#Seriously why does she invite them to her concert like this?

[azusickle]

The way Chika approaches talking to women isn't straight

[leclerc-s]

track 002. this is why we can't have nice things

─── ❝ here's a toast to my real friends, they don't care about the he said, she said ❞ ───

masterlist // previous // next

JULY 2016

daniel ricciardo living up to the name i see

carlos sainz who made max angry?

mae jones bold of you to assume it was one of us and not a reporter.

max verstappen one asked me if i agreed with those two. i said no. he got angry. i called him a fucking dick. i regret nothing.

daniel ricciardo had anyone checked up on her yet?

daphne jones i’m fine. everything is fine.

daniel ricciardo bullshit but whatever

mae jones it feels like i’m watching my parents fight.

daphne jones i’m fine, it’s not like i'm being called a snake and it feels like the entire world has turned against me. seriously, i’m fine

carlos sainz she’s lost it.

mae jones CARLOS! carlos sainz es la verdad (it's the truth)

daniel ricciardo would i got to jail for starting a fist fight with them? how do american politics work?

max verstappen i’m not sure but i’ll help.

daphne jones no. you two will do no such thing.

carlos sainz yes we will.

mae jones i can bail them out

daphne jones mae! stop encouraging this. mae jones but it’s so much fun

SEPTEMBER 2016

daphne jones we broke up.

daniel ricciardo sorry, do you need anything?

max verstappen you’re not sorry. what is it the teenagers say shoot your shot?

mae jones you are a teenager max max verstappen i meant the younger teenagers

daphne jones a nap and a bottle of fucking wine

daniel ricciardo i can help with wine, you’re on you own for the nap

daphne jones by the way, i’m performing after the us grand prix in october.

mae jones she drops that bomb and then just leaves? hello? we need answers?

OCTOBER 2016

liked by user81, user37, user16 and others

f1updates daphne jones preformed tonight at the circuit of the americas after the race earlier in the day. this marks the one-year anniversary since the eldest jones made her f1 debut. this also marks the singer’s first concert of the year since the end of her 1989 world tour. over 80,000 fans were in attendance and the superstar preformed some of her greatest hits including you belong with me, shake it off, and enchanted.

tagged daphnejones, f1, cota_official

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user27 🐍🐍🐍🐍

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user56 gtfo with that bullshit.

user05 🐍🐍🐍🐍

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user38 her tour flopped, it’s why she’s only preformed once this entire year

user72 or maybe the entire internet has been harassing her and she hasn’t felt mentally stable to preform? user68 friendly reminder that celebrities are people too. they have feelings like us and any other person.

user97 she looks stunning! despite everything happening she's glowing. am i curious why? yes. but she'll talk about it when she's ready.

user83 kim was right about her. she’s a snake.

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user91 genuine question but why invite daphne jones? does she know anything about f1? or was it to sell tickets?

f1updates our best guess is that this was a marketing tool seeing as formula one isn’t as popular here in the states as it is in the rest of the world. daphne jones is a huge pop star and she would get the attention they need. she’s also close friends with max verstappen, carlos sainz, and daniel ricciardo.

user27 she’s trying to find a new f1 driver to sleep with. probably slept with half the grid by now. she needs to sleep around to be able to write music. she doesn’t sell without the men in her life.

comment has been deleted by post creator

f1updates we will not tolerate any bullying or hateful comments towards anyone posted on here, whether it be drivers or other celebrities. with that being said, we stand with daphne jones, if you don’t like that please unfollow and block. any further comments like this and you will be reported for harassment.

user58 daphne doesn't deserve the hate she is getting. props to f1updates for standing up for her, we aren't seeing a lot of that these days. f1updates this page was made to inform fans of f1 news not drama surrounding the drivers and their friends. we do not tolerate hate towards anyone

NOVEMBER 2016

mae jones max and i broke up. we thought you guys should be the first to know.

carlos sainz QUE? NO! POR QUE?

max verstappen some people grow apart carlos. it's that easy.

mae jones easy, right. max verstappen don't do this mae.

daniel ricciardo i feel like a child of divorce.

daphne jones i'm sorry that you two broke up. are you both okay?

mae jones the lie? yes. the truth? no. max verstappen no. daphne jones so if you two aren't fine they why did you two break up. mae jones reasons that neither of us wants to talk about

daniel ricciardo well if either of you two needs someone to talk to we're here.

carlos sainz i can't believe you two broke up. love is not real.

daniel ricciardo it seems like carlos' world is falling apart

carlos sainz no entiendes, i helped those two get together. i was like the baby with the arrows! mae jones he means cupid. when he's upset he forgets what words translate to. daphne jones we understood.

daniel ricciardo well now i won't be able to listen to EVOLution without crying.

max verstappen well how do you think i feel? mae jones i have to perform the songs on tour, how do you think i feel?

liked by user15, user09, user59

f1updates max verstappen and his girlfriend of a year and a half, mae jones, have broken up. do not make any assumptions as to why and give the two privacy. some of you are way too obsessed with their lives. (pictures acquired from mae's instagram, they have since been deleted.)

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user41 WHAT? THIS IS HOW I FIND OUT? BUT- THEY WERE SO CUTE

user15 romance is dead

user46 2016 has not been the year of the jones' sisters

user90 i would've committed war crimes for these two. she wrote an entire love album for him and now they're over? i can't believe this.

user09 as a fan of both jones' sisters this has not been our year. i'm in shambles.

user59 this was my last straw. i no longer believe in love.

FEBRUARY 2017

mae jones YOU TWO ARE FUCKING DATING? AND YOU SAID NOTHING? CALVIN? TOM? WERE THEY PR?

mae jones DAPHNE ALISON JONES! DANIEL JOSEPH RICCIARDO! ANSWER YOUR FUCKING PHONES ASSHOLES!

daniel ricciardo hello. how'd you find out?

mae jones I JUST SAW YOU TWO KISSING IN THE RED BULL GARAGE. THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN HOW DID I FIND OUT? WERE YOU TWO JUST NEVER GOING TO TELL US? daniel ricciardo not never...just you know, when we felt like it max verstappen that's fair, we do spend way too much time together

daphne jones well what were you doing in the red bull garage 🤨?

mae jones VISITING MY FRIENDS AND CHRISTIAN! DO NOT USE EMOJIS ON ME RIGHT NOW DAPHNE!

max verstappen i saw this coming after austin last year, i figured it wasn't long. and then she dated other people and i sort of gave up hope.

carlos sainz i wanted to be cupid again. i had a plan and everything.

daniel ricciardo your time will come with someone else carlos.

mae jones how long?

daniel ricciardo september 28, 2016 max verstappen YOU WERE DATING IN SEPTEMBER? mae jones so the other two weren't pr? daphne jones tom was, the other one wasn't. daniel ricciardo i'll have you guys know i was secretly fighting with tom hiddleston for daphne and i came out on top! a win for australia! max verstappen she just said it was pr daniel ricciardo LET ME HAVE THIS VERSTAPPEN!

carlos sainz i can't believe this

max verstappen i know it was pr but you picked him? over tom hiddleston?

daniel ricciardo my enchanting personality won her over

mae jones to be fair i would pick daniel too. tom’s a sweetheart but daniel’s, you know, daniel.

carlos sainz when can i be cupid again? i want to set people up!

max verstappen are you single? you should not be invested in other people’s relationships this much.

mae jones i thought he was dating that girl, penelope.

carlos sainz 🤢 don’t ever say those words again. i would never.

daphne jones carlos unless the next words out of your mouth are ‘she’s like a sister to me’ don’t say anything

carlos sainz she’s my worst nightmare, i can’t stand her. i would never ever date her

daniel ricciardo screenshotting this for when you two start dating and i can make you look like an idiot.

max verstappen isn’t that every day?

carlos sainz i’m crashing into you at turn 1 the first chance i get

max verstappen i’d like to see you try

¡leclerc-s speaks! fear not people, a flashback to how we got here will be posted soon. please ignore the likes as they are not relevant to the story. it just looked too weird without anything down there (it’s just randomized numbers). i've also taken creative freedom with certain aspects of events that have unfolded. i didn't want to speak much about specific events so i've only skimmed over them. 2016 was truly not the year of the jones' sisters hence the mention of the mae x max break up.

¡disclaimer! this is in no way making assumptions about the people involved in this story, this is all fake. it is a fanfiction please don't take any of what is said seriously. this is all for entertainment purposes and as a creative outlet for me. enjoy!

[kawarikisaki]

I hope you’re including Aoko because I really like their interactions would really if the admiration wasn’t just one sided.

Okay So this one is gonna get weird. And there's going to be a lot more stuff that feels like guesswork here. Even though Aoko and Hakuba are native to the same story, we don't really see them interact much, at least not in super meaningful ways.

Anyway, I'm going to start by saying Aoko is smart. She's often put into a position where she's the butt of a joke or playing the fool, but she is established from the beginning to be very intelligent, at the very least she's shown to be able to keep up with Kaito academically.

So time for another headcanon with barely any substantiation- their class is an advanced class. After all we already know that Aoko and Kaito are both very smart, and Hakuba is also smart and was very intentionally transferred into their class.

But more on the relationship between Aoko and Hakuba.

To begin with Aoko is a fan of Hakuba, but mostly just on a shallow level, she doesn't give off the impression of having been a fan for a long time, but she is interested enough after seeing him on tv to start quoting his catch phrases (which changes a bit depending on what we're taking as canon, with it being "Why did you do it?" in the original manga, and "the truth has come to light" in the 1412 anime).

Despite this in their first actual interaction she's not all that excited when he flirts with her- talking with her friend later she doesn't even really acknowledge that she was asked on a date, just that if Hakuba wins the bet she'd be going to a concert with him. And I'd like to think that her reaction is that way because she saw the original offer for what it was- not a legitimate attempt to woo her but rather just a move to rile up Kaito.

Every move that Hakuba makes in that introductory chapter is directed at Kaito, but that doesn't mean he's just ignoring Aoko. Perhaps this is me having an idyllic view of him, but I think he's very empathetic; he sees Aoko and he sees that she's like him in that she's kind of forced into the shadow of her father, he sees her interaction with Kaito and is able to understand that she wants to go with Kaito but with the way things were playing out Kaito was going to get away with acting like he didn't care... and that would have only hurt Aoko. So what does he do? He interferes; he puts himself in the villain role and shows Kaito 'if you don't care about her then sooner or later someone will come along that does', and he does it this way for the dual purpose of antagonizing Kaito (who he already suspects may be Kid) and also trying to help Aoko. And during the heist he takes it very seriously, commiting to the bit as it were. Did I explain that last point well? I don't think so. Is it a bit of a stretch? Absolutely. Do I care? Not really. This is how I see it.

The next time Hakuba is taking the stage (A Gift from Akako) he's also very much focused on Kaito not Aoko, which makes sense, Magic Kaito is Kaito's story after all so of course we really only ever see Hakuba and Aoko interact when it's serving Kaito's narrative.

But what we do start to see is Aoko and Hakuba seeming to get along well in just a casual way. Additionally in that case there's a clear change in Aoko, previously she's always stayed on the sidelines just waiting to hear the news of results, but this time she actually requests to come along to help catch Kid- and I would like to claim that the one responsible for this change in her is Hakuba. Perhaps she sees that Hakuba is inviting Kaito and opens up the idea that she can be there too, or maybe she thinks that if the son of a police superintendent can be there then the daughter of the inspector on site can be there, or maybe she has an inkling of Kaito's identity and is coming along to help... whatever it is the one that gave her the push is Hakuba, and after that heist she starts showing up at them more regularly.

The two are both present again for the Dark Knight heist, but unfortunately they don't even so much as look at each other, so no notable interactions there... Which brings us to Midnight Crow.

When Akako and Hakuba are both approaching Kaito with their own thinly veiled 'hey I know you're Kid, good luck, I'm actually rooting for you here' bits, Aoko comes up and once again plays the fool changing the flow of the conversation and- doing almost the exact same thing they were by giving Kaito the exact information that he needed through a barely connected anecdote. (Yes I think that at this point Aoko also knows, and just is fully acting oblivious.) And that's all she does in Midnight Crow in the manga, however, in the 1412 anime there's a bit more; she also forms a detective team "to catch Kid", that motive ringing somewhat hollow when she herself said that she was on neither side, and Hakuba admits that he's relieved that Kid didn't lose. The purpose of this team doesn't really seem like it's genuinely to catch Kid but rather Aoko making an excuse for the four of them to be able to talk directly about Kid without there being any suspicions. Then once again they're both present in Sun Halo but don't interact with each other at all.

So what does all of this tell us? They're friends. In a very normal way.

Aoko seems to respect Hakuba's skill. Early on she bonds with him over their mutual distaste for Kid, but overtime that changes and they still care a lot about each other without needing there to be an undercurrent of aggression directed at Kid in order for them to see eye to eye. And Hakuba for his part clearly enjoys spending time with her. And absolutely cares about her feelings given that even though he knows Kaito is Kid he never tries to tell Aoko that, not wanting to to potentially hurt her.

And that's about the gist of it. This one kinda feels like I'm saying a lot of words but not really expressing much... a lot less focused than the other rambles I've done so far but eh.... it's a less focused topic. When I try to simplify things down to the facts of what we see- well these two barely even interact with one another, but even so the vibe is that they're friends, which is good because I get the feeling that Hakuba doesn't really have many of those. Anyway.

There is one more thing that I want to bring up about the connections between Aoko and Hakuba, and for that I'm going to talk about Nonchalant Lupin.

Nonchalant Lupin being the sort of one-shot/prototype that got polished and eventually evolved into Magic Kaito. I'd recommend reading it if you haven't but for now I'm gonna give the cliff notes version just in case.

The one shot stars Lupin Kaito a young magician that steals for monetary gain, Holmes Aoko the kind hearted and self sacrificing detective love interest, and the antagonist Gurikouji Ken who is the son of a mob family who blackmails Aoko into marrying him using pictures taken of Kaito in the act of stealing.

Now obviously Lupin Kaito became Kuroba Kaito, and Holmes Aoko became Nakamori Aoko. And a lot of people would say that Ken is the prototype Hakuba, which I think there is some truth to that, but not the whole story- because I instead propose that both Holmes Aoko and Gurikouji Ken were the bases for Hakuba.

Nakamori Aoko got Holmes's role as childhood friend and love interest, and Hakuba actually got the role of detective and the morality from Holmes while taking an aggressive approach and cocky confidence from Ken. Not that Holmes is cleanly split up between the two of them, but even so I like to think that the Aoko and Hakuba we know were at least in part cut from the same cloth, and that's why even though we barely ever see them interact they do genuinely fit well together in a way that just feels correct.

Does that make sense to anyone but me? Who knows.

[smooshi-graysimp]

HC of the week

I HC that…

Willow loves Mortis but Angelo “hates” Mortis

Angelo likes Melodie but Willow hates Melodie

Angelo + Mortis: If they were to hangout they would actually be good friends! Just that Angelo wants Willow’s partner to treat her like a queen, and he doesn’t think Mortis would provide that so that’s why he arrows him.

Willow + Angelo about Mortis: Even when Angelo hates the idea of Mortis dating Willow, he’ll sarcastically though is actually serious about Willow and Mortis being trash together and Willow will jokingly throw insults at him and other stuff. Even if Angelo doesn’t support it he helps Willow for it and as for Mortis he tries to help him too actually but trying to convince Willow there’s other fishes at sea.

Willow + Melodie: Mel and Angelo are besties too and so Angelo introduced her with Willow. Willow does NOT like her at all, when she’s happy she’s annoying she’s crying she’s annoying she’s angry she’s annoying. Although she actually likes that Mel’s have beef with Janet and so they joined forces and pick on her together. (Something that Mandy’s not happy about, and yeah I see Mandy and Janet as friends and I prefer to ship them, I see Mandy as a teen)

Willow + Angelo about Melodie: Even though Angelo and Mel are friends Angelo does crashes her stage and put himself to the spotlight. Willow supports it and it makes Mel mad (Dw! It’s friendship stuff! Mel: furiously attacking the two, my point still stands tho) other than that yes Angelo goes to Mel’s concerts and invites Willow in, Angelo also helps Mel with makeup. Willow doesn’t actively shows that she hates Mel but you can see her being very annoyed at her.

Btw: I don’t think I ship Willow x Mortis? I see it as one sided personally but I just think the relationships fun. Plus platonically I feel like they could be good friends like both don’t take things seriously both are toxic (though Mortis is just a bad roommate)

[miffue]

O1 LOVE COUNTDOWN — main character syndrome

staring at your door, hearing the banging against it, you can’t lie it’s crazy as hell.

“omg y/n, i swear if you do not open this god damn door right now, imma kick it down and i’m not joking girl.” lumine said. something tells you she means her threat.

contemplating your choices to either open the door or just let her kick the door and let herself in manually. you look at the door knowing you’d be forced to confess you’re secret. slowly opening the door you let lumine in as well as hu tao.

“hu what are you doing here?, i thought it was only lumine.” you said with confusion. “hehe, just in case you get murdered, you’ll be next my client!!”

“okay that doesn’t matter right now, what matters is why are you lying to us y/n. no jokes. tell me and hu the truth.”

“uhm, how about we sit down for this one.” hu tao has a mischievous look in her eyes, “is it that bad y/nnie?”, “unfortunately, yes.”

“okay enough small talk. tell us everything right now.” lumine looks at you with seriousness in her eyes.

sighing before you start talking. “okay so, to sum up why i didn’t wanna go anymore so suddenly is because, my ex is apart of that band.”

both of them looking at you like you’re joking, saying the same line at the same time. “BITCH WHATTT??!!”

“wait you’re joking, like honestly this is some lie to cover up the whole reason.” hu tao says, lumine nodding in agreement.

“i wish i was joking honestly.”

“we’ve been your friend since forever and neither of us have known about this ex??? i was beginning to think you was wuh luh wuh.” lumine retorted

“listen this ex was in highschool. we broke up after a shitty as argument. and i don’t wanna face him again ever. never in my life again. i’ll avoid him in any way that i humanly can.”

“listen y/nnie, i know that it’s hard to get over people, but you can’t let him control your life. he can’t stop you from going to a concert. he shouldn’t matter anymore we’re almost done with university, and guess what your life’s been great! if he doesn’t matter before then he shouldn’t matter now or in the future.” lumine states, she’s always been good with her words.

“that’s true y/n, you need to go live your life, you cnat just not go to somewhere just because he’s going to be there. facing him could help you get over him. you said y’all relationship ended cause of an argument right? you could get closure from meeting him again at this concert. i promise this could be good for you.”

almost tearing up you hug them both. “i love you guys so much, thank you hearing me out and helping em through it, you guys are the best.”

“hehe it’s no problem pookie!” hu tao stated with a bright smile. “what she said y/n, we’re here for you, as well as everyone else. don’t be afraid to open up to us.”

hearing a ding from hu tao’s phone, she checks it, shoving her phone in your’s and lumine’s face. “look!!! even albedo is going now! yoi convinced him.”

“looks like the whole group’s coming.” you said with a content smile.

“yes yes!!! okay intervention over. i’m glad we got this out of the way, now you can enjoy yourself at the concert and not give a fuck about that ex.” lumine said going back to her cheery self.

“seems like it!!”

SYNOPSIS you and scaramouche or kunikuzushi from 6REEZE dated in highschool but went your own ways after an argument. So when one of the members sister is apart of your friend group invites you to their concert without knowing that one of them is your ex. You’re still head over heels for him but, does he still have feelings for you?

AUTHOR'S NOTES — restarted this whole smau cs i hated where it was goin but yea !!!!! hope yall enjoyed and also not proof read at all so gulpers.. mb for spelling errors or anything like that, love you all sm

TAGLIST — @featuredtofu @brain-r0tt @saeskiss @m9rtality @sl-vega @feiherp @jayzioxx

masterlist | next

[lilac-melody]

Okay so I was reminded about this and since I made a Yujiro trauma post already going over why he always blames himself for everything (so in essence diving into his trauma) I’m gonna go over why the anime sucked at expressing Aizou’s trauma.

