#I first learned this piece like in 2017 so ages ago

[cassandralexxx]

The Starry Night

by Catherine Rollin

[chirasul]

for the ama post: I want to ask who was the first character ever conceptualized for Coelary and have they changed much from their original incarnation? and if so, in what ways?

the VERY FIRST bug character I made was Arsenia! and she has changed a LOT since her first iteration, but I found her style pretty quick and then I've been refining her design ever since.

gonna put some images under a readmore because my first drawings of arsenia are NAKED!

this is the very first drawing of Arsenia, based on a threadwing antlion. i posted it on twitter on September 8th, 2012 (good god over 10 years ago)

i started drawing her a lot more within the next year, where she started to assume her current form, which was influenced by anime styles i was trying to emulate:

i had these vague ideas of her story, which i slowly started to piece together into a webcomic. arsenia's design varied wildly due to my extreme lack of art skills

the first few pages of this were posted on the Coelary tumblr back in 2013, though the script quickly outpaced what I could draw, so I quit programming school and started art school in 2015 (at age 25) and yes: i did in fact go to art school just so i could make coelary

(this one's from 2017)

by the time i started drawing final art for Coelary from 2017-2020, Arsenia's final design was basically locked in and I could draw her fairly consistently each time

(2021 Arsenia)

nobody really tells you this, but designing a character is largely about getting to know them over time, especially as you cultivate your style and build your skills

(2023 Arsenia)

To be totally honest, I don't really FEEL like Arsenia's design has changed over the past decade, per se; it more just felt like I had to learn to make my art skill live up to the idea of her. But I think I'm there! I can finally draw her the way I originally imagined her.

I hope that's what you were looking for and feel free to ask any followup questions!

[she-karev]

The Night They Met (Andrew DeLuca x Alex Karev’s Sister Origin Chapter)

Age Rating: 12+

Chapters: One of One

Fandom: Grey’s Anatomy

Ship: Andrew DeLuca x Amber Karev (Alex Karev’s Sister)

Canon Episode: Season 17 Episode 6

Summary: While DeLuca is under, he dreams about the first night he and Amber met and when he started to fall in love with her.

Words:

May 3rd, 2020

“Webber paged?” Teddy asks Owen as she enters the OR.

“Yeah, for me. DeLuca got stabbed.” Teddy sees DeLuca on the table under anesthesia to her shock, “He has a massive hemothorax and blood in the pericardium.”

“Sternotomy tray?”

“And Balfour. We treated a kid in Jordan who had shrapnel in the same area.”

Teddy remembers their patient from the army, “Right. Texas Hold 'Em guy.”

“And we sent him home in one piece.”

“Alright, let's do it again.” The surgeons get ready and start to cut into DeLuca who is passed out on the table. His mind takes him back to the past or it makes him dream his own version of the past. Either way it takes him away from what’s going on right here in the present where his life is on the line.

July 17th, 2017

Andrew DeLuca walks along the sidewalk of downtown searching for a bar to drink and relax after what just transpired at Joe’s Bar ten minutes ago. He was gonna talk to Jo Wilson about how he’s worried about Dr. Shepherd but she thought he was gonna confess his feelings for her again.

DeLuca learned from the first time he tried to confess his feelings for Jo that it would be for nothing. She interrupted him and told him that she doesn’t feel the same way. It hurt him but he learned to accept it and move on. But to have her outright tell him that despite everything she still loves Alex has him yearning for a buzz to kill the sour mood Jo incited in him. He left Joe’s so he doesn’t see Jo’s face as he drowns his sorrows and is on a quest for another bar to unwind in.

He spots a hole in the wall to his right called Screwdriver. The name itself tells him it’s not a high end cocktail bar and it most likely has college students and down on their luck drunks desperate for a drink. But at this point he’ll settle for a keg in a back alley instead of the usual spot for Grey Sloan staff to drink.

He pushes through the door and the smell of stale beer hits his nose, but he continues down the stairs. The walls are covered in old rock star posters, and he can hear Summer of 69 getting louder as he reaches his destination. There are tables and a stage for live entertainment in this room that could seat about 10 people. He sees a couple of men deep into their beers at one table and spots his destination.

The bar counter is tended by a large and hairy bartender who is already tending to another patron sitting on the stool with her back towards DeLuca. He can discern that it is a woman with long blonde wavy hair. She is wearing a gray sweatshirt with dark jeans and casual shoes. Andrew can guess it’s a college student trying to drink despite being below the age limit. He ignores it however and sits two stools away from the woman without glancing at her needing to be alone in his misery tonight.

“Can I get a beer and onion rings please?” Andrew asks the bartender who nods before grabbing a glass and going to the beer tap. He hears female laughter next to him which calls his attention and he looks to his left to see that his night just got worse.

It turns out the college student was actually the woman he accidentally assaulted this morning. He didn’t recognize her because instead of an expensive dress with a coffee stain and high heels she looks casual with her college sweatshirt that has Iowa State University at the front in yellow font. The sight of her here of all places on a crappy night like this has him widening his eyes at the unfortunate coincidence.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” He says in disbelief over his misfortune causing the woman to look at him offended.

“What exactly do you have to be upset with me about?”

Andrew realizes what he said and wants to take it back and explain, “No that’s not what I meant I just-”

“Did I spill coffee on you or punch you in the face or picked up your tampons?” DeLuca’s face burns at this recap in front of the bartender who is taking this out of context, “Cause I’m a little lost on what you have against me.”

DeLuca glances at the bartender who looks mildly interested at this interaction but puts a beer in front of Andrew before walking back to the kitchen. The two of them are left alone with their respective drinks basking in the awkwardness of this chance meeting.

Andrew sighs and tries to fix his mistake, “Look it was an accident, I swear.”

It falls on deaf ears because the woman is still peeved by his presence and makes it known, “No, it was three accidents, five if you count each individual tampon.”

“I said I was sorry I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“Nothing, in fact we don’t have to speak to each other ever again.” The woman tells him in an aggravated tone that makes him respond the same way due to his own crankiness.

“Oh, that’s too bad, I was really enjoying getting to know you.”

“Well, I wasn’t.”

DeLuca rolls his eyes at that, “I was being sarcastic.”

The woman turns to him with a dark look, “I wasn’t.”

The two of them drink their alcohol in bitter silence once they made it clear they were not in the mood for idle chit chat. After he sips his beer he looks over at the woman who is drinking her scotch and soda.

DeLuca wants to go back to his drink and join the woman in her silent isolation but there’s something about her that intrigues him. Maybe it’s her being in a bad mood as well that has him curious about what made her want to unwind in alcohol too. Or maybe it’s because she’s unlike any other woman he met.

When he first met her this morning, she looked like she came straight from a fashion magazine. Now she looks dressed for a casual stroll instead of a night out in a bar. This change in persona has him intrigued on the angry woman next to him and for some reason a part of him wants to know her more and figure out what she’s really like beyond the clothes and bad attitude.

Andrew decides to ask a question, at this point he can’t piss her off more, “So, uh…what were you doing at the hospital anyway? Were you visiting a relative?”

The woman looks at him confused and he expects a sharp insult but instead he gets a medium respond, “No I was uh…there for an interview to become an intern.”

Andrew’s interest is piqued at the prospect of working with this beautiful woman, “Oh, what field?”

“Surgery.”

The coincidence wipes his sour mood and he looks at her impressed and surprised, “Oh that’s my field too, I’m a second-year resident.” The bartender puts the beer and onion rings out in front of Andrew who doesn’t notice as he continues talking to her, “How did it go? Did you make a good impression?”

He sees her signaling the bartender and pointing at her empty glass, “I think so I wasn’t socially inept as most doctors would be and they didn’t notice the coffee in boobs if that’s what your worried about.”

She gives him a mocking grin that would normally bother him but seeing it from her has him quietly chuckle to himself amused.

He shifts to where she’s coming from and makes an assumption based on her college shirt, “Are you visiting from Iowa?”

“No, I’m visiting from New York I went to Iowa undergrad.”

Andrew nods noting unlike most doctors he knows she went to state school, “That’s cool I hear Iowa State is a really great school for…aspiring doctors like you.” He admonishes himself for his stupid comment about a state he barely acknowledges let alone knows the information on universities there. Despite this she gives him a genuine grin amused by his verbal clumsiness and chuckles for the first time.

He joins her and notes her perfect smile before he continues, “Sorry I don’t really know what to say here.”

She faces him with a wide smile as the bartender hands her a new drink, “Really? I couldn’t tell.”

Andrew smiles before moving on to a new question, “So, New York are you graduating from Columbia? Or maybe Cornell?” The blonde woman frowns at that with surprised eyes that are furrowed. Andrew asks her out of curiosity, “What?”

She shakes her head, “Nothing it’s just…people look at me and hear New York and immediately assume model or actress. Ivy league is the last guess they would make about me.”

Andrew shrugs, “Well maybe that’s because they didn’t run into you after you interviewed for a surgery job at one of the top hospitals in the nation, that could be a factor.”

“True. As for the question neither, I’m graduating from NYU in May after that Match Day and then the rest of my life starts…no pressure.”

Andrew knows the feeling too well as he was a stressed out med student not that long ago, “So how long are you in Seattle for?”

“Just until tomorrow, I go back to New York by then.”

He sees an opportunity for a clean slate and takes it moving closer so he’s sitting in a stool right next to her, “Well since it’s your last night in town and we might work together in the near future how about we make a fresh start by letting me buy you a drink?”

She raises an eyebrow at him holding the glass in her hand that he remembers is her second drink for the night so he tries again, “Okay how about I buy you a meal then? And you can reimburse me for the dry cleaning.”

The woman chuckles at him, “Oh I’m still gonna reimburse you buddy.”

He doesn’t back down however as he is more intrigued by her the longer he talks to her, “Then you can reimburse me for any emotional or physical trauma I unintentionally cause tonight, what do you say?”

The woman looks at him blankly for a moment before responding, “All right.” She turns to the bartender, “Can I get a double cheeseburger please with the largest side of fries you have.”

Andrew can sees where this is going and grins at her long and expensive order, “With buffalo wings and after I want two of your most expensive desserts to go.”

She grins at him and he responds with a sly grin of his own before taking out his wallet for what will surely be a hefty bill.

“Can I get a name? Since your probably gonna bankrupt me in one night?” Andrew asks causing the woman to hold her hand out and he shakes it.

“My name is Amber.”

“Amber.” Andrew tries the name out and it feels nice saying it, “So Amber is there anything else I can get for you? Caviar? Maybe a beamer?”

Amber smiles at that, “Well it is the least you owe me after the pain and humiliation this morning. And you should throw in a whole new wardrobe straight from Saks.”

“I think I’ll have to sell my kidneys to swing that kind of cash.” Andrew jokes, “You know I grew up in Wisconsin and it’s right on top of Iowa but beyond the cities I memorized for field trips I don’t know much about your state.”

“Well I know Wisconsin is known for its massive amounts of dairy and cheese, is that accurate?”

“Very.” Andrew says with a nostalgic smile, “My mom was really into cooking, and she would try any dish with cheese on it. I joined my high school cross country skiing team so I could lose some of that fat. And I looked into healthy recipes I could make with my mom, so we don’t have as much lard in our systems as the dairy aisle.”

Amber chuckles at that image, “Well where I’m from we Iowans are known for our vast agriculture. We lead production in corn, soybeans and pork, what we lack in culture we make up for in fiber.”

Andrew is intrigues by this, “I guess it’s safe to say your kitchen was bustling with healthy ingredients unlike mine growing up.”

“No.” Amber says with a laugh, “Nobody in my family can cook to save their lives unless there’s clear instructions on the box. Basically, our family dinners consisted of tv dinners and white rice, although on occasion we would have mac and cheese with a little extra in it.”

“Extra?” Andrew asks with furrows eyebrows.

“Yeah, my siblings and I figured out about 50 different things to add to macaroni and cheese to give it a little something for taste.” Amber sips her drink, “Let’s see hot sauce was my favorite, hot dog too and out of some sick curiosity there was also peanut butter in the mix.”

Andrew groans in disgust and smiles in amusement, “Oh god that sounds disgusting.”

Amber smiles in agreement, “Yeah well my brother could eat anything that wasn’t nailed down so he finished it for us both thank god. Not much has changed since then, about three nights a week I have cereal for dinner and other nights I swindle my money for a hot dog from a cart that’s ten steps away from the next one.”

Andrew chuckles, “Well I’m lucky if I have the energy to pour cereal and milk together after a nightmare shift so I think I have you beat there right now.”

“Did I mention my cereal has dehydrated marshmallows?”

“Okay that is a problem.” He teases Amber who chuckles with him before he asks another question, “So what made you decide you were gonna be a doctor? I decided after four years as an EMT plus my whole family are doctors so that was motivation too. Do you have a family of doctors too?”

Amber winces at that, “Um…sort of. My brother is a surgeon, but he wasn’t the reason I decided to get into medicine. I challenge myself because nobody thought I was smart enough or determined enough to do a minimal task let alone past the MCAT. So, I made it a point to hit the books, get a 3.8 GPA and graduate with honors. After that it became kind of like a habit of mine to succeed and be the best I can be at the hardest thing possible.”

Andrew nods understanding her more, “And what could be harder than cutting into people and sewing them back together?”

“Exactly.” Amber confirms with a smug grin, “I thought I wanted to be an engineer growing up, but I figured out quickly that me and machinery are like lighting a match at a dumpster fire. Plus, those reflective vests are ugly.”

“True and what’s more trending than scrubs?” Andrew is very impressed at the woman next to him and makes it known, “It’s admirable, you pushing yourself like that. Med school for me was filled with legacy kids who expect shortcuts so hearing how you worked hard to earn everything you got is refreshing.”

Amber grins flattered, “Well I like to think we live in a meritocracy where people rise and fall based on how hard they work.”

Andrew is taken back by her vocabulary, “I think this is the first time I’m hearing the word meritocracy. Was politician your career goal too?”

“No, I practically grew up in a library.” Amber elaborates further, “We had basic cable, and I didn’t have enough money for a bookstore so checking out books was my best and cheapest option.”

Hearing about how she’s a bookworm too has Andrew’s interest in this woman reach higher and his attraction to her grows, “What did you like to read?”

“Fantasy mostly, I’m a sucker for magical worlds that turn into big movie franchises.” Andrew grins as his previous perception of her fades the more he knows about her, “I also like horror, reading about scary situations is so much better than seeing it on the big screen and…” Amber sips the last of her drink telling Andrew she has an embarrassing secret that requires alcohol to tell, “I also like graphic novels.”

Andrew’s eyes widen at the image of her reading Superman or Batman in the back of a comic bookstore, “Wow, I did not peg you for a comic book nerd.”

“Graphic novels.” Amber corrects with a serious face, “If you’re gonna make fun of me at least do it right. And I’m not a nerd, I haven’t read every single graphic novel in the world, just the ones that pique my interest. I have specific tastes.”

Andrew sips his beer, “Like what?”

Amber thinks for a moment, “Like Punisher, Old Man Logan, The Walking Dead those are my favorites. I like the dark and gory stuff with tortured antiheroes set in apocalyptic worlds.”

Andrew smiles at this, “Well when you put it like that I might have to give one of those a read.”

Amber chuckles at that before she pauses as a new song plays, “God I love this song.”

Andrew listens to determine what the song is and figures out it’s Leather and Lace by Stevie Nicks, “You like Fleetwood Mac?” He asks Amber who he thinks is the coolest person he’s ever met right now.

“Doesn’t everybody?” Amber asks back with a smile that stops Andrew dead.

“As far as I know right now yeah.” Andrew says after his peds rotation that lets him know the latest trends among the youth, “But it’s mostly because of that new Guardians of the Galaxy movie that had that one song that was already-”

“Overrated to begin with? I know!” Andrew is surprised at this shared point of view, and he almost wants to pinch himself to see if he’s dreaming the perfect girl right now. However, he doesn’t as he listens intently while she continues venting.

“It’s like ‘there’s a whole album with so many songs that are so much catchier, go on your spotify now’ Also it’s not the band that makes the songs great it’s the singer. Stevie Nicks went solo after Mac but nobody put her masterpieces on the charts.”

