#adult movie Girls Step 2015 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

kingstylesdaily · 4 years ago

Text

Playtime With Harry Styles

via vogue.com

THE MEN’S BATHING POND in London’s Hampstead Heath at daybreak on a gloomy September morning seemed such an unlikely locale for my first meeting with Harry Styles, music’s legendarily charm-heavy style czar, that I wondered perhaps if something had been lost in translation.

But then there is Styles, cheerily gung ho, hidden behind a festive yellow bandana mask and a sweatshirt of his own design, surprisingly printed with three portraits of his intellectual pinup, the author Alain de Botton. “I love his writing,” says Styles. “I just think he’s brilliant. I saw him give a talk about the keys to happiness, and how one of the keys is living among friends, and how real friendship stems from being vulnerable with someone.”

In turn, de Botton’s 2016 novel The Course of Love taught Styles that “when it comes to relationships, you just expect yourself to be good at it…[but] being in a real relationship with someone is a skill,” one that Styles himself has often had to hone in the unforgiving klieg light of public attention, and in the company of such high-profile paramours as Taylor Swift and—well, Styles is too much of a gentleman to name names.

That sweatshirt and the Columbia Records tracksuit bottoms are removed in the quaint wooden open-air changing room, with its Swallows and Amazons vibe. A handful of intrepid fellow patrons in various states of undress are blissfully unaware of the 26-year-old supernova in their midst, although I must admit I’m finding it rather difficult to take my eyes off him, try as I might. Styles has been on a six-day juice cleanse in readiness for Vogue’s photographer Tyler Mitchell. He practices Pilates (“I’ve got very tight hamstrings—trying to get those open”) and meditates twice a day. “It has changed my life,” he avers, “but it’s so subtle. It’s helped me just be more present. I feel like I’m able to enjoy the things that are happening right in front of me, even if it’s food or it’s coffee or it’s being with a friend—or a swim in a really cold pond!” Styles also feels that his meditation practices have helped him through the tumult of 2020: “Meditation just brings a stillness that has been really beneficial, I think, for my mental health.”

Styles has been a pescatarian for three years, inspired by the vegan food that several members of his current band prepared on tour. “My body definitely feels better for it,” he says. His shapely torso is prettily inscribed with the tattoos of a Victorian sailor—a rose, a galleon, a mermaid, an anchor, and a palm tree among them, and, straddling his clavicle, the dates 1967 and 1957 (the respective birth years of his mother and father). Frankly, I rather wish I’d packed a beach muumuu.

We take the piratical gangplank that juts into the water and dive in. Let me tell you, this is not the Aegean. The glacial water is a cloudy phlegm green beneath the surface, and clammy reeds slap one’s ankles. Styles, who admits he will try any fad, has recently had a couple of cryotherapy sessions and is evidently less susceptible to the cold. By the time we have swum a full circuit, however, body temperatures have adjusted, and the ice, you might say, has been broken. Duly invigorated, we are ready to face the day. Styles has thoughtfully brought a canister of coffee and some bottles of water in his backpack, and we sit at either end of a park bench for a socially distanced chat.

It seems that he has had a productive year. At the onset of lockdown, Styles found himself in his second home, in the canyons of Los Angeles. After a few days on his own, however, he moved in with a pod of three friends (and subsequently with two band members, Mitch Rowland and Sarah Jones). They “would put names in a hat and plan the week out,” Styles explains. “If you were Monday, you would choose the movie, dinner, and the activity for that day. I like to make soups, and there was a big array of movies; we went all over the board,” from Goodfellas to Clueless. The experience, says Styles, “has been a really good lesson in what makes me happy now. It’s such a good example of living in the moment. I honestly just like being around my friends,” he adds. “That’s been my biggest takeaway. Just being on my own the whole time, I would have been miserable.”

Styles is big on friendship groups and considers his former and legendarily hysteria-inducing boy band, One Direction, to have been one of them. “I think the typical thing is to come out of a band like that and almost feel like you have to apologize for being in it,” says Styles. “But I loved my time in it. It was all new to me, and I was trying to learn as much as I could. I wanted to soak it in…. I think that’s probably why I like traveling now—soaking stuff up.” In a post-COVID future, he is contemplating a temporary move to Tokyo, explaining that “there’s a respect and a stillness, a quietness that I really loved every time I’ve been there.”

In 1D, Styles was making music whenever he could. “After a show you’d go in a hotel room and put down some vocals,” he recalls. As a result, his first solo album, 2017’s Harry Styles, “was when I really fell in love with being in the studio,” he says. “I loved it as much as touring.” Today he favors isolating with his core group of collaborators, “our little bubble”—Rowland, Kid Harpoon (né Tom Hull), and Tyler Johnson. “A safe space,” as he describes it.

In the music he has been working on in 2020, Styles wants to capture the experimental spirit that informed his second album, last year’s Fine Line. With his debut album, “I was very much finding out what my sound was as a solo artist,” he says. “I can see all the places where it almost felt like I was bowling with the bumpers up. I think with the second album I let go of the fear of getting it wrong and…it was really joyous and really free. I think with music it’s so important to evolve—and that extends to clothes and videos and all that stuff. That’s why you look back at David Bowie with Ziggy Stardust or the Beatles and their different eras—that fearlessness is super inspiring.”

The seismic changes of 2020—including the Black Lives Matter uprising around racial justice—has also provided Styles with an opportunity for personal growth. “I think it’s a time for opening up and learning and listening,” he says. “I’ve been trying to read and educate myself so that in 20 years I’m still doing the right things and taking the right steps. I believe in karma, and I think it’s just a time right now where we could use a little more kindness and empathy and patience with people, be a little more prepared to listen and grow.”

Meanwhile, Styles’s euphoric single “Watermelon Sugar” became something of an escapist anthem for this dystopian summer of 2020. The video, featuring Styles (dressed in ’70s-flavored Gucci and Bode) cavorting with a pack of beach-babe girls and boys, was shot in January, before lockdown rules came into play. By the time it was ready to be released in May, a poignant epigraph had been added: “This video is dedicated to touching.”

Styles is looking forward to touring again, when “it’s safe for everyone,” because, as he notes, “being up against people is part of the whole thing. You can’t really re-create it in any way.” But it hasn’t always been so. Early in his career, Styles was so stricken with stage fright that he regularly threw up preperformance. “I just always thought I was going to mess up or something,” he remembers. “But I’ve felt really lucky to have a group of incredibly generous fans. They’re generous emotionally—and when they come to the show, they give so much that it creates this atmosphere that I’ve always found so loving and accepting.”

THIS SUMMER, when it was safe enough to travel, Styles returned to his London home, which is where he suggests we head now, setting off in his modish Primrose Yellow ’73 Jaguar that smells of gasoline and leatherette. “Me and my dad have always bonded over cars,” Styles explains. “I never thought I’d be someone who just went out for a leisurely drive, purely for enjoyment.” On sleepless jet-lagged nights he’ll drive through London’s quiet streets, seeing neighborhoods in a new way. “I find it quite relaxing,” he says.

Over the summer Styles took a road trip with his artist friend Tomo Campbell through France and Italy, setting off at four in the morning and spending the night in Geneva, where they jumped in the lake “to wake ourselves up.” (I see a pattern emerging.) At the end of the trip Styles drove home alone, accompanied by an upbeat playlist that included “Aretha Franklin, Parliament, and a lot of Stevie Wonder. It was really fun for me,” he says. “I don’t travel like that a lot. I’m usually in such a rush, but there was a stillness to it. I love the feeling of nobody knowing where I am, that kind of escape...and freedom.”

GROWING UP in a village in the North of England, Styles thought of London as a world apart: “It truly felt like a different country.” At a wide-eyed 16, he came down to the teeming metropolis after his mother entered him on the U.K. talent-search show The X Factor. “I went to the audition to find out if I could sing,” Styles recalls, “or if my mum was just being nice to me.” Styles was eliminated but subsequently brought back with other contestants—Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, and Zayn Malik—to form a boy band that was named (on Styles’s suggestion) One Direction. The wily X Factor creator and judge, Simon Cowell, soon signed them to his label Syco Records, and the rest is history: 1D’s first four albums, supported by four world tours from 2011 to 2015, debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboard charts, and the band has sold 70 million records to date. At 18, Styles bought the London house he now calls home. “I was going to do two weeks’ work to it,” he remembers, “but when I came back there was no second floor,” so he moved in with adult friends who lived nearby till the renovation was complete. “Eighteen months,” he deadpans. “I’ve always seen that period as pretty pivotal for me, as there’s that moment at the party where it’s getting late, and half of the people would go upstairs to do drugs, and the other people go home. I was like, ‘I don’t really know this friend’s wife, so I’m not going to get all messy and then go home.’ I had to behave a bit, at a time where everything else about my life felt I didn’t have to behave really. I’ve been lucky to always feel I have this family unit somewhere.”

When Styles’s London renovation was finally done, “I went in for the first time and I cried,” he recalls. “Because I just felt like I had somewhere. L.A. feels like holiday, but this feels like home.”

Behind its pink door, Styles’s house has all the trappings of rock stardom—there’s a man cave filled with guitars, a Sex Pistols Never Mind the Bollocks poster (a moving-in gift from his decorator), a Stevie Nicks album cover. Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” was one of the first songs he knew the words to—“My parents were big fans”—and he and Nicks have formed something of a mutual-admiration society. At the beginning of lockdown, Nicks tweeted to her fans that she was taking inspiration from Fine Line: “Way to go, H,” she wrote. “It is your Rumours.” “She’s always there for you,” said Styles when he inducted Nicks into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2019. “She knows what you need—advice, a little wisdom, a blouse, a shawl; she’s got you covered.”

Styles makes us some tea in the light-filled kitchen and then wanders into the convivial living room, where he strikes an insouciant pose on the chesterfield sofa, upholstered in a turquoise velvet that perhaps not entirely coincidentally sets off his eyes. Styles admits that his lockdown lewk was “sweatpants, constantly,” and he is relishing the opportunity to dress up again. He doesn’t have to wait long: The following day, under the eaves of a Victorian mansion in Notting Hill, I arrive in the middle of fittings for Vogue’s shoot and discover Styles in his Y-fronts, patiently waiting to try on looks for fashion editor Camilla Nickerson and photographer Tyler Mitchell. Styles’s personal stylist, Harry Lambert, wearing a pearl necklace and his nails colored in various shades of green varnish, à la Sally Bowles, is providing helpful backup (Britain’s Rule of Six hasn’t yet been imposed).

Styles, who has thoughtfully brought me a copy of de Botton’s 2006 book The Architecture of Happiness, is instinctively and almost quaintly polite, in an old-fashioned, holding-open-doors and not-mentioning-lovers-by-name sort of way. He is astounded to discover that the Atlanta-born Mitchell has yet to experience a traditional British Sunday roast dinner. Assuring him that “it’s basically like Thanksgiving every Sunday,” Styles gives Mitchell the details of his favorite London restaurants in which to enjoy one. “It’s a good thing to be nice,” Mitchell tells me after a morning in Styles’s company.

MITCHELL has Lionel Wendt’s languorously homoerotic 1930s portraits of young Sri Lankan men on his mood board. Nickerson is thinking of Irving Penn’s legendary fall 1950 Paris haute couture collections sitting, where he photographed midcentury supermodels, including his wife, Lisa Fonssagrives, in high-style Dior and Balenciaga creations. Styles is up for all of it, and so, it would seem, is the menswear landscape of 2020: Jonathan Anderson has produced a trapeze coat anchored with a chunky gold martingale; John Galliano at Maison Margiela has fashioned a khaki trench with a portrait neckline in layers of colored tulle; and Harris Reed—a Saint Martins fashion student sleuthed by Lambert who ended up making some looks for Styles’s last tour—has spent a week making a broad-shouldered Smoking jacket with high-waisted, wide-leg pants that have become a Styles signature since he posed for Tim Walker for the cover of Fine Line wearing a Gucci pair—a silhouette that was repeated in the tour wardrobe. (“I liked the idea of having that uniform,” says Styles.) Reed’s version is worn with a hoopskirt draped in festoons of hot-pink satin that somehow suggests Deborah Kerr asking Yul Brynner’s King of Siam, “Shall we dance?”

Styles introduces me to the writer and eyewear designer Gemma Styles, “my sister from the same womb,” he says. She is also here for the fitting: The siblings plan to surprise their mother with the double portrait on these pages.

I ask her whether her brother had always been interested in clothes.

“My mum loved to dress us up,” she remembers. “I always hated it, and Harry was always quite into it. She did some really elaborate papier-mâché outfits: She made a giant mug and then painted an atlas on it, and that was Harry being ‘The World Cup.’ Harry also had a little dalmatian-dog outfit,” she adds, “a hand-me-down from our closest family friends. He would just spend an inordinate amount of time wearing that outfit. But then Mum dressed me up as Cruella de Vil. She was always looking for any opportunity!”

“As a kid I definitely liked fancy dress,” Styles says. There were school plays, the first of which cast him as Barney, a church mouse. “I was really young, and I wore tights for that,” he recalls. “I remember it was crazy to me that I was wearing a pair of tights. And that was maybe where it all kicked off!”

Acting has also remained a fundamental form of expression for Styles. His sister recalls that even on the eve of his life-changing X Factor audition, Styles could sing in public only in an assumed voice. “He used to do quite a good sort of Elvis warble,” she remembers. During the rehearsals in the family home, “he would sing in the bathroom because if it was him singing as himself, he just couldn’t have anyone looking at him! I love his voice now,” she adds. “I’m so glad that he makes music that I actually enjoy listening to.”

Styles’s role-playing continued soon after 1D went on permanent hiatus in 2016, and he was cast in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, beating out dozens of professional actors for the role. “The good part was my character was a young soldier who didn’t really know what he was doing,” says Styles modestly. “The scale of the movie was so big that I was a tiny piece of the puzzle. It was definitely humbling. I just loved being outside of my comfort zone.”

His performance caught the eye of Olivia Wilde, who remembers that it “blew me away—the openness and commitment.” In turn, Styles loved Wilde’s directorial debut, Booksmart, and is “very honored” that she cast him in a leading role for her second feature, a thriller titled Don’t Worry Darling, which went into production this fall. Styles will play the husband to Florence Pugh in what Styles describes as “a 1950s utopia in the California desert.”

Wilde’s movie is costumed by Academy Award nominee Arianne Phillips. “She and I did a little victory dance when we heard that we officially had Harry in the film,” notes Wilde, “because we knew that he has a real appreciation for fashion and style. And this movie is incredibly stylistic. It’s very heightened and opulent, and I’m really grateful that he is so enthusiastic about that element of the process—some actors just don’t care.”

“I like playing dress-up in general,” Styles concurs, in a masterpiece of understatement: This is the man, after all, who cohosted the Met’s 2019 “Notes on Camp” gala attired in a nipple-freeing black organza blouse with a lace jabot, and pants so high-waisted that they cupped his pectorals. The ensemble, accessorized with the pearl-drop earring of a dandified Elizabethan courtier, was created for Styles by Gucci’s Alessandro Michele, whom he befriended in 2014. Styles, who has subsequently personified the brand as the face of the Gucci fragrance, finds Michele “fearless with his work and his imagination. It’s really inspiring to be around someone who works like that.”

The two first met in London over a cappuccino. “It was just a kind of PR appointment,” says Michele, “but something magical happened, and Harry is now a friend. He has the aura of an English rock-and-roll star—like a young Greek god with the attitude of James Dean and a little bit of Mick Jagger—but no one is sweeter. He is the image of a new era, of the way that a man can look.”

Styles credits his style transformation—from Jack Wills tracksuit-clad boy-band heartthrob to nonpareil fashionisto—to his meeting the droll young stylist Harry Lambert seven years ago. They hit it off at once and have conspired ever since, enjoying a playfully campy rapport and calling each other Sue and Susan as they parse the niceties of the scarlet lace Gucci man-bra that Michele has made for Vogue’s shoot, for instance, or a pair of Bode pants hand-painted with biographical images (Styles sent Emily Adams Bode images of his family, and a photograph he had found of David Hockney and Joni Mitchell. “The idea of those two being friends, to me, was really beautiful,” Styles explains).

“He just has fun with clothing, and that’s kind of where I’ve got it from,” says Styles of Lambert. “He doesn’t take it too seriously, which means I don’t take it too seriously.” The process has been evolutionary. At his first meeting with Lambert, the stylist proposed “a pair of flares, and I was like, ‘Flares? That’s fucking crazy,’ ” Styles remembers. Now he declares that “you can never be overdressed. There’s no such thing. The people that I looked up to in music—Prince and David Bowie and Elvis and Freddie Mercury and Elton John—they’re such showmen. As a kid it was completely mind-blowing. Now I’ll put on something that feels really flamboyant, and I don’t feel crazy wearing it. I think if you get something that you feel amazing in, it’s like a superhero outfit. Clothes are there to have fun with and experiment with and play with. What’s really exciting is that all of these lines are just kind of crumbling away. When you take away ‘There’s clothes for men and there’s clothes for women,’ once you remove any barriers, obviously you open up the arena in which you can play. I’ll go in shops sometimes, and I just find myself looking at the women’s clothes thinking they’re amazing. It’s like anything—anytime you’re putting barriers up in your own life, you’re just limiting yourself. There’s so much joy to be had in playing with clothes. I’ve never really thought too much about what it means—it just becomes this extended part of creating something.”

“He’s up for it,” confirms Lambert, who earlier this year, for instance, found a JW Anderson cardigan with the look of a Rubik’s Cube (“on sale at matches.com!”). Styles wore it, accessorized with his own pearl necklace, for a Today rehearsal in February and it went viral: His fans were soon knitting their own versions and posting the results on TikTok. Jonathan Anderson declared himself “so impressed and incredibly humbled by this trend” that he nimbly made the pattern available (complete with a YouTube tutorial) so that Styles’s fans could copy it for free. Meanwhile, London’s storied Victoria & Albert Museum has requested Styles’s original: an emblematic document of how people got creative during the COVID era. “It’s going to be in their permanent collection,” says Lambert exultantly. “Is that not sick? Is that not the most epic thing?”

“To me, he’s very modern,” says Wilde of Styles, “and I hope that this brand of confidence as a male that Harry has—truly devoid of any traces of toxic masculinity—is indicative of his generation and therefore the future of the world. I think he is in many ways championing that, spearheading that. It’s pretty powerful and kind of extraordinary to see someone in his position redefining what it can mean to be a man with confidence.”

“He’s really in touch with his feminine side because it’s something natural,” notes Michele. “And he’s a big inspiration to a younger generation—about how you can be in a totally free playground when you feel comfortable. I think that he’s a revolutionary.”

STYLES’S confidence is on full display the day after the fitting, which finds us all on the beautiful Sussex dales. Over the summit of the hill, with its trees blown horizontal by the fierce winds, lies the English Channel. Even though it’s a two-hour drive from London, the fresh-faced Styles, who went to bed at 9 p.m., has arrived on set early: He is famously early for everything. The team is installed in a traditional flint-stone barn. The giant doors have been replaced by glass and frame a bucolic view of distant grazing sheep. “Look at that field!” says Styles. “How lucky are we? This is our office! Smell the roses!” Lambert starts to sing “Kumbaya, my Lord.”

