#anyway everything is connected and the bar scene says more in like 20 seconds than most episodes say in an hour

[hotshotsxyz]

5x11 meta - buck, eddie, and the bar scene

i just keep coming back to that moment in the bar when eddie notices buck, but buck doesn’t notice eddie, because for the life of me, i can’t think of a single other time that’s happened

we see eddie from buck’s point of view constantly, because buck always notices him. literally, eddie’s very first scene is a shot of buck noticing him, and it never stops

it happens again during the tsunami

and, most recently, in wrapped in red, just before eddie tells them he’s leaving the 118

this happens several other times in the show, but notably does not happen again before the bar scene. interestingly the only episodes i can think of that don’t quite fit this pattern are eddie begins and buck begins, but in both of those, the audience becomes aware of eddie’s presence at the exact same time as buck does

there are plenty of moments where eddie looks at buck and buck isn’t looking back, and vice versa, but buck always knows when eddie is there

so this moment, when eddie sees buck but buck doesn’t see him feels extremely significant to me

i specifically want to draw attention to the fact that, not only does buck not notice eddie in his vicinity, he also has his eyes closed for the entirety of the time the camera is focused on his face

buck has always seen eddie, literally and metaphorically, but this time he can’t

so what does this mean? maybe nothing, but i think this scene was more than just a way to show how isolated eddie feels right now. i think it’s also the apex of the distance between him and buck, and the absolute rock bottom of their relationship, and i’ll explain why

[the rest under the cut because this got long]

earlier in the episode, buck tries to get to eddie to talk to him, but eddie refuses and tells buck to move on. in the very next scene, buck asks bobby if he knew eddie wasn’t coming back which bobby confirms. when hen tries to reassure him that he will be back, buck responds with this:

"I don’t know. I had dinner with Eddie last night, and he seemed […] different."

at this point, buck appears to have given up on the idea that eddie is coming back, and maybe even on eddie himself. from here until the last scene of the episode, buck won’t talk to or about eddie again. notably, we don’t even see buck’s reaction to eddie on the comms during the truck rescue

so then we get to the bar scene, AKA: grocery store fight 2.0

i swear I'm going to explain

why is it grocery store 2.0? it isn’t a big blowout fight, but like the grocery store scene, it’s a complete breakdown of communication between buck and eddie that will lead to significant consequences for both of them (buck’s kiss with lucy, and eddie’s blow up at bobby)

let’s compare and contrast:

buck shows up at the grocery store, intending to apologize and re-establish communication with the 118

eddie shows up at the bar, presumably intending to spend time with the 118. now, it’s entirely possible that eddie has seen the 118 since the christmas party, but as far as the audience is concerned, this is the first time, and therefore also eddie’s attempt to reestablish communication with the 118 (and, given his earlier conversation with josh, and what we know he’ll ask for later, it’s not unlikely that he also intended to take back what he said to buck about moving on)

next, in the grocery store scene, eddie, who has always been level headed with buck, yells. buck quickly becomes defensive and the fight escalates, but it’s clear neither of them is hearing what the other is saying. the conversation is cut off by the cars in the parking lot before there can be any resolution

in the bar scene, buck, who we’ve established has always seen eddie, has his eyes closed. eddie, initially hopeful, notices buck and the others having a seemingly great time without him and quickly becomes dejected and leaves, ending the "conversation" before there can be any resolution

on the surface, this seems pretty different, but underneath, it’s exactly the same

to explain that, though, we need to talk about the last time eddie’s mentioned in the episode: when ravi mentions that eddie was at the bar, and buck says

"I texted him. I just… thought he was a no-show."

to which ravi replies that he saw eddie in the parking lot, and eddie blew him off. buck says that’s "weird" and wonders aloud what’s going on

this exchange is vital because it changes the bar scene from a one sided breakdown of communication to a two-sided one.

presumably, when eddie sees buck laughing in the bar, he comes to the conclusion that buck has indeed moved on, and is fine without him, which is a conclusion the audience might come to at this point as well, because of the conversation he had with bobby and hen earlier. eddie takes this as a rejection and leaves. the audience, however, doesn’t, and it quickly becomes apparent that everything buck’s displaying on the surface is just that – a facade, concealing how wrong everything is underneath. it’s not until the scene with ravi at the end, though, that the misunderstanding is confirmed, because despite having "moved on" (not really) buck is the one that invited eddie to the bar, and buck, just like he did at the beginning of the episode, still wants to know "what’s going on [with eddie]"

we get less, overall, of buck’s side of this silent conversation, but i think there are a few things we can infer. first, buck more than likely texted eddie after the call with the truck bomb. second, eddie almost certainly never responded. had eddie said he was coming, then not shown up without a word, buck would have worried, and at the very least, mentioned his concerns to someone. on the other hand, had eddie said he wasn’t coming, buck wouldn’t have had to make an assumption about eddie being a no show; he would have known.

on buck’s side of things, then, this is a reinforcement of what eddie said earlier, that he’s moved on, and buck should too. we know this to be incorrect, because just a few scenes later, eddie will indicate to christopher unambiguously that he hasn’t moved on, and doesn’t want to

returning to our grocery scene comparison, what we end up with is:

in the grocery store scene, eddie says [i miss you and im hurting without you] but buck hears [you left and now you can’t come back]

in the bar scene, buck says [i want you to be here, but you told me to move on so i won’t push too hard] and eddie hears [i moved on, just like you said. i’m fine without you]

in the grocery store scene, buck says [i miss you and i need to you to understand that i only wanted to come home] and eddie hears [my job is more important to me than my relationship with you]

in the bar scene eddie says [i want to be here with you, but i don’t belong here anymore and you’re fine without me] and buck hears [i’ve moved on, just like i said. i’m fine without you]

not so different after all, huh?

so this leaves us at the end of the episode, with buck and eddie farther apart than they’ve ever been, and, most likely, the farthest apart they’ll ever be again

why?

[spoilers for 5x13 ahead]

because the next time buck and eddie have a real conversation after the grocery store fight, they come back together stronger than ever. and based on interviews and promos,  the next time buck and eddie have a real conversation after the bar scene is going to be when eddie breaks down and buck is in the room

they’ve been stretching buck and eddie like a rubber band all season, and the bar scene in 5x11 is the farthest apart they can go without breaking apart completely or snapping back together

eddie was always soft with buck, but after he uncharacteristically yells in the grocery store scene, he becomes infinitely softer, starting with ‘i forgive you’ and culminating in, you know, all of season four

buck has always seen eddie, so it stands to reason that now, after uncharacteristically closing his eyes (moving on), he’ll be able to see eddie more than ever, which is to say, he’ll see everything eddie’s been trying to hide. it’ll be explosive and emotional, and might even result in an actual fight, but everything that happens from here on out will be part of what brings them back together, not what pushed them apart

this, finally, is the resolution not only of the miscommunication from the bar scene, but also of the conversation on the balcony in which eddie says

"Or you don’t know her the way he does. When you think of your sister, you see this person you’ve always looked up to. The woman who’s taken care of you. But maybe that’s not who she is right now. This time, maybe she’s the one who needs taking care of."

and funny thing about the balcony scene?

buck couldn’t see eddie properly then, either

[anxiouslyfred]

Blackberry Delivery Service

Summary: Where soulmates get plants that reflect what is done to each of them at unpredictable time of their lives, schools teach it’s about maturity. Virgil has known this is wrong since he got his plant at the young age of 8.

Remus never learns this before the night everything goes wrong gets followed by a day out of Roman’s daydreams.

/\/\

Nobody had figured out yet how the delivery service worked. There were classes in schools covering the history of soulmates and the plants connected to them which could go over how when people roamed the lands or lived in small villages and tribes they'd be drawn to the plants when they were ready for it. That still happened in a lot of the indigenous cultures, where spending time among nature was a larger part of their way of life.

For the people in cities though a delivery service had opened with the advent of a postal service. When a person became ready to care for their plant it would be delivered at a time they were alone at home and then the van would disappear for somewhere else. No base was known of for the Soulmate plants delivery, nor any greenhouses and plenty of legends surrounded the vans but nothing could get confirmed.

Virgil had read everything he could about them regardless. Originally it was dreaming that he'd get his plant one day and learn how he can find his soulmate with it. Receiving it when he was just 8 years old had grown the interest into the reasons people claimed they got their plants.

What schools taught was that if you are mature enough to care for someone, or something, living other than yourself and put their needs on the same level as your own then the plant would be delivered. The forums and multitudes of orphanages and care homes gave out different lessons, leaflets filled with personal stories about people getting their plant so they had something to look forward to, a reassurance there was somebody out their for them.

That was why Virgil received his plant. His parents had busy jobs and rarely spared a thought for their son, so long as he was fed, clean and his clothes were the good quality expected of reasonably wealthy parents. He'd gotten lonely and used to being ignored, or a second thought to everyone but the blackberry bust he received was a promise that wouldn't continue forever.

And that was how he continued on, looking after the plant and trying its best to help it grow. The thorns were longer than a normal blackberry bush and grew in a higher number but the berries were a wonderful balanced of sweet and tangy. It was soon Virgil's favourite treat, as long as the berries came from his soulmate plant. If only he could tell his soulmate was looking after theirs as well, but nothing changed except what Virgil did to the plant.

/Years Later for Remus\

It had taken far too long for Remus to save up the money for his own flat. Still, 10 times fired is 20 people he knows can't accept who he is, and he could finally move out from Roman's apartment.

He'd thought there could be a celebration, him and his brother having a game night or something to mark the achievement. Sure Remus would have liked to do more than that, go to a bar, or maybe bowling and see how many innuendos and dirty jokes he could make around it, but with Roman back in rehearsals a night in, getting him settled into the flat would have been nice.

Instead they argued, Remus hurt over the dismissal Roman gave. “I can't just fritter away hours with you. This could be a big break for me if it gets the presses attention so I have to be responsible for my time.”

“It's one night, Ro. One night to get that stick out of your arse, loosen up and just be silly again. Fuck, we could find an adventure on a hike and play dragons and princes again like we used to. Toast the fact I'm making it on my own now.” Remus had pleaded, just needing something to mark the change.

“Yeah and then in a month, possibly two, you'll be asking for an adventure or night out to celebrate you moving straight back in.” Roman scoffed, dismissing the idea and Remus's long standing dream of independence in one sentence.

Remus had slammed the door to his flat open then. He'd made the offer when they finished moving all his stuff over to the apartment and there was something darkly satisfying that he could now actually kick Roman out now. “Fuck you, Get the hell out of here! You've watched how fucking hard I've worked to get this and now you think I'm going to throw it all away for what?” He made no attempt to keep his voice down, too hurt and angry to care.

“Yeah, cause you're so mature. You haven't even received a plant to look after yet.” Roman had started to protest but as soon as Remus's missing plant was mentioned he was getting manhandled out of the door.

“I'm blocking you everywhere. I fucking trusted you!” Remus screamed, throwing cushions from the sofa at the door as soon as he'd slammed it shut, locking it behind Roman.