“Exactly!” Andrew agrees full heartedly, “I mean they worked on Rumours while there was affairs and divorces and so many other things that make good bands breakup. They put all that drama into a great album and yet everyone is focused on that one song because it goes with one scene in that one movie. It’s just…” Andrew stops when he notices the furrowed eyebrows and her hand over her lips that tells him he’s elaborating too much, “Sorry, my mind goes somewhere else when Mac is involved.”

Amber moves her hand revealing a grin, “I get it, I’m passionate about that band too, mainly because of Stevie. I mostly got into it because my middle name is Stevie, but I learned to appreciate the artistry and the history of it.”

DeLuca raises an eyebrow at that weird fact, “Your parents named you after Stevie Nicks? Not Christine or Lindsey?”

“Shut up.” Amber chuckles at that question that makes Andrew grin, “My dad was really into blues music. But hey I’m lucky I didn’t get B.B. or Muddy.”

“Or Fats Domino.” Amber chuckles at that sipping her drink before she closes her eyes bopping her head at the song.

“Here comes my favorite part.” Andrew sees her tapping her fingers against the counter according to the rhythm and is struck by lightning at what he hears next, “Lovers forever, face to face”

Andrew hears Amber singing the chorus and he knows he isn’t doing anything because the sound of her bedroom voice singing one of his favorite songs has him frozen in place. He begins to understand that Italian phrase he heard growing up ‘colpo di fulmine’ in English translation its interpreted as either ‘love at first sight’ or ‘lightning strike’. He can guess the latter interprets it correctly because the second he heard this beautiful woman start to sing it’s like something struck him.

Something so powerful and intense he can’t comprehend it but he knows it’s because of this smart, beautiful and independent woman next to him that has his full attention while she sings perfectly in tune and harmony.

“My city, your mountains stay with me, stay” Amber doesn’t notice Andrew staring at her as she sings too enthralled by the song, “I need you to love me, I need you today. Give to me your leather take from me my lace”

When she finishes singing, she opens her eyes and notices the staring next to her that makes her blush as he sees a red hue across her cheeks. He stops his staring looking at the beer instead hoping he didn’t ruin this by leering. She clears her throat; he fully expects her to say good night and walk out of the bar, but her next words catch him off guard.

“Do you want to sit at a table? I’m getting a crick at my neck facing you at this angle so…”

Andrew nods, “Yeah sure a table is fine, lets go.” Andrew lets Amber stand first and pick out a table while he says a silent thank you to the lord for not screwing up his chance with this dream woman.

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 14/09/2023

Green Panty Zone (Sequenced Ver​.​)

Season 5 Featured on: STUDIO TRIGGER QUALITY MUSIC WORKS

Ripped by SonicHeroesFan1

I've talked about it before, but man - its SO cool how I've been able to get attached to certain rips without knowing anything about what its aiming to convey. This isn't just about not getting the joke - there are a surprising number of rips made as tributes or inofficial follow-ups of sorts to other well-loved pieces from other communities. An example I've covered on this blog would be Big Sus Chocobo, an Among Us-themed YTPMV of Electric de Chocobo directly paying tribute to The First AVGN YTPMV of 2022, which released earlier that year (which in turn took direct inspiration from Big Ass Chocobo from 2017 - thank you, anonymous Ask for the correction!). Its heartwarming, in a way, to remember that SiIvaGunner is at its core part of a community, and that the channel is a community of creators in of itself.

The part in parenthesis in Green Panty Zone (Sequenced Ver.)'s name isn't just for flavor - it openly tells you from what source SonicHeroesFan1 chose to pay tribute to with this rip. Green Panty Zone is a 10-year old mashup between Champion from the anime series Panty & Stocking and various pieces of Sonic the Hedgehog music - made by none other than the infamous Triple-Q. You remember Triple-Q, right? - I've talked about him on the blog before in Planet Wisp Mashup Medley, and even outside of SiIvaGunner he's one of the most long-enduring personalities in the space of audio shitposting. Green Panty Zone, despite its age, is a pretty fun listen and displays the sheer creativity and work Triple-Q so consistently puts into his work, even as long ago as 2012.

With all that said, it *is* still a mashup - a rather simple joke in execution that works tremendously well. Green Panty Zone (Sequenced Ver.) pushes Triple-Q's original idea to the natural end point - what if the melody of Champion were to be directly implemented into the Sonic music used? The outcome is nothing short of beautiful, and it runs the full list of Sonic music featured in the original - Green Hill Zone, Angel Island Zone, Emerald Hill Zone, Palmtree Panic Present, Green Hill Zone's 8-bit rendition from the Game Gear, and even the oft-forgotten Sunset Hill from Sonic Advance 3. Each segment is given utmost care in their sound and authenticity, to where its almost hard to notice just how much the rip escalates and changes as it goes from Sonic game to Sonic game. Its easy to infer by his username, but SonicHeroesFan1 displays such infectious love for the Sonic series in all the Sonic rips he works on, its as if that love directly translates into quality and authenticity.

Each segment is done incredibly in its own right, and are topped off with a bunch of personal flourishes binding them together. The most striking one is the transition into Sunset Hill from Sonic Advance 3, using Sonic CD's time-travel sounds and a voice clip from Sonic's early-2000s voice actor to signify the change to a more "modern" Sonic game track, but that's only really scratching the surface! There's spring sounds, spike sounds, a snare sound almost exclusive to Sonic 2's soundtrack that opens the way for the Emerald Hill Zone segment - hell, the entire segment representing Sonic CD actually uses another SiIvaGunner rip as its baseline, yet it fits the mix so perfectly as to almost go unnoticed despite how noticably different it sounds. (Read Collision Chaos Good Future JP [CD Beta Mix] to learn more!)

This is one of those rips that I swear I could gush about endlessly, and the strangest part is that...I've never watched Panty & Stocking. I have no idea what emotional ties this'll have to someone who did - I'm speaking solely as a SiIvaGunner and a Sonic the Hedgehog fan, and that alone was enough to make this rip hit home. The amount of love poured into rips like these, despite being so directly tied to jokes for such a specific audience - tied to a mashup made 10 years ago by someone who, as a reminder, doesn't even associate much with the SiIvaGunner team anymore - is absolutely insane. Its a true testament to where SiIvaGunner's priorities lie: It's never about broad reach, about fame, about attention, but about quality and love for the fellow man.

[chromorbid]

If you get this, answer with 3 random facts about yourself and send it to the last 7 blogs in your notifications, anonymously or not!

i just got so emotional over old ask chains bc of this, god you remember those days????? in 2012-2016 when this was a thing all the time and people had so much fun learning about one another and making friends??? i just happened to be looking at tags on my ollllllld second blog right before seeing this too. that feels a bit serendipitous, dont you think? :')

instead of just "3 random facts" i think i'll use this ask as a springboard prompt for a brief history of my time here on this website, since a lot of folks are returning and it might be nice to come out and see what some of my old lost chums might be up to now.

In mid-2011 i joined tumblr because i realized all my favorite dA artists were posting on dA less and on here more. I didn't do much here until i encountered a piece of fanart of a character from a certain webcomic, got curious about that comic, enjoyed it, and discovered that there was a big community on tumblr who liked it! my first ever URL was.... man i don't really remember! Maybe something reflecting my dA name at the time? But i don't remember what that was then either, having deleted that account ages ago. but i think my second one was "gamzeecryingalonewithpie" or something to that effect because the "laughing alone with salad" stock photo meme was big. It was so silly.

Eventually i trended into making all my urls/handles some sort of pun having to do with death, and some years ago i settled on my current url for a twitter handle because it really hit me in a place. My best friend and currently roommate @mossspores came up with it!

Anyhow, i basically spent all my time on tumblr being comparatively insufferable from 2011 to about 2017 before i migrated the majority of it to twitter. At the moment, I actually keep looking at all my archived posts from my old blog trying to find some old OC stuff and being ridiculously embarrassed at how silly (ignorant? abrasive? entitled?) my young self was. I'm not certain about sharing my olllllld URLs besides the one from before, but probably my most famous one was "ammodramus"--I was bestowed the nickname "Ammo" for the longest time and probably gained the most followers during the run of that one. I think the most followers i ever got up to was somewhere around 700 on my first blog and close to 1,800 on my second one. (funny now, i've had this particular blog probably the longest out of the three and barely have over 100. i like this better, though.)

Now for the BIGGEST thing i was part of....i was really into the whole once-ler fandom craze. yeah. i was there on the ground floor, and basically became one of the biggest enablers of the ask-blog phenomenon. i even tried really hard to make my own of the "personification" blogs eventually, but it fell down flat because i was in a dark place mentally on the side while also dealing with the gradual degradation of my physical ability to draw (aka painful arthritis). But i had the most fun i had ever had online before in the thick of it. i made toooons of friends and i even still keep in touch with a few of them. There were a lot of mistakes and upsetting blunders made by myself and a lot of people i knew, but these days i think i'm generally okay outing myself as having been a part of it. i mean, it's been ten goddamn years since that kicked off after all. lmfao. i was also an ignorant teenager.

Now you'll just see me skulking about on here vaguely while reblogging posts in short bursts because i still never took to figuring out how queuing posts works best. For a long-ass time i had a tagging system i took VERY seriously and trigger-tagged religiously. when i remade to my third and current blog, i gave that up and BOY did my mental health suddenly improve or WHAT. i realized i'd been absolutely running myself ragged with caring about appearances and making sure as often as possible to upset NO ONE with my posts. Basically, the way that simply analyzing every single post i shared and making sure to cover ALL my bases to make sure no one felt irked by my sharing of a post, was, uh. To put it mildly, fucking exhausting. And i posted A LOT. I can guarantee i had to have cumulatively reblogged nearly half a million posts between those two accounts. Last i checked on just my second blog, the pages went back into the 10,000s.

so yeah! hi to anyone who read through this whole thing who i knew way back when! I'm doing much better than i used to be, thanks to a lot of therapy and medication. i made it out of the house i grew up in, even the State i grew up in, and feel a lot less like i'm gonna die before 30! :') i've been chilling, playing final fantasy xiv, and eating lots of rice and vegetables. o/

thanks for the ask! <3

[aelaer]

1 ,10, 23 & 26 for the fic writer ask game? (Sorry that it's so many but I wanted an eve split between reading and writing. 😄)

This is the ask post, since I posted it like, ages ago. See previous post for delay excuses lmao.

1- How long ago did you start reading fanfiction? Writing fanfiction? Oh god I'm old, 2003 for both. Freaking 20 year anniversary next summer/fall, respectively. I already knew I enjoyed writing by that time and when I discovered fanfic (I don't remember how I learned of it--possibly a school friend? Possibly Neopets?) in late spring/early summer, it only took me until early September to start posting. I know the date because my first fic is still live (though it has been edited several dozen times lmao).

10- What’s your favorite fandom, pairing, or character to read fic for? 2003-2011: LOTR, Aragorn-based, usually Arwen was the pairing if it figured at all into the story (because just like now, romance wasn't my main genre). 2012-2016: Fanfic break! RP took over entirely. 2017-2018: BBC Sherlock, Sherlock, pairing didn't matter, no faves there. I read gen, Johnlock, Sherlolly, and whatever Sherlock/Irene was called. And I even read a few rarer pairs like with Lestrade and Moriarty. I rarely click on incest stuff, that's a squick for me. 2019-now: MCU, Stephen Strange, and no preferred pairing. My bookmarked stories include Tony, Christine, Wong, Mordo, Loki, but my super-faves tend to be in the good ol' gen/found family category.

23- What’s your absolute favorite trope to write? According to AO3, it's "Hurt Stephen Strange" *snort*. Which, yeah, probably. Also I like have him abducted because if we're gonna make it hurt, might as well make the situation really, really suck. Overall I'd say "angst with a happy ending" is basically the definition of 90% of my pieces.

26- What’s your biggest distraction when writing? Research. I start looking things up and go down a research rabbit hole, and definitely look at things that are not at all necessary for the story. It's a big reason why I have to now dedicate time to just writing and put footnotes for fillers to research later

[causeiwanttoandican]

The Times

Prince William’s close friends on what makes him tick — and why he’s not trapped

March 20 2021, 6:00pm

As the world devours the Harry and Meghan interview, what’s going on with the brother who was left behind? He’s embracing his destiny, William’s close friends tell the Sunday Times royal correspondent, Roya Nikkhah

Next month Prince William will celebrate his tenth wedding anniversary — the day he became a duke and embarked on the most formative decade of his life. Back then, the tentative 28-year-old newlywed was not ready to devote himself entirely to royal duties. A decade on, he is in a very different position.

The job of being the heir to the heir to the throne, of finding a balance between life and duty, is difficult at the best of times. These are not the best of times. In their bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey this month the Duke and Duchess of Sussex accused the royal family and the institution around it of racism and callous disregard for a suicidal newcomer, among many other damning charges. Harry the spare also declared that William was trapped within “the system … My brother can’t leave that system, but I have.”

In the immediate aftermath of the interview William was “reeling”, a source close to the duke says. “His head is all over the place on it.” Four days after the Sussexes had their say, he hit back during an engagement with the Duchess of Cambridge at a school in east London. Asked about accusations of racism, William retorted with restrained fury: “We’re very much not a racist family.” He also confirmed that he hadn’t spoken to Harry yet, “but will do”. By the weekend it emerged they had “been in contact”.

William is thought to have been less than thrilled a few days later when that conversation made global headlines after the American presenter Gayle King, a close friend of the Sussexes, revealed live on air that it had not been an easy chat: “I did actually call them to see how they were feeling,” she told viewers. “Harry has talked to his brother and he had talked to his father too. The word I was given was that those conversations were not productive.” The intervention prompted a senior royal source to say that “none of the households will be giving a running commentary on private conversations”.

A close friend of both brothers says Harry’s “trapped” comment was “way off the mark”, insisting that William does not see it that way. “He has a path set for him and he’s completely accepting of his role. He is very much his grandmother’s grandson in that respect of duty and service.”

When the Queen turned 90 nearly five years ago William admitted “the challenge” that “occupies a lot of thinking space” is how to “modernise and develop” the royal family, and make it “relevant in the next 20 years’ time”. Twenty years now seems like a very long time. In the hours and days after the Oprah broadcast, William was at the heart of all discussions with the Queen and the Prince of Wales about how to respond to the Sussexes. He was keen that the issue of race should be acknowledged in the Queen’s statement as an area of particular concern that “will be addressed”.

William has always railed against being a “ribbon-cutter royal” and the issues he champions — mental health, battling racism in football, homelessness and his ramped-up eco-warrior role — are a window into where the future King William V will take the House of Windsor. A friend says: “He’s a small-c conservative. He values tradition and the need to go around the country, but he realises he can make a difference beyond traditional royal duties.”

Today royal popularity is, to put it mildly, in a state of flux, but William’s strategy has been working. Post-Oprah, he ranks just below the Queen at the top of a YouGov poll of royals. Not so long ago such a position looked like a long shot, when the “workshy Wills” and “reluctant royal” tags plagued him and he was clocking up fewer days of royal work than his nonagenarian grandparents. Pictures of him hitting the ski slopes and clubs of Swiss resort Verbier in March 2017, missing a Commonwealth service that even the Duke of York flew back for, didn’t help.

After the lasting PR gold dust of the Cambridges’ 2011 wedding and the births of Prince George and Princess Charlotte, it was the first public nosedive for William, who was still working as an air ambulance pilot. “That pissed him off,” a friend says. “He was leaving home at 5.30am, getting home after dark and saving lives in between, but people were still being critical of his commitment to his [other] job.” William was based at Cambridge airport with East Anglian Air Ambulance for two years, where he was on call for “some very sad, dark moments”, often working “on very traumatic jobs involving children”. He later acknowledged that “after I had my own children … the relation between the job and the personal life was what really took me over the edge, and I started feeling things that I have never felt before”. But it was a job he loved, because of “working in a team … that’s something that my other job doesn’t necessarily do. You are more out there on your own.”

A former royal aide says: “Immediately after their wedding he had a very clear idea of the pace at which he wanted to take things.” William was adamant he wouldn’t curtail his day jobs, first as an RAF search and rescue helicopter pilot in Anglesey and then with the air ambulance. “If you’re not careful, duty can weigh you down an awful lot at an early age,” he said, insisting he didn’t “lie awake waiting or hoping” to be king. He delayed full-time royal duties until the autumn of 2017, when, acknowledging the Cambridges’ future required more time at “monarchy HQ”, they moved from Norfolk to London and George started school.

