#and yes I know that Joe didn’t want to marry her which is devastating for her I’m sure but marriage isn’t everyone

[lonelystarbuckslover13]

I saw someone say they think the fact that there actually weren’t that many songs on ttpd about Joe (as far as we know) is actually a sign of respect for him and I couldn’t agree more. The few songs that are most likely about him aren’t speaking poorly on his character they’re just heartbreaking, and the most vengeful songs on the album are likely about Matty. I feel like so many people went into this album expecting to hate Joe after but instead we just learned what we always knew - Joe was a generally good guy and Matty Healy sucks.

[yasbxxgie]

The Artist’s Way: Writer-director Radha Blank ruminates on creative frustration and rejuvenation in her debut feature, The Forty-Year-Old Version

Fair warning: This interview with Radha Blank isn’t business — it’s personal. Right now, like at this very moment, Radha is being introduced to the world as the writer, director, and star of the remarkable new Netflix film The Forty-Year-Old Version. But I remember Radha in the 1990s, smashing open mics at Brooklyn Moon in N.Y.C., rocking a fitted N.Y. Yankees cap and big hoop earrings. I remember her jumping into cyphers and catching wreck (read: she can dance her ass off) at Club Kilimanjaro. I remember sitting in the audience of her play Seed in 2011 and thinking, Damn, homegirl can write. I remember witnessing the rise of her emcee alter ego and one-woman show RadhaMUSprime at Joe’s Pub in 2014 and thinking, Damn, Radha can rhyme. AND she funny AF. Because Radha was (and is) a part of a close-knit artists’ community, I also recall her hustle, the keeping-the-lights-on-while-trying-to-make-your-dreams-come-true shuffle we know so well. Radha worked as a teacher, she wrote for children’s television and for shows such as Empire and She’s Gotta Have It.

So when The Forty-Year-Old Version won the U.S. Dramatic Directing Award at Sundance earlier this year, the community rejoiced! This wasn’t just a win for Radha, it was a win for the people. Here was a film rooted in Radha’s own story, about a woman at 40; a Black artist trying to get her stories told — as a playwright and as a rapper; a daughter grieving the death of her mother. Radha told her story her way, down to shooting the streets of New York on 35mm film in black and white. The result is a whole, liberating mood. There’s even a nod to Prince’s Purple Rain.

Karen Good Marable: First of all, Radha, congratulations! The Forty-Year-Old Version is amazing. Your success feels so much like a win for Brooklyn. A win for us all. Thank you for writing it. Radha Blank: I really did make it for us — us being Black women, Black women of a certain age, Black women artists of a certain age. I didn’t think I’d be starting a whole new career in my 40s, but I think it speaks to what’s possible if you let go of other people’s ideas of where you should be in your life. If I listened to other people and gave credence to their ideas, I would not be here.

Amen. When you were younger, did you have the boxes to check, i.e., “I need to get this done by 30, I need to get this done by 40”? Were you that girl? RB:

I think I was that girl. And I always say this about aging: It’s never really about the person; it’s about other people’s perceptions that you then take on. I thought by 40, I would be married with a couple of kids, all of my work being published, theaters asking, “Can we do a revival of this play now?” I really thought once I decided to be a playwright, which was probably my mid-20s, I thought, Oh, by 40, I’m going to be set up. I will have a house. And I do have a house, but that came from Cookie and Lucious Lyon. They got me a house.

Come through, Empire. RB:

I feel like we’ve all been conditioned to think that 40 is: You’re an adult, you’re accomplished, you’re established. What me and my character share is there’s still all of these “who am I” moments, questions around identity. Especially when my mother died, I really had to figure out who I was, because so much of my life as a woman, as a person, as a Black American, as an artist, was tied to this woman. When she died, I really had no sense of myself. So I feel like my personal experience propelled me toward telling the story. We just don’t see women of that age saying, What do I do next? Am I happy? Is this enough?

Your mother — curator, visual artist, cinephile, and arts teacher Carol Blank — figures prominently in the film. She is a goddess and a guide, but she also represents a complicated lesson in what it means to be an artist. RB: Oh, listen, I feel like everything I’ve learned, I’ve learned from my mother — from my frustration as an artist to being a teaching artist for so long. That’s where I learned how to be a director, honestly. I didn’t go to film school. I did stand-up comedy and all this performance stuff, and my first example was my mother. She knew how to turn a phrase or a joke to get the kids interested, and if they weren’t, she wasn’t going to push it. I learned from her first, and I tried to match her energy.

I don’t know what my mother went through when she turned 40, as an artist. I know she was a mom of two by that time, but I gathered — especially because she was a teaching artist for so many years — that she was hustling, jumping between these different roles, trying to make sense of something for herself. In that way, I feel like the movie and my journey as an artist brought me closer to her. I was like, Oh, this is what you had to go through. And then you had two kids on top of that?

In the film, your character is also a teacher. As much as she tries to model support and positivity, sometimes the frustration seeps through. One line stayed with me: “Don’t think that because you created something, people will appreciate it.” RB:

Yeah, I have been bitter. I was able to transform that into a film; it gave me a story to tell. But I did feel that theater as an institution didn’t pay off, there wasn’t much of a dividend. I had done a play in 2011 called Seed, and everyone was like, “Girl, this is your breakout! This is your moment! This play is going on Broadway!” None of that shit happened. Theater was not responding in the same way. I was quietly devastated by it, and I think the movie is my exploration of the why. How come things didn’t happen for me? Here’s someone who has been trying for 20-something years and my biggest accomplishment was 10 years ago when I was 30. That’s why I invented the 30 Under 30 award for my character: The idea that accomplishments are amplified by one’s proximity to youth. There’s no 50 Under 50 award. Or 60 Under 60. Being young and doing something as an artist seems more of a cause for celebration. You know what I mean?

There’s also this theme of displacement that runs through the film. In addition to your protagonist feeling out of place in the classroom and in the theater community, she’s also setting a play, Harlem Ave, that deals with gentrification. RB:

So, my parents were gentrifiers in their own way in the late 60s and 70s, when they moved to the south side of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. They didn’t displace people, because what they and their artist and jazz musician comrades would do is take over dilapidated spaces that were considered unlivable — broken-down lofts and factories and storefronts — and create community. There was an investment in engaging the community that came before you, whereas now I think gentrification really is just about an opportunity for the person moving in — “Oh, look at this dope, cheap brownstone that I can get” — with no regard for what came before.

Right. RB: The same thing happens with these artistic institutions: They find a dilapidated space, they revive it and put a million dollars into it. Then when it comes to programming, the people on the stage don’t look like the people outside of the gate. They’re thinking of their silver-haired patrons, because those people can afford a $100 ticket, and that is who I feel most of the theaters cater to. So when diversity shows up on the stage, it’s a version of diversity that protects the audience from feeling bad about racism or sexism. They can still remain in a comfortable place, so they can come back next week or next month and see something for the $300 membership.

But then you brilliantly juxtapose said institutions with the battle rap in the Bronx. RB: I wanted to show these different hubs of art in New York. This film is about capturing an authentic New York experience, and so we shot that battle rap scene at a warehouse space at the tip-top of the Bronx. Art and culture are happening in these spaces that we’re not always focusing the camera on and that don’t have the multimillion-dollar renovation fund of a downtown theater. But this is theater. This is art.

Is that battle based on an actual show? RB:

Yes. Well, we recreated that. Babs Bunny, who people may recognize from Making the Band, created this brand called Queen of the Ring. If you go on YouTube, you’ll see their battle raps. I would watch them because I just needed to see women slaying shit and not being proper or polite. I just wanted to put it into a cinematic world.

Your pen is equally hard-hitting, Radha. Rhymes like “Poverty Porn” and “This Some Bullshit” do so much in revealing character, advancing the narrative. RB:

Thank you. I mean, I feel like if we’re stopping to listen to a song, it should still be about advancing the narrative. We’re still moving forward, riding on this person’s frustration, but into the next scene, next act, or what have you. I think it comes from being a playwright, making sure that everything is earned and not just thrown in there for novelty or because it’s colorful and interesting. I feel like RadhaMUSprime is probably an explosion of her consciousness, the things that she’d been suppressing.But yeah, I’m an emcee. I rhyme. The beautiful thing about the film is I didn’t have to become a professional rapper. I don’t feel like the movie is 8 Mile. I say the movie is 2 Mile,

because she’s not trying to go that far. She’s not trying to be a hip-hop star. For her, hip-hop is a meditation and it shows up in many ways, from the trap beat floating outside her window, to her freestyling in the mirror, or with the dudes in the basement cypher at Arlene’s Grocery.

In some ways, the moral and artistic struggles of The Forty-Year-Old Version remind me of Hollywood Shuffle, Robert Townsend’s 1987 classic. RB:

I appreciate that you bring up Hollywood Shuffle, because I know that because I’m Black and I’m shooting in black and white, people always make the comparison to She’s Gotta Have It. But I feel like my film calls back to Hollywood Shuffle, about a Black artist confronting the white gatekeepers on who gets to tell a Black story and how.

Exactly. And like Townsend, you wrote, directed, and starred in your own first feature film. How was that experience, and do you think you would do it again? RB:

I wouldn’t say I regret being in my film, but I think that there’s probably more of a fascination with my film because I’m in it. And I have too much respect for actors to call myself one. I don’t come from training. I don’t sit in these auditions day after day. I don’t have to endure seven callbacks for a role. I just think that when an audience is familiar with a face, it might make it easier for them to go down the line with this person. So while I don’t plan on being in another one of my films, I do plan on mining my family legacy for storytelling, and on telling stories where music is a driving force.I really want to be an auteur. I’m hoping that my stories get quieter. Very quiet, but very potent. A slow burn, but such a beautiful payoff. I want to make work like that.

Amen.

Photographs:

Radha Blank on set, t & m

Radha Blank with her fellow cast members

[bisluthq]

This was a truth bomb?

Joe and Taylor are two cishet white millionaires in the eyes of the public - there's no benefits to be had, because the truth is that the vast majority of people simply do not care. Her fans do, but beyond that, Joe Blow on the street doesn't give a rat's flying you-know-what if Taylor Swift is secretly or publicly married. Keeping an engagement private makes plenty of sense to avoid information being leaked and acquired through nefarious means, and it's pretty customary in other entertainment industries for engagements to be kept quiet until right before the actual wedding. But a secret marriage longterm? The math isn't mathing.

Taylor sings about marriage with such reverence that I can't imagine her keeping a marriage secret for long. She's also picked up steam with marriage references over her last three albums, but the references aren't largely positive on her last two albums? (The 1 / My Tears Ricochet / Champagne Problems / Coney Island). If she was secretly married, wouldn't her references to marriage be more positive and not painted in such a way that makes marriage seem like a curse? Taylor is in love with the idea of being in love, she's obsessed with love, and her writing reflects her desire to be loved. Privacy issues aside, I really can't see her as someone who would keep that hidden once everything was a done deal. Keeping it hidden would add nothing of value - what good does it do?

Hetlors are bringing up a secret marriage because it's finally clicking that three devastating albums back to back make little to no sense thematically if she's so happy and in love with her gorgeous, tall and handsome as hell London boy. They need her to be secretly married, because if she's not, they might actually have to confront that Toe isn't all its cracked up to be

Was this a truth bomb? Also are you the anon who also just said Jack A outed Taylor? Guys if this is the kind of shit you genuinely believe and reality doesn’t affect this belief system like 1) more power to you I’m impressed with flat earthers too 2) idk what’s it to me. Like just do your thing lmao believe Taylor Swift has never touched a dick and follows “Toe” around the world as a PR stunt and calls him her partner and the co-creator of her last two albums to absolute RANDOMS because of the closeting and makes out with him at private parties for the high profile attention this gets her heterosexuality which she’s apparently determined to keep and stupid hetlors believe it while you’re so smart you could out her if you wanted. Like if that makes you happy believe it dude what’s it to me?

FWIW I don’t think they’re secretly married, I think they’re very possibly engaged but if they ARE secretly married they’re…. not HIDING it they’re just not announcing lmao. Which is how Adele and Ed both dealt with marriage dude like they didn’t announce and then Ed was asked and Adele thanked her husband at an awards show. That’s how they did it. There’s a precedent for it - unlike the sekrit babies and all the other konspiracy shit, TWO of Tay’s pop peers had secret marriages. So if you believe that - and again I don’t really vibe with sekrit marriage because to me the math is tricky like it’d have to have happened in Cali and that’d make it lockdown time I think and idk like it’s not convincing - you’d be like “well yes she has a lot of meaningful jewelry she might be wearing in lieu of wedding rings and she doesn’t call him her boyfriend anymore” like that would be the basis for your theory. And I can guarantee NOT ONE sekrit marriage truther is emotionally attached to it like it’s just a fun theory.

Also… “devastating albums” which include songs like Long Story Short, Invisible String, CLM etc and a “dark view on marriage” or whatever and two of the songs you mention he… helped her write? Really? Okay dude.

Like I say I don’t get the sense you want a discussion, you just want to explain to us how dumb we are lmao. You want to believe your thing and fair enough but I don’t go bother y’all like… believe your thing. I find it sad and pathetic really but not because of Taylor lol just because I find it… sad and pathetic you guys are obsessed with it. I’m genuinely sad about it. BUT if what makes you happy is thinking the stupid Hetlors don’t understand how MISERABLE lesbian icon Taylor Swift is and how Toe is NOTHING and trying to aspire to be Austin professionally and irrelevant in her life and she’s producing CWF go off queens like go do that lmao what’s it to me?

I’m REALLY over sexuality debate re Taylor it’s just SO FUCKING BORING dudes. She’s with that blond boy who always makes you doubt. Maybe she’s fluid. Maybe she’s not. She’s defs not a homophobe so that’s good. Beyond that who fucking CARES?

[lauras-collection]

More Than I Know [Part 5]

Tom Holland x female reader

Masterlist

Summary: Your plan was to bring someone to the wedding so your family would stop bothering you about your nonexistent love life. Well, that backfired majorly because now your fake love life was all they wanted to talk about.

Words: 2k

Warnings: family members that keep bothering you about getting married?, maybe a little bit angst? some kissing (ooh) nothing else I think (let me know if there is anything in there that I should add)

A/N: Remember when I said this was going to have 4 or 5 parts? Yeah, that was a lie :D I don’t want to drag it on for too long but I’ve still got some things up my sleeve so look forward to at least 2 or 3 more parts :D

Prologue | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

After dinner, everyone started mingling and you finally had the chance to introduce Tom to the rest of your family. Your grandma was immediately smitten with him. 

“Haven’t I always told you, Y/N?” She raised her eyebrows at you “One day you’ll find the one. And here he is.” She nudged you with her elbow while nodding at Tom and you rolled your eyes. 

“Grandma, we haven’t even been together that long.” or at all. you added in your head. Tom just smiled while he looked between you and your grandma. You couldn’t blame him. What were you supposed to say to something like that when you were just pretending to be together?

“Oh, that doesn’t matter. I can already tell he’s a keeper.” she wrapped one arm around you and the other around Tom, hugging you both. “Welcome to the family Tom.” 

“That’s why I never introduce anybody to my family.” You huffed after your grandma had finally moved on to one of your cousins. “I’m sorry about that.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Tom shrugged. “That’s what I’m here for right?” 

“Well, actually you’re here so I don’t get these types of comments from my family. But that plan backfired because now they all want us to get married.” 

Tom let out a laugh and rubbed your back. “That’s what you get for lying to your family, darling.” he whispered in your ear before moving his head back to look at you with a smirk. Before you could reply he pulled you into his side, his arm resting around your waist. “There are two girls giggling and taking pictures of us.” Tom muttered as he glanced behind you. You turned around to see what he was looking at and spotted Vanessa and Michelle. They were Daniel’s sixteen-year-old twin sisters. And just as Tom had said they were giggling while pointing their phone cameras at the two of you. You shifted out of Tom’s embrace and walked over to the two teenagers who were sitting at one of the dining tables. Their eyes went wide and they put their phones down when they noticed you advancing towards them with a scowl on your face.

“Hey girls.” You addressed them. Your hands were on your hips and you waited for them to greet you back before continuing. “Tom and I would appreciate it if you would stop taking pictures of us without our consent.” You took a breath and continued in a friendlier tone. “If you want a picture with him you can go ahead and ask, I’m sure he’d be happy to. But please don’t lurk around snapping pictures of us. It’s disrespectful.”

The girls were visibly affected by your words and nodded quickly.

“Sorry, Y/N. We’ll delete them right now.” Vanessa said and looked at her sister who unlocked her phone. 

“I don’t think that’s necessary. Unless you want them to, love?” Tom’s voice was heard as he put his arm back around you his chin resting on your shoulder and his eyes focused on yours. You had to gulp at the proximity and didn’t even notice that Vanessa and Michelle were looking at Tom slack-jawed.

When you remembered that Tom had asked you a question you turned back to the girls and shook your head with a shrug. “Just please don’t post them anywhere.”

“You don’t wanna be seen with me?” Tom teased and you poked him in the ribs but left his comment unanswered. The thing was that while you were fine with paparazzi taking pictures of Tom and you out and about. After all, it was part of the deal. But it was something different in this private setting, surrounded by your family and friends. Aside from that, you didn’t want to steal all the attention from Kate and Daniel, it was their weekend and you didn’t want pictures of you and Tom in the tabloids to overshadow that.

***

After talking to your sister and her friends for a moment you were on your way back to Tom when you felt someone tuck on your hand. You stopped walking, curious to see who it was.