Remus had tried. He'd done everything he could think of to be mature enough to get that soulmate plant, but it still hadn't been delivered. Every day he hoped that perhaps finally it would come; that whatever spirits created and delivered the plants would finally realise he was ready for the soulmate plant.

He'd even kept a garden on the balcony at Roman's house. That was Remus's space and he'd kept it alive, thriving even. Every plant he'd had there had now found a place on window sills around the apartment, as specified to their requirements as Remus could manage.

For Roman to have thrown his missing soulmate plant back at him was too far, and his brother should have known that. It had turned the first night in his apartment which Remus had been so excited to finally afford from being a celebration to one of near destruction.

Remus had agreed with fix and redecorate the apartment for a reduced rent so he decided to move the screaming in his brain to chipping the cracked tiling away from the walls of the bathroom. The landlord had offered it when learning he was a joiner after his most recent building course. With every strike he wished it was a stem he could yank away from Roman's lavender bush, make him realise just how it felt to be missing something everyone insisted was important.

Mud, plants and carpentry could only get Remus so far until he was collapsing onto his new bed, and the tears came.

A new home, but an even lonelier life than before now he couldn't face the last person to try and stick with him again.

/A New Day Comes\

Remus thought the knock on his door must be Roman, trying to apologise or just explain himself. There were always more explanations from Roman than spoken apologies. The apology was shown in his behaviour and the time he cut himself off.

He definitely didn't expect the knock to be a blackberry bush and a van driving out of sight.

An apartment with no balcony or attached garden was probably the worst possible place Remus could try to grow blackberries, but he didn't have much choice, not over what his soulmate plant was, or where it could grow. There was at least a large window in his bedroom that he could find space for it in.

Remus gave it a small smile as he carried it through, leaving it at the foot of his bed for a moment. “Well I guess you were finally ready to come to me then. You just wait here while I shift some of your new friends around to give you a nice spot to rest in.” He says, stroking the leaves lightly before turning away.

“This isn't the ideal space for you, I know, but it's what I have and what's mine is yours, Buddy. Well for you and all my other plant friends of course. I don't care if your connected to my soulmate, these guys get all my love just as much as you do.” Remus was rambling, still mostly talking to the blackberry bush but nuzzling into the other plants he had as they were moved, some closer together and a couple taken to one of the other windowsills.

“I'm no more mature than I was yesterday so it seems like the teachers were just saying more bullshit to us all. Wonder why you're actually here though. Unless it's because I'm completely alone in the world now, and this is all just a complete scam. What makes me being completely alone the trigger when Roman got his years ago after a night moping that he's never be someone's hero?” They'd still been living with their parents when that happened, but now Remus was focused on being lied to by schools.

He shook his head, moving the bush to the new spot. “Maybe I should have tried mixing those chemicals in science labs given everything else they've lied over. I bet it wouldn't have caused anything fun to happen anyway. Now Buddy, you need a frame or some support to hook onto and then I want to start checking online if there are any people around caring for blackberry bushes. If my soulmate already has you then I'm gonna be telling them off for not caring for you properly. Lack of gardening knowledge does not mean you're unable to research a singular plant.”

Remus fell to humming as he started rooting through the boxes that hadn't yet been unpacked for his gardening supplies. He'd need to trim the bush a bit and get it tied onto a frame. There was plenty of time before he had work to get that done.

/Over to Virgil\

After growing up with his blackberry bush, Virgil never expected anything to change with it. He wasn't sure if that was because his soulmate was content to let him look after it or if they just hadn't received their plant yet.

This morning was proving they probably hadn't received it until now and were very knowledgable about how to look after their plants. Virgil had watched as the canes were cut, thorns trimmed away in the busier areas of the bush and then as a frame appeared in the pot, stalks being tied to it from the bottom upwards.

It had been a relaxing if confusing scene to watch but Virgil hadn't wanted to look away. There was evidence he had a soulmate and apparently one who's a very avid gardener.

Part of him wanted to cheer, to dance around his home screaming for joy. He had a soulmate out there, and now their plants were more identifiable than the wild growth that was all Virgil understood enough to achieve. There was a chance he could one day find someone who wouldn't just be talking to him for his family name, or in the hopes of getting a higher role in his mother's business.

It just made Virgil want to go out and start actually trying to find whomever they were, but what if they were annoyed that he hadn't taken better care of their plant? What if they had their life all put together and only cared about the plant because soulmates were meant to be important to them and he'd just disappoint them?

There were hundreds of what if questions that Virgil was now coming up with, stilling his hands as he went to search the 'match my plant' websites there were.

Instead he just double checked his Blackberry bush was watered enough and drew a V in the soil, washing his hands before finally heading into the restaurant his parents wanted checking on today. They'd decided Virgil should have a role as site inspector for the restaurants while they were refurbished or put together for a new site opening at some point and Virgil didn't mind the role. It gave him the chance to meet normal people in the builders, electricians and other skilled jobs as well as avoid special treatment from the restaurants staff since most of the time they'd never meet him officially.

Today the site was having fitted counters installed as well as the tables secured for the private booths. Virgil would really just be checking everything looked right and hoping to avoid chatting to the joiner for too long.

“Hey there, Are you the boss man for the site?” There was a man in fluorescent overalls trying to peer through the windows of the restaurant, knocking on them as Virgil walked up to it.

Most of the builders had been given the morning off so they didn't get in the way but the actions of the man had Virgil checking the time and realising he'd set off late after watching his plant get looked after. “Yep, that's me. Sorry I ran a little late. It seems like my soulmate has gotten their plant and was doing a lot of gardening for it this morning. I got distracted watching it.” The explanation was far more than the joiner needed to know, but it felt deserved given Virgil was late.

“Cool thing, Patches. I got mine this morning too. Must be a busy day for the delivery guys. You planning on letting us in or should I break a window and replace it on my way out?” The man had walked back to the van that was parked on the pavement in front of the restaurant as he spoke, but leaned back to wink at Virgil when he suggested the vandalism.

Virgil shook his head, snorting a little at the idea. It didn't seem serious so he wasn't going to treat it as such. “First, I'm gonna need to see some ID, preferably your traders license. Can't just trust people who ask if I run the building without introducing themselves at all.” He did pull the keys out of his pocket though, waiting beside the door as the other bounced back over.

“Well, I'm Remus, here's my card, call me whenever for whatever cause a body like yours I ain't gonna refuse.” Remus definitely checked Virgil out as he spoke but still handed over his license, a business card behind it that Virgil pocketed.

Unlocking the door, he shook his head again. “I'm Virgil and will need to call the company doing the rest of this place to complain about the state they've left it in. Sorry it seems to be chaos. I did order them to leave it clear yesterday but apparently my instructions were ignored.”

Remus didn't seem to care, already carrying various boards and his toolkit, just making large steps over any equipment or items left in his way. “I got a blackberry bush this morning. You said you thought your soulmate had got theirs today too so what's yours?”

“Oh, yeah, same. It's blackberries too. I've been scared that I'll hurt it if I do anything though so have mostly left it to grow its own way once I got a mini greenhouse to look after it in.” Virgil agreed, pulling his phone out, and falling into mumbles over how to make the call.

It was only moments later when Virgil looked up to actually double check the number, ever doubting his phone had saved it correctly, that he realised Remus had frozen and started watching him, large siding board still balanced on his shoulder. “Did I say something wrong? Is there something I need to raise as a big issue to like health and safety that I've missed?” He asked.

Remus bounced between his feet for a moment, almost falling before he remembered the siding and leant it against the wall. “No Dude, but like, does your plant look something like this now?” He pulled his phone out while speaking, flicking through a few screens before showing a picture of Virgil's blackberry bush, except it was surrounded by dozens of other plants on a windowsill that was in dire need of fresh paint and probably new frames all together.

“That's – That is my plant! Even down to the frame that appeared!” Virgil exclaimed, almost snatching the phone away to look closer at the picture. “I watched everything getting trimmed and tied onto the frame this morning.” He muttered, all thoughts of scolding the builders leaving his mind in the moment.

“So you're my soulmate then?” Remus asked after a minute of waiting for that connection to be made.

Virgil didn't think his eyes could get any wider or that he could be any more shocked than he already was, but that sentence would have managed it. “Well, must be, this is my plant so yeah.” He nodded frantically through the explanation.

He was a bit confused when Remus's expression darkened to a scowl. “This entire soulmate thing is fucked up. Nothing against you but is this stupid damnable universe telling me I had to go through losing or falling out with everyone I know only to get my plant and meet my soulmate on the same fucking day? It's ridiculous and stupid. If it wanted to pull this fairytale bullshit with anyone it should have been with Roman. This feels like he's fucking writing the story of my day just to spite me after throwing everything I've been trying to do back in my face yesterday.” The rant had Virgil backing away a little, sitting down on one of the benches as Remus carried on.

“I did every fucking thing I could to be whatever stupid ideal of mature this world wants before letting people have their plants for years! I scraped through course after course, job after job just trying to find one which I could make a career out of, earn enough to get even a ratty apartment I need to fix up for the landlord and then have the universe fucking telling me to speed run the entire process. Not just, hey Remus, you can finally have the soulmate plant to look after since you've been looking after your hundred plant babies so well, but hey Remus, you brother is a fucking bastard so you're all alone but here's a plant and hey, here's your entire fucking soulmate too.” Remus was screaming at the walls, the ceiling, anywhere that wasn't Virgil, looking like he was two steps from destroying the next thing he looked at closer to ground level.

Virgil usually felt panicked by watching displays of anger like this in real people. He'd usually do everything he can to get out of that situation but instead he just listened and waited, learning more from the rant than he'd expected to.

The yelling must have been audible from outside or something because there was soon a knock on the window of the restaurant, although Remus didn't seem to hear it. He did notice when Virgil stood though, falling quiet to watch him as though expecting him to say something.

With a gesture to the door Virgil went to open it, only to blink as someone almost identical to Remus stood on the opposite side, holding what he guessed might have been a peppermint plant. “Hi, um, sorry if I can't do this, but Remus hasn't been answering my calls and had mentioned doing some work here today. Is he still around?” The man asked, shifting to try and see further into the store.

“Who are you, first? And what's with the plant?” Virgil held a hand up to keep them outside, raising an eyebrow at their discomfort.

“His brother, Roman. I said something I really shouldn't have and have come to beg for forgiveness. The plant is part of my apology.” With that explanation, especially following the rant he'd just heard Virgil held one finger up before shutting the door in his face.

Remus seemed to have started getting his work tools out now his rant had been cut off when Virgil sat down again. “So that was some rant you had there and given I've had my blackberry bush since I was 8, I might be able to explain what actually seems to be the time the plants come to us. Before that though, are you going to start screaming again if I say there's someone at the door holding a plant and asking if you're here so they can beg for forgiveness?” He explained, watching as Remus turned to him and then deflated.

“He literally said I wouldn't last more than a couple months in my new apartment before having to live with him again, threw the fact I hadn't got my plant yet in my face last night and is now trying to apologise with a fucking plant?” Remus muttered, but sighed as he stood up.

Roman was let in silently and he seemed to watch Remus as if expecting something to be said first. Remus was watching his brother just as carefully, before glancing over to Virgil.