He’d had to fight his corner for the air ambulance role. A source close to William reveals “there were lots of raised eyebrows in the Palace when he wanted to do that. While the Queen and his father backed him, some senior courtiers questioned whether it was becoming of a future king to be doing a middle-class role, hanging out with ordinary people. They thought he wouldn’t stick it out, he’d find it boring, or was doing it out of stubbornness to put off royal duties. He was pretty bloody-minded about it, and determined that other people’s expectations in the media or the system shouldn’t get in the way of his own values.” In the wake of Harry and Meghan’s interview much has been speculated about the extent to which royal life is dictated by Palace officials, but it is clear that William has managed to forge his own path. Who knows how high those senior courtiers’ eyebrows rose in 2019, when William spent three weeks shadowing the spooks of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ to learn how they combat terrorism. He insisted on being called “Will” and lunching in the canteen every day.

Those closest to the duke say his resistance to the idea of full-time royal duties stemmed not only from a desire to achieve something for himself but also from a fear of the impact on his family life. Miguel Head worked alongside the prince for ten years until 2018, as William, Kate and Harry’s communications secretary and later as William’s private secretary. “In his role everyone’s going to tell you you’re marvellous,” Head says. “The RAF and air ambulance jobs were about knowing what his abilities were, what he was good at in his own right. Without that he’d still be hankering for something that was his own.” After children came along he says William developed a “visceral determination to give them a life of consistency and privacy that were missing for large parts of his own childhood”.

Another close aide says the plan enabling the Cambridges to have a few years of “normal” married life, away from the full-time glare of the royal spotlight, paid dividends: “For years, the battles around privacy and paparazzi intrusion were all-consuming. He wanted to know, could we build them a credible plan allowing them a family life while slowly increasing the profile of official life? It took years to get there, but the success of that plan allowed him to be confident and content in his role. He’s not worried about his kids’ privacy any more and he has been able to be the kind of dad he wants to be.”

“Marriage maketh the man,” a friend says. “Catherine’s groundedness has been the critical anchor. And where his relationship with the media was once all fury and frustration, he now understands using the power of modern media, so the public feel they’re getting enough access.”

The children’s birthdays are marked with photographs — often taken by the Duchess of Cambridge — and there has been a noticeable increase in their public appearances of late. While not “officially” staged, William was happy to let George and Charlotte be photographed at their first Aston Villa match with Mum and Dad in 2019. Pandemic set pieces have shown the family clapping for the NHS on the steps of Anmer Hall, their Norfolk home, and, before Christmas, their first red-carpet appearance together for an evening at the panto with key workers and their children.

As they celebrate their anniversary on April 29, friends who joined the Cambridges on their wedding day tell me the partnership’s equal footing is key to its success. “They’ve got a solid relationship and she gives him confidence,” one says. “There is no jealousy, no friction, they are happy for each other’s successes.” In private William talks as passionately about Kate’s work as his own campaigns, and takes pride in her growing confidence on the public stage.

William has said his grandmother’s approach to being head of state is to take “more of a passive role. She’s above politics and is very much away from it.” He doesn’t plan to meddle in party politics, but he was not happy about the unenviable position the government put the Queen in with the 2019 proroguing of parliament, which was later ruled to be unlawful and forced an apology from Boris Johnson to the monarch. Constitutionally the Queen had no alternative other than to act on the advice of her government, but in William’s reign there will be “more private, robust challenging of advice”. His last three private secretaries — Christian Jones, Simon Case, now the cabinet secretary, and Head — had all worked in government departments, helping William to keep his finger on the political pulse. The new incumbent, the Whitehall heavyweight Jean-Christophe Gray, who served as David Cameron’s spokesman, continues in that vein.

The former Conservative leader Lord Hague of Richmond was last year appointed as chairman of the Royal Foundation to develop William’s work on mental health, the environment and a raft of new support programmes for key workers. “People internationally and nationally respect his credibility and knowledge on these issues,” Hague says. “He’s very persuasive. You only see that behind the scenes. He knows what he wants and he goes out to get it.”

Charlie Mayhew, chief executive of the conservation charity Tusk, has known William since he was 20. In 2005 Tusk and Centrepoint, the homelessness charity championed by Princess Diana, were the first patronages William took on. “In those early years I kept having to pinch myself to remember how young he was,” Mayhew says. “He was much more mature than his age and very aware of his destiny coming down the track. He had a sincerity, but never without wicked humour. His teasing is merciless.”

William knows some people see his passion for conservation as a posh man’s part-time hobby, but Mayhew says the duke’s “genuine and huge knowledge” undermines that view. “He’ll call and WhatsApp to flag up something that I haven’t even seen in the conservation space. He can be impatient to get things done.” Last year William launched the Earthshot prize, a £50 million Nobel-style environmental award to galvanise solutions to global problems over the next decade. He believes “conservation and the environment … shouldn’t be a luxury, it’s a necessity”, Mayhew says. “That’s the drum he wants to beat. He’s got a megaphone and wants to use it in the most constructive way. He speaks for that next generation and I think they can relate to it.”

A turning point for William was his 2015 official visit to China, one of the world’s largest consumers of ivory, where he met President Xi and condemned the illegal wildlife trade as a “vicious form of criminality”. Unlike his father, who has refused to visit the People’s Republic over its human rights record and treatment of Tibet, William’s view was that despite the UK’s fractious relationship with China, “we’ve got to engage”.

“It was very political, raising the illegal wildlife trade in China. I’m sure the diplomats were having all sort of nightmares in advance,” says Mayhew, who joined the duke in China. “But he was gathering greater confidence that he had the ability to be a mouthpiece for the issue.” Mayhew reveals that while William was visiting Japan before China, he still hadn’t secured a meeting with Xi. “But when the Chinese saw all the high-level meetings he was having in Japan, they changed their minds and Xi made time for him.” Later that year, as Xi began a UK state visit, William appeared on Chinese television condemning the ivory trade. Two years later China banned the trade.

In 2018 he spent months prepping for his most high-stakes overseas visit yet, to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories that summer. Navigating the diplomatic tightrope walk between Jerusalem and the West Bank, he visited a Palestinian refugee camp in Ramallah. As he travelled back to Jerusalem, he changed his speech for a reception with young Israelis and Palestinians to strengthen his solidarity with the latter: “My message tonight is that you have not been forgotten … The United Kingdom stands with you.” It was a bold move, but both sides hailed his visit a success and the officials breathed a sigh of relief. To the delight of the travelling press pack, William’s engagements on the final day were brought forward, allowing the diplomat duke and president of the Football Association to land back in the UK in time to watch England’s World Cup tie.

Ask him if he’s a peacemaker and William will laugh, saying Kate is the mediator. But according to a source close to William and Harry, his bridge-building skills were deployed in the lead-up to Harry and Meghan’s wedding in 2018, when tensions in the Kensington Palace household, then still shared by the brothers, were running high: “Every time there was a drama, or a member of staff on the verge of quitting, William would personally try and sort it out.”

As the brothers clashed more over the substance and style of their work, and the family hierarchy that William is a stickler for but Harry is less keen on, a split was inevitable. When they finally divided their households in March 2019, it had been a long time coming. But he never thought that a year later his brother would up sticks for America.

The pair went for a long walk to clear the air after the “Sandringham summit” when the Megxit deal was hammered out, but did not part shores as friends. What upset William the most was Harry and Meghan’s surprise launch of their “Sussex Royal” website before the summit, which featured their blueprint wish list of a part-time, commercial royal future. Later, when the Queen decreed they could no longer use “royal” in their future ventures, their website hit back with this bold statement: “While there is not any jurisdiction by The Monarchy … over the use of the word ‘Royal’ overseas, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex do not intend to use ‘Sussex Royal’ … or … ‘Royal’ …” Both “the content and that it’s still online is staggering”, a senior royal source says. “That was it for William, he felt they’d blindsided the Queen in such an insulting and disrespectful way,” says a source close to him, who reveals it was still at the forefront of William’s mind at the Commonwealth Day service one year ago. It was the Sussexes’ final engagement as working royals, and the froideur between them and the rest of the family was unmistakable.

It is a year since the Sussexes left for California and William misses Harry. “Once he got over the anger of how things happened, he was left with the absence of his brother,” an aide says. “They shared everything about their lives, an office, a foundation, meetings together most days and there was a lot of fun along the way. He’ll miss it for ever.” A close friend says William “definitely feels the pressure now it’s all on him — his future looks different because of his brother’s choices, it’s not easy.” Another friend says: “It’s still raw. He’s very upset by what’s happened, though absolutely intent that he and Harry’s relationship will heal in time.”

After lobbing bombs in his Oprah interview, Harry said: “I love William to bits … We’ve been through hell together … we have a shared experience … The relationship is space at the moment, and time heals all things, hopefully.” Harry would be wise not to set his stopwatch.

The first test will come this summer, when the brothers could be reunited for a series of family engagements including the Duke of Edinburgh’s 100th birthday and the Queen’s birthday parade in June. In July they are scheduled to unveil a statue of their mother at Kensington Palace, marking what would have been Diana’s 60th birthday, an emotionally charged occasion with the world watching.

While a chasm has opened up between the brothers, William has grown closer to the Queen and Prince Charles. He has helped them to navigate their way through Megxit, Prince Andrew’s removal from public life following the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and, now, the Oprah controversy. “That has changed the way the Queen sees him and values his input,” a courtier says. William also feels his relationship with his grandmother has “massively improved” in recent years and their views are “more aligned than ever”.

Friends say there has also been a “renaissance” in William and Charles’s relationship. “As the years passed there were strains imposed by the system — money, work, competition, Diana,” one says. “Part of William’s evolution is that as he has become closer to his father, he sees their similarities. At William’s wedding there was a gag in one of the speeches that he was more like his father than he’d ever admit, which made a lot of us laugh. As their respective destinies get closer, it weighs more heavily on them and strengthens the bond. The rift with Harry has also brought them closer.”

William is said to hate “flummery”, though the role of future king comes with plenty of bowing and scraping. But in 2017, for the first time publicly, he didn’t get his way. As a new parent worried about rising teenage suicide rates, he had spent a year convening a Cyberbullying Taskforce with big cheeses from tech and social media giants including Facebook, Snapchat, Apple, Google and Twitter. He wanted them to adopt industry-wide guidelines creating safer online spaces for children. According to William the meetings at Kensington Palace got “fruity” and the tech giants didn’t come close to the change he wanted. He was furious.

Tessy Ojo, chief executive of the Diana Award youth charity, sat on the taskforce. “He was deeply disappointed,” she says. “He didn’t come into it as ‘the duke’, he gave emotional pleas as a father.” William has since publicly condemned social media giants for their “false choice of profits over values” and privately offered support to the family of Molly Russell, who took her life at 14 after viewing images of self-harm online. Ojo believes it is William’s “lived experience of the fragility of life that guides the work he does”.

It also shapes the way he and Kate are raising their family. William has said he is determined that the grandchildren Diana never knew should “know who she was and that she existed”. He “constantly” talks to his children “about Granny Diana” at bedtime, so that they know “there are two grandmothers in their lives”. Earlier this month on Mother’s Day, Kensington Palace’s social media feeds published George, Charlotte and Louis’s cards paying tribute to “Granny Diana”, revealing it is an annual ritual for the Cambridge children. After a difficult few weeks for William, a line in Charlotte’s card provided poignant insight into how he is feeling: “Papa is missing you.”

He is on course to be a more modern monarch than any before him, but William is still a creature of habit at heart. He has the same tight circle of friends from his schooldays, one of whom says that, with William, “it’s all about trust and loyalty”. He plays five-a-side football in his Villa socks when he can, goes to the Chelsea Harbour Club gym he went to as a child with his mother and has a “smart casual” public uniform of chinos, jacket, blue shirt and no tie.

“William’s not trying to be down with the kids,” a friend says. “He never wants to be painted as irrelevant or dull, though he’s allergic to being compared to celebrities. The public doesn’t always get to see his funny side, but otherwise he’s the same in private as in public. He once said, ‘I’ll be in the public eye all my life. I can’t hide who I am because I’ll be found out.’ ”

In 2019, during a visit to a youth homelessness charity supporting LGBT people, William was asked how he would feel if one of his children was gay. “Absolutely fine,” he replied. “I fully support whatever decision they make, but it does worry me from a parent’s point of view how many barriers, hateful words, persecution and discrimination might come.” Such a personal exchange was a radical departure from royal engagement small talk. But William, the first in his family to be photographed for the cover of a gay magazine, had personally put the issue on the agenda.

As president of Bafta he gave the academy a diplomatic dressing down in his speech at last year’s ceremony, expressing his “frustration” over the lack of diversity: “In 2020, and not for the first time in the last few years, we find ourselves talking again about the need to do more to ensure diversity in the sector and in the awards process — that simply cannot be right in this day and age.” The 2021 nominees announced this month suggest his words hit home.

William “thinks the public look to him to keep royal work looking modern”, a confidante says. “The Queen and Prince of Wales are providing continuity and stability. He’s carving out his own relationship with diverse communities. He sees it all as a way of doing things now that will help a smooth transition when the time comes.”

Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, as a former frontline worker himself, William has led the royal charge supporting key workers. “Now, more than ever, he knows what his role in public life is, and he sees the value in it,” a close aide says. Chatting to NHS workers in January, William said: “Something that I noticed from my brief spell flying the air ambulance … is that when you see so much death and so much bereavement, it does impact how you see the world … as a … darker, blacker place.” Soon after the first lockdown was announced, the Cambridges’ Royal Foundation launched Our Frontline, a round-the-clock mental health and bereavement service for key workers.

Miguel Head says the future King William will continue to campaign on his big issues: “I can’t see him backing away from causes he’s passionate about. And while he’s not someone who loves ceremony, he knows the importance of it. When he gets the top job he won’t do away with it all. He’s mindful the monarchy represents something timeless that’s above all of us, and many people like the magic and theatre of it.”

Roya Nikkhah

Roya is royal correspondent at The Sunday Times. Over more than a decade she has covered royal events for the BBC, interviewed the Prince of Wales and Prince Harry and presented the films Prince William, Monarch in the Making and Meghan and Harry: The Baby Years.

[alicemitch09writes]

first love

pairing: Kuroo Tetsurou x reader

summary: You never forget your first love.

author’s notes: This is what prompted the many angst fics to come in my repertoire. I’ll just to slowly transfer some of my one-shots that are reader inserts here on tumblr.

twenty one pilot’s cover of ‘can’t help falling in love’ really helped me in the writing of this fic. It’s a favorite of mine I keep going back to when writing fics. Reader is a musician, who plays the ukulele and violin and at the time when I wrote this (back in 2017), I was learning to play the uke, mostly for fun.

also available on ao3.

disclaimer: i own NOTHING but the plot.

Wise men say, only fools rush in

But I can't help, falling in love with you

 They moved to Tokyo when she was 8.

And at a young age, she was pretty much a timid and shy girl, always hiding behind her parents whenever in the presence of new people, especially when she was being introduced. She wasn't very good with socializing, always wary and scared that she'd make a horrible impression.  And of people, in general. People were generally scary, especially those she was unfamiliar with. She found solace in music, due to her father's influence, who was a music instructor at a university. "When words fail, music speaks." He'd tell her as they played 'Heart and Soul' together on the piano, her mother taking a video of them from the side. And a little while later, by some miracle, she made friends with the local kids – Tetsurou and Kenma. The two were an odd pair, given Tetsurou's loud and mischievous demeanor being a total contrast to Kenma's quiet and well-behaved and aloofness. Still, they were the best friends she could ever have.

 Years passed, and the three were inseparable.

Over time, the two proved to be more trouble than they were worth – Tetsurou, with his never-ending schemes and provocation abilities, and Kenma, with his indifference to the world so long as he was playing his games.

Nothing's changed much of her, other than her ability to keep the dynamic duo grounded. Also, she had her flair for music. Still, she was terribly shy. Though she has a voice, she chose to stick to the background, wanting to be out of the limelight.