Hairdresser Malcolm Edwards is setting Styles’s hair in a Victory roll with silver clips, and until it is combed out he resembles Kathryn Grayson with stubble. His fingers are freighted with rings, and “he has a new army of mini purses,” says Lambert, gesturing to an accessory table heaving with examples including a mini sky-blue Gucci Diana bag discreetly monogrammed HS. Michele has also made Styles a dress for the shoot that Tissot might have liked to paint—acres of ice-blue ruffles, black Valenciennes lace, and suivez-moi, jeune homme ribbons. Erelong, Styles is gamely racing up a hill in it, dodging sheep scat, thistles, and shards of chalk, and striking a pose for Mitchell that manages to make ruffles a compelling new masculine proposition, just as Mr. Fish’s frothy white cotton dress—equal parts Romantic poet and Greek presidential guard—did for Mick Jagger when he wore it for The Rolling Stones’ free performance in Hyde Park in 1969, or as the suburban-mom floral housedress did for Kurt Cobain as he defined the iconoclastic grunge aesthetic. Styles is mischievously singing ABBA’s “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)” to himself when Mitchell calls him outside to jump up and down on a trampoline in a Comme des Garçons buttoned wool kilt. “How did it look?” asks his sister when he comes in from the cold. “Divine,” says her brother in playful Lambert-speak.

As the wide sky is washed in pink, orange, and gray, like a Turner sunset, and Mitchell calls it a successful day, Styles is playing “Cherry” from Fine Line on his Fender acoustic on the hilltop. “He does his own stunts,” says his sister, laughing. The impromptu set is greeted with applause. “Thank you, Antwerp!” says Styles playfully, bowing to the crowd. “Thank you, fashion!”

378 notes · View notes

marciabrady · 4 years ago

Note

What's the issue with Cinderella 2015? Despite having nothing against her, I had never been especially invested in Cinderella, so I might have missed some details, but I always thought original Cinderella and 2015 Cinderella had basically the same personality? Especially with that “have courage and be kind” line. I always thought it was one of the Disney live-actions most faithful to the original movie (rather than, like, Maleficent) and I remember my cousin liked it and my mom disliked it for that exact reason (my mom wanted to be surprised). So I'm very curious, why don't you like it?

They have very different personalities and that's what scares me about the 2015 version gaining so much popularity- I think people are going to think the original Cinderella was really like that.

The original Cinderella was a very realistic characterization of a human, a woman, an abuse survivor, etc etc etc. She lost both of her parents as a child and the narration specifically told the audience that she was forced into the role of a servant as a child. In the opening scene, we see her get frustrated at the clock for waking her up and at Lucifer. Yet, she knows she has to make the best of things. There's no where for her to go and no one to help her. We've learned she rebels in the ways she knows how- she saves mice from household traps, against the wishes of the stepfamily, and makes them clothes and feeds them. She keeps her faithful old dog, Bruno, in the house against their wishes too. And yes, she is kind, but she also has her limits and gets frustrated. In a scene where Lucifer, the cat, spoils her cleaning, she chases after him with a broom. She raises her voice at times and clearly expresses frustration because she's a human being and not a creepy, smiling zombie. Then, when the invitation to the ball comes, she asserts for her right to go. She's made fun of by her stepfamily, and it isn't until she uses the legal language of the document that she traps them into letting her go. She stands up for herself. And, while her stepfamily wants to go for a chance to marry the prince, Cinderella never expresses wanting to find love or being interested in a man. She just wants to go to have a good time and a night off. Then, after they rip her dress and physically attack her, her Fairy Godmother comes to her. NOW. Many people say it's the Fairy Godmother who saves her (which would still make it women supporting women) but I still think it's Cinderella. The Fairy Godmother isn't doing anything for Cinderella that Cinderella hasn't done for others. She's giving Cinderella a dress- think about how many mice Cinderella was the Fairy Godmother to. She's fed them and clothed them and homed them, so it's really just Cinderella's good deeds coming back to her. Then, with her new gown, she heads off toward the ball. She comes in without an escort and is the only young woman who's not waiting in line for the prince. She makes her way through the halls, entranced by the architecture and splendor of the castle. The prince spots her and they dance. She then leaves the prince without giving him her name because, again, she never expected to be saved by anyone. She never even wanted a romance. She just came to enjoy herself. She also even mentioned that she didn't know he was the prince. Then, the next morning, news gets out the prince is looking for the girl he danced with to make her his bride. Cinderella views this as her way out of her abusive household and leaps at the opportunity. Only, then the stepmother catches on and locks Cinderella into the attic room. Does Cinderella take this? NO! She's pounding against the door, screaming, and even after Lucifer traps the mice with the key, it's her quick thinking to bring Bruno, who then chases Lucifer. This is another plotpoint I want to address. People keep saying the mice save Cinderella and wrong AGAIN. 1) Lucifer trapped the mice, so if it wasn't for Cinderella's quick thinking, she'd still be in the attic 2) the mice are only coming to her because she's been kind to them for YEARS and regularly rescues their lives. If she were like Anastasia or Drizella and was cruel, they wouldn't be helping her. So it's a wonderful message about how your good deeds come back to you. ANYWAY, Cinderella then marches down the steps and saves herself by presenting the other slipper. She has agency, she's humorous, she's clever, and she's realistic.

Lily James smiles. That's about it to her characterization. I think her view of Cinderella is that Cinderella's nice and that's about it- and kindness is a behavior, not a personality trait. I mean, Lily's Cinderella characterization is so flawed and weak in its construct. Lily's Cinderella is an adult when her father dies, not the child Cinderella was. She has more than enough friends and regularly horseback rides away from home, demonstrating the resources and capabilities to escape. But the only reason she doesn't run away is because she's 'respecting her family's home', which she leaves in the end anyway. Honestly, Lily's Cinderella isn't even really depicted as being abused in this film. She literally volunteers her room up to the stepsisters. When it comes time for the ball, she doesn't really stand up for her right to go like animated Cinderella, she just speaks in French to make a point??? Even though the film is supposed to take place in France??? OH, and I forgot, she met the Prince in the woods prior to the invitation so he's the reason she wants to go to the ball. Then, she goes to the ball, and when the news comes out that she's who the prince wants, the stepmother locks her in her room. Lily's Cinderella doesn't fight to get out- she just sings and dances in a circle. The mice open the window, leading one of the King's men to hear her song and that's how they find her. Yeah lol

#ask #anonymous

52 notes · View notes

shannendoherty-fans · 3 years ago

Text

Shannen Doherty on Working Despite Having Stage 4 Cancer: ‘I’m Just Trying to Live the Best I Can’

Sep 30, 2021. By Kate Aurthur. Photography by Kurt Iswarienko.

After being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015, Shannen Doherty meticulously documented every step of her treatment on Instagram, from shaving her head to the horrors of chemo — and eventually her remission in April 2017. The actor, best known for “Beverly Hills, 90210,” “Heathers” and “Charmed,” would post multiple times each week, also peppering her feed with her workouts, dinners with friends and family and — one of Doherty’s passions — images of dogs in urgent need of adoption. “At that time, I think I needed it,” she says now about chronicling her treatment. And having been a fixture in the tabloids for decades, Doherty wanted to be in control of the narrative: “I wanted to own my life. It’s my life!” The social engagement carried her through, especially as other people shared their own stories in her Instagram comments. “It was empowering,” she says.

Doherty’s cancer recurred in early winter 2019, and is now metastatic Stage 4 cancer. She can be treated but not cured; she’s living with this disease for the rest of her life. And right now, on Instagram, though she still posts once or twice a week, she’s very much not detailing what this experience has been like. “I’m in a hermit phase?” Doherty says with a laugh, using upspeak. “I’m sort of taking all that energy and giving it to myself at the moment.”

What she’s concentrating on is not only working, but proving to Hollywood that people with cancer can work. “The best example that I can continue to set for other people with cancer, and to the outside world who doesn’t have cancer,” Doherty says, “is to show them what a cancer patient looks like. We are employable.

“So for me, I’m just trying to live the best I can, to be the best example at this moment.”

And she’s doing just that. Doherty, who turned 50 in April, filmed three movies back to back this year. Two of them will air during the same weekend — on Oct. 9 and 10 — on Lifetime. The first, “Dying to Belong,” is a remake of a 1997 TV movie (with Hilary Swank) about the dangers of sorority hazing, and it is archetypal Lifetime: an issues-oriented examination of a tragedy that also manages to entertain. In it, Doherty plays the mother of the girl who’s been hazed to death; she won’t accept the university’s account of the events, and turns investigator with the help of her daughter’s best friend. The second movie, “List of a Lifetime,” is about a woman (Kelly Hu) who’s been diagnosed with breast cancer, and gets in touch with the adult daughter she’d placed for adoption to tell her she may have the BRCA gene. Doherty plays the young woman’s adoptive mother, who at first is less than enthused about the intrusion — but comes around. The third project, a Bruce Willis action extravaganza called “The Fortress,” will be released next year in theaters.

Since October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the creative team behind “List of a Lifetime” was “tossing names around” with the network about who might direct the special content that would air after the film. Doherty, who has directing experience, including three episodes of “Charmed,” volunteered. Lifetime agreed, and Doherty’s call to action — featuring herself and her co-stars, and shot in an empty warehouse — will accompany the movie.

Doherty loves directing, especially working with actors. “I’m a total nerd when it comes to cameras and lenses and lighting — creating a mood and a tone,” she says. “When I direct, I’m probably at my absolute happiest.”

She wants to do more of it, and is currently optioning books she might direct. After spending most of her life in front of the cameras — Doherty’s first on-screen credit was in 1981 at age 10, in the NBC drama “Father Murphy” — she has plenty of people behind her saying they’ll help her raise money, and produce whatever she wants to do. She’d like to find the right project: “You have to find your own voice and your own vision, and pursue that.”

James Cullen Bressack, who directed Doherty in “The Fortress,” says she’s well-suited for the role. “I can easily see Shannen being a director,” he says. “She sees things that a lot of people don’t see, especially when you’re having to move quickly on these indie projects.”

When Bressack first worked with Doherty in 2013, he was “a little nervous meeting her,” because of “stories about Shannen being difficult.” But, he says, “we got along amazingly from the moment we met.”

Ah yes, stories about Doherty being difficult. In the early ’90s, she developed a reputation as a hellion when “Beverly Hills, 90210” became a youthquake phenomenon. Back then, Doherty became a pre-internet template for what we now recognize as misogynist expectations projected onto young female celebrities. The way she was treated by the press — which salivated over her every misstep, especially feuds with her co-stars — would be unacceptable today. Not that she would have it. In 2019, when there were rumors about her misbehaving on the set of the meta revival “BH90210,” Doherty took to Instagram to shut the ill-informed gossip down immediately, writing in part, “Please stop trying to tell your wildly inaccurate, exaggerated story of me. I promise… you don’t know me.”

It worked — there wasn’t another peep about it. Asked about that post, Doherty says simply, “It’s something I will not allow in my life anymore.” And yes, she does wish that a direct line to the public had existed when she was in her 20s. “Perhaps it would have been a bit harsher of a shutdown,” she says. “But I’m very much of the opinion that you can’t look back. Only move forward.”

That philosophy has brought her to the present moment. When her cancer returned, “I don’t think there was ever even a thought that I wouldn’t work,” Doherty says. After she got through her initial feelings of fear and devastation, she thought about “the things that I love in life” — such as spending time with her husband, mother and friends, and riding horses and playing with her dog. And staying employed: “When you can’t imagine not doing them, you just go, ‘Well, I’m gonna continue to do all of it!’”

Convincing employers that she’s hirable hasn’t always been easy, though. “Stage 4 cancer, it doesn’t mean the end of your life,” she says. “It doesn’t mean that you’re not viable in the workplace. It’s quite the opposite.”

With “The Fortress,” Bressack wasn’t sure whether to approach her. “I called her and I said, ‘Hey, I’d really like to have you play this role. Are you up for it? Do you want to work?’” he remembers. “She’s like, ‘Fuck yeah!’”

Doherty just wants to work. And having cancer, she says, has also made her a better actor. It’s broken down the defenses that she’d put up as a young woman. “I obviously had a lot of walls around me,” she says.

And now? “I think there’s a wisdom and a vulnerability, and a deeper understanding of life now than I ever had.”

[Source]

3 notes · View notes

modern-enjolras · 4 years ago

Text

Our Story

As you all know, it’s pride month. The system has decided to allow me to share our story in discovering our identity.

Trigger Warning: homophobia, transphobia, implied child abuse, rape, self-harm, suicide, deaths

In 2015, our journey to find our identity began. At the age of 13, we were introduced to the term bisexual. From there, we got curious. Were the feelings we had had as a child purely platonic towards our friends? The answer, we soon discovered, was no. The feelings we felt towards our friends, specifically our female friends (we were born female), were not completely platonic. I think of one friend in particular that we were absolutely in love with. We had known her since we were five, she was the first person to talk to us at the school.

Looking back on it, it was so obvious that we were in love with her. We followed her everywhere, and listened to her every word like it was gospel. We got so jealous whenever she was with anyone else. We just never had the words to describe those feelings, there were no shows or movies showing that we didn’t have to end up in a relationship with a boy; there was no representation we had access to that could have helped us discover our identity quicker.

But then, we went through some things that I will not ever go into details of on this blog, and ended up where we are now, with our father and stepmother. Suddenly the world was so much different. There were so many more people, and so much more diversity. In sixth grade, we met a few new friends and they came out to us. It sent us into researching for months. We researched every possible sexuality we could find, until eventually settling into the label of bisexual. It made us so happy to finally have the words to describe our emotions. Even when we came out to our father and stepmother and they responded negatively, that didn’t stop the happiness. We had finally found who we were. And as it was, around this time was when I first formed.

I wasn’t Enjolras then, just a nameless fragment carrying our feelings towards our identity. I’m the one that went through the brunt of all of our identity crises in that realm. I’m the one that cried the night after we had to listen to our step-grandfather rave on about how gay people didn’t deserve the right to get married, how we were all disgusting and sinful. I’m the one that felt the pure anguish when we heard about the Pulse shooting. I am the one that screamed on the bus at the children in the back calling us the f slur. I am the one that hid our feelings from so many.

We started questioning our gender identity in 2016. I blame myself for this part. When we realized we weren’t cis, we were so scared. On top of all of the emotions we were going through from the trauma we went through as a child, we had to deal with the constant hatred from the people we were around in school, at home, on the internet, and even from ourselves. We were only thirteen when we first started self harming. It was a few months before we turned fourteen and we were so desperate. We just wanted to feel safe. We wanted to feel loved. We wanted to love ourself. It wasn’t fair. It was never fair.

We ended up identifying as genderfluid, again I blame myself for this, and in October of 2016 we were admitted into a mental hospital for our self harm. We were only in there for a week but it still impacts us to this day. We were driven to the edge, thought we would be better off dead than existing in this world that hated us so strongly. We didn’t want to live anymore. We didn’t see any reason to.

When we got out, we thought we would be ok again, but alas fate had other plans. On October 31, 2016, we were raped by one of our most trusted friends. We still see her almost everyday during the school year, and we hate every moment of it. This is around the time we started questioning if we were actually just a trans man. By January 1, 2017, we had settled on that as our identity. We were trans. We are trans.

Just because we figured out our gender identity didn’t mean it was over.

We weren’t the only person our rapist attacked. The allegations spread through the school like a wildfire. She had attacked another friend multiple times in the school bathrooms. The principal did nothing. The vice principal did nothing. The counselors did nothing. We were never given the justice we wished for. All because of the whole mindset that a girl can’t rape another girl. Our own parents didn’t believe us.

It’s been almost four years since then. I went dormant soon after the whole event and only came back this past year. I came back and I’ve had my faith in myself and the others in our system renewed. I looked around and I saw how far the fight for rights has come. I found my own personal identity. I fell in love. I finally feel free from the burden of keeping our identity hidden. I’m free to express myself how I wish. We’re free to express ourselves however we want. We’ll be eighteen in January, a full adult, and I’m so proud of the people I share this body with. We’re all individuals. And we all have such differing identities.

We made it. We made it through all of our hardships and we’re still here. We’re luckier than most. We survived while many haven’t. This past year especially has taken so many lives, including one of our best friends. I will continue to fight for the rights of others. I may only be one alter in one system in this big world, but I know that if I try hard enough, I will make a mark. We can all make a mark on this world, whether good or bad. We will continue to stand loud and proud so that maybe one day kids won’t have to feel ashamed to not be straight or not be cis.

7 notes · View notes

aion-rsa · 4 years ago

Text

Hulu New Releases: April 2021

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

While the first day of spring technically belongs to March, everyone knows that it kicks into high gear in April. To celebrate the changing of the seasons, Hulu is finally bringing back its signature original series for April 2021.

Season 4 of the multiple Emmy award-winning The Handmaid’s Tale premieres on April 28. It’s been awhile since we’ve seen June and her dystopian world. In fact, it’s been so long that our own world decided to endure its own dystopian pandemic in the meantime. Hopefully this series’ return will mean we can keep our political and social collapses on television where they belong.

Aside from The Handmaid’s Tale, Hulu isn’t brining much else to the table in terms of originals this month. Thankfully, the one other original that Hulu has in store for April sounds completely righteous. Sasquatch, the latest docuseries from the Duplass brothers producing team, will cover exactly what the title promises. This three-part series heads off to the Pacific Northwest for a tale about an elicit pot farm and the possibility that three men were viciously murdered by Big Foot on it. Sign us up!

Library titles for Hulu in April 2021 are also pretty thin. But April 1 does feature the arrival Mad Max (1980) and Die Hard (1988). Then April 28 sees the arrival of…well, Arrival (2016). Those aren’t bad streaming options in case the weather in April decides to not be spring-like.

