have it. Unlock! Indeed, point of order, the prime minister.

^archived recording (boris johnson)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the House has spoken, and the government will listen. It is clear that the House does not support this deal. But tonight’s vote tells us nothing about what it does support.

sarah lyall

Theresa May is like one of those — she’s, I’m afraid, like a bull in a bull ring, who has tons of stuff sticking out of her. And she’s staggering around, and people are throwing spears at her. And they’re sticking in, and she’s bleeding, and everyone’s criticizing her.

michael barbaro

This is so graphic.

sarah lyall

Sorry. And she keeps coming back.

archived recording

So the nos have it. The nos have it. Unlock!

sarah lyall

And trying again, and nobody likes anything she does.

archived recording (theresa may)

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, I profoundly regret the decision that this House has taken tonight.

sarah lyall

And she becomes more and more unpopular.

archived recording

So the nos have it. The nos have it. Unlock!

sarah lyall

And by the end, people are almost like, whoever gets in we prefer to Theresa May.

archived recording (theresa may)

Mr. Speaker, I think it should be a matter of profound regret to every member of this House that once again, we have been unable to support leaving the European Union — [SHOUTING] — in orderly fashion.

sarah lyall

So the moment that Theresa May announces that she’s stepping down, Boris Johnson sees his second chance.

michael barbaro

To be prime minister.

sarah lyall

To be prime minister. Get her out, and then he can go in.

archived recording

I am pleased today, I am proud today, to introduce the candidate whom I shall support to lead the Conservative Party and our nation, a man who has already shown that he can lead this great global city through two successful terms. Ladies and gentlemen, Boris Johnson. [APPLAUSE]

michael barbaro

Sarah, are we to understand that all of this played out exactly the way that Boris Johnson would have hoped, that after he elevated Brexit, no matter what you think of it, Brexit has come around to elevate him?

sarah lyall

I think that’s right. I think in the last three years since the vote, he’s had to get his head around the fact, this is what’s going to happen. And if he has a conviction, this is now his conviction. And it’s a poisoned chalice, in my opinion. I feel like he’s set himself up for a task that’s almost impossible to carry out. And it’s kind of ironic that he’s gotten this job through something that he put into place and made it so difficult for himself. His political hero is Winston Churchill. He always wanted to be Winston Churchill. And I don’t see how anyone could be Winston Churchill throughout the Brexit process.

sarah lyall

It’s not like defeating the Nazis during the Second World War. It’s not a war. It’s a very, very complicated divorce from an entity that Britain is incredibly connected to in ways that most people don’t understand and take for granted. And I don’t see anyone coming out of it better off than they were before.

michael barbaro

So now this man, with what appears to be no deeply rooted political views, is going to be steering the U.K. through its greatest political challenge, perhaps, in history. And it’s exactly what he wanted.

sarah lyall

I’m not sure he wanted to have to be prime minister at this moment in history. But it’s the only chance he’s going to get. And he has a sort of blind optimism that he will be able to figure something out when he gets a job. And I think that’s the approach he’s taking now.

michael barbaro

Sarah, thank you very much.

michael barbaro

And good luck in London.

sarah lyall

Thank you. Yeah, I’m flying there soon.

michael barbaro

So you’re going to be there for the election.

sarah lyall

I’ll be there again, yeah. And I’ll do what I thought I was supposed to do two years ago, the last time this came around, three years ago.

sarah lyall

I will write this story saying that Boris Johnson has become prime minister. That was supposed to happen before, and maybe it will happen this time.

michael barbaro

The winner of the Conservative Party election for prime minister is expected to be announced tomorrow. We’ll be right back. Here’s what else you need to know today. Internal documents from drug makers, distributors and pharmacies released on Friday reveal a lax approach to tracking suspicious orders of opioids that went on to kill tens of thousands of Americans. A Walgreens in Port Richey, Florida, ordered 3,271 bottles of oxycodone a month, despite a local population of just 2,831. According to the records, the Walgreens employee in charge of flagging such orders cleared them anyway. The records show that companies had little or no oversight in place for flagging suspiciously large orders. One major drug maker gave the job of stopping suspicious orders to sales staff, whose bonuses were tied to those sales. The records are now evidence in a major trial against the companies brought by nearly 2,000 towns and cities devastated by the opioid crisis. That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