“Seriously. Are we sure the universe hasn't stolen one of Roman's stories and decided to dump me into it?” He asked, taking the peppermint from Roman and placing it in front of the window.

“I have literally known Roman for all of 2 seconds so have no clue what those stories might be like to say.” Virgil pointed out, knowing his expression was probably reflecting how crazy he found the question to be.

Remus rolled his eye, “I see no prostrating yourself on the floor to beg for forgiveness. This apology so far sucks worse than Mrs PeePee's apple sorbet.” He glanced over to Roman who was looking between them confused.

“Yes, of course dear Brother, except there isn't exactly space on the floor for that to be possible. I spoke entirely out of turn yesterday and should have never even considered speaking to you the way I have done. You have my deepest apologies and I swear that I will do everything I can to help make it up to you. In fact I would be honoured if tonight you'd accompany to the indoor mini golf course that's opening on the edge of town. It's rainforest themed and I hear rumours they've included a swamp area.” Roman bowed as he was speaking, actually glancing around to see if it was safe for him to kneel.

Virgil couldn't help snickering at it though, and Remus was soon to join in the laughter. “Let's all go actually. I need to know if this idiot is entertaining beyond cheap jokes and loud rants to tell the universe off.” Virgil agreed, before glancing at the sideboard and the time. There was still a couple of hours before the rest of the builders should arrive, hopefully enough time for Remus to do some of the work he was actually here for.

“Sure, you're forgiven and I think the universe has done pretty much everything I would have asked you to do or try to do already.” Remus agreed, jumping over a few things back to where he would be fitting the counters. “By the way, this is my soulmate and I got a blackberry bush this morning. Only figured that it was the same as his like 10 minutes before you got here.”

“Was that what the screaming was about? I thought someone was injured?” Roman asked, moving to the bench when Virgil shrugged and patted it.

Virgil snorted. “Yeah, Remus has a few things to say to whatever does soulmates about how today has gone for him. Not sure the universe listens to people screaming in restaurants-to-be though.”

Eventually Virgil would get Roman to share one of the stories Remus had kept referencing and had to agree: The day they met really did seem to come out of Roman's imagination.

[mrcurrygoestospain]

Camino De Santiago - Round 5

Spain travel log, 2021…

Day One:

September 20 - Depart Seattle for Madrid, by way of London. There were plenty of issues just getting to this point. In addition to the ongoing concerns over COVID-19, or perhaps because of them, I had some serious concerns about whether I could and whether I should do this trip at all. In the end, I think I simply realized that it was totally appropriate for me to go on this trip: I’ve been “responsible” and taken the full round of vaccinations, generally avoided social contacts with people and been diligent about the masks. So I made my reservations and thought everything was fine. About 2 weeks before takeoff, I got an email from Iberia that one of my flights had been changed. When I looked into it, I found that it was the connecting flight from London to Madrid and the schedule had been bumped up by about 6 hours taking me from having a 2 hour layover in Heathrow to needing to be on a plane for Madrid 4 hours before I actually landed in London and would be able to board it… It took attempts at phone calls over several days to get this corrected. Finally, I tried while I was at top work one morning around 5:00 am. I finally got through and a nice lady helped rebook my connecting flight. She found the only available flight on that day that would work; now I have a seven hour layover.

I prepped for my trip, checklists and routes planned. I arrived at the airport 3 hours early, just in case. Although I booked with Iberia, it was a British flight. So standing in line at the BA counter in SeaTac, I saw the sign: “All passengers must show proof of a negative COVID test.” What? I’d already checked multiple times; I only need proof of vaccination to get into Spain. I check the internet. Sure enough, if you’re on a layover in England, you need a negative test…A quick Google search helped me find a testing center at SeaTac airport, so I rushed down to baggage claim number nine to see if I could get a test in time. In all honesty, I really thought I wasn’t going to make it and I’d have to try to contact the airline again to find a way to reschedule my flight. I stood in the line for what seemed like forever, but finally had the privilege of paying $250 for a rapid COVID test. T- minus 2 hours 30 minutes to departure and they promised results in 1-1.5 hours. The test itself was relatively painless. After all of the horror stories I’d heard about the nasal swabs, I was a bit worried. But it didn’t hurt, it just tickled a little bit. I waited, and waited…it seemed like they would never have my results. While I waited, I heard stories from other travelers who had missed flights or rebooking because of these ridiculous COVID-related requirements. One young Canadian lady I spoke to shared that she’d spent over $1000 on COVID tests in the last month due to traveling. I guess my $250 wasn’t so much.

I finally got my negative test results and rushed back to the check in counter, filled out the required government forms and headed through security. The flight was delayed.

After a nine hour flight to London, I had seven or eight hours to kill in Heathrow Airport, Terminal 5, before boarding my flight to Madrid. I shopped, I ate, I listened to podcasts. I took a few naps and generally cursed British Airways for changing my original flight. Some Italian guy made quite a scene at the boarding gate for the flight to Madrid. The gate agent handled it quite well and passive-aggressively punished him for his demeanor.

I arrived in Madrid after an easy flight on Iberia, made my way to the metro and on to my Hostel. It was a nice enough place. After 28 hours of travel, I was ready for a shower and bed.

Day 2:

On my one day in Madrid, I walked from my hostel/hotel to the Museo Nacional del Prado. It’s Spain’s greatest art museum. This was my second time there and I spent a lot more of it. There are so many amazing pieces and, for someone who used to truly despise art, it was amazing. I highly recommend it. I haven’t been to a whole lot of art museums, but it is, by far, my favorite. I followed that with a walk through the Royal Botanical Gardens. I’m sure they’re great when all of the flowers are blooming, but in early fall, it’s just a lot of green. Either way, it was still peaceful. I visited another nearby park, walked around and viewed the statues, and then made my way back towards the hotel and passed it to go to the Cathedral opposite the royal palace. It’s a much more modern cathedral than the ones I’ll see on the Camino, but still impressive.

Day 3:

On the morning of the third day, I got up early and got packed. Took the metro to the train station and purchased a ticket to Leon. After two hours on the train, I took a 20 minute walk to the hotel and dropped off my bag, and then spent the next few hours wandering the city. I found a barber and got a haircut for 9 Euro, quite a bargain. Stopped at the “Taste of America” shop to get a bottle of hot sauce (Cholula, of course), and just meandered around the city until I could get checked in at the hotel. It was a pretty uneventful day, which is just what I needed. I was still very tired from all of the traveling and trying to swap schedules.

Day 4:

I got up late, around 8:00 AM and started walking the city. I stopped for a cafe con leche and met a Scottish couple who had been walking the Camino for the last few weeks. While we waited out the rain under cover, the shared with me some of their other walking adventures, including tales of walking through the Swiss Alps on the Via Francigena, a pilgrimage route to Rome. I may have to look into that for a future trip. I also shared with them my plans/considerations of taking a walk on the “Great Glen Way” in Scotland. The wife had already done this and highly recommended it, along with the West Highland Way. Both are approximately 5-day walks through some of the wild country of Scotland. When the rain let up, we parted ways and I went to tour the Cathedral, toured the Basilica of Saint Isidore and wandered around town, shopping and eating. Inside the Saint Isidore museum and basilica, i had the opportunity to see what is referred to as the “Sistine Chapel of Romanesque Art” as well as a gold and silver cup that some historians claim is the “holy grail.”

Day 5:

Didn’t sleep much…I forgot how much they like to party in Spain. It was LOUD all night long. Anyway, started my walk. Today was about 27 km and it rained through about 50% of the day. It was a mix of roads and dirt tracks. I only saw one other pilgrim, a Spaniard who doesn’t speak any English. I got ahead of him and had stopped for a rest at a picnics table on top of a mountain. He showed up a few minutes behind me and I tried to chat for a minute, but the language barrier…. I offered him half of my tangerine and then he took off again. I passed him up later. I had been slightly worried about where to stay for the night as the municipal albergue in this province/state are currently closed due to the ‘Rona, but when I got to town I found a pension with rooms available. The lovely lady named Susana showed me to a room and also worked tirelessly to make me a reservation for the following night. I hadn’t eaten much for the day, so I ordered big: hot dog and patatas oil bravas. Patatas bravas is a traditional dish in Spain which is made of fried potatoe cubes that are covered in a (typically) spicy tomato sauce. Potatoes Ali Oli are the same fried potatoes but with a garlic cream sauce instead of the spicy sauce. This one combined both sauces. It was nice. The inside of the restaurant/bar/cafe was very loud with a bunch of men playing a card game I’m not familiar with, so I went outside to have a beer. An older Spaniard, named Hilario, came out and started trying to talk to me. I explained that I am American and I don’t speak much Spanish, but he disagreed. So he went inside and got another man, a Hungarian who had been in Spain for the last 25 years, named Fernanco(?) who was extremely drunk, to come out and talk to me. He was so drunk, he introduced himself as “muy borracho” or “very drunk” and the proceeded to tell me that he used to be a muy Thai fighter and a coal miner and now he was just a fat drunk who collected money from the government because he got hit in the head too many times. At least I THINK that’s what they were saying…. I went to bed early to get a good rest and let my aching feet and hips recover before a long day tomorrow….from La Robla to Poladura, should be about 25km or so with some very intense climbs. We’ll see.

I’m currently on the Camino San Salvador, which is a route from Leon to Oviedo. They say “whoever goes to Santiago without visiting Oviedo, goes to the servant but not to the Lord.” This is because Oviedo is famous for having a specific relic. While most people are aware of the Shroud of Turin, which is the burial cloth of Jesus, many don’t know (including me, until recently) that traditional Jewish burial included placing a cloth over the face of the deceased immediately after death and until the body was prepared for burial. This cloth would then be removed and the full-body cloth would be applied. So anyway, this Cathedral boasts possession of the face covering that was placed over Jesus’ head, likely immediately after the spear pearled his side and before he was brought down off of the cross. Once I complete the Camino San Salvador (about 5 days, I hope), I will continue on to the Camino Primitivo, one of the many Camino’s de Santiago. So the Camino San Salvador goes to the relics of Christ and the Camino Santiago (Santiago = Saint James) goes to the resting place and remains of Saint James (the major), also known as “Santiago Matamoros” or “Saint James the Moor Slayer”, the patron saint of Spain.

[ramblefang]

Rabbit Town; BNA ep 2

 “Previous Post

Preface

My previous (and first) post of these BNA first impressions ended up being more rambly than even I want to be. Most of that was due to me retelling events, which I was actually doing to help me remember what happened in the episode. So instead, I’m going to try just going through the episode again in another tab and using timestamps (which I think is the norm for this sort of thing anyway.) This technically means I’ll be writing down my second impressions, but I’d really prefer my first watch of episodes to not be interrupted every minute by me needing to tab out and write something. I’ll still try to remember and write out my first impressions anyway.

(Hmm, Netflix doesn’t seem to provide a precise timestamp. Guess I’ll just approximate things by mousing over the...runtime...bar thing.)

Cold Open

0:15 Starting off right where the last episode ended: Michiru saying that she’s human.