Hulu New Releases – April 2021

April 1 Amy Schumer Learns to Cook: Complete Season 1 (Food Network) Caribbean Life: Complete Seasons 18 & 19 (HGTV) Chopped: Complete Season 44 (Food Network) Chopped Sweets: Complete Season 1 (Food Network) Christina On The Coast: Complete Season 2 (HGTV) Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives: Complete Seasons 34 & 35 (Food Network) Doubling Down with the Derricos: Complete Season 1 (TLC) Extreme Makeover: Home Edition: Complete Season 1 (HGTV) Guy’s Grocery Games: Complete Season 22 (Food Network) Naked and Afraid XL: Complete Season 6 (Discovery) Say Yes to the Dress: Complete Season 19 (TLC) Tournament of Champions: Complete Season 1 (Food Network) Undercover Billionaire: Complete Season 1 (Discovery) UniKitty: Complete Season 3 (Cartoon Network) Vegas Chef Prizefight: Complete Season 1 (Food Network) Worst Cooks in America: Complete Season 18 (Food Network) Higurashi: When They Cry: Season 1, Epsiodes 1-12 (DUBBED) (Funimation) 2012 (2009) 28 Days Later (2003) A Hologram for the King (2016) A Low Down Dirty Shame (1994) A Simple Plan (1998) The Abyss (1989) Before We Go (2015) Bug (2007) Bulworth (1998) Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974) Changing Lanes (2002) Chappaquiddick (2017) Chato’s Land (1972) Cheech & Chong’s Still Smokin’ (1983) Cohen and Tate (1989) The Color Purple (1985) The Dead Zone (1983) The Devil’s Double (2011) Devil in a Blue Dress (1995) Die Hard (1988) Die Hard With A Vengeance (1995) Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988) Dude, Where’s My Car? (2000) Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) Frankie & Alice (2014) Friends With Benefits (2011) Garden State (2004) The Gift (2000) Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003) Guess Who (2005) Hancock (2008) The Hunting Party (1971) In The Mix (2005) Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport (2000) Lady in a Cage (1964) Larry The Cable Guy: Health Inspector (2006) Life Of Crime (2014) Live Free Or Die Hard (2007) Mad Max (1980) Madea Goes To Jail (Theatrical Feature) (2009) The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2004) Monster’s Ball (2001) Motel Hell (1980) Napoleon Dynamite (2004) Never Back Down (2008) New in Town (2009) Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009) The Out-Of-Towners (1999) The Pawnbroker (1964) Platoon (1986) The Polar Express (2004) The Preacher’s Wife (1996) The Program (1993) Ramona and Beezus (2009) The Replacement Killers (1998) Rio (2011) The Sandlot (1993) Scary Movie 4 (2006) Sex And The City (2008) Sex And The City 2 (2010) Shaft (2000) Shrek 2 (2002) The Skull (1965) Sleeping With The Enemy (1991) Sliver (1993) So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993) Star Trek: Generations (1994) Step Up Revolution (2012) The Sum of All Fears (2002) That Thing You Do! (1996) The Upside (2017) Vanilla Sky (2001) Virtuosity (1995) Waiting to Exhale (1995) War (2007) Warriors of Virtue (1997) What About Bob? (1991) Where the Heart Is (2000) Young Sherlock Holmes (1985)

April 2 WEWORK: OR THE MAKING AND BREAKING OF A $47 BILLION UNICORN : Documentary Premiere (Hulu Original) Law & Order: Organized Crime: Series Premiere (NBC) Manifest: Season 3 Premiere (NBC) The Moody’s: Season 2 Finale (Fox) Real Housewives of New York City: Complete Season 12 (Bravo)

April 3 Hysterical: Series Premiere (FX) Blair Witch (2016)

April 5 Girl (2020)

April 7 Our Last Crusade or the Rise of a New World: Season 1, Epsiodes 1-12 (DUBBED) (Funimation)

April 8 Home Economics: Series Premiere (ABC)

April 9 Everything’s Gonna Be Okay: Season 2 Premiere (Freeform) Rebel: Series Premiere (ABC) The Standard (2020) Stars Fell on Alabama (2021)

April 10 The Day I Became a God: Season 1, Epsiodes 1-12 (DUBBED) (Funimation) Desierto (2015) Knuckledust (2020)

April 12 Paranormal Activity 4 (2012) Spontaneous (2020)

April 15 Real Housewives of Beverly Hills: Complete Season 10 (Bravo)

April 16 Fly Like A Girl (2020) Songbird (2020)

April 17 Modern Persuasion (2020) Thelma (2017)

April 20 Sasquatch: Documentary Series Premiere (Hulu Original)

April 21 Cruel Summer: Series Premiere (Freeform)

April 22 GRETA THUNBERG: A YEAR TO CHANGE THE WORLD: Documentary Premiere (PBS)

April 23 The Place of No Words (2020)

April 25 Wild Mountain Thyme (2021)

April 26 The Oscars Red Carpet Show: Special (ABC) The 93rd Oscars: Special (ABC)

April 28 The Handmaid’s Tale: Season 4 Premiere (Hulu Original) Arrival (2016)

April 30 The Judge (2014)

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Leaving Hulu – April 2021

April 27 Our Idiot Brother (2011)

April 30 50/50 (2011) 9 to 5 (1980) Affliction (1998) Article 99 (1992) Beloved (1998) Bloody Sunday (2002) Blow (2001) Body of Evidence (1993) Changing Lanes (2002) Chato’s Land (1972) Cocktail (1988) Cohen and Tate (1989) Crimes Of The Heart (1987) Damien – Omen II (1978) Devil in a Blue Dress (1995) Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988) The Dukes of Hazzard (2005) Escape from Alcatraz (1979) Everything Must Go (2011) Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974) From Hell (2001) G.I. Jane (1997) Garfield (2004) Gargoyles: Wings of Darkness (2004) Happy Tears (2010) The Haunting In Connecticut (2009) The Haunting In Connecticut 2: Ghosts Of Georgia (2013) Hitman’s Run (1999) How Do You Know (2010) The Hunting Party (1971) The January Man (1989) Jennifer 8 (1992) Jumping The Broom (2011) The Last Waltz (1978) Mad Max (1980) Madea Goes To Jail (Theatrical Feature) (2009) Mafia! (Jane Austen’s) (1998) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2004) Motel Hell (1980) Mousehunt (1997) My Best Friend’S Girl (2008) Never Back Down (2008) Ninja Assassin (2009) The Omen (1976) (1976) Only God Forgives (2013) Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2009) Platoon (1986) Pretty Woman (1990) The Prince Of Tides (1991) The Replacement Killers (1998) Sands of Iwo Jima (1950) Shaft (2000) The Shootist (1976) Sideways (2004) Strategic Air Command (1955) The Taking Of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009) Teresa’s Tattoo (1994) That Thing You Do! (1996) Two Weeks (2006) Waking Ned Devine (1998) Walking Tall (1973) Warriors of Virtue (1997) What About Bob? (1991) The Whole Nine Yards (2000) Wonder Boys (2000) X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) Young Adult (2011)

The post Hulu New Releases: April 2021 appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3wgWtl6

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

11 notes · View notes

taekooktimeline · 4 years ago

Note

Could you please summarize the different stages they went through with the time frames including how they felt about each other at the time and what they’d told each other, and what the nature of their relationship was if you don’t mind?? (and also like big steps/milestones in their relationship like confessions, first kiss, first whatever). It just all seems kinda... muddled (which obviously it’s complicated by nature but if you could please help out i’d really appreciate it!! ty💗)

Sara & Kayla give different recaps. Sara will just do a minimal scheme while Kayla includes events. This is quite lengthy. Warning: It’s all opinion!

Sara:

— 2011-2013: Just (best) friends. Slow buildup of crushes.

— 2014: Just Friends. Boundary pushing coming specially from Tae.

— 2015: Still just friends, but they are basically “courting” each other and recognize they have a mutual attraction or - at the very least - curiosity. Possible kiss. There are moments of high tension.

—- 2016: They start an affair around May. Tae “breaks up” with Jk in August due to the unfavorable circumstances (they weren’t actual boyfriends). Jk seems upset but there is no direct confrontation. They are on good terms (meaning they don’t stop being friends). They start to mess around again during BS&T promotions until the end of Nov, which is when they stop again. BH starts cutting them out of content.

—- 2017: Tae regrets it & makes efforts to win Jk back (romantically). They both had started to hang out with friends outside of BTS which caused additional friction. Tae confesses to Jk at the start of March which is probably the first time there was an actual love confession between them. They start a serious relationship.

— 2018: Jk falls into a slump at the very beginning of the year (probs having to do with fame, identity, restrictions, etc) which causes Tae to suffer as well. (The group as a whole was also having a hard time but we are focusing on TK). This can be considered a crisis but they resolved it and came out stronger out of it, both as individuals and as a couple. As a group too !

— 2019: closeting intensifies even more but funnily enough they drop big lgbtq hints. They mature as a couple. By the end of the year(?) they start living in different apartments when they aren’t promoting which causes them to spend less time together.

— 2020: they keep being stable as a couple. Tae goes through some struggles but they are ok. Closeting reaches its peak, their first contract expires & they stage a talk to be able to change the narrative & interact more freely in front of cameras while still being closeted. (Disclaimer: I personally don’t think they have had any type of official engagement, just that they wear couple rings to show commitment like koreans typically do).

————————-

Kayla: reminder that this is entirely opinion on the timeline of their relationship. This is a quick summary. The timeline goes into further detail. Again, you’re free to believe as you like.

2011- predebut; friends as evidenced by Tae saying in an interview he noticed Jk first + Jk bought Tae a shirt for him while in America; Jk has also said Tae brought him out of his shell

213- debut; close friends; possible attraction but not recognized yet; this can be deduced based on them singing to one another in Rookie Kings in ep 7, Tae saying “you’re beautiful” to Jk and not the girl in the “Beautiful” MV + when the members go over the VHope kiss in episode 8, Jk seems very uneasy and uncomfortable about it (prior to the kiss talk, Taekook were affectionate, linking hands and hugging, mimicking one another)

2014; close friends who have noticed the attraction each feels and begin pushing boundaries to see how the other will respond; an example would be festa 2014, when Tae says touching thighs is for pervs but then is fine with Jk doing so moments later; Tae is visibly aroused by Jk dancing in two different moments this year (April during “boy in luv” and Sept 16 when he bites his lips and gets heavy lidded); in April when BTS act out a skit of Jk falling in love, TK pretend to lean in for a kiss and neither expresses discomfort. Milestone - realizing the other doesn’t react negatively to flirting / boundary testing

2015: close friends continuing to push boundaries; suspicions by us (theorizing) of a first kiss due to Tae drawing attention to his lips in two selecas in January + Jk recommending a gay song “Memo”, in which he changed the lyrics to say he wants “one more”; 123 theory first comes into play as well as Jk starting to send messages through songs - in May he recommends a song by Eels and highlights “can’t help falling in love” + in the same month Tae and Hobi cover “hug me” and then Jk uploads a song “eat” which has the line about wanting to hug someone. In December he covers “paper hearts” and shortens the lyrics from the original by 3 seconds so “when there’s cameras and I can’t reach you” is at 1:23. He also releases “fools” half an hour before Tae’s birthday. It’s an LGBTQ song. He’s called Tae a fool before in a fan sign. In addition, there is a lot of sexual tension in 2015 - Notably, festa. In June, Tae suggestively plays with a mic and Jk puts a mic in his mouth. When BTS appear on Yaman, TK are the only ones to interlock hands + appear to share looks of complicity when the interviewer asks if the members ever touched each other. During tension escalator, both exhibit a lack of boundaries and show comfort in being in each other’s space in a way the other members don’t feel (see an in-depth analysis of the moment by BL expert Pam here - https://youtu.be/mu8K1KBcn_0). They’re still playful with dubsmash and a secret handshake. They also begin to be more aware of cameras. They’re visibly separated in November during the HHYH concert making and when a camera pans to them in December, Tae stops leaning his head on Jk’s shoulder. Milestone - in our opinion, a possible first kiss happened this year, but they remained close friends testing boundaries

2016- FWB; we believe this is when they began to be intimate, though they didn’t label it. They’re flirty in Jan when they discuss Jk being an adult / turning 20. There are suspicions Jan 26 is an anniversary due to Tae uploading “how am I supposed to live without you” on this day and jk responding the same day with “nothing like us”. They’re generally affectionate in clips, such as summer package in Dubai. Jk is distracted in BV1 til Tae shows up. Jimin claps at a heart with their name in it + TK cuddle one morning without barriers or displays of uncomfortableness. We believe the dynamics changed between BV1 and SMART based on the tension in SMART. Tae is shy and Jk looks like he won at life; both bump arms and share shy and happy glances. Taekook is also coined this year! Due to external stressors, and shakiness/uncertainty in what their relationship really is, in our opinion TK remain close friends but end it come autumn 2016. They may have reunited briefly, based on continuing to display affection and attraction to one another, but proceeded to end things again by the end of the year. Milestone - in our opinion, this is the year they became intimate; FWB/not a serious relationship

2017- they become an official couple this year. In the beginning of the year they display jealousy towards one another, and Tae is very extra in his actions to Jk (ex - GDA awards in Jan). We believe Tae was trying to win Jk back. By March 2017 they appear to reunite and enter a renewed honeymoon period, as can be seen by the private convo vlive in April, ILY signs in Chile, suspicious kissing sounds in Tae’s Brazil vlive and festa footsie + suggestive actions at that event. They are still battling through the rollercoaster of 2016, which is why in BV2 we see them be sweet (“you’re mine” “do you want to live here with me?” To jk singing “nothing like us” in the direction of Tae’s room while seeming to be melancholy). Jk sings “nothing like us” in an interview and Tae gets shy. They display general closeness, like in the Run ep filmed in Nov when Jk eats food that has fallen from Tae’s mouth. They’re overall touchy in American interviews and hold hands after the AMAs when they don’t believe cameras are on them. They also do their handshake on MAMA and don’t have space between them during the show. Milestone - became an official couple

2018- all appears fine with them as a couple, though both struggle with disbandment talks as individuals and as a group. This year is when we see the cheek kisses and “am I your friend?”, as well as “look at me, just me” from Jk to Tae in a run episode. Namsan private date on 1/26. Tae also tells Jk his eyes are always on him and he loves him during his birthday message to him. “Taekook best unit” is said by Tae at a fan sign, further proof of them supporting their “ship”. They display consideration and support to each other, like in Run ep 52, when Jk offers to trade cards with Tae so Tae doesn’t have to go to the sauna with his skin condition, or when Jk comforts Tae about his mullet at a fan sign. They also flash the ILY sign to each to each other at the BBMAS + BV3 happens when Jk is visibly excited to room with Tae (dropping hints / members congratulate) and is distracted til he shows up. Concert nape kiss. Milestone - solid, secure couple

2019- TK continue to appear close without issues or breaks. They’re flirty and affectionate at fan signs. Jk gestures twice to Tae as his life partner in the Japanese bbq interview, while Tae flicks his chin and they play footsie. They display traditional marriage threads while at a concert in Busan and Tae says Busan has his heart. They give themselves away as roommates in the May vlive with Jin and Jimin. Tae mentions the LGBTQ movie “call me by your name” twice. Jk says “I’m still me” from the LGBTQ movie “Love, Simon” at Festa. Jk awards Tae the “I thought you’d be beyond my imagination” award. They’re flirty in the “Home” performance and affectionate during MAMA. Weverse comment in November has been debunked. Jk doesn’t acknowledge Tae’s birthday online but gives him an airport nape kiss that day. ILY signs during the NYE vlive. Milestone - to me, it’s possible they talked about the future together since Jk confidently referred to Tae twice as his life partner in the Japanese bbq interview and Tae responded by flicking his chin affectionately when “family” was brought up + marriage threads + matching hanboks

2020: all seems fine, in fact, dynamics may have shifted to truly indicate some sort of promise as TK have gotten bolder - they both wear rings on their left ring finger at the Grammys, along with matching outfits, and Jk breaks the lineup to stand by Tae (again, rumored anniversary as this happened Jan 26); general closeness and affection can be seen in American interviews, dancing together on Fallon and during CNS (with JK flashing the ILY sign); they wear matching outfits during BBC Live; Jk continues to wear Tae’s rings throughout the year. Milestone- i believe they’ve made some sort of deeper promise to each other, hence why Jk wears the rings and their actions are generally loud.

Final reminder this is all opinion / theory. You’re entitled to believe as you like. This is our stance.

#taekooktimeline #asks #discussions

30 notes · View notes

pochapal · 4 years ago

Note

rank every year of the 2010s from best to worst i want some pochapal lore

[warning for discussion of my fucked up mental health and my myriad traumas. we’re really opening the pandora’s box here gang]

ok time for me to overshare on the internet again! super long post because i can’t shut up and you asked for it. anyway, by objective ranking:

#1: 2012 - halcyon era, my personal peak. spent the whole year writing hunger games oc fics with my deviantart fanfiction besties whom i still think about all the time and always hope are having the best possible day. if you were here for this era understand i still hold you so closely and dearly in my heart <3.

#2: 2013 - god i was such a good example of a human being back then. was the year my writing like actually took off and i had a healthy balance between creative stuff and a social life (said social life consisting of spending lunchtimes at school breaking into classrooms and discussing fandom shit with five other people. reading homestuck updates in the music room on one person’s really shaky mobile data...legendary). highlight of the year and maybe my life was in the april of 2013 when i got out of failing to submit a hard deadline essay by telling my english teacher i wrote a whole novel over the two week break and then producing said novel. god i wish i had that level of like. fucking confidence back me back then knew what i wanted and how to get it.

#3: 2010 - the last year of childhood. i was 12 and played pokemon all the time with my friends and went places and had a moderately successful youtube channel and it didn’t matter that i was bullied so badly at school because i was basically high off life. summer of 2010 was so good specifically. i’d used to get the bus with a friend and go see movies and break into historical sites and get into normal childhood mayhem and maxed out my pokewalkers twice a month and i was buzzed because i had two (2) whole friendship groups to choose from and that was such a huge deal to me the terminal social outcast. it was so simple and carefree and even though everything and everyone involved in this era grew up to suck except for one specific person i kinda really miss it.

#4: 2018 - this was the first year i wasn’t depressed to the point of nonfunctioning. it was 20gayteen, i was on antidepressants, i was as close to thriving as i got at uni (going into town with people once a week, attending art and culture events, getting good grades across the board), i started to write for fun again, i got my cat whom i love dearly, i was exhibited in my uni’s city’s literature festival, GOD i actually nearly attended a pride event that year can you imagine. this year was basically my life’s second peak. miss getting the 8am train and daintily sipping on a cherry coke to keep me from passing out. wish this time could have lasted longer.

#5: 2019 - kinda absolute middle of the road year not for lack of anything happening but because the overwhelming amount of good and bad things cancelled each other out. so like there’s the fact that i was at the top of my uni game this year, was basically making the first steps into a professional writing career (covid i will never forgive you for killing all that dead </3), finally saved up enough to buy myself a gaming pc, and the summer after the homestuck epilogues, but equally 2019 was the start of the Pochapal Gender Fiasco which is by far the most horrible thing i am still currently undergoing and i burnt myself out mentally about halfway through the year (being stuck overnight in a hospital for a panic attack absolutely horrible horrible irredeemable) and then got like super death plague flu that i was sick with for three months (literally recovered less than a month before rona hit. god’s cruel karma.). so like...it kind of averaged out? the good shit was good but not as great as other years and the bad shit was awful but nowhere near as terrible as it could have been. gotta give a shoutout to 90% of my current mutual cohort for following me in 2019...omelette route gang make some noise !!

#6: 2014 - oof. this year essentially marked the start of a four year long downward mental health spiral because everything fell into awful alignment. i’d just turned 16, finished secondary school, had all my friends up and ditch me at once, was home alone for a whole summer, and was hit with Sudden Intense Body Image Issues that i couldn’t explain until uh. after very recent developments lmao. this one goes out to the me of july 2014 who did nothing but lay in bed and listen to the same two marina albums on a loop because fuck i’m attracted to men and also my facial and body hair are really starting to come in and if i think about this for too long i will literally kill myself because oh god i can’t handle getting older which is clearly and definitely the issue going on here. my brain fucking broke super hardcore and it’s a miracle that an overeating disorder was like the worst thing i walked away with.

#7: 2015 - downward spiral year two!! i was so volatile this year it was such a mess. i was totally socially isolated after a brief stint of falling in with a group of people at the start of my first year of sixth form until january where in quick succession a) it turned out every single one of these people was friends with the person who sexually assaulted me whom i obviously had a lot of complicated feelings towards and b) baby’s first crush came out as bisexual but in the “women and also trans women” kind of way which tore me up so terribly in ways i couldn’t begin to understand. no words for the experience of seeing a girl kiss a boy and crying so hard at night you threw up because you could never be her no matter how much you wanted it. actually kinda get the sense what was going on there was bigger than just some crush lmao. then after that i was so mentally ill i basically attended school less than half the time and it was the only year in my life i failed my exams. i ended up having to resit my entire set of first year a level exams because jesus christ was i in such a bad way it was a miracle i even showed up to them. all i did was either have anxiety attacks or enter bedbound depressive slumps for weeks at a time. but it’s okay because it gets worse.