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Boris Johnson to Be U.K. Prime Minister After Winning Party Vote

michael barbaro

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.” After trying and failing to deliver Brexit, British Prime Minister Theresa May will resign this week. Today: The story of how the man expected to succeed her made Brexit, and how Brexit is now making him prime minister. It’s Monday, July 22.

archived recording (theresa may)

I will shortly leave the job that it has been the honor of my life to hold. I do so with no ill will, but with enormous and enduring gratitude to have had the opportunity to serve the country I love.

michael barbaro

Sarah, catch me up on what happened after that moment when Theresa May announces that she’s stepping down.

sarah lyall

Well, it touched off an immediate mad scramble over who would replace her. And under party rules, the next party leader is chosen only by members of the Conservative Party. And it’s they who will be selecting the next leader of the party and thus the next prime minister of the U.K.

michael barbaro

And who is expected to be at this point?

sarah lyall

At this point, it’s a shoo-in for Boris Johnson. Unless something bizarre happens, he will be the next prime minister.

archived recording

[MUSIC]

michael barbaro

And Sarah, who is Boris Johnson?

archived recording

He is the Conservative M.P. for Henley. He’s editor of The Spectator. And it seems he’s 92 times better than me at hosting topical news quizzes. Ladies and gentlemen, Boris Johnson. [CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

sarah lyall

He is a celebrity politician.

archived recording (boris johnson)

This is a totally ecumenical cross-party venture, my friends. Now, this is a once in a lifetime chance.

sarah lyall

And he is extraordinarily visible by the way he looks. He has a massive shock of bright white hair.

archived recording

And how long have you been cutting your own hair? [LAUGHTER]

archived recording (boris johnson)

I think that was a low blow.

sarah lyall

He’s incredibly articulate.

archived recording (boris johnson)

Are you saying they haven’t the guts to put questions to me? Great supine protoplasmic invertebrate jellies.

sarah lyall

He’s incredibly funny. He’s incredibly charming.

archived recording

Have you snorted cocaine? [LAUGHTER]

archived recording (boris johnson)

I tried to.

archived recording

You’ve tried to snort cocaine?

archived recording (boris johnson)

Unsuccessfully, a long time ago. [LAUGHTER]

archived recording

Sir, what are you thinking?

archived recording (boris johnson)

I sneezed.

archived recording

What was unsuccessful about it?

archived recording (boris johnson)

I sneezed. [LAUGHTER]

sarah lyall

He’s also incredibly — what the Brits would call shambolic. He doesn’t get to places on time. He’s disorganized. He’s ill-prepared. He can’t remember what meeting he’s at and what he’s supposed to be doing.

archived recording (boris johnson)

We’ve got a fantastic guy called — oh, he’s brilliant. It’s either — he’s a superb man — Sterling, Gurling, something like that. What’s he called? Come on, what is it again? Tell me the name. Come on.

archived recording

You should get it. No, serious, it’s not my job to —

archived recording (boris johnson)

Stop sitting there like a great, big, fat Buddha and tell me the name of this guy.

michael barbaro

Sarah, when I think of British government, and certainly when I think about the prime minister, I think of a certain level of kind of stuffy formality and sobriety. How does this person that you’re describing, how does that person become the first in line to become prime minister?

sarah lyall

So there’s really two ways to look at him. He is all those things. He is bumbling. He is shambolic. But at the same time, a lot of his moves over his career have been quite calculated. It’s often been in the service of either getting attention or getting power. So for example, he started as a journalist.

michael barbaro

What was his reputation as a journalist?

sarah lyall

Well, very entertaining. He’s really funny and inaccurate. And he would write articles about the European Union, where he’d exaggerate and sort of cast the European Union as this terrible bureaucracy, trying to take things away from citizens. It was sort of the stuff that made no sense. It was like, the E.U. was going to regulate condoms and make them all one-size-fits-all.