0:22 Shirou says she’s a tanuki, based on the appearance of her tail. She seems offended by the idea. My best guess is that her reaction has to do with what tanuki are famous for: having huge balls. (Also they’re magical spirits, which may or may not have something to do with the powers Michiru has.)

0:45 The police arrive and it seems Shirou is a known entity. Gives me Batman vibes. Is Shirou a vigilante? And in that way where the police are just used to it by now?

Opening

0:50 The OP starts and I notice the strands of DNA. Makes me think of how Michiru apparently changed species, and also the way there is some pharmaceutical company behind the very existence of Anima-City. Oh, and I just got that “BNA” is basically a pun on DNA.

1:30 Last time I had recalled something about shadowy feral transformations, but it looks like Michiru transforms into something more equine than anything else. (With what I know from later in the episode, she definitely seems to be a shapeshifter, which I think is appropriate for a tanuki.)

1:40 Oh, and there’s still totally something about this vocal melody that reminds me of “Bad Apple.” Admittedly, it’s been years since I actually listened to that song, so maybe I’ll have to go compare them later.

Forms

2:00 A detail spoiled by the OP: apparently beastmen have human forms that they can switch to, yet Michiru can’t. Honestly, it sort of looks like she’s stuck in a halfway state—a kemonomimi for the most part, though with the nose and “mask”

2:10 Shirou appears surprised, and possibly skeptical, about Michiru being unable to switch forms, indicating that it is by far the norm to be able to do so

2:35 Ah, by the way Michiru speaks about it, switching forms seems to be common knowledge even among humans. Shirou says “Quit talking like a human” in response to the idea that they’re always in beast form, which means this is a common human misconception (and this comes up later as well, illustrating how Michiru really comes across as human in little ways).

2:45 Bystanders seem to be paying special attention to Michiru, likely to her form. (This sets up what happens later over her inability to assume a human form)

Cooperative

3:00 A lot about this scene speaks to me as a trans person: someone running tests that “prove” someone’s identity and insisting that what they see on the surface is all there is to the truth

3:35 Michiru says she must be afflicted with a “disease”, reminding me of the worries I had about a pharmaceutical company being behind the city and how there may be a darker purpose involving a “cure.” Unsettlingly, Michiru also isn’t far off from saying that being a beastman—the very existence of beastmen—is itself a disease. (Mind, she doesn’t literally say that, but based on things she says at the end of the episode, it may not be too far off from how she actually feels—right now.)

4:00 Back to trans stuff, this reminds me of how being trans was, as a whole, labeled as “Gender Identity Disorder”, categorized as a mental illness rather than a natural state of being. (Also, I’m currently building a headcanon of Michiru being a trans girl. Not only because of this stuff, but also due to how she reacted to being called a tanuki: I can interpret her as feeling gender incongruence/dysphoria over the big balls thing.)

4:30 Interesting that this is a “cooperative”. Are they technically not part of the government and are more independent than that? Or maybe the term means something else in Japan.

4:40 Again with trans feels. Filling out forms and needing to identify as something you don’t actually see yourself as

4:50 (Didn’t catch that my first time around: different blood types? Wonder if blood harvesting and blood mixing will be a thing. Remembering the kids that were about to be sold off... Might these things be connected?)

(Rather than making things shorter, this is just resulting in me going even more in-depth. Oh well. I guess I’ll just have to deal with it.)

5:10 Probably a bit of an exaggeration that you can’t get back anything stolen from you: says more about how this is a seedier place than the video in episode 1 let on. We sort of got that from Michiru being pickpocketed in the first place, but this lets us know that that wasn’t an irregular occurrence

5:30 (Also didn’t really absorb this my first watch, but it does make sense that Michiru has been sleeping outside while on the run. Doesn’t feel good to think about how she had to spend that time being scared of the humans around her.)

5:40 Kuro is a wonderfully round birb.

6:10 Michiru making the same connected that I made (and that the audience in general is probably expected to make) about Shirou potentially being that big wolf who was up on the rooftops

6:25 Michiru probably expected Anima-City to be the end of her struggles where everything would just be better and easier. Indeed, she is young and naive.

The Next Morning

7:20 While Michiru may be surprised by the “rule of the strong” here, it does work effectively in parallel with the focus that has been put on money (between these two episodes). The powerful get to do what they want, whether it comes from physical strength or financial power. When it comes down to it, the human world, under a capitalist framework, doesn’t behave all that differently

7:45 Oh, Shirou has some sort of direction connection with the mayor and/or the government. Is this what they meant by “social worker”? Is he some sort of government agent? Does he have the extrajudicial authority to just beat people up (and even kill them?) the way he did with those terrorists?

9:00 (Considering Marie’s apparent connection to Rabbit Town, she probably does have some connection to the pickpocket. But now that I’m making this connection... Did Marie bring those kids to Rabbit Town after they were separated from their parents by beastman hunters?)

Rabbit Town

9:25 My very first expectation with a place called “Rabbit Town” was something akin to “Little China Town”

9:35 Then it struck me as something of a red light district

10:00 And we learn what Michiru might have to deal with in the future for being unable to switch to a human form: more people may think she’s trying to pick a fight.

10:15 Saying that she’s “not some baby” indicates that there are people who can’t control their forms: young children. Or, perhaps, someone who hasn’t been a beastman for a long time. (Maybe she’ll figure it out when/if she gets back with the kids she helped rescue.)

10:45 (Struck by how “coincidental” it is that someone like Grand Grandma would end up with a random kid’s wallet. It’s making me think that the pickpocket and Marie actually funnel people into this person-trafficking ring)

11:15 With my early impression of Rabbit Town being some sort of red light district, I thought this was some sort of communal daycare. (But seeing it again, I’m noticing how stern these women are at seeing the children. Definitely doesn’t look like they care about the kids.)

11:20 The line about them being “women who were betrayed by men”, and the following lines, really fit in with my thinking that this was a red light district, and they probably just didn’t want to outright say these were sex workers. (And maybe some of them are, but it turns out to be far from the whole picture)

11:40 And it does seem to be the image they want to give to Michiru: that they’re a bunch of women struggling together with all of these kids to take care of. There was also a bit about “what it’s like to live as a beastman” which makes me think that it’s definitely the norm for beastmen to be poor—not a surprise since they are clearly an oppressed minority group

Literacy

12:05 Totally expected “Poop” to become the kids’ nickname for Michiru. (Glad it didn’t since it would have made it harder to really care about what happens later.)

12:50 Look at these cuties wanting to learn. (And sobering in retrospect to think how this is probably the most care and attention they’ve had in a while.)

13:10 I forgot to say something about it last episode, but the way Shirou’s sense of smell is visualized is amazing.

13:20 Again with the red light district impression, I was thinking this was the arrival of a pimp or something

13:40 I appreciate Michiru caring about what the kid is already doing instead of reprimanding them for not paying attention

14:00 So we learn about Silver Wolf, who could be the wolf Michiru saw when she arrived in the city. Since Shirou seems to be that wolf, does that mean he’s actually Silver Wolf? Is this an urban legend based on him? Or is he actually some sort of god?

Money

14:45 The demands of payment really played into my pimp impression, but then this guy mentions “letting these women be gangsters.” They could totally still be sex workers as well, but this clues us in that these women may be involved in shadier stuff

15:10 I wonder if the politics of these criminal groups will come more into play in the future. Wouldn’t be surprised if some of the villains we meet end up being allies by the end, considering the way Trigger tends to tell their stories.

15:35 “It’s all women are good for anyway” is an impressively disgusting line to tell us that they’ve been talking about selling the kids. Also, I wonder what it means for the mayor to know about the kids: that the government will be sending people to rescue the kids and shut them down...or that the mayor would be interested in buying...

15:45 The line about the kids being “snatched away” probably means the mayor, so probably not about buying the kids. Still doesn’t mean the “rescue” could end up being more nefarious than it would seem. (Look, I just don’t trust the head of a pharmaceutical company also being a mayor, especially when a video about the city was directly associated with the company instead of being its own thing.)

15:55 Given the earlier scene between Shirou and the mayor, and Shirou being here, I guess he’s something like the mayor’s enforcer? Her trusty hand that does what needs to be done? But I’d also guess that if the mayor is secretly a villain, Shirou has no idea

Trafficking

16:30 I immediately put together that these kids were probably separated from their parents due to attacks by those beastman hunters. (And earlier in this post is when I retroactively put together that Marie, or people with the same job, likely gave/sold the kids to Grand Grandma, if they don’t work for her directly.)

16:40 The rule of the powerful coming up again. This is the way this world (and our world) works. (Which I could go off on a political tangent about, but I’ll refrain for now.)

16:55 Michiru is an atheist. Or at least incredibly pragmatic. Not the most helpful thing to say to people who literally can’t do anything in this situation, but I appreciate the sentiment of actually doing what you can instead of hoping someone else does something about it

17:20 Hmm, no one seems too surprised about Michiru’s expanding tail powers. Maybe this is a relatively normal tanuki thing?

18:00 But the stretchy arms totally aren’t normal, even for a tanuki. Thinking about it, no one else has obviously shown any kind of powers yet. Shirou’s fight with the terrorists could have just been his physical prowess. Do these powers have something to do with Michiru’s transformation from human to beastman?

18:50 In case you didn’t catch on to everyone’s surprise, confirmation that what Michiru just did was very unusual.

19:25 Never a big fan of the “even if they’re women” line. They’ve been doing a very bad thing. Stopping them shouldn’t have anything to do with gender. Why even bring it up. But I guess it does play into Shirou being a masculine and “chivalrous” type of character, as well as this being a generally patriarchal society (which isn’t really any different from our world). (Thinking back to my post on the previous episode, I guess “this isn’t too different from our world” is probably the point that the pseudo-branding contributes to.)

20:00 It seems that Shirou’s relationship to the police is less like Batman, and more like he just outranks them.

20:20 “Facility” is such a cold and impersonal term that it really does make me worry about what the government is going to do with these kids. Again, pharmaceutical company. (I’ll make sure to go back to episode 1 and get a better look at the company’s actual name so I can use that. May as well if I’ll continue to make a big fuss over it.)

20:35 “Even though you’re a beastman, don’t you have a human heart?” is a horribly offensive question. I was initially going to refer to it as a microaggression, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized how terrible it is. It’s heavily loaded with the ideas: 1) beastmen are expected to be bad, hence the “even though”, and 2) being human is inherently a good thing. Despite what she said to Shirou at the end of last episode, it seems that she really just has the inverse of his beliefs. And this is so clearly something that only a human would say that it convinces Grand Grandma of Michiru’s “humanity”

21:20 Shirou, needing to wait for evidence before he can do anything, kind of illustrates Michiru’s point of view of not being able to count on society—on anyone else—to be able to help you.

21:30 Shirou, representing the police and government authority to an extent, believing that he “never makes mistakes” again reminds me of the protests we’ve had throughout this year. How the police totally does make mistakes—or rather, the way they don’t even view things they’ve done as mistakes—is totally a problem. (ACAB)

21:40 Following up on what Grand Grandma mentioned earlier about being “betrayed by men”, Michiru questions why it’s only “women and children” that Shirou is protecting. Is it that men don’t need to be protected? “What makes males so special? Are men really that great?”