“Hi, Lottie.” You smiled down at the little girl. She was your cousin Joanna’s daughter and she had everyone wrapped around her finger with her blonde curls and cute smile.

“Hi.” She smiled sweetly. “Is that your boyfriend?” She asked while pointing at Tom who was talking to your grandma again.

“He is.” You nodded and couldn’t help but smile at the look of adoration on her face. 

“He’s very pretty.” She whispered and you let out a laugh. 

“You’re right. He is indeed very pretty.” You looked at Tom who seemed to be nodding along to whatever your grandma was telling him. Maybe a new recipe she had tried out and some nifty cooking tricks she tells everyone she meets whether they wanted to hear them or not. “D’you want to go say hi?” You turned your attention back to Lottie. “I think he’s been listening to grandma talk about her cooking enough.”

“Yes.” She exclaimed nodding furiously.

“C’mon then.” You took her small hand in yours and let her towards the two. “I’m sorry to interrupt you guys, but someone wants to say ‘hi’ to Tom.” Both Tom and your grandma look at you and when you notice that Tom looks at you thankfully, you know that you’d interrupted at the right time. 

“Hi there. What’s your name?” Tom crouched down towards Lottie.

“I’m Lottie. And you’re really Y/N’s boyfriend?” She whispered the last part and you felt like your whole family had already rubbed off on its youngest member. What’s the big deal whether someone has a boyfriend or not? 

“I am.” Tom nodded with a small smile on his face, clearly amused by the five-year-old.

“Are you going to marry her?” Your eyes bulged out of your head at Lottie’s question. What is it with this family?

Tom glanced at you and then looked back at Lottie. “If she doesn’t grow tired of me.” He replied with a shrug and there was a fluttery feeling in your chest. It was probably annoyance, right? You couldn’t believe he was fuelling their craze even more. 

“I’m sure that won’t happen.” Your grandma promptly replied and you closed your eyes. Why had you been so stupid to think that your family would stop talking about your love life, or lack thereof, when you finally showed up with a boyfriend? You’d thought that you could experience the wedding in peace, but all you’ve heard all evening have been questions about your relationship and if you were planning on getting married, too. You didn’t regret bringing him, you enjoyed his company and your family loved him. But you couldn’t help but think about how they would react when Tom and you would eventually ‘break up’. They’d be devastated and would ask you how you could let someone like him go. 

You felt Tom reach for your hand. Opening your eyes again you saw that Tom was looking at you concerned.

“You alright, love?” 

“Yeah, it’s just...” You waved your free hand around trying to find the words. Your grandma sensed that you were a little overwhelmed and took Lottie’s hand to take her back to her mum. Your grandma could be pretty intense at times but she knew when you needed a bit of space. You sent her a thankful glance which she acknowledged with a knowing smile. “It’s just a little much right now.” 

***

The evening was slowly coming to an end. Many had already gone to bed and only a few small groups of people were still in the dining room. You and Tom had hatched a little plan to finally give Joe a show and you were pretty excited. You wanted to show him that you didn’t need him to be happy. You had never been of the opinion that you needed Joe to be happy, but you wanted him to know that as well. It probably wasn’t the healthiest way of thinking, but you couldn’t care less at the moment.

Walking over to Tom, who had taken a seat at the table where Joe sat with some of your cousins and Daniel’s friends, you put the beer that you had gotten for Tom on the table in front of him.

Tom turned to look at you with a smile. “Darling, you’re the best.” He pulled you onto his lap by your hips and wrapped his right arm around the small of your back the left resting on your thighs. “Can I have a kiss?” He asked and you couldn’t help but smile. While he was being absolutely adorable you knew he was doing it to give Joe a show and you were all for it. You lowered your head and pressed a kiss to his lips. You’re about to pull away again when Tom’s left hand reaches for your cheek to keep you close. “One more.” He mumbled and you only had to move your head the slightest bit to touch his lips with yours again. When your lips separated from his, Tom pulled you closer before you could lean back. As if on instinct, your eyes fell completely shut, your lips opened and you took in a sharp breath when his open lips touched yours. You could taste the beer on his tongue, smell his cologne and your hands moved from his shoulders into his soft hair. You felt that fluttery feeling in your chest again but tried to ignore it. Without thinking about it, you tugged lightly at his brown curls making him let out a soft moan.

“Oi, Y/N! Get a room!” Your cousin Dave shouted from across the room with a snigger making you pull away from Tom.

You turned to Dave, flipping him off. “We’ve already got one thank you very much!” You felt Tom’s chest rumble with laughter as everyone around you howled at what you said.

“Then use it.” Dave brought out between wheezes. You rolled your eyes and turned back to Tom who shrugged his shoulders with a grin. 

It was late and you weren’t going to stay much longer anyway so why not shock these people and give them something to laugh about?

“You know what?” You raised your eyebrow with a smug grin as you looked at Dave again. “I think we’ll do that.” If everyone had been howling with laughter before, they were losing their minds now. You got up from Tom’s lap, took his hand, and pulled him away from the immature bunch of guys.

On your way to your hotel room, you were surrounded by silence for the first time in hours, giving you the chance to think about what just happened. What you and Tom shared hadn’t been a simple peck. It was a proper kiss and for a moment you’d forgotten that you were just pretending to be in love with him.

“I hope that was okay. Me kissing you like that. I know we haven’t really discussed that so...“ Tom said when you reached your floor. “I’m sorry if that was too much.” He rubbed his neck as he looked at you. You could see that he was a little sheepish.

“No, don’t worry. It was very much okay.” You blushed a little while playing with your room card in your hands.

“Very much okay, huh?” Tom grinned, the sheepishness from only seconds ago already gone and you shoved him lightly with your shoulder.

“You’re a decent kisser.” You said shrugging your shoulders as you watched Tom’s jaw drop in mock hurt.

“Just decent?! I’m an excellent kisser!” 

“Keep telling yourself that.” You tried to sound serious but a smile was already tugging at the corners of your mouth.

“Looks like I’ve got some convincing to do.” He looked at you intently and you had to look away to not get lost in his eyes. The air had shifted to something more serious making you feel nervous.

“You’ll probably get one or two chances tomorrow...” You had reached your room and handed him the key to open it because he was closest to the door.

“Can’t wait.” Tom whispered before exaggeratedly running his tongue over his top lip, making you laugh. 

“You’re an idiot.” 

Part 6

(Please tell me that kissing scene was okay, I worked so long on that and I’m not sure what words are anymore :D )

Thank you for reading 💕

Taglist:

@jackiehollanderr // @alicethestral // @snowxbarryxendgame // @van-horn-dashner // @sltwins // @yeahimcrying // @ohhhotstan // @heathera101x // @xxnomercy // @bbyxk // @infamousmany // @zabdisamor // @starsholland // @kthemarsian  

Let me know if you want to be tagged (or taken off the list)

[monicalorandavis]

Teresa Giudice: surprisingly insecure.

Oh you don’t think this deserves an entire blog post? Well fuck right the fuck off because I’m going in bitch...

Mrs. Giudice. You know, the table-flipping, forehead-challenged, bikini clad, ex-con, mother of four - her. She’s not doing great. This season has offered an insight into the woman who made The Real Housewives of New Jersey the best of all Housewives franchises. And, I hate to say it, especially since she’s acting like a total asshole, she deserves our sympathy.

Let’s, for a moment, remember the early days of the Real Housewives. The women in Orange County were rather polite in retrospect. No violence anywhere. It was all name-calling and mean tweets. Every one in a while, the passive-aggressive forgotten invitation to a birthday party. You know the sort of social kamikaze’s that women launch on their most hated enemies. “Oh, I didn’t know you’d like to come. There weren’t anyone’s husbands around for you to steal”...You get the picture.

But then Teresa came along with her huge wads of cash and ditzy/tough girl Jersey thing and the American public gobbled it up. She was unlike the others on the cast. There was Caroline Manzo, the maternal, good-natured lioness. Then Dina, Caroline’s younger, hotter sister with a cool demeanor and distant husband who was always traveling. (Didn’t work out *spoiler alert*). Then, there was Jacqueline who was all fake smiles and puppy dogs and rainbows and...someone should check on Jacqueline because she always seemed one glass of Sauvignon Blanc shy from losing her mind in the middle of a Cheesecake Factory. But Teresa was the surprise hit. She had all those daughters with their bright blue eyes and sassy, ready-for-camera one-liners. It was too insane to be written. And then, fast forward and Teresa’s husband, Joe Giudice aka “Juicy” (I hate myself for knowing this) gets indicted on several felony counts of fraud. Then to make matters worse, he takes Teresa down with him. Her signature is on everything. It looks like Teresa was a co-conspirator in the fraud. Could she have been a sinister mastermind? Was all the flashiness a big ‘fuck you’ to Uncle Sam?

She certainly didn’t seem like she had the brains to pull it off. No shade. But, she was more concerned with Gia’s dance recitals and keeping Milania off the banisters and alive. She didn’t have time to scam people with phony contracts. Nor, did it seem, that she’d ever risk anything that would tear her away from her kids. No, this was the work of her husband and for whatever reason he hadn’t taken the necessary precautions to legally protect his wife. It was a sad day for RHONJ fans. Teresa and Joe were charged with 39 counts of fraud. She would serve her time first and then Joe would do his. The judge seemed to grant them some leniency by allowing them to serve their terms back to back as opposed to stripping their daughters of both parents simultaneously. A small victory in light of the sad events.

But it wouldn’t be a typical Hollywood sentencing for Tre. She had to do 15 hard months at a Federal Corrections Facility in Danbury, Connecticut. But, and this is the best part, she came out looking like a million bucks. She was shredded out, buff, and in fabulous spirits. Truly, it was inspiring. She came out ready to work and make up for lost time. Despite some pushback from the girls, she was back in the swing of things. All looked promising for Joe too. He had watched over all four of the girls with aplomb. Doing hair, packing lunches, getting everyone to practices, study groups, games and play dates and seeming to really dig it. They seemed to be doing just fine.

And yet, this season of RHONJ has been devastating for the Giudice family. Joe went in to serve his 41 month sentence. Then, right on cue, Teresa started acting like a raving bitch to everyone on the cast. She was picking fights with Melissa, Jackie, then Margaret, then Jennifer, then her brother and back again. It’s horrible to watch. She uses her anger to diffuse any of her wrongdoing. It’s an old trick of hers but this season it’s more vicious. It’s cruel. She seems to be liking making everyone sad and scared. Then, all of a sudden, word on the street is, Joe is being held in an I.C.E. facility because he’s not a U.S. citizen. But how???

Wouldn’t he have filed for that when he got married? They’ve been married for over 20 years. Surely, he would’ve taken care of that by now. Surely!

Except, not. Turns out, when pushed on the issue, Joe had no valid reason as to why he hadn’t taken care of his citizenship. He simply never got around to getting his US passport. He hadn’t filled out the necessary paperwork just because...he didn’t.

And that, my friends, is Joe Giudice in a nutshell. A scrub. The kind of man who doesn’t do the things he’s supposed to. Not for any good reason but because...he just didn’t. The worst kind of man. Shiftless, arrogant, “things couldn’t possibly go wrong for me”-ass man. Sure he can flip a few houses and use the profits to invest in another shady business deal but are all the contracts legal? No. Are his papers in order? Nope! Does he have a new Range Rover? A duhhhh.

Now, here is the larger issue. Teresa is a slamming piece of ass (to quote Marge Jr.) and she’s the star of the family. A human being could not be in better shape. She could (and, rumor has it, has) snag any old thing she wanted to. Joe sure couldn’t. I remember a few seasons back when it seemed painfully obvious he was sneaking phone calls to a little girlfriend that the show was kind enough to hide (sort of). Nobody cares about him. I think even Joe’s family would admit, he’s been riding Teresa’s coattails through this whole thing. Luckily, Gia seems down to help her mother (though she’s understandably very loyal to her father). So, it’s most likely only a matter of time until mother and daughter start their own fitness brand and, ladies and gentlemen, I’ll sign the fuck up.

Now, how is it that Teresa is still stuck with this man? (I just got word that they are separated but still...)

I was under the impression that if no one else knew how much of a scrub her husband was, Teresa sure as shit knew. But in the most recent episode of RHONJ, Teresa, who’s had her fair share of red wine, is almost in tears lamenting that no one is going to want her now following a fight with Joe in which he told her that she was basically a washed up dirty dish rag. She, like anyone with common sense, should’ve shut that shit down immediately. She should’ve driven her ass to the ICE facility and broke her husband out for the sole purpose of sending him on a one-way flight to Italy to never return. Arrivederci! 

I almost don’t want to watch the show any longer if I have to watch Joe Giudice’s miserable toxis ass! I watch Real Housewives for the fun, positive messages of female independence and friendship. Yes, there’s fights every one in a while that I selfishly enjoy. But I don’t like seeing men try and destroy their wives’ self-esteem. It’s a remnant of a bygone era. And I should be compassionate to Joe’s circumstance. Yes, he’s in an ICE facility and that’s very traumatizing. But I hate this narrative that his experience in ICE is somehow a vendetta against him by the federal government. I also hate that his experience in ICE is just as horrible as everyone else’s. Sir, you are not in the same boat as these Honduran children you are being housed with. These are people running for their lives and you, you are someone who didn’t do the paperwork you were supposed to do 20 years ago when your wife brought it up to you the first time. You are a man who was convicted of 39 counts of fraud serving a felony sentence. You ain’t innocent.

The saddest part, besides the horrible wreckage it has done to their daughters, is the toll it’s taken on Teresa’s self-esteem. It’s corroding her. It’s as if her self-esteem is so blown to shit that she’s punishing herself with this terrible friendship to Danielle. She is almost unrecognizable. The very same woman who Teresa very famously flipped a table over, is now the friend she refuses to part with. And while Danielle is very good at picking out vulnerable prey, there seems to be a larger issue at hand. Teresa seems not quite right. The decisions are not adding up. Obviously, Teresa has demonstrated shitty taste in men (Joe) and the occasional screw-up with friends (never-ending Jacqueline drama!). But this business with Danielle is disconcerting. Danielle is just another toxic leech trying to suck you dry, Tre! Break the cycle! Your girls need you!

[mr-mellow-dj]

Wonderful Tonight

A/N: I have this song on my iPhone and every time I hear it I can hear Rick singing it to Kate. This is the classic by Eric Clapton “Wonderful Tonight” which he wrote celebrating his then wife. I also apologize to anyone else who may have written another fanfiction based on this song.

Cross posted from Fanfiction.net

 There are many versions of this song on YouTube, here is one of them:

watch?v=nfgg7DjMtwE

 This didn’t really fit in my Coltrane song book fanfiction so I present this as a one-shot. I hope you enjoy it.

 Disclaimer: The characters are the property of Andrew W. Marlowe and ABC television. The lyrics are the property of their respective owners. No infringement is intended.

Transcriptions from dustjackets dot wikifoundry dot com slash page slash Transcripts.

_________________________________________

It's late in the evening

She's wondering what clothes to wear

She puts on her make up

And brushes her long blonde [brown] hair

And then she asks me, "Do I look alright?"

And I say, "Yes, you look wonderful tonight"

_________________________________________ 

 A/N: Sometime after 3x14 Lucky Stiff

Richard Castle surveyed the Ballroom at the Hilton he had rented for the evening. This was the first (and hopefully annual) Johanna Beckett Memorial Scholarship fundraiser that he convinced, okay maybe cajoled, Kate Beckett into allowing him to host.

Around the room he saw the mayor, a couple of state assemblymen, members of the city council, along with other dignitaries (especially the mayor’s campaign contributors) and of course their spouses or significant others. He was one of the few that came ‘stag’. After the fiasco with his publisher, Gina Cowell, he was in no mood to be seen with any starlet, model or wannabe.

Of course he brought his mother, Martha Rodgers. As he took a sip from his the flute of Champagne, he saw Martha also scanning the crowd, her ‘graydar’, as she called it, on high alert. She seemed to recover better from Chet Paliburn’s death than Rick from the demise of his relationship with Gina.

He continued to scan the room for his muse. Then he saw her at the entrance and he was entranced. She was wearing a halter floor length dress of sky blue tulle. The bodice was lace with a high collar. Her hair was in a French twist. She was adorned with long silver earrings that enhanced the effect of her long, lovely neck.

She spotted him and seemed to float over to him (at least that’s what he thought). As she walked over to him, the dress would teasingly split showing one of her lovely legs. All of this was overwhelming to Rick’s senses.

“Castle.”

He didn’t respond. His mouth open slightly.

“Castle!”

“Sorry,” Rick finally responded.

“Cat go your tongue?” Beckett chuckled.

“I’m sorry.”

“What? Is there something wrong with my dress?” she asked as she looked around on her dress for something.

“No. You look wonderful.”

“What?” Beckett asked. “What are you sorry for? This fundraiser is so very sweet. You really didn’t have to get a ballroom to have it.”

“My pleasure, Beckett,” he answered. “But I am sorry.”

“Okay, I’ll bite. What are you sorry for?”

“I work with you every day. You are strong, badass Beckett. You are a warrior princess, like Xena. The best detective NYPD has.”

“Thank you, Castle.”

“It’s the truth. But that’s not what I’m sorry for. I’m sorry that I’m around the warrior you so much I keep forgetting how stunningly beautiful you are. And Josh should be very proud to call you his girlfriend.”

“Thank you, Castle.” Beckett blushed.