sarah lyall

And it was going to ban shrimp-flavored potato chips.

michael barbaro

And it was going to really do neither.

sarah lyall

No, it was going to do neither. And the other journalists who were covering the same things would be yelled at by their editors, who would say, why aren’t you covering the same stuff Boris is? And he set a tone for the coverage of the European Union. It was just wrong. And when he was asked about it, he said, it doesn’t matter what the facts are that you marshal in service of that thesis. The thesis is right.

archived recording

[MUSIC]

sarah lyall

And he talked about it once. He went on a program called “Desert Island Discs,” which is a BBC program where you talk about your favorite music.

archived recording

My castaway this week is a politician and a journalist, prone to getting into scrapes, a word that suits his rather Wodehousian image.

sarah lyall

And he was talking about his coverage. And he said —

archived recording (boris johnson)

See, everything I wrote from Brussels I find was sort of — I was just chucking these rocks over the garden wall, and there’s an amazing crash from the greenhouse next door over in England. Everything I wrote from Brussels were having this amazing, explosive effect on the Tory Party. And it really gave me this, I suppose, rather weird sense of power.

archived recording

But this made your reputation as a journalist, didn’t it?

sarah lyall

It started to inform the Tory Party’s attitude toward Europe. And so he was welcomed by them as someone really telling the truth about Europe for the first time.

michael barbaro

So he was finding an audience among Britain’s conservatives?

michael barbaro

And was he himself actually a conservative?

sarah lyall

Yeah, he was always a conservative. But there are different strains in the Conservative Party. And at least in the beginning, it seemed his biggest motivation was to get in Parliament, and that way to start building a base toward having more power. But at that point, it was sort of unclear what his convictions were. And as he said in an interview at the time, when he was asked what he would resign over, if there was any principle that would be so important to him, he said, “I’m a bit of an optimist, so it doesn’t tend to occur to me to resign. I tend to think of a way of Sellotaping everything together and quietly finding a way through if I can.” In other words, he would sort of do what it took to kind of paper over the edges in order to get through it in order to remain in office.

michael barbaro

Which is another way of saying, when it comes to his convictions, they are malleable.

sarah lyall

Yes. And that’s illustrated again when he runs for mayor in 2008, because he refashions himself then. He positions himself as a liberal, urbane man of multicultural London. He’s pro-business, but he’s pro-immigrants.

archived recording (boris johnson)

If you’ve been here for more than 10 to 12 years, I’m afraid the authorities no longer really pursue you. They give up.

archived recording

So should we have that amnesty?

archived recording (boris johnson)

Well, why not be honest about what is going on?

archived recording

So have that amnesty?

archived recording (boris johnson)

Yeah, absolutely.

sarah lyall

Like, he’s this really old-fashioned conservative, who went to Oxford, speaks in a really posh accent, which isn’t supposed to go over well with regular people. And regular people love him. He would walk through the streets of London and people would sort of yell, hey, Boris. Women found him really attractive.

archived recording

Boris says what he means, and he delivers.

sarah lyall

There’s just something about him that made him a really good candidate. So then he gets elected mayor, which was actually an amazing feat. A conservative would never get elected in London, and it was based purely on personal popularity.

archived recording (boris johnson)

I do not, for one minute, believe that this election shows that London has been transformed overnight into a conservative city.

sarah lyall

And then he continued with these sort of funny statements. And he also showed to the world a kind of physical comedy.

archived recording

He got himself into pretty deep water today.

sarah lyall

So he once was at the Thames doing something, and he fell into the river.

archived recording (speaker 1)

Oh, then really badly.

archived recording (speaker 2)

And this is the best bit. This is the best bit here. She pulls down the volunteer with him.

sarah lyall

And then what a lot of people saw was, during the 2012 Olympics, he was trying to promote Britain or promote London or something, and he went down this zip wire. And he got stuck in a zip wire, and he had this sort of wedgie. And he was stuck in the middle.

archived recording (speaker 1)

Hey, Boris, you’re going the wrong way.

archived recording (speaker 2)