21:55 And Michiru outright says what she had only implied earlier. Also, she seems a bit scattered between being angry at men, being angry at beastmen, being angry at the police, bring angry at society, and being angry in general. But I get it.

And that’s the end of the episode. I’m not sure if this is how I’ll continue to do these impressions, but I guess I’ll have to see how I feel about it once I get to episode 3. Maybe I’ll try out some genuine first-impressions, even if it means interrupting the episode constantly.

[shijiujun]

[起承] Chris’ Mini Concert in Taipei 20191222 - Summary

As promised, the concert summary!! 

First, let’s look at this gorgeous background and what Chris wore in his first song - Totally magical my god and GALAXY THEMED!!! Okay it was actually purple themed because he likes the colour and a lot of fans actually turned up in purple things. 

Being the dumbass that I was, I did not do that because I didn’t even THINK OF IT HONESTLY so in my haste i had to go buy some purple cap that is really cute (unicorn-themed!) and yes turned up for the concert.

I went with a lovely new friend this time along with two other friends (all of who I met on Tumblr!!) and when we first reached the venue, there were so many other fans there already as usual giving out freebies - I have completed a set of five plastic fans with Chris and Jake faces printed on it, and now I have three plastic sheet 2020 calendars with Chris’ lovely face on it so amen. A lanyard also, and ooooh like they printed fake passenger tickets with chris’ face on it HAHA

Venue/Seating: 20 Rows, 20 Seats, 10 on each side with a row cutting down the middle and then a stage - In terms of venue I think it was a pretty cozy venue, definitely smaller than the venue for the Trapped Taipei and Taichung fanmeets so everyone got a much better view. This is the venue they used for the first History Party

I was seated in the 4th row, which was farkinggggg close. Ann and Elle were seated in the 2nd row, and we were technically all in the same area - BEST

So after we were seated, suddenly there was a lot of commotion from the fans, and that’s when we realised that ANDY AND KENNY WALKED IN!!! They came in with caps and face masks on, and they sat themselves in the first row on the right section - I’d like to mention that seated in the same row were also Chris’ parents, his brother (real or like bro I haven’t figured out yet), Diane and Director Lee from Trapped (ahhhh Diane is farking pretty) and yes, Jake was not there, BUT BUT BUT I do believe he was invited, but he’s just busy with work. Jake and Zhang Guang Chen (the guy who plays Andy in Trapped) both liked Chris’ concert photo on Instagram!!

Photos weren’t allowed, and they were damn fucking strict about this which I honestly DONT UNDERSTAND but am not surprised at - It’s like he’s thanking his fans for turning up and he’s really touched and everything and all fans want to do is have some really nice photos of him you know CRIES IN A CORNER - So it was like the Trapped fanmeet media mafia again, people standing at the sides watching and making sure you dont take photos

BUT BUT BUT in the first two songs they couldn’t control us all because we were ALL taking photos, which is why I have photos from the first two songs but NOWHERE ELSE, but tbh the first song’s visuals were so beautiful that those were all I needed for photos, seriously - Which is nice because I rented a cam for this and I REALLY WOULD HAVE CRIED IF I WALKED AWAY WITH NO PHOTOS

He sang a few Chinese ballads, and then he went to change clothes, and THEN HE TURNED UP IN THIS SHIRT AND DANCED TO THE WEEKND’S CAN’T FEEL MY FACE

At the beginning of the concert he told everyone that he wasn’t going to cry and we all called bullshit on that and hahaha lo and behold he cried halfway through and then at the end A LOT

Xiao Yi hosted it again!!! My god, I love Xiao Yi so much, he’s honestly the best and he’s way more handsome in person than he is on Instagram HAHAHA and I love how close he is to the Trapped boys

I do have more photos of this but they’re all half blur because I was trying to dodge the photo police, but hip thrusting moves? Check. Skin reveal? Four holes in his shirt, CHECK.

Anyway, the entire show was filled with like crazy good dance numbers and Chris sang songs such as A Whole New World, and also two of his self-composed songs!! I can’t remember what the first song was called but he did sing this at the Taichung fanmeet, and the second song is called 「不想分開」which means ‘Don’t Want To Separate From/Leave Each Other’ and they’re pretty good 

Chris said that HE MIGHT have some album/single release activity next year and asked us to look forward to Jan 2020 I don’t know what to expect tbh HAHAHAHA

And Chris also sang Della’s song from Trapped - and halfway through the song DELLA APPEARED AND STARTED SINGING WITH HIM!! And he was so touched that he started to cry (as always, the crybaby), then the audience and Xiao Yi got Della and Chris to duet one of Della’s other more popular songs, and then SHE WAS THE BEST BECAUSE SHE led Chris down the stage and into the crowd and got him to touch everyone’s hands (okay not everyone, but whoever who could reach him) - Unfortunately I was literally two arms length away from him, so I didn’t even try reaching out for him but as always he came real close, and I got to witness that face up close for the fifth time this year, thank you god and all the higher powers above and buddha for giving me this excellent year

And everytime Xiao Yi and Chris asked questions to the audience Kenny would be like this absolute fanboy yelling from his seat - Gotta love the friendship between them

Xiao Yi printed like photos of him and Chris and stuck it on chocolate bars and gave them out to the audience for like question and answer LMAOOOO funniest shit ever - So XY asked how much do we love Chris, and the first fan was like ‘I left my kid at home to come and watch Chris’ and then another one was like ‘I came here on a TOUR and now I have left my tour group secretly for a few hours so I can come attend this’ LMAOOOO

And CHRIS’ attire was fucking on point that day, all his outfits were like fucking A+++++++++ like sexy and handsome and WOOOHOOO

Okay and now storytime - The one SHITTY thing that happened during the concert:

So there was this older lady seated in the first row, and in the beginning she kept getting up to talk to the staff and I didn’t think much of it - You know maybe she’s a hardcore fan or something and she knows the staff and has some special connections or whatever

And then, LITERALLY HALFWAY THROUGH A SONG, she stands up and she starts shouting. I’m not joking, she starts fucking shouting and pointing at like some fans in the second row saying, “Why is it they can take photos but I can’t?! You guys are too much!!!”

Mind you all, Chris is literally PERFORMING and she’s making a scene

So the staff get her to sit down, and then we think it’s the end of it right, but no she proceeds to yell at shout the same thing across like three fucking songs, and then at one point she stands up and tries to get attention from the staff to come and catch another fan seated behind her because she’s taking photos 

In the end no one else in the vicinity dared to take photos or whatever and she was still being a bitch and yelling - And the dumb thing is that she wasn’t asked to leave. This crazy woman in the first row making a scene and she’s not being asked to leave wtf

And then she just keeps shouting throughout the entire concert, and at two instances Xiao Yi had to say “Hey guys, everyone, be good okay? Everyone, please be good”

Okay and then some point in between crazy lady brings out a decanter of like whiskey and chugs it down - Like so wild

So okay, she’s sitting in the first row, and it doesn’t take a genius to know that the risk of sitting in the first row or at the sides is that staff can easily get to you to ask you to not take photos - and she’s in the “because I can’t have it NO ONE ELSE CAN” mode, which is like... okay that’s one thing, but the other part is-

CHRIS IS LITERALLY PERFORMING WHY WOULD U CAUSE A SCENE FOR HIM?!!!

And she was just plain fucking rude she was honestly yelling and scolding like other fans, and I feel like that she doesn’t have a right to do that

Around me were ALL the major Chris fanclub/fanaccount fans and they were all like wtf is wrong with her? 

Basically she was such a disruption and idk why she wasn’t asked to leave

Worst of all, in his every very last song, Chris actually sang half a verse to her directly, and IDK if he knows her, or maybe heard that she was being very enthusiastic, or didn’t know that she was being a crazy bitch, in any case, Chris effectively rewarded her bad behaviour

A lot of the fans were really upset about that, because this woman fucked up the entire experience for us (just imagine someone yelling like two rows in front of you and shouting and pointing throughout the whole like 45 minutes) and Chris basically signalled to her that it’s okay to be a nuisance to everyone else, even if it was done accidentally

Otherwise, A+ concert!!! So happy to be in Taipei again and seeing the boys!!!!! And Lisley and Kana were both there as well, and i have to say I really, really love Diane <3333

Concert was a little bit short imo but the tickets weren’t expensive so it’s alright. No fan benefits this time HAHAHA

[bri206]

HE’S HIDING SOMETHING

This is a little guess fic for 7x13 after reading the synopsis. I hope you enjoy!

He’s hiding something, he can feel it.  Oliver had walked past William’s room this morning , and when he asked if he wanted to help with breakfast, he slammed his laptop shut. Now he’s sitting across the bar pushing around his eggs.

“Hey” Felicity says walking into the living room. “Something smells amazing” Laying a gently her hand on William, to give him a gentle hug. He gives her a small smile in return. “Did you sleep well? Was the bed ok? I was thinking about getting the extra soft mattress, but I know that you like some firmness.” Shutting her eyes, she silently shakes her head and tucks her lips between her teeth. “I’m just… gonna… forget I said anything.”

“I made you coffee honey”

“Thank you”

When she looks up to give her husband a look of thanks, she immediately stops in her tracks. His eyes are darker, but not like the kind of dark when he is out in the field. This is different.

“You ok, Felicity?”

“What?”

“You’re coffee.” William says scrunching his eyebrows together.

“Right, coffee.”

Looking between his parents several times, he just shakes his head. “I’m going back to my room.”

“Will you didn’t finish your breakfast” Oliver says quickly.

“I’m not hungry.”

Before Oliver can protest, Oliver’s already in his room.

Releasing a deep sigh, Oliver closes his head and lets it hang.

“Uh Oh, I know that look. What’s wrong?”

“He’s hiding something”

“Oliver, he’s a teenager. Secrecy is their main language. I mean we were teenagers once, we know how it goes.”

“That’s what I’m worried about. Felicity I was not a good teenager. I mean when I was his age, I had my first of many beers, and I was smoking and partying.”

Felicity can see the spiral consuming him.

“Ok, Oliver, Oliver. Hey, focus.” She grabs his face between her hands. “Listen to me, William is a good kid. Ok? He has a good head on his shoulder, and he is super smart.”

“Yeah, but he just went through several traumatic experiences, one after the other. That could lead to some awful fallouts for him and us.”

“Were you reading that child psychology website again?”

He hesitates. “No”

“Oliver, you know those articles do nothing, but make you worry, and for no reason.”

“No reason? Did you just see the encounter we had with him. He couldn’t get out of the room quick enough.”

“He’s still adjusting.”

“He hates me.”

“No he doesn’t. He does not hate you, ok? It’s like you said he went through some traumatic experiences and it’s just gonna take time for him to  adjust to our new norm.”

“You’re right. Time.”

“Time. Speaking of time, aren’t you gonna be late for work?”

“Yeah, I should go” he says, grabbing his coffee and giving her a kiss. “I love you.”

“Love you too.”

---

As he walks into the precinct, the first thing he notices, is the chaos. He’s still trying to adjust to the environment of not only the police force, but also with so many people being involved.