Tetsurou would scold her, saying that it was a waste because she had a good singing voice. In which, would make her blush. Kenma would say the same thing even without looking up from his game console. But Tetsurou's words resounded, her heart beating like a drum.

    Shall I stay, would it be a sin?

If I can't help, falling in love with you

   It was the clichest thing to happen – she fell in love with her childhood friend.

She fell for Tetsurou.

For all his cockiness, his mischievousness, his peculiar affinity with cats (ironic that they attended Nekoma), and his atrocious bed hair – she loved it all.

Of course, she'd never tell him.

She doesn't have the heart to.

Neither will she tell Kenma, being the perceptive boy he was.

Plus, she'd have to go against a throng of his admirers (who made up of about half of the female population, by the way). There was no way she had a chance. And besides, who was she to him but his ever dependable, timid and adorable best friend?

When he bought her a ukulele on her 16th birthday – he knew she had wanted to try to play it for the longest time, she knew that it was simply out of friendship.

For a while, she became the volleyball team's manager. And for a while, she was able to play it cool with her feelings. This was okay, she thought, its better like this.

"This is my best friend, (Last Name) (Name)." he says, wrapping his arms around her neck as he hugged her from behind, introducing her to two players from Fukurodani.

The shorter of the two – Akaashi Keiji, smiles. "Nice to meet you, (Last name)-san."

"Oh! She's so cute!" says the loud boy – Bokuto Koutarou. "Are you sure she's not your girlfriend?"

Tetsurou laughed, chin digging into her head. "I've known her forever, that'll be weird."

"Kuroo, you're hugging her too tight." Kenma says with a frown.

Best friend.

That's all she'll ever be to him.

    Like a river flows, surely to the sea

Darling, so it goes, this love was meant to be

   It was rare to find Tetsurou at his lowest since he was usually contented with whatever happened. But they lost, unable to secure a spot at nationals.

So when she found him all by himself at the gym, she knew he needed to be cheered up.

Taking her ukulele from her bag, she started playing. Tetsurou looked up just as she started singing. "You with the sad eyes don't be discouraged, oh I realize" she kneeled in front of him, watching him with careful eyes. "It's hard to take courage, in a world full of people; you can lose sight of it all, the darkness inside you, can make you feel so small."

She continued singing to him, feeling her heart beat faster with every line. It was so hard seeing this down, it was so unlike him. He rested his head on his folded arms, eyes closed as she sang. He always loved hearing her sing.

"And I see your true colors shining through," she wished her words reached him. "I see your true colors, and that's why I love you."

For a moment, she choked up. Not intending to say those words out loud, but they were part of the song, and the way she sang it with so much emotion that the look Tetsurou was giving her made her nervous. His golden eyes stared deep into her (eye color) – filled with so much emotion, but she focused on confusion, probably at why she had stopped.

Regaining her composure, she continued. "So don't be afraid to let them show, your true colors are beautiful like a rainbow."

Tetsurou cracked a smile, reaching out to ruffle her hair playfully. "When did you get so cheesy?"

"And when did you become this uncool?" she teased back, slapping his hand away. "Are you feeling better now?"

Sighing, he leaned his back against the wall, staring at the ceiling. "A little, but thanks for coming after me."

"It's not the end of the world," she tells him kindly. "and after all, there's next year. Right, captain?"

The look on his face was priceless – clearly not expecting that. But their senpai had already decided, Kai and Morisuke were on it too, as was Coach Nekomata – before it broke into a grin.

His grin was the biggest she's ever seen.

     Take my hand; take my whole life, too

'Cause I can't help, falling in love with you

  Tetsurou got mad at her, saying painful words to her face.

Furiously, he turned to face her. She took a step back in surprise, clutching her ukulele to her chest. Then her instrument slipped from her hand, landing on the ground with a loud crack. The words coming out from his mouth were hard to bear, and she could just stand there taking it all in.

He didn't mean it really, but the stress and frustrations were just getting to him. She knew that.

"You know nothing. I never want to see your face again." He seethed.

When all was said and done, he up and left.

It felt as though the life was sucked out of her. She couldn't feel anything, she felt too numb to move. It only came as a surprise that she was still there when she found herself sitting on the ground, rocks digging into her skin.

Picking up her ukulele from the ground, she was surprised to find that it was still in one piece. Except for the scratches on the surface, and crack on the rim of the saddle boards. Funny, they seemed like an allegory.

Despite it all, the pain in her heart and Tetsurou's harsh treatment towards her, she found herself smiling. Hot tears streamed down her face, teeth digging unto her lower lip as if to keep her sobs in.

But the pain of it all was too much, she was only human.

Hugging her instrument to her chest, she allowed herself to cry, sobbing loudly, body shaking violently as her heart broke into smithereens.

    She heard that they had made it to the semi-finals, being one of the top four schools, which shouldn't be a surprise. Actually, it was secondhand information from Kenma. Right after what happened with Tetsurou, she decided to cut ties with anything associated with him, which was basically everything – the volleyball club, Kenma.

It was something she had to – no, something she wanted to do.

No matter how much it killed her.

           "Hey, let's make a little bet. If I win, you go out on a date with me."

"And if I win?"

"You won't ever see me again."

          Gentle strums silenced out the lull machines, the dripping of liquids. Faint scents of flowers and fruits hid the overly sanitized room, with walls too white and dull.

"But I can't help," her voice was quiet, low, eyes transfixed to her fingers on each string on her ukulele. "falling in love," a lone tear slips down her face, though a smile graced her lips. "with you."

In front of her, the television displayed the live coverage of the nationals - Nekoma won against Fukorodani, and then lost to Karasuno.

She smiled, hugging her ukulele as tears slipped freely.

The memory of the bet they made when they were younger came to mind, making her smile. That was such a long time ago, Tetsurou probably forgot all about that just as he forgot all about her.

"Don't worry, you won."

Now you won't ever see me again.

          He was surprised when they came back to school, she wasn't there. She was the first person he looked for since she was absent during the whole finals match. But she wasn't anywhere to be found – not in the library, the music room, the club room.

He had a promise to keep, and an apology to make up.

So it came as a surprise to him when his classmates' expressions turned grim at the mention of her name. Some had begun to cry, some looked away, nothing was making sense.

But one word was clear to him – cancer.

He turned to his best friend, who met his gaze. For the first time in his life, he saw anger in those usually stoic eyes. He knew then that he knew, he always knew. There was also pain, pain for his best friend's condition. And for (Name)'s sake, he decided to keep his mouth shut.

Without a word, he ran, as fast as he can, ignoring the calls from his classmates, teachers, teammates. He had to get to her. He had to apologize; he didn't mean what he said. He wanted to see her, hold her, tell her he was stupid and an idiot-

           But he was already too late.

[cassanovancats]

felicitate. eight.

seven < current > nine

Dec. 22-24, 2017

The next couple of days is spent mostly watching the whirlwind of your classmates and teachers preparing. You, Maki, and Yuta are left to your own devices which means you three are often spotted walking aimlessly around campus. You especially have spent the passing days considering what your brothers will be facing, and trying to strategize against the unknown Satoru warned you about. It’s after your daily meditation you decide fuck it.

Everyday as a sorcerer is spent wondering if it’ll be your last. You see horrors far beyond any normal person’s imagination, all to protect people who will never know you exist if you do your job right. To do this job, to be a jujutsu sorcerer, you must constantly be ready to die. You have seen plenty of colleagues' horribly mangled bodies already as a first-year. It’s common. In fact, the fact that your entire class is still alive is an anomaly.  And after meditating on the ever-increasing likelihood that death will touch your life far closer than it ever has before, you decide there is no need to hide feelings that Satoru insists are reciprocated.

You approach Inumaki first, since he was also raised in the jujutsu world and likely to be open to your proposition. You explain all of your reasoning before taking a deep breath and getting to the heart of the issue, “I-I like you. Maybe even love.”

“Salmon,” he beamed, markings exposed in the sanctuary of your room. He’s especially beautiful in the soft glow of the Christmas lights, clutching a stuffed animal he had won for you at a festival years ago.

“But I also like Yuta. I haven’t talked to him yet, but I’m interested in trying this between all of us.” Your hands twist over each other in anxiety. Even with the decision to no longer try to deny feelings, it is hard to be so open. How on Earth did Satoru manage to be so aloof about relationships? You see Toge’s hand cover yours.

“Salmon, bonito flakes,” he reassures, leaning down to catch your eyes. A weight lifts off your shoulders. You didn’t fuck up your friendship and he’s equally interested in a relationship. Inumaki watches you smile for the first time since you dragged him from the hallway. He slowly places a hand on your chin and lifts your head to face him. “Salmon roe?”

You nod, but don’t wait for him to close the gap. Leaning up, you lightly kiss his lips, eyes fluttering close at their softness. There’s a small tingling sensation, one you have long associated with the surge of cursed energy mixing with yours. It's an exhilarating feeling when copying someone's technique, but like this, you think it's addicting. You pull back first, sighing happily with your eyes still closed. You wear matching blushes and smiles.

“I know you have to get back to preparing to leave….” You bite your lip reluctant to let him leave after finally getting a taste. You had known Toge since you were both children thanks to clan meetings. Only in the past year, working closely and interacting frequently, have you realized your feelings for the boy. Now there is a chance to have him and Yuta, if you are able to explain how polyamory isn’t so strange for sorcerers (though historically, it has been accompanied by power imbalances in favor of the strongest sorcerer in the relationship).

“Tuna?”

“Just happy,” you nuzzle your forehead into his neck before sitting up straight. “I’ll talk to Yuta, since we both will be here at the school. Then, if he agrees and when you get back,” you poke a finger in his ribs, “all in one piece, we can talk about how this will work.”

“Salmon,” He gives one more last, quick kiss before leaving your room. You slide to the floor against your door, sighing happily. God, Satoru is going to be so smug. You bite your lip to hide your lovesick smile, pulling your phone out to text him an update on your lovelife.

You didn’t get a chance to talk to Yuta for a while. When you had finally collected yourself enough to leave your room, he was nowhere to be found on campus. The next morning, your class ate breakfast together before everyone left for their posts. Yuta had been there, of course, but he hesitated before sitting across from you and Inumaki (strange on its own - you three often all sat together). Even then, Yuta blushed and avoided eye contact with you and Toge, looking especially flustered at the casual, platonic skinship you shared with everyone. Not to mention the heavy atmosphere of a looming battle. You resolved to find him after everyone left; less people on campus meant less people interrupting, anyways. You sent everyone off with a hug, but your brothers and Toge got an additional kiss on the cheek.

(Megumi made a show of wiping it off and snarling at you. You wonder how long his rebellious phase will last.)

It took a while, but you were finally able to track Yuta’s energy to the empty training room. He was comparing his katana’s blade to a few other swords kept by the school. “You know, half of those are technically on loan from the Gojo clan. The other half is almost entirely from the Zen’in clan, but there’s one or two from Toge’s family and other small clans.” You muse, tracing the intricate design on the handle of one you recognized as belonging to your family. Yuta jumped from your sudden appearance. “Wanna spar? It seems like maybe you’re avoiding me but I wanted to talk to you. If I did something wrong you can get that aggression out before we talk,” You offer.

“No! I-I mean, no, I’m not avoiding you. Yeah, we can spar if you want.”

You smirk a little, “Alright.” You grab one of the wooden staffs next to the actual blades and shrug off your jacket. Gesturing to the center of the room where a circle marks a training ring, you say, “No cursed energy. I haven’t warmed up any.”

Yuta nods and takes his position opposite you. “Ready?” He asks. He waits for your nod before rushing forward, catching you off guard. You click your tongue, surprised at how fast he moved to attack. Your staff connects with a harsh clash, blocking his before it gets too close to your body. He retreats slightly, clearly analyzing you for any weak spots, and asks, “What did you need to talk about?”

“Toge and I and you…. Maybe” Grunting, you move to attack but Yuta side-steps. You plant your feet and use momentum to change your direction to where he now stands. He grits his teeth when you connect a hit. “I know you grew up normally, but we like each other and you.” You take a few steps back, knowing this possible mental blow is best delivered without a physical one. “And I think you like us, too.”

Yuta’s mouth hangs open, gaping at you and loosening his grip on his staff. “W-what? Like - like all three of us -?” He seems unable to complete the sentence.

“Yeah,” You nod, moving forward to sweep his feet out from under him. It’s a simple move, one he learned to avoid months ago, but he seems defenseless right now. You stand and pin him to the ground with the end of your staff against his forehead. “I know it’s somewhat strange out there,” you wave your hand dismissively, “but sorcerers have done it for ages. Toge and I know that, but you don’t have the same background.”

“But I thought - you two kissed!” He points an accusing finger.

“How did you know that?” You frown, cocking your head to the side. You shake the question away, deciding it didn’t matter, and offer a hand to help him up. He ignores it. “I mean, the first hurdle here is knowing if you like both of us.”

Yuta blushes furiously but doesn’t refute you. It takes him a second to recover from how blunt you said it but eventually he manages to spit out an affirmative. The brightness of your smile takes him longer to recover from.

“Great! That’s really good. Toge-kun will be excited to hear that.” You wipe some sweat off your forehead and try to contain your excitement. “Since he’s away right now, I think we should wait to have this conversation in person. Neither of us want you to feel pressured to agree for whatever reason either, so it’ll give you some time to think about it.” You move to leave him alone to do just that, but you can’t stop yourself from giving one last big smile. “I’m really happy you’re even thinking about this, Yuta.”

You spend the rest of the day with your head in the clouds, completely over the moon at the idea of your new relationship. Satoru loses his mind when you call to give a status update, which causes you to dissolve into a puddle of lovesick goo. At dinner, where it’s just you, Yuta and Maki, you can’t help your puppy-dog eyes. Maki kicks your shin several times, embarrassed just from looking at you.

You keep to your word though, so much so when Yuta approaches you on the next day, you ask several times if he is sure he wants to talk now. You hadn’t even had much time to think about the logistics of a poly relationship, too focused on how to keep your preparations a secret. It was surprisingly hard to hide your smuggled bow and quiver until you reached a rooftop near the entrance. Eventually you yield though, and he drags you to an empty classroom. “(y/n), I really want to tell you not to take this the wrong way, but honestly, there’s no right way to take it.” You feel your stomach drop, but he continues, oblivious. “I just can’t be in a relationship.”

“Like, in a relationship with Toge and I specifically?” You’re not sure where the strength to ask that question came from. You’re not even sure you want to hear the answer.

“Yes,” He finally makes eye contact. “I mean, no! God,” Yuta runs a hand through his already disheveled hair. “I’ve never had to reject anyone before, jeez. You two, both of you,” he blushes heavily, “are the only ones I see myself in a relationship with. I just can’t be in one when I have Rika. It doesn’t feel right.”

You nod, trying to hide the hurt and embarrassment you think you just might drown in. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Yuta sighs.

“Well, I guess I’ll tell Toge then. Unless you wanted to?” You offer hopefully, but he shakes his head. “Alright. I hope we can still be friends, Yuta.” You instinctively go to hug him but stop yourself halfway. Muttering a soft apology, you brush past him to leave.

You go straight to where you had hidden your bow, bringing along a sword for close-ranged fighting. All borrowed from the school, but you made sure to take ones originally from the Gojo clan as an extra reassurance. You really needed that reassurance now.

[darlingpetao3]

Thank You For Ruining My Life: An Homage to Tom Cavanagh

“You’ve ruined all my future expectations of men.”

The costume-clad woman had the courage of steel to say this to the then 53-year-old actor, Tom Cavanagh of The Flash, in front of a ballroom filled with a couple hundred people. This brave utterance was spoken during the 2016 Fan Expo Vancouver convention during a Flash question and answer period with actors Tom Cavanagh and Candice Patton. In its third season, the show was undoubtedly still hitting its stride in popularity, and the room was packed to hear these two speak.

The brave woman whose turn it was at the microphone was referring to Tom’s role as Ed Stevens on the NBC 2000 hit, Ed. I had not known of this show previously, but having now heard such a proclamation intrigued me. “You’ve ruined all my future expectations of men.” That was a tempting notion, and as I continued to listen to this disarmingly charming and wittingly funny man steal the stage, Tom intrigued me even more. I’d watched him play three different versions of Harrison Wells on The Flash since the show’s premiere date, yet I hadn’t truly noticed him in a “life-ruining” way before.