This way.

archived recording (speaker 1)

Boris, this way.

sarah lyall

He looked so ridiculous. Look at his little blue hat. He’s wearing the most ill-fitting outfit. Oop, it just stopped. And he’s dangling.

archived recording (boris johnson)

It’s going well. It’s very, very well-organized. What they do — get me a ladder.

michael barbaro

He’s really kind of hamming it up.

michael barbaro

And the crowd beneath him, it seems kind of charmed.

sarah lyall

Look at them all taking pictures of him, laughing. He makes people feel good. He really does.

archived recording (boris johnson)

Can you get me a rope? [LAUGHTER] Get me a rope, O.K.?

sarah lyall

Any other politician, that would have been the end, to be photographed like that. But he turned it into a plus. He turned it into a virtue, and people thought it was hilarious. And they thought he was cuddly and cute. The thing about when he was mayor is the first time he had that much power, and he was fantastic figurehead. He was a fantastic front man.

archived recording (boris johnson)

Finally, you have brought home a great truth about our country, that when we put our mind to it, there is absolutely nothing that this country cannot achieve.

sarah lyall

He was not a details person. He showed up late to things. He was ill-prepared. He wouldn’t read anything. He didn’t know about the policies. And luckily, the mayor of London isn’t that important a job, really. He doesn’t have a lot of responsibility, so he couldn’t really mess it up. But he was not a great mayor.

michael barbaro

So Boris Johnson has been a consistent source of amusement and controversy.

sarah lyall

Boris is constantly getting himself into trouble and constantly finding a way out of it through basically charm and bluster and an ability to talk himself out of any situation.

michael barbaro

And what trouble does he get himself out of?

sarah lyall

Well, there’s been a lot of trouble with women. He fathered a child with someone other than his wife while he was mayor of London and managed to never really have to discuss it publicly. When he was editor of The Spectator, he had an affair with one of his employees, who got pregnant, wrote about it. He denied in the beginning he’d had the affair. He lied to the journalists who asked. He lied to the prime minister. He got fired from his job. And somehow he got out of that, too. And it started to become clear that his disheveled, bumbling persona was calculated. And people have said — and I’ve seen it, too — before he goes on TV, he’ll run his hands through his hair to make it look messier, as if he couldn’t be bothered to ever brush it. He wants to look like that. And someone recently told this amazing story about how Boris came to speak at some kind of civic meeting, or a meeting of some industry group, and arrived five minutes late, right before he was supposed to speak. And sort of got up and looked and said, where am I speaking, what group is this, and told these anecdotes, and how he totally snowed the crowd. The crowd thought it was hilarious. They loved him. And the guy was really happy he pulled it off. Until he saw Boris do the exact same thing at a totally different group some months later, the exact same thing. He came late. He said, where am I? He told the same anecdotes, as if it was just off the top of his head.

michael barbaro

And in fact, it was a routine.

sarah lyall

It was a routine. It was a comedy routine designed to promote this view of him as this disheveled, bumbling person who could sort of pull it out at the last minute. He wants to seem that way.

michael barbaro

So a lot of this is an act. It’s kind of political theater.

sarah lyall

Exactly. And during that whole time, when people asked him, did he want to be prime minister, what was he going to do next? He would always slough it off with what looked like more of an act.

archived recording

Is there a possibility you could become prime minister?

archived recording (boris johnson)

I think that that is vanishing. I’ve about as much chance of being reincarnated as an olive. [LAUGHTER]

sarah lyall

And so meanwhile, though, he is quietly consolidating his popularity and preparing in his head somehow a way to challenge the prime minister, David Cameron. He’s way more popular than David Cameron, though he’s just an M.P. at this point. And the question is, how would he get there? What would he do? And then finally, in 2016, he sees a chance.

michael barbaro

And what is that chance?

sarah lyall

The chance is Brexit.

michael barbaro

We’ll be right back. So Sarah, pick us up where we left off. It’s 2016, and you said that Boris Johnson sees his chance to become prime minister. What’s happening at that moment?

archived recording (david cameron)