#8: 2016 - downward spiral act iii: the spiralling. prefacing this by saying that i actually had two whole good months (april - may) in that i was functioning enough to do my exams and finish school with decent grades. the rest was super extra mega terrible. my school attendance for year 13 dipped below 65% and literally the only thing that kept me from being kicked out was the fact that i was naturally smart at the subjects i took and also because the school would have a lot to answer for after letting me get to that state despite having a hefty file on how damaged i was. keep in mind every single part of this was fully untreated btw - i was just floundering around and letting it all fester. i spent three solid weeks going to school but locking myself in the bathroom all day every day and having mental health episodes then going home like nothing else happened only to continue the breakdown that night. then things got kicked into fucked up overdrive when i moved out to uni and was cut off from what little support structures i did have. it was so bad all i did was cry all the time and never went anywhere to the point where three separate sources recommended me to the wellbeing and crisis counselling service that i stopped going to after two sessions because i was fucked up in ways cbt techniques could not even touch. at least i tried to make an effort for the first two months of uni which like. good for me?

#9: 2017 - what lieth at the base of the spiral. helltrench year. i was at literal rock bottom. i stopped going to class, i didn’t hand in a single piece of work. i lied to my parents and would book trains each day only to go back to my student flat and sit there and contemplate suicide. like i would just slump on the floor in a catatonic state and vividly contemplate one of four or so ways i could end my own life. i only didn’t because i wanted to wait until the summer to collect my last student loan and transfer it to my parents as an apology for my death which obviously didn’t end up happening. honestly i can’t remember much of the first half of 2017 that’s how bad it was. i remember taking a gender studies class and the teacher made it Weird that i was the Only Male Student in the room and then she sent me a scolding email after i walked out halfway through a class and never returned. apparently i got into a lot of online discourse in this year but i don’t remember anything other than being put on a blocklist by the milkfic author over ace discourse which is funny if you have the context. mostly i just baited terfs and weirdo freaks to get them to say horrible things to me as what i guess amounts to some kind of digital self harm. anyway breaking point came in late august when i got kicked out of university and then nobody could ignore it any more so there was no choice left but for me to seek out help and recover enough to function which luckily i did. i really Do Not remember 2017. you could tell me anything about that year and i’d probably believe you.

#10: 2011 - extra circle of hell for this little fucked up gem of a year. on the surface it wasn’t actually that terrible, until the Summer 2011 Domino Effect Of Bad Shit. up until like may/june it was a pretty all right year! i was 13 and had a surprisingly successful youtube channel uploading pokemon soundfont remixes to an audience of i think ~350-400 subscribers at my peak? anyway then i got hit with the early summer triple combo of childhood friends moving away, cute and quirky sexual assault at the hands of a person in my friend group, and then having some Really Great and Super Appropriate interactions with adults on deviantart. like obviously there’s the actual ptsd-inducing event which totally disrupted and killed the person i was right up until that moment and reshaped every facet of my life for better or worse (there’s an alternate timeline where that didn’t happen and i got into electronic music and/or coding instead) but really it’s the events that followed in its wake which were kind of more fucked up. so like all of a sudden i was super aware of my body and me growing my hair out and being mistaken for a girl in class suddenly became this Less Innocent thing and i ended up spending hours overnight going to transgender questioning forums and looking up hrt timeline videos and having the wikipedia article on tracheal shaving saved because it was a life raft to me whose voice was imminently gonna deepen and i was simultaneously reeling with constant trauma flashbacks and the whole thing was so so fucked up. then i was on deviantart and i don’t remember exactly how but a small group of furry guys ten to fifteen years older than me started messaging me and encouraging and requesting me to produce nonsexual fetish stuff for them and talking to me about stuff like if i’d ever thought about growing up to be gay and i didn’t think anything of it for a long while because they called me a very talented writer and it felt so good to have someone be nice to me after being so alone and isolated for months on end. anyway the only reason i got out of that before it got bad was because they invited me to one of the big furry sites and i was weirded out because i thought it was a porn site and thinking about sexual stuff was a huge trauma trigger so i just ended up blocking them all and pretending like it didn’t happen. at the time half this shit didn’t bother me but in retrospect holy fuck 2011 was such a damaging year. to think if like three events didn’t happen i wouldn’t be the fucked up mess you see before you today.

god fuck this turned out super long but i’m not apologising because this was a therapeutic exercise for me and also constitutes as one of the biggest pochapal lore dumps of all time. come get your food or whatever.

#Anonymous #long post #read all of this if you have vested interest in knowing intimate details about my life or whatever

4 notes · View notes

ibelieveinharrystyles · 5 years ago

Text

Chapter Two: London Calling?

Forever? Masterlist

25th December 2015

“Merry Christmas Anne!” Ashley called out as her and her mum entered the Twist family home, the smell of Anne’s homemade nut roast wafting towards them as they hung the coats up.

“Ashley! Linda! Merry Christmas to you both!” Anne greeted them both with a hug, her familiar scent was sweet, with an added floral touch that Ashley didn’t recognise.

“Is that a new perfume Anne? It smells absolutely delightful.” Ashley asked as she took off her battered converse, she respected Anne too much to wear them in her house.

“Yes my love! Harry bought it for me, we did our stocking presents this morning and we’re just setting the table for dinner.” Anne told her.

“Sounds absolutely perfect!” Linda exclaimed as Anne led them into the kitchen, perfectly decorated as always, Harry stood at the island in the middle of the kitchen chopping a mountain of carrots, “You’ve got him well trained haven’t you?”

“Linda! My favourite Hanson!” Harry cried, placing his knife on the chopping board as he ran towards her, wrapping his arms as he swayed her from side to side.

“Look at you Harry, you’ve grown so much since I last saw you,” Linda said, taking a step back to look at Harry properly.

“Mum you literally saw him six months ago.” Ashley muttered, rolling her eyes at her persistent mother.

“Don’t listen to her Linda, she’s just jealous.” Harry told her, causing Ashley to stick her middle finger up at him, “If it’s alright with you Linda, I’m going to say hello to my second favourite Hanson.” Harry sauntered towards Ashley, “Merry Christmas!” He cried, stretching his arms out, before enveloping her in a hug, the itchy fabric of his over the top Christmas jumper.

“Merry Christmas you little shit,” Ashley whispered, so as not to let her mum or Anne hear.

“Can I get you ladies anything to drink? I’ve got wine, beer, lemonade or just water.” Anne told them as she retrieved a bottle of red wine from the fridge.

“Well as it’s Christmas I’ll have a glass of wine please.” Linda told her.

“Just water for me please, I wasn’t feeling too well last night, I’m not sure alcohol is going to help that.” Ashley said softly, “Are you doing your ginger biscuits Anne?”

“I made some yesterday, why do you ask lovely?”

“I just thought I could smell them, I remember the smell from when Harry and I were little.” Ashley told her.

Dinner was in full swing and Gemma and Robin had now joined the group, to some it might seem unorthodox for Ashley and Linda to spend Christmas with another family but since the Christmas of 2008 when their oven stopped working Anne insisted they came over as they had lots of food spare and since then it had become a bit of a tradition, alternating between houses each year. The room was full of laughter and the warmth from the open fire tickled their skin, the sound of the Michael Buble album filled the room. “So Harry what have you got planned for 2016?” Linda asked, piling carrots onto her plate.

“I’ve got a few things lined up, I’m looking forward to it, I never thought the idea of not having my day planned for me would be so exciting.” Harry told her, fiddling with his paper crown.

“How about you Ashley? I know you’re on a gap year, but have you decided what to do after that?” Robin asked her.

“I’m quite interested in radio, I’ve applied for an internship at Capital in London, Harry gave me their contact details, and when we went down for the boys’ show in London I had an interview, and I’ve been offered a place, starting in the new year.” Ashley told them, the only other person around the table who knew was Linda, she had meant to tell Harry, there just never seemed to be a right time.

“That’s amazing Ash!” Harry exclaimed, “So you’ll be moving to London then?”

“I’ve got the money dad left me in his will, I think this is the sort of thing he’d want me to use it for, to get myself a small flat.” Ashley didn’t like talking about what happened to her dad, she was only ten when he passed away so she didn’t really understand at the time, he was diagnosed with cancer when she was little, and in his last few months it became increasingly worse.

“He’d be so proud of you poppet.” Anne assured her, taking hold of her hand from across the table.

The meal was finished and Anne stood in the kitchen preparing dessert whilst everyone discussed whether to play monopoly or family fortunes first. Ashley felt herself losing concentration in the conversation, she felt her palms become clammy, she began to realise it was a recurrence of what had happened the night before. She excused herself and made her way to the bathroom, making it in time to throw up in the toilet rather than all over Anne’s bathroom floor, she slumped against the wall, knowing it was likely she’d probably throw up again. The tiles on the wall were cold against her warm skin, she stood up, splashing cold water on her skin. “Ash you alright in there?” Gemma asked from the other side of the door, Ashley unlocked the door, letting Gemma in, “You look a bit peaky lovely, are you alright?”

“I think I had something dodgy to eat last night, I was sick last night as well.” Ashley explained.

“Mum told me you could smell ginger.” Gemma replied, sitting on the floor next to Ashley.

“What’s they got to do with anything?” Ashley asked.

“Ash when was your last period?”

“I’m not exactly regular, but i’d say it was almost eight weeks ago. Wait, you don’t think?”

“You might be pregnant.” Gemma whispered, Ashley rested her head in her hands.

“Why is this happening? Why now?” Tears rolled down her cheeks, as far as she was concerned she wasn’t ready to be a mum, she was only just an adult.

“Hey, we don’t know that you’re actually pregnant lovely,” Gemma told her softly as she held her tight, rubbing her back gently, “I might have a test somewhere, do you want to do it now?” Ashley said nothing, she just nodded, “Let's get this over and done with,” she whispered.

Ashley had never known three minutes to take so long to pass, she sat on the toilet biting at her nails, the timer on Gemma’s phone went off, indicating that the three minutes were up. “Do you want me to look at it first?” Gemma asked.

“I think I’ve got to do it, it’s pretty clear I’d be bringing up a baby by myself, for that I should be able to stand on my own two feet.” She wobbled as she stood up, taking the test in her hands. She took a deep breath and looked down at it, she knew what it meant, she turned towards Gemma, “two blue lines. It’s positive.” her voice wobbled terribly as she broke down in tears.

“It’s gonna be alright, we’re going to get through this together, we all love and care about you immensely, whatever you decide, whatever’s best for you.” Gemma assured her, cradling her in her arms, “Do you want me to get Harry or your mum?”

“You can’t tell Harry, not yet, not today, I’ll tell mum soon, just not now.”

“Alright, we’ll go back downstairs when you’re ready.” The two girls were interrupted by a knock on the door.

“Are you okay Ash? Can I come in?” Harry asked from the other side of the door.

Ashley shoved the test in her pocket and wiped the tears from her cheeks, “Yeah come in.”

“I’ll leave you two to it,” Gemma made her way out of the bathroom, “She’s not feeling too well, look after her.” she instructed Harry.

He held out his hands to pull her up from where she was sitting on the floor “I’m going to run you a warm bath with any bubbles of your choice, then we’ll watch a film in my old bedroom, I don’t want to subject you to games night if you’re feeling ill.”

After a wonderfully long soak in the bath Ashley changed into the joggers and hoodie Harry had left out for her, she tied her damp hair up on top of her head and made her way into Harry’s room. He’d created a proper relaxed environment for her, the room was lit by nothing but fairy lights that were strung around the ceiling. “Love Actually or Home Alone?” Harry asked as she climbed into the bed.

“Love Actually, you know how much I love Colin Firth,” she chuckled, snuggling up under the duvet like a little kid.

“Don’t know why I even asked.” Harry replied, putting the DVD in the TV before joining Ashley in the bed, she snuggled into his chest as he wrapped his arm around her, stroking her arm gently.

“I’m sorry I ruined your Christmas Harry,” Ashley whispered.

“Don’t be daft, I love spending time with you, if I’m honest with you I’ve spent so much time in other people’s company over the past five years, I’d much rather be up here with you watching cheesy Christmas movies.”

An hour into the film Harry looked down at Ashley, she was sound asleep, she looked two peaceful, so he didn’t dare disturb her, he knew she was unwell and didn’t want to make her feel worse. He pulled his arms from where he’d been holding her, getting out of bed and pulling the duvet up so she was properly covered. He turned off the TV and all the fairy lights, “Merry Christmas my love.” Harry whispered, placing a kiss on top of her head before making his way back downstairs.

The smell of bacon stirred Ashley from her deep sleep, she peered around at the bedroom that wasn’t hers, realising she was in Harry’s bed. She slipped out of bed, making her way downstairs to the kitchen where Harry and Gemma sat eating breakfast. “Morning,” Ashley chimed as she sat beside Harry at the kitchen table.

“You feeling better?” Gemma asked, prompting Harry to get up and make up another bacon sandwich.

“Yeah, I slept like a baby.” She told her, stretching out before pouring herself a cup of tea, “You didn't say anything did you?”

“It’s not for me to say, you can tell him when you’re ready, but I know my brother, he’ll be by your side every step of the way.”

“What are you two whispering about?” Harry asked, placing the bacon sandwich in front of Ashley.

“You.” Ashley replied, sticking her tongue out at him, “When do you fly out to LA?”

“As soon as he can I reckon.” Gemma winked at her.

“Oh yeah we wouldn’t want to keep Kendall waiting would we?” Ashley teased, Harry crossing his arms across his chest like a grumpy child, “Oh we’re only messing H, if you’re happy that’s all that matters.” Harry continued to keep up the grumpy teenager pretense, “If you don’t give me a smile I will sit on you,” Harry glanced at her suspiciously, “You leave me no choice.” She stood up from her seat and plonked herself on his lap, he uncrossed his arms and wrapped them around her tightly, her head squishing against his bare chest that poked through the gap in his white dressing gown.

“You win.” He told her, “You always will.”

56 notes · View notes

transparenttriumphzombie · 4 years ago

Photo

Harry Styles On Vogue

Source:

https://www.vogue.com/article/harry-styles-cover-december-2020/amp?__twitter_impression=true

From Vogue MAGAZINE

Playtime With Harry Styles

“There’s so much joy to be had in playing with clothes. I’ve never thought too much about what it means—it just becomes this extended part of creating something”

I ask her whether her brother had always been interested in clothes.

“He’s up for it,” confirms Lambert, who earlier this year, for instance, found a JW Anderson cardigan with the look of a Rubik’s Cube (“on sale at matchesfashion.com!”). Styles wore it, accessorized with his own pearl necklace, for a Today rehearsal in February and it went viral: His fans were soon knitting their own versions and posting the results on TikTok. Jonathan Anderson declared himself “so impressed and incredibly humbled by this trend” that he nimbly made the pattern available (complete with a YouTube tutorial) so that Styles’s fans could copy it for free. Meanwhile, London’s storied Victoria & Albert Museum has requested Styles’s original: an emblematic document of how people got creative during the COVID era. “It’s going to be in their permanent collection,” says Lambert exultantly. “Is that not sick? Is that not the most epic thing?”

“It’s pretty powerful and kind of extraordinary to see someone in his position redefining what it can mean to be a man with confidence,” says Olivia Wilde

Hairdresser Malcolm Edwards is setting Styles’s hair in a Victory roll with silver clips, and until it is combed out he resembles Kathryn Grayson with stubble. His fingers are freighted with rings, and “he has a new army of mini purses,” says Lambert, gesturing to an accessory table heaving with examples including a mini sky-blue Gucci Jackie bag discreetly monogrammed HS. Michele has also made Styles a dress for the shoot that Tissot might have liked to paint—acres of ice-blue ruffles, black Valenciennes lace, and suivez-moi, jeune homme ribbons. Erelong, Styles is gamely racing up a hill in it, dodging sheep scat, thistles, and shards of chalk, and striking a pose for Mitchell that manages to make ruffles a compelling new masculine proposition, just as Mr. Fish’s frothy white cotton dress—equal parts Romantic poet and Greek presidential guard—did for Mick Jagger when he wore it for The Rolling Stones’ free performance in Hyde Park in 1969, or as the suburban-mom floral housedress did for Kurt Cobain as he defined the iconoclastic grunge aesthetic. Styles is mischievously singing ABBA’s “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)” to himself when Mitchell calls him outside to jump up and down on a trampoline in a Comme des Garçons buttoned wool kilt. “How did it look?” asks his sister when he comes in from the cold. “Divine,” says her brother in playful Lambert-speak.

#harry styles #non binary #men wearing dress #harry styles in dress #transgender #trans pride #transgender woman #dresses #men in dresses #dress

1 note · View note

haddocktree · 5 years ago

Text

Dean DeBlois Talks the Care and Feeding of Flying Reptiles

The writer-director of DreamWorks Animation’s Oscar-nominated ‘How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World’ reflects on his long and loving journey creating the epic animated trilogy.

By Jon Hofferman and Dan Sarto | Tuesday, January 28, 2020 at 11:29am

In 3D, Awards, CG, Films, People, Virtual Reality, Visual Effects | ANIMATIONWorld | Geographic Region: All

Oscar and Annie Award-nominated ‘How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World,’ the final chapter in DreamWorks Animation’s epic animated feature trilogy, written and directed by Dean DeBlois. Images © 2019 DreamWorks Animation LLC. All Rights Reserved.

At this point, neither the How to Train Your Dragon animated feature film franchise, nor its longtime writer-director Dean DeBlois, needs much of an introduction. The epic adventure series, which debuted in 2010, has been both commercially successful and critically acclaimed, with the first two installments garnering an immense number of Annie Award nominations and wins, as well as being Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe nominees for Best Animated Feature. (How to Train Your Dragon 2 won the Golden Globe in that category in 2015.)

This time is no different: How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World has been nominated for an Academy Award and eight Annie Awards, including Best Animated Feature, and has won accolades from the National Board of Review, the Society of Voice Arts & Sciences, and the Hollywood Music in Media Awards, among others. Produced by Brad Lewis and Bonnie Arnold, The Hidden World delivers a heartwarming message about overcoming intolerance wrapped inside a tale about growing up, facing the unknown, and learning to let go. It also answers the burning question of what happened to the dragons that once populated the earth and lived in cooperation with humans.

So, as awards season rounds into the home stretch, and DeBlois faces his third round of Dragon-mania, it seemed like a good time to talk with him about this reptilian saga that’s become such a central part of his life.

AWN: In a presentation that you gave at the VIEW conference in October, you said that in general, you’re not very enthusiastic about sequels because, if you've done a good job, your story is told, and a follow-up can feel like an unnecessary add-on. What about How to Train Your Dragon made you feel that it provided an opportunity to do sequels the way they should be done?

Dean DeBlois: Well, I think it was a combination of three things. One is that I was a Star Wars kid and I loved the expansiveness of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. I felt they took characters that I loved, expanded their worlds and increased the adventure, the peril. The characters were kind of maturing and growing up, and it had a big impact on me. And I saw in the Dragon world and its cast of characters the potential to do something similar. The world could be expansive, and we could grow up with the characters. In the time that it takes to make an animated movie, our fan base could be aging with the characters, which wasn't really something that I'd seen done before – where you take a cast of friends and then grow up with them. We would leap five years into the future and find a new organic problem that felt important and universal. So, that was part of it.

Then, I think it's also the conversation that I had with [Dragon books author] Cressida Cowell. Even though the narratives are quite different in the films and the books, I loved the idea that she was taking on this challenge of explaining what happened to dragons and why they aren't here anymore. I thought that was really intriguing, but also kind of gripping and emotional. The opening line of her very first book is, "There were dragons when I was a boy." That suggests they're gone. What happened to them? So, I loved taking on that challenge.

Finally, just being able to explain certain mysteries that were inherent in the first film. What happened to Hiccup’s mother? Is Toothless the last of his kind? If so, why? Just the idea that we might be able to take organic questions that we didn't have time to explain in the first movie, or didn't feel the need to, and make them into important questions in the context of the trilogy. As if we'd gone back in time and planted them there.