Spoilers for the anime + the lipxlip movie + other novels

Okay, wow where do I begin...

The anime, I guess.

So the only time we really dived into Aizou’s trauma was in episode 4, but even then, all the anime did was scratch the surface. Is it true that Ken and Yuko dating around got him all stiffy and annoyed with his family? Yes.

But that isn’t his trauma.

When Aizou was young, he lived a normal life. Caring parents, older brother he sometimes fought, sometimes got along with, and just...generally a normal life.

But then, one day, his father cheated on his mother, which, according to Ken and Arisa’s novels, as well as the Romeo and Kono Sekai no Tanoshimikata novels, led to their parents fighting almost all hours of the day, everyday.

Ken would come home from school to find Aizou, who is starving and miserable thanks to his parents being too busy screaming at each other for hours at a time. They’d be so busy fighting that they would barely remember to even buy groceries.

So Aizou experienced severe neglect as a child. From not being fed, to not even being looked at by his parents, to having to rely on his brother, who’s only a year older than him, to feed him carbonara.

And when his parents divorced, his mother started to seriously drink, and it got to the point where even if Aizou was simply doing a thing he loved- like singing, his mother would throw alcohol cans- some still filled with alcohol, at him and scream at him to stop singing.

And that’s how his life was. It grew worse when Ken got to middle school and started dating around, because now Aizou was completely alone.

He says in the Romeo novel:

“It was the day that Kuro arrived that Aizou had the first conversation with his brother in a long time. He had been surprised seeing the kitten and talked to him. It was probably because of Kuro being there that it made it less painful to go home.”

He was completely alone, and the silence of the apartment hurt him about as much as all the screaming.

And, continuing on, throughout the years, Aizou lost contact with his dad and he ended up having to take care of his mother often. Even out in public, he’d find her drunk in the streets and, despite barely being in middle school, he had to help her a lot.

Another thing to note is that whenever she was drunk, she would hit him often. Shibasaki Yuko is a drunk mother who abandoned her kids and was verbally and physically abusive to Aizou.

And surely, it all gets better? After all, she was at his Yappa Saikyou concert, right?

Yeah no one knows where the fuck she came from.

Before Aizou enters high school, before his and Yujiro’s first live show, Yuko meets a French man, and the two decide to marry. She tries to force Aizou and Ken to agree to go to France with her, which they both refuse.

She does eventually come around, but she went to France and abandoned her kids in Japan, on the night of Aizou’s debut live.

The fact that they’re at his concert now, anime-onlys, is a huge deal, given Aizou had torn up the tickets meant for Yuko and Ken, and Yujiro had only invited his mother and she ended up not going because Koichiro was in the hospital.

So while yes, things are slowly getting better- not just for Aizou, but for Yujiro as well, they were still abused to hell and back growing up.

Both of them had to grow up way too fast.

Aizou had to learn at a young age how to take care of himself, and Yujiro abandoned everything to focus on a kabuki career. (Another grievance I have with Yujiro is when he gave Koichiro his ticket, Koichiro mentions not having time for friends and Yujiro only says “I know, I’ve always been watching you” but the entire point of his character arc in the Romeo novel/the movie is him not having had any friends before Aizou!! Yujiro had the same childhood as Koichiro but they totally brushed it off!)

I really wish the anime didn’t downplay their trauma.

And circling back to the anime, Aizou being uncomfortable around women is because of his mother, mostly. So the whole “compare Aizou’s trauma to dislike of food!” is actually very insensitive and honestly it downplays his trauma so much.

This is why Aizou and Yujiro find so much comfort in each other- because they’re the only ones who know and understand each other. They don’t undermine each other’s trauma and they help each other through it, no matter what.

Yujiro has seen Aizou’s mother hit him while being drunk, and Aizou has seen how stern and awful Yujiro’s father is.

And since their family is evidently getting better, there’s nothing to tell Hiyori or anyone else. Because there’s no point in saying “yeah I used to be abused”. It’s the healthiest for them to be able to get help without having to relive everything by dragging someone else into it. So they are both literally the only ones they can go to when their trauma is affecting them.

I gave the anime the benefit of doubt back when ep 4 aired, but there’s honestly no excuse at this point to glaze over their trauma like this.

[ithappensoffstage]

Make a fool of myself when you hang around

In an attempt to make Billy Hargrove see that he’s like, super stupidly in love with Steve Harrington, Eddie gets the gang together for a concert–and flirts with Steve while he’s at it. What he doesn’t know is that Billy and Steve are already dating, and that Billy is quite the jealous type. (read on ao3)

Billy Hargrove and Eddie Munson don’t agree on most things. Billy likes parties; Eddie only does if he’s the dungeon master of a D&D party. Billy likes drinking, Eddie likes drugs. But the one thing that they can agree on is music.

Oh, and that Steve Harrington is smoking hot. Even if Billy won't admit it. Which is why Eddie has a plan.

So once they’ve vanquished Vecna, Eddie insists that they deserve a little celebration. The hotties and the honorary Hellfire members, that is.

"No kiddos, no babysitting," he tells his gathered peers. "Just–RECENT GRADUATES!" He bellows that last bit, brandishing his ceremony invitation in the smiling faces of Robin, Steve, and Nancy.

Off in the corner of Steve's backyard, Billy smokes a cigarette and mutters, "Didn't think you could do it, Munson."

Eddie works his jaw. "You know what. You're lucky I'm feeling generous. Because I know plenty of other people who would take these Madonna tickets off my hands."

Billy stubs his cigarette under his foot. "I will end you."

Steve opens his arms wide. "What'd I say about cigarettes on the ground, ba–Billy?" He clears his throat. "Hargrove, what the hell?"

"Not like your absentee parents are gonna notice."

Their bickering fades into static behind Eddie. And then there's Nancy and Robin in front of him, the two girls lost in their own world as they gush about going out. They don't sound thrilled about Madonna, but the escapism aspect is absolutely tempting.

Eddie can work with that.

On Friday night, the five teens pile into Steve’s Beemer, except it’s Billy driving. The maniac shaves a two hour drive by almost half, all the while blasting Bowie and Blondie and Madonna out of Steve’s shitty speakers. With Steve in the passenger seat, and Eddie behind him, Eddie can do quite a lot flirting-wise. Especially if he wants it to be noticed.

He drums the beat on Steve’s shoulders. He rests his hand near Steve’s neck while he argues over which tape should be played next. And perhaps most egregiously, Eddie holds a freshly rolled joint right to Steve’s lips. Steve accepts graciously while Billy’s eyes bulge out of his head.

Bingo.

Billy parks, telling them all to get out of the car with his usual amount of venom. Eddie slides out, offers his chivalrous hands to the ladies, and pretends not to care when they both snub him.

Well, Nancy turns her prim nose up at him. Robin, on the other hand, drags Eddie through a few puddles and punks until they’re alone together.

“What the hell are you doing?” Robin hisses. She pulls Eddie aside even farther through a cloud of sweet-smelling haze that perks him right up.

On top of the world, Eddie replies, “What? Just having a little fun. I can’t be the only one who thinks they’d be super cute together.”

Robin averts her gaze. “Who?” she asks, voice high-pitched and words mumbled, and yeah, Eddie isn’t playing this game.

He rolls his eyes. “Steve and Billy, duh! So I’m just giving Hargrove a little… incentive, you know?”

“By flirting with Steve?” Robin asks with bug eyes and arched eyebrows.

Eddie doesn’t know why she’s so concerned. It’s harmless. “Look,” he explains, steering them both back to their group. “Steve’s pretty, but I’m only doing this to make Hargrove see what he’s going to miss if he doesn’t jump on it. Him. Steve. Whatever, point is, I’m matchmaking.” He puts on a grandiose voice as he continues, “The dungeon master only encourages romance. He does not enter into his own.”

“You are making a capital-H huge mistake,” Robin squeaks. “Seriously, like, remember volatile, just-moved-from-California-Billy? I feel like you’ve, like, activated him.”

“Does he hate gay people?”

“No, but–”

“Then we’re fine. So get a move on, and get to flirting with Nancy before I have to dance with her, too. My feet are tired, Robin, so tired!”

She skids to a stop. "Wait, you like girls and boys?"

Eddie shrugs. Like, duh. "Yeah. You don't?"

Robin loops her arms through his. "Nope–just girls. Maybe Nancy… is the same as you."

"That's the spirit!" Eddie encourages. "Now onward."

When they get back to the group, Eddie goes for the kill. He plants his hands on Steve's waist and greets him with an ostentatious, "Hey big boy!"

Billy snatches Eddie's wrist. He twists until Eddie scuttles away, complaining loudly about how much Billy must have had to drink.

"I don't drink anymore," Billy sneers. "Mindflayer took part of my liver and all that." He rolls up his sleeves. "But it's not like I need more than this fist to kick your ass."

Eddie laughs. "What's wrong, man? You don't like me again all of a sudden."

"Something like that, yeah."

"For Christ's sake. Billy. Billy," Steve says, and for whatever reason, Billy deflates at the sound of his name.

And Eddie should stop pushing. He knows he should. But he also thinks Billy deserves to know why he reacts like that when Steve says his name all tender and talk-me-down-ish.

So Eddie thanks Steve for the save with a big old wink.

"That's it," Billy roars. He lunges forward while Steve grabs both of his arms, holding him back.

Eddie remembers why he used to be afraid of the dude. He backs off, hands raised high in surrender, and tries to laugh that last mistake away. "Whoa, Hargrove. Cool it. I'm just joking around."

"Joke around with somebody else's boyfriend!" Billy growls.

A nervous, joyous, thoroughly shocked noise bubbles its way out of Eddie like a landmine. It's the squeak of a misstep, then the explosion. "Your WHAT!" He sounds hysterical. He feels hysterical.

Billy is fuming like one of his cigarettes. But Steve is grinning fondly and broadly, the arms wrapped around Billy looking a lot more like a hug now than a restraint.

"His boyfriend," Steve repeats, a little giddy.

Robin smiles, too. She exhales in relief. "Whew. That was getting harder and harder to keep a secret."

"You knew?"

She shrugs. Like, duh.

"And Nancy?" Eddie turns on her now, hoping for a partner in his crime of cluelessness.

"I've known since their senior year," she admits

"Yeah, you knew before we did," Steve says.

"Before you did," Billy corrects curtly. "I had it all figured out."

"Right, babe, because beating me up was you 'having it all figured out–'"

"That was one time –"

And then Harrington and Hargrove are back to their classic bickering, bodies turned in toward each other and eyes alight with mischief, and it all makes so much sense that Eddie wants to scream.

“Don’t worry about it too much, buddy,” Robin tells her foolish friend. “You can still work that matchmaking magic for me.”

Eddie rubs his hands together like he’s hoping to roll a natural 20. “What are we all standing around here for?” he calls. “Come on! Madonna is gonna rock your world!”

He leads them into the fray. One couple down, one to go.

Eddie can work with that.

[shewholovestoread]

Hi, thank you for your analysis they’re good :). What so you think about the it’s LA I’m sure there was traffic scene? Because for me GIGI kind of let her of the hook easy. That was inconsiderate of Dani. I was curious about your opinion for that scene. Thank you :)

Hi Anon, sorry about the delay, was down with damn covid (though since it was omicron, all my tests were negative, so go figure)

A little background: Dani has had a rough day, the CAC endowment that she thought was sorted is back to blowing in her face, Bette and Pippa have rallied their supporters and forced the CAC to backtrack. Gigi and Dani were supposed to attend Eli's recorder concert but Dani forgot and instead of telling Gigi that she lost track of time, lies and says that she's stuck in traffic and won't be able to make it.

The scene starts with Gigi and Dani at Dani's home, they're getting ready for dinner, going over their day and then we get to this shot:

I think this exchange is important because while Dani did lie, there's no indication from her face or body language that she messed up, in the sense that she forgot to continue the lie. It seems that she just had a long day and decided to tell Gigi the truth rather than continue lying. It doesn't matter much in the scheme of things but it's important nonetheless because she could have just stuck to her story and avoided everything that follows.

I also want to draw attention to Gigi's expression, her expressions around Dani are usually very soft so seeing this hardness on her is rather obvious that she is indeed pissed off. Gigi's a devoted mother, she absolutely adores her kids and takes that responsibility very seriously, I don't think, inviting Dani for the recorder concert was something she did without thought. Because Dani is turned away from her, she doesn't see this shift in her expression.

Dani still hasn't sensed the shift in mood, when Gigi asks her, "So you lied to me?" She's being flippant in her response, I don't think she means any of this out of malice or disregard, she's just trying to joke, hoping to dispel any tension that might arise. She doesn't get serious till Gigi says, " Do you want to hurt me?" This is in stark contrast to her fights with Sophie (those two were horrible when it came to communication) Instead of beating around the bush or attacking Dani, which would have immediately made her defensive, Gigi instead lays out the consequences of her seemingly 'small lie', that it was hurtful, she hurt Gigi's feelings.

Now and this is the important part, it's the way Gigi tells Dani that her actions were shitty without launching into a verbal attack. She acknowledges that Dani's been having a tough time and reiterates her support for her but tells her, in no uncertain terms that she's not going to be a punching bag for Dani to lash out at when she's having a bad day. Also, at no point does she raise her voice, she's still speaking TO Dani, not AT her and that's an important distinction. She's telling Dani why her actions hurt her while affirming that she does care about her.

This is followed by this:

A sincere apology from Dani who looks decidedly sorry about her actions and that she hurt someone she cares about. This is one of the things that I love about Dani when she's with Gigi, she makes mistakes and does mess-up but she actively apologises and means them. She's not just saying the words, she puts in the work and does better.

When Gigi crosses the table, it looks like she's about to leave, except she doesn't. She stands in front of Dani and pulls her in for a hug and just holds her. Even though they've just had a fight, Gigi doesn't withhold her affection from Dani. She told Dani that her behaviour was hurtful, Dani apologised, Gigi accepted that apology and they moved on, there's no need to keep flogging a dead horse.

A hallmark of any relationship is how well the people within it communicate with each other and with Gigi and Dani, their ability and willingness to be open and honest with each other is what sets them apart from the other couples on the show. They're willing to be vulnerable with one another especially when it isn't easy.

I can understand Anon's question about whether Gigi let Dani off the hook too easily. We've become accustomed to seeing screaming matches and blow-out fights between couples in the pursuit of "realism", couples who spend the whole duration of their argument actively shouting at each other and reaching no solution at the end of the ordeal. Gigi and Dani had a difficult but needed conversation in a mature way where they each communicated their grievances, heard each other out and then moved on as you're supposed to. That's the healthy way of dealing with conflict.

[path-of-my-childhood]

Musicians On Musicians: Paul McCartney & Taylor Swift

By: Patrick Doyle for Rolling Stone Date: November 13th 2020

On songwriting secrets, making albums at home, and what they’ve learned during the pandemic.

Taylor Swift arrived early to Paul McCartney’s London office in October, “mask on, brimming with excitement.” “I mostly work from home these days,” she writes about that day, “and today feels like a rare school field trip that you actually want to go on.”

Swift showed up without a team, doing her own hair and makeup. In addition to being two of the most famous pop songwriters in the world, Swift and McCartney have spent the past year on similar journeys. McCartney, isolated at home in the U.K., recorded McCartney III. Like his first solo album, in 1970, he played nearly all of the instruments himself, resulting in some of his most wildly ambitious songs in a long time. Swift also took some new chances, writing over email with the National’s Aaron Dessner and recording the raw Folklore, which abandons arena pop entirely in favor of rich character songs. It’s the bestselling album of 2020.

Swift listened to McCartney III as she prepared for today’s conversation; McCartney delved into Folkore. Before the photo shoot, Swift caught up with his daughters Mary (who would be photographing them) and Stella (who designed Swift’s clothes; the two are close friends). “I’ve met Paul a few times, mostly onstage at parties, but we’ll get to that later,” Swift writes. “Soon he walks in with his wife, Nancy. They’re a sunny and playful pair, and I immediately feel like this will be a good day. During the shoot, Paul dances and takes almost none of it too seriously and sings along to Motown songs playing from the speakers. A few times Mary scolds, ‘Daaad, try to stand still!’ And it feels like a window into a pretty awesome family dynamic. We walk into his office for a chat, and after I make a nervous request, Paul is kind enough to handwrite my favorite lyric of his and sign it. He makes a joke about me selling it, and I laugh because it’s something I know I’ll cherish for the rest of my life. That’s around the time when we start talking about music.”

Taylor Swift: I think it’s important to note that if this year had gone the way that we thought it was going to go, you and I would have played Glastonbury this year, and instead, you and I both made albums in isolation.

Paul McCartney: Yeah!

Swift: And I remember thinking it would have been so much fun because the times that I’ve run into you, I correlate with being some of the most fun nights of my life. I was at a party with you, when everybody just started playing music. And it was Dave Grohl playing, and you...

McCartney: You were playing one of his songs, weren’t you?

Swift: Yes, I was playing his song called “Best of You,” but I was playing it on piano, and he didn’t recognize it until about halfway through. I just remember thinking, “Are you the catalyst for the most fun times ever?” Is it your willingness to get up and play music that makes everyone feel like this is a thing that can happen tonight?

McCartney: I mean, I think it’s a bit of everything, isn’t it? I’ll tell you who was very... Reese Witherspoon was like, “Are you going to sing?” I said “Oh, I don’t know.” She said, “You’ve got to, yeah!” She’s bossing me around. So I said, “Whoa,” so it’s a bit of that.

Swift: I love that person, because the party does not turn musical without that person.

McCartney: Yeah, that’s true.

Swift: If nobody says, “Can you guys play music?” we’re not going to invite ourselves up onstage at whatever living-room party it is.

McCartney: I seem to remember Woody Harrelson got on the piano, and he starts playing “Let It Be,” and I’m thinking, “I can do that better.” So I said, “Come on, move over, Woody.” So we’re both playing it. It was really nice... I love people like Dan Aykroyd, who’s just full of energy and he loves his music so much, but he’s not necessarily a musician, but he just wanders around the room, just saying, “You got to get up, got to get up, do some stuff.”

Swift: I listened to your new record. And I loved a lot of things about it, but it really did feel like kind of a flex to write, produce, and play every instrument on every track. To me, that’s like flexing a muscle and saying, “I can do all this on my own if I have to.”

McCartney: Well, I don’t think like that, I must admit. I just picked up some of these instruments over the years. We had a piano at home that my dad played, so I picked around on that. I wrote the melody to “When I’m 64” when I was, you know, a teenager.

Swift: Wow.

McCartney: When the Beatles went to Hamburg, there were always drum kits knocking around, so when there was a quiet moment, I’d say, “Do you mind if I have a knock around?” So I was able to practice, you know, without practicing. That’s why I play right-handed. Guitar was just the first instrument I got. Guitar turned to bass; it also turned into ukulele, mandolin. Suddenly, it’s like, “Wow,” but it’s really only two or three instruments.

Swift: Well, I think that’s downplaying it a little bit. In my mind, it came with a visual of you being in the country, kind of absorbing the sort of do-it-yourself [quality] that has had to come with the quarantine and this pandemic. I found that I’ve adapted a do-it-yourself mentality to a lot of things in my career that I used to outsource.  I’m just wondering what a day of recording in the pandemic looked like for you.

McCartney: Well, I’m very lucky because I have a studio that’s, like, 20 minutes away from where I live. We were in lockdown on a farm, a sheep farm with my daughter Mary and her four kids and her husband. So I had four of my grandkids, I had Mary, who’s a great cook, so I would just drive myself to the studio. And there were two other guys that could come in and we’d be very careful and distanced and everything: my engineer Steve, and then my equipment guy Keith. So the three of us made the record, and I just started off. I had to do a little bit of film music - I had to do an instrumental for a film thing - so I did that. And I just kept going, and that turned into the opening track on the album. I would just come in, say, “Oh, yeah, what are we gonna do?” [Then] have some sort of idea, and start doing it. Normally, I’d start with the instrument I wrote it on, either piano or guitar, and then probably add some drums and then a bit of bass till it started to sound like a record, and then just gradually layer it all up. It was fun.