We are approaching one of the biggest decisions this country will face in our lifetimes, whether to remain in a reformed European Union or to leave.

sarah lyall

So it was then that the prime minister, David Cameron, called the referendum known as Brexit over whether Britain would leave the European Union.

archived recording (david cameron)

The choice goes to the heart of the kind of country we want to be and the future that we want for our children.

sarah lyall

He and his government were pro-Remain.

archived recording (david cameron)

My recommendation is clear. I believe that Britain will be safer, stronger and better off in a reformed European Union.

sarah lyall

And everyone assumed that the country felt the same way. And he assumes that all his allies in the Conservative Party will follow along with him —

michael barbaro

Including Johnson.

sarah lyall

— including Johnson, to campaign to remain. So Johnson was one of the people who was supposed to support him. And at the very last minute —

archived recording (boris johnson)

We have a chance, actually, to do something. I have a chance, actually, to do something.

sarah lyall

Boris became head of the Leave campaign.

archived recording (boris johnson)

I would like to see a new relationship, based more on trade, on cooperation, but as I say, with much less of this supranational element. So that’s where I’m coming from.

archived recording

Boris, if that’s really what you’ve thought all along, why have you kept your party waiting for such a long time?

archived recording (boris johnson)

The truth is that it has been agonizingly difficult.

michael barbaro

Is it clear at this moment whether Boris Johnson actually wants to leave the E.U.?

sarah lyall

Well, he wrote a famous editorial on the day he made this announcement of how he felt about it, saying, we should leave the E.U. Britain should leave the E.U. But it turned out later he had written an opposing editorial saying the exact opposite thing. It was only at the last minute that he decided to run with the “we should leave” version.

michael barbaro

Suggesting that the depth of his conviction here might have been shallow.

sarah lyall

Suggesting there was no depth of his conviction at all, that it was just political calculation and pragmatism. What would be better for Boris?

michael barbaro

Better for Boris how?

sarah lyall

Better for Boris in that he wanted power. And what he thought would happen, what everyone thought would happen, was the following — that Brexit would be voted down, that they’d remain in the European Union, but that David Cameron would be so weakened by the whole process that he would have to step down as prime minister, leaving Boris in place to take over. And then Boris would lead the country, not through Brexit — because Brexit would have been voted down — but he would have appeased the right wing of the party, and thus consolidated his power better than Cameron ever could.

michael barbaro

So this whole kind of move to backstab David Cameron by supporting Brexit at the last minute is based on his belief that Brexit would not actually happen, until it did.

archived recording

There we are. That is now statistically, mathematically there, that the Leave campaign have won. And we’re expecting at the end of the count 52 percent for Leave, 48 percent for Remain. Quite an extraordinary moment.

sarah lyall

Everybody was shocked. And if you see, there was an amazing moment where Boris Johnson comes out —

archived recording (boris johnson)

Today, I think all of us politicians —

sarah lyall

— the head of this campaign —

archived recording (boris johnson)

— should thank the British people —

sarah lyall

— to give a press conference —

archived recording (boris johnson)

— because, in a way, they have been doing our job for us.

sarah lyall

— to basically reassure the country that he is in control, that he knows what he’s doing.

archived recording (boris johnson)

They hire us to deal with the hard questions. And this year, we gave them one of the biggest and toughest questions of all.

sarah lyall

And he looks so frightened.

archived recording (boris johnson)

I believe the British people have spoken up for democracy.

sarah lyall

He looks like a deer caught in the headlights. He has no plan. It becomes clear he has no plan.