AWN: The emotional center of the storytelling in the films is the growth of the characters, their becoming adults and taking on adult responsibilities, even though they're still young. That’s really the best part of the films.

DeBlois: Yeah, it felt organic to me because I was thinking about what problem I could graft onto 15-year-old Hiccup that felt important. He now has his father’s love and admiration, he has the respect of the town, he has the attention of the girl he was secretly pining for, he has an amazing dragon that he could fly around on, and he ended an age-old war. It doesn't feel like a character who could have a problem until something really eventful enters his life. We needed to go to another rite of passage, which just naturally led to a 19-year-old in search of himself, when you've got two domineering parents of contrasting philosophies. A character who's on the run from his destiny at home, only to return to it with a renewed sense of self, was an appealing tale to me.

AWN: There's a large number of characters in the films, and they play pretty central roles. How do you ensure that you give them enough screen time and develop them enough so it feels that they really belong and have a reason for being there?

DeBlois: It's really tough and I don't know that we did, to be honest. I think that a lot of our characters are underserved. If we had a longer movie, if we could make a 120-minute movie instead of a 90-minute movie, we might be able to explore them more. But oftentimes the characters do become support characters. We do our best to give them moments, give them a laugh here and there, or give them a starring turn. But when you have an unwieldy group of characters, it’s really tough because you're always fighting the ticking clock of budget and time.

AWN: Speaking of characters, what makes a good villain and how do you determine how villainous to make your villain?

DeBlois: That is a very good question and I don't know that I have a very good answer. I struggle with villains. I find them boring if they just want power or money. Unless there's a bit of empathy in their desire, it just falls flat for me. Drago was meant to be a really interesting villain in How to Train Your Dragon 2. There was going to be a sea story that followed his survival and how he became marooned on an island that was home to a very aggressive dragon. He had to befriend this thing in order to fly off the island and get back to his armada. It was a very touch-and-go relationship because they were both very headstrong, but in the end, they established a mutual trust, and it changed him. Even with all of his heinous crimes, when he arrived in the third-act battle, he took the side of the dragon riders, fighting his own former cohorts. I liked that idea because it took what was admittedly a one-dimensional character and gave him complexity. But we didn't get to do that because, again, taking the time to do that story properly would have compromised Hiccup’s story. I regret it since I really wanted to do something interesting with that character.

We channeled some of that frustration into the development of Grimmel [in The Hidden World] and making him a villain for the times – an intolerant elitist who’s trying to crush blossoming ideas of peaceful coexistence. But he’s also a character who’s fun to watch onscreen – he has a kind of playful sensibility and likes the sound of his own voice. Enjoys the hunt, enjoys cornering his prey and forcing it to make desperate decisions. He’s a character without empathy, but he has a sense of humor.

Dean DeBlois.

AWN: To turn to the production side, did you use any virtual camera work or any tools that helped you visualize how you wanted to shoot this?

DeBlois: Yes, [cinematographer] Gil Zimmerman and his team – the layout team who provided us all the previs and the final layout of the movie – would go down to our mocap stage and pull up rough versions of our sets and don the outfits with the little ping-pong balls and actually work out a lot of their own choreography. So, if it wasn't a flight scene, if it was something that had a physical space where they could really block for action, they would come up with ideas that way. It's always dispensed with when it gets to animation, but the ideas are there and then the animators start from scratch.

AWN: How extensive was the previs? Were you using it more for storytelling or was it used more for camera and layout?

DeBlois: On this film, we started to invite the layout department into the storytelling. In other words, if there was a sequence that depended on visceral, kinetic movement – something that's hard to suggest on drawn storyboards – we would talk out the beats of the script pages with Gil Zimmerman and the assigned previs artists, and they would go off and develop it. If we knew there was going to be flight involved or some kind of complex set, we would either hand the sequence entirely to the previs artists or involve them really early.

I found I really liked this step and how far it has come in recent years, where so much of the finished idea can be represented quite clearly and closely in the previs. It used to be awkward to look at – characters that would slide across floors, and blank expressions, and robotic movements. It’s come such a long way that it’s something you can include in test previews with audiences, because it's full of color and it has lighting… it’s a very exciting new tool to use.

AWN: Like many top animation directors, you're going to be moving over into the live-action world. Have you always wanted to go this route? You've been directing animated films for a long time.

DeBlois: Yeah, after Lilo and Stitch, I took a look at my personal hopper of ideas that I was working on and I would say three-quarters of them were live-action. They felt like live-action films. I decided to go out there and just see if anyone was interested. I sold three of them. It got close with a start date on one of them, but they all kind of went on ice when there were administrative changes both at Disney and Universal. It was an exciting and frustrating period and it just feels like an itch that I didn't scratch. So now I have that opportunity to return to the world of live-action and hopefully get a movie going. I do so with caution because I know that so many things can fall apart very quickly in live-action, whereas in animation we tend to commit to the idea of making the movie, even if you have to change out people in the process.

AWN: Do you feel that your experience in animation gives you specific skills that you can apply in live-action production?

DeBlois: I think my storyboarding background definitely gives me the ability to communicate ideas clearly and visually represent them. Having spent so much time on the story side of things, writing as well, I feel as though I can clearly communicate the story we're telling and engage other people in contributing ideas and making it better. I think in any sort of filmmaking enterprise you need somebody who's going to be the guardian of the story, but still be open to great ideas, and I feel like I've been honing that skill over the years.

AWN: Last question. How does it feel to say goodbye to dragon world – after three really well-done, well-received, expansive, beautifully animated features? You completed the trilogy, you told the story as well as it could be told. What are your thoughts looking back on this huge body of work?

DeBlois: I'm very proud that we were able to reach the goal that we had set for ourselves, that we didn't have to creatively compromise much, and that we did it with largely the same team over the course of a decade. It's bittersweet because not only have we come to love the characters and the world, but we really like working together. We don't know if we're ever going to be arranged as that crew again. People have gone on to different shows, some have left the studio. It was a bit of a gamble to dedicate so much time to a trilogy, especially in the ever-changing landscape of studios. There were five changes in leadership on Dragon 3 alone. With every person that comes in, they have their own sensibility and their own tastes. And so, learning to work with each person and also giving them ownership can be tricky. Luckily, we were able to keep our North Star in sight and deliver the ending that we wanted.

#dean deblois #AWN #q&a time #q&a #httyd #httyd 3

22 notes · View notes

joeyqtef975 · 4 years ago

Text

Why Most Individuals Will Certainly Never Ever Be Fantastic At Milfporn

Pornobr Hd.

Advocates say the adult movie market, which presented a widespread system of testing and call tracing to secure performers from HIV in the 1990s, has experience that might help Hollywood and also various other industries trying to find a safe way to reactivate. " The difficulties for sports, for Hollywood, and the porn market are all different but in reality, we each have things we can pick up from each various other." Globally, pornography is a 97 billion dollar market, navigate to this web-site and also the US represent 12 billion of it. In 2017, the International Organization of Net Hotlines "traced online child sexual assault product to over 70 countries," as well as greater than 60 countries in 2018. Top porn enjoyment companies, like Pornhub, promote to as well as receive content from nations around the world.

Health divisions require to be able to promptly recognize individuals understood to have actually been occupationally exposed to STDs/HIV for therapy, follow-up, and also companion management to control more spread of illness to others in the community. Movie critics have long argued that adult video is a magnet for creepy fans, pushed young women and Sexually transmitted diseases, asserts the market refutes.

A bulk of the participants at the Cambridge Union argument assumed so. I wish this symbolizes the beginning of an actual push back versus the pornography market; that youths will not enable it to distort and also deteriorate their own sexuality and also sexual orientations, none much more.

They see the magic of the movie-making and the creative thinking that goes into these productions. They appreciate and also recognize everything it takes to make it take place. Porn-studio proprietors state they'll default prior to they would certainly allow prophylactics to hinder of sales.

Hardcore Amateur Porn Video Clips

Given that its launch, the film has triggered significant discussion about the experiences of female performers and also the porn market itself. For Hollywood stars to return to function, they might need to begin acting like porn stars.

Disease private investigators have actually regularly been not able to establish contact with revealed and also infectious performers to initiate prompt treatment as well as companion solutions as well as contain the spread of infectious illness to entertainers as well as their partners. Some grown-up movie industry testing centers, manufacturing business, and ability firms have actually not been cooperative in supplying performer contact info to the local health department. This situation results in a lack of ability by neighborhood wellness divisions to recognize the resource of potential illness episodes as well as place a fast public wellness action when such break outs take place.

Take The Next Step Fund The Battle Against Huge Porn.

Diane Fight It Out is Chief Executive Officer of the Free Speech Coalition, the profession organization for the pornography industry. She claims the debate regarding wellness threats in the pornography industry is out of touch with fact, because adult performers get examined more frequently than any various other populace in the nation. It seems that the historic taboo of black men copulating white ladies is one sexual hang-up that also the pornography industry hesitates to get over. Regardless of just how often individuals utilize pornography-- Pornhub alone declares it acquired 28.5 billion sights in 2014-- its economic power remains covert amongst the masses. Unlike various other types of enjoyment, whose information consistently obtains splashed across the front web page of customer magazines, rumblings within the grown-up show business are normally just adhered to by specific niche trade audiences.

Annually, Pornhub releases a report showcasing stats from their "top 20 nations." The 2019 list of top 20 periods throughout a number of continents. Human trafficking in the pornography sector can not be isolated to one area or one populace. With most of porn easily accessible online, pornography of a trafficking survivor living overseas is just a search away. Regional wellness departments monitor STD/HIV treatment and also follow-up of revealed and infected people for condition examination objectives. Regional enforcement of the adult film market, however, has actually been met with significant obstacles, most notably in Los Angeles where the sector is mostly based.

It's much less typical currently than it was twenty years ago for stars to obtain multi-film agreements. This is an outcome of the shrinking of workshop budget plans and also eruption of web traffic to tube sites like Pornhub and also Redtube, which reveal content made by various other producers without paying for it. In her publication, Tarrant approximates that piracy sets you back the pornography sector some $2 billion a year. There's nothing incorrect with need or having a sexual cravings as long as both celebrations are consenting adults. When it concerns internet porn, that line is so regularly blurred or non-existent, that it is necessary to be clear about what constitutes dream and also reality.

Then when these attractive pieces can't wait any kind of longer, they will be permeated by a huge cock for the hardest anal sex possible.

These beautiful gays like it extreme, and if you intend to join them for all their kinky, mind-blowing orgasms, sign on to pornhub.com totally free, man on male movies.

Attractive studs recognize how to excite each other with competent mouths and also pulsating boners in the dirtiest gay videos you can ever before picture.

These toned, muscular hotties provide the most effective blowjobs and also engage in the wildest orgies, since all they crave is to be pounded hard, deep and repeatedly.

We offer streaming pornography videos, downloadable DVDs, photo albums, and the number 1 complimentary sex neighborhood on the web.

We're constantly working towards including more features that will certainly maintain your love for porno alive as well as well.

Yet if you're watching pornography that portrays physical violence as well as aggression towards females, or you're proactively searching for ladies that look underage, just how does that notify your own intimate connections? There will always be a market for pornography, that a lot is clear fromHot Ladies Desired, yet visitors can select which web content to engage with. If we can develop a greater need for even more moral porn, ladies in the industry will undoubtedly get much less duties that need their subjugation, and also our individual partnerships will certainly be favorably impacted also. The documentary 'Hot Girls Desired', generated by Rashida Jones and released in the springtime of 2015, complies with numerous young women residing in a North Miami Coastline residence as they try to enter the amateur pornography sector.

The conservative Washington, D.C.-based National Fixate Sexual Exploitation suggests that porn viewing has sustained harassment and also sexual physical violence in other profession. Some evidence supports the claim, but there is also research study that associates the freedom to check out grown-up content with fewer occurrences of rape-- the concept is that porn can promote as a risk-free sex-related release. A shooting postponement in the pornography sector was raised this weekend after an adult-film entertainer whose HIV-positive test triggered a weeklong closure of Los Angeles-area manufacturings was retested, with adverse outcomes. In my experience, gay porn, and also the whole grown-up market, has actually ended up being far much less taboo and much more extensively accepted. I have actually located audiences are far more sex positive, they're individuals that understand the art of pornography as well as see beyond the sex.

1 note · View note

giftofshewbread · 5 years ago

Text

Apostate

: By Candy Austin

Published on:June 26, 2020

Hebrews 3:12 “Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.”

In recent years, several high-profile Christians have chosen to turn their collective backs on God and walk away from the Faith. Famous Christians such as Musicians. Leaders, Authors, and Pastors, some even losing their faith to the point of committing suicide. This is nothing more than an ‘utter tragedy’ to say the least!

From CBN news: ‘Losing My Religion:’ What We Can Learn from Celebrity Christians Who Walk Away from the Faith

20 years ago, Harris’ book on Christians and dating became a best seller, and Harris became an instant Christian celebrity when he was only 21 years old. Harris served as lead pastor at a Maryland megachurch from 2004 to 2015.

He now renounces his earlier teachings on purity, saying they “contributed to a culture of exclusion and bigotry.” Harris has also apologized to the LGBT community for ways his “writing and speaking contributed to a culture of exclusion and bigotry.” He recently took part in a gay pride festival in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Last month Harris revealed in an Instagram post that he has left Christianity altogether. “I have undergone a massive shift in regard to my faith in Jesus,” he wrote. “By all measurements that I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian.”

Marty Sampson who wrote music for Australia’s Hillsong ministry years ago also recently posted doubts about the Christian faith on issues such as hell and suffering, saying, “I am genuinely losing my faith, and it doesn’t bother me.” – Source

From CBN News: Beloved Pastor, Mental Health Advocate Tragically Takes His Own Life

Jarrid Wilson, author, pastor, and founder of Anthem of Hope, tragically took his life Monday night, on the eve of World Suicide Prevention Day. – Source

From CBN News: Christian Singer Announces, ‘I no longer believe in God’: How You Can Experience Jesus More Personally Than Ever Before

Jon Steingard is a pastor’s son and a musician, singer, and songwriter. He has been the lead singer for the Christian band Hawk Nelson since March 2012.

Now he has made an Instagram announcement that is generating headlines: “After growing up in a Christian home, being a pastor’s kid, playing and singing in a Christian band, and having the word ‘Christian’ in front of most of the things in my life—I am now finding that I no longer believe in God.” –Source

To be honest, I have a hard time understanding how people who once supposedly lived their lives with and for God all of a sudden decide one day that they do not believe in Him anymore. How does one sing songs, preach, or write books for years at a time and supposedly for God’s Glory, all of a sudden do ‘an about face’ on Him?

All the while, some had made a considerable amount of money from their ‘supposed Faith’ which, in the end, when they decided to walk away, makes it seem that the whole time they were just faking it and ‘making merchandise of Him.’

Such is the case with our Prodigal daughters who will be 27 and 22 this year. These are grown women who still post rants for all to see, mind you, on their social media pages. Rants stating their ‘ungrateful dissatisfaction’ on their upbringing. Lamenting their lack in getting to ‘be their true selves’ because of the restrictions of living in a Christian home.

During their time as children, as I have stated in previous articles, we were in no way as strong in the Lord as we are now. Basically, we were like a lot of Secular Christian Families nowadays who still live like the world. Our girls were raised in church but were in no way made to attend every time the church doors were open. We taught them about Jesus, but we probably only read the Bible on occasion, at best.

Anyhow, nothing was ‘force fed’ or anything like they would have their social media friends believe. Once they became teenagers, our family did start to grow more in the Lord. Our girls seemed to enjoy attending Youth Camps and even wanted to do ‘Mission Work’ when the opportunity arose. They each had their own Bible and seemed to have their own genuine relationships with the Lord until they each fell in love with an atheist.

In recent years, though, as it seems by their posts, our raising them to know and love the Lord and to follow His Word apparently became ‘toxic’ to them. How dare we not allow them to be their own person as a child, with no restraints, and to ‘Do as thou wilt’! How ‘unhealthy’ we were to want them to do things God’s way! By pointing them to God’s Word, that meant that we were somehow silencing their voice?! What kind of lousy parenting is that?!

All of a sudden it was a ‘detriment’ for them to grow up in a God-fearing home! Look at how much they missed out on by not getting to sin like everyone else! Wait… now that they have ‘apostatized’ and are ‘finally free’ from all of our Christianly toxicity, everyone on their social media needs to know that they have ‘triumphantly walked away’ from all godly hinderances!

Now they can ‘pursue their heart’s desire’ to the fullest extent, by having premarital sex every night, march in any number of gay pride and abortion parades, get drunk several times a week, smoke all the hookah pipes and weed as often as they like, indulge in all the secular movies, concerts, and music, and any other ‘ungodly pursuits’ they may have! Yay!

Whoo hoo! Now all of their social media friends can ‘cyber pat them on the back’ for they are ‘Free at Last, Free at Last; now they can Thank their Father the Devil that they are Free at Last! Being a Christian was such a burden! Mom and Dad who are total ‘Southern Baptist Bigots’ and their ‘quack’ Rapture beliefs can stuff it! We are Women now, and we are gonna do as we darn well please!’ (Tongues audaciously sticking out and devil-horn hand signs galore!)

Yawn… ‘pinky clap’ on their newfound independence as they ‘defiantly and proudly’ march down the wide road to destruction. Whoo hoo. Yay. We are so happy for you. Not.

‘Deeply saddened and frustrated’ does not even begin to describe where we are at in seeing all of this play out in our Prodigal adult children. The truth is, in these Last Days, we feel ‘utterly defeated.’ The enemy has robbed us of so much and keeps on doing so, no matter what! We cannot win for losing.

No matter what we do, we are perpetually viewed as the ‘bad guys.’ We could give all our love, approval, support, time, money, help, and gifts to them and still somehow we would be deemed as ‘the toxic Christian parents.’ Ultimately, we are despised and rejected, year after year; and, frankly, there is not much we can do about it… except Pray.

From Got Questions: Will there be a great apostasy during the end times?

The Bible indicates that there will be a great apostasy during the end times. The “great apostasy” is mentioned in 2 Thessalonians 2:3. The KJV calls it the “falling away,” while the NIV and ESV call it “the rebellion.” And that’s what an apostasy is: a rebellion, an abandonment of the truth. The end times will include a wholesale rejection of God’s revelation, a further “falling away” of an already fallen world.

The Greek word translated “rebellion” or “falling away” in verse 3 is apostasia, from which we get the English word apostasy. It refers to a general defection from the true God, the Bible, and the Christian faith. Every age has its defectors, but the falling away at the end times will be complete and worldwide. The whole planet will be in rebellion against God and His Christ. Every coup requires a leader, and into this global apostasy will step the Antichrist. We believe this takes place after the church has been raptured from the earth.

Jesus warned the disciples concerning the final days in Matthew 24:10–12: “At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.” These are the characteristics of the great apostasy of the end times. – Source

Bottom line, Jesus tells us to love our enemies, do good unto them, and pray for those who despitefully use and persecute us. We need to also pray for all the high-profile Christians who have walked away from the Lord in recent years.

Pray that the god of this world would be hindered or stopped from blinding the minds of those who are perishing! That God would grant them and all our Prodigals salvation before it is too late! For Apostates and Prodigal sons and daughters to come to their senses and come back home to God the Father, sooner rather than later!

Time. Is. Ultimately. Running. Out.

Until next time… Maranatha!