Little did I know that Tom Cavanagh would not only eventually ruin my expectations for men as well, but he would change my life in other ways, too.

After the Q&A, I had this urge to buy a S.T.A.R. Labs T-shirt from one of the vendors at the convention. In my head, I thought I would purchase something so that I could have an excuse to talk to Mr. Cavanagh at his signing booth. Again, he intrigued me, and I wanted to experience more of his incredibly likeable personality. So, I dragged my friend with me to wait for what was maybe ten minutes in a queue. Shortly, I was paying the assistant for my autograph I would soon acquire. They wrote my name on a sticky note so that Tom would know how to sign a personalized message to me. And then, it was my turn.

His eyes sparkled when he turned his attention to me. I instantly had a feeling this was just the way he was naturally. Oh yeah, and I swear to God I’d never seen eyes that blue in my entire life. It genuinely stunned me.

“Hi!” he greeted me.

“Hi!” I responded, equally as thrilled. Tom admired the T-shirt I had brought and took note of my name on the piece of paper. I remember us joking together about the extremely lax security in and around S.T.A.R. Labs on the show, which prompted his message to me on the heather-grey cotton. He wrote my name, [followed by a heart!] and a very welcoming, ‘Come on by, just walk right in!’

I had official clearance from Harrison Wells himself.

I thanked him very much, leaving with my treasure folded over my arms. My friend and I walked towards the hall’s exit, and I couldn’t shake this feeling inside me. It felt strange—I couldn’t name it for the life of me. It felt like an odd fluttering with a simultaneous yet contradictory slightness of breath. My head was confused and would continue to be so for the rest of that weekend.

As I waited at my gate in the airport on that Sunday evening to head home, all I knew was that the moments at the con featuring Tom were the highlights of the weekend for me.

And that I was going to begin watching more of the other films and television shows he’d been in. What was the show the brave cosplaying woman had said ruined her expectations of men? Oh yeah, Ed.

Maybe I’ll start there…

***

Feliz Navidad, Feliz Navidad…

In my house, it’s never really Christmastime until Michael Bublé croons through the speakers of the wooden stereo system in the living room. It felt especially festive as it was now Christmas Eve—a month and some change since the con. It was late, possibly ten o’clock. I was lying on the floor in front of the Christmas tree with my trusty laptop, a word document open. I was writing three holiday-song short stories featuring the new muse in my life, Harrison Wells. I wanted to be able to post them the next day, so my fingers were taptaptapping away.

I had written a handful of things before 2017, most of which had been Marvel-related, under my second, ‘rebirth’ pen name online. I was a little fish among all the grand and fabulous writers on Archive of Our Own, and in many ways, I still feel like that little fish. I was only just learning and feeling out the psyche of the Wells characters. Each one is so different. In my rewatch of the previous seasons of The Flash, I’d taken diligent notes, and as I’d later learn with each following rewatch, I would know them all—what they think, how they talk and behave—like the back of my hand. It was fun to suss out these guys, and I found that I was growing to love the act of writing even more.

One month later, in January, I would post all the stories I’d written thus far on Tumblr. I’d just created an account and, who knows? Maybe I’d get a wider range of readers on here, too.

Might as well give it a shot, right?

***

Wild horses couldn’t keep me from attending Fan Expo Vancouver 2017, especially when the big news dropped. Not only would Tom Cavanagh be attending again, but so would Carlos Valdes, Danielle Panabaker, Candice Patton, and the convention-elusive star of the show himself, Grant Gustin.

Before the moderator for the Flash cast’s Q&A panel could utter the final thanks to the actors at the end of the session, I bounded from my seat and sped down to the photo op booth where the cast would be taking “Team Up” photos with fans. ‘Sped down’ has to be the most appropriate couple of words because I indeed felt like a true Speedster dressed head to toe as the small screen’s adaptation of Jesse Quick, the angsty and brilliant daughter to Harrison Wells turned superhero.

After waiting in a queue that felt like ages, I was next to stand with Team Flash. As I took a step forward, all of the actors’ and actresses’ eyes—the people I spend time with every Tuesday evening—were on me. I heard a familiar voice approve of my costume. It was Danielle.

“Tremendous.”

Grant even joked that he thought for a second Violett Beane, the actress who plays Jesse Quick, had shown up to surprise them. “I was like, what’s Violett doing here?” he said.

I stood in the back row, happily sandwiched between Tom and Carlos. I dared to let my hands rest on their backs, and I couldn’t contain my joy. Shortly after, when I received my near-instant physical photograph of the moment, I saw Tom had pointed at me. In my mind, it felt as if in his gesture, he meant, hey, look at this cool person. Haha. I couldn’t be further from it.

I would go on to further be uncool in public as I later found myself virtually shaking and almost hyperventilating in line for a one-on-one photo op with Tom. The guy dressed as Kid Flash behind me gave me a few encouragements of the “it’ll be okay” variety. As my turn finally arrived, the lovely man of the hour greeted me with a bright smile in recognition of my Reverse Flash T-shirt (I had done a quick change before this photo op because I had worn a Flash T-shirt for a photo with Grant).

“Great shirt!”

The internet comes up with many hilarious and fitting words, but none such so than the term “Cavanarms.” One of the said Cavanarms found its way around my shoulder in such a casual way. My hand rested on his back, and I have told anyone who will listen about how soft his sweater was. What was approximately a five-second interaction will stay with me forever. And to this day, I will always regret how I’m standing beside him in the picture—there’s a distinguishable gap between us. I could have been closer—should have been!—but I like to use the fact that I felt as if I’d combust into flames if I were any closer to the man.

Maybe I’d have another chance to combust later again that day because, believe it or not, this fan hadn’t had enough of seeing Mr. Cavanagh in person. And since he was appearing at the con for this day only, there was no way I was going to squander any opportunities. Besides, there was still one final thing left on my convention docket: the autograph. In my mind, going to get his autograph was an excuse to get to talk to him and simply be in his presence for longer than five seconds. Here, take my money. I’m a sucker, and I’m proud of it. I saved all year for this kind of thing, and Fan Expo has always been my ultimate nerdy Treat Yoself Day.

Plus, this year I came equipped with a question for Tom (something for which I may have prepared a little too far in advance).

“Which of your characters would win in a lawyering battle: Ed or Miles?”

Miles was Tom’s latest character from his newly released project Darrow & Darrow, a fellow lawyer as Ed Stevens (remember, the man who ruins women’s expectations of men?), whom he portrayed almost two decades prior. What I loved about Tom when I got to ask him this was that he was silent for a moment following the question. He was genuinely putting thought into my question. As he pondered, Tom continued to autograph the photo of us together taken mere hours ago.

“Ed. He would wipe the floor with that other guy. Like, Miles is great, but Ed has a rapier-sharp mind, you know?”

I wholeheartedly agreed with his answer and felt relieved inside for some reason. We thanked each other (as politely as two Canadians can) before I left him to pay attention to the next lucky soul in line. I made the mistake of casting my eyes downward at the signed photo.

Tom had signed two little hearts over the I’s in my name. He really needed to stop adding hearts to my things, or I was just going to melt to the floor. In fact, I started to make these strange noises as I tried not to completely maul everyone in front of me while exiting. My friend ushered me as fast as physically possible on our way out of the main hall. One man took one look at me and asked, “Are you okay?”

No.

“Yep!”

The second I made it out of the herd, I broke out into open space. First came the minor hyperventilating. Then came the squealing followed by laughter. Top it off with various fangirlish comments of, “He’s so beautiful!”, “His eyes are so blue!” and “I love him!” and I was probably quite the sight to see (but at a convention, that’s considered normal!). My friend smiled on as she let me express everything that I had to keep inside until I had the right time to expel my emotions. I was on cloud nine. Ten, if at all possible.

The next day would be the con’s final day, which I would attend alone. My friend needed to catch the ferry in order to prepare for her courses the day after. I did a scan of the convention hall one final time in case there was something I missed purchasing. Afterwards, I sat on the cold hard flooring of the convention centre hallway for a bit of a break. I was wiped out. With my phone in hand, I smiled at the messages from this one Tumblr blogger who had been following my posted adventures at the con. I had seen and replied to many of her comments on my stories I’d written thus far, and I enjoyed her matching enthusiasm for Tom and The Flash in general. I felt her to be a kindred spirit. I had no idea then that I was chatting with one of my future best friends, L.

***

I spotted her.

She was wearing an identical shirt to the one I had on—a light grey T-shirt with a sequinned Spider-Man mask in the corner, which around it read, We met on the Web. A giddy me couldn’t wait for the short escalator ride to end. Her back was to me and facing the baggage claim, so here was my chance to surprise her instead.

I towered over my friend, E, and donned a low, authoritative voice.

“Excuse me, Miss, can you come with me?”

She squealed a greeting to me and I returned it as we hugged for the very first time after two and a half years of online friendship. We would still have about two hours to kill until our mutual Tumblr best friend, L, touched down at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport from across the Pond.

Something I noticed was that E and I carried on talking during our wait like it was second nature, that we hung out like this all the time. Whereas when I met L in person for the first time the year previously, our first meeting was that of quiet, delighted shock, unknowing how to react to one another’s physical presence. It almost felt like a fantasy. The closest thing we’d ever gotten to this was visiting over video chats! I’m not sure what each of these different reactions in these separate meetings meant, but what I do know is that I’ve never had such strong female friendships such as these—so full of uplifting support and love for one another. They are the greatest ladies I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing.

And as a searching L eventually turned the corner to meet us in the Arrivals terminal, I caught sight of her Tom & Grant bandana tied around the handle to her carry-on bag. It was an item she had received in return for helping fund the short film produced in 2018 (I’d bought the ringtone). Seeing the accessory jolted me to remember that the former of the titular short was the reason for this long-awaited get-together holiday in the Windy City in the first place. Tom Cavanagh, unbeknownst to him, had just officially united three online friends, each from a different country, to spend six full days of in-person bonding and a whole lot of fun.

***

I should have been shelving books.

I should have been doing a lot of library-related tasks, but my head was elsewhere. Anywhere other than the small-town public library where I work. Instead, I sat on the carpeted floor of the Junior/Young Adult section with my phone in hand and a dreadful article title staring back at me.

“The Flash: Carlos Valdes and Tom Cavanagh to Exit after 7 Seasons.”

My world felt like it was falling apart.

Tom was leaving? There had been rumours and wonderings spreading around the fandom regarding whether he was leaving the show. With a storyline ending with a monumental sacrifice and a time-travelling man saying his farewells, it all seemed to point to the fact. I should have known… I could have rivalled Supergirl as being the Paragon of Hope after all the optimism I doled out to my followers and friends who would come to me worried Tom would exit the show. I would always give reasons to deny such a thing could happen, claiming that I’d believe when I saw it.

Well, there it was, and I definitely saw it.

One could feel the ripple effect over the internet of the shards of broken and riled-up hearts around the world.

Tom’s exit was on his terms, having not felt challenged by his character’s plotlines, as mentioned in a recent Entertainment Weekly article. As a viewer—and I am a viewer (Mike and Tom Eat Snacks, anyone?), it has been increasingly difficult to look past the missed shots made by story editors and showrunner, so understandably, the actor would want to seek something more exciting and meatier. That said, Tom has always shone on-screen and taken what he’s been given in stride. He turns unearthed material into diamonds and indeed shines on screen. Steals it, even! Tom easily makes the episodes he’s in better, and when he’s missing, you feel the loss. The few episodes of Season 7 without him only give us a tiny hint at how the show will be without him going forward. It much resembles when you might bring out your favourite jigsaw puzzle, only to find that the one piece you need to complete it isn’t there.

***

On a personal note, as I write this, I am roughly 20 followers away from reaching a milestone of 2,000. I have written well over 200 stories for The Flash alone (whether they be short or long, one-shots or chaptered), and goodness knows how many words I’ve generated altogether over the course of these many years with inspiration from the show and my favourite character. I’ve written and co-written novel-length stories, one monumental Wellsian story of which was done alongside L and E (almost solely done through alternating text messaging in the app, Line) that reached over 108,000 words and consisted of 42 chapters. And when I’m not writing for my blog, I’m also working on trying to accomplish my dream of becoming a published author. Just as I thought before I launched my Tumblr blog, I think again now: Might as well give it a shot, right?

***

I have watched virtually everything Tom has been in that I could get my hands on, both physically and electronically. Sure, a few titles are out of my reach and probably lost to the very early 90's forever, but from what I've seen through Tom's filmography is enough to know that he can do anything. He can play the romantic leading man that will make you fall head over heels for him or a deranged killer that will have you genuinely scared of him. That is talent. Tom always brings something new to the table from each role to the next, and (when he's not playing those psycho killers) you can't help but admire his craft.

Not only is his acting stellar, but from what we as fans have gathered on the man, Tom has got to be one of the kindest men in the business. His humour and sheer ridiculousness could get anyone through a tough time (we’ve seen plenty of bloopers and behind-the-scenes videos to prove this!). He has clearly bottled and stored an endless supply of Fountain of Youth™ and each year continues to wow us with his handsomeness. Tom is charming, dedicated, and yes, arguably holds the world record for Bluest Eyes.

In my eyes, Tom Cavanagh gave me the two best friends I could have ever asked for, as well as plenty more lovely friends I’ve continued to make online. (One day, I hope to meet him again so that I can tell him in person how because of him, I’ve met such very important people in my life). Through Tom, I have truly found my passion for writing, and in doing so, segued me to dare to dream of becoming a published novelist. I wholeheartedly believe all of this would not have happened if it weren’t for those first series of events that led me to meet Tom and love and admire him immensely. He is indisputable proof that there are indeed men like him out there. Indeed, he did ruin all of my future expectations of men. He ruined my life in the absolute best way and I am eternally grateful.

I am very much looking forward to what Tom will do next. I think it’s rather needless to say that I will follow him in his career, as he has gained a devoted fan for life. He represents so much to me and so much of it I have gained since meeting him that fateful day, when I thought to myself, Maybe I should buy this T-shirt and get this guy to sign it. Wherever Tom goes in life, I’ll be here to cheer him on.

I have a pretty good feeling plenty of others will, too.

[keijikunn]

Memories ─ part i

── A @celestialarchiveshq collab “Connected by fate”

Pairing: Semi Eita x fem!reader Tags: college!au, kinda angst i guess, fluff, SLOW BURN, maybe strangers to lovers!au Summary: On the last day of the year, you dream of your soulmate’s most impactant memory that happened within the year. Each memory will be different each year. Word count: ~3.6k

Author’s note: I’m late and I’m so so sorry! I said I’d comeback by the end of January, but here we are in March lol. I can explain why I took so long in another post, if you want, but anyways. Here’s my piece from the soulmate!au collab from @celestialarchiveshq ! I decided to break it into pieces, because so far I have 9k words and you don’t deserve this. Anyways, hope you enjoy and stay tunned for the next part!

WARNINGS: insecurity, mention of injury (it’s a broken arm), self-esteem issues, let me know if I forgot anything 

MEMORIES’ MASTERLIST

You didn’t know who your soulmate was, the little information you had about them was that you only knew they were a boy and had a huge passion for volleyball and music. But one thing that you knew for sure about him was that he desperately needed a hug. Not because he’s supposedly your partner for life, your one true love, your missing piece. No. Your soulmate mark taught you things are more than that, that there’s more colours than just black and white, more than just simple and exact definitions. 

Being able to access his most important memory of the year through a dream was both a blessing and a curse. The first one is quite obvious, it meant your soulmate had overall a good year, no bad day overshadowed the good ones. However, when the second case occurred, it pained you to know that he went through a lot, and you couldn’t do anything. 

It was hard to predict how much a couple of consecutive bad memories could have changed your soulmate. Knowing only an hour or so piece of the 8760 hours of the last year, let you little to no room to guess how he coped with it. You couldn’t help but think what did he do to deserve all the insecurities and self-doubt he’s been receiving. What happened to the sweet boy that still believed hard work was worthy?

2004 (age of 10)

Your soulmate was running towards his front door, ignoring his young sister’s whines to slow down, but he didn’t pay attention. He was eager to see what was the surprise his father told him before he left for school. What could it be? Your soulmate’s voice, a pitch higher due to his age, resonated inside his head. 