^archived recording (boris johnson)

Thank you, finally, to everybody at Vote Leave for the extraordinary and positive campaign you have run. Thank you.

michael barbaro

Then what happens?

archived recording (david cameron)

It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve our country as prime minister over these last six years.

sarah lyall

So then David Cameron quits. And they’re left with a power vacuum. Who is going to be the next prime minister? And at that point, it looked like Boris was a shoo-in. He was definitely going to get it. He had been the head of the Leave campaign. He was the most popular politician in the country.

michael barbaro

And this is what he’s always wanted.

sarah lyall

Yeah, everybody knew who he was. It’s what he’s always wanted. And he had a colleague, Michael Gove, who had also betrayed Cameron and helped him, helped Boris, with the anti-Europe campaign. And the idea was that Boris would be prime minister, and Michael Gove would be, like, chancellor of the Exchequer or some other really good job. And they’d sort of planned it all out. And there really weren’t any other legitimate candidates at that point. So that was, like, on a Friday, I think. And there was, I think, six days to figure this out, or about a week to figure it out. And they’re campaigning, and everyone’s like, what are they going to do? They have to put out some sort of plan. Boris writes this editorial for The Telegraph that’s supposedly putting out his political plan. There isn’t really a plan. It’s all chaotic. It’s all weird. Everyone’s getting scared. And then the day before Boris is meant to formally announce that he is putting his name forward to be prime minister —

archived recording (michael gove)

I thought it was right that, following the decision that the British people took last week —

sarah lyall

— Michael Gove, his great friend and ally through the whole campaign —

archived recording (michael gove)

And I hoped that Boris Johnson would be someone who could ensure that the government followed the instructions of the British people, and also build and unite a team around him in order to lead this country forward.

sarah lyall

— calls a press conference and says —

archived recording (michael gove)

And Boris is an amazing and an impressive person. But I’ve realized in the last few days that Boris isn’t capable of building that team and providing that unity.

sarah lyall

He doesn’t trust Boris. He thinks Boris would be a bad prime minister.

michael barbaro

Good lord.

sarah lyall

He’s withdrawing his support. Yes. And so —

^archived recording (boris johnson)

Well, I must tell you —

sarah lyall

Everybody who thought Boris is going to be prime minister is now saying he’s not going to be. And Boris has to withdraw from the race.

^archived recording (boris johnson)

I have concluded that person cannot be me.

michael barbaro

This is pretty humiliating.

sarah lyall

Really humiliating, and it felt like everything had finally caught up to him. He’d been exposed. The lying, the blundering, the sort of lack of preparation, the inability to follow through on things had all finally, finally come back to haunt him. He’d always gotten away with everything before. He was like the Teflon politician. And suddenly, he was having to accept the repercussions of what he had done.

michael barbaro

What happens?

sarah lyall

They have to find a compromise candidate. And everyone is sort of poisoned in one way or another, so they settle on this super unlikely figure, Theresa May.

archived recording (theresa may)

I have just been to Buckingham Palace, where Her Majesty the Queen has asked me to form a new government. And I accepted.

sarah lyall

And she tries, and she tries, and no one likes what she does.

michael barbaro

And where is Boris during all this period?

sarah lyall

Well, Boris is a dangerous figure. So she felt, the way Cameron did before, that she could sort of neuter him by giving him a job in her cabinet. So she makes him foreign secretary, another job he’s not very good at.

archived recording

Either they’re dissembling or lying, or you are. Four ambassadors said they heard it said several times. You said it’s not government policy, but you do support free movement. That’s four of them. They’re not lying.

^archived recording (boris johnson)

No, that’s complete nonsense. Yes. Well, I think that they have been misrepresented. And if I may say so, I’m not entirely convinced that your reporter talked to those ambassadors. And I think —

sarah lyall

He’s underprepared. He’s disheveled. He says things that aren’t true. He makes some bad blunders, but he sort of soldiers on.

michael barbaro

Sounds like Boris Johnson.

sarah lyall

Sounds like Boris Johnson. He’s Boris being Boris. And then he ends up resigning from the cabinet over what he says is Theresa May’s poor handling of the Brexit negotiations.

^archived recording (boris johnson)

We never actually turned that vision into a negotiating position in Brussels. And we never made it into a negotiating offer. Instead, we dithered.

sarah lyall

But really what he’s doing is starting to plot his next move.

archived recording

So the nos have it. The nos have it. Unlock! Indeed, point of order, the prime minister.