(JESUS = THE WAY, THE TRUTH, & THE LIFE)

Candy Austin

*My 2cents worth here, as the Tumblr Author of this page, (giftofshewbread) I just wanted to say, I myself, love the lord, but it’s been a hell of a battle with the flesh & spirit, to become a follower of Christ, it’s the greatest journey you’ll ever endure & it’s truly a battle within, like they say, ‘The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,’ and it certainly is. God help us all, I myself wrestle a lot in these past few years, it’s not been easy and I’ve called out God and I’ve been furious with Him and not trying to come from a selfish part of me, just one that is very battle weary and people have become so ugly/cruel/wicked and in my situation, it’s been extra hard because of being alone, not much for fellowship, just thru internet and it’s very meager and so, it’s been a very lonely journey, oh I know the Lord is with us, but yet, we are human and so much to learn, it can just sure be a solo feeling and hard time of it. Well anyways, holding on, but Lord, Maranatha, Amen !

Leho Lechem

3 notes · View notes

satan-chillin · 5 years ago

Text

All the Small Things

Summary: Two girls from the future claimed to be Sam's granddaughters.

Also available in Ao3 & FF.net

"So, Sammy. You and Rowena, I see," Dean spoke as a distraction. And Sam would have thanked him for it if not for his choice of topic.

Sam sighed, fiddling with his phone so he won't look at his brother. "Now's not the time, Dean."

Dean pointedly ignored him. "I mean, I'd say I didn't see that one coming—heh, no pun intended." He grinned at his own joke. "But that explains the new taste for porn. Redheads? I thought you're into brunettes, Sammy."

"How did you even—you know what, can we not have this conversation while there are children at the back?" Sam hissed, flushing from his cheeks to his neck.

"That's the thing, Sam. I didn't know. You just confirmed it." Dean sent him a wink and a strong pat against his chest. "Just call her, man. It's for a professional matter. She can be the grandmother of your grandkids later."

It started exactly the same way Sam and Dean encountered their grandfather, Henry Winchester: a previously normal-looking door at the motel that glowed from the other side and out came a person.

Well, two people, in this case. Two girls who tumbled in an ungraceful landing and pained groans on the floor. One was a brunette and another a redhead that made Sam incongruously remember a certain occasional ally witch.

Dean was the first to recover from the shock and out with a gun pointed at the two. "What are you and what are you doing here?"

Sam, despite the alarm and suspicion ringing their bells in his head and him mimicking Dean's guarded stance, oddly felt concerned at what appeared to be two roughly teenage girls who came out of nowhere.

"Woah, easy," said the brunette. She pushed up her glasses and grimaced upon seeing Sam and Dean. She nudged her companion who gave the brothers a stink eye. "We're not here to—uh, we're not here to hurt you."

Dean scoffed. "If there's anybody here doing the hurting, it's us, missy. So stuff it. What are you?"

The redhead scowled at the question, though the expression earned her a pinch from the brunette. "Right, right. Sorry. We're humans if that's what you're worried about," the same girl who spoke said. She raised her hands in surrender.

"Yeah because that's exactly what humans will say when asked 'what are you?'" Dean deadpanned. Sam thought he was being a special kind of bitchy today, but, right. He was supposed to be on Dean's side here.

The brunette sighed exasperatedly. "You have a point, sir," she said calmly, crossing her arms. "But I'm not lying about us. We are humans, and I do think it's important to assert that first thing especially when encountering fellow hunters."

"You? Hunters?" Dean snorted. "Please."

That irked the redhead girl, it seemed, because the next thing they knew, she was shouting, "Abi!"

Suffice to say, the impact sent both Sam and Dean flying against the walls, and, wow, they didn't miss that at all.

"Wena!" Sam heard the other girl yell, aghast.

Sam's back hurt like hell when he fell on the floor, and yet the first thing he registered was the name that sounded like 'Rowena' and that was neither here nor there.

"That's it. Witches, huh." Dean was already on his feet, loading his gun with two witch-killing bullets.

Sam watched as a blur of dark hair rushed towards Dean and kicked him in the crotch. The redhead girl cheered when Dean crumpled on his knees, hissing. Sam was on high alert, and kid or not, he has to subdue them before—

Sam paused within a few steps, not looking forward to being kneed in the groin. He'd had some phantom pain from the Nutcracker on occasion, thank you very much. Without any other choice that didn't involve roughing up some kids, Sam opted for words.

"Okay," he said, placing down his gun and kicking Dean's away. Dean shot him an incredulous look of are you insane?! that Sam readily leveled with a flat stare. "Give us a name and we can all talk peacefully. That good?"

The brunette relaxed immediately and stood straighter. "I'm Kelly, sir, and this is my sister Rowena. I know this is all weird barging in on you, but—this is Peoria, Illinois, yes?"

"Yeah," Sam managed to answer despite the names that sounded too good to be a coincidence. Kelly? Rowena? Sisters? What was going on here?

Rowena—the redhead girl, Sam thought unhelpfully instead—apparently looked relieved. "The spell worked then," she chirped with a smug grin to her sister.

Kelly shushed her a bit too late. Warily, she addressed both Sam and Dean. "As for your question earlier, we're not really witches witches, you know? We, ah, do a bit of spell, but not enough to label us witches."

"Let them, Lee." Rowena harrumphed. "It's not like they can touch us."

Dean chuckled humorlessly as he sat on the bed, still furious. "Pray tell, miss, why we couldn't?"

"Because if you do, Uncle Jack will find out, and so does grandpa. Oh, he's nice, alright, but you don't want to face his wrath."

Kelly looked like she was seconds away from facepalming or yelling for her sister to shut up. Whichever came first.

Dean, with injured pride and hurt balls, humored the girl. "And who's this grandpa of yours who's not ridden with arthritis?"

Sam racked his brain for names of any old hunters that they knew and tried to think whether there were some they have to watch out for. Senior hunters were no joke if they could live this long in the hunting business.

Rowena huffed. "Why, Sam Winchester, of course!"

Also, there was the matter of some tension with a couple of hunters who—

Wait.

What?

"Sam Winchester," Dean repeated, face blank. "Samuel Winchester."

"Unless there's another Samuel Winchester that you know." Rowena rolled her eyes.

Dean tilted his head, but when he glanced at Sam he was unable to keep the laugh that escaped him. "Dude, you didn't tell me you have grandkids already."

And Sam would have hit him for that, if that little fact registered as a joke, if it didn't make everything else click with sense and clarity.

When Sam met Kelly's stare with a gasp of realization coming from her, Sam was almost afraid to ask.

"Kelly, what year do you think is it?"

Even she was afraid to answer, but out came a low-voiced reply from her of a year that should be four decades from then.

Amidst his surprise, Sam tried with utmost effort on how to make the revelation with finesse because the two girls weren't their first time traveler for goodness's sake.

"Welcome to 2020," Sam said instead, with an awkward chuckle and the brazen tact of a lumbering moose.

Time travel was officially the least of his favorites.

"Time travelers," Dean muttered. "So messing with time runs in the family?"

"I don't think it's intentional," Sam whispered, warily eyeing the girls who were busy poring over the diner menu. They must be hungry. "I mean. Henry did it to escape, and Abaddon just followed. The girls must have thought it was a teleportation spell. They did ask about the place."

"What's with Illinois and their motel doors?" Dean grumbled. The girls looked at him briefly. Rowena scowled at him. Dean's expression turned even sourer. "You done yet? Don't tell me you're planning to buy out the diner."

The girls turned red, though Kelly's was out of embarrassment while Rowena looked irritated and close to yelling another spell until Kelly pinched her arm.

"Dean," Sam said in warning. He expected Dean to be the adult in this. Sam addressed the girls, "I'm guessing the time travel is purely accidental. Any reason why you attempted to perform the spell?"

"Gabriel was kidnapped," Rowena said when Kelly looked hesitant to answer.

"Um, are you sure it's alright for us to answer your questions? I mean, we're from the future and we might jinx it once you find out some things," Kelly said reasonably.

"Sure," Dean agreed. "But we have to make sure that the danger you were running to didn't follow you here. Happened once. Was a pain in the ass."

"The Henry Winchester and Abaddon incident," Kelly said automatically. When Dean raised an eyebrow, she glanced down shyly. "You told me that."

There was silence when their orders were brought in. The waitress eyed Dean and Sam and sent the two young girls a questioning glance. Sam would have felt offended if he didn't understand how they appeared in public: two men too young to be fathering two girls their age. It was weird.

"So are flying cars a thing in your time?" Dean suddenly asked with a mouthful of pancakes. When Sam sighed beside him, Dean just shrugged. "That's like an obligatory question when you meet someone from the future, dude. 'sides, that's a safe question."

"Flying cars? That's silly," Rowena huffed. "Back to the Future thought those were available back in 2015. Look how wrong they were."

Dean looked startled. "I made you watch that?"

"Uncle John did. He won't shut up about movies." She turned her little nose. "He got it from you."

"Oh." Dean's eyes softened imperceptibly. "John, huh."

Sam was against any other name-drop—it was bad enough that two of his supposed grandchildren from the future were just across the table—but watching Dean's expression reminded them that it was one of the very few things they looked forward to: a larger family and the setting down of roots. It was nice to know that there was still hope for them in that department despite their current lifestyle that they would hardly change even after the close call to another world-ending cataclysm.

"So, can you return to your time with the same spell you used?" Sam asked, changing the topic to the issue at hand lest he gave in to the temptation to ask about a lot of things, starting with whether he was the paternal or maternal grandfather of Kelly and Rowena and who was their grandmother.

"We're not sure," Kelly admitted. "You know that we only meant to transport ourselves from one place to another. We didn't bring ingredients with us to replicate the spell again." She paused, then jolted as if she remembered something crucial. "Oh, the bunker. That's already your headquarters, yeah? There could be a stock of the ingredients we need there. That is if you don't mind helping us out."

"Of course not. Help yourself with the bunker, we'll hit the road once we're done with breakfast," Sam said. He made a mental note to call Cas later and have him and Jack ready the ingredients and the tools needed in case they got back early.

"Are you not currently on a case?" Rowena asked.

"We're already done with it, actually. You caught us at the right time."

"Great!" Rowena chirped. "We can get to working as soon as possible."

"You got your mood swings from your namesake, alright," Dean commented tersely. "Speaking of—Sam, call Rowena. She might know something with this spell. Also helps that they have an expert's supervision. In case they mess it up again. No offense, kids."

Kelly looked chagrined, and Sam expected her sister to be livid; instead, however, the redhead girl was, in fact, excited, eyes gleaming as she smacked her poor sister by the shoulder.

"We're meeting grandma, Lee. Our young grandma! I bet she's prettier in person," Rowena gushed.

Dean stopped eating and Sam almost spilled his coffee when it dawned to him.

"You're saying Rowena is your grandmother?" Dean, the first to recover from the revelation, said slowly. "Rowena, the redheaded witch with the Scottish accent. That Rowena?"

The redheaded girl leveled Dean with a flat stare as if saying 'Duh'. "You mean my name didn't give it away?"

"Well, your sister's name is Kelly, who's obviously not your grandmother since you just referred to Jack as uncle," Dean reasoned like that was the most surprising thing they should focus on.

"I liked you more when you were older," Rowena said. "And I'll have you know that I look like my grandma Rowena. My mom even said so."

"But if Rowena's your grandma and Sam's your grandpa—well, it's possible they're on separate sides—"

"Oh my god. They're our grandparents, okay? That union started a line of strong blood born from a topnotch hunter and a natural-born witch, so obviously our mom—"

"Rowena, shut up right now!" Kelly suddenly yelled, silencing her sister and had the attention of the diners and the staff on them.

Sam left a couple of bills on the table and was well-aware of the judging looks on them as they followed Rowena after she stormed out of the establishment.

Sam couldn't blame them; a few hours in, they were clearly failing to reign in two teenagers.

"Hey, no jumping out of a moving car, capeesh?" Dean warned the girls at the backseat, particularly the redhead. Sam was sure Dean was close to addressing her as a drama queen.

Rowena completely ignored Dean. Kelly simply nodded and looked out the window. The sisters were both quiet half an hour on the trip, the tension palpable between them that even the brothers began to feel uncomfortable. They weren't strangers to sibling quarrel, and they both agreed that it sucked to have one especially in a car.

"I just don't want you spilling too much information about the future, alright?" Kelly was the first to speak after the tension became unbearable for her.

"I know," grumbled Rowena after a while, her face turned the other way. "I just—never mind."

That cleared the air a bit.

"So, Sammy. You and Rowena, I see," Dean spoke as a distraction. And Sam would have thanked him for it if not for his choice of topic.

Sam sighed, fiddling with his phone so he won't look at his brother. "Now's not the time, Dean."

"How did you even—you know what, can we not have this conversation while there are children at the back?" Sam hissed, flushing from his cheeks to his neck.

Sam pretended that he didn't see through the rearview mirror the girls stifling their grins.

"Right," Sam huffed. He found Rowena's number on speed dial and called.

"What's so important in this fine a morning, Samuel?" came Rowena's voice from the speakers, sounding groggy and mildly irritated to be disturbed from her sleep.

"We need your help," Sam said.

"Obviously. You never call me for a social meeting."

"Can you make it this afternoon? It's kinda urgent."

Rowena groaned from the other line. "Someone's dying?"

"Uh, no. Hopefully not."

"The world is ending again?"

"I don't think so."

"Then it's not bloody urgent, Samuel."

The two girls at the back burst into a fit of giggles at the exchange.

"You're not with Dean?"

"In here," Dean called like a student in a roll-call.

"Dean's driving." Sam wasn't obtuse enough to not get the underlying question there. "There are two kids with us. They're the ones who need your help with a spell."

"While it's commendable that children are introduced to witchcraft at a young age, I don't advice dabbling with it without adult supervision."

"Exactly why they need you."

Sam heard her hum in consideration. "And here I thought you're looking for any reason to see me, Samuel," she said sweetly.

Dean made a mock-gagging noise. "Hey, less flirting, more driving to the bunker."

And this was coming from the person who shamelessly teased Sam for his, er, acquired taste.

"We'll see you there," Sam said, disregarding Dean's ribbing. "Take care, Rowena," he added as an afterthought.

"Ever the gentleman, Samuel," Rowena remarked dryly, promptly cutting off the line.

Sam made a bitchface at Dean. "I called her. You happy now?"

"Are you?" Dean shot back.

"Shut up," Sam grumbled. He turned to the girls at the back. "You probably won't like this, but I think it's better if you won't tell her who you really are."

"But—" the redheaded girl—Sam was going to call her Ro; all these same names could be confusing—was about to retort, but upon looking at Kelly, she reluctantly agreed. "Fine. Besides, there's a possibility that we might wipe ourselves from existence. Right, Lee?"

Kelly nodded grimly. "Yeah. Us being here alone probably caused some changes already. Hopefully nothing too massive."

"That could happen? You can possibly jinx your birth or something?" Dean asked with a frown. When Sam raised an eyebrow at him, he shrugged. "I'm curious. Cas did warn us of making any changes when he brought us back a couple of times in the past, but the first time he also said that time is fluid. There's also the matter of alternate universes and such. I dunno. What if it's a quantum thing, you know? Wherein you won't return to the future you originally came from but on an alternate future where you barely notice the changes but they're still there. Like the movie Coherence."

"That's the term 'quantum' in movies are, Dean. Sci-fi films tend to slap that word along time-travel and physics mumbo-jumbo."

"So? Not all viewers are physicists."

"Fine, you have a point, but you don't have to needlessly scare them." Sam gestured at the girls.

"We're not scared, because we know we'll return where the others are probably looking for us," Ro said, though it sounded like she was trying to convince herself more.

"Worst case scenario is you're going to be stuck with us for a few more days, but rest assured that we'll do our best to bring you home," Sam promised them, earning him a small smile of gratitude from Kelly.

They came through apocalypses, alternate universes, and even God. What was sending two girls from the future compared to those?

Cas and Jack were already at the bunker when they arrived. Dean was clearly surprised to find them early.

"How's the hunt?" he asked once he recovered, tousling Jack's hair when he passed him.

"Good," Cas simply said.

They both averted each other's eyes and skirted around something that Sam couldn't put his finger on as he observed the exchange.

"These are the time-travelers you speak of." Cas approached them. "Hello, children."

Kelly gave him a small wave while Ro smiled at Cas impishly.

"And you plan to return them the same manner they did." Sam nodded in confirmation.

"I can help," Jack readily suggested, watching the two girls curiously. "I can bring them back."

"That'll be easier but also perilous. You're strong, Jack, but we can't have you risk it yet knowing you're untrained with time-traveling, and riding the stream of time is not easy even for the experienced travelers. Not to mention the two charges you'll have to carry with you," Cas reasoned that didn't leave much room for argument.

Jack didn't put up much of a fight against the fair argument, though he did look like a kicked-puppy for being denied.

"But you can help us remove this encounter in their minds," Cas said. "Yours and Dean's too," he reminded Sam.

Ro was ready to protest though beaten by Dean to it. "Woah. Why Sam and me too?"

"I assume you already know a lot about the future."

"The fact that Sam and Rowena's gonna bang more than once and I'm going to have a kid named John—that's it."

Cas shook his head. "It's possible that Sam and Rowena might not end up together, thus erasing their child and grandchildren from existence," he said amidst Sam's explanation to a terribly curious Jack who was strangely looking at Sam at the background. "That's only a minor example, Dean. You know the rules."

"Forgive me if I'm having doubts about having my mind erased, Cas, because while that didn't happen to me before, it happened to Mom when I could have warned her against her death," Dean said sharply. "There could have been no apocalypse and the retakes that followed; Sam could have been a lawyer by now, married to Jess; Dad wouldn't have died; we could've had simple lives where people wouldn't die on association with us!"

There was an uncomfortable silence that followed at Dean's sudden outburst.

For all his usual expression of blankness, Cas seemed like he was slapped on the face. "I didn't know that the life you have now makes you incredibly unhappy. I'm sorry I assumed." Cas walked out of the war room with Jack on his heels.

Dean's jaw tightened at Cas's retreat. He stood. "Call me if you need me for later."

Watching Dean's back disappearing in the hallway made Sam frustratingly blame himself that he should have seen this coming, starting with their parting with Cas and Jack yesterday. Sam had chalked Dean's testiness to exhaustion, and obviously there was more to it.

"Sorry you have to see that," Sam apologized, not forgetting the two girls one bit who witnessed the unpleasant interaction. He hoped that they wouldn't interpret it as them being an indirect cause of it all; they were way too young for self-blaming. "Let's get you lunch."

Sam was unable to fight off the urge to gather them both each on his sides, planting his hands on their small backs as he steered them towards the kitchen.

Dean wouldn't have answered the door if he hadn't mentioned that they get him should the need arise.

To his surprise, though, it was Kelly who came bearing him food and a beer and asking for entry. Reluctantly, Dean allowed her in for the peace-offering alone.

Kelly was taught well enough to just sit there, though she was apparently not told that staring was rude when someone was eating.

"Relax, kid, I'll eat it," Dean assured her wryly. It was one of Sam's salad and burgers that were thankfully not made of fake meat.

Kelly moved around while Dean ate, and Dean was far distracted to care about her touching his collection of records and cassette. His worry was unfounded when she returned them neatly the same way Dean arranged them.

"You a fan of music, kid?" he asked, still unsure what Kelly wanted with him.

"Even in this decade, most people are," she said absently. "My playlist is composed mostly of your suggestions. We pretty much have the same taste."

A smirk paved its way on Dean's face. "Oh yeah?"