“Mom, dad, I’m home!” He exclaimed, kicking out his shoes to quickly enter the living room; only to receive a stern look from his mother, pointing with her fingers his shoes, indicating he had to organize it. “Okay, I’m doing it.”

“Mom! Nii-chan didn’t wait for me when I asked!” His sister, Aime, complained, closing the door behind her. 

The older woman scolded the young boy, who scratched the back of his neck, apologizing to his sister next. The feeling of excitement filled his body once again when his father, still wearing the shirt and pants from his suit, appeared in his vision, holding a large package. 

“Welcome back, kids.” He grinned, placing the mysterious box on the floor to spread his arms so Aime could jump into his embrace. Your soulmate did not waste time to approach his father, who messed up with his hair. “Son, are you ready for your surprise?”

“It’s not fair that nii-chan’s getting a present! It’s not even his birthday.” Aime whined, both parents exchanged a brief smile, before the mother held onto her shoulders, guiding her to sit on the sofa next to her brother. He was almost jumping on his seat, bouncing his legs as if that motion would stop him from throwing himself at the box to open it. 

“The reason why me and mama decided to gift nii-chan is because he listened very well to us,” the older man started to explain. “Do you remember what he asked us a few months ago, Aime?”

“I asked if I could get my own guitar!” Your soulmate piped in, almost bursting into happiness as he connected the dots. 

“And we talked to you two about it, right?” Their mother continued, instigating her children to remember the topic of that conversation. 

“Mama and papa said that if we dedicate ourselves to something we really want, they could get us what we asked.” The young girl replied obediently. 

“Nii-chan has been dedicating himself to his guitar lessons, so we thought about rewarding his hard work.” Their dad finally announced what your soulmate had guessed all along, a smile spreading on his face. After receiving a light nod from them, the boy immediately put his hands on the wrap, tearing it apart to reveal a beautiful guitar. “We’re expecting extra hard work from now on, buddy.”

“I will!” He exclaimed, hugging both parents tightly, cheeks hurting from his large grin. “Thank you so much!!”

September, 2017 (current time, age of 23)

The memories were blurred in your mind, though all feelings and sensations burned in your heart whenever you remembered it. You always saw them in your soulmate’s perspective, being privileged enough to have a piece of his happiness - or cursed to feel the sadness that washed over in other years. 

It was perhaps his fault that you got so hooked on music and learned how to truly appreciate it, you somehow felt connected with him, as if it was a language only you two knew. It didn’t really matter the genre of the music, you could listen to an indie band from your college or a worldwide superstar; your heart knew how to stay tuned to different frequencies, absorbing the perfect high notes to the bass riff that made your bones shake.

That was how you met this eccentric lead vocal and guitarist from a rock-ish band in your college department, a guy with ash blonde hair, narrowed eyes and a voice filled with unsaid emotions. Semi Eita appeared to be angry at anyone at any time of the day, quick to offer snarky replies with his sharp tongue. It could be just a persona he created as his band progressively became well-known around college, or could be just himself and his lack of interest in people in general. 

You got to know him through your friend - and the band’s drummer - Akihiko, after one of their performances on a local live-house most college students go on a Friday night. Semi sat far from his bandmates, who were talking excitedly with each other and a couple of friends, with the same scowl you’ve seen in a picture Akihiko once showed you. 

“Guys, this is my friend Y/n,” he introduced you as soon as you two entered the small backstage room reserved for the performers. “She’s really into music, so I decided to invite her to one of our presentations.”

“It’s nice to meet you all!” You exchanged greetings, while you noticed the lead vocal just rolled his eyes and busied himself with his phone. “I enjoyed it a lot today! I could feel every instrument resonating through my body. Please invite me for your next performance!”

Throughout the whole night you hang out with the band, Semi stayed quiet on his own, enjoying a bottle of beer too lost inside his head. His bandmates reassured you he was fine, the guy wasn’t a fan of gathering with friends or any sort of social contact - which was ironic to say the least, after all, he spends his free time entertaining people. 

Despite the singer’s wish to avoid contact, many girls - and guys - approached him perhaps to initiate a small talk, or maybe to end up on a secluded corner of the live-house with their mouths on his. His quite mysterious façade was intriguing, you even admitted it to yourself, as a possible explanation to his “fame” around people, and maybe that was the reason he attracted many people. 

You only got the chance to have a proper conversation with him on the next band rehearsal, which Aikihiko invited you per the other’s request. Inside the soundproof studio, you sat on a chair across Semi, who was too busy tuning his guitar to care about your gaze on him. He still sported the same scowl in his face, however, this time you could notice a hint of excitement - maybe even a silent love towards his instrument and what he was able to do with it. 

“Are you done staring at me?” Semi asked angrily, lifting his head from the tuning keys he had just finished adjusting. “Why are you here? Aren’t you Akihiko’s hookup or something?”

“First of all, ew!” You exclaimed, face contorting in a grimace at the thought. “I know him too well to feel attracted! Besides, he permanently smells like cigarettes, it’s awful.”

“Just wait until he arrives, the studio will be infested by this shit.” He replied with a huff, rubbing his hand against his face. “For real, though, why are you here?”

“The other guys invited me to watch you practice,” you said, then leaning down to grab a notebook from your bag by your foot on the floor. “They think watching you play will help me with an activity I have to turn in before the winter break.”

“What is it?” Semi seemed interested, you noticed, putting his guitar on its support, crossing his left leg. Although you two were talking for a couple of minutes, you still felt a cold barrier between you two. It was quite noticeable as how the lead singer guided the conversation, questioning you and your reasons to be there.

“I attend the music course as an extracurricular activity, and I have to produce a song by the end of the semester.” The room fell in silence, but you could almost hear the gears in Semi’s head turning. “And I’m also here to convince you to sing for my project.”

“No.”

“Expected.” You laughed amused as Semi’s eyebrow twitched at your response. “Do you like barbecue? I can take you to an expensive restaurant as a payment.”

“You’re not gonna bribe me.” He stated, narrowing his eyes to send you sharp looks. In response, you smirked at his reaction. Just like Akihiko told me he would react.

“You’re right, I’m not gonna bribe you,” you mirrored his posture: left leg over the right one, arms crossed on the chest. But, contrary to him, you opened a smile, though your eyes screamed at the challenge in front of you. “I’m going to make you agree with me.” 

October, 2017 (current time, age of 23)

A month has passed since your very first talk with Semi Eita, and although you didn’t make any progress regarding your project, you’re getting to know a bit more about the real Semi - not just the cold façace he shows. He is indeed quick with comebacks, hot tempered - especially when he’s talking about music, the boy stands still for his beliefs in what would be better for the band - but, Semi seems to have a huge wall separating his deepest sides from his friends. As if something holds him back from being true to his feelings. 

“C’mon, Semi, we’re having a movie night,” Akihiko whined once again. “Stop watching this volleyball game and let me start choosing the movie!”

“He won’t budge Akihiko, it’s his friends playing.” The bassist, Takeshi, laughed at the rather unilateral discussion: the lead singer’s eyes were still trained on the screen, watching carefully every movement; while the drummer tried to snatch the remote control from the other’s grip. “You should know by now that he analyses carefully every Ushiwaka’s movements to scold him later.”

“I don’t do that!” Semi spoke up, diverting his gaze from the TV, proceeding to push Akihiko away from him. “Ushijima doesn’t need my comments. He never did, anyways.”

“So, the famous Semi Eita is also a sportist?” You teased him, nudging his left left leg with your foot, since you were half laying on the couch. “And has his phone number? Impressive.”

“Our lead singer had the honour to play on the same team as Ushijima Wakatoshi.” Akihiko threw his arm forcefully around the ash blond haired boy, earning a groan in protest. “And played against the Adlers’ setter, right? And you lost, right?”

“You don’t have to remember me, Akihiko-san, thank you very much.” He removed his bandmate over himself to look at you. “And I’m not a sportist.”

“How come not, Semi?” Takeshi retorted rhetorically, the smile on his face gave away his enjoyment in teasing him. “You had a sport scholarship in Shiratorizawa, you have to be at least great in volleyball!”

“Yeah…” Semi muttered lowly, lowering his gaze to the wooden floor of Akihiko’s apartment, clearly bothered by the turn the conversation took. “Choose the movie, I’ll make the popcorn.”

As he left the room, the other two guys exchanged looks, and you kind of deduced they went too far in this topic. To say you were curious about why him attending such a powerhouse school was delicate was an understatement, the urge to get up and follow him to the kitchen and shoot him questions was undeniable high - but you weren’t a senseless person.

Another part of Semi Eita’s personality presented itself to you, holding as many secrets as the façade he shows to everyone else does. You couldn’t help but think about how many experiences he went through to close himself like that, but more than that, you tried to imagine what kind of story Semi could tell through a song. That was the reason why you wanted so bad his participation in your project. 

Semi Eita could tell a great story if he wanted to. And you would try your best to make it happen. 

2008 (age of 14)

Your soulmate slowly dragged himself back home from school, body sore and longing for a long hot shower to relieve the stress of his muscles. Finals were taking a toll on him, especially when he was about to graduate middle school and needed to pave his way to good high schools. The sidewalk was slightly slippery due to the recent melted snow, droplets of water occasionally hitting his uniform’s pants near his ankles. 

Soon enough, he found himself opening the front door, being welcomed by a warmer environment. The young boy removed his shoes and heavy coat, greeting tiredly his mother and sister, who were both in the kitchen making dinner. Your soulmate headed to his bedroom ready to throw himself on his bed, wishing the mattress could swallow him. However, as soon as he turned the lights on, a white envelope with a familiar purple logo on the table caught his attention.

His hands worked quickly in tearing the material apart, removing a single sheet from the inside. The euphoria already dominated his senses, eyes barely proceeding to read the name of the institution at the top of the paper - but he knew which one was. His eyes scanned the words, eagerly searching for what he was wishing to himself for the past few weeks. 

“Mom!” He screamed at the top of his lungs, running out of his room to find her. “I made it! With a sports scholarship!”

“Oh my gosh, congratulations!” The woman cheered, drying her hands on her apron to involve her son in a tight embrace. His cheeks hurt from how wide he was smiling, but the bursting sensation of pride in his chest made up for that.

I am good at something, after all. I made it to a huge school through my volleyball abilities. 

I’m not replaceable. 

Mid October, 2017 (current time, age of 23)

“What the heck happened to you?” The words left your mouth before you could even think after you entered the usual studio the band usually rehearses. Akihiko was seated behind his set of drums, scrolling aimlessly through his phone; and Takeshi finished setting up his bass on the amplifiers. But what surprised you the most was the cast on Semi’s left arm, holding it in a position he couldn’t stretch it. 

“Hi, Y/n,” Semi waved cynically with his right hand, “I am fine, thank you for worrying about my well being.”

“We need your help.” Both Akihiko and Takeshi said. 

“Why do I feel it’s related to the fact Semi broke his arm?” You questioned, glaring at the lead vocal suspiciously. 

“The band has a presentation in a week and Semi can’t play the guitar for obvious reasons,” the bassist started approaching you, offering you a bright yellow pick - which you accepted, still not sure about the end of the conversation. “We’re lacking a guitarist, but Akihiko said you’re pretty good, right?”

“Uh… maybe?” 

“What Takeshi is trying to say is,” Semi cut his bandmate, eyebrows furrowed in annoyance. “We need you to play the guitar as support for our next concert.”

It was unexpected, you thought with yourself, by the little you knew about Semi and his relation to music, you imagined he would ask any close friend of his that he trusted. Perhaps Akihiko mentioned you know how to play, he could have even shown him a few recordings you did in the college studio. Either way, hearing Semi inviting you was a surprise. 

“Sure, I guess?” Your answer sounded more like a question, evidencing your state of confusion and unsureness. “Wouldn’t you guys want someone else, though?”

“No.” The ash blonde hair boy answered without hesitation, once again surprising you. “You’ll do it just fine.”

You quickly exchanged looks with Akihiko, in hopes to discover that it was a huge prank or even a childish comeback from Semi regarding your stubbornness of having his vocals on your project. However, the drummer nodded his head; his facial expression didn’t give any sign of mischievousness like it usually does.

Semi stopped in front of you, handing you his own guitar. The instrument felt foreigner in your grasp, as if a simple guitar held secrets and hidden feelings of its owner - and it might do. You felt oddly connected to the guy in front of you, the same one who denied every invite of yours to sing for a couple of minutes for an extracurricular project. 

As your fingers strummed the strings, you noticed how perfectly tuned the guitar was and you were quickly to mentally facepalm yourself. It’s obvious Semi Eita would take such a good care of his guitar, the boy loved music after all. After adjusting the strap over your shoulder to fit your much smaller stature than the owner’s, you played a couple of chords to make the final adjustments on the amplifiers. 

“So, tell me the setlist I need to work on.” The three men smiled gratefully at you - though Semi’s looked more like a grimace, but you understood. They proceeded to fill you up with plenty of songs and minor details you should be aware of about their style, rearragended chords.

The hours flew by while you were in the studio with the band, the four of you fell in a good synchronization - if an outsider saw the rehearsal, they would never guess you weren’t the main guitarist. Playing with them felt familiar, all your frequencies merged into one smoothly, even easily. You adapted yourself to Akihiko’s excitement and Takeshi’s quirks during his solos, but the easiest one to work with was Semi. 

His style of singing fitted perfectly with your own strumming habits, even the occasional exchange of looks was easily understood between you two. He seems to be too arrogant on stage, pretending as if he was the best amaetur performer in college - but in a sense, Semi could think like this. The way he easily went with the flow with a new element in the studio, someone he has never seen playing before. 

“Great job, guys!” Akihiko exclaimed, clapping his hands a couple of times. You put the yellow pick on the top of the amplifier and cracked your knuckles, feeling your fingers a little stiff from the almost two hours rehearsal. And you did well, Y/n, you even remembered all the chords!”

“Akihiko!” Your whine made both the drummer and the bassist laugh. “I can remember things, okay?”

“Then tell me why can’t you remember your soulmate’s memories?” He wiggled his eyebrows, daring you to answer him. When you didn’t reply, he snorted. “You can’t even defend yourself on that! Anyway, we rented the studio for another hour, but I have some business to solve at home. Feel free to stay until the end, okay? Thank you for the practice!”

“Thank you.” You smiled, sending off the drummer. While you quietly went through the songs you weren’t familiar in the setlist, Takeshi bid farewell to you and Semi - leaving you two alone. “If you wanna leave, just let me know and I’ll stop, okay?”

“You are good,” Semi complimented you, not answering your statement. “Akihiko-san wasn’t lying after all, you are indeed good.”

“Why do you sound so surprised?” The studio was filled with rhythmical strums, following your favourite song of the list while you quietly hummed the lyrics. “I suppose Akihiko showed you a few things I did for the course.”

“Actually, he didn’t,” His response caught you off guard, your right hand stopping its motion in the middle of the song’s bridge. “And I suggested your name as support. I kind of wanted to see what’s up with you and music.”

“And what do you think, Semi?”

“Why do you want me to sing your song for the project?” He asked, ignoring your question completely. You arch your eyebrows in surprise, earning the same gesture - as if he was inciting you to answer him. 

“I strongly believe that music has an unique power to deliver messages. It could be the lyrics, the instrumental or just the performance… everything has a meaning.” You stated, adjusting the guitar in your lap properly; eyes fixed on the man in front of you. “From my point of view, after watching you perform and how you interact with music, I imagined you have some deep feelings buried inside of you that could be delivered through a song. Somebody could relate to you and feel grateful for you expressing something they might couldn’t.”

“I’ll do it.” Semi said after a few seconds in silence, surprising you. When you looked at his face, a small smile adorned his features. You mirrored his expression, though yours were much larger in order to convey your happiness. 

COLLAB MASTERLIST!

SEARCH FOR A BOOK!

General taglist

Bold users couldn’t be tagged!

@whootwhoot​ @nikkiandherrandomshits​

Wanna be tagged? Click here!

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 1, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

For those of you exhausted by this week’s news, you can take a break tonight. Lots of moving pieces are in play, but nothing that would hold a historian to her desk a hundred years from now, so skip this letter with a clean conscience.