^archived recording (boris johnson)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the House has spoken, and the government will listen. It is clear that the House does not support this deal. But tonight’s vote tells us nothing about what it does support.

sarah lyall

Theresa May is like one of those — she’s, I’m afraid, like a bull in a bull ring, who has tons of stuff sticking out of her. And she’s staggering around, and people are throwing spears at her. And they’re sticking in, and she’s bleeding, and everyone’s criticizing her.

michael barbaro

This is so graphic.

sarah lyall

Sorry. And she keeps coming back.

archived recording

So the nos have it. The nos have it. Unlock!

sarah lyall

And trying again, and nobody likes anything she does.

archived recording (theresa may)

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, I profoundly regret the decision that this House has taken tonight.

sarah lyall

And she becomes more and more unpopular.

archived recording

So the nos have it. The nos have it. Unlock!

sarah lyall

And by the end, people are almost like, whoever gets in we prefer to Theresa May.

archived recording (theresa may)

Mr. Speaker, I think it should be a matter of profound regret to every member of this House that once again, we have been unable to support leaving the European Union — [SHOUTING] — in orderly fashion.

sarah lyall

So the moment that Theresa May announces that she’s stepping down, Boris Johnson sees his second chance.

michael barbaro

To be prime minister.

sarah lyall

To be prime minister. Get her out, and then he can go in.

archived recording

I am pleased today, I am proud today, to introduce the candidate whom I shall support to lead the Conservative Party and our nation, a man who has already shown that he can lead this great global city through two successful terms. Ladies and gentlemen, Boris Johnson. [APPLAUSE]

michael barbaro

Sarah, are we to understand that all of this played out exactly the way that Boris Johnson would have hoped, that after he elevated Brexit, no matter what you think of it, Brexit has come around to elevate him?

sarah lyall

I think that’s right. I think in the last three years since the vote, he’s had to get his head around the fact, this is what’s going to happen. And if he has a conviction, this is now his conviction. And it’s a poisoned chalice, in my opinion. I feel like he’s set himself up for a task that’s almost impossible to carry out. And it’s kind of ironic that he’s gotten this job through something that he put into place and made it so difficult for himself. His political hero is Winston Churchill. He always wanted to be Winston Churchill. And I don’t see how anyone could be Winston Churchill throughout the Brexit process.

sarah lyall

It’s not like defeating the Nazis during the Second World War. It’s not a war. It’s a very, very complicated divorce from an entity that Britain is incredibly connected to in ways that most people don’t understand and take for granted. And I don’t see anyone coming out of it better off than they were before.

michael barbaro

So now this man, with what appears to be no deeply rooted political views, is going to be steering the U.K. through its greatest political challenge, perhaps, in history. And it’s exactly what he wanted.

sarah lyall

I’m not sure he wanted to have to be prime minister at this moment in history. But it’s the only chance he’s going to get. And he has a sort of blind optimism that he will be able to figure something out when he gets a job. And I think that’s the approach he’s taking now.

michael barbaro

Sarah, thank you very much.

michael barbaro

And good luck in London.

sarah lyall

Thank you. Yeah, I’m flying there soon.

michael barbaro

So you’re going to be there for the election.

sarah lyall

I’ll be there again, yeah. And I’ll do what I thought I was supposed to do two years ago, the last time this came around, three years ago.

sarah lyall

I will write this story saying that Boris Johnson has become prime minister. That was supposed to happen before, and maybe it will happen this time.

michael barbaro

The winner of the Conservative Party election for prime minister is expected to be announced tomorrow. We’ll be right back. Here’s what else you need to know today. Internal documents from drug makers, distributors and pharmacies released on Friday reveal a lax approach to tracking suspicious orders of opioids that went on to kill tens of thousands of Americans. A Walgreens in Port Richey, Florida, ordered 3,271 bottles of oxycodone a month, despite a local population of just 2,831. According to the records, the Walgreens employee in charge of flagging such orders cleared them anyway. The records show that companies had little or no oversight in place for flagging suspiciously large orders. One major drug maker gave the job of stopping suspicious orders to sales staff, whose bonuses were tied to those sales. The records are now evidence in a major trial against the companies brought by nearly 2,000 towns and cities devastated by the opioid crisis. That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

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