"We like classic movies, and at Christmas eves you liked playing The Lord of the Rings that I already memorized Aragorn's speech. We both developed a taste for psychological thrillers. You liked Enemy, I think, because no matter how much you complained how confusing the ending was, you'd asked me to watch it with you so we could analyze it together."

Dean didn't miss the change in tenses, and he took a more somber appearance when he watched her sit on the edge of the bed and stared somewhere far away. Dean listened.

"You liked your burgers greasier the more you got older, and you make a mean one with bacon with too much cheese. That's my favorite," Kelly shared. "At fifty-eight, you got injured by a werewolf that clawed your back. You got a mean scar that looked badass, and you were so proud of it." She didn't turn to Dean, seemingly gathering her bony legs against her chest. "When Uncle John said he wasn't interested to join the hunting business, you sent him to the most prestigious school you could afford because you wanted the best for him. You were supportive of his choice of career so he became a good doctor. Uncle Rob's the one who became a hunter but he had to stop when he met Aunt Georgia and they had Gabriel. In the end, it was Aunt Jo who truly got into the hunting career. You were against it at first, until you realized that was unfair of you to her. Now, she and Aunt Claire make a fine tandem. Uncle John, Uncle Robert, and Aunt Jo might be your adopted kids, but that never stopped you and Cas from raising and loving them unconditionally. You were a firm believer that family didn't end in blood, and it showed."

Dean swallowed thickly, taking the load of information in. So he didn't get to make his own children, but it turned out that he would have two great sons named after his fathers and a daughter named in honor of Jo. And he raised them with Cas, a fact that caused some repressed feelings to well up inside him.

The thing was, Dean could picture that, a family. A family with Cas and three adoptive children. In some part of his mind, there was a surge of hope to seeing that future a couple of years from now.

Dean didn't have those yet and he was already unwilling to let that go.

"Why are you telling me this?" he asked when he finally managed to speak.

"Because it doesn't matter anyway if you won't remember them in the end," Kelly told him. "Because I want you to know at least before that that Cas assumed wrong. You were happy. It wasn't an easy life, but if it was, you wouldn't have met the other people you have now. You wouldn't have known Cas, Aunt Jack, Bobby, Aunt Charlie, and everyone else that brought you here and made you to what you are now and what you'll be. You were happy, and you told me that yourself the day before you died."

Dean wondered if this was what his Mom felt all those years ago when she met her sons from the future, when Dean warned her about her death. He remembered that she cried then, overwhelmed, maybe. It was exactly what Dean was experiencing right now.

He could barely find it in himself to be surprised at the small arms that wrapped around his torso, squeezing him in an embrace.

Kelly sniffled against his chest. "I miss you, grandpa. So much."

Dean let her glasses dig against his skin. He was unsure how what to say to that, but maybe there was no need to reply. He let her take her time, his hand eventually found the top of her small head.

"Do you mind if I ask you a question?" Dean rasped. He felt her shook her head. "How did I die, Kelly?"

"Heart attack." She sniffed, letting Dean go in the process. "I wasn't there when it happened, but they said it was all very sudden."

Dean didn't doubt that because after all the dangers of monsters and divine entities, he was more convinced that what would truly take him out of commission was something unexpected, something he didn't see coming. Because life was unexpected that way.

Looking at Kelly, Dean was proven his point.

"Where's Kelly?" Sam asked when he found Ro wandering the library alone.

"She went to see Dean," Ro answered, pulling out William Golding's Lord of the Flies. She wrinkled her nose at the dust and settled the book down on the table. She found Sam staring at her, and added, "They're probably having their chick-flick moment so I'm going to read something while we wait."

Kelly having an emotional moment with Dean? Not only that was uncharacteristic of Dean, but there was only one reason he could think of that Kelly would see him. Sam supposed all that precaution about revealing too much about the future was already thrown out of the window when selective memory erasure was mandatory. Sam sat heavily across Ro. "Why?" he asked.

"Aside from the fact that this is a one-time opportunity?" Ro tilted her head, pushing the book away carefully, losing her interest in it. "Kelly misses him. They were… close."

Sam took his time to swallow past the lump in his throat. It wasn't that he expected each other to live forever, but still. To hear that Dean would pass before him, well, it wasn't exactly pleasant news. "How long ago in your time did he..." he trailed off quietly.

"Last year. Cardiac arrest," Ro supplied. "I'm not as close to him as Lee was, but he was alright. Protective, just like you, but if it wasn't for him, we wouldn't have some of our cool uncles and aunts. Everyone took his death hard, as expected for someone loved and respected dearly. You've made peace with it quickly, you told Mom. Cas is—was, a different matter."

Sam was almost afraid to ask, and somehow Ro sensed it, continuing, "He disappeared a week after. We still don't know what happened to him, but Uncle Jack had grieved for him as well. He said that wherever they are now, they're both at peace, so there's that."

Sam took comfort in the knowledge that Dean would live a long, contented life either way, with children and grandchildren of his own, it seemed. He would have the rest of his life with Cas even. Sam was glad that he and Dean had both reached the point where they were comfortable laying each other to rest, with no talk of resurrections or second tries.

"You might as well ask me a lot," Ro said when a blanket of somber silence passed them. Sam believed that was her attempt to change the dismal topic. "We won't remember about any of this anyway."

Sam was lying if he said that he wasn't curious and was in dire need of distraction from knowing Dean's death in a few decades. He asked for the names of the next three presidents, the new technological development, the discovery of new elements, the sensational books released. Ro answered him to her utmost best, and Sam found her general knowledge impressive. For a moment he recognized the pride in him for having this brilliant girl and Kelly, who happened to be a jiu-jitsu black belter at a young age, as his future granddaughters.

"You know, I expected you to ask more specific things," Ro said wistfully. "Nothing depressing, just… specific."

The tone in her suggestion was unmistakable. Sam huffed out an awkward laugh. "Doesn't matter. There's no time for your matchmaking," he replied, a tad amused.

"Psh. If Dean said you're already showing signs of attraction before you knew you'll get together with grandma, then there's no need to worry, is there?"

"Better take precaution still. Things can easily change."

"So are people," Ro said knowingly. "If grandma didn't change for the better, I doubt you would consider her even as a friend."

Now that she mentioned it, Sam was there when Rowena was, in her own words, a villain, and he was there as well to see through her redemption. Sam liked the strong and capable woman he saw underneath the flaws and pettiness she deemed to have. While a work in progress, he liked the room for growth he saw in her, the ability to tremendously care and willingness to sacrifice if need to be. Sam developed a special fondness for her wit and particular brand of dark humor, the twinkle in her green eyes when she called his name in a teasing note. And don't get him started on her physical qualities.

Oh, damn, Sam glumly thought in realization. He had it bad already.

Ro raised an eyebrow at him and smirked smugly. The expression didn't last long, her young face settling for something unbidden. "She wasn't the easiest person to be with, but you didn't love her any less. Mom and her brother knew that. You had a good run with grandma."

Unlike the mention of Dean's death earlier, Ro made Rowena's passing sound less dismal, that—morbidly it might seem—it was inevitable. There was no uncertainty in Sam when he asked, "How did it happen?"

He promised to himself that it was the last question about another person's death that he would ask.

Ro's smile at him was ambivalent. "She died in her sleep. And before you ask, no, she didn't die by your hand. Mom said you almost forgot about that prophecy thing until her tenth birthday, when you finally acknowledged that if there was something fictional stories kept saying, it was that prophecies were not all pretty cut and dry. You married grandma a month after, and I guess that was it. You didn't 'kill' her, but you did just make a 300-year-old witch give up her immortality for you so that she can grow old with you."

Sam's reeling mind was unable to register the clicking sound of heels walking towards the library until Rowena herself entered with crossed arms, fuming.

"I was under the notion that when you called me for an urgent matter, everything is all set once I arrive," Rowena criticized.

Sam cleared his throat. "Cas said that we already have what we need." He gestured vaguely behind him. "I'll just uh—I'll just go get them."

Ro watched him beat a hasty retreat. When Rowena's attention was on her, critical, the girl straightened her back.

"And you wee girl would be?"

"Rowan, ma'am," Ro lied easily, extending her hand.

Rowena considered her small hand for a second before shaking it daintily. "That works as well."

Sam came back and helped with the initial set up. Ro took the moment to slip to the kitchen and bring out a teapot and cup, pouring Rowena tea.

"Where did you find such a darling girl? " Rowena whispered at Sam, humming in approval at the drink.

By the time Rowena was done, Sam looked relieved that she was easily appeased. Ro winked at him.

Rowena regarded the girl. "You don't look as young as Samuel made you to be."

Ro took the observation as a compliment, seemingly glowing at the words. "No, but I myself should be called a child for my mistake." She sighed dramatically and explained the situation for Rowena.

It was a bit frightening how Ro acted like a younger version of Rowena, easily winning over the latter's sympathy, and by the end of her tale, they were both in each other's personal space, with Rowena tucking away a stray lock of Ro's red hair.

Yeah, there was no mistaking of their relation there, Sam thought wryly.

"And you made sure that nobody else could follow through the door you used?" Rowena queried.

"The spell was specifically for only Lee and me," Ro assured her. "Designed to work only one way. Once."

Rowena looked mildly impressed. "You have strong foundations, dear. I wish I could say the same for the girls wanting to be my apprentice." She glanced at Sam. "Are you sure the consequences will be too dire if we keep her?"

"Rowena," Sam started, though he sounded more amused and fond at the same time.

"Samuel," Rowena returned obligingly.

"You know the rules on time travel."

"Och. Do I? Remind me to try it next time so I'll experience it for myself. Might have to slap someone back in the 17th century."

"I'm sure it won't be difficult for you, but the experience is not exactly pleasant. And pulling someone away from their timeline can have serious repercussions."

"But if you remember Gavin, there were hardly changes because he wasn't so vital to the history," Rowena reminded him. "Unless this girl is going to be an important figure decades from now, I don't see how there could be this so-called repercussions you speak of. No offense, dearie. I mean that in a broader sense."

Sam sighed. He knew she being purposefully stubborn. "Yeah, no." He smiled tightly.

"Because?"

He exchanged a look with Ro, who only gave him an encouraging, saccharine smile. "Right. Doesn't matter anymore." Sam fought an incoming headache. "She's your granddaughter from the future, Rowena. She and her sister are going to be the kids of your daughter."

Rowena blinked. "Oh."

"Both of you are our grandparents," Ro corrected Sam.

Rowena blinked multiple times. "Oh."

Sam looked away. "Yeah."

Rowena tilted the girl's chin to her, scrutinizing her thoughtfully. "That explains the hair and the eyes. Resembled us more than the parents, aren't you?" She patted Ro's cheek affectionately.

Sam waited for the relentless teasing that never came.

Rowena stood and clapped her fingers. "Let's get to bringing you girls back, shall we?"

Sam noted that Rowena wasn't any less fond of Kelly when she and Dean joined them at the library. Rowena merely nodded in greeting at Dean, and there was the typical lilt of her voice when she said 'Castiel' when the fallen angel came to the room with Jack.

Sam was surprised when Rowena didn't point out the apparent tension they could almost taste in the air when Dean and Cas met each other's eyes.

"Go on, dearies," Rowena encouraged the girls, seemingly excited to witness her granddaughters' capabilities. "Perform the same spell you did. Don't mind us here."

Somehow, the girls were hardly assured, suddenly self-conscious to be watched. Sam wondered if their meticulousness was due to them hovering over the two.

"Done," Ro announced when the cauldron began producing a thin trail of smoke.

"A modified spell," Rowena recognized.

Kelly nodded. "It's Ro's idea. Makes the spell difficult to replicate."

Ro preened.

"Well, to be fair to you girls, your only mistake was using the wrong phonetics; therefore, you overdid it," Rowena began to explain, pointing at the written incantation of the spell the girls wrote down. "Barely a novice's mistake."

"Did she just compliment somebody else's witchcraft?" Dean whispered to Sam.

Sam shrugged.

Sam and Dean watched with bated breath as Rowena walked the girls step by step to redo the same spell that would help them return in an exact time before they vanished in their timeline.

Jack's wandering eyes that bounced curiously between all the people inside the library went unnoticed. When Cas glanced at him questioningly, Jack turned to the small light show happening on the cauldron as Rowena cited an additional Latin phrase.

The whole affair was underwhelming, all things considered. Ro and Kelly wrote the slightly different inscriptions on the nearest door until there was a bright glow that came from the other side.

The door no longer led to the restroom, Jack mused, fascinated.

"That's quick," Ro muttered. Kelly agreed.

"Because you dearies are talented," Rowena told them with a soft expression that didn't usually grace her features. She was being sincere, that much was obvious. "Keep it up, girls. Your Mom must be proud of you two."

"So this is goodbye, huh." Dean approached. "Try to avoid accidentally time-traveling next time," he jested.

Kelly grinned at him. Dean allowed the urge to ruffle her hair. There was a kind of understanding that passed between them when he received a nod from Ro.

"Take care, will you," was Sam's last piece of advice to them, not wanting to be too emotional about something he would forget in a few minutes. "We'll see you girls around, I guess."

But damn it, it was hard not to.

"Uncle Jack," Kelly called, startling Jack at the title. "We're ready."

Jack's fingers tapped them on their foreheads. "You'll forget about this once you passed that door," he said. "Personally, I'd rather you remember," he whispered to them.

Ro's eyes that reminded Jack of Sam were lit in amusement, with Kelly equally so. Jack didn't get what was funny. "We know you'd say that. Just take care of Cas, okay? We'll see you around too." Ro winked.

With a final wave, Kelly opened the door for the both of them. It closed on their backs without showing any glimpse of the other side. The whole thing happened within five seconds without much of a fanfare.

"I'll go first," Dean stated once the moment passed, walking to Jack. He wasn't happy that he wouldn't get to keep this memory, but Jack admired Dean's decisiveness.

Jack shook his head. "I think it'll be better if I do this all at once. Castiel said that he wanted to be included in this too."

"I know very little, but it'd be safer this way," Cas told them.

"Now wait just a second, what is the angel saying?" Rowena butted in.

"We have to wipe this encounter from everyone's mind, Rowena, and that includes yours," Sam answered.

"Why, I don't remember agreeing to a bloody memory erasure, Samuel," she retorted.

"Rowena—"

"No," she said firmly. "What if not remembering is what changes the outcome? I don't want to forget that I saw what I'll have one day. I don't—I don't want to, Sam. Please."

Sam came closer, gingerly holding her by the shoulders in comfort. "Rowena," he tried again. "Nothing is set in stone, but if there's one thing I want to believe in, it's that some things will happen no matter what. And I know in my gut that those two sisters are one of those. You'll have them. We will have them and their mother and their uncle. For now, we just have to wait."

It was the point where Dean was supposed to make fun of Sam, of him and Rowena making googly eyes on each other in front of everyone. But that could wait, he thought, not when Cas was slotting his hand against his and Dean was letting him.

Dean wondered multiple things at once.

He wondered faintly if he would remember this particular bit afterward. He didn't want to forget Cas's fingers entwined with his for the first time.

Dean wondered if the brief moment counted as contentment and happiness on Cas's side.

Dean wondered if the Shadow was coming after Cas in the next ten seconds for feeling a momentary satisfaction.

Unbeknownst to them, Jack set to work.

It wasn't Jack's intention, but he saw them for himself anyway: the pieces of memories of Sam, Dean, Castiel, and Rowena as he sifted through their heads.

He witnessed, with an outsider's perspective like that of an audience to a TV, Dean and Castiel's heated conversation two days ago on the subject of getting together more than friendship allowed them to be.

He witnessed the pull of attraction that began to form between Sam and Rowena while one of them thought it was happening only on a single side and the other thinking it was a fleeting fancy that became inexplicable the longer it lingered.

Jack barely understood most of the concepts, though it did make him understood what drove the actions of these people in his close circle.

It would certainly be a tough project, but while Jack was helplessly inept in the subject matter, he could make up for it with immense determination.

Jack began to plan.

End

#samwitch #sam x rowena #samwena #samwena fanfic #samwitch fanfic #sam winchester #rowena macleod #spn fanfiction #Supernatural #post season 15 #rowena #fanfic #destiel #dean winchester #castiel #jack kline

25 notes · View notes

lily-blue · 5 years ago

Text

CODE Z3RO | CODE 04

characters: BTS & Red Velvet genre: thriller, futuristic au warning: blood, death summary: The twelve most ambitious and promising university students are welcomed in Choego, the world’s first entirely artificial intelligence-driven city, to compete for five job contracts that could change their life. But what if something goes wrong? What if they get trapped? What if the city suddenly turns against them? Can they find a way out before the countdown reaches zero? words: 4,7K tagged: @philosopher-of-fandoms

➼ Chapter Index

The corridor was dreadfully quiet as if Jung Hoseok had walked down on an abandoned graveyard full of long forgotten souls. Honestly, he hated every damn minute of this impossible trial that the researchers had forced upon their group of twelve, but at least his rivals weren’t too much to bear except for Taehyung whom he hoped would have disappeared along with or rather instead of daddy’s little princess. At least, Sooyoung had been a weaker link than him, a brainless doll dressed in gold and glitter. Considering the dynamic of their miniature society, she had meant no harm, meanwhile Taehyung seemed to be one of those guys who would have given you the last drop of drinking water just to poison you in a deserted island. He was ambitious and Hoseok knew that people like him would have done anything to get what they wanted.

Taking a sharp right turn, the Sociology major pushed the canteen’s double door open and walked towards their group that was eating in the corner, putting his arms on the edge of an ugly, plastic chair’s backrest. For a few minutes, he listened to their quiet chatter about neutral topics in silence, rolling his eyes when one of the girls changed the subject from a television show to the weather. It was a natural reaction for the chaotic situation they were in, complete ignorance, but the fact that he had known that it was something he should have expected didn’t mean that it didn’t rub him in the wrong way.

He cleared his throat to gain everyone’s attention. Looking at the empty lunch boxes and the dirty cellophane in front of Seokjin, he couldn’t wait to leave this creepy hospital behind, finding useful clues in the researchers’ headquarter, earning some good points for his neatness from their supervisors. He had always been good at finding links between reasons and consequences until the equation hadn’t expanded with risky variables such as haunted buildings, axe murderers and walking zombies. Would have it been possible that the researchers had made a complex trial for them, getting their inspiration from stupid, American survival shows and lame books for young adults? Shit! How much he hated their sick society and the masterminds behind the contemporary entertainment industry.

‘Did anyone see our Korean Richie Rich or that scary IT guy with the eerie look?’ he asked before he could have overthought their situation even more, his long fingers already shaking under the imaginary weight on his shoulders. Staying composed in an ambiguous situation had already taken a lot of energy out of his body and was harder that he had first thought.

‘Did you check the toilets?’ the grumpy guy with lilac hair asked, chewing on the last bites of his sandwich in an obviously annoyed pace and Hoseok wondered whether Taehyung had hated people in general or it was him whom he had an actual problem with.

‘Well, obviously. I’m coming from there,’ he answered and patted the front side of his jeans with a wide grin, satisfied that he had finally found a toilet after he had failed so during his first attempt, half an hour prior when they had stepped into this eerie labyrinth with dozens of empty rooms and abandoned beds. Although a part of him did find rationality behind the absence of people - Choego was still under construction and was waiting for its wealthy inhabitants after all -, he couldn’t help but feel uneasy whenever he thought about the silence that surrounded them 24/7.

His gaze never leaving the boy deep in his own thoughts, Taehyung rolled his eyes at Hoseok’s stupidity, saving his energy as he swallowed a cocky comment on the inevitability of having more than one toilet in a huge building like this one with at least six floors. Humming, he honestly started to doubt the company’s management, considering that they had indeed thought of idiots like Hoseok as valuable candidates. From his point of view, even his three-year-old little sister was smarter than a significant part of their group of so-called prodigies. The thought of teaming up with a bunch of losers was utterly ridiculous yet he couldn’t disobey the researchers’ orders.