Swift: That’s so cool.

McCartney: What about yours? You’re playing guitar and piano on yours.

Swift: Yeah, on some of it, but a lot of it was made with Aaron Dessner, who’s in a band called the National that I really love. And I had met him at a concert a year before, and I had a conversation with him, asking him how he writes. It’s my favorite thing to ask people who I’m a fan of. And he had an interesting answer. He said, “All the band members live in different parts of the world. So I make tracks. And I send them to our lead singer, Matt, and he writes the top line.” I just remember thinking, “That is really efficient.” And I kind of stored it in my brain as a future idea for a project. You know, how you have these ideas... “Maybe one day I’ll do this.” I always had in my head: “Maybe one day I’ll work with Aaron Dessner.”

So when lockdown happened, I was in L.A., and we kind of got stuck there. It’s not a terrible place to be stuck. We were there for four months maybe, and during that time, I sent an email to Aaron Dessner and I said, “Do you think you would want to work during this time? Because my brain is all scrambled, and I need to make something, even if we’re just kind of making songs that we don’t know what will happen...”

McCartney: Yeah, that was the thing. You could do stuff -  you didn’t really worry it was going to turn into anything.

Swift: Yeah, and it turned out he had been writing instrumental tracks to keep from absolutely going crazy during the pandemic as well, so he sends me this file of probably 30 instrumentals, and the first one I opened ended up being a song called “Cardigan,” and it really happened rapid-fire like that. He’d send me a track; he’d make new tracks, add to the folder; I would write the entire top line for a song, and he wouldn’t know what the song would be about, what it was going to be called, where I was going to put the chorus. I had originally thought, “Maybe I’ll make an album in the next year, and put it out in January or something,” but it ended up being done and we put it out in July. And I just thought there are no rules anymore, because I used to put all these parameters on myself, like, “How will this song sound in a stadium? How will this song sound on radio?” If you take away all the parameters, what do you make? And I guess the answer is Folklore.

McCartney: And it’s more music for yourself than music that’s got to go do a job. My thing was similar to that: After having done this little bit of film music, I had a lot of stuff that I had been working on, but I’d said, “I’m just going home now,” and it’d be left half-finished. So I just started saying, “Well, what about that? I never finished that.” So we’d pull it out, and we said, “Oh, well, this could be good.” And because it didn’t have to amount to anything, I would say, “Ah, I really want to do tape loops. I don’t care if they fit on this song, I just want to do some.” So I go and make some tape loops, and put them in the song, just really trying to do stuff that I fancy.

I had no idea it would end up as an album; I may have been a bit less indulgent, but if a track was eight minutes long, to tell you the truth, what I thought was, “I’ll be taking it home tonight, Mary will be cooking, the grandkids will all be there running around, and someone, maybe Simon, Mary’s husband, is going to say, ‘What did you do today?’ And I’m going to go, ‘Oh,’ and then get my phone and play it for them.” So this became the ritual.

Swift: That’s the coziest thing I’ve ever heard.

McCartney: Well, it’s like eight minutes long, and I said, “I hate it when I’m playing someone something and it finishes after three minutes.” I kind of like that it just [continues] on.

Swift: You want to stay in the zone.

McCartney: It just keeps going on. I would just come home, “Well, what did you do today?” “Oh, well, I did this. I’m halfway through this,” or, “We finished this.”

Swift: I was wondering about the numerology element to McCartney III. McCartney I, II, and III have all come out on years with zeroes.

McCartney: Ends of decades.

Swift: Was that important?

McCartney: Yeah, well, this was being done in 2020, and I didn’t really think about it. I think everyone expected great things of 2020. “It’s gonna be great! Look at that number! 2020! Auspicious!” Then suddenly Covid hit, and it was like, “That’s gonna be auspicious all right, but maybe for the wrong reasons.” Someone said to me, “Well, you put out McCartney right after the Beatles broke up, and that was 1970, and then you did McCartney II in 1980.” And I said, “Oh, I’m going to release this in 2020 just for whatever you call it, the numerology...”

Swift: The numerology, the kind of look, the symbolism. I love numbers. Numbers kind of rule my whole world. The numbers 13... 89 is a big one. I have a few others that I find...

McCartney: Thirteen is lucky for some.

Swift: Yeah, it’s lucky for me. It’s my birthday. It’s all these weird coincidences of good things that have happened. Now, when I see it places, I look at it as a sign that things are going the way they’re supposed to. They may not be good now, they could be painful now, but things are on a track. I don’t know, I love the numerology.

McCartney: It’s spooky, Taylor. It’s very spooky. Now wait a minute: Where’d you get 89?

Swift: That’s when I was born, in 1989, and so I see it in different places and I just think it’s...

McCartney: No, it’s good. I like that, where certain things you attach yourself to, and you get a good feeling off them. I think that’s great.

Swift: Yeah, one of my favorite artists, Bon Iver, he has this thing with the number 22. But I was also wondering: You have always kind of seeked out a band or a communal atmosphere with like, you know, the Beatles and Wings, and then Egypt Station. I thought it was interesting when I realized you had made a record with no one else. I just wondered, did that feel natural?

McCartney: It’s one of the things I’ve done. Like with McCartney, because the Beatles had broken up, there was no alternative but to get a drum kit at home, get a guitar, get an amp, get a bass, and just make something for myself. So on that album, which I didn’t really expect to do very well, I don’t think it did. But people sort of say, “I like that. It was a very casual album.” It didn’t really have to mean anything. So I’ve done that, the play-everything-myself thing. And then I discovered synths and stuff, and sequencers, so I had a few of those at home. I just thought I’m going to play around with this and record it, so that became McCartney II. But it’s a thing I do. Certain people can do it. Stevie Wonder can do it. Stevie Winwood, I believe, has done it. So there are certain people quite like that.

When you’re working with someone else, you have to worry about their variances. Whereas your own variance, you kind of know it. It’s just something I’ve grown to like. Once you can do it, it becomes a little bit addictive. I actually made some records under the name the Fireman.

Swift: Love a pseudonym.

McCartney: Yeah, for the fun! But, you know, let’s face it, you crave fame and attention when you’re young. And I just remembered the other day, I was the guy in the Beatles that would write to journalists and say [speaks in a formal voice]: “We are a semiprofessional rock combo, and I’d think you’d like [us]... We’ve written over 100 songs (which was a lie), my friend John and I. If you mention us in your newspaper...” You know, I was always, like, craving the attention.

Swift: The hustle! That’s so great, though.

McCartney: Well, yeah, you need that.

Swift: Yeah, I think, when a pseudonym comes in is when you still have a love for making the work and you don’t want the work to become overshadowed by this thing that’s been built around you, based on what people know about you. And that’s when it’s really fun to create fake names and write under them.

McCartney: Do you ever do that?

Swift: Oh, yeah.

McCartney: Oh, yeah? Oh, well, we didn’t know that! Is that a widely known fact?

Swift: I think it is now, but it wasn’t. I wrote under the name Nils Sjöberg because those are two of the most popular names of Swedish males. I wrote this song called “This Is What You Came For” that Rihanna ended up singing. And nobody knew for a while. I remembered always hearing that when Prince wrote “Manic Monday,” they didn’t reveal it for a couple of months.

McCartney: Yeah, it also proves you can do something without the fame tag. I did something for Peter and Gordon; my girlfriend’s brother and his mate were in a band called Peter and Gordon. And I used to write under the name Bernard Webb.

Swift: [Laughs.] That’s a good one! I love it.

McCartney: As Americans call it, Ber-nard Webb. I did the Fireman thing. I worked with a producer, a guy called Youth, who’s this real cool dude. We got along great. He did a mix for me early on, and we got friendly. I would just go into the studio, and he would say, “Hey, what about this groove?” and he’d just made me have a little groove going. He’d say, “You ought to put some bass on it. Put some drums on it.” I’d just spend the whole day putting stuff on it. And we’d make these tracks, and nobody knew who Fireman was for a while. We must have sold all of 15 copies.

Swift: Thrilling, absolutely thrilling.

McCartney: And we didn’t mind, you know?

Swift: I think it’s so cool that you do projects that are just for you. Because I went with my family to see you in concert in 2010 or 2011, and the thing I took away from the show most was that it was the most selfless set list I had ever seen. It was completely geared toward what it would thrill us to hear. It had new stuff, but it had every hit we wanted to hear, every song we’d ever cried to, every song people had gotten married to, or been brokenhearted to. And I just remembered thinking, “I’ve got to remember that,” that you do that set list for your fans.

McCartney: You do that, do you?

Swift: I do now. I think that learning that lesson from you taught me at a really important stage in my career that if people want to hear “Love Story” and “Shake It Off,” and I’ve played them 300 million times, play them the 300-millionth-and-first time. I think there are times to be selfish in your career, and times to be selfless, and sometimes they line up.

McCartney: I always remembered going to concerts as a kid, completely before the Beatles, and I really hoped they would play the ones I loved. And if they didn’t, it was kind of disappointing. I had no money, and the family wasn’t wealthy. So this would be a big deal for me, to save up for months to afford the concert ticket.

Swift: Yeah, it feels like a bond. It feels like that person on the stage has given something, and it makes you as a crowd want to give even more back, in terms of applause, in terms of dedication. And I just remembered feeling that bond in the crowd, and thinking, “He’s up there playing these Beatles songs, my dad is crying, my mom is trying to figure out how to work her phone because her hands are shaking so much.” Because seeing the excitement course through not only me, but my family and the entire crowd in Nashville, it just was really special. I love learning lessons and not having to learn them the hard way. Like learning nice lessons I really value.

McCartney: Well, that’s great, and I’m glad that set you on that path. I understand people who don’t want to do that, and if you do, they’ll say, “Oh, it’s a jukebox show.” I hear what they’re saying. But I think it’s a bit of a cheat, because the people who come to our shows have spent a lot of money. We can afford to go to a couple of shows and it doesn’t make much difference. But a lot of ordinary working folks... it’s a big event in their life, and so I try and deliver. I also, like you say, try and put in a few weirdos.

Swift: That’s the best. I want to hear current things, too, to update me on where the artist is. I was wondering about lyrics, and where you were lyrically when you were making this record. Because when I was making Folklore, I went lyrically in a total direction of escapism and romanticism. And I wrote songs imagining I was, like, a pioneer woman in a forbidden love affair [laughs]. I was completely...

McCartney: Was this “I want to give you a child”? Is that one of the lines?

Swift: Oh, that’s a song called “Peace.”

McCartney: “Peace,” I like that one.

Swift: “Peace” is actually more rooted in my personal life. I know you have done a really excellent job of this in your personal life: carving out a human life within a public life, and how scary that can be when you do fall in love and you meet someone, especially if you’ve met someone who has a very grounded, normal way of living. I, oftentimes, in my anxieties, can control how I am as a person and how normal I act and rationalize things, but I cannot control if there are 20 photographers outside in the bushes and what they do and if they follow our car and if they interrupt our lives. I can’t control if there’s going to be a fake weird headline about us in the news tomorrow.

McCartney: So how does that go? Does your partner sympathize with that and understand?

Swift: Oh, absolutely.

McCartney: They have to, don’t they?

Swift: But I think that in knowing him and being in the relationship I am in now, I have definitely made decisions that have made my life feel more like a real life and less like just a storyline to be commented on in tabloids. Whether that’s deciding where to live, who to hang out with, when to not take a picture - the idea of privacy feels so strange to try to explain, but it’s really just trying to find bits of normalcy. That’s what that song “Peace” is talking about. Like, would it be enough if I could never fully achieve the normalcy that we both crave? Stella always tells me that she had as normal a childhood as she could ever hope for under the circumstances.

McCartney: Yeah, it was very important to us to try and keep their feet on the ground amongst the craziness.

Swift: She went to a regular school...

McCartney: Yeah, she did.

Swift: And you would go trick-or-treating with them, wearing masks.

McCartney: All of them did, yeah. It was important, but it worked pretty well, because when they kind of reached adulthood, they would meet other kids who might have gone to private schools, who were a little less grounded.

And they could be the budding mothers to [kids]. I remember Mary had a friend, Orlando. Not Bloom. She used to really counsel him. And it’s ’cause she’d gone through that. Obviously, they got made fun of, my kids. They’d come in the classroom and somebody would sing, “Na na na na,” you know, one of the songs. And they’d have to handle that. They’d have to front it out.

Swift: Did that give you a lot of anxiety when you had kids, when you felt like all this pressure that’s been put on me is spilling over onto them, that they didn’t sign up for it? Was that hard for you?

McCartney: Yeah, a little bit, but it wasn’t like it is now. You know, we were just living a kind of semi-hippie life, where we withdrew from a lot of stuff. The kids would be doing all the ordinary things, and their school friends would be coming up to the house and having parties, and it was just great. I remember one lovely evening when it was Stella’s birthday, and she brought a bunch of school kids up. And, you know, they’d all ignore me. It happens very quickly. At first they’re like, “Oh, yeah, he’s like a famous guy,” and then it’s like [yawns]. I like that. I go in the other room and suddenly I hear this music going on. And one of the kids, his name was Luke, and he’s doing break dancing.

Swift: Ohhh!

McCartney: He was a really good break dancer, so all the kids are hanging out. That allowed them to be kind of normal with those kids. The other thing is, I don’t live fancy. I really don’t. Sometimes it’s a little bit of an embarrassment, if I’ve got someone coming to visit me, or who I know…

Swift: Cares about that stuff?

McCartney: Who’s got a nice big house, you know. Quincy Jones came to see me and I’m, like, making him a veggie burger or something. I’m doing some cooking. This was after I’d lost Linda, in between there. But the point I’m making is that I’m very consciously thinking, “Oh, God, Quincy’s got to be thinking, ‘What is this guy on? He hasn’t got big things going on. It’s not a fancy house at all. And we’re eating in the kitchen! He’s not even got the dining room going,’” you know?

Swift: I think that sounds like a perfect day.

McCartney: But that’s me. I’m awkward like that. That’s my kind of thing. Maybe I should have, like, a big stately home. Maybe I should get a staff. But I think I couldn’t do that. I’d be so embarrassed. I’d want to walk around dressed as I want to walk around, or naked, if I wanted to.

Swift: That can’t happen in Downton Abbey.

McCartney: [Laughs.] Exactly.

Swift: I remember what I wanted to know about, which is lyrics. Like, when you’re in this kind of strange, unparalleled time, and you’re making this record, are lyrics first? Or is it when you get a little melodic idea?

McCartney: It was a bit of both. As it kind of always is with me. There’s no fixed way. People used to ask me and John, “Well, who does the words, who does the music?” I used to say, “We both do both.” We used to say we don’t have a formula, and we don’t want one. Because the minute we get a formula, we should rip it up. I will sometimes, as I did with a couple of songs on this album, sit down at the piano and just start noodling around, and I’ll get a little idea and start to fill that out. So the lyrics - for me, it’s following a trail. I’ll start [sings “Find My Way,” a song from “McCartney III”]: “I can find my way. I know my left from right, da da da.” And I’ll just sort of fill it in. Like, we know this song, and I’m trying to remember the lyrics. Sometimes I’ll just be inspired by something. I had a little book which was all about the constellations and the stars and the orbits of Venus and...

Swift: Oh, I know that song - “The Kiss of Venus”?

McCartney: Yeah, “The Kiss of Venus.” And I just thought, “That’s a nice phrase.” So I was actually just taking phrases out of the book, harmonic sounds. And the book is talking about the maths of the universe, and how when things orbit around each other, and if you trace all the patterns, it becomes like a lotus flower.

Swift: Wow.

McCartney: It’s very magical.

Swift: That is magical. I definitely relate to needing to find magical things in this very not-magical time, needing to read more books and learn to sew, and watch movies that take place hundreds of years ago. In a time where, if you look at the news, you just want to have a panic attack - I really relate to the idea that you are thinking about stars and constellations.

McCartney: Did you do that on Folklore?

Swift: Yes. I was reading so much more than I ever did, and watching so many more films.

McCartney: What stuff were you reading?

Swift: I was reading, you know, books like Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier, which I highly recommend, and books that dealt with times past, a world that doesn’t exist anymore. I was also using words I always wanted to use - kind of bigger, flowerier, prettier words, like “epiphany,” in songs. I always thought, “Well, that’ll never track on pop radio,” but when I was making this record, I thought, “What tracks? Nothing makes sense anymore. If there’s chaos everywhere, why don’t I just use the damn word I want to use in the song?”

McCartney: Exactly. So you’d see the word in a book and think, “I love that word”?

Swift: Yeah, I have favorite words, like “elegies” and “epiphany” and “divorcée,” and just words that I think sound beautiful, and I have lists and lists of them.

McCartney: How about “marzipan”?

Swift: Love “marzipan.”

McCartney: The other day, I was remembering when we wrote “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”: “kaleidoscope.”

Swift: “Kaleidoscope” is one of mine! I have a song on 1989, a song called “Welcome to New York,” that I put the word “kaleidoscope” in just because I’m obsessed with the word.

McCartney: I think a love of words is a great thing, particularly if you’re going to try to write a lyric, and for me, it’s like, “What is this going to say to that person?” I often feel like I’m writing to someone who is not doing so well. So I’m trying to write songs that might help. Not in a goody-goody, crusading kind of way, but just thinking there have been so many times in my life when I’ve heard a song and felt so much better. I think that’s the angle I want, that inspirational thing.

I remember once, a friend of mine from Liverpool, we were teenagers and we were going to a fairground. He was a schoolmate, and we had these jackets that had a little fleck in the material, which was the cool thing at the time.

Swift: We should have done matching jackets for this photo shoot.

McCartney: Find me a fleck, I’m in. But we went to the fair, and I just remember - this is what happens with songs - there was this girl at the fair. This is just a little Liverpool fair - it was in a place called Sefton Park - and there was this girl, who was so beautiful. She wasn’t a star. She was so beautiful. Everyone was following her, and it’s like, “Wow.” It’s like a magical scene, you know? But all this gave me a headache, so I ended up going back to his house - I didn’t normally get headaches. And we thought, “What can we do?” So we put on the Elvis song “All Shook Up.” By the end of that song, my headache had gone. I thought, you know, “That’s powerful.”

Swift: That really is powerful.

McCartney: I love that, when people stop me in the street and say, “Oh, I was going through an illness and I listened to a lot of your stuff, and I’m better now and it got me through,” or kids will say, “It got me through exams.” You know, they’re studying, they’re going crazy, but they put your music on. I’m sure it happens with a lot of your fans. It inspires them, you know?

Swift: Yeah, I definitely think about that as a goal. There’s so much stress everywhere you turn that I kind of wanted to make an album that felt sort of like a hug, or like your favorite sweater that makes you feel like you want to put it on.

McCartney: What, a “cardigan”?

Swift: Like a good cardigan, a good, worn-in cardigan. Or something that makes you reminisce on your childhood. I think sadness can be cozy. It can obviously be traumatic and stressful, too, but I kind of was trying to lean into sadness that feels like somehow enveloping in not such a scary way - like nostalgia and whimsy incorporated into a feeling like you’re not all right. Because I don’t think anybody was really feeling like they were in their prime this year. Isolation can mean escaping into your imagination in a way that’s kind of nice.

McCartney: I think a lot of people have found that. I would say to people, “I feel a bit guilty about saying I’m actually enjoying this quarantine thing,” and people go, “Yeah, I know, don’t say it to anyone.” A lot of people are really suffering.

Swift: Because there’s a lot in life that’s arbitrary. Completely and totally arbitrary. And [the quarantine] is really shining a light on that, and also a lot of things we have that we outsource that you can actually do yourself.