“And that’s the truth, too,” Castle added. “Speaking of which, where’s doctor motorcycle boy?”

“I wish you’d stop calling him that.”

“Okay, where is the good doctor?”

“He got called in.”

“We scheduled this to accommodate his schedule. What happened?”

“The cardiologist on duty had a conflict. His brother-in-law was brought in for an emergency bypass. Hospital rules.”

“I imagine it would be devastating if you’re operating on a loved one and they die on the table,” Castle acknowledged.

“Yeah,” Beckett agreed. “That’s why he called Josh. He and Josh have worked in surgery together several times. Also, Josh was the next on the call list.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, so am I. We really haven’t had a lot of time together lately and I was looking forward to tonight.”

“Well, if you don’t mind, I’d be happy to be your substitute escort, Beckett. For this evening, of course.”

Taking his arm, she said, “Of course, Castle. Thank you.”

“My pleasure.”

_________________________________________ 

We go to a party

And everyone turns to see

This beautiful lady

That's walking around with me

And then she asks me, "Do you feel alright?"

And I say, "Yes, I feel wonderful tonight"

_________________________________________ 

A/N: Sometime in season 4 before 4x19 47 Seconds

After surveying the room before the second annual Johanna Beckett Memorial Scholarship fundraiser, Jim Beckett came up to his daughter and asked, “Did Rick pay for this ballroom? My god, Katie, this is pretty extravagant even by NYC standards.”

“Yes, dad, he did,” Kate somewhat sheepishly answered. “He gets things into his head and refuses to listen. I asked him to tone it down a little but he wouldn’t hear of it. He said ‘that’s how I can get my rich friends to come.’”

“Katie,” her father said. “You know the man loves you. I see how he looks at you. He looks at you the same way I looked at your mother.”

“I know, dad,” Kate sheepishly responded. “I’m just not ready yet. I’m still getting over the shooting and my PTSD. But, I’ll tell him soon.”

“Tell him what?”

“That I love him, too.”

“Please don’t wait too long,” Jim Beckett said to his daughter touching her shoulder. “I almost waited too long to ask your mother out. When I first asked her, she said something to the effect of ‘it’s about time’. Please learn from your father’s mistake.”

“Thanks dad.” Kate smiled. “I’m almost there.”

Just then Rick Castle walked up.

“Hello, Jim,” Castle said as he held his hand out to shake. “It’s great to see you here. Thank you for coming.”

“Thanks, son,” Jim responded not too subtly shaking Rick’s hand. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. And thank you for putting this on. You really didn’t have to do this.”

“Thanks, Jim. It’s my pleasure. I’d like to believe Johanna would be happy with this.”

“I’m sure she would, son.”

Castle continued smiling and then turning and looking Beckett in the eye, “I’m doubly sure that she would be very proud of your daughter, as I am sure you are, too.”

“Yes, I am.”

“If you don’t mind, Jim,” Rick said as he held out his elbow to Beckett. “I’d like to borrow your daughter. There are some people I’d like her to meet. And maybe open their checkbooks.”

“Oh, by all means,” Jim chuckled.

“Detective Beckett,” Castle said.

“Lead on, Castle,” she answered.

As the couple walked away, Jim could only marvel at the duo. He hoped very soon his ‘son’ comments would become true.

A woman looked at Jim and then the departing pair.

“They make a lovely couple,” the woman said to Jim. “They look like a long time married couple. Did they marry young?”

“No, they’re not married” Jim said. “But as the daughter’s father, I hope they change that soon.”

_________________________________________ 

I feel wonderful

Because I see the love light in your eyes

And the wonder of it all

Is that you just don't realize how much I love you

_________________________________________ 

A/N: After 5x23 Watershed

While she was just starting to get used to being at Nikki Heat book launch parties, and the associated paparazzi calls to her (‘Nikki’, ‘Nikki Heat’, ‘over here Nikki’) for pictures, she still didn’t like to be in the limelight. From her time in vice, she didn’t like to be the focus. Then being the focus could get her hurt or killed. Now being in the limelight sometimes interfered with her murder investigations. Plus, her new employer, the Justice Department, may not look kindly on her exploiting the fame associated with the books.

Furthermore, while Captain Gates knew about them as a couple, the aftermath of her standing on a bomb answered that question, Beckett still didn’t want to advertise the fact to the whole world. People would make assumptions. At first, she didn’t want to give confirmation, but now, with the huge ring on her finger, it was going to be hard to hide that the muse had become the fiancé. That’s why she came in solo and not on his arm. She also felt that that honor should go to Alexis and Martha. For the longest time they have been his ‘red-headed pillars of unconditional love’ as he called them. She also believed that this would not be Castle’s last book launch party so in the future she would come in on his arm as his wife.

She had talked with Castle about the ring and how she would wear it. Of course, when she was working, she would wear it on the necklace that held her mother’s ring. But only when they were out alone, would she wear it openly on her left hand. Tonight, since it was a public venue, she would wear it turned in her left hand. An acknowledgement for him, not a flaming red flag for everyone else.

She still was not comfortable with the dichotomy of a rich, best-selling, acclaimed author and a NYPD homicide detective.

Their worlds are so different. He had the mayor on speed dial. Almost effortlessly he could get many wealthy people in a room for a fundraiser.

She worked in the trenches, so to speak. She worked with and saw the underbelly of the city. The people in her circle of friends were just ‘average Joes’, not the affluent.

Sometimes she worried that his friends would look at her as some ‘gold-digger’, only after his money. While the money he has is nice and she wouldn’t complain too much about his spending habits, they’d fall on deaf ears anyway, she didn’t fall in love with him because of his money. Once she got through the playboy façade, she found a great father and a loving son, a gentle man who’d do anything for the women in his life, which now included her, without question or recompense. He’d shown that for the past 4 years.

Her discomfort went down, however, every time she looked at the ring now adorning her finger. It essentially said to her, Castle doesn’t care that they’re from different worlds now, all he wants is her.

There were times that he had to remind her. “Beckett, for the longest time, it was just mother and me, living hand-to-mouth. We weren’t rich by any stretch. So don’t think that just because I have money now, I always had money or I’m some egotistical high-maintenance author because of it. I’m just a man who happens to have a gift that is well rewarded. Looking back at our childhoods, you’d be the rich one in a different world. The daughter of two well educated, high profile Manhattan attorneys compared to the illegitimate son of a mid-tier struggling actress? Puleeze.”

After admiring the ring on her finger, she looked up, took a deep breath, and entered the ballroom for the book launch party.

As she did the first time she went to Castle’s ‘Nikki Heat’ book launch party, she went to the display of the books. She always anticipated the surprise of the dedication. Rick would never let her see it before it was published, even now that they were a couple. And he told her only Gina and the printer would know it prior to publication. Even Alexis didn’t know what he wrote. It was like it was Top Secret security launch codes or something.

So she picked up the closest copy of ‘Deadly Heat’ off of the table and opened it to the dedication. She looked over and saw him as she opened the book. He was gazing across the room at her with an intensity that almost set her ablaze with his love light. She lovingly smiled at him and then turned to the book.

There, (as if she needed another demonstration of his love for her) for all the world to see, was another declaration of his love for her.

To KB:

May the dance never end and the music never stop.

_________________________________________ 

It's time to go home now

And I've got an aching head

So I give her the car keys

She helps me to bed

And then I tell her as I turn out the light

I say, "My darling, you are wonderful tonight

Oh my darling, you are wonderful tonight"

_________________________________________ 

A/N: Several Years after 8x22 Crossfire

“I don’t know why I let you convince me to come to this gala,” a very pregnant Kate Beckett said to her husband, Rick Castle.

“You could have stayed home, you know,” Castle answered. “You didn’t have to come. I would have made very valid excuses.”

The pair walked in to the ballroom. Well, Rick walked in. Kate waddled in.

“Being 8 months pregnant with twins is no fun,” Kate hissed. “You did this to me.”

“I seem to remember you being a very willing, if not enthusiastic, participant,” Rick chuckled.

“You’re right,” Kate said as she kissed him. “But that doesn’t make me feel any better about being a beached whale.”

“Kate,” Rick said as he turned to look in his wife’s eyes. “You look amazing. You’re carrying our two boys. I can’t think of anything more amazing and awe inspiring than that.”

“Well, I need to find the ladies room.” Teasingly stabbing him in the chest with her index finger she continues, “Your two sons seem to be playing soccer with my bladder.”

“I love you, Kate,” Rick said as he kissed her.

“I love you, too.”

Beckett waddled over to the ladies room. It was early in the festivities so there wasn’t a long line at the door. She managed to make it to a stall.

Shortly after she was in the stall, she heard two women come in.

“I saw Rick Castle over by the bar,” said one.

“I could just eat him up,” said the second.

“He’s married now,” said the first. “I understand to some NYPD Detective.”

“NYPD Captain.” Kate thought.

“Maybe he’s up for a little on the side,” said the second.

“Be careful,” said the first. “I imagine the wife carries handcuffs and a gun.”

“Ooh,” said the second. “Kinky.”

“You’re such a nasty girl.”

“Yeah,” the second agreed. “That doesn’t change the fact that he’s a cutie.”

“Yeah,” agreed the first woman. “Rich and handsome. No wonder the girls call him the ‘white whale.’”

Kate heard small noises as if the women were fixing their lip gloss.

The first then piped up, “Sadly, I heard he’s devoted to this one.”

“Rick Castle? Devoted? He was such a hound not too long ago.”

The first continued, “That detective must have tamed him.”

“Damn straight,” Kate thought.

“Let’s see if there are any bachelors or stag husbands out there,” continued the first.

“Or maybe there are some couples looking for a third,” said the second.

The first chuckled, “Nasty, girl.”

“Yep. That’s me.”

Kate heard the click of their heels on the tile floor and then the door open and close. She felt it was safe to come out and finish her bathroom trip.

Finally she walked out of the ladies room and looked for her husband.

“Are you okay,” Castle asked. “You were in there a long time.”

“I’m fine, Castle.”

“I’m worried about you,” Castle continued. “You’re carrying precious cargo. I probably should have left you home.”

“No,” Beckett pointedly said as she kissed her husband. “I won’t leave you to the sharks.”

“Sharks?”

“Single women on the prowl. I overheard a couple of them in the ladies room talking about big game and especially a ‘white whale.’”

Castle chuckled. “And you’re marking your territory, huh?”

“Damn straight I’m marking my territory. I’ve got the ‘white whale’, I plan on keeping him … and I love him to pieces.”

“I love you, too, Kate.”

“Now, we need to mingle for a while to keep up appearances,” Beckett said as she kissed her husband.

Then after kissing him again, she said in a sultry tone as if to emphasize the kiss, “In about an hour, I want you to take me home and recreate the crime of getting me pregnant.”

Returning her kiss, Castle said, “I’d love to take you home, Beckett. Maybe we should get out your cuffs. I did commit the crime, didn’t I?”

_________________________________________ 

A/N: Thanks for reading!

[talix18]

November 4

If I could go back in time and tell myself anything useful, #1 would be for gods sake please keep up with guitar lessons. #2 would be something about considering carefully the fact that you're going to live out a few more decades; continuing to blow up relationships will have you living them out mostly alone. #3 would be Absolutely Fill Out the Rhodes Scholarship application, idiot. I know you don't know yet that you want to travel but I promise that the experience you would have going to school overseas would be more than worth putting up with the weather. It's a problem that opportunity arises for some people when they're too young to appreciate it – at least it was a problem for me. So play guitar, sing, write, do all those things in front of people because it can just be fun, you know. Go to school far away. Sit still and let someone love you.

Because there is a distinct possibility that you will never meet someone who you know is The One. I'm pretty sure I thought I'd met The One two or three times. Nobody is going to fit all of your edges without rubbing uncomfortably in a few areas, whether it's their tendency to cut their hair too short or their inability to take on housekeeping duties when you're laid up or their families not being people you'd choose to hang out with. It's nice to have someone to hang out in sweatpants with; it's nice to have someone around who makes you laugh. Love is just as much about action as it is about emotion. It's not just something that happens to you; it's also something that you do.

But the reality is that I did meet someone I had those heart-flips over. We had that connection I'd always hoped to find. And life got in the way. He wasn't willing to make the changes he needed to in order to be with me and I wasn't willing to wait anymore. And I had the one that I was crazy about who just wasn't as crazy about me, and the one that I thought was the Universe actually working in my favor until the long-distance of it all got too much. Maybe I've had my chances.

I just want a life where I can honestly say “I wouldn't change a single second because it got me here.” Is that so much to ask?

Is it terrible if I don't eat anything except cauliflower crust veggie pizza? I mean, if I'm not overdoing the cheese and the veggies are fresh and the sauce doesn't have sugar in it – there's no reason that it's a “bad” idea, is there?

Saturday night I was at a meeting where a friend was celebrating nine years clean. She is hilarious and outgoing and incredibly smart, and she honestly believes that all Muslims are taught to throw acid in the faces of their women. This baffles me. I have this other friend – she's Jewish and also incredibly smart, and helped vote in the current administration because she's anti-reproductive rights. The administration that normalized being a Nazi in the 21st century. I just don't get it. And this is always going to limit the extent to which I'm going to trust someone – if you fundamentally believe that some humans are less deserving of compassion and dignity and self-determination, then I have to wonder what's going to happen if I fall into one of your less deserving categories.

Anyway, what I'm learning is that my mental health depends on being around people – on being part of a community – and I need to tell the truth about myself in safe places. So I'm at a meeting Saturday sharing about how my depression manifests, the specific example being that for most of the almost 15 years I've lived in this house, there has been a dresser drawer on my bedroom floor. It hasn't always been the same drawer – I've fixed at least two or three rails in the time I've owned these IKEA dressers. And it is entirely likely that I wouldn't have this problem if I didn't stuff the drawers beyond their recommended capacity. The point is that this is how I live: walking around the drawer on the floor. I am not going to consider my shit together until there are no drawers on the bedroom floor.

After the meeting, the woman next to me, who is a successful married adult with grown children, leaned over and said “I've never felt so close to you.” And that's what it's about, gang. Those moments when we tell the truth about how we live and other people recognize themselves in it. It's scary sometimes but, for me, it's necessary. And when I have more than one broken dresser drawer, I can ask for help getting rid of the things I don't need and taking the broken things to the dump. Then I can buy a new piece of clothing storage furniture, probably from IKEA, because I'm not made of money, and this one doesn't have drawers.

Last night I drove two hours to Philadelphia to see Fleetwood('s Heartbreakers House) Mac. You have to understand what Stevie Nicks means to me. Yes, I loved “Dreams” when I heard it the first time in someone's apartment in fifth grade where I was playing some version on Spin the Bottle for the first time. (Billy Schoonmaker, where are you now?) I loved the White Winged Dove song that I didn't know the name of until I saw a song I'd never heard of by Stevie on a jukebox and played it. And I remember a cartoon of someone literally dragging a heart behind them that was in the junior high newspaper. But The Moment I got it was when my mother's second husband, who played bass in an actual, playing out band, brought home Stevie's first solo album. I remember seeing her on the cover with white roses and gauzy clothes and a crystal ball and a tambourine and thinking “you mean life can look like that all the time?” My experience of gauzy clothes and crystal balls was limited to the Renaissance Festival that came to town every summer. I don't know why I took that album cover so literally – she could have been dressed that way specifically for those pictures – but in that moment I had permission to make my life look any way I wanted it to.

So Stevie, and by association Fleetwood Mac, have been part of my soul for most of my life, and I've been lucky enough to have seen her solo and with them several times. (Not on the Wild Heart tour, though! Not when Joe Walsh was her opener and Mom refused to sit through him and I was too young to go by myself. [Learning later that Stevie considers Joe the lost love of her life just makes it easier to carry that grudge.]) I've seen them minus Lindsay plus Billy Burnette & Rick Vito, with Lindsay Buckingham but minus Christine McVie (sorry I'm not sorry this is my preferred line-up), and now minus Lindsay plus Mike Campbell and Neil Finn.

I saw them in April and had All The Emotions. All of them. There were the general Stevie emotions, of course. Then there were the Tom Petty emotions, because I'd seen Campbell with Petty and the Heartbreakers the previous summer, on that last tour. Thank god. I don't even know what made me decide to go – I didn't take pictures or buy a shirt like I almost always do – but I was there, and then Tom died. And now Stevie, who adored him, and Mike, who was his musical partner, were on stage together without him.

Then there's Neil Finn, who was? Is? The frontman for Crowded House, who I also love. But more importantly, he was one of the favorites of my friend Andrea, who died of cancer far too young, who lived in Seattle and I made it a point to fly out for her 40th birthday. Who I flew out to sit in the hospital with in the last weeks of her life. Who I met on the Internet of all the ridiculousness, along with an entire group of Webpeeps who I've been lucky enough to ride roller coasters, celebrate weddings, and baptize babies with. Andrea loved Split Enz and Crowded House and made me listen to their catalog beyond “Something So Strong” and “Better Be Home Soon” and find the pop perfection there. There he was, sounding like he was doing Fleetwood Mac karaoke but also sounding like someone I love who is gone.

Not to mention the whole Stevie and Lindsay and will he ever be able to sing again after his throat was injured after his heart surgery and what the hell happened that Stevie decided this was finally a bridge too far to cross with him after everything else they've worked through. I love Stevie but not blindly, and I see Fleetwood Mac touring without two of their three main songwriters but not without her.

All. The. Emotions.