They all finished the remains of their food in utter silence except for Wendy who hushed her boyfriend when he tried to break the unpleasant atmosphere with a joke about two cartons of milk talking in the desert that only Seokjin could appreciated. Said boy stood up not long after the carefree laughter left his mouth and looked around with a pinch of worry in his eyes as the peace finally settled between the lovebirds on his right.

‘So now that we all finished our breakfast and Joohyun also got her insulin, I suggest to go and find the others. Any objections?’ he asked in a firm tone as he took the lead voluntarily. After all, when it came to measuring their possible strengths and weaknesses, he was far the most qualified for the job since he’d already had experience in disastrous situations thanks to his degree in Crisis Management. He’d served his required volunteer service in Nepal where a massive earthquake had killed more than eight thousand people in 2015. He was certain that he could handle the researchers’ tough simulation just as smoothly as he’d helped to rebuild hundreds of buildings for those who had lost not just their homes but their loved ones, too, from one day to another. Although back then, he hadn’t had to deal with disrespectful youngsters like Taehyung.

‘You bet! Could you explain, why are they so freakin’ important?’ he asked as he stood up just the same, his itching palms resting on the top of the table, voice heavy because of the boiling anger in his veins. He looked at his rivals, annoyed, then smashed the wooden furniture, fingers curling into pulsing fists as he stretched his back and faced with the eldest challengingly. ‘I mean, we’ve already left that crazy bitch behind - thank goodness -, so why are they any different? Is it because of his money?’ he came up with the first thing that seemed rational enough to waste their time for losers when Seokjin’s sharp glance rendered him speechless. The lilac-haired boy gulped but didn’t blink, holding onto his pride with tooth and nail regardless of the others’ disapproval snorts.

‘It’s because we’re in the same team, Taehyung, and we won’t betray another fellow. Not until I’m here,’ Seokjin claimed earning a few smiles mostly from the girls. When he took the first step towards the double door, no one stayed behind. They all followed him to the hallway, leaving their bags and luggages casually in the corner, close to Jimin’s belongings.

As if the obvious disagreement between Taehyung and Seokjin had forced everyone’s mouth shut, the incomplete group walked down the hallways without exchanging small talks, only Joohyun’s heavy breathing emerging from the background noise of their firm steps. Unlike his caring girlfriend who simply couldn’t hold herself back from glancing at her roommate’s direction, Namjoon looked more than bothered because of her current state. But he chose not to confront the redhead more than once within a single hour and fixed his gaze on the strange duo right in front of him. Seeing Taehyung’s clenched fists and crimson ears, the mechanical engineer had some serious doubts whether Joohyun was the only one they should have been worried about.

‘Did you see the Saw?’ Hoseok asked completely out of the blue as his gaze glided from the light green tiles to the boy on his left with an arched brow floating slowly yet challengingly to the middle of his forehead. He seemed nervous, Namjoon could tell, as his trembling hand ruffled his messy locks unintentionally, his hair already resembling to a bird’s nest because of his ugly cap that now peaked out of his jeans’ huge back pocket.

Namjoon narrowed his eyes, waiting anxiously when the lilac-haired boy’s annoyed voice reached his ears with a harsh ‘What?’

The older boy had always thought of himself as someone who rather avoided conflicts than raising his voice on the verge of an upcoming storm yet he couldn’t stop his shoulders from becoming naturally tense as he observed his childish teammates. He didn’t understand why any of them or anyone in general would have made an anxious sphere even more uncomfortable on purpose and if not on purpose then how came that they didn’t notice the obvious, the negative effect of their debate on the remaining people in their group. For him, it was enough to shoot a quick glance at Wendy’s creased forehead and he knew that something was definitely off with the situation.

‘In the sixth movie, although I’m not sure, there was this horrific game in which all the victims had to work together…’ Hoseok went on, trying to take a further discussion on the subject that seemingly made the whole situation worse as Taehyung’s fingers curled up in a slightly shaking fist.

‘Jeez! Just shut up already, would you? You’re such a headache,’ he snapped and speeded up his hasty steps to get as far from the Sociology major as possible considering his limited options. In the end, he slowed down next to Seulgi and walked by her side in silence as if she hadn’t been there in the first place. Not that the girl would have minded the momentary peace, Taehyung’s rejecting attitude was better than listening to their whining.

‘Asshole,’ Hoseok murmured under his nose, darting his tongue out at the younger’s back when he thought that no one was watching. But his resentful comment didn’t slip Namjoon’s attention as the engineer stepped behind him and watched her girlfriend as she checked on Joohyun when she was finally left alone. Her genuine eagerness to help others in need never failed to amaze the ever so rational boy therefore the fond smile that played in the corner of his mouth was rather proud than annoyed.

‘I saw that movie, man. It was the fifth actually,’ he answered the question Taehyung refused to and even patted Hoseok’s shoulder a few times to soothe his nerves, encouraging to follow the others who were already a few steps ahead of them. ‘A bit disgusting, if you ask me, but genius.’

They changed their opinions on the mentioned movie in which there had been a group of people who had to work together in exchange for their freedom. Yet, they failed miserably as they couldn’t stop sacrificing each other, not caring about anything but their own lives. Every single task in the survival game was designed to emphasize the importance of teamwork hiding it behind selfishness and the players only realized it when it was too late. At the final challenge, they had to fill an enormous object with their own blood and considering that by the time they had reached the last room only two of them survived, they almost bled out and died inches away from their redemption. If they hadn’t been killing one another so carelessly, a few ounces of blood would have been enough from each one of them. It was mind-blowing, one of the most amazing plot twists in the history of horror for sure.

Opening every single unlocked door and walking into every damn toilet and janitor’s room, they searched for Yoongi and Jimin literally everywhere in vain as if the Earth had suddenly opened its mouth and swallowed both of them up in whole. It made everyone uneasy.

They were on the ground floor in the eastern wing when Seokjin finally stopped and they all could take a short break from this insane hide and seek. Though, not everyone was so keen to rest as Jungkook and Taehyung markedly walked back and forth, not knowing what to do with their energy. But while the grumpy boy kicked into the wall here and there lightly, testing his strength, Jungkook observed the remaining doors on the current level one by one.

‘I really don’t think that they’ll be there,’ Namjoon stated when the youngster pushed the door with the basement sign on it open and peeked inside, turning his head left and right.

‘Maybe,’ he hummed, not really paying attention to the fellow engineer’s presence as he stepped on the first step behind the door instead. He had questions and he was more than willing to leave their group behind for a few hours at most if it was really necessary to find the desired answers. What was the whole point of this simulation beside the obvious, that the researchers were curious about their problem-solving abilities in an artificial catastrophe? What happened with those who had left the group? What if they all managed to pass the trial? Why had they lied to them about their schedule for the rest of the day when they clearly had other plans for their candidates? What kind of skills were required to get a contract? Creativity, cooperation, critical thinking? ‘But I’d like to check the whole facility in case they hid some clues on one of their computers,’ he explained, grabbing the handrail as he looked at Namjoon from above his shoulder. ‘You don’t have to follow me, though.’

The older boy furrowed his brows and opened his mouth, ready to protest but the voice that filled the air was definitely more high-pitched and less raspy than what his vocal chord could have ever maintained. Both Jungkook’s and Namjoon’s head turned towards the petite girl, standing right behind the latter, watching her acting all embarrassed because of the faint ‘I’d like to. Sounds like a good idea even if I won’t be much help,’ that had left her mouth. Yerim brushed a tiny mop of hair behind her ear over and over again, unable to stand the younger’s piercing gaze for more than an ephemeral moment. And everything became much worse when Taehyung decided to join their company.

‘Hah! Of course, she thinks that. After all, it’s his idea,’ the lilac-haired boy blurted out, his deep voice heavy with ill will and mockery. The Marketing major’s loud presumption and malicious smile turned the girl into a blushing mess within a blink of an eye and seeing her frightened look, anyone could have told that she wished nothing but to dissolve into thin air.

‘Is there something you want to say?’ Seokjin joined the conversation as well and stepped between Taehyung and Yerim like a human shield as if his presence could have protected the girl from everything that the grumpy boy had been so ready to throw at her face.

Taehyung snorted. Ridiculous.

‘Sure. Your sister isn’t any better than Sooyoung was,’ he claimed, tilting his head to Yerim’s direction as the others walked closer, their figures forming a lame, irregular circle around the epicentrum of their debate. ‘Now that Gangnam girl’s gone, she’s the weakest link,’ Taehyung scoffed matter-of-factly, earning a few deadly glances from their teammates although no one protested, not even Seokjin. The eldest just stood there with tense shoulders and clenched fists, breathing shallow and worried. He hated that the Marketing major wasn’t that far from the truth - considering their abilities in an emergency situation, Joohyun, Hoseok and Yerim seemed to be the less useful members of their group. While the older girl panicked in stressful situations and Hoseok got easily scared even of his own shadow, his sister usually froze when everyone around her was loud and pressing. He had still remembered the first fire alarm test they’d had in primary school since Yerim’s homeroom teacher had made sure, it remained unforgettable as he’d freaked out in front of everyone when he had failed to find the little girl. But it didn’t mean that they couldn’t have surprised them with unexpected, innovative solutions. They had plenty of time to prove Taehyung wrong and Seokjin hoped they would. After all, without Yerim, they would have slept through and have failed the first part of the simulation.

Turning towards Jungkook, Seokjin relaxed his stiff muscles and spoke up in a rather calm voice.

‘Actually, we have plenty of time. Let’s go and check the area,’ he said, encouraging the younger with a firm nod as he took the first steps towards the door. To Taehyung’s dissatisfaction, everyone followed them thus he was the only one who remained in the hallway.

‘It’s useless. It’s not that we’ll find some nasty skeletons in their basement,’ he shouted like a sulky child and his annoyed statement forced Namjoon to stop on the first stair, head snapping at his direction. He looked at Taehyung, confused, lips in a firm line, white like virgin snow. Truth to tell, he didn’t like him - especially not his destructive attitude - but he was a part of their group, just as much as anyone else, and teamwork was the keypoint of their task. The researchers wanted them to work together, in unison, and Namjoon wasn’t that stupid to disobey their will because of Taehyung’s ill-wishing behaviour. He didn’t plan to shut him out since he didn’t plan to lose his chance to get a contract because of him either.

‘Don’t be a dick, man! I’m sure, you don’t want to be their enemy,’ he said, calling for him with a simple wave of his hand. ‘Let’s go!’

A few seconds later, the hallway was as empty as it had been before they would have crossed the threshold of the abandoned hospital - eerie and silent, lack of human souls.

Kim Seokjin was an excellent team player until his little sister wasn’t a part of the said group because then she became more important to him than anything or anybody else and preferences inevitably destroyed the collaboration. It wasn’t his fault though, their parents had raised him to be like this, they had literally planted the protectiveness in his nature from the moment Yerim had been born.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked in a voice so quiet, it was barely above a whisper although he did it out of goodwill rather than being ashamed of the fact that his sister wasn’t as fierce and independent as their mother who had been a zealous activist in Yerim’s age. She and their father had met on a protest against the educational system and its clearly disadvantageous and sometimes sexist rules such as the unsaid privileges that the wealthy students had gotten and the must of mini skirts even in winter. Well, back then they had been on different sides and that was what had made their love a groundbreaking story. Seokjin found it endearing and inspiring at the very same time.

Shaking his head, he put his palm on his sister’s shoulder and squeezed it lightly. His caring touch earned an equally light sigh in return.

‘Yeah. It’s not that I suddenly become useless just because he said so,’ Yerim replied and even though her voice was faint, both her eyes were shining with a reassuring glint, her lips curling up all the way to her ears. She didn’t want her brother to worry to no end nor was willing to give the satisfaction to Taehyung by letting him see her fall apart. So she strengthened her heart and didn’t let anxiety consume her soul.

‘That’s my girl,’ Seokjin smiled and patted the top of his sister’s head, staying by her side as they followed Jungkook who seemed unbothered by the fact that Yerim couldn’t take her eyes off of his back and could have easily burnt a hole in the middle of his bladebone if one had been beared with superpowers. Ah! He would have given everything to be able to turn simple object to gold.

At some point when the first closed door appeared on the hallway, Seokjin started to make mental notes and different theories based on their surroundings and all those things that had happened to them since they had arrived to the artificial city. Although it looked logical that the city was empty considering that it didn’t have any citizens and the food supply in the canteen was also rational, the lack of instructions bugged him as if something had been off, as if the simulation hadn’t gone as planned. They should have found at least a video or audio file by now that could have help them step on the appointed path, shouldn’t have they?

Sharply turning right, Seokjin was so immersed in his own thoughts that he didn’t notice that Jungkook’s firm body stopped dead in front of a glass wall that separated them from a well-equipped laboratory full of huge, white cabinets and tables, papers laying in piles on their titanium surface.

‘Look! There’s a computer,’ Jungkook spoke up, his index-finger pointing at the electrical device in the left corner of the room. He didn’t hesitate, not even for a moment, as he lifted his bracelet in front of the small control panel on the right side of the door with a victorious smile on his face, demanding entrance which he got after a few seconds of complete silence. ‘Cool.’

When the boy stepped inside the lab, Seokjin grabbed his sister’s wrist, looking deep into her eyes, searching for some kind of confirmation in them that she knew what she was doing and she wasn’t so impatient to follow the raven-haired boy inside the room because she was indeed attracted to him as Taehyung had suggested approximately ten minutes ago. Not that he had problems with Jungkook as a person because he seemed like a really nice guy but the fact that he had let Sooyoung stuck inside their dormitory didn’t make him the most reliable fellow. He didn’t want Yerim to be used by some guy who was mostly alluring because of his distant behaviour. He was familiar with young adult books, he knew that these kind of boys always got the shy girl in town.

Yerim pulled her arm out of Seokjin’s grab and walked inside the laboratory soon followed by the rest of the team except Taehyung who refused to play by Jungkook or anyone else’s rules. He leaned against the glass wall from the outside and shot an ill-wishing smile at the eldest when he gave in to her sister’s wishes and crossed the threshold as well.

Since her steps came to a halt a few inches from Jungkook’s back, Seokjin walked to the computer, too, while the others opened the cabinets and the hidden drawers that they couldn’t have seen from the hallway. Joohyun and Namjoon made themselves busy with the printed papers on the tables.

‘Honey, could you take a look at these reports? It’s absolutely Chinese for me but you might be familiar with the ingredients in the right corner. They sound pretty medicine-like,’ he mused, looking at the said girl from above his shoulder, watching her as she put a tiny phial filled with some blue fluid back to its container.

‘Just a sec,’ she replied and slid the glass door back to its frame, paying close attention not to break anything inside.

As she step behind her boyfriend and took the paper out of his hand, Seokjin’s gaze glided back to the computer’s screen. Honestly, he didn’t understand a single thing but Jungkook’s clicks were so firm and confident that he put his trust in his knowledge without thinking. He opened then closed some folders, pushed the keys on the keyboard, furrowed his brows and started everything all over again until a stubborn window blocked him from further investigation and after a careless right click, everything went black.

‘What happened?’ Yerim asked, curious, leaning a tad bit closer to the blank screen and so to Jungkook without thinking twice. As her nostrils got filled with the boy’s characteristic scent that was definitely stronger and manlier than she would have thought, her whole face turned ruby red and she stepped backwards so hastily that she bumped into her brother’s shoulder. Seokjin rolled his eyes but didn’t make a comment on her obviously awkward behaviour. No, he turned towards Jungkook instead, waiting for his reply.

But that answer had never come as the door that allowed them to leave the room started to move, fast.

‘Everyone! Get out of this room! Now!’ Seokjin shouted as soon as he caught a glimpse of the closing exit, waving with his hands towards its direction as if his exaggerated gestures could have fasten everyone’s speed. But it couldn’t.

Since Joohyun couldn’t handle stress and Wendy cared too much, Namjoon couldn’t pull them out of the room on his own because dealing with a mild panic attack and his stubborn girlfriend was simply overwhelming. He needed help and Seokjin was the only one who was willing to give them that extra hand. He ran towards his frozen teammates and grabbed Joohyun by her wrist. The eldest threw her arm over his shoulder casually then lifted her petite figure as he carried her out of the lab, letting Namjoon show him the way.

‘What the…,’ he heard Jungkook swearing as he accidentally crashed his shoulder into the glass wall, trying really hard not to collide with Seulgi who got to the door the same moment as he did. Seokjin rolled his eyes, panting, before he put the girl in his arms down.

‘Where is Yerim?’ he asked when he caught his breath and looked around, anxiety growing in his chest due to the absence of his little sister.

‘Inside,’ Taehyung stated with a flat face while he pointed at the girl who had seemingly frozen a few steps from the blank screen. Her gaze were cloudy, lips slightly parted with fear.

‘I left her with you. You should have grabbed her hand and pull her out, you selfish bastard,’ Seokjin snapped, screaming like a wild animal and the only thing that kept him back from slapping Jungkook’s face was the clinking sound of the closing door. It was already through halfway but he couldn’t stay still.

The boy ran back inside the lab and wrapped his long fingers around his sister’s wrist, pulling her towards the hallway like crazy but Yerim fell into her knees because of the sudden force and hit her head into the table, feeling the bitter taste of her own vomit in the back of her throat. She didn’t move until her brother helped her find her balance and pushed her towards the door. Three. Yerim finally took her first steps on her own, running. Two. Seokjin was so happy that his sister managed to reach the hallway in time that he didn’t notice the report that had slipped out of Wendy’s hand on the floor. One. Glass collided with glass at the same time, the young man’s butt crashed to the floor. Shocked, no one dared to say a word.

The relieved smile soon froze onto Yerim’s lips as she realized what had happened. Her whole body was a shaking mess as she turned on her heels and looked at her brother, stuck inside the lab. She put her palms onto the wall, tears blurring her vision.

‘No,’ she whispered over and over again while her spirit slowly gave up, knees fitting close to the ground. ‘We’ll get you out, don’t worry, okay?’ she promised, not knowing that the room was actually soundproof and all Seokjin could see was her sadness and guilt. So he smiled, crawling to the wall in his own pace. He didn’t have to be fast anymore, there was no need to rush.

Meanwhile Hoseok stepped to the control panel and lifted his own bracelet in front of it in vain. It didn’t work, in fact, it rejected his request more dramatically than he would have ever thought. It shifted red and turned on the security system.

Seokjin’s shoulders tensed as the ventilation system markedly stopped working and the air became heavy with an unfamiliar chemical product, something transparent with no scent yet with something that burnt his veins. He shook his head, leaning his sweaty forehead against the glass, and took a few swallow breathers as if it could have magically solved his breathing problems. It hurt like hell, moving his limbs, keeping his eyes open hence he stayed still, gaze fixed on his clearly panicking sister. She was worried, he knew it. She must have been already screaming for a while, making silly promises that she couldn’t keep. It would have been so typical of her. He laughed and his raspy voice echoed in the sphere as the world turned red.

Red walls, red people, red tears. Even the last memory that popped up in his mind between confusing, fading pictures was red, cherry lips sealing his mellow ones with the untrue promise of infinity.

➼ chapter V.

#code zero #bts scenarios #red velvet scenarios #ssbyme #here's where the roller-coaster begins #thriller #futuristic au #poor seokjin #he was such a good brother

4 notes · View notes