McCartney: I love that. This is why I said I live simply. That’s, like, at the core of it. With so many things, something goes wrong and you go, “Oh, I’ll get somebody to fix that.” And then it’s like, “No, let me have a look at it...”

Swift: Get a hammer and a nail.

McCartney: “Maybe I can put that picture up.” It’s not rocket science. The period after the Beatles, when we went to live in Scotland on a really - talk about dumpy - little farm. I mean, I see pictures of it now and I’m not ashamed, but I’m almost ashamed. Because it’s like, “God, nobody’s cleaned up around here.”

But it was really a relief. Because when I was with the Beatles, we’d formed Apple Records, and if I wanted a Christmas tree, someone would just buy it. And I thought, after a while, “No, you know what? I really would like to go and buy our Christmas tree. Because that’s what everyone does.” So you go down - “I’ll have that one” - and you carried it back. I mean, it’s little, but it’s huge at the same time.

I needed a table in Scotland and I was looking through a catalog and I thought, “I could make one. I did woodwork in school, so I know what a dovetail joint is.” So I just figured it out. I’m just sitting in the kitchen, and I’m whittling away at this wood and I made this little joint. There was no nail technology - it was glue. And I was scared to put it together. I said, “It’s not going to fit,” but one day, I got my woodwork glue and thought, “There’s no going back.” But it turned out to be a real nice little table I was very proud of. It was that sense of achievement.

The weird thing was, Stella went up to Scotland recently and I said, “Isn’t it there?” and she said, “No.” Anyway, I searched for it. Nobody remembered it. Somebody said, “Well, there’s a pile of wood in the corner of one of the barns, maybe that’s it. Maybe they used it for firewood.” I said, “No, it’s not firewood.” Anyway, we found it, and do you know how joyous that was for me? I was like, “You found my table?!” Somebody might say that’s a bit boring.

Swift: No, it’s cool!

McCartney: But it was a real sort of great thing for me to be able to do stuff for yourself. You were talking about sewing. I mean normally, in your position, you’ve got any amount of tailors.

Swift: Well, there’s been a bit of a baby boom recently; several of my friends have gotten pregnant.

McCartney: Oh, yeah, you’re at the age.

Swift: And I was just thinking, “I really want to spend time with my hands, making something for their children.” So I made this really cool flying-squirrel stuffed animal that I sent to one of my friends. I sent a teddy bear to another one, and I started making these little silk baby blankets with embroidery. It’s gotten pretty fancy. And I’ve been painting a lot.

McCartney: What do you paint? Watercolors?

Swift: Acrylic or oil. Whenever I do watercolor, all I paint is flowers. When I have oil, I really like to do landscapes. I always kind of return to painting a lonely little cottage on a hill.

McCartney: It’s a bit of a romantic dream. I agree with you, though, I think you’ve got to have dreams, particularly this year. You’ve got to have something to escape to. When you say “escapism,” it sounds like a dirty word, but this year, it definitely wasn’t. And in the books you’re reading, you’ve gone into that world. That’s, I think, a great thing. Then you come back out. I normally will read a lot before I go to bed. So I’ll come back out, then I’ll go to sleep, so I think it really is nice to have those dreams that can be fantasies or stuff you want to achieve.

Swift: You’re creating characters. This was the first album where I ever created characters, or wrote about the life of a real-life person. There’s a song called “The Last Great American Dynasty” that’s about this real-life heiress who lived just an absolutely chaotic, hectic...

McCartney: She’s a fantasy character?

Swift: She’s a real person. Who lived in the house that I live in.

McCartney: She’s a real person? I listened to that and I thought, “Who is this?”

Swift: Her name was Rebekah Harkness. And she lived in the house that I ended up buying in Rhode Island. That’s how I learned about her. But she was a woman who was very, very talked about, and everything she did was scandalous. I found a connection in that. But I also was thinking about how you write “Eleanor Rigby” and go into that whole story about what all these people in this town are doing and how their lives intersect, and I hadn’t really done that in a very long time with my music. It had always been so microscope personal.

McCartney: Yeah, ’cause you were writing breakup songs like they were going out of style.

Swift: I was, before my luck changed [laughs]. I still write breakup songs. I love a good breakup song. Because somewhere in the world, I always have a friend going through a breakup, and that will make me write one.

McCartney: Yeah, this goes back to this thing of me and John: When you’ve got a formula, break it. I don’t have a formula. It’s the mood I’m in. So I love the idea of writing a character. And, you know, trying to think, “What am I basing this on?” So “Eleanor Rigby” was based on old ladies I knew as a kid. For some reason or other, I got great relationships with a couple of local old ladies. I was thinking the other day, I don’t know how I met them, it wasn’t like they were family. I’d just run into them, and I’d do their shopping for them.

Swift: That’s amazing.

McCartney: It just felt good to me. I would sit and talk, and they’d have amazing stories. That’s what I liked. They would have stories from the wartime - because I was born actually in the war - and so these old ladies, they were participating in the war. This one lady I used to sort of just hang out with, she had a crystal radio that I found very magical. In the war, a lot of people made their own radios - you’d make them out of crystals [sings “The Twilight Zone” theme].

Swift: How did I not know this? That sounds like something I would have tried to learn about.

McCartney: It’s interesting, because there is a lot of parallels with the virus and lockdowns and wartime. It happened to everyone. Like, this isn’t HIV, or SARS, or Avian flu, which happened to others, generally. This has happened to everyone, all around the world. That’s the defining thing about this particular virus. And, you know, my parents... it happened to everyone in Britain, including the queen and Churchill. War happened. So they were all part of this thing, and they all had to figure out a way through it. So you figured out Folklore. I figured out McCartney III.

Swift: And a lot of people have been baking sourdough bread. Whatever gets you through!

McCartney: Some people used to make radios. And they’d take a crystal - we should look it up, but it actually is a crystal. I thought, “Oh, no, they just called it a crystal radio,” but it’s actually crystals like we know and love.

Swift: Wow.

McCartney: And somehow they get the radio waves - this crystal attracts them - they tune it in, and that’s how they used to get their news. Back to “Eleanor Rigby,” so I would think of her and think of what she’s doing and then just try to get lyrical, just try to bring poetry into it, words you love, just try to get images like “picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been,” and Father McKenzie “is darning his socks in the night.” You know, he’s a religious man, so I could’ve said, you know, “preparing his Bible,” which would have been more obvious. But “darning his socks” kind of says more about him. So you get into this lovely fantasy. And that’s the magic of songs, you know. It’s a black hole, and then you start doing this process, and then there’s this beautiful little flower that you’ve just made. So it is very like embroidery, making something.

Swift: Making a table.

McCartney: Making a table.

Swift: Wow, it would’ve been so fun to play Glastonbury for the 50th anniversary together.

McCartney: It would’ve been great, wouldn’t it? And I was going to be asking you to play with me.

Swift: Were you going to invite me? I was hoping that you would. I was going to ask you.

McCartney: I would’ve done “Shake It Off.”

Swift: Oh, my God, that would have been amazing.

McCartney: I know it, it’s in C!

Swift: One thing I just find so cool about you is that you really do seem to have the joy of it, still, just no matter what. You seem to have the purest sense of joy of playing an instrument and making music, and that’s just the best, I think.

McCartney: Well, we’re just so lucky, aren’t we?

Swift: We’re really lucky.

McCartney: I don’t know if it ever happens to you, but with me, it’s like, “Oh, my god, I’ve ended up as a musician.”

Swift: Yeah, I can’t believe it’s my job.

McCartney: I must tell you a story I told Mary the other day, which is just one of my favorite little sort of Beatles stories. We were in a terrible, big blizzard, going from London to Liverpool, which we always did. We’d be working in London and then drive back in the van, just the four of us with our roadie, who would be driving. And this was a blizzard. You couldn’t see the road. At one point, it slid off and it went down an embankment. So it was “Ahhh,” a bunch of yelling. We ended up at the bottom. It didn’t flip, luckily, but so there we are, and then it’s like, “Oh, how are we going to get back up? We’re in a van. It’s snowing, and there’s no way.” We’re all standing around in a little circle, and thinking, “What are we going to do?” And one of us said, “Well, something will happen.” And I thought that was just the greatest. I love that, that’s a philosophy.

Swift: “Something will happen.”

McCartney: And it did. We sort of went up the bank, we thumbed a lift, we got the lorry driver to take us, and Mal, our roadie, sorted the van and everything. So that was kind of our career. And I suppose that’s like how I ended up being a musician and a songwriter: “Something will happen.”

Swift: That’s the best.

McCartney: It’s so stupid it’s brilliant. It’s great if you’re ever in that sort of panic attack: “Oh, my God,” or, “Ahhh, what am I going to do?”

Swift: “Something will happen.”

McCartney: All right then, thanks for doing this, and this was, you know, a lot of fun.

Swift: You’re the best. This was so awesome. Those were some quality stories!

[immaturityofthomasastruc]

IOTA Reviews: Crocoduel

When you stop and think about it, this episode is really just the world's most intense custody battle.

Let's get into the thirteenth (chronologically the twelfth) episode of Miraculous Ladybug's fourth season: Crocoduel

We start off with the band Kitty Section (composed of Luka, his timid sister Juleka, her “best friend” Rose, and Ivan) performing a concert for the super amazing Zoe and all the peons beneath her greatness (Alya, Alix, Nino, and Mylene). Luka notes its been a while since Marinette came to the Liberty. Because I guess even the show wants to forget the events of “Sole Crusher”.

Luka is still upset that Marinette hasn't wanted to be around him since their breakup, so after he walks away, the others scheme to force them to spend time together.

Yep, even though they promised to back off in “Gang of Secrets”, Marinette's friends are once again trying to meddle in Marinette's personal life as well as Luka's this time. Because it's not like they can understand how hard it is for two exes to remain friends after a breakup and give them their space, right? They plan to invite Marinette to Luka and Juleka's birthday party while reminding the audience that they're twins.

YES. THEY HAVE ALWAYS BEEN TWINS. ASTRUC HAS NEVER SAID OTHERWISE OR CONTRADICTED THIS STATEMENT IN THE PAST.

LUKA WAS NEVER TWO YEARS OLDER THAN JULEKA, JUST LIKE THERE WAS NEVER A WAR IN BA SING SE.

In all seriousness, I do feel like I was a little hard on Astruc for this. Compared to other things he's made canon on Twitter, this is fairly minor, and we only knew Luka was the older brother at first through a tweet. And considering the other retcon we'll see in the very next scene, this isn't as big of a deal as I made it initially.

Alya invites Marinette to the party, but she easily deduces that it's a trap. Alya then tries to convince Marinette to talk to Luka.

Uh... since when? When did Marinette lose all romantic feelings for Luka? The whole point of the breakup in “Truth” was to show that she couldn't pursue a romantic relationship with Luka because of her duties as Ladybug. She never showed any signs of not loving him, which made the breakup all the more tragic. Yeah, “Mr. Pigeon 72” was an excuse for her to go back to loving Adrien because the writers don't know how to write anything else, but it didn't mean she stopped loving Luka. You know, it's almost like the writers want to make sure the audience knows Lukanette will never happen and the sacred Love Square is the only way Marinette will ever feel love for someone else.

Alya still forces Marinette to go, making her ask Juleka if Luka won't be there. Some people have gone down on Marinette for this, but she does later acknowledge how wrong this was to ask, and apologizes to Juleka for trying to force her to do something she didn't want to do. If only Marinette's friends learned the same lesson.

Juleka goes to tell Luka about the party, but hesitates to tell Luka he can't go there. While he knows Juleka is hiding something, Luka is distracted by the sudden arrival of his father who he loves despite abandoning him for his entire life, Jagged Stone. However, Luka and Juleka's mother, the anarchy-loving Anarka isn't happy that much like his sperm when the condom broke, Jagged came in without her permission.

At the day of the party, Marinette panics as soon as she sees Luka, who in turn realizes she didn't want to see him. Rather than comfort Juleka who just ran away crying, the others comfort Luka, preventing him from being akumatized by Shadowmoth, though he still keeps his Akuma around just to be safe. Marinette apologizes to Juleka before Shadowmoth can akumatize her too (even though she got a Magical Charm in “Guiltrip” so it wouldn't work either way). Then Shadowmoth tries to akumatize one of the guests as they find out Jagged (who just arrived) is Luka's father, but since they're dumb teenagers who don't know Jagged was winning awards and being celebrated as a rock icon while Anarka was working two jobs and struggling to make enough money for rent, they think it's awesome. Very confusing day for Shadowmoth, isn't it?

Marinette also finds out Jagged is Juleka's father and finds out Juleka worries Jagged loves Luka more since they share more interests, which she thinks is true when Jagged gives Luka a guitar case and instructs her to not tell his sister. Marinette tries to call out Jagged for neglecting Juleka over Luka even though Jagged was more of a father to his pet crocodile than either of his biological children, but it's obviously a gift for Juleka, the first bass guitar Jagged ever owned, which calms her down. Funny how nobody acknowledges how Jagged practically abandoned his family, isn't it? Sure, it looks like he's trying to make up for it, but he just acts like he's always been Luka and Juleka's dad and they don't have any problems with their father literally never being in their lives until now.

Jagged's gift to Luka is a record of the first record he made in his band with Anarka before they broke up, Crododuel, but Anarka is naturally pissed he wants to give that to Luka. Jagged and Anarka argue over which one was the Yoko Ono in their relationship while they both grab the record, which Shadowmoth uses to akumatize the two as it breaks, turning them back into Guitar Villain and Captain Hardrock respectively, Shadowmoth labeling them as Crocoduel.

Unlike the other team Akumas like the Punishers or the Gang of Secrets, Guitar Villain and Captain Hardrock care more about fighting each other than working together, and they see getting Ladybug and Cat Noir's Miraculous as a competition to help prove who was right in their argument. It's a pretty interesting gimmick, though I don't get how Shadowmoth thinks this will help him and not ignore Ladybug and Cat Noir while they fight.

Alya provides a distraction to help Marinette transform, and after we get Adrien's single scene to remind the audience he's still a main character, he transforms into Cat Noir. The two heroes give chase, but then Guitar Villain and Captain Hardrock decide to take their fight to above the clouds.

Yeah, it's not like you have a form that specifically allows you two to fly, right?

All they had to say was that Marinette was still making more potions for that form, and it would have been better than ignoring the fact that they can fly.

Much like the hotel room during the night Luka and Juleka were conceived, the crossfire from Guitar Villain and Captain Hardrock's fight starts to damage the area around them. Ladybug and Cat Noir get Luka and Juleka to safety, and Luka tells them about what's happening, while Ladybug spouts the lesson about people needing to talk even though they don't love each other anymore, reflecting the situation the writers retconned her into learning.

Ladybug summons her Lucky Charm, a roll of scotch tape, and comes up with an idea that involves Juleka. She takes her away into an alleyway and gives her the Tiger Miraculous. The tiger Kwami, Roarr, demands Juleka show some courage, so Juleka yells in her face. Unfortunately, as much as I want to show this scene, the subs I got don't really match up, so I can't really give some screenshots of it. So I guess you can watch this scene from Full Metal Jacket instead to get the gist of things.

So Juleka takes the Tiger Miraculous and transforms into Purple Tigress.

I think the suit has a pretty good design. I like the striped pattern with the gold highlights around the black stripes, and think the color scheme is visually pleasing, especially the hair. I wouldn't call it one of my favorite hero suits, but I still like the way it looks.

Cat Noir launches Ladybug and Purple Tigress into the air where they split up to steal both halves of the record, but when they break them, no Akuma comes out. It turns out that since the record was broken while Jagged and Anarka were akumatized, they need to put it together again before breaking it in order to free the Akuma.

Purple Tigresse goes to distract Guitar Villain and Captain Hardrock with her power, Collision, which she uses to KNOCK CAPTAIN HARDROCK'S SHIP ABOVE THE CLOUDS, TAKING GUITAR VILLAIN WITH HER.

Why the hell did it take four seasons to break this Miraculous out if it gives the user the ability to go Super Saiyan on the enemy? I think Cat Noir's expression after seeing the power in action says it all.

Cat Noir Cataclysms the record (because a record is just so hard to break without using the power of destruction, isn't it?), Ladybug de-evilizes the Akuma, uses Miraculous Ladybug to fix everything, Jagged and Anarka somehow weren't killed by their own daughter, the three heroes pound it, and Ladybug gives two Magical Charms to Jagged and Anarka.

Back at the Liberty, Juleka tells the two to forget what caused them to break up and just apologize while they ignore the past, proving the writers really don't get how hard it is to move on from tough events in life. And despite building it up for the entire episode, Marinette and Luka talk in the final thirty seconds of the episode and just agree to be friends, meaning once again, Luka was sidelined in what should have been a focus episode for him.

Aside from the way Jagged and Anarka's relationship was portrayed coupled with the retcons surrounding Luka, this episode was alright in my opinion. Guitar Villain and Captain Hardrock are some of my favorite Akumas, so I thought it was nice to see them again, even if we didn't get to see their powers at full potential. I also thought this was a really good episode for Juleka, as I felt like the hero debut really helped her grow as a person and didn't just feel like she was given a Miraculous because the plot said so. She wanted to help her parents, and using the Tiger gave her the courage to symbolically speak out while potentially launching them into the stratosphere.

But the biggest problem to me has to be the way Jagged is portrayed in the episode. Just like with “Truth”, the idea of Jagged being a terrible parent is just swept under the rug and everyone just accepts the fact that Jagged is Luka and Juleka's dad very well. Despite the idea leading to some interesting drama in a show that's no stranger to family drama, they don't really do much with the whole “Jagged abandoning Anarka” thing. Aside from a brief interaction between Luka and Jagged while the former was akumatized into Truth, nobody is really angry at Jagged. Nobody really feels angry at Jagged for what he did, despite the drama being the main focus behind the episode that also had the Lukanette breakup. You would think this would at least lead to some tension between his family, but nothing really comes from it other than an argument that was pretty much played for laughs. But considering this show has a history of teaching kids to love their parents no matter how cruel they are to them, I'm not entirely surprised.

Overall, it's just a decent, albeit forgettable episode. If the writing with Jagged was different, it could have been a lot better in my opinion.

[captain-mcdavid]

three times to fall - nolan patrick

word count: 2k

smut: yes | no

summary: three times the reader realized they might have more than just friendly feelings towards nolan.

warnings: steam, swearing, alcohol (this is like the first thing i’ve written here since gpp, so bear with me, it might not be that great)

the first time

It was getting harder and harder to keep track of your group of friends in the crowded stadium, you stumbled along, your head turning left and right frantically as you looked for a familiar face. 

You slowed your pace, mouth twisting in confusion when a finger hooks through your belt loop, yanking you back into a solid chest. “Watch where you’re going,” Lips graze your ear, a recognizable deep voice whispering while hands slide to rest over your hipbones, guiding you through the crowd. 

You turn your head back and up to look at Nolan, his blue eyes zoned in on moving the two of you through the crowd. His hands stay solid on your waist, and the longer they sit there the hotter the skin starts to feel. You pull forward a little more, trying to distance yourself, hoping that maybe Nolan will let go, but his fingers just tighten on your skin making you picture things you really shouldn’t be picturing with one of your good friends. 

Suddenly Nolan jerks you to the left, and if it weren’t for his solid grip on you, you’re sure you would have tumbled over, but thank god you’re able to stay on your feet in his presence. Just literally, though. Definitely not metaphorically. Your mind trips over almost every little thing he does. 

“There she is!” You hear Leah before you see her, she appears as people clear the small corner your friends are tucked into. “Couldn’t keep up?”

She teases you and you feel the rumble of Nolan’s laughter against your back, reminding you just how close the two of you are. 

Instinctively your hand lands on his wrist, and you swear you feel an actual spark.

“We’re gonna head to the exit on 170th, it’s closest to the cars.” Leah says, and you nod.