And I went with my grown adopted niece and Stevie sang about children getting older and I was weeping, as I do.

I had decided against buying a shirt, figuring I could make a more rational decision about what I wanted the next day and get it online. And learned to my horror that no, I couldn't, and then the crazy started. The crazy that said “Look! They're going to be in Philly Friday. Get a ticket to that show and buy what you want there. And if you go alone, you can get a more expensive single seat on Mike Campbell's side of the stage and be In It.” I don't remember how long I thought about it. I do know I ran it past my sister, who said she'd done equally as outrageous things, which gave me permission. My sister is one of the sanest people I know and is one of the lines I can never color outside of.

So I bought that Mike Campbell section ticket and reserved a place on the parking lot and vibrated through half a day at work looking forward to it. Until I happened to see something about them canceling the Boston show the night before and looked further and saw that the Philly show had to be postponed due a band member's illness. I was disproportionately devastated. Which is a thing with both addiction and depression – responding to things out of proportion with their actual importance. That disappointment led to a pretty steep downward spiral during which I actually called my sponsor and allowed her to talk me through the insanity maze.

It is recommended that one have a sponsor one trusts and get in the habit of talking to them regularly so that muscle will be exercised when you're feeling crazy or like using or whatever it may be. This is not my way. My traditional way of being a sponsee was crawling through whatever on my own and calling my sponsor to tell her about it afterward, and getting together with her just long enough to work whatever my next step was before my anniversary. Then my very smart Buddhist sponsor with 20 years clean relapsed, and everything changed.

[lovemesomesurveys]

How many…

How many times have you skipped class? I don’t know. I did it sometimes in college if I wasn’t feeling well or just wasn’t feeling it that day, but only if I knew I could miss that class that day and be fine. Thankfully, the the syllabi always listed what the reading and homework assignments were and I sometimes asked a classmate for their notes. 

How many times have you kissed the last person you kissed? Too many times to count over the span of 4 years.

How many years have you known your second closest friend? I don’t have any friends. 

How many alarm clocks are in the house? 5. One actual alarm clock and then the rest are our phones.

How many people have you argued with? Only a couple.

How many times have you watched your favortie movie? I have a lot of favorite movies, many of which I’ve seen countless times. How many people do you live with? 3 people and a doggo. How many pairs of boots do you own? 4. How many people have told you they’re in love with you? 0. How many times have you cried over the opposite sex? Too many. How many people have been in your house at one time? Maybe like 20. How many stuffed animals are in your room? A LOT. I have a ton of giraffe stuffed animals.

How many cellphones have you went through? 6 or 7. How many pets do you have? 1.

What would you do if…

What would you do if you could never listen to music again? It would definitely suck. I don’t listen to it all the time, but I do enjoy it and I would miss it.

What would you do if your current bf/gf cheated on you? I’m single.

What would you do if you could never wear jeans again? I haven’t worn jeans in over a year, no joke. All I wear now are leggings. I don’t miss jeans at all.

What would you do if your dad became president? Wow. I have no idea. I would not want that at all because of all that comes with it. He’d be dealing with a tremendous amount of stress and pressure, as well criticism and scrutiny. That extends to his family, as well. We’d all be in the spotlight. Thankfully, my dad has no desire at all to run for president or get involved in politics. 

What would you do if you lost your most important possesion? I’d be very upset.

What would you do if your house burned down? Make sure my family, including my doggo, and I got out safely. I’d also try and grab what I could and what I would absolutely need such as medications, phone, laptop, wallet. Whatever else I could. Ahh that would be devastating, though. I obviously couldn’t grab everything and so much would be lost. So many sentimental things.

What would you do if your best friend didn’t want to be friends anymore? I pushed away all my friends and completely withdrew from everyone already. :/

What would you do if you had to move to a different state/province? My family wouldn’t just make that decision without all of us talking about it and figuring it out together.

What would you do if someone shaved your head? Omg. I’d be devastated and extremely angry.

What would you do if Jesus came to your front door? Be in complete awe of even being in His presence and fall before Him. Then I’d invite Him in and show Him hospitality. 

What would you do if your house was robbed? I’d be freaking out to say the least if I was home while it was happening. It’d be so scared. If I wasn’t home and discovered it upon coming home, I’d call the cops and see what was done to the house and find out what was stolen.

What would you do if your sister/brother got married? Be happy for them and help them anyway I could. 

What would you do if dogs became extinct? Omg. Don’t even say that. We need dogs.

What would you do if the last person you kissed proposed to you? That would be completely out of the blue. I haven’t talked to or seen him in almost 4 years. I’d obviously say no and then be like, dude, wtf??

Have you ever…

Have you ever broke a body part? Yes.

Have you ever broke someone else’s body part? No.

Have you ever changed for a guy/girl? In some ways. Or I tried to, anyway.

Tried to jump on a celebrity but been stopped by the security guards? Wow, no. I’m not a crazy fan like that.

Have you ever complained about the last person you spoke to? Yes.

Have you ever cried on your mom’s shoulder? I’ve cried to her or in her arms many, many times in my life.

Have you ever dialed 911 as a prank? No. I was always afraid of even accidentally dialing it.

Have you ever won a talent show? Nope. 

Have you ever spilled a drink on a expensive electronic item and ruined it? Ugh, yes. 

Have you ever fainted when someone told you shocking news? No.

Have you ever swooned over the Jonas Brothers? Yep. I was really into them back when they first came out and during the time they were still together. I followed Joe and Nick’s solo careers, as well. Now they’re back together and touring and I want to go.

Have you ever bought a piece of makeup that cost over $100? Hell no. 

Have you ever been cheated on by someone who claimed to love you? I’ve never been cheated on.

Have you ever got food free because the waiter thought you were hot? Ha, no.

Do you…

Do you have someone who will always be there for you? My family.

Do you have a membership at a gym? Nope.

Do you act dumb to get guys/girls to like you? Pfft, no. No one should do that.

Do you know anyone who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day? No.

Do you follow the rules? Yeah, generally.

Do you have a friend who secretly really annoys you? No, but I have had friends in the past that did sometimes. 

Do you always have Pepsi at your house? No. We always have Coke, Sprite Zero, and Ginger Ale.

Do you flirt with anything that moves? No.

Do you watch SpongeBob? No. I have’t seen an episode in years.

Do you count sheep when you can’t sleep? No. I listen to ASMR.

Do you sweat easily? Ugh, yes. 

Do you like pineapple? No.

Do you refuse to wear something that’s out of style? I don’t care. If I like it, then I’ll wear it. I don’t wear things just because it’s “in.” I have to actually like it. I don’t even know what’s in style anyway really anymore. I’m old.

Do you type ‘u’ or 'you’? You. 

What is…

What is your best friend’s name? Yolanda. She’s also my mom.  What is your first girlfriend/boyfriend’s name? Derek.

What is your neighbour’s name? I never talk to the neighbors and have no idea who any of them are. What is your least favorite swear word? Cunt.<<< Gahhhh, SAME. I couldn’t even type that, but since the person I got this from did I’ll leave it there. You will never, ever hear me say that word. What is the best and most romantic way to propose to someone? I don’t think there’s a singular best way to propose. That differs for everyone. <<< Yeah, some people want something grand, others want something intimate and lowkey. Just depends. What is something that always makes you laugh? My doggo. What is the name of your hometown? I’ll give you my home state: California.   What is the most gentle way to turn someone down? That’s never an easy situation. You don’t have to be rude or mean about it, but be honest and express how you’re feeling. What is the most boring thing to do? Waiting. <<< What is the funnest kind of question to answer? In a survey? I don’t know, just ones that allow me to elaborate or vent/ramble when I need to. Not just yes/no, one word answer questions.  What is the most useless thing you know? A lot of things probably. What is your favorite pair of pants? All my pairs of leggings. What is the best flavour of ice cream? Strawberry.

[lilacmoon83]

Finding You Always

Also on Fanfiction.net and A03

Chapter 181: Save Me

Joe flipped the closed sign on the diner door, as he watched the clouds in the sky swirl dangerously above the city.

"Damn...have you ever seen a storm like this?" Frankie asked his husband and Joe instinctively put an arm around him.

"Nah...this ain't normal. I can feel it in my bones," Joe replied.

"Joe...what is it?" Frankie asked, noticing the peculiar look on his face.

"You know, when we got married, it was the best day of my life and I thought this could be okay, even after they denied us the chance to adopt," Joe mentioned.

"Yeah...it was my fault. Guess being a cop means nothing if you got into trouble in your teens. Never knew they'd go back into my past," Frankie said shamefully.

"You were a kid, love and it was a stupid technicality. Doesn't change how much I love you," he said, smiling at him.

"But then we met David and his little girl and I saw two people that needed to be taken care of. So we did...for two years. I knew they were special the moment they walked in here," Joe replied.

"Me too...then they got their family back and still needed us," Frankie said fondly.

"I got this feeling in my gut, Frankie. Maybe it's the cop in me...but something tells me that they need us...they need family now," he added.

"Then let's go find them," Frankie agreed, as they left the diner, hand in hand. And somehow, deep inside, they knew they wouldn't be back.

~*~

The ominous clouds churned above the city, getting darker and darker by the minute. Lightning could be seen flashing inside the brewing mass of cumulus matter and what had begun as a small system seemed to be quickly growing. It was slowly blanketing the city and it was already drawing the attention of the entire populous of Seattle.

"And if you're just joining us, you're probably seeking answers for this sudden storm. Our radars are functioning properly and this sudden storm is a bit of a mystery," the meteorologist reported, as Jacinda watched the report on her phone.

"This doesn't make any sense," she commented.

"It makes perfect sense if you'd just believe," Lucy chimed in. The brunette sighed and looked over at Henry. His eyes were fixated on the clouds above and he looked a little pale.

"Henry...what's wrong?" She questioned.

"All of this...it's all real," he realized. Lucy's eyes widened.

"You remember?" she asked.

"No...but it's all so familiar," he realized.

"He's right…" Ivy offered, as she approached with Ana and both had clearly been crying.

"Ivy...what happened?" Jacinda asked.

"Mother...she's gone. She sacrificed herself for me," Ivy cried, as Jacinda hugged her.

"Gone? What do you mean?" Jacinda questioned. Ivy sniffed.

"She's dead...she sacrificed herself to save...to save us," Ivy said, realizing what she was saying. She had almost said that she sacrificed herself to save Ana, but she knew that wasn't accurate. Her mother had given her life for her as well.

After years of believing that her mother didn't love her, years of jealousy over Ana, and hurt about her mother's favoritism, which had morphed into hate, her mother had made the ultimate sacrifice for her. And Ivy wasn't sure how she felt about that. Now that there was no target for her hate and jealousy, she was just left feeling empty. Regina had once warned her that this is what revenge would leave her with, if she managed to survive her quest to quench that revenge. Snow and Charming had even tried to counsel her mother at times, trying to get her to see what her mother's favoritism was doing to her daughter. Regina's advice and Snow and Charming's counsel had always fell on deaf ears. Or so she thought. Until just moments ago, she would have sworn that she hated her mother and her mother hated her. And to find out that the case was neither left her feeling lost. Add to that, she suddenly had an incredible amount of guilt, for she had allowed Gothel to use her and may have very well contributed to the apocalypse that seemed to be upon them.

"Ivy...I don't understand. What do you mean she sacrificed herself to save you?" Jacinda questioned in confusion.

"It's because of Gothel, isn't it?" Lucy asked. Ivy nodded.

"You're right, Lucy...you've been right about everything," Ivy answered, as tears slipped down her cheeks.

"This is all my fault...we're all going to die, because of me," she sobbed, as Ana hugged her tightly.

"We're not going to die, Aunt Ivy," Lucy insisted, as she turned to her parents.

"Please...you have to remember," she pleaded.

"Lucy...sweetheart, I don't know what it is that's going on here, but it doesn't mean that Henry's book is real. I know you want it to be, sweetie…" Jacinda said.

"No Jacinda...she's right and I think I know something that might help," Ivy interjected, as she fished something out of her shoulder bag.

"Mother thrust her bag into my arms, just before she died and I think I know why," she continued, as she pulled a glass slipper from it. Lucy gasped and Henry's eyes became fixated on the object. She placed it in his hands and his eyes widened in shock, as it all played back to him in his head. Everything...growing up in Storybrooke with his loving family, all their adventures, and danger. Then leaving to break out on his own and meeting Ella. Then having Lucy and the curse...with his mother being left behind. He took a strangled breath, as it all crashed down on him and he looked up at the ominous storm above.

"Henry?" Lucy asked and he looked at her with awe and wonder in his eyes.

"Not Henry...Dad," he answered, as she practically jumped into his arms. He hugged her tightly and cradled her head, which instantly reminded him of his grandfather. His eyes widened and he put Lucy down, as he went over to Tilly, who was staring at the wrecked garden.

"Tilly…" he said, as he shook her shoulder.

"She's coming…" the girl uttered.

"Who's coming, Tilly?" Rogers asked, as Margot got in her line of vision, trying to snap her from the trance she seemed to be in.

"Tilly...who is coming?" Margot repeated.

"I think she means me," a voice said, as Gothel emerged from the cavern by climbing up the vines that had sprouted forth from the earth.

"Eloise?" Rogers asked in confusion.

"Hello Captain," she answered in a sultry tone.

"Captain?" he asked in confusion.

"You…" Henry growled and she smirked.

"The author is awake at last…" she responded.

"You poisoned my mother! Your curse made me think I was an orphan and my family was dead?!" Henry exclaimed, as he advanced toward her. But one of her vines came alive and wrapped around him, constricting around him and suspended him in the air.

"Henry!" Jacinda cried, as commotion from normal citizens erupted around them, as no one could hardly believe what they were seeing.

"Dad!" Lucy cried, as the vines squeezed him.

"Tilly…" Margot said, as she tried to get through the glazed expression on her face.

"Alice!" Henry called out and that was the trick to snapping her out of the trance. She blinked and looked up, gasping, as she saw him being squeezed to death. Without thinking, a spark of golden colored magic left her fingertips and snapped the live vine, which screeched, as it died and turned to black ash. Henry fell to the ground and Jacinda helped him up, as she looked at Tilly in shock. And onlookers also stared at the blonde in shock, for they had seen the golden sparks she emitted from her hands. Their chatter was akin to a collective buzzing, as they conversed and discussed what they were seeing.

"What...what was that?" Alice asked, starting to panic and Henry realized that she still wasn't fully awake.

"That's what makes you special, Alice...you're my daughter and together, we can remake this world. I just need your power to help me," Gothel stated.

"Daughter?" Alice asked in confusion.

"You're no mother to her...and you know it," Henry spat angrily, as he put a hand on the girl's shoulder.

"Is what she says true?" Tilly asked.

"Yes...but she's evil. She abandoned you and poisoned your father's heart so you couldn't be together," Henry explained.

"Don't listen to him, Alice...he just wants you to use your powers to save his family. He doesn't care about you," Gothel argued.

"She's wrong...because you are part of my family," he insisted hotly.

"I am?" she asked in confusion.

"Yes...you're my step-sister," he explained.

"Who's my father?" she asked.

"It's me...isn't?" Rogers asked, as the confusion was still present in his eyes. But he shook his head.

"I don't know how...but I feel it. It's me, isn't it?" he repeated desperately. Henry smiled and nodded.

"Yes…" he answered.

"I don't know how...but I feel it. None of this makes any sense. It's your book, isn't it? It's real?" Rogers asked, as he felt a weight being lifted, as he accepted that as his reality.

"All of it…" Henry answered.

"Papa?" Tilly asked hopefully. He nodded and reached for her hand. She reached out as well, but vines exploded between them and snatched Rogers up, proceeding to squeeze around him.

"No! Papa!" Tilly cried, as Gothel commanded the vines and tossed him to the ground. There was a sickening crack and they rushed to Rogers side. They saw the blood around his head and Tilly screamed, as she started sobbing uncontrollably. Henry stared in disbelief, as Drew gingerly checked for a pulse.

"He's alive...but it's weak. We need to get him to a hospital!" he called.

"No one is going anywhere!" Gothel announced, as her vines continued to grow through the city. They watched in horror, as they sprouted up everywhere, wrapping around buildings and houses. The result was explosions and mass destruction, as buildings and bridges collapsed, crippling infrastructure with devastation and killing hundreds in an instant.

"Magic is back…" Henry muttered. And he knew that meant that his Aunt Eva was Hook's only chance of surviving. However, he knew getting her here would be a challenge and he watched Drew slip away from the vines.

"Find my aunt and Paul if you can! They're his only chance!" Henry called. Prince Naveen nodded and slipped away, as he took off running into the city.

"Hang on Hook…" he murmured, as he took off his flannel shirt and pressed it to his cracked skull.

"We need to keep pressure on it," he said, as Jacinda put her hands on his and their eyes locked. He didn't see recognition yet, but it was obvious to her now that her life was not what she thought it was.

"Join me Alice…" Gothel implored.

"No...you're evil! I'll never join you!" she shouted back, as she stood in front of Margot, afraid that Gothel would go for her next. But the witch only smirked.

"Then I guess I'll just have to take your power by force," she growled, as she struck Tilly with the amulet and began to absorb her magic. She cried out in pain and Margot was blasted back, as she tried to go to her.

"Fight her Alice! You're the Guardian! Wake up!" Henry pleaded with her. But it didn't seem to matter and she continued her magical assault on her daughter…

~*~

The large, heavy doors were pushed open and they were prodded inside, as his eyes darted around, until he finally saw her.