For those of you who do want some reflections, I am struck today by the media’s breathless recounting of how the ongoing negotiations over the two infrastructure bills shows that the Democrats are in disarray and President Joe Biden’s agenda is crashing and burning. The New York Times called a delay in the vote on the measures “a humiliating blow to Mr. Biden and Democrats” and wondered if “Biden’s economic agenda could be revived.”

Exactly a year ago, the news reported that Trump adviser Hope Hicks had coronavirus and that she had recently traveled with White House personnel on Air Force One. The stock market dropped 400 points on the news. The previous day had been the infamous presidential debate when Trump yelled and snarled at Biden, while his entourage, including Hicks, refused to wear masks despite a mandate that they must do so. We did not know who else might be infected.

Hours later, we learned that the president and First Lady were both sick, and within hours the president would be hospitalized.

The rest of the news provided a snapshot of the Trump presidency:

•A study of more than 38 million English-language articles about the pandemic between January 1 and May 26 showed that Trump was “likely the largest driver of…Covid-19 misinformation.”

•Trump’s former national security adviser, retired Lt. General H.R. McMaster, told MSNBC that Trump was “aiding and abetting Putin’s efforts” to disrupt the November election.

•We learned that Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, had not disclosed that in 2006, she signed an anti-abortion ad in the South Bend Tribune. It appeared near another ad from the same organization that called for putting “an end to the barbaric legacy of Roe v. Wade and restore laws that protect the lives of unborn children.”

•A tape leaked of Melania Trump complaining about having to decorate the White House for Christmas—“I’m working… my a** off on the Christmas stuff, that you know, who gives a f*** about the Christmas stuff and decorations?”—and then said of criticism that she was not involved with the children separated from their parents at the southern border: “Give me a f****** break.”

•News broke that Donald Trump, Jr.’s girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, had left the Fox News Channel after an employee complained of sexual harassment, saying she required the employee to work at her apartment, where she would sometimes be naked, and where she would share inappropriate photos of men and discuss her sexual activities with them. She denied any misconduct, but FNC settled the case against her for $4 million.

•The House of Representatives, controlled by Democrats, passed a $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief measure. No Republicans voted for it.

•Right-wing conspiracy theorists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman were charged with four felonies in Michigan for intimidating voters, conspiring to violate election laws, and using a computer to commit a crime.

•Claiming he wanted to prevent “voter fraud,” Republican governor Greg Abbott of Texas limited the number of locations for dropping off mail-in ballots to one site per county. While Republican counties tended to have just one location already, Democratic Harris County, the third largest county in the country, with a population of more than 4.7 million and an area larger than the state of Rhode Island, had previously used 12. Democratic Travis County, which includes Austin, previously had four.

That was one single day in the Trump presidency.

In contrast, today, the Democrats are trying to pass an extremely complicated package, consisting of two major infrastructure bills, backed by different constituencies, that will alter the direction of our country by investing in ordinary Americans and revising the tax code to claw back some of the 2017 tax cuts the Republican Congress gave to corporations and the very wealthy. Although there is no guarantee they will pass, the bills are currently still on track, and all the relevant parties are still at work discussing them, exactly as one would expect.

What is the unusual piece in this process is that the other major American political party—the Republicans—is refusing to participate in the crafting of a major bill that is extremely popular.

This infrastructure package is huge, but it is hardly the only item in Biden’s agenda. In March 2021, the Democrats passed the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion economic rescue package that has helped the administration produce more jobs in its first six months than any other administration in American history.

Not a single Republican voted for that bill; it passed while they were focusing on the ungendered Potato Head kin and the decision of the Dr. Seuss estate to stop the publication of some of Theodor Geisel’s less popular books.

The economy has recovered in large part because of the Biden administration’s enormous success at distributing the coronavirus vaccines to every American who wanted one.

Republican lawmakers have worked against this process, and today we crossed the unthinkable line of 700,000 officially counted deaths from Covid-19.

Now, the administration has begun to put vaccine mandates into effect, and they are working. Those who insisted they would never get vaccines changed their minds when employers and public venues required them. Today, California governor Gavin Newsom announced that the state will require coronavirus vaccines for school children, along with the ten others it already requires, as soon as the Food and Drug Administration fully approves them for use in children.

Meanwhile, Republican-dominated state legislatures are following through on the voter suppression noted a year ago, passing measures to cut down Democratic voting and install Republican operatives in key election posts before the 2022 election.

As political scientist and foreign relations expert David Rothkopf tweeted: “Are the Dems the ones in disarray when they are crafting specific programs while the GOP offers up only cynical Tweets & obstruction? The only GOP agenda items are voter suppression, defending the worst president in history & when they have power, pushing tax cuts for the rich.”

For my part, I’m not sure what is driving the stories that seem to paint Biden’s work as a lost cause: The recent position that Democrats are hapless? That it’s safer to be negative than positive? That our news cycle demands drama?

Whatever it is, I continue to maintain that the issue right now is not Democrats’ negotiations over the infrastructure bills—regardless of how they turn out—but that Republican lawmakers are actively working to undermine our democracy.

—

Notes:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/24/nightmare-scenario-book-excerpt/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/01/us/amy-coney-barrett-abortion.html

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/01/us/california-students-covid-vaccine-requirement/index.html

https://www.newsweek.com/texas-ag-says-trump-wouldve-lost-state-if-it-hadnt-blocked-mail-ballots-applications-being-1597909

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/30/us/politics/infrastructure-democrats-pelosi.html

David Rothkopf @djrothkopfThe NYT does it again: "House Delays Vote on Infrastructure Bill as Democrats Feud." On the homepage they call it a "Big Setback for the Biden Agenda." Really? Really? A day? A couple of days? The media is getting this story 100% wrong.

House Delays Vote on Infrastructure Bill as Democrats FeudA liberal revolt left Democrats short of votes, but leaders insisted they would bring up the measure again on Friday, giving them more time to reach a deal on a separate climate and safety net bill.nytimes.com

2,463 Retweets9,500 Likes

October 1st 2021

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[blackhakumen]

Mini Fanfic #713: After One Huge, Chaotic Adventure (DuckTales 2017)

7:46 p.m. Outside of McDuck's Mansion........

Goldie: (Walking to the Mansion with Louie Beside Her) ('Sigh') Well......Today was pretty hectic. With all the adventuring and stuff.

Louie: Right? This might be the most intense one we been through so far.

Goldie: I can believe that. (Turns to Louie) How are you feeling?

Louie: Pretty good. Honestly, I'm just glad all of us made it home back in one piece. (Turns to Goldie) What about you?

Goldie: I feel a bit of the same way you do. Just want some sleep already.

Louie: ('Sigh') Same. Never thought in the million years that being in a near death experience could be this tiring.

Goldie: (Chuckles Lightly) Yeah, well.... That's one of the essence.of being a McDuck, kiddo. Might as well get use to it.

Louie: (Rolls his Eyes) Yeah. Yeah. I get the memo......So uh.....Did Uncle Scrooge ever told you about anything recent about Webby yet?

Goldie: The fact that she's the coot's kid this entire time? Ah yeah. I was just as surprised as you were when he first told me. Something tells me that you might not gonna get his inherence after all.....

Louie: (Simply Shrugs) Eh. It's fine. I'll just find another way to build my own success and fortune in the future. And besides....(Smiles Softly) If anything in this deserve that inherence a lot more, it would definitely be Webby.

Goldie: (Smiles Proudly at her Sharpie) Well, look at you!~ Showing humility and junk. Where did all of that came from?

Louie: Hey, when you been through a lot of crap as I have in a young age, you tend to learn some things. Most of which are preachy.....

Goldie: (Chuckles Lightly) Well, regardless of how "preachy" the life lessons you've learned are, I'm proud you.

Louie: Really?

Goldie: Yeah. I mean.... Honestly I've always been proud of you ever since that day you went back and saved me from that weird Doofus kid or whatever. (Frowns a Little) Speaking of which, I uh.....never really apologize for up and leaving you like that afterwards.

Louie: It's fine, Aunt Goldie. I already got over that a long time ago. And besides, our relationship has gotten a lot stronger as of late.

Goldie: (Smiles Softly) Yeah. I'm really happy for that. Happy that I even met you to begin with....(Suddenly Stops Walking) Hey, Louie?

Louie: (Stops Walking While Turning to Goldie) Yeah? What's wrong? Why did you stop walking all of a sudden?

Goldie: (Takes a Deep Breath Before Smiling Softly Again and Saying.......) I love you.

Louie: (Eyes and Mouth Widened in Complete Shock at What His Auntie Just Said) .................. I'm sorry. Did.....Did I hear that just right? (Points at Goldie) Did you....just said that you love me?

Goldie: Uhhhh....Yeah. That's exactly what I just said a few seconds ago.

Louie: Really? So uhh.....Does that makes you a clone or.. ...

Goldie: I'm sorry....(Eyes Widened in Complete Disbelief) WHAT!?

Louie: A clone. You know, an artificial being who looks exactly like you and-

Goldie: (Groans While Facepalming Herself) ('Ugh') I know what a clone is, you ungrateful little twerp! I mean, seriously, can't an old woman express her love and appreciation to her own bloody nephew for once her lifetime!?

Louie: Okay! Okay! I'm sorry! I just.... Really didn't those words coming out of you. You never tell me that before.

Goldie: (Glare Softens Up into a Bit of a Shy Like Frown) Well....Yeah. I mean, I've always wanted to tell you that a while now, but.....('Sigh) I chickened out at every opportunity I had. Goes to show how much you really mean to me and. Even though we're not blood related.

Louie: And like I said before.....(Smiles Softly) It doesn't matter if we are or not. Cause I already considered you as family the moment I first met you. (Turns Away in a Shy Like Manner) So I maybe guilty of not telling you this either, but......(Turns Back to Goldie with a Sincere Smile on his Face) I love you too, Aunt Goldie. Always.

Goldie: (Heart Begins to Melt in Sincere Happiness) C'mere, you!~ (Pulls Louie Up into a Loving Hug) Thank you so much~

Louie: (Chuckles Lightly) No problem. Thank you for being an amazing aunt. I can't believe it took us this long to say the L-word towards one another.

Goldie: I know, right? (Smiles Softly) But I'm glad we finally did it. It felt great.

Louie: Agreed........So uh.....You sure you're not an artificial clone or-

Goldie: (Gives Louie an Auntie Like Glare) Do you want me to drop you right now?

Louie: Nononono! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I was just joking around is all! I didn't mean all of that! Really!

Goldie: (Kiss the top of Louie's Forehead Before Giving a Playful Smirk) That's what I thought. (Makes her Way to the Mansion with Louie in her Arms) Now, come on. Pretty sure everyone is wondering where we are already.

Louie: Let's just hope they don't go crazy about us being gone missing for a couple of minutes.

Goldie: (Snickers) Knowing them, the possibility of that is near possible.

Unknowingly to the duo, Scrooge witness the whole interaction from the window, inside the mansion. All while have a soft smile on his face.

@keyenuta

@raidenraccoon

@lettheladylead

@26shann

@caleb13frede

@miki-13

@ma-lemons

@albion-93

[nomanwalksalone]

ON INSPIRATION

by Réginald-Jérôme de Mans

It took me seven years staring at it on my bookshelf to finally open Paul Smith’s you can find inspiration in everything* (*and if you can’t, look again). It was, I now recognize, too close to my own thinking about inspiration, inspiration that was coming to a head at the time I bought the book years ago.

Of course, Paul Smith is a knight of the British Empire, a globally acclaimed design force who has accumulated decades of accolades. I simply scribble on the Internet. But what hit so close to home in this gaily eclectic volume, originally published in 2001, is its appreciation of the vast sensory possibilities out there in anything from Japanese toy robots to old cameras to trophy animal heads, to say nothing of clothes. I wonder if Smith has anything like Stendhal syndrome, that feeling of taking in so much, being so moved, by contemplation, that you pass out. There is inspiration everywhere, and simply trying to capture a fraction, to capture one tiny smallest increment of an instant, feels like my life’s work, if not my work’s work, before it overwhelms me. At the time I was finally realizing that, more than thirty years into my life, I discovered this book, a happy coincidence, and its random and motley assemblage of past and present, kitsch and elegant, intellectual and low, resonated with me.

More than 20 years ago, I learned about Smith and the simple design philosophy he repeats throughout his book: classic with a twist. Today, that may sound like the most worn-out cliché. A throng of tailor-designers played variations on that theme in the 1990s, a leitmotiv of dusting off old classics and making them relevant again. (They’ve been followed by the recent trend for the allegedly classic itself and the misconception of timeless style, now, rather sadly to me, on the ebb.) I suspect those 1990s Young Turks, Welshmen and Ghanaians would have been nowhere without Smith. Classic had become a matter of either perceived exhaustion, or appropriation in Ralph Lauren pastiche, a rich, inexhaustible mine. Smith embraced the innate kitsch of clothes and styles made for a disappearing world, that phantom British Empire. Rather than sell the actual old relics of Empire, as the 1960s’ Granny Takes a Trip (co-founded by Savile Row-trained tailor John Pearse) did, Smith could design new clothes repurposing the ethos of those remnants, rather than those old clothes themselves. Less chance of catching a disease, as was legendarily the case for a Swinging Londoner who purchased a Crimean War greatcoat still infected with impetigo. Not for nothing was Smith’s old London flagship in Covent Garden on Floral Street, a street that was “dead” at the time he moved in as the old market shops of an earlier London had all closed up. London the plutocrat’s Disneyland was not even a gleam in a New Labour eye.

A self-consciousness and awareness, a knowing and witty transgression, marked Paul Smith’s earlier clothes. That irreverence was engagingly levelling, democratic, fitting for a man universally recognized as down to earth, blokey, unprepossessing. He made totems for modern Britain acutely aware of what had gone before, designing a rainbow-striped Mini, or shoes (that used to be made in Northampton) on whose soles were carefully printed maps of London.  He stood for knowing rules, construction, design and intentionally flouting them in minor ways. Innovation is essential for a designer to keep putting out seasonal collections, of course, but primed by all I had read and seen, I had to visit his well-worn, homey London shop on my first visit to England. A student, I was shocked by prices, too late realizing the premium some pay for concept…or name. I finally settled on a thick indigo selvedge denim buttondown shirt, my first piece of selvedge denim (the first time I had seen the word “selvedge,” in fact). I had to admit to myself I had bought it to have part of the totem, and gradually wore it less and less often, until it dwelt on the back of a closet shelf.

Reading this book, I was inspired to wear the shirt again. We, the customers and wearers, repurpose too. The shirt is dark enough to avoid Canadian tuxedo (Canadian dress shirt?) connotations, and now that there is a subtrend for denim shirts with bespoke tailoring, I should probably try wearing it with a suit one of these days like my more attractive #menswearblogger friends (you know who you are).

I kept the shirt for sentiment; I put off reading Paul Smith’s book out of fear of confronting the reality of inspiration. There really is in every moment, every possible tiniest impression, incalculable volumes of not data, but being, incapable of completely capturing, reflecting or recording, at least for human beings. Smith comes across in his book as an obsessive collector (about which, come to think of it, I better plead the Fifth), accumulating so many different tiny items that one person’s individual, slightly askew perspective, can build of them a world. Or his own True Brit Empire.

Almost all his profiles dub Smith “True Brit,” a man whose designs reflect a vision of a broad, modern, diverse Britain – not for nothing did postcolonial novelist Hanif Kureishi model for him at one point. Today, of course, you’re as likely to encounter cheaply made $100 Smith-branded graphic T-shirts at luxury retailers, but brand expansion forces concessions.

Seven years after coming to terms with my fears about writing again – my struggle between the need to expiate my inspiration and a fear of derision, if not failure, I overcame my fears about reading a book too close to my way of thinking. It’s a vivid, entertaining read, containing various interviews, monographs, flights of fancy, even a fold-out board game. I owed it to him to recognize this.

Quality content, like quality clothing, ages well. This article first appeared on the No Man blog in 2017.

[entertainment]

Entertainment Spotlight: Minhal Baig, Hala

Writer and director Minhal Baig recently released a feature-length film, Hala, about a Pakistani-American teenager that uncovers a secret that threatens to unravel her family, which premiered in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. She previously served as a story editor on Bojack Horseman (Netflix) and staff writer on Ramy (Hulu). In 2017, she was chosen to participate in Ryan Murphy's Half Foundation Directing Mentorship. Minhal took some time out of her busy schedule to answer some of our questions:

Without any spoilers, what scene, moment, or line from Hala are you most excited for audiences to see?