Your ears are still ringing from the music but you hear Nolan mumble, “Sure,”

And then the group keeps walking, Nolan still behind you, his hands still on your hips and you heart still beating way too fast.

What is happening?

...

the second time

Standing against the wall you watch as the other party goers do shots, acting rambunctious and carefree. A small laugh escapes you when you see Travis throw his beer can on the ground, stomping on it mercilessly for no reason.

Another wave of the loopiness that pushed you to seek space in the first place hits, so you wander down the hall, pushing into the first room with a bed.

It’s clean, but a fast clean. The type of tidying someone does when they’re in a rush. There’s hockey memorabilia everywhere, and when you see the photo on the bedside table you realize that you’re in Nolan’s room. You feel odd being in here but you slouch onto the bed anyway, feeling better as soon as you’re off your feet.

You lean to look at the pictures on the bedside table, smiling at the sly grin Nolan sports in almost everyone of the photos. Since the concert you had been thinking about him more than you should. It wasn’t normal to view a good friend like this, one that you’ve known since elementary school.

You’ve watched him grow up. And somehow you started seeing him less as the goofy kid that kicked everyone’s ass in gym class hockey, and more as a man. A hot man. With a good sense of humour and an extremely charming smile.

“Snooping?”

Your head snaps towards the door when you hear his voice, his lazy grin lets you know he’s not serious so you smirk in response, giving him a nod, your heart rate picking up.

There are a lot of things running through your head at the moment, and you’re very close to saying every single one of them, but you’d need one more shot to do that.

He runs his hand through his hair as he walks over to you, and your filter loosens enough for the words to slip out, “Can I play with your hair?”

Nolan laughs and you giggle along with him while he sits beside you on the bed. “You wanna play with my hair?”

You nod, biting your lip as you crawl menacingly towards him. His eyes widen and he inches further away, grabbing at your wrists when you try to reach for him.

“No,” He laughs, pushing you away.

You sit back on your knees and frown, “Please,”

He scans you with furrowed brows for a moment before sighing and nodding. You scoot behind him with an excited squeal, signalling his loud laugh, and a flutter of your heart.

You wouldn’t do it- any of this really- if you weren’t intoxicated, but knowing that you can blame all of your embarrassing actions on alcohol. Throwing caution to the wind you move so that your legs are on either side of him, you’re not expecting him to, but almost instinctively he leans back into you. With a grin you run your hands through his locks and he makes a fake moaning noise.

“I’m gonna braid it,” You whisper, separating the hair into three chunks. You’re surprised by how soft it feels in between your fingers. You’re focused on braid and you’re nearly halfway done when you feel a light touch on the bottoms of both of your feet. It’s an uncomfortable tickle that makes you fidgit, both your legs coming to wrap around Nolans torso.

Realizing the weirdness of it all you’re about to move your legs but Nolan holds them there. “What are you doing?” You ask, wiggling your feet in his lap.

Nolan stands suddenly and you gasp, grabbing his shoulders quick so the other half of you doesn’t fall behind. “Nolan put me down!”

He spins maniacally squeezing your calves relentlessly while you shake with laughter. You jerk one leg free finally nearly falling when it hits the ground. Nolan drops your other leg and you use all your strength to shove him. You’re expecting more than him just lazily falling onto the bed, but that’s all you get despite what you though was an impressive output of strength. “Asshole,” You murmur, moving closer to push at his chest, but he catches your wrist with a smirk, yanking you right into him.

You’re nearly chest to chest, and you’re extremely confused as to what’s going on but you let it happen anyway, moving easily as he guides you to straddle his lap. You have a staring contest for a minute, but the look in his eyes is so intense you need a break, so you reach your hands into his hair again, running your nails along his scalp. His eyes flutter shut, hands coming to rest in the back belt loops of your jeans.

“Nolan,” You whisper, and it sounds like a question, cause you’re seriously wondering what the hell is going on.

He opens his eyes and hums a response, one of his hands moving from your back to your face. His thumb catches your bottom lip and he sweeps it down, watching the way it moves.

Your heart is no longer beating steadily at this point, because you can’t believe that this is happening. But it is, and he’s definitely leaning in closer. When he kisses you the first time it’s gentle, so soft you’re not even sure it actually happened. Your lips mould together lightly, almost like he’s afraid of your reaction.

When he pulls back and your eyes flutter open, lips still parted he stares back, his gaze flickering between your own and your mouth. You swear you see the slate color in his eyes darken before he connects your lips again, harder and more urgent this time.

His lips are so soft and inviting, the way they work with your own makes you feel like your entire body is buzzing. His tongue licks into your mouth and you instinctively lean into him, your hands sliding down to the naps of his neck. Tugging lightly at the hair you slide your other hand below the fabric of his flannel and t shirt, trying to get as close as possible.

Nolan pushes at your bum, queuing a roll of your hips against him. The low moan that your movement entices has you pulling away with a gasp, fuck he’s hot.

You observe him with wide eyes, his swollen lips and heaving chest. He tilts your chin up forcefully, exposing your neck. He bites into the skin gently, and you want nothing more than to lean back in and kiss the life out of him, but sober you is fighting for the steering wheel, which is why you blurt out, “What are we doing?”

“Making out,” He mumbles, words muffled against the skin of your neck.

“Just making out?” You reply, your hand gripping harder at his hair. You’re like pushing him into you, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

“Do you want me to do more?” He whispers, pressing his lips right below your ear.

“More...?” It comes out breathy, you’re totally engrossed in what his mouth is doing.

“Yeah,” He starts, kissing down the column of you neck before dragging his tongue back up. “More.”

A loud moan escapes you at his actions, and he chuckles against your skin. “I’m gonna take that as a yes,”

Then he��s standing up, but you’re prepared this time, holding onto him easily. His teeth are dragging across your collarbone now, while he strides across the room, he kicks the door shut and then turns back to drop you onto the bed.

His lips travel down your neck and chest, and when his hands slide up the fabric, and just when he’s about to pull it off, the door busts open, almost as fast as it just closed.

“Nolan!” Travis yells, completely oblivious to the fact that he’s literally on top of you. “Beer pong, let’s go.” And then he leaves.

The room goes silent and all you and Nolan can do is stare at eachother, the earlier moment completely ruined.

“Uh...”

“I should um-,” Nolan starts, and you nod, frozen underneath him. He just nods and then stands from the bed, looking back and forth between you and the door before he nods awkwardly and then leaves.

What is happening?

...

the third time

“We are not watching that!” Rachel barks, yanking the DVD case from Nolan’s hand. 

“Slap shot is a classic, but fine.” He grunts, flopping down onto the couch beside you.

You shift away from him a little, still not sure how to act. More chatter ensues, and you give input every once in a while, rolling your eyes at your friends incapability to choose a movie. Finally, someone decides on the Avengers, and not everyone is happy of course, but the opening credits start to roll anyways. 

Ignoring the five people already on the couch, Rachel parks herself directly in the middle, squishing everyone up against each other, groans and swears are heard from all of you but Rachel just waves you off, making you roll your eyes. 

You feel Nolan shift beside you, turning so he’s more on his side giving you a little more space. “Here,” He mumbles, hand finding your leg and adjusting you so you were in the same position, your back pressed to his front. He’s practically spooning you, your right shoulder pressed to the back of the couch. You’re stiff against his body, and it’s like he can feel it, cause he rubs his hand back and forth against your thigh.

You haven’t talked about what happened at his party, and Nolan seems to be acting like nothing has happened, but you can’t brush it off that easy. Not after all these feelings you’ve been having.

To your surprise he doesn’t move his hand, it stays in it’s place a few inches above your knee. Leah chucks a blanket over the herself and the two of you, making Nolan’s very noticeable PDA less noticeable.

As the movie starts, your friends chatter and jost at eachother, but it dies down eventually, everyone quieting to watch the action.

You eventually relax too, leaning back into Nolan instinctively, your eyes drooping the longer the movie plays.

At some point the noise around you mutes completely, Nolan’s warmth and steady breathing lulling you to sleep.

You don’t wake until the movies over, your friends all nudging on the couch to get up.

You shift, trying to appear less groggy but then a hand slides from your leg to your waist, and Nolan pulls you back against him.

“Tired?” His low voice rumbles behind you, and maybe it’s that you’re still tired, or maybe it’s that you just want to feel him behind you, but you nod, leaning even further back.

He chuckles, his head falling to rest on yours. And then your friends turn to face you all cuddled up, and the both of you are straightening up immediately.

You stand, trying to hide the blush on your cheeks. “Good movie,” You say, and everyone laughs.

“Oh please, you watched maybe five minutes of it,” Leah quips, and you make a face back.

“Ready Nolan?” Trevor asks, pulling his keys out of his pocket.

Everybody else heads to the door as well, giving hugs on the way out.

Nolan reaches out to give you a one armed hug before he walks out the door, and it’s so quick you almost miss the way he kisses the corner of your mouth, winking before he walks out.

You’re left standing there in complete shock, which seems to be a very common emotion when you’re around Nolan lately.

And all you can think is what is happening?

[kimmyyang]

210504 GJ & ZZH cut @ backstage

MC: I heard that they made you guys use the same dressing room so you can get to know each other better. GJ: The entire crew uses the same dressing room. MC: So you know what each other is like when you're resting. GJ: Oh... Jie, when we get our makeup done in the morning and we use the same dressing room. If the condition is not allowed, we rest in the lounge. If we have electricity, we can go into the caravan and turn on the air conditioner. MC: What are you like when you're in the lounge? GJ: He already said that before. ZZH: No one talks. MC: Just say about each other. So, no one talks? ZZH: When I was in the dressing room, I thought why does he love to play songs so much? He has to play songs the whole time, whether it's on his phone or on his speakers. And he has to sing along, he's obsessed with singing. Seriously. MC: Do you admit to that? GJ: Yes, I admit. ZZH: Do you do that in every crew? GJ: Pretty much. ZZH: Honestly... in this industry, you're lucky that you didn't get beaten to death yet. MC: Hahaha~ because everyone is sleepy in the morning. ZZH: Yes, and he's playing songs out loud. MC: What's the purpose of playing songs? GJ: If I don't play songs, I would be very sleepy. ZZH: He's right. GJ: I would fall asleep while getting my makeup done, especially in the early morning. Very sleepy. MC: Have you been updating your playlist lately? GJ: Yes, I like to listen to Jay Chou. Both of us like to listen (to Jay Chou). When I play his songs, Zhang laoshi also sings along. And Wang Leehom. ZZH: JJ Lin. GJ: JJ Lin. MC: Recently, a laoshi who's surname is Zhang has released a song called 环绕 (ZZH's new song), please have a listen. GJ: I will buy it. ZZH: How many are you planning to buy? GJ: You say how many I should buy? MC: 511 (it's ZZH's birthday) GJ: 511, I know it's his birthday... I've already... I won't say it. ZZH: That's nothing to Gong laoshi (meaning that he's rich haha) MC: You're the master of the ghost valley after all, you're very generous. GJ: I've already given him a present, it's a secret. I won't tell you. MC: Ok, keep it secret. Let's recommend something that you use daily. GJ: In my bag? MC: Yes. You're very good at recommending stuff, like the washing socks machine. GJ: To be honest, that socks machine... I won't say the brand but don't buy it, it broke. ZZH: They won't give you an endorsement now (you've said that). GJ: It broke, it's not good. MC: Let's recommend something good then. GJ: My endorsement product and it's something that I actually use. ZZH: Aiya~ he's rich now. I thought you were going to recommend the bag. GJ: Look! ZZH: I was about to say he's different now that he has become popular. GJ: The bag looks nice too. MC: Don't carry the bag under your arm, it doesn't look fashionable. Let's put it aside for now. GJ: This is not an ad, I actually use this lip balm and hand cream. MC: Why are these 2 so special? ZZH: He needs to take care of his hands. GJ: My fans have always told me to take care of my hands. And my lips get dry very often, so I have to apply it. When I was a child... ZZH: You didn't like to drink water. GJ: Yes, my dad's older brother, my uncle used to say that my lips look like monkey's butt when it's red because I always lick them. MC: After you've grown up, you really care about that. Recommend it to everyone. GJ: I recommend these to everyone but I won't say the brand name. MC: It's also the dry season. How about Zhehan? ZZH: Can I recommend something different? MC: Of course, anything that you can think of. GJ: What do you want to recommend? ZZH: When I go to work, I always bring my speakers. I carry my JBL speaker. MC: Which one of you actually plays songs? Both of you carry speakers? ZZH: I play songs too but then he's didi, so I gave the privilege to him. Otherwise, it would have been me bringing my speaker because I do that with every crew. GJ: And you were complaining about me? MC: So when you said that he didn't get beaten to death is something you've experienced before? ZZH:

Yes yes yes. My previous makeup artist, I still remember the promise I made with her. When I walk into the dressing room, I bring in my speaker and sing along. I sing until my makeup is done. GJ: Sing until your makeup is done? Omg. ZZH: Yes. And that makeup artist sometimes she would be in a bad mood, or when I didn't sing that great, she would always hold it in. So I said to her "jie, you've been listening to me singing for 3 months. If I hold a concert in the future, I will invite you." If you're watching this now, please message me and I will invite you to my concert. I still remember it's Lei jie. MC: Lei jie, please contact us, the contact details will be on the bottom of the screen. Please take a look. *laughs*

Translation: KIMMYYANG

[snlhostharry]

try try again

harry x reader

2.2k words 

summary: harry wants to propose, but life keeps getting in the way 

a/n: first off... I suck at titles... why am I like this.... second off this is my secret santa gift for @jambrosemc ! happy holidays em! hope you like this, you are a super talented writer I just binged all your pieces and I am obsessed. and thank you to @peeterparkr for hosting 

The first time he tries is after the first concert he does for Fine Line. 

Fine Line at the Forum is a success in all the ways that matter, and Harry is so happy coming off the stage that he almost forgets about his plan to propose all together. When you barge into his dressing room after the show is over, smiling and ecstatic for him he suddenly sees the ring box on the counter and rushes to shove it in his pocket before you can see it. 

“That was insane, love,” You say wrapping him into a hug. “I think they really liked it.” 

He gives you a cheeky smile, “You think?” You roll your eyes in response, “What gave it away?” He asks, “The frantic screaming or the bra’s that were thrown onto the stage?” 

“You should’ve kept a couple,” You tease, “They could’ve been my size.” 

He laughs, “If you want one that bad I will buy it for you.” 

“I’m holding you to that,” You say, taking a seat on top of the counter. He runs a hand through his hair, knowing that this would be the perfect moment to just get down on one knee. He can see himself doing it, simply bending down and saying the words he’s wanted to say for what feels like forever. “You okay?” You ask him, seeing the look on his face and supposing that he’s thinking about something that happened during the concert. “You did a great job out there, seriously. Everyone really loved it H, the album is spectacular.” 

He shakes himself back into the moment, “I know, I know.” He says, and it comes off a little sharper than he means it too, he’s just very much in his own head about this whole thing now. What felt like it would be the perfect moment now feels wrong, like doing it now would cheapen the entire thing. He sighs, “Sorry,” He says, planting himself down on the floor dramatically, “Thank you.” 

“We don’t have to go out if you don’t want to,” You tell him, guessing that he’s just tired from a long night. “Let’s get takeout and go home, or go home and get takeout whichever order.” 

He smiles, “You ate before the show.” 

“That was like three hours ago, and it was a snack, I always planned on eating again, and you were too nervous to eat before the show.” 

He hugs his knees to his chest, “Watching you eat an entire kids meal in under five minutes actually helped with the nerves.” 

You shrug, “What can I say? I have my moments.” 

He stands and presses a kiss to your forehead as you swing your legs over the side of the counter. “You have a lot of moments, I love you.” 

“Love you too,” You wait a second before asking, “So home then?” 

He thinks about it for a minute, “Yeah.” 

“When you call in the food order make sure you put it under my name,” You tell him and he collects his things from the room, “People are beginning to get suspicious when I go into the restaurant to pick up an order for Harry.” 

He nods, and gently grabs your hand as the two of you leave. Maybe he’s not going to do it tonight, but he’s more resolved to actually pop the question than ever. He’s just so in love with you that he wants the whole thing to be perfect, and for some reason he has it all in his head that it needs to be a story that the two of you can tell in the future, something meaningful, he just has absolutely no idea what that is. 

The second planned attempt is a lot more off the cuff. 

You insist on throwing him a birthday party at the house, saying something about wanting to one up your sister who threw a very tasteful christmas party that the two of you went to. Not that your sister was invited seeing as the party was in London, but you knew that there would be enough pictures that she would see that you’re just as good as she is. Harry doesn’t understand it at all, but he decides that he doesn't even want to know how a rivalry like that can develop and leaves it alone. 

Objectively, you throw a very nice party. Of course Harry makes it a point to tell you this as often as possible without seeming overly invested in it, because he loves you and he wants you to be proud of your own work just like you want him to be proud of his. It’s hard for him to leave your side at all because he loves to see you talk to his friends and family and seem so happy to do it. You fit right in with everyone and he’s so grateful for that, and it’s as he’s standing there watching you talk to people that it hits him that this could be his moment. 

Not in front of everyone because that would be so much more pressure than he needs, but he thinks that after when everyone has finally left the house that he could catch you in the middle of cleaning or something and gently ask you to marry him. He decides that tonight, that’s the plan and he spends the rest of the night just thinking about that. It really is a great party, full of all his favorite things and people, it’s one of those nights where he feels like he loves you so much that his heart might just burst out of his chest. 

When finally every last guest has left the house, and things are a bit messy, he can’t seem to find you anywhere. He locks the door behind him, and starts walking through the house calling your name. He checks upstairs, in the kitchen, in all the bathrooms, and nothing. Until finally he walks into the living room and finds you sound asleep on the couch, snoring loudly enough that he’s surprised he didn’t hear it while he was looking. He looks at you and just smiles, suddenly completely fine with the fact that another plan has been ruined. He simply picks you up and takes you to bed, well aware he’s going to have to move onto plan C if he ever wants to get this done. 

The next time he tries, you end up surprising him. 

Plan C is a nice candlelight dinner at the house, which Harry tried to cook but ended up burning so eventually he relented and ordered food before putting it all together. Of all the plans he had come up with thus far, this one seemed the most foolproof. Everything was already planned: he knew you were going to come home from work at a certain time, he knew that there wouldn't be any distractions, and he had psyched himself up enough that he wasn’t just going to forget about the whole thing like he did the first time.

When the entire table is set up and the ring is in his pocket, he sits waiting for you to come home. He thinks about getting up to change some of the place settings just a little, but when he does he hears the clicking sound of your key in the door and sits back in his seat. After you walk into the house and set your stuff down in the entryway, Harry hears the sound of your shoes on the floor as you excitedly run into the kitchen. When you make it to where he can see you, he sees that you have a megawatt smile on your face and a large box in your hands. 

“I have a surprise,” You say, keeping a firm hold of the box. 

“I suppose it’s in that box,” He says, leaning over the chair so that he can see. 

You roll your eyes but keep smiling, “Yeah, obviously.” 

“Do you want me to guess?”

“God no,” You say, “That would take way too long. Basically I was at work today, and Mark has been producing this piece about a no kill animal shelter for a new segment about everyday heroes or whatever which is gross because puff pieces but when the woman came in to do the interview she brought in all these cats, no dogs for some reason, but anyway so we were all playing with the cats because our job is stressful and cats, and then she was like ‘you guys seem so good with these cats, they are looking for homes and-” 

He looks at you with a wide eyed expression, “You didn’t.” 

You ceremoniously walk over to the table, open the box and pull a small orange cat into your arms, “You bet your ass I did.” You gently pet the cat, which mews quietly from your arms, “She does not have a name mostly because I couldn’t think of any.” 

“We talked about pets like a week ago, briefly.” 

You give a guilty smile, “Yeah but I felt like I really needed this cat. I live here now, we live here, and I finally feel like I’m settled-” You sit down at the table and sigh, “I think I might be nesting, which is kind of gross but I don't know. I love you, and I love being here and I finally feel stable enough to get a freaking cat so that’s the explanation I have.” 