"SNOW!" he cried, as he saw her. There was a thick chain hanging from the rafters and at the end of it, Snow hung painfully by shackles that were attached to the suspended manacles. He wrists were bleeding from the steel that cut into her soft flesh and tears streamed down her face, as she whimpered through the gag between her teeth.

"LET HER GO! YOU'RE HURTING HER, YOU BASTARD!" David roared, as he struggled with the two brutes that held him back. He turned sharply and delivered an uppercut to one and kicked the other one in the abdomen. He ran toward Snow, but Clayton cut him off by stepping into his path and shoving the plasma rod into his abdomen. David dropped to his knees in pain, as the Collector took vicious delight in his torture.

"Dad!" Emma cried and Snow screamed for him through the gag. From the bag that held the chalice, there was a pulsing glow, as if it was sensing the danger to its charges.

"It's time," Clayton said, as he stopped electrocuting David and then kicked him in the gut, causing him more pain, as he writhed on the ground.

"It's time to seize the power. I'll have thirty seconds to absorb the power back into my staff," he said, as he held the staff and looked at Snow with an evil smirk.

"Slit her throat," he ordered, as one of his hired hands moved in with a knife.

"Mom!" Emma cried, as she advanced, but both were stricken still and they saw the Facilier held two dolls modeled after them.

"No...MOM!" Summer cried, as she struggled against her captor. Snow's eyes widened in fear, as she could feel the man behind her. David growled and barreled into the man with a savage cry, burying his fists into him again and again. The man fought back and rolled, now pinning David on the floor, as he got his hands around the Prince's neck.

"Killing him will work too," Clayton said, nonchalantly, as David gasped for air.

But a gunshot rang out and the thug slumped dead onto David. He breathed air into his starved lungs and climbed out from under the dead weight, as he looked at Rumple in the doorway.

"Thanks," he rasped.

"Guess I'll have to do it myself," Clayton growled, as he turned his staff around, baring the sharp end, and strode purposefully toward Snow. Rumple and Belle started toward Summer, to free her first, but Facilier halted them.

"Another step...and the Savior won't need to worry about her poisoned heart being the thing that kills her," he warned, stilling them. But David got up and intended to head Clayton off, when Facilier warned him too.

"Another step, Your Highness and you'll lose your daughter in addition to your wife," he warned. Snow's eyes locked with his, as more tears slipped down her cheeks. Suddenly, there was a rumbling beneath them and chaos erupted, as thick, thorny vines emerged from beneath them, wrecking havoc to anything in their wake. They reached as high as the sky and the ceiling crumbled around them. Belle cried out, as Rumple shielded her from any falling debris. The chalice still glowed and David heard the voice inside him.

"You don't have to be holding the chalice to wield its power," Endymion reminded. David closed his eyes and concentrated on the chalice, pleading for help. He felt something in his hand and opened his eyes, as a glowing sword was now in his hand. The blade was lit with the magic of the chalice and he set his jaw in determination, as he swung the blade and demolished the thick vines in his way like nothing. He hacked his way through them, as Clayton still struggled to get around them so he could murder Snow, but there was no way David was going to let him hurt her. He sliced through the last vine that blocked his path to Snow and with a strong swing, he swiped through the thick manacle with one arm, while catching her in the other. She looked up at him, love and relief shining in her eyes, as he cradled her against him. He freed her from the shackles and she removed the gag.

"Oh Charming…" she gushed, as she clung to him.

"It's okay, my darling. You're safe," he promised.

"And that won't last...I assure you," Clayton growled.

"We have to end this...or Gothel is going to destroy this entire city," he whispered to her.

"Then we'll do this together," she added, as he pressed up on the small of her back, bringing her lips crashing against his in a smoldering kiss. He picked up his sword and helped her to her feet then.

"That's a very nice sword," she complimented with a smile. He grinned back.

"I think the chalice might have something for you too," he said, as he watched her close her eyes and concentrate. As expected, a bow and a quiver appeared in her hands.

"You really think your arrows and swords are going to get you out of this?" Clayton growled, as he climbed around the large vines obstructing his path. Snow threaded an arrow and then fired it at one blocking their path to their daughters. David's eyes widened in surprise, as the arrow exploded upon contact and burned away at the vines.

"Exploding arrows...that's awesome," David commented, as he took her hand and they climbed their way through the virtual jungle that had sprouted up. Clayton growled and followed them.

"Emma?" they called, as they made their way out.

"Over here!" Regina called to them, as they found her with Summer, Belle, and Rumple. And there was the chalice, glowing and pouring over with magic.

"Looks like magic is back…" Emma said, as she held her heart in pain.

"No…" they cried, as they rushed to her side.

"Serves you right...you're killing your own daughter with your precious chalice," Facilier commented.

"Shut up…" Regina growled, as a fireball appeared in her hand.

"Reminding me of your presence now isn't wise," she added, but he only smirked in amusement.

"It's good to see that ripping your dark side from you didn't take your wit too," he retorted.

"Magic is here…" Rumple realized. Belle's brow furrowed in confusion.

"But that doesn't make much sense. If the chalice answers to Snow and Charming's call, why would it return magic when it would know doing so could kill Emma," Belle wondered. Rumple watched the realization on David's face, as he suddenly seemed to have the answer.

"That's it…" he realized.

"What do you mean?" Snow asked.

"When I was poisoned...drinking the wine in the chalice healed me," he reminded.

"But...there's no wine this time," she said. He smiled.

"There doesn't need to be. Its power is made of true love...Emma is made of true love. That must be partly why she needs to kill us. She knows the chalice can heal Emma...it's why she left her behind," he replied, as the answer came to him like lightning.

"Is it really that easy? Has it really been in front of us this whole time?" she wondered with hope in her voice. He nodded.

"Regina...we need to pull Emma's heart out," he said. She looked astonished.

"No one has ever been able to pull her heart out. My mother tried...even Gothel tried and couldn't do it. She had to poison her from the inside," Regina reminded. His shoulders slumped in defeat.

"The advantage she once had of not being able to have her heart ripped will now be her undoing. Poetic indeed," Facilier commented.

"One more word from you and one of these exploding arrows is coming at you," Snow warned dangerously, as they cradled their daughter.

"Guys...it's okay. You can let me go…" Emma rasped, as she accepted death.

"Never," Snow refuted with vehemence.

"We'll figure this out," David insisted, as his eyes were desperate again.

"Here...this can cut her heart out," Rumple offered, as he offered the dagger to David. The Prince looked at him in confusion and horror. He knew how much trust the Dark One had to have in him to offer it, but he was still horrified by the prospect.

"Are you insane? You want me to cut my daughter's heart out?" he questioned.

"The dagger is the exact opposite of her. If there is anything that can rip her heart, it's this. If you want to save her...then do it," he insisted, as David took the dagger and turned back. The dagger lit up, as he pressed the tip to Emma's chest. She gasped, as her heart was pulled from her body. Snow grasped the chalice and they watched in amazement, as it sucked the green poison out of her heart. Emma gasped in relief, as her heart was cured and the poison was burned away by the chalice. Snow and Charming's mouths, which were ajar at this, turned into bright smiles, as they stared down at their eldest baby with love. Regina and Summer smiled too, as the former hugged her granddaughter close in relief. David guided her heart back into her chest and helped her sit up.

"Mom...Dad...you saved me," she uttered, as they hugged her between them. David looked up at Rumple and handed the dagger back to him.

"Thank you...I know that took a lot of trust on your part to give it to me," he said gratefully.

"You've protected my family, as well as your own over the years. From one father to another, I knew you'd never abuse the power and only use it to save your child," Rumple replied, as Belle put her arms around him and smiled up at him.

"You realize that this makes you officially a hero now, right?" David teased, earning an eye roll.

"Don't start with that," he retorted, as Belle grinned at him and kissed his cheek.

"Not to break up the love fest, but we need to get out of here and find Gothel. She's the source of all this," Regina reminded. They agreed and began to follow her out.

"This was your plan to get the chalice?" Facilier hissed.

"I really don't see you doing much better," Clayton growled back, as he followed them.

"Our deal is still on, providing you don't get in my way. I will have that chalice," the Collector seethed, as he prepared to follow them right to Gothel and into the thick of another battle. Facilier watched him go.

"Or I'll witness your demise and take the chalice for my own," he said, as he followed as well. What was to come was sure to be an epic battle and he was going to capitalize on it in anyway possible.

Snow and David used their arrows and sword respectively to hack their way through the vines that now occupied the ruined Museum. Emma and Regina used their magic as well to clear a path, while making sure Summer stayed close.

"Mom! Dad!" Leo called, as he guarded Eva and Bobby near the entrance. They rushed to their other kids and hugged them close.

"If magic is back…" Eva said, as she looked at her older sister with worry. But Emma smiled.

"It's okay...Mom and Dad figured out how to cure my heart, with Gold's help," she said, as she looked at Rumple and Belle, who had been following them lastly as well. They made their way outside and witnessed the ominous storm clouds that now blanketed the city.

"Looks like she's hard at work," Emma commented.

"And this is without your parents star seeds. If she gets them...this world will be eaten alive at an even more alarming rate," Rumple warned, just as Drew came running up the stairs.

"Naveen?" David asked, as he young man nodded.

"Yes, I'm awake and Hook is hurt...badly. He's got one chance," Naveen said, as he looked at Eva.

"Let's go…" she said, as they hurried after him and soon arrived at the community garden, which seemed to the epicenter of destruction.

"Finally...the guests of honor have arrived," Gothel stated, as they witnessed Tilly being suspended by the vines. David willed his sword to draw on the power of the chalice again and he used the charged blade to slice through the thick vine. He caught Tilly, before she could fall to the ground and she slowly opened her eyes.

"Grandpa Charming?" she asked drowsily. He smiled and then her eyes widened in horror.

"Papa!" she exclaimed, as he hugged her gently.

"He's going to be fine," David promised, as nodded to him and Alice watched Eva use her magic to heal his head wound, just as Paul arrived, having gotten Henry's call. Of course he still thought he was Dr. Anthony Narita and he stared at Eva in awe.

"Dr. Aeson...how did you do that?" he asked in disbelief, as he watched Detective Rogers awaken with no injuries.

"It's a very long story that you've forgotten...but I promise you'll remember soon," Eva answered.

"Alice…" Hook called, as he sat up.

"Welcome back," Eva said, with a smile.

"Papa?" Alice asked. He smiled and stood up, as she rushed into his arms. He hugged her tightly and then looked up, seeing Emma there.

"Emma...you're alive…" he said tearfully. She smiled.

"And all cured, thanks to Mom and Dad...and Rumple too," she replied, as he opened his arm and she joined them in a hug.

"Mom…" Henry said, choking back a sob, as he approached. Her eyes widened.

"Henry...you're awake too?" she asked. He nodded and he rushed toward her too, as they hugged tightly.

"Gods I've missed you, kid," she gushed, as she breathed him in. He swiped a few tears away and then turned to his grandparents, before rushing toward them as well.

"Wait...a lot of us are remembering, but the curse isn't broken yet," Henry stated, as he pulled back from their hug.

"No...but it's weak enough that people are slowly waking up and once we defeat her, we'll break it completely," David said, as he looked to Gothel, who stood before them, poised to finish what she had started.

"Or you and your wife can just die already so I can have your star seeds," she hissed, as her vines whipped around them. David sliced them all, as they came close to him and Snow proceeded to use her exploding arrows to incinerate them, causing awe and amazement to the people witnessing the spectacle.

"Well...guess there's no hiding it anymore," Emma said, as her hands lit up with white light and a fireball appeared in Regina's hand. Leo's hands sparked with cobalt lightning and Eva's swirled with pink magic. Summer released bubbles and encased the poison darts some of the man-eating plants started to release, while Bobby used his powers to swallow up as many vines back into the ground as he could.

"Aunt Regina!" Leo exclaimed, as he saw one of the poison darts heading for her back, but it was thankfully knocked out of the way by an arrow. Regina sighed in relief, as Robin stood there, along with Zelena, a still very confused Chad, Rose Red, and Fandral, as well as their children. Being half Asgardian, Carina, Ben, and Ari all wielded swords and enhanced strength like their father.

"Now the endgame can really begin...hold nothing back. As long as this witch draws breath...there is no future," Rumple growled, as he glared at Gothel. She smirked back.

"Not even you can stop what's coming, Dark One," she warned.

"But we can," Snow stated, as she stepped up and David stepped up beside her, as they joined hands.

"And we will," he added.

"We shall see, truest loves. Time to commence with the end of this world…" she replied, as power erupted from her fingertips and met theirs in an epic clash of true titans of dark and light...

[xtruss]

Now There’s No Doubt Meghan and Harry Had to Leave

Caught between a hate-filled media and a terrified royal family, the surprise is not that the couple struck out on their own. It’s that they didn’t escape much sooner

Harry says racism ‘large part’ of reason why couple left UK

Shola Mos-Shogbamimu: Meghan has been mistreated for years

Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, speaking to Oprah Winfrey on US television. Photograph: Joe Pugliese/Harpo Productions/PA

seldom remembered fact about the royal family is that, before the death of Princess Diana, it was not normal to be interested in them. Tabloids were fascinated, but it was more of a convention than news – like a splash about tomatoes causing cancer, it was the out-of-office auto reply of the industry, a fallback. The family (I seriously dislike the affectation of calling them “the Firm”) survived while there was nothing to see. They were caught between two irreconcilable forces – their own culture of discretion, on one side, and intense, 24-hour scrutiny on the other – and they navigated that with a studied blandness. What did they actually care about? Manners, duty, causes, the Commonwealth. Whatever curiosity surrounded them, they simply did not reward it, and the regular response to that, after a few centuries and whatnot, was to not be terribly curious.

You may recall David Blaine, the magician who lived in a glass box above the Thames for 44 days in 2003: people really wanted to know what he was doing, even though we could see what he was doing – and that was mainly nothing. There grew a peculiar resentment of gawping at something that was only interesting because it was untouchable. But we could see for ourselves that it was not interesting – and then everyone got annoyed and some of us (not me) threw eggs. Eventually, hawkers started selling eggs. That pretty much sums up the experience of the royals pre-1997.

The death of Diana changed all that, but in a counterintuitive way. Curiosity had driven a woman into a pillar, so you might expect a generalised reflection on the nature of it – what were the paparazzi hoping to see? A divorcee, going about her business, with a gentleman caller. Was there not a case for just giving it all a rest, especially given that the core traits of royalty, the bits that made them so unusual – restraint, self-abnegation, respectability – had been more or less torched by Prince Charles’s generation, anyway (it wasn’t just Camilla and Fergie and their antics; Prince Andrew, who, of course, was then still just a buffoon with no Jeffrey Epstein taint, had added to it with It’s a Knockout).

Instead, the opposite happened: far from posing difficult questions about whether all this invasive scrutiny was warranted or humane, the tragedy seemed to elevate it, to usher in a belief that this obsessiveness between a society and its head of state and her offspring and in-laws was somehow natural. The post-rationalisation of Diana and her place in culture is almost hallucinatory at times.

If you are of a certain age, you might recall that before she died, we were not all trying to dress like her. She was not our people’s princess; we may have watched Martin Bashir’s Panorama interview but with an idle rather than passionate interest. She was neither a feminist nor any other kind of icon. Fair play, it was a decent thing, when she held hands with HIV patients, but generally speaking, she was just a Sloane in an egalitarian age, a pretty relic. Her death should have sparked a conversation not just about an intrusive press but about what the family represented, whether its hierarchies and rules could survive any more contact with living, sentient modern souls.

Instead, it catalysed quite a cunning, self-justifying switcheroo from the gutter press: we had to hound the woman because the public demands it, the public is just so interested. This buried a landmine that has detonated a quarter of a century later, upon contact with that other fixation of the same media, race: or, more specifically, dog-whistling racist tropes.

Harry and Meghan in 2018. Photograph: Neil Mockford/GC Images

And so we come to last night’s interview. It’s possible, of course, in any clash between two factions, for everyone to be in the wrong. It’s possible, for instance, for the royal family to be inhumane, hierarchical to the point of lunacy, snobbish and racist – and simultaneously for Prince Harry and Meghan to be spoilt and high-handed. On the eve of the Oprah interview with the couple, which aired on CBS on Monday at 1am GMT, it was indeed fair to expect that the impartial viewer would come away thinking: “Six of one, half a dozen of the other.” For those who were already Team Windsor, there were aspects that would grate enough to confirm their views: Oprah’s faux toughness, the mad opulence of the garden backdrop, the very carefully choreographed frankness. But in the end what swung it so far the other way certainly wasn’t the cute gender-reveal (the couple are expecting a girl). Instead, it was something much darker: Meghan’s disclosure that she “didn’t want to be alive any more” at one point, while pregnant with their first child, Archie. “That was a very clear and real and frightening, constant thought,” she said.

When I spoke to Katie Nicholl, royal reporter and the author of Harry and Meghan: Life, Love and Loss, before the broadcast, she had said, judiciously: “I think she perhaps didn’t give it long enough. Within 18 months they were off – that was no time at all. Fergie and Diana both gave it longer than that.”