“Got another one” Dinah says coming to walk with him.

“Another murder?”

“Yep. Another young woman, late 20’s, early 30’s” she says giving him the photograph. “Strangled to death.”

“Do we have a connection” he asks when he reaches his desk? “Still working on it.”

He sighs, when he heavily sits down.

“You ok?”

“Yeah, I’m just worried about William.”

“Oh, yeah, how’s that going.”

“Well he’s not talking to me and he’s hiding something from me, so great.”

“I’ m sorry.”

“I should have expected this. I mean, I can’t blame him for being mad. I did break my promise to him.”

“He’s a kid, he’ll get over it.”

“Or he won’t” he mutters.”

“Why don’t you look more into that case, you can even go to the crime scene if you would like. That’ll help get your mind off your problems.”

“Yeah, I’ll look into it.”

-----

After going over all the women again, for the fifteenth time, Oliver gives up. There are no connections that he can find. He sent the list of women that had been murdered by the mystery serial killer or as the Star City news reporters are calling him “The Star City Slayer”, over to Felicity, but still nothing.”

A knock breaks him from his reverie.

“Hey, find anything?”

“No. All these women, they all have different jobs, families, social status. Some have kids, some don’t. Some are married, some aren’t. I mean, it’s almost as if he was randomly picking these women out of the city pull.”

“What about age?”

“I mean a few of them were in their early 20’s, one of them was in her late 30’s, and the rest mid 30’s.”

“Alright, so we have a range, 20-30’s.”

“That’s kind of a big range.”

“Yeah, well you said you had nothing, so, I’m reaching for anything at this point. You try.”

“Alright fine, if you want to get technical, all of them are blonde. Happy?”

“Peachy” she says sarcastically. “Now go home.”

“What? I’m done yet, and Felicity’s still working on this, so this could take a couple hours.”

“Oliver, you’re not here. Mentally anyway. You’re mind is drifting off to your son.”

Oliver wants to protest, but he knows she’s very right. William is all he has been able to think about the entire time he’s been at work.

“Dinah..”

“Go. Go home and spend time with your family. We both know you deserve it.”

“Are you sure? I mean, what if he attacks again?” “Oliver, we’ve got this. I promise. Now go, before I have to escort you out myself.

----

Walking through the doors of their apartment, Oliver can’t help but feel relief.

“Hey, you’re home early. Did you find the killer?”

“No, umm, Dinah kind of forced me to come home.”

“Forced you? Why?”

“Appaerantly I wasn’t focused.”

“Let me guess, William.”

“Yeah. Speaking of which, is he here?”

“Yeah, he’s in his room. Which he hasn’t left in the last 4 hours.”

“Great, then he can help me with dinner.”

“Oliver, wait.”

“What” he asks turning towards her.

“Look, I know you want to get to the bottom of this, but you need to remember he is not some low life criminal. He’s your son.”

“I know that” he says defensively.”

“I know you know that. I guess what I’m trying to say is that you need to be patient with him and let him tell you rather than force it out of him.”

“Alright, alright.” he lift her hand and kisses it delicately.

Walking to his son’s bedroom, he takes a deep breath and softly knocks on the door.

“Hey Will.”

Looking up from his laptop, he slowly narrows his eyes.

“Hi, dad. What are you doing here? It’s just that Felicity said that you tend to work late.”

“I usually do, but I finished early today. I figured that we could make dinner together.”

“Oh”

“I did promise Felicity lasagna, and we do make the best lasagna. What do you say?”

He looks at his laptop one final time, and then closes it.

“Ok.”

----

“The table is set.”

“Perfect, and the lasagna is out of the oven. How are the breadsticks, Will?”

“Done.”

“Perfect, because I am starving.”

After bringing over the food, they all settle down and begin to eat. The conversation is surprisingly easy, as Felicity talks about her new security system, and Oliver’s new job with the police.

“So Will, what was your favorite thing about Cambridge?”

William hesitates and looks down at his food. Oliver and Felicity exchange looks, worried that he won’t answer. But he proves them wrong seconds later.

“Umm, I think it had to be the science fair there.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, everyone really got into it. I also played some baseball while I was over there.”

“That’s awesome, Will.”

This is the moment, Oliver thought, this was the moment he would figure out what his son was hiding. But before he could even get the first word out, Felicity’s computers go wild.

Rushing over to them, Felicity immediately starts typing furiously. And then with a final punch to a key, her moments go still.

“Umm, Oliver. Come here, please.” she says in a very tense voice.

Quickly getting up he, comes to land a hand on her shoulder in support.

“What’s wrong?”

Seeing that William has a clear view to the screens, she slightly pushes Oliver into his line of sight.

“What?”

“Look” she says pointing to the disturbing picture.

It is Dinah, Renee, and Emiko tied to chairs, with blood running down different parts of their bodies.

“Where is this?”

Quickly finding the address, Felicity gives it to him.

“565 W. Prichard”

Pulling up another camera angle, Felicity's breath hitches.

“Wait a second, that guy looks familiar.”

“Stanley.” Oliver says in utter disgust and surprise.

“Yeah, he was the one that was in prison with you.”

“‘Was’ being the key word. How did he even get out?”

“I don’t  know, but Oliver, they don’t look so good.

Already pulling back his shoulders, and turning towards the bedroom, Oliver starts to walk with determination, when all of a sudden he hears his son’s voice.

“Dad?”

Turning to his boy, Oliver’s stance softens a bit.

“Buddy I’m so sorry, but-”

“You have to go. I get it. Go.”

“Will, I promise I’ll-”

“Just go. They need you.”

Without another thought, Oliver was gone.

----

It had been 15 minutes since Oliver had left, when Felicity found his dot stopping right in front of the abandoned warehouse.

Felicity is doing everything she can think of, on her computer, when she catches a glimpse of William.

He is sitting all alone at the table, looking very sad and disappointed. That immediately shakes her of her reverie.

“Hey Will, can you come here for a second?”

At the sound of his name, he gets up and begrudgingly makes his way over to her.

“Felicity, if this about dad-”

“It’s not. I mean it is, but not… I could really use your help.”

“With what? You look like you have everything covered.”

“Well that is where you’re wrong, because I have a very important job for you. Pull up a seat.”

He does as she asks, and when he sits beside her, she shows him what to do.

“Do you see these orange dots?”

“Yeah”

‘Those are heat signatures, that means those are the amount of people in the building.”

“It shows four.”

“Exactly. Three of those are our friends and the other is the bad guy.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“I want you to keep an eye out for more orange dots. Can you do that?” “Yep” he says with a determination, she hasn’t seen in him for a while.

“Alright Overwatch, talk to me.”

“Ok,  they are in the North East sector.”

“Any surprises I should know about?”

“No, it’s just the team and Stanley, so far.”

With a simple nod, Oliver wasted no time getting to the North East sector.

Kicking the door open, he is welcomed to his friends, looking utterly pissed off and tied up.

Turning to the sound of the door opening, Stanley lets a creepy smile appear on his face.

“Oliver. It’s so nice to see you again” he says in his childlike innocence voice.

“Let them go Stanley.”

“Oh, I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re my victims” he says it as if that statement would solve everything.

Knowing that he will just make everything worse by yelling, Oliver decides to take the softer approach.

“Stanley, this has nothing to do with them. Ok? This is about you and me. Now, let them go.” “They weren’t supposed to be here.”

Getting irritated every second that passes by, Oliver tightens his grip on his bow.

“Stanley, let, them, go.”

“I tried to get to her. But every time I tried to go through the window, there was loud beeping and sirens screaming.”

Losing his patience, Oliver made small steps towards the man, who seemed to be in his own little world.

“And then I saw her, yesterday. She was beautiful, with her hair blowing in the wind, shining as bright as the sun. And her dress kissing her thighs with every step. She was a sight to behold.”

All while Stanley is giving his disturbing speech, William accidentally pushes a button, and a whole bunch of pictures pop up. All of them are of the women that were killed.

--

“You saw who” Oliver asks curtly in his deep voice.

“I was going to finally have her, because she was the key. But then, you showed up and I couldn’t blow my cover, so I went for second best.”

--

William leans closer to the pictures and notices a similarity between the 6 women. They all looked like her.

“Felicity” fear coating his voice.

She is intently watching Oliver’s every move.

“Felicity” he tries again.

“What?”

“All these women, they all look like you.”

At the revelation, she looks back to the screen where Oliver is watching Stanley, waiting to make a move.

“Oh my god” she whispers. “Oliver he was going to kill me.”

As soon as the word reached his ears, he goes stock still. Stanley was talking about Felicity. His Felicity. He was going to kill her.

“You were going to kill my wife” he whispers in anger.

“Yes. She was the only way. Felicity was the key to you.”

“Don’t you dare speak her name.”

“You hurt me Oliver, and I just wanted to hurt you, and the only way to do that was to hurt someone close to your heart. Because I know from experience that when someone hurts your heart, there’s no going back.”

Not wanting to hear another word come out of his mouth, Oliver lunges at him and fights. Fights for his wife, and the anger that courses through his veins. As he continuously punches the defenseless man, her voice finally comes through.

“Oliver! Stop! Stop!”

At the final ‘Stop’, he did. He lets his fist loosen just a little bit, and he takes in the scene before him. Stanley’s face is bloodied and bruises are becoming prevalent. As much as he wants to finish the job, he thinks about his son and Felicity, and how much he wants to be a good man for them. And if he kills Stanley, he will not be that man for them, so he backs up slightly and glares at him.

“If you EVER even so much as think about my wife, you will forever be in the pain of hell.”

“Without her, you are nothing”

And with one final punch, Stanley is silent.

---

Felicity is lost. Lost in thought. He was there, at Big Belly Burger yesterday. He was going to kidnap her and kill her. Murder her, just so he could get back at Oliver. That was a lot to process.

Not knowing how long her mind had been lost, she feels her arm being lifted and her feet shuffling across the floor. A light pressure is being applied to her shoulder, causing her to sit on the soft cushions of the sofa. And then the presence was gone.

But then it returned minutes later.

“Felicity”

That was all it took, her name.

“William. Oh, I’m sorry, did I zone out?”

“Yeah. But it’s ok, I brought you the hot chocolate you like. The one with extra cinnamon and extra whip cream.”

Giving him a sincere smile, she gladly takes the beverage and sips at it. Sitting across from her, William asks if she’s ok.

“Yeah, sorry it’s just a lot to take in.”

“Knowing that yesterday could have gone really bad.”

“Yeah” she whispers.

“Well it didn’t and I think that’s all that matters.”

Nodding her head, she silently agrees.

Silence fills the air as they sit quietly processing the night.

And then out of nowhere, he spoke.

“Why did you forgive him so easily?”

Turning towards her step-son, she looks to question what he means.

“Dad. Why did you just pretend like the last 7 months didn’t exist?”

“Will I-”

“You act like you didn’t give up everything for him. That you didn’t cry yourself to sleep every night. That he didn’t break you. Felicity you were a barista. And you hated it.”

“William. Look, you’re right, I did forgive him quickly, but it’s not what you think. Ok?”