He can’t stop himself from breaking into a smile, even though he knows his plans have been thwarted again. (He thinks later, after the moment has already passed that he very well could’ve done it right then and there after you’d given a whole speech about the two of you being stable). He shakes his head after looking at you making funny faces at the cat like it’s a child, “Okay hand her over.” 

You hand her over and say, “I will not accept any names that have to go with the fact that she’s a ginger, because that’s just lame.” 

“Well seeing as those were my only ideas-”

You sigh, “We will think of something, just not now because you got dinner and I’m starving.” 

“What’s she going to eat?”

“I got food and a bowl, and a bunch more things being delivered within the next week or two.” 

“Did you go out and buy a box just for the dramatic reveal?”

“Yes, I did and it was totally worth it.” 

The cat’s name ends up being Hillary, after you discover an affinity for pet names that are usually person names. Something about the way you’ll end up talking about Hillary in polite conversation and someone will have to ask you who that is makes you want to choose it overall. Even though Harry is not sure about the sudden change at first, he soon becomes best friends with Hillary, and you often find the two of them cuddled up together on the couch. She likes to listen to him play music just as much as you do as it turns out. 

Harry is still trying to think of a way to propose. So much time has passed since he bought the ring, and the first time that he planned to pop the question that he wonders if he’ll ever find the right time to do it or if you’ll just end up asking him one day because it’s all gone too far. One afternoon when the two of you are relishing a rare shared day off, he watches you cook lunch in the kitchen and decides that now is the time to do it. No more excuses, no more surprises, just him and you and the question on the tip of his tongue for too long. 

When you put all of the food on plates, and set them out on the counter he walks over and just looks at you. It weirds you out at first so you ask, “What? Is there something on my face?” 

He gets down on one knee and you still are very confused about what he’s doing. You open your mouth to ask him, but the realization suddenly hits you and you cover your mouth with your hands. 

“y/n,” He says, “I have been waiting to ask you this for what feels like forever. And everytime that the plan fell through you somehow managed to make me want to marry you even more. I love you so much, I love everything about you, how excited you get about your work, how much you love Hillary and how supportive you are whenever I do anything. I love our life here, and I want to be with you forever. Will you marry me?” 

You don’t say anything for a second, still shocked, “Yes of course.” He stands and kisses you, slipping the ring onto your finger. “I was wondering when you would ask me.” 

“You knew?”

“I saw it that night after the forum,” You say, “I figured you got nervous.” 

“And you just let me flounder here for almost six months?” 

“Yes,” You smile, “I figured you wanted to do it on your own terms.” 

“Next time just call me out love, because I sat on this for too long.” 

[chudleycanonficfest]

Air

Our first story on Day 1 comes to you by @zurisenchantedquill !

Title: Air Author/Artist: zurimadison Pairing: Romione, side Hinny Prompt: Rock Concert Rating: Teen, borderline Mature? Trigger Warning(s) (if any): bit of snogging :)

Full disclosure, I was inspired by the song "Stay Next to Me" by Quinn XCII and Chelsea Cutler

______

Ron

“You have ten minutes,” Ginny says, smacking her gum as she stares at me. “Harry will be here soon.”

I don’t move from my seat on the couch. “So let me get this straight, not only are you forcing me into going to this concert tonight, but you also invited your boyfriend to my flat?”

“You like Harry.” She checks her phone. “Nine minutes.”

I do like Harry, but I’m not going to admit that to her right now. I try a change of tactics. “I had plans tonight, Gin. You can’t just show up unannounced and expect me to drop everything to go out with you.”

“Laundry is not a plan, Ron,” she says, texting furiously as she plops on the other end of the couch. “Mum says I need to get you out of the house because you’ve been moping since your breakup, and I knew that if I gave you warning, you’d find an excuse to bail.”

I can’t help but wince, reminded of both the recent end to my relationship and the correct assumption that I’m hiding away because of it. “I just need some me-time right now.”

She looks at me, cheek lit by her phone screen, and smirks. “Eight minutes.”

Whoever said Weasleys are pushovers has never met my little sister.

Actually, probably no one has ever said that.

I sigh and stand, making my way to my bedroom to change.

“Comb your hair or something, while you’re at it,” she calls. “You look a mess.”

“Thanks Gin,” I yell back, but then I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Sheesh, she wasn’t kidding. 

Seven minutes later, dressed and groomed enough to be presentable, I set off down the road with my sister and her boyfriend. 

“Go on then, who are we seeing tonight?”

“The Black Keys,” Harry answers, grinning. “I’ve been dying to see them for ages.”

I’ve never heard of them before, so I ask, “what kind of music is that? Rock?”

“Technically, more Indie Rock,” Ginny answers, and I can’t stop the small snort that escapes me. She shoots a glare that very clearly warns me not to take the mickey, so I hold my arms up defensively and clear my throat.

“Oh, sounds...erm, fun.” It’s lame, but Harry nods and starts rambling about his favorite songs. For all my trouble, Ginny graces me with an approving quirk of her eyebrow. Thanks Sis. 

The venue is close to my flat, so it isn’t long before we’re through the doors, pushing our way into the crowd. 

It feels like even less time before Ginny is snogging Harry, their bodies swaying in time to the music as her drink slops unnoticed on their shoes. They break apart every now and then to sing a lyric or two, then they’re right back at it.

I try to ignore it as I down my beer, but the venue is so congested that I’m constantly jostled into them. Not that they even seem to notice, mind you, but as much as I don’t care what Ginny does on her own time, it’s another thing entirely to literally have it shoved into my face. 

My bottle is devastatingly empty, so I mutter an excuse and snake away through the crowd, not finding it at all dispersed as I move further from the stage. I spot a bar in the back corner and fight my way over to it, feeling like a hero returning home after battle when I’m able to place my order with the bartender. 

It happens as I’m waiting for my beer. I glance down the length of the bar, more out of idleness than anything else, and I see her. 

She’s got dark curly hair that’s highlighted with honey, a red strapless dress that could bring a man to his knees, and, unless I’m much mistaken, she’s holding a book in one of her hands as she leans across the bar to be heard above the music.

I am struck with the impulse to know the color of her eyes. 

She seems to be alone, and is the only person in the venue actually sitting on a stool. I’m not altogether surprised when, after receiving her drink, she opens her book. She’s so absorbed in her reading that she doesn't notice the people bustling around her. She doesn’t even look up when the bartender hands a drink to someone over her head. 

It takes me two more beers, alone in the corner, watching this woman who has such impressive focus, before I work up my nerve. There’s a small opening in the crowd, so I decide it's now or never and throw myself through it. I slip to her side and deliver the almighty line that I’d been working on for nearly twenty minutes.

“Whatcha reading?”

I honestly expect her to ignore me or maybe genuinely not hear me, but to my surprise, she looks right at me. 

Brown. Her eyes are chestnut brown, with a dark ring around the outside. They appraise me before the corners of her round lips turn upwards almost imperceptibly. “Treasure Island.” She has to shout to be heard above the music.

“No way,” I exclaim, bemused. “That’s one of the few books I’ve actually read! Isn’t it crazy that Ben had the treasure the whole time?”

“He what?” Her eyes go wide as she gazes at me, slack jawed. “Seriously?”

“Wait, you didn’t know?” I ask, clapping a hand over my mouth. “I’m so sorry, I thought-”

“Just kidding,” she interrupts me, then begins to giggle at what I can only assume is my idiotic expression. “I’ve read this a million times.”

Her laugh is infectious, and I silently swear to make her do as much of it as I can. I lean against my forearm on the bar and turn sideways so I can view her better. Something about the way she’s looking up at me makes me feel brave. “What’s your name?” 

“Hermione.”

“Ron.” I extend my hand. She slips her tiny palm into mine. I shake it, but then I don’t let go. 

A drunk patron knocks into me, pushing me closer to her. I can almost see down her dress, I’m standing so close. “It’s too crowded in here,” she shouts as she glances over her shoulder. “So many random bodies pressed together.”

“We should go somewhere.” I’m not sure what’s gotten into me, but I don’t mind it when she rewards me with a tiny smile.

“Where? Outside?”

“I don’t care,” I say. “Your choice. I’ll follow you.”

She surveys me, looking as though she’s deciding. “Aren’t you going to miss the show?” 

“No,” I laugh. “I don’t know this band at all.”

“Me neither,” she admits. She’s nearly knocked off her stool by a surge of the crowd around us, and this seems to seal the deal. “Ok, let’s go.” She stands and winds through the crowd, never releasing my hand. 

_____

Hermione

I lead my tall, red headed stranger to the back patio, feeling instant relief in the cool night air as we step over the threshold. The music is much less loud out here, and it’s not as crowded. I drop his hand as I perch myself on the patio railing, sighing in contentment as my overstimulated senses are satisfied by the calming change in environment.

Ron flags a server for us, so I take the opportunity to examine him while he orders. He’s broad in the shoulders but narrow in the hips, though the shape is flattering in the way his t-shirt pulls across his chest. From underneath the material on his left arm, a full sleeve of tattoos runs enticingly to his wrist, leaving me with a burning desire to see the obscured designs. 

Tattooed and bearded. Just how I like 'em.

The server leaves and he turns his gaze back to me, reminding me of the thing so far that I like the most about him.

His eyes.

They’re almost turquoise-y blue, and seem to ripple like water. That alone would be sexy enough, but there’s something about the way they make me feel. They’re...kind.

He leans his back against the railing where I’m sitting, close enough that my leg is brushing his arm. “So, did you come to this show tonight because you like a little background music while you read?” 

I laugh. “No, my friends dragged me here with them, but I lost track of them pretty much the moment we arrived. Hence, this.” I hold up my book. “What about you? You said you don’t know the band either.”

“Nah,” he agrees. “I was also forced to come out tonight. But, I don’t fancy watching my sister snog her boyfriend all evening so…” He shrugs. His hair moves gently in the night breeze.

“Well look at us,” I say. “A couple of third wheels.”

The server comes back with the drinks: two shots of whiskey and two beers. I thank him as I take mine, and Ron raises his shot glass.

“Left your boyfriend at home, then?” He’s holding the whiskey expectantly, smirking while he waits for my answer.

I roll my eyes. “Very subtle.”

“Oh, you saw what I did there?”

“I did, believe it or not.” I hold my whiskey out as well. “To being single?”

It’s phrased as a question, and there’s a triumphant sparkle in his eye as he clicks his glass against mine. “To being single.”

“Cheers.” We throw back the shot. The alcohol hums just under my skin.

Ron doesn’t return to his previous position, but instead stands in front of me so that his stomach is against my knees. He places his free hand on the outside of my bare thigh, sending tingles down my spine. He meets my eye for a moment, as though asking if I mind, and in response I lean forward and place my free hand on his chest. 

The full, lopsided smile I receive in return is worth it.

“What do you do for a living, Hermione?” His voice is gravelly now.

“I’m in microbiology,” I answer. “I work in a lab.”

“Wow,” he lets out a low whistle. “Smart and beautiful.”

I laugh again. “What about you?”

“I’m a nurse,” he says, puffing out his chest. “I work in the ICU.”

Somehow I understand the kindness in his eyes even more. I’m so distracted by looking into them that I accidentally spill some beer all over my lap. “Oh no, I’m sorry!”

“Watch yourself,” he says, laughing as he grabs a napkin and dabs off my legs. “Why is your drink so full anyway?” 

“Yours is just as full,” I argue, offering my beer as evidence.

He looks between our two glasses and shrugs. “Maybe, but I can drink faster, so it doesn’t count.”

“How do you know that?” I demand, holding the beer up now as a challenge. “Chugging contest?”

His grin is evil and beautiful. “You’re on.”

“Three, two…” We both begin to drink as quickly as we can, though it becomes apparent to me that I’m quite outclassed. His Adam’s apple bobs distractingly and I reach out, tracing my finger down it before I can stop myself.

I freeze, my hand again on his chest, fingers grazing the skin above his neckline. When I meet his eye, he puts his glass on the railing and steps between my legs, wrapping his arms around me to bury his hands in my hair as he pulls me in for a kiss.

The way he feels is so distracting that I drop my own glass, still half full, on the outside of the patio, where it spills in the grass. I’m sure we could get kicked out of the venue for that, but right now I don’t care. I kiss my new friend Ron for all I’m worth. He tastes like whiskey and every flick of his talented tongue ignites tiny fires all over my body. 

We snog for I don’t know how long, until we’re forced to come up for air. He doesn’t step away from me, but keeps his face close to mine as we pant. 

“I can’t waste another second here, can you?” His whisper tickles my cheek.

I run the analysis, weighing my options even as my head spins from the snog. I grip his arms tighter. “We should go somewhere.”

His lopsided smile takes my breath away.

[sgt-paul]

MUSICIANS ON MUSICIANS: Paul McCartney & Taylor Swift

© Mary McCartney

❝ During the shoot, Paul dances and takes almost none of it too seriously and sings along to Motown songs playing from the speakers. A few times Mary scolds, ‘Daaad, try to stand still!’ And it feels like a window into a pretty awesome family dynamic. ❞

interview below the cut:

Taylor Swift arrived early to Paul McCartney’s London office in October, “mask on, brimming with excitement.” “I mostly work from home these days,” she writes about that day, “and today feels like a rare school field trip that you actually want to go on.”

Swift showed up without a team, doing her own hair and makeup. In addition to being two of the most famous pop songwriters in the world, Swift and McCartney have spent the past year on similar journeys. McCartney, isolated at home in the U.K., recorded McCartney III. Like his first solo album, in 1970, he played nearly all of the instruments himself, resulting in some of his most wildly ambitious songs in a long time. Swift also took some new chances, writing over email with the National’s Aaron Dessner and recording the raw Folklore, which abandons arena pop entirely in favor of rich character songs. It’s the bestselling album of 2020.

Swift listened to McCartney III as she prepared for today’s conversation; McCartney delved into Folkore. Before the photo shoot, Swift caught up with his daughters Mary (who would be photographing them) and Stella (who designed Swift’s clothes; the two are close friends). “I’ve met Paul a few times, mostly onstage at parties, but we’ll get to that later,” Swift writes. “Soon he walks in with his wife, Nancy. They’re a sunny and playful pair, and I immediately feel like this will be a good day. During the shoot, Paul dances and takes almost none of it too seriously and sings along to Motown songs playing from the speakers. A few times Mary scolds, ‘Daaad, try to stand still!’ And it feels like a window into a pretty awesome family dynamic. We walk into his office for a chat, and after I make a nervous request, Paul is kind enough to handwrite my favorite lyric of his and sign it. He makes a joke about me selling it, and I laugh because it’s something I know I’ll cherish for the rest of my life. That’s around the time when we start talking about music.”

Taylor Swift: I think it’s important to note that if this year had gone the way that we thought it was going to go, you and I would have played Glastonbury this year, and instead, you and I both made albums in isolation.

Paul McCartney: Yeah!

Swift: And I remember thinking it would have been so much fun because the times that I’ve run into you, I correlate with being some of the most fun nights of my life. I was at a party with you, when everybody just started playing music. And it was Dave Grohl playing, and you…

McCartney: You were playing one of his songs, weren’t you?

Swift: Yes, I was playing his song called “Best of You,” but I was playing it on piano, and he didn’t recognize it until about halfway through. I just remember thinking, “Are you the catalyst for the most fun times ever?” Is it your willingness to get up and play music that makes everyone feel like this is a thing that can happen tonight?

McCartney: I mean, I think it’s a bit of everything, isn’t it? I’ll tell you who was very … Reese Witherspoon was like, “Are you going to sing?” I said “Oh, I don’t know.” She said, “You’ve got to, yeah!” She’s bossing me around. So I said, “Whoa,” so it’s a bit of that.

Swift: I love that person, because the party does not turn musical without that person.

McCartney: Yeah, that’s true.

Swift: If nobody says, “Can you guys play music?” we’re not going to invite ourselves up onstage at whatever living-room party it is.

McCartney: I seem to remember Woody Harrelson got on the piano, and he starts playing “Let It Be,” and I’m thinking, “I can do that better.” So I said, “Come on, move over, Woody.” So we’re both playing it. It was really nice.… I love people like Dan Aykroyd, who’s just full of energy and he loves his music so much, but he’s not necessarily a musician, but he just wanders around the room, just saying, “You got to get up, got to get up, do some stuff.”

Swift: I listened to your new record. And I loved a lot of things about it, but it really did feel like kind of a flex to write, produce, and play every instrument on every track. To me, that’s like flexing a muscle and saying, “I can do all this on my own if I have to.”

McCartney: Well, I don’t think like that, I must admit. I just picked up some of these instruments over the years. We had a piano at home that my dad played, so I picked around on that. I wrote the melody to “When I’m 64” when I was, you know, a teenager.

Swift: Wow.

McCartney: When the Beatles went to Hamburg, there were always drum kits knocking around, so when there was a quiet moment, I’d say, “Do you mind if I have a knock around?” So I was able to practice, you know, without practicing. That’s why I play right-handed. Guitar was just the first instrument I got. Guitar turned to bass; it also turned into ukulele, mandolin. Suddenly, it’s like, “Wow,” but it’s really only two or three instruments.

Swift: Well, I think that’s downplaying it a little bit. In my mind, it came with a visual of you being in the country, kind of absorbing the sort of do-it-yourself [quality] that has had to come with the quarantine and this pandemic. I found that I’ve adapted a do-it-yourself mentality to a lot of things in my career that I used to outsource.  I’m just wondering what a day of recording in the pandemic looked like for you.

McCartney: Well, I’m very lucky because I have a studio that’s, like, 20 minutes away from where I live. We were in lockdown on a farm, a sheep farm with my daughter Mary and her four kids and her husband. So I had four of my grandkids, I had Mary, who’s a great cook, so I would just drive myself to the studio. And there were two other guys that could come in and we’d be very careful and distanced and everything: my engineer Steve, and then my equipment guy Keith. So the three of us made the record, and I just started off. I had to do a little bit of film music — I had to do an instrumental for a film thing — so I did that. And I just kept going, and that turned into the opening track on the album. I would just come in, say, “Oh, yeah, what are we gonna do?” [Then] have some sort of idea, and start doing it. Normally, I’d start with the instrument I wrote it on, either piano or guitar, and then probably add some drums and then a bit of bass till it started to sound like a record, and then just gradually layer it all up. It was fun.

Swift: That’s so cool.

McCartney: What about yours? You’re playing guitar and piano on yours.

Swift: Yeah, on some of it, but a lot of it was made with Aaron Dessner, who’s in a band called the National that I really love. And I had met him at a concert a year before, and I had a conversation with him, asking him how he writes. It’s my favorite thing to ask people who I’m a fan of. And he had an interesting answer. He said, “All the band members live in different parts of the world. So I make tracks. And I send them to our lead singer, Matt, and he writes the top line.” I just remember thinking, “That is really efficient.” And I kind of stored it in my brain as a future idea for a project. You know, how you have these ideas… “Maybe one day I’ll do this.” I always had in my head: “Maybe one day I’ll work with Aaron Dessner.”

So when lockdown happened, I was in L.A., and we kind of got stuck there. It’s not a terrible place to be stuck. We were there for four months maybe, and during that time, I sent an email to Aaron Dessner and I said, “Do you think you would want to work during this time? Because my brain is all scrambled, and I need to make something, even if we’re just kind of making songs that we don’t know what will happen…”

McCartney: Yeah, that was the thing. You could do stuff — you didn’t really worry it was going to turn into anything.

Swift: Yeah, and it turned out he had been writing instrumental tracks to keep from absolutely going crazy during the pandemic as well, so he sends me this file of probably 30 instrumentals, and the first one I opened ended up being a song called “Cardigan,” and it really happened rapid-fire like that. He’d send me a track; he’d make new tracks, add to the folder; I would write the entire top line for a song, and he wouldn’t know what the song would be about, what it was going to be called, where I was going to put the chorus. I had originally thought, “Maybe I’ll make an album in the next year, and put it out in January or something,” but it ended up being done and we put it out in July. And I just thought there are no rules anymore, because I used to put all these parameters on myself, like, “How will this song sound in a stadium? How will this song sound on radio?” If you take away all the parameters, what do you make? And I guess the answer is Folklore.