That made sense when we spoke: what’s 18 months to get used to your in-laws? It’s the blink of an eye. But making the briefest survey of the kind of coverage Meghan received, the vehemence and double standards are breathtaking. It also goes some way towards explaining why she couldn’t just give it another year: the press seemed to be whipping itself into a frenzy; every negative story generated 10 more. If she ate an avocado, she was “wolfing down a fruit linked to water shortages, illegal deforestation and all-round general environmental devastation”. If she used lily of the valley in her bridesmaid’s flowers, she was potentially risking the lives of tiny children. She was portrayed as having bullied Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, to the point of tears over flower girl dresses for the wedding (the opposite was true, she told Oprah, God knows what was the root of all that) and routinely disregarded the Queen. And before very long, she was in despair. So you have to wonder, what is a reasonable amount of despair for a person to live with, and to what purpose? When were the smears ever likely to end? Do you have to be Californian and touchy-feely to ask whether that intensity of hatred is worth it, just to have people who will open your curtains and run you a bath?

Harry put it surprisingly strongly, when he said he’s “acutely aware of where my family stand and how acutely scared they are of the tabloids turning on them”. In this he gave the kindest possible reading of the situation, not a family closing ranks against its own, but one cowering in terror and simply not strong enough to protect itself. Whatever the truth of that, the individuals and their possible shortcomings are less interesting than the central question, which is not why Meghan and Harry left, but why any of them stay.

Certainly, the most shocking part of Oprah’s interview were the revelations that Harry was asked by unnamed members of his family how dark his first child’s skin was likely to be – and that, whether relatedly or not, they discovered that Archie would not have a title or, accordingly, any security. So. Many. Questions. Not least, how was Harry supposed to make a guess at his unborn son’s skin colour? But panning out to the general vilification of Meghan, the she-said-he-said mysteries that remain become more or less irrelevant. Irrespective of which earrings she wore and who she got on with or didn’t in the royal household, it was impossible to ignore from the start of the couple’s relationship that she had become the cipher for racial slurs that were, in general terms, unsayable.

Kehinde Andrews, professor of Black studies at Birmingham City University, traces the timeline: when they first met, the Daily Mail imagineered a “satirical” scene in which the Queen meets Meghan’s mother, who’s “straight outta Compton” living in a “gang-scarred home”. Upon the occasion of their marriage – another revelation of the interview is that they actually married three days before that ceremony; I’m not sure how important that is in the grand scheme of things – there was an outpouring of colour-blind celebration. That “just showed how little understanding we have of racism,” Andrews says, “if you think that Meghan Markle would make any difference at all. The monarchy is probably the primary symbol of white supremacy in the world; the idea that one black woman could make a difference to that is just facile.” He compares her fall from grace to that of Barack Obama, “the early celebration, racism’s over, which then switches to: ‘This isn’t about race, this is about you being problematic.’”

When you look at the build up of negative press, it was focused on Meghan as aggressive, bullying and angry, with a secondary motif of her being inauthentic and devious and having hoodwinked Harry, who is typically portrayed as the hapless idiot in what has unfolded. “No one’s called her a racial slur,” Andrews says, “but you can see the stereotypes, she’s basically being treated like most black people in elite white institutions.” She doesn’t belong there, so she must have used cunning to get there, and naturally she wouldn’t know how to behave once she arrived.

Let’s not pretend rich people don’t also kill themselves or experience depression’ ... Meghan during her interview with Oprah Winfrey on Sunday. Photograph: CBS

Here the idea that her predicament was in any way similar to Diana’s or Fergie’s comes apart. Yes, it would be a difficult adaptation for anyone, to suddenly be subject to protocols in which their individuality counted for nothing and all that mattered was the birth order of their spouse. But there was a particular timbre to the coverage of Meghan, that she was matter out of place – and what you’re dealing with there is not so much a hierarchy as a caste system.

In the end, Prince Charles probably emerges worst from the interview, with Harry’s disclosure that his father stopped taking his calls. Prince William comes off relatively unscathed; the Queen, likewise. The damage done to the institution is that one person leaving breaks the spell, and you wonder why, if they are all “trapped”, as Harry says, they can’t just … change. But the hangover from the affair is the tenacious media vindictiveness that, once it finds its target, doesn’t seem able to let go. We accept it as a caper, a game, but the despair it causes is real.

— The Guardian USA | Zoe Williams @zoesqwilliams | Monday, March 8, 2021

[paceofbase]

HACF Rewatch Recap: S03E06

Ass shot (which I’m always here for tbh)

YES to these gorgeous shots of Joe

Okay I really don’t get why the writers made Tom so sexist this season. I doubt he was going to pro-feminism rallies in S2, but he was nowhere near this bad. I don’t understand what their point was with this

I love how Cameron lets Donna know that she found out about the lie tbh

Lmao this line tho

I live for this shoulder to hip ratio tho

Omg their friendship is blossoming. Look at them

I think going to Diane’s vineyard was the point of no return for Donna tbh

Aww look at her worrying. She’s so adorable

Joe and Cameron hug people the same way lmaooo

The one they chose to play Diane’s daughter looks just like Annabeth Gish. Talk about good casting

See, right here. He only wants Joe to apologize and own up to what he did. He misses that partnership so much

Suddenly seems a little doubtful about her sudden marriage....WONDER WHY?

Look how cute they are here ughhhhh

I just love how in one episode their whole relationship completely shifted. Their friendship is honestly so beautiful

Okay my dumbass actually thought this was real when I first saw it. I mean, look at how nice and full of compliments Cameron is. Also, Donna is so gay here. I for real thought they were going to kiss LOL

Oh Bos you fucked it all up with Diane. Good job, bud

Omg god this sceeeennnneeeee. He hasn’t even said anything to her yet and the chemistry is about to crack my TV screen

I love how Cameron’s really the only one who can talk sense into Joe

Oh god the way Lee delivered this line. My heart.

And this one.

I feel like this line represents their relationships with Sara and Tom so well

I seriously thought that they were going to kiss here. I was honestly SHOCKED that they didn’t tbh

Omg Gordon’s DEVASTATED at this and it makes me so sad. Look at the disgust he directs at Donna over it

Gordon’s reaction to this is like on the same level as when Joe told him he was married to Sara. He’s just like “my god, these idiots are marrying the wrong people and I can’t fucking do it anymore.”

She definitely doesn’t seem too happy lol

Oh Shaggy, you did Joe dirty

I’m so glad Joe FINALLY did this. Took long enough jfc. Thank you, Cameron

[ooc-but-stylish]

Future Barry is Savitar? I haven’t seen this episode yet but

MYLONGESTYEAHBOIEVER.MP3

Iris West doesn’t deserve what happens to her (which won’t happen, if the finale photos are any indication), but, let’s be honest Barry has spent the entire three seasons disrespecting Iris whenever he could: lying about his identity; flirting with her while she was with Eddie; beating up Eddie out of jealousy; lying about his identity; taking advantage of knowing she kissed him in one timeline to make moves on her in another; dropping the L-bomb on her on Christmas while she was with Eddie, instead of putting his feelings aside like he should have 10+ years ago and respecting the platonic dynamic of her relationship with him; lying about Mason’s death; lying about his identity; bringing Eddie into the Circle of Liars ( Eddie originally wanted to tell Iris, remember that, you guys ); fucking up so bad against Eobard that Eddie killed himself, depriving Iris of a natural dissolution to her relationship if there even was one; trying to get with another version of Iris while that Iris was unaware that that wasn’t her husband; starting Flashpoint and stalking Iris for three whole months instead of talking to her like a normal person; stealing her wallet from right next to her and convincing her she dropped it, instead of talking to her like a normal person; only helping Joe because he wanted to get with Iris and not a moment sooner; not helping Wally against the Rival when he was right there, resulting in Wally being injured and Iris almost losing her brother; ignoring the fact that Iris and Joe were estranged in post-Flashpoint for a good reason and forcing them to be together for his benefit; proposing to her not out of genuine love but because she was about to die soon and he wanted to “change the future” ( what, did he think Savitar respects honeymoons? was Barry going to use husband-status to convince Iris not to be in the area where she’d die? what? ); getting Wally trapped in the Speedforce via hypocritically being mad about Wally keeping secrets, resulting in Wally experiencing his personal hell for an untold amount of time; and other bullshit with the pretense of “saving Iris” ( almost letting people die, not bothering to apprehend criminals, using his friends as tools when convenient ). I know I’m missing a few instances but that’s off the top of my head. For at least the first two seasons he was running off of the fact that just because the byline on the future newspaper and their lives on Earth-2 said he’s married to her, that he’ll get married to her. Otherwise he’d been acting like a total fuckshit until that point. Last episode established he’s capable of disrespecting her wishes as a person post-mortem. He promised her he’d keep in touch with Joe and the team and not let her death set them apart, and then it turns out he did exactly that because his pain was too great. As if everyone else’s wasnt?

He absolutely deserves this reveal. This is the  most logical conclusion I could think of to “Barry is a total ass to Iris and hurts her, hurts everyone around her using her as an excuse, and continues to do so unchecked, because he sometimes feels bad about it”.  He's spent too much of this season pulling ridiculous stunts for his own benefit, prioritizing his pain over everyone else’s, going back on his word when he promises not to do [insert negative thing], and then feeling sorry for himself afterward when it doesn't work out. "I'm sorry" this and "I'm sorry" that, instead of just not doing the things he was clearly advised not to do, instead of actually caring for people and their issues. Then when he feels bad, there's at least one other character being the Writer's Mouthpiece and caping for him at their own expense, saying "Well, he's the good guy and he's sorry so it's okay, we've all made mistakes too". They forced Iris to be that Mouthpiece, and I’m pretty sure more than once, because Precious Barry Allen can never be called out on anything, and Iris only has negative feelings for One Whole Episode ( at most! ) before needing to forgive him because “true love, OTP”. Remember that ultimatum she put that if he lied to her again, their relationship would be over? That was the beginning of Season 3, IIRC. But even though Barry did lie to Iris between then and episode 16, Iris wasn’t allowed to make through on her words or have any sort of feelings except pro-Barry, so Barry broke up with her, leaving her visibly devastated. And then they didn’t even stay broken up. He just came crawling back with a song and she forgave him, because “true love, OTP”. They broke up for one week.  Episode 19 is the first episode I've seen where Barry actually noticed the damage his self-centered behavior could cause other people. Having the villain be him down a darker path might cement for him the fact that he is constantly screwing things up and needs to stop sooner rather than later. Even his Future Self from 2056 realizes how much of an idiot he was, to have sent that message to the past saying "Hey, guys, don't trust me!" (paraphrasing). You know you fucked up when even your Future Self tells everyone how much of a fuck-up you are. Barry’s Flashpoint antics in particular put the Bad Future of 2046 ( John Diggle's death, etc. ) back on the table, and it brought the attention of the Dominators who tried to set-off the meta bomb, and, you know, that’s all pretty bad. So Barry absolutely deserves this reveal. Otherwise, how much sense does it make that up until now, only the women of the show, or the men of color in this show, were the only ones shown doubting their powers or being told they were better off not having them? Cisco only met Reverb for 10 minutes. Caitlin met E-2 Killer Frost and interacted with her for around the same amount of time. The both of them were immediately worried about whether having powers would make them turn evil just for having them. Despite having no proof that they themselves would lose control of their abilities ( and in Cait’s case, she didn’t even have powers to worry about until, you guessed it, Flashpoint ) they still feared the possibility. Yet Barry encountered 4 evil speedsters across 3 seasons and never once doubted that maybe his powers might make him evil or that he wasn’t meant to have them. Wally and Jesse only got their powers this season, and Jay made his proper debut in the season 2 finale, so it wasn't like their goodness was a balancing force throughout the show. Barry still met more bad guys with his powers than good guys with his powers. If anyone should’ve had the "I'm worried my powers are corrupting me" storyline, it's him.  Wally became a speedster in Flashpoint, then when he knew about it post-FP, every character around him was telling him he didn’t need powers, he was better off without powers, that he’d get hurt, and it’s dangerous, and all this patronizing junk. Jesse got powers, and Harry came all the way from Earth-2 to get someone from Earth-1 to convince her that she didn’t need powers, she was better off without powers, that she’d get hurt, etc. ... Yet Barry lost his powers and his SWM ass got an entire episode dedicated to showing him as absolutely useless without them, and how much he needed to have them, and he was the best version of himself with them, as if he didn’t have other ways to perform good, like through the intellect he’s supposed to have as a CSI. That they all now have powers and act as heroes now isn’t the point. The point was the storyline around it-- the writers chose to write Cisco and Caitlin as “worried about their powers, because potential evil”, or have other characters express their opinions that Wally and Jesse were “good enough/better without powers” while Barry was written as “too good for self-doubt” and “the best with powers”, showing what they really think about a) “powerless” people, and b) anyone that’s not Barry. So, yes. Barry Allen absolutely deserves this reveal.

[hellomissmabel]

Bye Bye Brooklyn Boys (12) - version 1

MASTERLIST

Pairing: Bucky x reader

Warnings: This is just so sad. Language.

Word count: 3.285

Summary: idk what came into me - this is the first version so yes, that means there’s going to be another.

Inspired by one of my favourite songs: Give by You Me At Six. Also, if you pay attention, you an find a subtle reference to “Castle on the hill” by Ed Sheeran.

September, October, November , December,

January , February, March,  April

May, June, July

August – version 1

It’s been a day It’s felt like an age Since I have seen you A face to face so we can say what we need to

Over the years, I’ve lost a lot of friends. I lost my best friend Natasha because she couldn’t look past her jealousy and acted solely on her rage. I lost James and then I lost Steve because they didn’t find it in them to man up and face their fears. They waited too long to tell me how they truly felt about me and we drifted apart like ships in the night, passing each other by without knowing.

That evening at the ball, everything changed. Devastated by Natasha’s betrayal, I bailed on both her and Bucky, grabbing Dean by the hand and demanding he’d drive me home. The ride back was silent, Dean knowing better than to stalk me with questions about what happened, realising that if he did I might be damaged beyond repair.

“Why didn’t you just tell me? About the message?”

“I didn’t want to lose you. I could see how much he still means to you.”

“You’re a good man, Dean,” you state softly, cupping his cheek in your hand. “You’re a good man that makes bad decisions.”

I forgave Dean and never saw anyone again. Those people were responsible for some of the best times of my life, but also for some of the worst. They ruined me, the person I had aspired to become stuffed away in a cardboard box along with all my other pictures and memories. And look at me now, standing in a cream coloured chiffon wedding dress.

Wedding dress.

Well, I guess that means I’m getting married today.

It was an ordinary Friday morning. Dean got up first because he has a longer commute, so as he was getting ready to leave for work as I drifted off to sleep again. That is, until I felt the bed dip under his weight and he coaxed me out of my sleep with an abundance of sweet nothings in my ear.

“But first,” he announces cheekily, “we must get you dressed. I have a surprise for you.”

He took me to the café we had our first date and asked me to go order while he was going to find us a spot. I just shrugged and didn’t think much of it, ordering a black coffee for Dean and a mocha latte for myself. Moving on to pay for our daily cup of joe, I see Dean making his way back over to me and I congratulated myself on my clever thinking as I asked two cups to go instead of regular mugs, just in case there weren’t any seats available.

“Order for Y/N,” the barista calls out and I reach to take it from the counter when a pair of grabby hands beats me to it.

“Dean,” I sigh sweetly, “What are you up to now?”

I turn around to see him holding my cup in both his hands, something else besides my name scribbled on it. Inching closer so I can clearly make out the words, I clasp my hand before my mouth to refrain from screaming.

It reads: Y/N, will you marry me?

Dean then gets down on one knee, chuckling at my reaction after placing the cup back on the counter first. “That day I accidentally ran into you, I reckon I didn’t take enough time to appreciate your beauty. But I have been hooked on you ever since that day when you got pancake syrup all over your shirt and you laughed at my milk foam moustache. I love you, Y/N. I love you, so will you do me the honour of being my wife?”

I know you’ve changed You don’t look the same We all make mistakes It’s growing pains, it’s just a phase we have to go through

“Y/N, are you alright? You’re going to ruin your mascara!,” Wanda shrieks as she moves quickly about the room to fetch you a handkerchief to dry the tears running down your cheeks.

“I sent them an invitation, too. Bucky and Steve, I mean,” you clarify, fingers trembling under the pressure of your impending nuptials.

Wanda waits a couple seconds before replying, contemplative eyes mixing with her soft smile. “Yeah, I know.”

Filling your lungs to the brim, you take a large gulp of air in utter surprise. “You know?”

“I’m your maid of honour, I am supposed to know everything. Besides, I’ve kind of been keeping tabs on the two Brooklyn boys for you. You want me to fill you in?”

You nod but do not say anything else, deciding to let Wanda do the talking for you. “Bucky left for Wakanda, working side by side with T’Challa. He told Nat he just wanted a warm body to keep him company at night, that he never wanted it to spiral out of control the way it did. He wanted to make amends but Nat refused. Nowadays she’s already on her second husband while Clint works and lives down the coast with his wife and two kids. He’s happy, Y/N. As for Steve, he has two kids as well but lives alone,” she grimaces glumly, crossing her ankles as you stare at your hands fidgeting in your lap.

Wanda clears her throat, coughing nervously. “Sharon dumped him for one of her colleagues and moved upstate. My brother Pietro overdosed and Sam’s barely getting by since he lost his job. It also cost him his apartment and he’s now occupying the guest bedroom at Steve’s loft. The place is too big for him anyway.”

Rubbing your temples, you try to make your way through the maze that is your mind right now, filling in the blanks wherever you can and failing miserably when you cannot put two and two together. “I don’t know what to say…”

“Y/N, I am telling you this to show to you that none of them are better off.” Wanda moves to sit down next to you, taking your hand in hers. “What happened, happened. This can’t be reversed, Y/N. You have to let it go.”