“I don’t understand. He hurt us. He left us.”

“Yes. He did. And we will always remember that. The way it made us feel , and our emotions. But I did forgive him, and this is why.” Taking a deep breath, she’s not sure if she should tell him what she’s about to tell him, because it could be crossing a line, but she needs him to understand why she willingly forgave Oliver.

“This isn’t the first time he’s done this.”

“Gone to prison?”

She huffs “No, lied to me. Do you remember when you first met Oliver? As your mother’s friend?”

He nods.

“That was right after he found out that he was your father. And he wanted so desperately to be in your life. So much so that he made a deal with your mother. The deal was that he could see you as long as he didn’t tell anyone about you.”

“Including you?”

“Including me. Now you're probably wondering why this means anything and that’s because your dad and I were engaged.”

“Engaged?”

“Yep. We were going to get married. But then you were kidnapped and the truth came out. Long story short, when I found out about you I was so angry, and it wasn’t because of you, because I love you as my own. But it was because he lied to me. I know some women would let it go and move on, but I couldn’t. So I broke off our engagement and relationship. That next year was torture. Oliver and I still worked together, but it was awful being around him and not being with him. In fact it was even worse when he started dating someone else. It was as if everything broke all over again.”

“And what happened after that? Clearly you two ended up together.”

“We did obviously, but it wasn’t without a fight. Look I guess the reason I forgave him so quickly, was because I know what it’s like to be without him and I never want to experience that again. So I would rather work on things with him than not have him at all. Will I know you’re mad at him, as you should be, but wouldn't you rather work things out now, then regret not having a relationship, ten, twenty years down the road?”

He looks down at his lap and back up at her eyes. She was baring her love, worry and belief in him.

Putting her cup on the coffee table, she take both of his hands.

“I am not saying you have to forgive him now, or even three weeks from now. But all I’m saying is that you deserve to have a relationship, a good one, with your dad.”

Before he can say anything, her alarm goes off. All it says is ‘Oliver Queen’.

A few seconds later, the door opens, and Oliver walks in, with his leathers on. His eyes immediately land on the scene before him and he sends questioning looks to his love. But she simply deflects them with a shake of her head. Getting up slowly, Felicity meets him half way and they are both embracing like they’re lives depend on it.

“You’re here.”

“I’m here” she says stroking his hair comfortingly.

He pulls back slightly and frames her face between his hands, “are you ok?”

“I’m fine. He didn’t touch me.”

That seemed to get through to him, because he let’s out a deep sigh and finally relaxes. Kissing her softly for a couple minutes, he finally breaks it.

Looking up he sees William, looking down at his lap.

“Will, I am so sorry, I had to leave. I know I promised dinner and a quite night-”

“Dad it’s ok. Really. Felicity let me help.”

“She did? You did?”

“Yeah, he was actually the one who figured out that Stanley was targeting me.”

Oliver stands in awe of his family, and can’t believe they’re his.

“Well good job, I am so proud of you.”

“Thanks dad” he says blushing.

Basking in the moment, Oliver almost forgets all of their problems, and they hit him full force.

“As amazing as you did tonight, we need to talk. Will, I know that I broke your trust and I lied to you and I am so deeply sorry for that. I don’t expect you to forgive me, but that being said, I do want you to be honest with me. Starting with what your hiding from us.”

The question makes William cower. The reaction causes both Oliver and Felicity to look worried at each other.

“Will, you can tell us anything” Felicity coaxes. “ We won’t be mad at you, I mean we were both teenagers once, and we did some not so appropriate things…”

He immediately looks up “I didn’t drink or smoke or party, if that’s what your thinking.”

At the statement, Oliver literally sighs and physically relaxes, causing Felicity to look over and give him a funny look.

“Oh thank god” he says under his breath.

“Ok, well if it’s not that, then what’s going on?”

Again William, looks down.

“Umm, I don’t know how to tell you guys, because I don’t know how you’ll react. I don’t if you’ll be mad at me-”

“William, we won’t be mad, I promise” Oliver says laying a supportive hand on his son’s shoulder.

Still avoiding eye contact, William lets the words fall from his lips.

“I’m Gay”

Silence fills the room, and that’s when the tears begin to stream down his face. He took from the lack of movement and sound that they were mad.

But their faces said anything but that. Oliver engulfed William into a hug and Felicity soon joined. When they released each other, William finally looks up.

“You’re not mad?”

“Mad? Why we be mad?” Felicity asks.

“Because Danny Walker’s parents were super mad when he told them he was gay. They said he was an abomination and that he was a disgrace.”

He feels two hands cup his face.

“You are NOT an abomination. You are a gift. Our gift.” Felicity said with all the love she could muster for her son.

“We love you Will, and we are so proud of you.”

“And we will always, always support you, no matter what. Ok?”

Tears openly running down his cheek, he simply nods, and feels them both pull him into a hug. And they all cry. Tears of joy, love and most importantly tears of happiness, because they all knew, they were all finally home.

[the-desolated-quill]

Quill’s Swill - The Worst Of 2018

Congratulations dear reader. You survived 2018. And you know what that means. It’s time for another best of/worst of list. Welcome to Quill’s Swill 2018. A giant septic tank for the various shit the entertainment industry produced over the course of the year. The films, games, TV shows and various other media that got on my bad side. As always please bear in mind that this is only my subjective opinion (if you happen to like any of the things on this list, good for you. I’m glad someone did) and that obviously I haven’t seen everything 2018 has to offer for one reason or another. In other words, sorry that Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald isn’t on here. I’m sure it is as terrible as some have been suggesting. I just never got around to watching it.

Okay everyone. Grab your breathing masks and put on your rubber gloves. Let’s dive into this shit pile.

Hold The Sunset

The news that John Cleese would be returning to the world of BBC sitcoms was incredibly exciting, being a massive Fawlty Towers fan and all. Unfortunately Hold The Sunset was not quite what I had in mind. It’s one of those rare breed of situation comedies that chooses to offer no actual comedy. It’s not a sitcom. It’s a sit. Like Scrubs or The Big Bang Theory.

An elderly couple plan to elope abroad only for Alison Steadman’s son to barge in, having left his wife, and forcing them to put their plans on hold. Hence the title ‘Hold The Sunset.’ It’s like a cross between As Time Goes By and Sorry, but if all the humour and relatability were surgically removed by a deadpan mortician. The characters are weak, the plots are thin on the ground and the humour (hat little of it there is) feel incredibly dated. The middle aged mummy’s boy is something that hasn’t been funny since the 90s. It’s an utter waste of great talent and what hurts even more is that this tripe is actually getting a second series. I can only assume the people watching this are comatose. Either that or there’s an epidemic of people in Britain who have lost the remote.

Avengers: Infinity War

Yes this is one of the worst movies of 2018 and no I don’t regret saying that one little bit. Avengers: Infinity War was fucking terrible. Period. There were too many plots and characters going on, which made the film hard to follow (and what staggers me is that the so called ‘professional’ critics have condemned movies for having too many characters and plots before. Spider-Man 3, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Batman vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice and even Deadpool 2. But because this is an MCU movie, it gets a free pass. Fuck off). The characterisation was weak due to sheer number of characters they try to juggle, resulting in characters coming off as one dimensional caricatures of themselves and scenes where characters such as Iron Man, Doctor Strange and Star-Lord sound completely interchangeable. The villain, Thanos, is a stupidly and poorly written villain, but that’s hardly surprising considering what a shit job Marvel have done building him up over the course of these 20+ movies. And let’s not forget that pisstake ending. A bunch of prominent Marvel characters die and it’s all very, very sad... except all these characters just so happen to have sequels planned, which makes this ending fucking pointless and have less impact than a feather on a bouncy castle.

I don’t know which is more shocking. That Marvel and Disney think their audience are that stupid and gullible, or that their audience are actually validating their view. Fuck you Disney.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery

I’ve always wanted a Harry Potter RPG, where you could customise your character, choose your house and actually live a full school life at Hogwarts. This year, Warner Bros and Jam City gave us just that.

That was a mistake.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery is the epitome of everything that’s wrong with the mobile gaming market right now. The gameplay is boring and involving where you just tap images on a screen until a progress bar fills up. Wizard duels are little more than rock-paper-scissors challenges that require no kind of skill. Bonding with friends and caring for magical creatures just consist of pathetically simple pop quizzes and yet more boring tapping. Oh and of course you only get a certain amount of energy to complete these tedious tasks. If you run out of energy, you wait for it to fill up... or pay up for the privilege. So determined are they to extract your hard earned cash from your wallet, there’s actually a bit where Devil’s Snare strangles your eleven year old avatar and the game effectively tries to guilt trip you into paying micro-transactions to save them. It’s sleazy, gross and manipulative. Honestly, you’re better off just playing Candy Crush.

Agony

When the developers of this game said they wanted to give the player a trip through Hell, they had no idea how true that statement really was. Agony is dreadful on a number of levels. The design for Hell itself, while visually interesting at times, is often not very practical and gets quite dull and repetitive after a while. The stealth mechanics are a joke and the AI of your demonic enemies are pitiful. All of this alone would have been enough to put this game on the list, but then we also have the casual misogyny. Agony is a gorefest trying desperately to shock the player. We see men and woman get tortured, but it’s the women that often get the extreme end. The violence inflicted on them is often sexual in nature and the game seems to go out of its way to degrade and dehumanise women at every turn. The orgasmic cries of ‘pull it out’ quickly become a staple of the game’s experience as we see naked women raped, tortured and murdered, all for the purposes of ‘entertainment.’

I would call Agony sexist, but honestly that would be giving it too much credit. Agony is like a little child trying desperately to be all dark and edgy in a pathetic attempt to impress everyone around him, and we should treat it as such. Go to your room Agony. No ice cream for you.

Peter Rabbit

If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of Beatrix Potter rotating in her grave.

Yes we have yet another live action/CGI hybrid, but instead of something innocuous like the Smurfs or Alvin and the Chipmunks, Sony instead decides to adapt Peter Rabbit, with James Corden in the title role.

It’s about as bad as you’d expect.

Their attempts to modernise the story are painful to say the least with pop culture references, inappropriate adult humour and twerking rabbits. Plus rather than the gentle, but slightly mischievous character we got in the source material, here Peter is a sociopathic delinquent who seems to revel in making the farmer’s life a living hell. He’s unlikable and unwatchable as far as I’m concerned and the film doesn’t in anyway earn the emotional moments it tries so desperately to sell to the audience. And the worst part is it’s getting a sequel.

Wait. Do you hear that sound? That’s the sound of Beatrix Potter tearing out of the ground, ready to kill whatever idiot came up with this shit.

Fallout 76

I was excited for Fallout 76. A MMORPG where players band together to rebuild society after a nuclear apocalypse. Could have been great. Pity it wasn’t.