McCartney: And it’s more music for yourself than music that’s got to go do a job. My thing was similar to that: After having done this little bit of film music, I had a lot of stuff that I had been working on, but I’d said, “I’m just going home now,” and it’d be left half-finished. So I just started saying, “Well, what about that? I never finished that.” So we’d pull it out, and we said, “Oh, well, this could be good.” And because it didn’t have to amount to anything, I would say, “Ah, I really want to do tape loops. I don’t care if they fit on this song, I just want to do some.” So I go and make some tape loops, and put them in the song, just really trying to do stuff that I fancy.

I had no idea it would end up as an album; I may have been a bit less indulgent, but if a track was eight minutes long, to tell you the truth, what I thought was, “I’ll be taking it home tonight, Mary will be cooking, the grandkids will all be there running around, and someone, maybe Simon, Mary’s husband, is going to say, ‘What did you do today?’ And I’m going to go, ‘Oh,’ and then get my phone and play it for them.” So this became the ritual.

Swift: That’s the coziest thing I’ve ever heard.

McCartney: Well, it’s like eight minutes long, and I said, “I hate it when I’m playing someone something and it finishes after three minutes.” I kind of like that it just [continues] on.

Swift: You want to stay in the zone.

McCartney: It just keeps going on. I would just come home, “Well, what did you do today?” “Oh, well, I did this. I’m halfway through this,” or, “We finished this.”

Swift: I was wondering about the numerology element to McCartney III. McCartney I, II, and III have all come out on years with zeroes.

McCartney: Ends of decades.

Swift: Was that important?

McCartney: Yeah, well, this was being done in 2020, and I didn’t really think about it. I think everyone expected great things of 2020. “It’s gonna be great! Look at that number! 2020! Auspicious!” Then suddenly Covid hit, and it was like, “That’s gonna be auspicious all right, but maybe for the wrong reasons.” Someone said to me, “Well, you put out McCartney right after the Beatles broke up, and that was 1970, and then you did McCartney II in 1980.” And I said, “Oh, I’m going to release this in 2020 just for whatever you call it, the numerology.…”

Swift: The numerology, the kind of look, the symbolism. I love numbers. Numbers kind of rule my whole world. The numbers 13  … 89 is a big one. I have a few others that I find…

McCartney: Thirteen is lucky for some.

Swift: Yeah, it’s lucky for me. It’s my birthday. It’s all these weird coincidences of good things that have happened. Now, when I see it places, I look at it as a sign that things are going the way they’re supposed to. They may not be good now, they could be painful now, but things are on a track. I don’t know, I love the numerology.

McCartney: It’s spooky, Taylor. It’s very spooky. Now wait a minute: Where’d you get 89?

Swift: That’s when I was born, in 1989, and so I see it in different places and I just think it’s…

McCartney: No, it’s good. I like that, where certain things you attach yourself to, and you get a good feeling off them. I think that’s great.

Swift: Yeah, one of my favorite artists, Bon Iver, he has this thing with the number 22. But I was also wondering: You have always kind of seeked out a band or a communal atmosphere with like, you know, the Beatles and Wings, and then��Egypt Station. I thought it was interesting when I realized you had made a record with no one else. I just wondered, did that feel natural?

McCartney: It’s one of the things I’ve done. Like with McCartney, because the Beatles had broken up, there was no alternative but to get a drum kit at home, get a guitar, get an amp, get a bass, and just make something for myself. So on that album, which I didn’t really expect to do very well, I don’t think it did. But people sort of say, “I like that. It was a very casual album.” It didn’t really have to mean anything. So I’ve done that, the play-everything-myself thing. And then I discovered synths and stuff, and sequencers, so I had a few of those at home. I just thought I’m going to play around with this and record it, so that became McCartney II. But it’s a thing I do. Certain people can do it. Stevie Wonder can do it. Stevie Winwood, I believe, has done it. So there are certain people quite like that.

When you’re working with someone else, you have to worry about their variances. Whereas your own variance, you kind of know it. It’s just something I’ve grown to like. Once you can do it, it becomes a little bit addictive. I actually made some records under the name the Fireman.

Swift: Love a pseudonym.

McCartney: Yeah, for the fun! But, you know, let’s face it, you crave fame and attention when you’re young. And I just remembered the other day, I was the guy in the Beatles that would write to journalists and say [speaks in a formal voice]: “We are a semiprofessional rock combo, and I’d think you’d like [us].… We’ve written over 100 songs (which was a lie), my friend John and I. If you mention us in your newspaper…” You know, I was always, like, craving the attention.

Swift: The hustle! That’s so great, though.

McCartney: Well, yeah, you need that.

Swift: Yeah, I think, when a pseudonym comes in is when you still have a love for making the work and you don’t want the work to become overshadowed by this thing that’s been built around you, based on what people know about you. And that’s when it’s really fun to create fake names and write under them.

McCartney: Do you ever do that?

Swift: Oh, yeah.

McCartney: Oh, yeah? Oh, well, we didn’t know that! Is that a widely known fact?

Swift: I think it is now, but it wasn’t. I wrote under the name Nils Sjöberg because those are two of the most popular names of Swedish males. I wrote this song called “This Is What You Came For” that Rihanna ended up singing. And nobody knew for a while. I remembered always hearing that when Prince wrote “Manic Monday,” they didn’t reveal it for a couple of months.

McCartney: Yeah, it also proves you can do something without the fame tag. I did something for Peter and Gordon; my girlfriend’s brother and his mate were in a band called Peter and Gordon. And I used to write under the name Bernard Webb.

Swift: [Laughs.] That’s a good one! I love it.

McCartney: As Americans call it, Ber-nard Webb. I did the Fireman thing. I worked with a producer, a guy called Youth, who’s this real cool dude. We got along great. He did a mix for me early on, and we got friendly. I would just go into the studio, and he would say, “Hey, what about this groove?” and he’d just made me have a little groove going. He’d say, “You ought to put some bass on it. Put some drums on it.” I’d just spend the whole day putting stuff on it. And we’d make these tracks, and nobody knew who Fireman was for a while. We must have sold all of 15 copies.

Swift: Thrilling, absolutely thrilling.

McCartney: And we didn’t mind, you know?

Swift: I think it’s so cool that you do projects that are just for you. Because I went with my family to see you in concert in 2010 or 2011, and the thing I took away from the show most was that it was the most selfless set list I had ever seen. It was completely geared toward what it would thrill us to hear. It had new stuff, but it had every hit we wanted to hear, every song we’d ever cried to, every song people had gotten married to, or been brokenhearted to. And I just remembered thinking, “I’ve got to remember that,” that you do that set list for your fans.

McCartney: You do that, do you?

Swift: I do now. I think that learning that lesson from you taught me at a really important stage in my career that if people want to hear “Love Story” and “Shake It Off,” and I’ve played them 300 million times, play them the 300-millionth-and-first time. I think there are times to be selfish in your career, and times to be selfless, and sometimes they line up.

McCartney: I always remembered going to concerts as a kid, completely before the Beatles, and I really hoped they would play the ones I loved. And if they didn’t, it was kind of disappointing. I had no money, and the family wasn’t wealthy. So this would be a big deal for me, to save up for months to afford the concert ticket.

Swift: Yeah, it feels like a bond. It feels like that person on the stage has given something, and it makes you as a crowd want to give even more back, in terms of applause, in terms of dedication. And I just remembered feeling that bond in the crowd, and thinking, “He’s up there playing these Beatles songs, my dad is crying, my mom is trying to figure out how to work her phone because her hands are shaking so much.” Because seeing the excitement course through not only me, but my family and the entire crowd in Nashville, it just was really special. I love learning lessons and not having to learn them the hard way. Like learning nice lessons I really value.

McCartney: Well, that’s great, and I’m glad that set you on that path. I understand people who don’t want to do that, and if you do, they’ll say, “Oh, it’s a jukebox show.” I hear what they’re saying. But I think it’s a bit of a cheat, because the people who come to our shows have spent a lot of money. We can afford to go to a couple of shows and it doesn’t make much difference. But a lot of ordinary working folks … it’s a big event in their life, and so I try and deliver. I also, like you say, try and put in a few weirdos.

Swift: That’s the best. I want to hear current things, too, to update me on where the artist is. I was wondering about lyrics, and where you were lyrically when you were making this record. Because when I was making Folklore, I went lyrically in a total direction of escapism and romanticism. And I wrote songs imagining I was, like, a pioneer woman in a forbidden love affair [laughs]. I was completely …

McCartney: Was this “I want to give you a child”? Is that one of the lines?

Swift: Oh, that’s a song called “Peace.”

McCartney: “Peace,” I like that one.

Swift: “Peace” is actually more rooted in my personal life. I know you have done a really excellent job of this in your personal life: carving out a human life within a public life, and how scary that can be when you do fall in love and you meet someone, especially if you’ve met someone who has a very grounded, normal way of living. I, oftentimes, in my anxieties, can control how I am as a person and how normal I act and rationalize things, but I cannot control if there are 20 photographers outside in the bushes and what they do and if they follow our car and if they interrupt our lives. I can’t control if there’s going to be a fake weird headline about us in the news tomorrow.

McCartney: So how does that go? Does your partner sympathize with that and understand?

Swift: Oh, absolutely.

McCartney: They have to, don’t they?

Swift: But I think that in knowing him and being in the relationship I am in now, I have definitely made decisions that have made my life feel more like a real life and less like just a storyline to be commented on in tabloids. Whether that’s deciding where to live, who to hang out with, when to not take a picture — the idea of privacy feels so strange to try to explain, but it’s really just trying to find bits of normalcy. That’s what that song “Peace” is talking about. Like, would it be enough if I could never fully achieve the normalcy that we both crave? Stella always tells me that she had as normal a childhood as she could ever hope for under the circumstances.

McCartney: Yeah, it was very important to us to try and keep their feet on the ground amongst the craziness.

Swift: She went to a regular school .…

McCartney: Yeah, she did.

Swift: And you would go trick-or-treating with them, wearing masks.

McCartney: All of them did, yeah. It was important, but it worked pretty well, because when they kind of reached adulthood, they would meet other kids who might have gone to private schools, who were a little less grounded.

And they could be the budding mothers to [kids]. I remember Mary had a friend, Orlando. Not Bloom. She used to really counsel him. And it’s ’cause she’d gone through that. Obviously, they got made fun of, my kids. They’d come in the classroom and somebody would sing, “Na na na na,” you know, one of the songs. And they’d have to handle that. They’d have to front it out.

Swift: Did that give you a lot of anxiety when you had kids, when you felt like all this pressure that’s been put on me is spilling over onto them, that they didn’t sign up for it? Was that hard for you?

McCartney: Yeah, a little bit, but it wasn’t like it is now. You know, we were just living a kind of semi-hippie life, where we withdrew from a lot of stuff. The kids would be doing all the ordinary things, and their school friends would be coming up to the house and having parties, and it was just great. I remember one lovely evening when it was Stella’s birthday, and she brought a bunch of school kids up. And, you know, they’d all ignore me. It happens very quickly. At first they’re like, “Oh, yeah, he’s like a famous guy,” and then it’s like [yawns]. I like that. I go in the other room and suddenly I hear this music going on. And one of the kids, his name was Luke, and he’s doing break dancing.

Swift: Ohhh!

McCartney: He was a really good break dancer, so all the kids are hanging out. That allowed them to be kind of normal with those kids. The other thing is, I don’t live fancy. I really don’t. Sometimes it’s a little bit of an embarrassment, if I’ve got someone coming to visit me, or who I know…

Swift: Cares about that stuff?

McCartney: Who’s got a nice big house, you know. Quincy Jones came to see me and I’m, like, making him a veggie burger or something. I’m doing some cooking. This was after I’d lost Linda, in between there. But the point I’m making is that I’m very consciously thinking, “Oh, God, Quincy’s got to be thinking, ‘What is this guy on? He hasn’t got big things going on. It’s not a fancy house at all. And we’re eating in the kitchen! He’s not even got the dining room going,’” you know?

Swift: I think that sounds like a perfect day.

McCartney: But that’s me. I’m awkward like that. That’s my kind of thing. Maybe I should have, like, a big stately home. Maybe I should get a staff. But I think I couldn’t do that. I’d be so embarrassed. I’d want to walk around dressed as I want to walk around, or naked, if I wanted to.

Swift: That can’t happen in Downton Abbey.

McCartney: [Laughs.] Exactly.

Swift: I remember what I wanted to know about, which is lyrics. Like, when you’re in this kind of strange, unparalleled time, and you’re making this record, are lyrics first? Or is it when you get a little melodic idea?

McCartney: It was a bit of both. As it kind of always is with me. There’s no fixed way. People used to ask me and John, “Well, who does the words, who does the music?” I used to say, “We both do both.” We used to say we don’t have a formula, and we don’t want one. Because the minute we get a formula, we should rip it up. I will sometimes, as I did with a couple of songs on this album, sit down at the piano and just start noodling around, and I’ll get a little idea and start to fill that out. So the lyrics — for me, it’s following a trail. I’ll start [sings “Find My Way,” a song from “McCartney III”]: “I can find my way. I know my left from right, da da da.” And I’ll just sort of fill it in. Like, we know this song, and I’m trying to remember the lyrics. Sometimes I’ll just be inspired by something. I had a little book which was all about the constellations and the stars and the orbits of Venus and.…

Swift: Oh, I know that song — “The Kiss of Venus”?

McCartney: Yeah, “The Kiss of Venus.” And I just thought, “That’s a nice phrase.” So I was actually just taking phrases out of the book, harmonic sounds. And the book is talking about the maths of the universe, and how when things orbit around each other, and if you trace all the patterns, it becomes like a lotus flower.

Swift: Wow.

McCartney: It’s very magical.

Swift: That is magical. I definitely relate to needing to find magical things in this very not-magical time, needing to read more books and learn to sew, and watch movies that take place hundreds of years ago. In a time where, if you look at the news, you just want to have a panic attack — I really relate to the idea that you are thinking about stars and constellations.

McCartney: Did you do that on Folklore?

Swift: Yes. I was reading so much more than I ever did, and watching so many more films.

McCartney: What stuff were you reading?

Swift: I was reading, you know, books like Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier, which I highly recommend, and books that dealt with times past, a world that doesn’t exist anymore. I was also using words I always wanted to use — kind of bigger, flowerier, prettier words, like “epiphany,” in songs. I always thought, “Well, that’ll never track on pop radio,” but when I was making this record, I thought, “What tracks? Nothing makes sense anymore. If there’s chaos everywhere, why don’t I just use the damn word I want to use in the song?”

McCartney: Exactly. So you’d see the word in a book and think, “I love that word”?

Swift: Yeah, I have favorite words, like “elegies” and “epiphany” and “divorcée,” and just words that I think sound beautiful, and I have lists and lists of them.

McCartney: How about “marzipan”?

Swift: Love “marzipan.”

McCartney: The other day, I was remembering when we wrote “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”: “kaleidoscope.”

Swift: “Kaleidoscope” is one of mine! I have a song on 1989, a song called “Welcome to New York,” that I put the word “kaleidoscope” in just because I’m obsessed with the word.

McCartney: I think a love of words is a great thing, particularly if you’re going to try to write a lyric, and for me, it’s like, “What is this going to say to that person?” I often feel like I’m writing to someone who is not doing so well. So I’m trying to write songs that might help. Not in a goody-goody, crusading kind of way, but just thinking there have been so many times in my life when I’ve heard a song and felt so much better. I think that’s the angle I want, that inspirational thing.

I remember once, a friend of mine from Liverpool, we were teenagers and we were going to a fairground. He was a schoolmate, and we had these jackets that had a little fleck in the material, which was the cool thing at the time.

Swift: We should have done matching jackets for this photo shoot.

McCartney: Find me a fleck, I’m in. But we went to the fair, and I just remember — this is what happens with songs — there was this girl at the fair. This is just a little Liverpool fair — it was in a place called Sefton Park — and there was this girl, who was so beautiful. She wasn’t a star. She was so beautiful. Everyone was following her, and it’s like, “Wow.” It’s like a magical scene, you know? But all this gave me a headache, so I ended up going back to his house — I didn’t normally get headaches. And we thought, “What can we do?” So we put on the Elvis song “All Shook Up.” By the end of that song, my headache had gone. I thought, you know, “That’s powerful.”

Swift: That really is powerful.

McCartney: I love that, when people stop me in the street and say, “Oh, I was going through an illness and I listened to a lot of your stuff, and I’m better now and it got me through,” or kids will say, “It got me through exams.” You know, they’re studying, they’re going crazy, but they put your music on. I’m sure it happens with a lot of your fans. It inspires them, you know?

Swift: Yeah, I definitely think about that as a goal. There’s so much stress everywhere you turn that I kind of wanted to make an album that felt sort of like a hug, or like your favorite sweater that makes you feel like you want to put it on.

McCartney: What, a “cardigan”?

Swift: Like a good cardigan, a good, worn-in cardigan. Or something that makes you reminisce on your childhood. I think sadness can be cozy. It can obviously be traumatic and stressful, too, but I kind of was trying to lean into sadness that feels like somehow enveloping in not such a scary way — like nostalgia and whimsy incorporated into a feeling like you’re not all right. Because I don’t think anybody was really feeling like they were in their prime this year. Isolation can mean escaping into your imagination in a way that’s kind of nice.

McCartney: I think a lot of people have found that. I would say to people, “I feel a bit guilty about saying I’m actually enjoying this quarantine thing,” and people go, “Yeah, I know, don’t say it to anyone.” A lot of people are really suffering.

Swift: Because there’s a lot in life that’s arbitrary. Completely and totally arbitrary. And [the quarantine] is really shining a light on that, and also a lot of things we have that we outsource that you can actually do yourself.

McCartney: I love that. This is why I said I live simply. That’s, like, at the core of it. With so many things, something goes wrong and you go, “Oh, I’ll get somebody to fix that.” And then it’s like, “No, let me have a look at it.…”

Swift: Get a hammer and a nail.

McCartney: “Maybe I can put that picture up.” It’s not rocket science. The period after the Beatles, when we went to live in Scotland on a really — talk about dumpy — little farm. I mean, I see pictures of it now and I’m not ashamed, but I’m almost ashamed. Because it’s like, “God, nobody’s cleaned up around here.”

But it was really a relief. Because when I was with the Beatles, we’d formed Apple Records, and if I wanted a Christmas tree, someone would just buy it. And I thought, after a while, “No, you know what? I really would like to go and buy our Christmas tree. Because that’s what everyone does.” So you go down — “I’ll have that one” — and you carried it back. I mean, it’s little, but it’s huge at the same time.

I needed a table in Scotland and I was looking through a catalog and I thought, “I could make one. I did woodwork in school, so I know what a dovetail joint is.” So I just figured it out. I’m just sitting in the kitchen, and I’m whittling away at this wood and I made this little joint. There was no nail technology — it was glue. And I was scared to put it together. I said, “It’s not going to fit,” but one day, I got my woodwork glue and thought, “There’s no going back.” But it turned out to be a real nice little table I was very proud of. It was that sense of achievement.

The weird thing was, Stella went up to Scotland recently and I said, “Isn’t it there?” and she said, “No.” Anyway, I searched for it. Nobody remembered it. Somebody said, “Well, there’s a pile of wood in the corner of one of the barns, maybe that’s it. Maybe they used it for firewood.” I said, “No, it’s not firewood.” Anyway, we found it, and do you know how joyous that was for me? I was like, “You found my table?!” Somebody might say that’s a bit boring.

Swift: No, it’s cool!