The scene between Hala and Eram in the shopping mall parking lot was a turning point in the writing process for me. Their relationship is fraught and because the story is being told from Hala’s perspective, we’re more aligned with her than we are with her mother. But in this scene, the perspective opens up a little bit. Eram makes some valuable points, albeit in a harsh way. She chastises Hala for marginalizing her and even asks her, rather bluntly, whether she looks down on her. This was a difficult scene to write because it came from such a personal place. I reflected on my own experience of treating my mother this way, and how differently I look back at those interactions now.

The story of Hala is one that will resonate with many people grappling with similar issues in their own lives. What do you hope that audiences take away from the film?

I hope that viewers can take away that we are more similar—in complicated family dynamics and coming-of-age—than we are different. Hala came from a very specific place, drawn from my lived experience. It’s not autobiographical, but there was emotional truth in Hala’s search for self. It’s not a search defined by her ties to her culture, faith or even her sexuality; it’s all of these things at once. I want people to be moved, to extend compassion, to be feel less alone.

What inspired you to write Hala?

Hala came out of a place of processing a pain that I experienced in my own adolescence. I was wrestling with my own identity as a teenager and my relationship with my family. It was a difficult time in my own life when I chose to leave home for college. I don’t think my parents were ready for that, but I also wasn’t quite ready, either. I was forced to learn a lot on my own and much of that is reflected in Hala’s own journey. While the film drew upon my personal life, it eventually became her story and needed to be true to the character.

If you could give any character from the film a piece of advice, who would you speak to and what advice would you give?

I think about how much pain and anguish could have been avoided had I been more open with my family. There was so much that I hid and continue to hide, not necessarily out of a sense of self-preservation anymore but because I didn’t want to burden them with the reality that I was not living up to their expectations. If I could talk to Hala, I would let her know that she’s not alone in her experiences and that vocalizing her feelings to her family, while difficult, might be what brings them closer together.

What’s the first thing that you remember being a fan of?

I remember seeing Jurassic Park and Hum Aapke Hain Koun with my family in a theatre. They were early cinematic experiences that I’ll never forget. For a little while, we could forget everything and just live in the world of a movie. It was everything.

Do you have any interesting facts about the filming of Hala that viewers would be surprised to know?

The high school that we filmed at, Northside College Prep—is where I went to school in Chicago. It was a very surreal experience to shoot in a classroom that I’d been in ten years ago as a teenager.

Who are your biggest influences?

Andrea Arnold, Lynne Ramsay, Celine Sciamma, Asghar Farhadi, Ruben Ostlund, Claire Denis, Maren Ade, Kelly Reichardt, Sofia Coppola, Debra Grafik, Abbas Kiarostami, Paul Thomas Anderson, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Xavier Dolan.

The biggest film influences on Hala were 35 Shots of Rum, Fish Tank and A Separation.

Can you take us through a typical day on set?

Every day is different depending on what I’m scheduled to shoot that day. If it’s an early call time, I head to set early with the cinematographer and go over our shots. We walk through everything together and then include the assistant director in our conversation. Then, I check in with my actors—to make sure they feel comfortable with what we’re shooting. Once I’ve done all of that, we read through the scene, block it, and the actors go away to get dressed while the various departments work to bring the scene to life. When the actors return, I usually do a rehearsal and once I feel that it’s ready, we shoot. I like to keep things moving and reset instead of calling cut, or do a few takes in a row so that the actors’ momentum isn’t lost. We finish a shot and if it’s good with everyone, I move on. The usual day on Hala required us to shoot five or six pages a day with multiple location moves, so imagine doing all of this at a relentless pace all day. Once we hit twelve hours, we call it a day.

What’s next for you?

I’m working on a film that centers the live of children, and specifically, the friendship between two nine-year old boys. It’s set in 1992. I’ve spent the last two years, on-and-off, taking a very journalistic approach to this story, spending a lot of time with people whose lived experiences I’m hoping to reflect in the final film. It’s a labor of love while I work a day job writing television.

Thanks for taking the time, Minhal! Hala is now available on Apple TV+. 

[vanessakirbyfans]

Defying expectations, challenging Hollywood’s norms and facing one’s own fear of failing emerged as central themes when Michelle Pfeiffer, Kate Winslet, Rashida Jones, Vanessa Kirby and Andra Day met virtually in December for The Envelope’s Actress Roundtable. Collectively, they represent four decades in film and more wild experiences than we can fit in one discussion — and they’re also behind some of the most complex characters in film right now.

Pfeiffer is eccentric, wealthy New York widow Frances Price in the quirky drama “French Exit,” which opens this week in limited release. When Price blows through most of her inheritance, she flees to Paris, where she attracts an odd assortment of friends. Winslet is rough-hewn paleontologist Mary Anning in “Ammonite,” a period drama that explores the hardships of a female pioneer in 19th century England’s patriarchal science world and the challenges she faced hiding her love for another woman.

Jones is Laura, the dutiful daughter of an eccentric father in the comedy-drama “On the Rocks.” Despite their complicated history, daughter and father embark on a covert mission to find out if her husband is cheating, but self-discovery may just be the biggest reveal. Kirby conveys anger, sorrow and grief following the death of her newborn baby as Martha in the emotionally wrenching “Pieces of a Woman.” And singer Day makes her film debut in “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” a period drama streaming on Hulu later this month that chronicles Holiday’s battles with law enforcement, drugs and the crush of systemic racism.

Their conversation here has been edited for length and clarity.

Your films are built around narratives of complex women, many of whom face challenges that aren’t often explored on screen. “Pieces of a Woman” is a great example of a film that is so specifically female, it would have never made it to the screen in the past.

Vanessa Kirby: It definitely feels like a different time right now ... we want to represent women that we identify as being us and the weird parts of us. In the movie, my biggest intention was to make it not a sanitized, movie version of a birth. So [she] felt super sick and burped a lot. She was really nauseous ... things that we might think are unpalatable or not comfortable. That’s all the facets of being human, and particularly being a women. I’ve read so many scripts where it was a version of a woman that I don’t know. It was a film version as opposed to my sister or my best mates or me.

Kate Winslet: That’s what is great about now ... the world is making space for all of these stories. We’ve always tried to tell these stories, but the world is more receptive to hearing them now. That is a shift.... It’s such a moving, seismic time to be doing this job.

Michelle, your character Frances Price is the perfect example of an imperfect female protaganist. She is a mess, and fantastic, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

Michelle Pfeiffer: I was just was so curious about this woman, and I thought she was so odd and not like a character that I had seen or that I had played. And then the dialogue is very stylized. So you have to give in to it but, at the same time, not too much. It was made up of these disparate tones of absurdism and melancholy, and it was funny, and it was tragic — these oddballs sort of living on the fringe of society and trying to make some sort of human connection, all of them, in some way.

Rashida, in “On the Rocks,” you play a reserved writer with a charming, flamboyant father. Your real father is Quincy Jones. What sort of parallels did you feel playing Laura?

Rashida Jones: I very much related to this idea of coming of age with a larger-than-life father who commands presence and changes the atmosphere of any room he walks into, and how that in itself can be something you have to untangle from. Because in order to be your own person, in order to find your life, in order to figure out who you are in the world, not relational to anybody else, you have to separate yourself from all that charm and the warm light of your father’s love. That part of it I very much related to. But Laura is unlike me in the sense that I’m pretty outspoken. This character, I think, has a lot of restraint. That was a challenge.

Andra, stepping into the shoes of Billie Holiday must have been a huge challenge, and this is your first film!

Andra Day: It was definitely terrifying. First of all, I’m a fan of hers. And I’ve always loved movies and had such a great respect for the craft of acting. My biggest terror was that I was going to suck. So I was like, “OK, I’m going to take two to three years off of music just to study and focus on acting.” I auditioned at the end of 2017, landed the role at the beginning of 2018, and then we shot at the end of 2019. So I had time to really live in her [shoes]. The film isn’t a sanitized version of Billie Holiday. She is raw. She is a fighter. She’s a hero, in all of her real humanness, even as a fractured figure. All of the emotional pain. It was the most challenging and rewarding thing I’ve done in my life — and the most terrifying.

Winslet: It never goes away.

Day: That’s actually my question. I mean, do you ever really, really shed all of it or let it go?

Winslet: Honestly, it does not go away. But I feel so excited for you, Andra, that in this moment you are connecting with other people, having these kinds of conversations, because we all learn on the job. All of these experiences that we are sharing are the things that will hold you up and buoy you through, and this is a time when we have to hold each other up. But it doesn’t get any easier. And I’m afraid you will always be terrified. I f—ing am.

Pfeiffer: When I first started acting, probably for the first 10 years, I literally on the first day would shake so terribly that I was sure you could see it on film. Fortunately, you couldn’t. I don’t shake any more, but I still have those jitters. I still think the first week of shooting I’m going to be fired and replaced.

Jones: Yeah. So congratulations on that, for a lifetime.

Day: This is a roundtable, but also a therapy session.

Let’s talk about the risks that jangle those nerves. Those of you who have been doing this a while have tackled a wide variety of characters and survived, and thrived. That’s unusual in Hollywood, especially for women.

Pfeiffer: Like all actors, you sort of choose the best of what is available to you, and go for as long as you can without working, until you need a paycheck. It’s also that thing where, depending on what your last role was, that’s how the industry sees you. It’s really up to you to try to find those things that shift it in the direction you want it to go. I did “Grease 2,” and that was one thing, and then was lucky enough a year later to get cast in “Scarface.” People were very upended, because nobody expected that turn. And then when I did “Married to the Mob,” that [was] another seismic shift, like, “Whoa, wait a minute; who’s that?” I remember when I met Marty Scorsese for the first time, he expected this dark-haired girl from New Jersey to walk in. That was one of the most flattering things anyone ever said about my work. It’s just looking for those opportunities, and sometimes they’re very small, but those small opportunities end up having the biggest impact on the direction that your career goes in.

Jones: I just want to interrupt and say how cool this is. Michelle, obviously, you’re an icon and a legend, but the fact that you did [those films] back to back; such different things, such different audiences, such different characters. To me, that is the success of the art form.

Pfeiffer: Well, thank you. I spent lots of time being unemployed and waiting and really stretching it out, but it is, for me, the most exciting thing about being an actor. And that’s why we’re always terrified, because we’re always trying to do something different.

Day: As music artists, people are always trying to put you in a box, like, “This is what you do,” and we’re constantly rebelling against that, because life’s not like that. I can’t be the same. This role changed me, and I wouldn’t have been the same [person] as three years ago anyway. As a fan of yours, [Michelle], it’s exciting not to know what you’re going to come out with next.

Kate, your recent leap into the unknown is playing Mary Anning.

Winslet: She was a woman of scientific brilliance who made pioneering discoveries in the fossil world. But she was an unsung hero, because she lived in the early 1800s, and the world of science and geology was, like so many worlds back then and still now, dominated by men. And those men would buy her finds and claim them as their own discoveries, actually put their names on them. But there was something incredibly stoic and accepting of her lot in life. Mary was self-taught. She was extremely working-class, actually impoverished, lived a very harsh life. I just loved her even though she is cantankerous at times and quite difficult.

Vanessa, in “Pieces of a Woman,” Martha is emotionally distant and hard to read even after going through significant trauma. Was that challenging?

Kirby: In her nature, [Martha] tries to never show anything she’s feeling. So I was really scared, because I thought, “Oh, my God, what if it looks like I’m feeling nothing or nothing’s going on?” I just had to trust that if I really felt it, and I really thought those thoughts [it would come through]. I’ve never given birth ... so a lot of women spoke to me about their experiences of miscarriage or stillbirth or losing children. I owe them everything, because they allowed me to sit with them and try and understand how it really felt. At the end of the shoot, I was like, “I hope it’s done them justice,” because it’s definitely something that’s not spoken about. There’s so much silence around it. I hope that the film will help start conversations that really need to start happening.

Andra, Billie had an exceptional life that was also quite brutal. How did you go about trying to convey that while still honoring her greatness?

Day: She is musically, my foremost inspiration. I already knew a lot about the government going after her. The early war on drugs, and the subsequent wars on drugs, were wholly entrenched in race. I was aware of that, but I didn’t know about how deeply they went after her, even up to her death. Yes, she was an addict and, yes, alcohol and drugs ... but they wanted her to die. And not just kill her, but to actually eradicate her legacy. It’s why I call her the godmother of civil rights, because she was doing it alone. Her singing “Strange Fruit” and the death of Emmett Till reinvigorated the civil rights movement. She was innately a fighter, a character with resilience and tenacity.

Kirby: Kate, can I ask what it was like being so young in “Titanic”? Did it like blow your mind after it came out and you realized that that many people were watching you in the cinema? Did you know at the time when you were making it —

Winslet: I didn’t. I was playing an American for the first time. And working with Leo, who I’d seen in "[What’s Eating] Gilbert Grape” and “Basketball Diaries.” So it was like, “Oh, my God, I’m Kate from Reading.” I was the overweight girl who would always be at the end of the line. And because my name was a W, sometimes I wouldn’t even get in the door of the audition because they’d run out of time before the Ws. And I was in “Titanic.” It’s mad.

Jones: How were you smart enough to know, even with all of that pressure and then getting hit with all of that fame, how did you know to back off and not take the big paychecks? You were so young. How did you know to shoot for longevity?

Winslet: The honest answer is I was scared of Hollywood. A big, scary place, where everyone had to be thin and look a certain way. And I knew that I did not look that way or feel like I fit there, so if I was ever going to belong, I had to earn my place. And to me, I hadn’t earned it. “Titanic” might have been a fluke. I had done “Heavenly Creatures.” I had done “Sense and Sensibility,” which I was nominated for an Academy Award for at the age of 19, but still I had this feeling of “maybe that was just luck.” When I became a mother at 25, all of that stuff evaporated completely. Then two years after she was born, I was asked to do “Eternal Sunshine [of the Spotless Mind].” I do believe that was a huge turning point in my career, because from then on people suddenly went, “Oh, she can do that?!”

Kate, what if anything did you learn from “Ammonite”?

Winslet: It really opened my eyes to wanting to take responsibility for this sort of shared voice that we have as women. To try harder to not be objectified.

Jones: But we take it for granted that things will be the way they’re supposed to be. And that’s what’s been cool about the last five years is there has been a complete and utter subversion of just having that existential moment of like, “Wait, what is it that I’m supposed to do? What are the societal norms? What are the professional norms that I’ve agreed upon that actually don’t feel comfortable?”

Kirby: I remember when I first started reading scripts, the character descriptions. The man, it would always be “articulate, intelligent, high-powered.” And then the woman would be “attractive, dark, beautiful hair, and all eyes look at her when she comes into the room.” It was so subtly objectifying. Often, the woman would be just ever so slightly moving the man’s story along, rather than necessarily having her own journey.

Day: I think we so often write this [young] generation off as like, “Oh, it’s the social media generation, and all they care about is selfies and dah, dah, dah.” But I think we can partly attribute this shift to them. I don’t think this generation wants the glossy, clean, the sanitized version of life. Also, with the internet and social media, everyone’s still connected; the globe is so much smaller now.

Rashida, you’ve not only acted, you’ve written, produced and directed. Do you think that kind of representation behind the camera is making a difference in what we are seeing?

Jones: The good news now is there definitely is an appetite, at least within Hollywood, for female content creators. And what’s nice is what all of you have been saying is the more women there are around, the more comfortable women feel advocating for themselves. If you don’t have that representation around, you’re less likely to speak up, because you don’t feel like you have any backup.

Day: One of the things we learned is that certain audiences would wince at [Billie] getting beat, but I was like, “If we don’t have that in there, then we’re continuing to retool her narrative, the thing that she’s been a victim of her entire life.” Suzan-Lori Parks cowrote this movie with Lee Daniels. Women’s stories have always been told through the lens of masculinity, through how they view us or how they want us to be. Most of our stories need to be told by women, written by women, done by women. Not to write men out of the picture, but for them to understand that it is a collaborative effort.