“I can’t help but think that none of it would have ever happened if I hadn’t met James. I would have never met Steve either and I would have never introduced those boys to the others. I wouldn’t have lost Nat, too.”

“You don’t know that. Maybe this was meant to be, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe you meeting Bucky was never meant to happen and it was the first wicked flap of the butterfly’s wings, the first spark that set everything else ablaze. But Y/N,” she says with those big doe eyes and soft voice, “Remember that we’re all grown-ups now, capable of making our own mistakes, we’re all individuals with the freedom of choice. Not all of it can be traced back to that first day you saw Bucky.”

“Why are you still here with me, Wanda?,” you blatantly ask your friend, blurting out the one question that’s been bugging you all this time. Everybody left you, everybody but Wanda, who stayed behind and has crowned herself as your confidante. “I thought that after Pietro you would…,” You shrug awkwardly, “Vanish into thin air or something."

“Pietro’s death was an accident. You know how he was, always experimenting and living on the edge. I thought about leaving, too, but my home is right here. My parents live here, my boyfriend lives here and I have you. You have a heart of gold, Y/N, and I see it in every single thing you do.”

I’ve been wasting all this time Trying to keep you off my mind Yeah, you off my mind, no more

There’s a knock on the door, Tony informing the two ladies he is ready to walk Y/N down the aisle to where Dean will be waiting for her, accompanied by his brother Sam.

“I’ll give you 5 minutes, tell everyone the bride is having some technical issues with her make-up because she’s crying tears of happiness. That’ll keep them occupied.”

Tony gives Wanda a curt nod of his head, signalling that there’s another matter that needs to be discussed. “Y/N,” Wanda speaks softly, “I believe there’s someone by the door wishing to speak to you.”

“Yeah, sure, uhm, send them in. I guess my 5 minutes aren’t up yet.”

A blond man steps into your line of sight, wearing a neat black suit and a grey tie he probably didn’t tie himself since he sucks at dressing up, preferring his chequered flannel shirts over a more formal attire every single time. It’s been too long since you’ve had the privilege of being on the receiving end of that mind-shattering smile.

“Steve? What are you doing here?”

“Well,” he exhales with a strange familiarity, “Technically you invited me.”

“I wrote those letters as closure, I never meant to send them,” you anxiously blurt out, mentally slapping yourself in the face. “But I guess my heart won the battle against my head. It was a stupid thing to do, I shouldn’t have – Never mind.”

“Y/N, I’m not here to ask you to run away with me again. I’ve tried that trick before and it didn’t work out, so I’m not going to do it a second time.” He chuckles and a tiny half-smile breaks through your tears. “I’m just here to tell you that I’m happy for you, Y/N. I don’t know Dean personally, but if he makes you happy than he makes me happy too.”

“Thank you, Steve. That – that really means a lot to me.”

“You should get going, though. Bruce’s getting antsy,” the blond chuckles.

“Thanks again, Steve,” you say as you give him a quick peck on the cheek before shimmying past him and making your way towards where’s Tony’s waiting for you, offering you his arm which you gladly accept. You’re ready for the future. You’re happy you finally got a chance to put some old matters to bed once and for all. Well, at least one old matter but that’s already enough miracles for one day.

As Bruce is walking you to the altar, your favourite song is playing in the background, filling the garden with its beautiful rhythm and you instantly fall in line with Tony’s footsteps. At the wedding rehearsal, you nearly tripped over your dress a couple times because you were so nervous. But not now, now you feel completely at ease.

Dean is looking back at you with tear-filled eyes, a goofy smile curling his lips upwards. His brother Sam, also serving as his best man, is standing next to him and gives you a look of approval, your wavy dress fits you like a glove and simultaneously makes you feel like a real Greek goddess.

I’ve been wasting all these nights Trying to keep you off my mind Yeah, you off my mind, no more

The music comes to a close when you reach your future husband, Tony lightly kissing your knuckles and whispering good luck into your ear before releasing you to your hubby-to-be, Dean completely and utterly awestruck at the mesmerizing woman standing next to him.

“Shall we begin?,” Dean’s best friend, Castiel, asks the both of you and you murmur eagerly in agreement. “Very well. We have gathered here today to celebrate the union of Y/N Y/L/N and Dean Winchester.”

The ceremony is short and sweet, just like you and Dean preferred. Your heart is hammering in your chest when it’s time to exchange the vows and even though you memorized everything by heart, you can’t help but black out at Dean’s words.

“Y/N,” he pledges with the utmost devotion. Never have you ever seen him cry, but today he’s having just as much a hard time as you trying to hold it all back.

He sucks in a deep breath. “I can tell you how much I love you a million times over and over again, but you already know I would give the world to be with you so I’m not going to repeat myself. I just want you to know that you are an angel that fell from the sky. I am honoured and privileged to soon be called your husband and I thank the heavens for giving me the opportunity to love you because I do, with all my heart and my entire soul.”

“Dean,” you breathe out, restraining yourself from becoming a blubbering, sobbing puddle of an emotional mess.

You clear your throat. “I honestly don’t know what I would do without you. You have given me my life back. You have given me the chance to be myself again and for that I am eternally grateful. With you by my side, I can move mountains. I love you. I love your touch, your smile, your eyes and how they crinkle when you smile. I love everything about you. Even when you snore like you’re trying to bring heaven down, I still love you.” This was met with a quiet chuckle from Castiel and a loud snort from Sam, the audience seemingly enjoying your little pun. “I will love you till death do us apart and even after that.”

After you exchange your vows, Castiel is ready to conclude the ceremony with the exchange of the wedding rings. “Do you take Y/N Y/L/N as your lawful wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and cherish until death do you part?“

"I do.” Dean then moves on to repeat after Castiel. “I take this ring as a sign of my love and faithfulness in the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit.”

Castiel turns to you next. “Do you take Dean Winchester as your lawful husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and cherish until death do you part?“

"I do,” you confirm with a shy smile. "I take this ring as a sign of my love and faithfulness in the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit.” “

Castiel holds out his arms, gesturing towards the crowd. “If anyone here has any reasons as to why these two should not be joined in Holy Matrimony, let him speak now or forever hold his peace.”

There’s not a doubt in your right mind that anyone would ever disapprove of Dean. He has charmed and enchanted not only your heart but that of many other people as well. There are a couple beats of silence that pass agonizingly slow and you feel the relief wash over you when the sound of the wind is the only melody falling on your ear, Dean gazing lovingly into your eyes. He winks at you, laughing lightly at your rosy cheeks.

Just as Castiel is about to pronounce you husband and wife, a dark figure blasts through the flowery decorations, walking bristly towards the altar and as his broken voice chimes through your mind, the bile rises in your throat. You didn’t know he’d be here today, you didn’t know he would ever read your letter. You can see his lips moving but you do not register anything anymore as you feel yourself slowly drowning into his baby blues. Dean takes a hold of your hand and brings you back to reality, repeating your name as he tries to get through to you. All these nights you’ve tried to keep him off your mind have gone to waste.

How long should I wait (I wait, I wait) To feel myself, feel myself again Cause I don’t think you hate (You hate, you hate) When we’re side by side but going two separate ways

It’s Bucky. Your Bucky, all the way from Wakanda to Brooklyn. “Fuck it, Y/N. I love you and I can’t stand to see you with him any longer. Damn it, I object!”

His chest rises and falls with every laboured breath, his icy eyes remembering you of the frozen lake you ice-skated on with Dean last winter. You had fallen into his arms time after time as you just couldn’t get the hang of it. It was one of your happiest days. This is supposed to be your happiest day and here he is, the master of screw-ups, James Buchanan ‘Bucky’ Barnes.

“Y/N, I know I’m the biggest jerk of all and I know I have done you and others wrong so many times. But I can assure you, this is not what you want. If Nat had given you that letter, it would’ve been me standing right there. No offense, Dean,” he adds sincerely, turning to face the seething man at your side. “You seem like a nice lad and all, but I loved her first.”

Dean releases his grip on your hand and runs over to the brunet asking his fiancé to abandon him at the altar seconds before the priest would pronounce them as husband and wife. He takes a swing at Bucky, hitting him flat on the nose and Bucky cries out in pain. The sound of bone breaking on impact has you rushing towards where his quivering form has tumbled to the floor.

“James, you stupid man,” you whisper as you cradle him into your arms, countless tiny drops of blood staining the luxurious fabric of your dress.

Sam has to restraint Dean in order to prevent him from going at Bucky a second time, pushing his brother down on a nearby vacant chair and pointing an accusatory finger at him if he tries anything. He then turns back to where you and Bucky are crouching on the ground.

“I would react the exact same way as my brother if you pulled that stunt on me, pal. But out of respect for Y/N, I’m going to give you guys a minute. Seems to me you have some unfinished business to sort out first.”

Sam’s eyes soften when he accepts Bucky’s apology, moving back and forth between the two of you before returning his attention to his brother downing half a bottle of bourbon one of the attending guest’s handed him.

“If you would’ve read the letter,” Bucky says stripped bare of all confidence. He’s not the Brooklyn boy you used to know, neither is he the man that rose above expectations. He is just Bucky now, a fragmented figure laying in your arms on your wedding day. “Then you know what I wanted for you, for us. I would’ve followed you to Norway, hell, I would’ve followed you anywhere if it meant I could just be with you.”

“I am way out of line here, Y/N, and I have absolutely no right to do this to you. I had no right to use Nat as a rebound and I see that now. I was wrong, so wrong, but I am not going to let you do this. Over my dead body.”

Bucky releases a shuddering breath. “There’s nothing I would’ve given to see that perfect smile on your perfect lips, to see your face light up in laughter when I admit you’re right, that I did get into something that’s way over my head, like right now,” Bucky cries softly as you cry with him.

I’ve been wasting all this time Trying to keep you off my mind Yeah, you off my mind, no more I’ve been wasting all these nights Trying to keep you off my mind Yeah, you off my mind, no more

Part 12: August - Version 2

Part 13: the letters

Tagging: the ever-wonderful @beccaanne814-blog @kiwi71281 @a-little-hell-to-raise @unpredictable-firecracker @marvelingatthewonder @emilyinwonderland3 @mrshopkirk @oopsmybagofplums @hardcorehippos @iiharu-kunii @knittingknerdy @winterwolf57 @dontbeamenacetotheforce @winterboobaer @shamvictoria11@thedragonblood @hymnofthevalkyries @feelmyroarrrr @amrita31199

[surveysonfleek]

635.

5000 Question Survey Pt. 41

3901. What is the most annoying tv ad? idk, i hardly watch tv anymore. 3902. If you died, how would you hope others would remember you? for making them happy. 3903. Name 2 questions that you will most likely never say 'no' to: 1. do you want a massage? 2. do you want free tickets to (anything)? 3904. What is the softest part of your body? boobs lol. 3905. What family do you want to see in place of the Osbournes when they finally stop doing their show? none. never really got into those family reality shows.

3906. If you could pick 3 bands to go on tour together who would they be? meh, idk. solo artists would be cooler. 3907. What is a main differance between western and eastern philospohy? i don’t knowwwww. 3908. Would you be fooled by Joe/Josephine Millionaire? yeah but i wouldn’t let that stop me if i actually fell in love with them. 3909. Do you believe Michael Jackson does innoprpriate things at his Neverland Ranch? Like what? honestly, unless there’s solid proof i don’t think we’ll ever know.  3910. What do you think of gov. Ryan who cleared out Illinois' death row? idk anything about it. 3911. Would you want a $500 gift certificate to: Kmart or Target? either or, i’d gladly take it. Macy's or Hot Topic? macy’s. Border's Books or Spencer Gifts? borders. Victoria's Secret or Frederick's of Hollywood? vs. 3912. What do you think of this website: www.blackpeopleloveus.com/ feeling too lazy to click it lol. 3913. Man vs Elephant. A zookeeper was treating a constipated elephant. He gave her too much laxitive. Suddenly everything exploded out onto the zookeeper. He was knocked to the ground where he hit his head on a rock and got knocked out. There he suffocated under a pile of elephant dung. True story. Is it a funny story? If yes, what is funny about it? Why is it so taboo to laugh at death? i think it’s unfortunate. it’s not funny to joke about death. 3914. What are your favorite five things from this list: alternate realities, animals, astronomy, birds, camus, cats, cheap trick, cocaine, cooking, costumes, dancing, elvis, gambling, greta garbo, james dean, jeff buckley, joy division, marilyn monroe, mixed drinks, moody blues, morrissey, mozart, my bloody valentine, orbital, pizza, playing flute, prince, radiohead, rummy 500, scrabble, table tennis, talk talk, van morrison, writing cooking, mixed drinks, scrabble, gambling, pizza. 3915. Do you have to read lots to be able to write well? not always but it can definitely help expand your vocab. 3916. Vanilla ice. Everyone loved him, suddenly everyone hated him. What was the deal?? too young to have followed him. 3917. If you could kick one person out of the grammies who would it be (Avril, Eminem, etc)? taylor swift lmao. 3918. Studies have revealed that when sending out a resume a person has a 50% higher chance of getting a responce if their name is white sounding than if it is black sounding. What do you think about this? it sucks. it’s not even just ‘black sounding’, it’s just ‘ethnic sounding’. Why do companies respond this way? ask them. 3919. Should Big Fat Greek Wedding really be a Big Fat Greek sitcom? idk. 3920. What are you addicted to? sleep. 3921. What fascinates you? a lot of things. i’m easily amused lol. 3922. What is fascinating about you? idk :( 3923. Personality wise, is anything the same for all human beings and if so, what? we’re all conscious? idk lol. 3924. What kind of a contest woud you have a shot at winning? post your favourite travel photo and tell us why. lol idk. 3925. You see a dirty punk kid who had a giant cowboy hat on who is rolling his own cigarettes. Your impression? nothing. who am i to judge? 3926. What would you never want to have more than 2 of? cars. lol idk. 3927. Is there a movie you just could not finish watching? What and why? star wars, the one with natalie portman and hayden christensen. idk i was really young, everyone at school talked about how cool star wars was so my godmother took me to the movies and it was just way too long and boring. 3928. Is there anyone that you love and want to be around for no explainable reason? sure. 3929. Would you go to times square for new years? no, it’s a living nightmare in my eyes. only way i’d do it is if my hotel room overlooked times square lol. 3930. Do you think that there are to many signs blocking up the scenery? not really, it’s part of the appeal. 3931. Did video really kill the radio star? meh. 3932. What was your favorite atari game? idk. 3933. what is your favorite neon color? blue/purple. 3934. Do you get depressed eveytime it rains? If yes, why? no, i actually love it. i do feel a little gloomy if i have to go to work while it’s raining though. 3935. 'The more you admit that all your actions are robotic, the less robotic you are.' What does Tim leary mean by this? you’re acknowledging you’re being robotic so it suggests you’re actually conscious of it rather than just doing it without realizing. Do you agree or disagree and why? eh, neither. i don’t really relate to it. How much of your actions do you admit are robotic? not much tbh. 3936. Are we not men? i’m not. 3937. Is it easy to be you? Would being someone else make it any easier? it’s actually very easy to be me right now. 3938. Why are sex religion and politics such taboo subjects? too many conflicting opinions, that’s why. 3939. Is there really a differance between republicans and democrats? different beliefs. 3940. Imagine someone has a great personality, sense or humor, family and job. they also really really like you a lot. Would you consider dating them if they: were fat? limped? were a midget? had hiv? were paralized in one arm? had a glass eye? had only 6 months to live? i would honestly consider all of these. i’m not one to really analyse a situation if i start falling in love. 3941. What makes you experiance nostalgia? old photos, music, movies, memories etc. 3942. What do you remember about these historical figures: Woodrow Wilson? an american president? lol idk i’m not americans. Hellen Keller? she was both deaf and blind. amazing woman, google how she used to communicate with her carer, it’s awesome. Christopher Columbus? founder of places and shit. 3943. Out of the above three figures, one is a huge racist, one is a socialist and one is a slave trader. Can you guess which is which? Racist: no idea. socialist: slave trader: 3944. Betcha they didn't tell you that in american history. Wilson, Keller and Columbus are painted as heros, impossibly good, ideal people. Why are so many things ommitted from and lied about in american history text books? i’m australian, i wasn’t taught american history.  3945. Do you drink super caffinated energy drinks? no. 3946. eminem or moby? eminem. 3947. spongebob or the animanicas? animaniacs. 3948. Why do people rush to grow up only to wish they were a child again? idk. that’s just how life is. 3949. Why do people sacrifice their health to obtain moneya d then use the money to restore their health? i don’t think they realize they’re doing that. 3950. Jetsons or Flintstones? jetsons. 3951. What are you saving up for? a house. 3952. Would you rather improve your cooking, creativity, body,logic or charisma? body. 3953. Is it more important to have stregnth or speed? strength. 3954. What is your favorite thing to do each day? sleep. 3955. When you are driving do you ever feel like turning the car towards someplace unfamiliar and not comming back? no, i absolutely hate driving to places that i’m unfamiliar with lol. 3956. Have you ever gone to lunch at a job and never gone back to the job? no. 3957. What kind of a dining room set defines you as a person? a normal plate, knife, fork, spoon and glass lol. 3958. Kiss, with or without the make up? without is a lot easier. 3959. Madonna or Courtney Love? madonna. 3960. Are you down with james Brown? i only know one of his songs. 3961. Do you believe in miracles? not really. actually, sorta. 3962. Are you living a lie? no. 3963. If you had to give up one would it be caled ID or call waiting? call waiting. 3964. Are you ready to switch to an electric or solar powered car? i’d love to if i could afford it. 3965. What is the greatest band of the 90's? idk lol. 3966. What's the appeal of Alley Mcbeal? nothing. my mum did love that show though. 3967. Fill in the blank. ___ aint the kind of place to raise a kid. a casino. 3968. What song goes: starry eye surprise, sundown to sunrise, we're gonna dance all night to this dj' and who is it by? idk. 3969. What ever happened to the mtv vj Kennedy? no idea.  3970. if you could sing with one band for a day what band and what song would you want it to be? haha idk. 3971. Josie and the PussyCats or Jem? josie and the pussycats. 3972. Wouldn't oyu like to be a pepper too? no. 3973. Britney spears, school girl or sexy, which do you prefer? either or. the britney in toxic was fire. 3974. Would you get married on tv? no lol. 3975. Where do you go looking for the secrets of life? nowhere. i don’t care for secrets. 3976. What is the fuel for your soul? inspiration. 3977. Why do people watch american idol (I think it's for Simon)? no idea. 3978. What makes life sweet? being around people you love and doing things you love. 3979. What does it take to make a great band? chemistry. 3980. What do you think of when you hear the word 'devo'? devastated. 3981. What song or movie represents the 80's for you? the breakfast club. 3982. What song poem or other piece of writing would you want read when you died? not sure. 3983. Is a stable job home and family pretty much your goal or do you want more than that and WHAT? i would definitely want that and more. mostly happiness really. 3984. What tv show that is no longer on tv do you miss? the office! 3985. Remember when Chris from nirvana threw his bass in the air and hit himself in the head with it? nope. 3986. What commercial is really annoying you(almonds, want some almonds, you're a big fellow aren't you)??? i hardly watch tv. 3987. Nominate a rockstar for president: kanye lol. 3988. Who amazes you? myself haha. 3989. What's the best musical act to come outta your own country? another country? idkkkkk. 3990. Is your life glamorous and exciting? not at all. 3991. Greatest oldschool rap artist: tupac. greatest newschool rap artist: kanye or kendrick. 3992. DJ Jazzy jeff or Will Smith, which persona? will smith. 3993. Ever try yoga? no. i’d like to though. 3994. Are you a brick shit house? no. 3995. What products do you use? depends for what? i use a lot of products for different things. 3996. How good do you look? not good right now. 3997. Tonight you're going to party like_________ i’m about to sleep lol. 3998. Have you ever written a song? as a kid, yes. if yes did you record it? no. 3999. What would you like to have 999 of? $100 bills. 4000. Do you own a metal detector? no.