McCartney: But it was a real sort of great thing for me to be able to do stuff for yourself. You were talking about sewing. I mean normally, in your position, you’ve got any amount of tailors.

Swift: Well, there’s been a bit of a baby boom recently; several of my friends have gotten pregnant.

McCartney: Oh, yeah, you’re at the age.

Swift: And I was just thinking, “I really want to spend time with my hands, making something for their children.” So I made this really cool flying-squirrel stuffed animal that I sent to one of my friends. I sent a teddy bear to another one, and I started making these little silk baby blankets with embroidery. It’s gotten pretty fancy. And I’ve been painting a lot.

McCartney: What do you paint? Watercolors?

Swift: Acrylic or oil. Whenever I do watercolor, all I paint is flowers. When I have oil, I really like to do landscapes. I always kind of return to painting a lonely little cottage on a hill.

McCartney: It’s a bit of a romantic dream. I agree with you, though, I think you’ve got to have dreams, particularly this year. You’ve got to have something to escape to. When you say “escapism,” it sounds like a dirty word, but this year, it definitely wasn’t. And in the books you’re reading, you’ve gone into that world. That’s, I think, a great thing. Then you come back out. I normally will read a lot before I go to bed. So I’ll come back out, then I’ll go to sleep, so I think it really is nice to have those dreams that can be fantasies or stuff you want to achieve.

Swift: You’re creating characters. This was the first album where I ever created characters, or wrote about the life of a real-life person. There’s a song called “The Last Great American Dynasty” that’s about this real-life heiress who lived just an absolutely chaotic, hectic…

McCartney: She’s a fantasy character?

Swift: She’s a real person. Who lived in the house that I live in.

McCartney: She’s a real person? I listened to that and I thought, “Who is this?”

Swift: Her name was Rebekah Harkness. And she lived in the house that I ended up buying in Rhode Island. That’s how I learned about her. But she was a woman who was very, very talked about, and everything she did was scandalous. I found a connection in that. But I also was thinking about how you write “Eleanor Rigby” and go into that whole story about what all these people in this town are doing and how their lives intersect, and I hadn’t really done that in a very long time with my music. It had always been so microscope personal.

McCartney: Yeah, ’cause you were writing breakup songs like they were going out of style.

Swift: I was, before my luck changed [laughs]. I still write breakup songs. I love a good breakup song. Because somewhere in the world, I always have a friend going through a breakup, and that will make me write one.

McCartney: Yeah, this goes back to this thing of me and John: When you’ve got a formula, break it. I don’t have a formula. It’s the mood I’m in. So I love the idea of writing a character. And, you know, trying to think, “What am I basing this on?” So “Eleanor Rigby” was based on old ladies I knew as a kid. For some reason or other, I got great relationships with a couple of local old ladies. I was thinking the other day, I don’t know how I met them, it wasn’t like they were family. I’d just run into them, and I’d do their shopping for them.

Swift: That’s amazing.

McCartney: It just felt good to me. I would sit and talk, and they’d have amazing stories. That’s what I liked. They would have stories from the wartime — because I was born actually in the war — and so these old ladies, they were participating in the war. This one lady I used to sort of just hang out with, she had a crystal radio that I found very magical. In the war, a lot of people made their own radios — you’d make them out of crystals [sings “The Twilight Zone” theme].

Swift: How did I not know this? That sounds like something I would have tried to learn about.

McCartney: It’s interesting, because there is a lot of parallels with the virus and lockdowns and wartime. It happened to everyone. Like, this isn’t HIV, or SARS, or Avian flu, which happened to others, generally. This has happened to everyone, all around the world. That’s the defining thing about this particular virus. And, you know, my parents … it happened to everyone in Britain, including the queen and Churchill. War happened. So they were all part of this thing, and they all had to figure out a way through it. So you figured out Folklore. I figured out McCartney III.

Swift: And a lot of people have been baking sourdough bread. Whatever gets you through!

McCartney: Some people used to make radios. And they’d take a crystal — we should look it up, but it actually is a crystal. I thought, “Oh, no, they just called it a crystal radio,” but it’s actually crystals like we know and love.

Swift: Wow.

McCartney: And somehow they get the radio waves — this crystal attracts them — they tune it in, and that’s how they used to get their news. Back to “Eleanor Rigby,” so I would think of her and think of what she’s doing and then just try to get lyrical, just try to bring poetry into it, words you love, just try to get images like “picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been,” and Father McKenzie “is darning his socks in the night.” You know, he’s a religious man, so I could’ve said, you know, “preparing his Bible,” which would have been more obvious. But “darning his socks” kind of says more about him. So you get into this lovely fantasy. And that’s the magic of songs, you know. It’s a black hole, and then you start doing this process, and then there’s this beautiful little flower that you’ve just made. So it is very like embroidery, making something.

Swift: Making a table.

McCartney: Making a table.

Swift: Wow, it would’ve been so fun to play Glastonbury for the 50th anniversary together.

McCartney: It would’ve been great, wouldn’t it? And I was going to be asking you to play with me.

Swift: Were you going to invite me? I was hoping that you would. I was going to ask you.

McCartney: I would’ve done “Shake It Off.”

Swift: Oh, my God, that would have been amazing.

McCartney: I know it, it’s in C!

Swift: One thing I just find so cool about you is that you really do seem to have the joy of it, still, just no matter what. You seem to have the purest sense of joy of playing an instrument and making music, and that’s just the best, I think.

McCartney: Well, we’re just so lucky, aren’t we?

Swift: We’re really lucky.

McCartney: I don’t know if it ever happens to you, but with me, it’s like, “Oh, my god, I’ve ended up as a musician.”

Swift: Yeah, I can’t believe it’s my job.

McCartney: I must tell you a story I told Mary the other day, which is just one of my favorite little sort of Beatles stories. We were in a terrible, big blizzard, going from London to Liverpool, which we always did. We’d be working in London and then drive back in the van, just the four of us with our roadie, who would be driving. And this was a blizzard. You couldn’t see the road. At one point, it slid off and it went down an embankment. So it was “Ahhh,” a bunch of yelling. We ended up at the bottom. It didn’t flip, luckily, but so there we are, and then it’s like, “Oh, how are we going to get back up? We’re in a van. It’s snowing, and there’s no way.” We’re all standing around in a little circle, and thinking, “What are we going to do?” And one of us said, “Well, something will happen.” And I thought that was just the greatest. I love that, that’s a philosophy.

Swift: “Something will happen.”

McCartney: And it did. We sort of went up the bank, we thumbed a lift, we got the lorry driver to take us, and Mal, our roadie, sorted the van and everything. So that was kind of our career. And I suppose that’s like how I ended up being a musician and a songwriter: “Something will happen.”

Swift: That’s the best.

McCartney: It’s so stupid it’s brilliant. It’s great if you’re ever in that sort of panic attack: “Oh, my God,” or, “Ahhh, what am I going to do?”

Swift: “Something will happen.”

McCartney: All right then, thanks for doing this, and this was, you know, a lot of fun.

Swift: You’re the best. This was so awesome. Those were some quality stories!

[tanjamikaelson]

BITTERSWEET - CHAPTER 6

MASTERLIST

CHAPTER 6: | THERE YOU GO AGAIN MAKING ME LOVE YOU |

In the living room, Klaus was being creative working on an abstract painting on an easel when Rebekah entered the room, or so he thought it was Rebekah. It was actually Esther possessing her body.

“What took you so long?” Klaus asked, not looking up from his painting.

“Alaric didn't want to hand over the stake.” Rebekah said, showing him a stake, “Luckily I'm quite the charmer.”

Klaus raised an eyebrow, “That's it?” 

“The last of the white oak stakes that can kill us.” Rebekah confirmed, “Do you want to do the honors or shall I?” 

Klaus put the paintbrush down before he took the stake from Rebekah and threw it into the flames in the fireplace. The flames flared up around the stake.

“Well that's that then.” Rebekah stated.

“Pack your bags, we're leaving.” Klaus announced.

“Today?” Rebekah asked nervously.

Klaus shrugged, “Why not? There's nothing keeping us here. We'll grab the doppelganger and be off by sunset.”

“But tonight is the decade dance.” Rebekah told him.

“So?” Klaus asked, uninterested.

Rebekah scoffed, “So, I'm head of the committee, we have to go.” 

Klaus rolled his eyes, “I'm not going to any dance.” 

“Lorena said she will be there.” Rebekah said teasingly, “Maybe you could use that opportunity and sweep off her feet like you did in the 1920s.”

Klaus sighed, “Okay, fine. One last hoorah.” he said smiling.

Rebekah smiled back, “One last hoorah, Nik.” 

・ • ・ • ・

"Check the front door." Lorena read a message from Klaus and wondered why he sent her that, just then when she heard a doorbell. She walked towards the door and opened them, but no one was there, except for one box. Lorena took it, guessing that Klaus' message was about that.

She opened a box and there was a beautiful white dress from the 20s, there was also a card with Klaus' writing, "Would you want to go to a 20s decade dance with me?"

Lorena dialed his number and as soon as he answered she said, "Are you seriously inviting me to a high school dance?"

"Rebekah told me that you want to go." Klaus told her.

"What? I told her that I don’t want to go.” Lorena replied confused.

Klaus smiled, “Well this will be our last night here so that’s the least we can do for her."

"Wow, how nice of you.” Lorena said in a sarcastic tone, “I didn’t know that you’re leaving."

"We are. You, me and Rebekah." Klaus told her.

"I don't think she would want to leave." Lorena replied.

"Well, she said she does, she doesn't have anything keeping her here and neither do we." Klaus said.

Lorena signed, "Fine. I'll go but only because of Rebekah."

・ • ・ • ・

Lorena arrived at a decade's dance fashionably late, Klaus was waiting for her at the entrance.

"You're late." Klaus remarked as she approached him.

"Well, the sooner we leave here, the better." Lorena shrugged, then looked at his outfit that matched hers. He wore a white suit just like her dress, "Matching outfits, hm.."

Klaus smiled, "You look even more beautiful in that dress, then I had imagined." 

Lorena gave him a small smile back, "Thanks."

"Shall we?" Klaus asked and Lorena locked her arm with his before walking inside.

"I see not everyone's meant for 20s." Lorena remarked when she saw the decorations and people around her.

"1920s were unique, no one can recreate them." Klaus said as the two of them stopped at the bunch table.

He was about to pour them a drink when he spotted someone in the crowd.

"Excuse me, love." Klaus said, handing Lorena a drink and walking away but she followed him.

"Where have you've been mate?" Klaus asked.

A boy looked at him, "I just got back in town."

Klaus gave him a serious look, "That's funny. I don't recall giving you permission to leave in the first place."

"Why do you always have to prove you're the alpha male?!" Caroline asked coldly.

Klaus laughed at her, "I don't have to prove anything, love. I am the alpha male."

Caroline scoffed in response, but it didn't faze him.

"Go and ruin someone else's night." Caroline tells him.

He glared at her and Caroline glared at him. They stood there that way for a long moment before Lorena interfered.

She grabbed his hand so that he looked at her, "This is Rebekah's last night here, don't ruin anything. Let's go."

He let her drag him away to the other side of the room.

"So you're not going to force me to dance with you or something?" Lorena asked him.

The corners of his lips tilted upwards, "Did you want me to ask you to dance?" His voice had a lot of hopefulness.

"Actually no." Lorena answered sharply.

Klaus raised his eyebrow at her, a look of amusement on his face, "Well then I don't really see a point in asking you. And I told you I'm not going to force you into anything."

"Except for this stupid dance." Lorena blurted out.

"I gave you a choice, and you said you're coming here because of my sister." Klaus told her.

"And where is she?" Lorena asked.

"I don't know, love. Maybe she's just late." Klaus replied.

"That doesn't sound like her." Lorena told him, then sighed in frustration, "You know what? Let's just dance and kill time until she shows up."

She took his hand and led him out in the middle of the dance floor. Klaus twirled her in towards him slowly and placed a hand on her hip, holding her close. 

"You know being here tonight reminds me of being at Gloria's in the 1920s." Klaus said softly, "You were reckless, sexy and fun. We used to dance till we dropped."

"So you're saying that I'm not reckless, sexy and fun anymore?" Lorena questioned him, raising her eyebrow.

"Oh, you most definitely are." Klaus replied and pulled her more into him whispering into her ear, "Especially sexy in that dress."

When he pulled back Lorena tried hard not to look into his eyes. She knew if she did she would get lost and she won't be able to find her way back. He of course never took his eyes off of her. Lorena hated to admit but there was something about being in his arms again.

"You know, that dress is actually the one I bought you back then, but never got a chance to give it to you." Klaus said softly.

"Really? You kept it for all these years?" Lorena asked.

"I most definitely did." Klaus said and put his finger on her chin, moving her head to look at him, "Look at me, love." when she did he continued, “In 1944 you were in London. And in 1990 you were at a concert, standing in the front row, dancing all night with some guy, it took every ounce of me not to kill him right then and there.”

“You were there?” Lorena asked curiously. 

Klaus softly smiled, “Even after I left you I never stopped looking out for you." 

Lorena shakes her head, "But in ninety years you only spoke to me once. Why?"

"I didn't want to bring you back into my life because it wasn't safe as long as my father was looking for me. I couldn't bear to lose you." Klaus told her honestly, not moving his eyes from hers.

Lorena shook her head down, "But you did lose me." 

"If you stayed with me my father could've killed you, that would be worse than leaving you." Klaus told her.

"If he wanted to kill me he would've done it in New Orleans." Lorena reminded him of that night.

"And to be honest I don't know why he didn't, but if he got another chance he wouldn't waste it. Just so he could make me suffer." Klaus told her and deep down Lorena knew that could be true, “And I'm sorry." Klaus said, caressing her cheek, "I'm so sorry, love." he moved forward placing a kiss on her forehead and Lorena closed her eyes at the feeling.

"You know I like this side of you." Lorena said when she looked at him again, "When you show that you really care and that you actually have a heart."

Klaus smiled at her words and Lorena placed her head on his shoulder. He tangled his fingers into her hair as they moved slowly to the music.

Suddenly Lorena laughed at the realization, "She set us up."

"What?" Klaus asked, confused.

Lorena looked at him, "Rebekah set us up. She wanted us to come to this dance because she knew it would bring back memories. And to get us to dance and get all cuddly." She moved her arms away from him then looked around the room, "And she still isn't here."

"I'll call her." Klaus said and walked out of the school, Lorena followed him. When he called her she didn't answer so he left her a voicemail, "Rebekah, call me back immediately! We only came to this ridiculous dance because you begged us to and now you're nowhere to be found."

Klaus looked down at his feet and saw a line made of salt. His eyes followed the line, seeing that it went around the entire school.

"What is this?" Klaus questioned.

Stefan walked up behind the two of them, revealing, "Your mother is back."

・ • ・ • ・

Lorena stood beside Klaus in the classroom where several candles were lit and Bonnie was chanting a spell.

Klaus let out a sigh of frustration, "What's taking so long?! All boundary spells have a loophole."

Then Matt walked in saying, "People are walking right out of the dance, past the barrier."

Jeremy spoke up thoughtfully, "Matt and I can leave, we can stop Esther ourselves. We just gotta find out where she is."

Stefan shakes his head, "It's suicide, Jeremy."

Klaus was running out of patience so he rushed over and grabbed by the throat a guy was was apparently Bonnie’s date, he started to strangle him, "Suicide would be disappointing me!" He turned to Bonnie, "Now work her magic, witch, or I'll start killing people you fancy."

"Let him go!" Bonnie demanded.

"Not until you get us out of here." Klaus growled at her.

"Ah, don't be stupid, Klaus. Bonnie doesn't give a damn about us. The only reason she's helping us right now is to save Caroline and Tyler. You start killing the people she cares about, she'll tell us all to go to hell." Stefan told him and Klaus let go of the boy.

"Maybe try another spell, I can help. I was a witch once." Lorena suggested, then she took a new map and placed it on the teacher's desk, "We're going to need more blood." Bonnie poured more blood on the map and Lorena told her, "Think of Elena and repeat after me, "Que le sang montre où se trouve la personne à laquelle je pense."

The blood formed a circular pool that didn't move.

Bonnie opened her eyes, "Esther is fighting me."

"Esther couldn't possibly have this much power." Klaus denied shaking his head.

"Unless she's channeling something." Lorena spoke up.

"A hotspot?" Bonnie said.

Lorena and Klaus exchanged looks before he turned to Damon, "Get the humans ready. I know where she is."

・ • ・ • ・

Klaus, Lorena and Stefan were standing outside the school near the entrance to the gym hall.

"You know this is your fault. You set us on this path when you released my mother." Klaus stated, "I wonder if revenge will prove worth the cost."

Stefan shook his head, "Oh, I'm done with revenge. As far as Esther; we've stopped her before, we'll stop her again."

"We're strange bedfellows, you and I. You know, all of this, reminds me of our time together in the Twenties." Klaus told him.

"You say that like I'm supposed to have happy memories about it." Stefan responded bitterly.

Lorena spoke up, running to Stefan, "You were a trusted friend."

"Nearly a brother even." Klaus added.

Damon walked up, with his snarky smirk, "Well, he already has a brother. Not to be, you know, territorial or anything."

Klaus shook his head with a grin on his lips, "Oh no, of course, the Salvatores. And their unshakeable bond. I wonder what'll happen when Elena finally makes her choice. Will we see you shake just a little bit?"

The Salvatore brothers exchanged looks.

Suddenly, Bonnie stormed out of the school shouting, "It's done. Esther's not fighting me any more. The boundary spell is broken."

Klaus tested the boundary with his arm to see if Bonnie's words were correct.

"Go back to the mansion, love." Klaus told Lorena.

"But-" was all Lorena managed to say before he rushed away. 

It didn't take long for Klaus to retrieve Esther's body from the cemetery. He took her coffin to the room where the other coffins were. Only one was closed. He opened it and Rebekah was lying there with a dagger in her heart. Klaus pulled the dagger out of her and put it on the table.

"Esther was possessing her body and she daggered her." Klaus informed Lorena.

Lorena was leaning on the door-frame, "And we didn't notice that it wasn't Rebekah." she muttered.

Klaus turned to Esther's body in another coffin as he spoke, "Your trap failed, mother. I live and I will go on living. Let your beloved spirits try to preserve you again, I dare you to come after me! I will build an army so big, no one will ever touch me. My survival will haunt you through eternity. You will never destroy me!" He shouted out.

・ • ・ • ・

Lorena and Klaus were sitting in the living room waiting for Rebekah to wake up. He handed Lorena a glass of whiskey and sat on the sofa beside her.

"Tonight was fun, wasn't it? Except for this part with my mother." Klaus stated.

Lorena shrugged her shoulders, "You can say that."

"Don't act now like you didn't enjoy dancing with me." Klaus said with a cocky smirk.

Lorena chuckled, "Get over yourself, Klaus."

"Playing hard to get." Klaus remarked, "You know I like a challenge." 

Two of them stared at each other for a moment, Klaus gave her a look he always gave her when he felt the desire to kiss her, but it was cut short when Rebekah entered a room.

"Oh, god. Am I interrupting a moment?" Rebekah asked when she saw that the two of them were sitting close to each other.

Lorena moved her eyes from Klaus to her and placed her glass on the table before standing up, "Not at all. I'm glad you're okay." She gave her a hug and Rebekah hugged her back.

"I guess my mother managed to convince you to go on a dance together." Rebekah remarked, seeing that Lorena wore a dress from the 20s, "I hope at least you two had some fun, I unfortunately missed it."

"It was okay." Lorena said quietly.

"It was more than okay, she doesn't want to admit it." Klaus spoke up.

"So are the two of you good now?" Rebekah asked, looking between the two of them, waiting for someone to answer.

Lorena turned to Klaus who raised his eyebrow waiting for her to answer, "Well, are we, love?"

Then Lorena realized that she’s the only one who should answer, "Okay. Yes, I guess we are."

・ • ・ • ・