[orchestratedadventures]

“Sex Outside of Marriage is Selfish”

Why should I wait to have sex until marriage? Isn’t that just one of those religious rules I am taught to believe but really doesn’t apply anymore in our time and culture? What even are healthy boundary lines? Read on to learn about Danielle’s personal experience with these questions in light of her past and present relationships. 

“Having sex outside of marriage is a sin.”

“Drinking is a sin.”

“Cursing is a sin.”

This was how I heard and interpreted the Gospel for the majority of my life: a long list of rules and things I wasn’t supposed to do.

My whole life I grew up going to church. I had my First Communion, I was Confirmed, and I attended a Christian private school. I went to church on Sunday to make my mom happy, and while I could answer questions about the Bible, and knew right from wrong, I didn’t have a strong relationship with Jesus. I prayed in spurts, but not consistently and my prayers were always about my own wants and desires. 

When I started college on a soccer scholarship. I had never dated anybody, apart from the occasional movie date in high school.

I definitely had never been in love.

My sophomore year, I met Zach. He played football and I played soccer. We had all the same friends. He was charming, funny, and I was instantly attracted to him. I probably had a crush on him for 4 months before we started dating. We spent so much time together. He was truly my best friend.

Going into the relationship, I had never had sex before.

Growing up going to church, I knew you were supposed to wait until you were married, but I just thought that was old fashioned and no one really waited anymore. Whereas the church tells you to wait until marriage, the world tells you just to wait until you are ready- whatever “ready” looks like. For me, I felt like I would be “ready” when I was with someone I loved and cared about and knew cared about me. Zach and I were best friends before we ever started dating, so I felt comfortable with him early on. I just wanted security and wanted to be in a “committed” relationship.

Once I felt like I had that, Zach and I had sex.   

Zach and I dated for almost a full year. My identity was completely wrapped in him, and my mood was dictated based on how our relationship was that day. For the sake of making a very long story short, the last four months or so of our relationship had a lot more lows than highs. Zach ended up breaking up with me almost a week before what would have been our one-year anniversary. I was devastated. I will never forget sitting in his car and him telling me he wasn’t happy and didn’t want to be together anymore. My heart was shattered.

I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think. I felt so disposable.

It was the first time I realized that the “committed” relationship I so desired, really wasn’t so committed after all. All he had to do was say a few words, and he was out.

There are a lot of hard things about break ups. The one thing I had the hardest time with, was the thought of him being with someone else. It seriously made me want to die. When he eventually went on to date someone else, I had nightmares of them in bed together and would wake up with my heart pounding and drenched with sweat.

I began to think maybe there is a reason God tells us to wait, more than just an “old rule” to follow, but maybe a rule that brings us more life and less hurt.

After Zach and I broke up, I started going to FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes) and thought I would try working on my relationship with God and deal with my pain in a healthy way. It’s amazing to look back on that time of my life and see the ways God worked. I distinctly remember sitting in my bedroom thinking about how I wanted to go to FCA but didn’t want to go because I wouldn’t know anybody. My old teammate then texted me out of the blew inviting me to go with her. After that, I started going regularly.

It was at FCA that I heard the gospel in a way that I had never heard it growing up. For the time time, I understood that I am broken and Jesus was sent to this Earth to die on a cross paying the penalty for all of my sins so that I could stand before the Lord as holy and blameless and be in a relationship with Him. Entering a relationship with Jesus began (and still is) transforming every part of my life. My heart slowly began to align with His ways, in how I wanted to spend my time, who I wanted to spend my time with, and about dating relationships. I only wanted to surround myself with people who were going to push me closer to Christ and found myself less attracted to environments that pulled me away from Him.

As I began walking with the Lord, sex was one of the things I started to question. For so long I thought the pain I felt from my break up with Zach was normal, and that’s just the price you pay for love. It wasn’t until I built a relationship with the Lord that I discovered that the pain is preventable and isn’t a necessary “right of passage.”

I will never forget a specific relationship talk we had at FCA when Joe, our FCA leader, said “sex outside of marriage is selfish.” That line hit me like a school bus. I had never thought about that. Why does God say to wait for marriage? Because God created sex to bond two people for life, and when sex occurs outside of marriage, it is damaging. God created rules because he doesn’t want to see us hurt. After that talk, I started to really feel conviction about waiting to have sex again until I was married.

This is probably where a lot of questions come in, like “If you have already had sex, what’s the point of waiting?” Trust me, once upon a time I thought the same thing. I remember watching Sean Lowe’s season of The Bachelor (yes I am a Bachelor watcher) and quite frankly not understanding the whole “recycled virgin thing.” It didn’t make sense to me.

I then went on a mission trip with FCA over my senior spring break. I saw on that trip first-hand how selfless relationships look when they are centered around Christ and it made me want my life to look different in order to glorify Him.

It was the first time I began to not focus on what I couldn’t do if I followed Jesus, but what I could do. 

At this point, I knew I didn’t want to have sex again until I was married, with that, there came certain insecurities though.

“Is there even a guy out there who would want to wait?

“Am I worth waiting for?

While these insecurities were all lies, they were also hard to fight off.

Naturally, as the Lord changed my heart, my hearts’ desires changed, and who I was attracted to changed. I went on a dating hiatus for about six months before I started going on a date here and there, until …I met my now boyfriend Greg.

After my first date with Greg, I knew he went to church, listened to Christian podcasts, and the story of how he came to really know Jesus. I discovered the massive heart he has for the Lord. Greg is a leader in our relationship, and pushes me to know Jesus. I like the person I am with Greg.

What is crazy is in all my insecurity, I always questioned if any guy would wait,  and never thought I would meet a guy who felt as much conviction about sex as I did.

Greg and I didn’t talk about sex until about three months into our relationship, which might seem a little late, but he lives 2.5 hours away and to be honest in those first few months, we were never in a position where we needed to talk about it. We didn’t kiss until our fourth date, which was almost two months after we first met. When he came to visit me, he stayed at a friend’s house, or would sleep on my couch. Pretty much everything about Greg was different than my last relationship.

One night we were on the phone and got talking about past relationships and the topic of sex came up. I found out Greg has similar regrets that I have about sex. He said he wanted to wait, not only to honor God, but if we were to get married, it would be better for our marriage. The next thing that came up was boundaries. Not having sex is hard, but there are certain preventative measures you can take to make things easier. One thing we decided was to not sleep in the same bed. We also decided that honoring God meant abstaining from all sexual activity. I listened to a sermon one time that talked about sex and the minister said “When your bodies start preparing for sex, you have gone too far,” so to leave some things to the imagination, that is pretty much where we drew the line. I also want to add that Greg and I have been together for eight months now, and while we haven’t had sex, we haven’t been perfect and we struggle. It is something I am constantly praying about and something we regularly talk about. 

At the end of the day, my hope is not in abstaining from sex. Following rules is not what changed my life. My hope is in Jesus. Jesus is the one who transformed my heart and showed me how much better His ways are than mine. Choosing to wait until I am married is just an overflow of my love for Him.

So, where do you stand in all of this? These are the hard questions to think about and ponder but I encourage you to talk to a friend or mentor about it. Sex, intimacy, and relationships are all big topics and not ones to avoid or just accept the common cultural approach to. Dig in, be raw, and really start to discover what God has planned for you in the midst of it all.

from “Sex Outside of Marriage is Selfish”

[amandaelisablog]

Crime Shows and Bad Decisions

To Whom It May Concern:

 Salutations to you, I am going to delve into the many criminal shows that have been and still air today. More than likely you have spent time watching these programs and wonder  to yourself how these people manage to find themselves in these situations. At this point I find myself critiquing their poor decisions.

There are many out there and this is just a short list:

·         Forensic Files

·         48 hours

·         Homicide Hunter with Joe Kenda

·         Who The Bleep Did I Marry

·         America’s Most Wanted

·         Dateline

·         Snapped

·         American Justice

·         Killer Kids

·         Making A Murderer

·         Mommy Dead and Dearest

·         Disappeared

·         Nightmare Next Door

·         True Crime with Aphrodite Jones

·         I (Almost) Got Away With It

·         Scorned: Love Kills

·         Obsession: Dark Desires

Looking at these lists there are at least one or more that you might have seen. You could be like me and find the shows fascinating and learn the not to-do’s from the people telling their stories. Each show has it niche and they might deal with parallel issues but then they have different ways to tell a story. Forensic Files for instance deals with a variety of cases involving rape, murder, kidnapping, serial killers, faking deaths and cold cases. It is truly fascinating how they’re able to solve these cases with a simple fiber from a car to even plants just with their DNA and some smart investigations. 48 hours is just as it sounds, the first 48 hours is vital to find someone who has gone missing. This is actually very common with the police department and so on.

I don’t know if any of you have seen the case of Gypsy Rose Blanchard and her mother Claudine “Dee Dee” Blanchard? It is covered on Mommy Dead and Dearest and to most it seemed like an open and closed case. It was much more complicated than that and there are many who sit on either side of the fence. This is the story presented in this case; Dee Dee spent almost all of Gypsy’s life keeping her disabled. She made up all of her medical conditions and spent over a decade stuck in a wheelchair. She was on so many medications that they induced the symptoms of the supposed conditions which she used to make her look sick to gain favor with different organizations. Dee Dee kept her daughter’s age from her as well, even telling her father not to reveal her age because she was mentally that of a 5 year old though physically being 15 years old.  It was discovered throughout the story that Dee Dee had Munchhausen by proxy which is a disorder in which the caretaker will induce sickness to get attention and gifts. These gifts were expensive trips to Disney world and other vacations. Dee Dee had also stated they lost their home in hurricane Katrina, so the place the relocated to build them a home for free. Dee Dee kept her daughter hostage for most of her life, abused her for trying to get away, keeping her away from her father and lied to keep people from helping Gypsy. To add to this Dee Dee had been her own mother’s caregiver and let her starve to death. She even tried to poison her step mother. Gypsy had run away a few times and her mother always found her and would threaten her and abuse her for her actions. The conclusion of this sad tale is that Gypsy had her mother killed by her mentally ill boyfriend. People felt as though Gypsy had suffered all of her life and they didn’t want to put in prison for life, being that she had been a victim in a terrible situation. They gave her ten years and she’ll still have a chance when she gets out.  

Obsession: Dark Desires is a terribly creepy show. The lengths that some people with go to for those they become obsessed with. Most of these cases involve different varieties of stalkers, love struck employees, ex-boyfriends and next door neighbors. It’s a scary world nowadays because of the internet and how much we give free for people to use against us. Just know that if you have someone obsessed with you then you definitely want to go online and look up websites like Beenverified to remove your information from being purchased. There are a number of free ones where you can just go in a delete them completely. This prevents others from having access to your previous and current addresses your family members and so much more. This is so legitimate I have done this and it’s a load off my mind to have this information off of the web. I’m sure that there are more out there but if you’re dedicated them you’ll have peace of mind.

While on other shows one of the reoccurring themes are the cases of both men and women who meet a charming person and within a month they get married without the allotted time to get to know each other. It is then that the trouble slowly begins. They don’t give enough time to get to know each other; there isn’t time to get to know someone in just a month. Because of this these people come face to face with a real life monster. Worst yet the small glimpses shown they brush aside and let them go. We as people should be aware of anyone in our lives. I’m not telling you readers that you should be suspicious but just be aware and give time in a relationship to learn the ins and outs of the person you might fall for and spend your life with.

Personally and this is just me mainly because of the things I’ve seen and been through; background search, tests for possible STDs. People lie and that means everyone, they will tell you one thing and you later find that the person you lie beside is a complete stranger. If the person you plan to be with does truly love you then they will not have any problems with your request in looking into them. It goes both ways too and you can give them the same thing. Just think for a second if everyone did this there could be complete trust, more so than what you want to imagine. If you were able to really know the person you bring into your life things would work out better. A lot of these people want to rationalize that they just had to trust the person’s word and that was enough. It really isn’t though and this is the end of each episode especially in ‘Who The Bleep Did I Marry?’ where each person says they wished they had known and how devastating it had been. With a little bit of knowledge you could save yourself years of your life wasted if this person turns out to be a horrible person.

Once let’s say a woman named Jane gets married to John the light switch flips and he shows his true colors. At this point you’re tied together because of the marriage. What’s worse is when they have children together and the children are used or kidnapped by the spouse. Not enough people stop and plan these things out, yes sometimes there’s accidents but most of the time its poor protection and planning. People make the mistake of joining bank accounts, even if you trust the person completely it’s better for your relationship not to. Most successful couples will tell you that with this separation in accounts the couple can erase one possible issue that most couples have. Money can tear people apart, even the strongest couples. Now back to the case of Jane and John, she will feel as though it is what you do in a relationship is join together bank accounts adding your spouse to all your accounts. It is not a breach of trust to keep things separated. You stay equal in your relationship and still are able to share your money with one another.

When you first date someone they only show you the good side of them. It’s new and exciting and you want to make a great impression but you need to get to the core of this person. But as we learn from these shows it is unwise to take that at face value. They are wolves in sheep’s clothing and the victims don’t see it coming when they wolf tear their lives apart.

The worst one are the ones who don’t have a criminal record because their acts have never made it through the system. Some lie about their name and that’s what makes it harder. This makes it harder for you to dig deeper.

If you notice that something isn’t right use your instincts and get out. It will get worse and no matter how many times you rationalize it there has to be a time when you leave and save yourself and your children. There is a point when trying to make the marriage work falls off the list of priorities especially when it comes to abuse. I had just watched an episode of Who the bleep did I Marry and this husband was drugging his wife every night so that he could have sex with her unconscious body. She finds out about the drugging and confronts him and she basically said don’t do it again, not this is messed up stay away from me. He did it again and she stayed after that, it wasn’t until she finds the videos that she decided this was what would break her and cause her to make a solid decision. Another thing that just baffles me is the ones where the woman or man gets a glimpse into the real person that they are and then they’re proposed to, they actually say yes despite continued abuse and mistreatment.

I’m not going to lie here and say that I know everything or that I’ve ever been completely wise in my past. But now that I’m older and look back I at least can say once I saw the red flags I would walk away and keep myself safe. I’m glad for this though and it opened me up to finding someone perfect for me.

Keep your eyes and mind opened to the world around you don’t allow someone to put you down, criticize you, deceive you, or control your life. You’re an independent person and you can still be in a relationship even if it isn’t with this person not treating you well. You will have problems in any relationship, but use a wise mind to pick out and weigh what you can fix and what you cannot. Don’t just jump into marriage lightly just because they seem perfect at the time. Live together feel each other out and learn their quirks before marriage even becomes a thought. I suggest doing as I do and binge watch these shows, especially Who the bleep did I Marry? Do it you won’t regret it!

Be wise my dear readers.

 Sincerely

Amanda M