Fallout 76 is a dreadful game. Not only is it a buggy, glitchy mess that requires a constant online connection to play, which could result in you losing hours of progress if your WiFi went down, it’s also unbelievably tedious, and that’s because there’s nothing to do in the game. There’s no other characters to interact with, the various robots and computers you come across are really little more than quest givers, there’s no actual plot so to speak, and because of the sheer size of the world and the number of players allowed on a server, the chances of you actually meeting any actual players is remote. And let’s not forget all the behind the scenes drama. Bethesda falsely advertising Fallout themed canvas bags and players getting shitty nylon ones. Bethesda accidentally releasing the account information of various players trying to get a refund for said bag. Bethesda failing to program the year 2019 into the game code, meaning that the game’s nukes don’t work.

Maybe there’s a chance that Bethesda could pull a No Man’s Sky and fix everything over the coming years with various patches and DLCs, but the damage has already been done. It’s incredibly disappointing. The Elder Scrolls 6 is going to have be fucking incredible to win everyone back.

Mama Mia!: Here We Go Again

I can’t stand jukebox musicals anyway, but Mamma Mia was always one of the worst. Its boring, meandering story with its one note, obnoxious cast of characters screeching out ABBA songs like they’re at some drunken karaoke session at some poor sod’s hen party has always grated on my nerves. So imagine my delight when they announced we were getting a sequel. Ever wondered how Meryl Streep met her three lovers and founded her hotel? No? Well tough shit, we’re going to tell you anyway.

Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again is basically just Mamma Mia again. The actors still can’t sing, the characters are still annoying and story is still boring and meandering, completely at the mercy of the chosen songs rather than the filmmakers using the songs to compliment the story (you know? Like proper musicals do?).

How can I resist you? Very easily as it turns out. Gimme, gimme, gimme a fucking gun so I can end my misery.

The Cloverfield Paradox

A lot of people were unhappy about the direction Cloverfield was going. They wanted a continuation of the found footage, kaiju movie from 2008, not an anthology series. I was personally all in favour. Partially because I thought the first Cloverfield was a tad overrated, but mostly because I thought it would be a great opportunity for more experimental film projects and could be a great launchpad for new writers and filmmakers. 10 Cloverfield Lane was a great start. Then The Cloverfield Paradox happened.

The Cloverfield Paradox is basically JJ Abrams trying to have his cake and eat it too. Maintaining the anthology format whilst connecting everything together in a ‘shared universe’ (yes, yet another shared universe). The result was a cliched, poorly edited and idiotic mess of a film that actually took away from the previous two films rather than added to them. Everyone hated it and, as a result, 2018′s Overlord, which was totes going to be part of the Cloververse, was made its own standalone film and Abrams double pinky promised to make a true sequel to the original Cloverfield. A complete and total disaster. No wonder it was a straight-to-Netflix film.

The Handmaid’s Tale - Season 2

This is probably going to be the most controversial entry on the list, but please hear me out because I’m not the only one who has a problem with this season.

I was reluctant to watch The Handmaid’s Tale simply because of how gruesome the original book was, but I forced myself to watch the first season and I thought it was pretty good. It remained faithful to the source material for the most part and included some nice additions that helped to expand the story and mythos. If it was just a one off mini-series, everything would have been fine. But then they made the same mistake as The Man In The High Castle and Under The Dome did where they commissioned another season and attempted to tell a story that goes beyond the book.

There’s a reason why the original story ended where it did. The Handmaid’s Tale isn’t meant to be an empowering story about women sticking it to the patriarchy. It’s a cautionary tale about how fragile our civil rights truly are and how easily they can be taken away from us. It’s designed to shock, not to satisfy. So seeing a handmaid blow herself up in a suicide bombing feels very incongruous and just a little bit silly. It would be like doing a TV adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 where the first season followed the source material and then the second season turned Winston Smith into this heroic freedom fighter trying to overthrow Big Brother. It would represent a fundamental misunderstanding of what the book was about in the first place.

And then of course there’s the increased level of violence in Season 2, which many have complained about. In Season 1 and the original source material, the violence was justified. In Season 2, the motivation behind the violence has gone from ‘how can we effectively demonstrate how easily a fascist patriarchy can happen in the West?’ to ‘what brutal act can we inflict upon Ofglen to shock the audience this week?’ It’s purely for shock and nothing more. And with the showrunner (who I feel I should mention is a man) announcing that he has planned ten seasons of this, it seems that The Handmaid’s Tale is going to go even further with this depravity until it effectively becomes the equivalent of a Saw film.

The Handmaid’s Tale exists as a way of shining light on and critiquing misogyny in its most extreme form. Season 2 however demonstrates that there is a serious risk of it becoming the very thing it’s criticising in the first place.

The Predator

I love the Predator franchise, but The Predator is the worst.

People thought that this would be good because director Shane Black had actually starred in the first Predator movie back in 1987. Instead we got this bloated, confusing, obnoxious and insulting mess of a film that seems to go out of its way to ruin everything that makes Predator so good. There’s no tension. No suspense. No intrigue. Just a bunch of gore, explosions and shitty one liners from annoying and lifeless characters. They essentially took this big alien game hunter from outer space and turned him into a generic monster from a bad summer blockbuster. It no longer hunts for sport. It wants to take over the world and splice our DNA with theirs. But don’t worry, a rogue Predator doesn’t want to kill humans (even though he himself kills a bunch of humans), so he gives us a Predator Iron Man suit to set up a sequel that will probably never happen because this movie was a box office bomb and it fucking SUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKKKEEEEEDDDD!!!

This film also has a very nasty streak towards those with disabilities. There’s a lot of jokes at the expense of a character with Tourette’s and it has an extremely ignorant and patronising view of autism, portraying the main character’s kid as being a super genius who can decipher the Predator language and even going so far as to say that he represents ‘the next stage of human evolution.’ Presumably the Predators want social communication difficulties because apparently it helps them hunt somehow.

What with Disney acquiring 20th Century Fox, the future of both the Alien and Predator franchises were very much in question. This film needed to be a success in order to make a case for Disney to keep making more of them. It wasn’t. Congratulations Shane Black. You might have just killed off this franchise for good. Thanks arsehole! :D

So those were my least favourite stories from 2018. Join me on Wednesday where we shall discuss something more positive. Yes, it’s awards season. Who shall win the coveted Quill Seal Of Approval? Watch this space...

Or don’t. It’s up to you. I don’t want to force you or anything. It’s a free country.

[homosociallyyours]

a friend just posted a pic on fb of the coffee shop we used to hang out at, taken way back in the day. it’s just a shot of the place taken from inside, looking out the big glass windows and onto the street of downtown chattanooga. but one friend pointed out that she could see another friend’s van parked across the street, and one of the baristas came on and said he’d taken the photo and then proceeded to post a bunch more. 

anyway i’m feeling nostalgic so i’m posting about it. memories behind the cut. 

i started going there when i was maybe 15 years old. i don’t remember why, but it’s likely that the artsy nerd club i was a part of (we stayed after school to watch amadeus and monty python and we’d sometimes go to the local art museum) went there after a meeting one day. or maybe someone told me about it. anyway, it was my favorite place to go. i would drink pots of tea, always trying new things. 

on my 16th birthday my parents got me a teapot from there and a gift certificate to buy tea with. i had that teapot til it broke a year ago. 20+ years! it moved with me to and from college, to nyc, california, texas, and back to california. damn. 

anyway after i’d been going for a while i started talking with the owner. his name was ian, and he was pretty young. he loved tea and coffee and he had a roaster where they’d make their own coffee. it was loud and lovely, and for a long time it lived up front, right by a little elevated area with couches. when it was running you couldn’t hear anything and had no choice but to either shout or be quiet. 

ian encouraged my love of tea, and offered to keep track of everything i’d tried in a little notebook that was kept behind the counter. i got to make notes on every pot i drank, and i remember writing “terrible! grass!” after my first pot of green tea (it was oversteeped--my fault--and probably made with water that was too hot--their fault). i had my first pu-er there, and fell in love with its damp leaf flavor and that turned earth scent that it has. i drank multiple pots of jasmine pearls and wrote a caffeine fueled poem about it with a friend. i loved that little coffee shop. 

i don’t remember when i went from hanging out inside to hanging out outside, but i feel like i was 18 or so. the older people (they were probably barely 21-25, fucking babies) sat out there smoking and drinking coffee. i developed a crush one summer on a guy who made me think of arthur dent for some reason (don’t ask because i don’t know) and we went on one awkward date and didn’t kiss, and now i wonder what’s happened to him and if he, too, wasn’t straight. who knows? someone, i’m sure, but i can’t remember his last name anymore so is it even relevant? 

i’d never felt cool til i went off to college. it was like leveling up without trying, like when you’re playing a game and do one action and suddenly all your stats are refilled and you’re like...this is unexpected? but i’ll take it? i think that’s why i decided i could really sit with the outside tables. that and my bff, who was dating someone who was friends with a lot of those people, would show up sometimes and sit out there. 

(if you’ve actually been reading along so far, here’s where i’m gonna introduce you to a bunch of people i’ve never talked about before and will likely never mention again. just so you have fair warning.) 

the cast of characters shifted a lot, but there were always the constants. scott, the barista, who was much older than most of the people hanging out but looked young and seemed young. i look back with adult eyes and question the relationship we had, but at the time i just thought it was cool that someone so much older thought i was worth hanging out with. but he was 30 when i was 19, and man that’s a lotta years. he had a summer where he hit on my friend and i constantly, after his wife left him and he was kinda floundering a bit. but it never went past flirting and it never bothered me, though like i said it kinda does now. we were still hanging out when i was 21 and we’d go get beers after the coffee shop closed at ten or midnight. he’d turn up obnoxious music really loud and i’d sometimes help close. 

there was gabe and george, brother and sister in a family of people with names starting with the letter g. george was tiny and cute and either very drunk or very hyper from coffee at all times. gabe was a nerd who was usually quiet but loved to play scrabble, and we’d take the board inside sometimes and battle one another. he was much better than me, i won’t lie. liz and ever were both writers who would play with us sometimes. ever had changed her name at some point (to ever; any name she had before is irrelevant) and when we met she explained the meaning of her new name, which i won’t give because damn it’s very google-able. 

she was a so fascinating to me, always talking about some feminist theory or philosopher, and i always felt so smart when we’d hang out. like a Serious Thoughtful Adult and not a kid. and liz was less serious but no less smart. she played scrabble a lot more and for a while we got pretty close. she took me out after coffee sometimes to a shitty bar with pool tables and tried to teach me how to play pool. she had her own cue and even though she was like 5′2″ she could break like nobody’s business. i never figured out how to do that part. 

alex would come with us sometimes. he was tall and handsome and rode a motorcycle, and was the first openly bi guy i ever met. one time he invited me over to his house and we laid around listening to the smiths and talking. he burned me a copy of their greatest hits that i still have, all scratched up so it probably doesn’t play anymore. he crashed his bike more than once driving drunk. dumb fuckin kid. now he repairs coffee machines and sails, i think. life is funny. 

a few other people ran in groups. meg and waide and the aforementioned jason and ardyce. some people called meg “big megan” and another megan (her family was really wealthy, rich southern politicians who knew the clintons and have a mention in sweet home alabama--the song, not the movie) was “little megan” because she was still in high school. i joked that i was medium megan, but the whole thing was awkward because big megan was fat and i was small fat and little megan was skinny. i’m gonna blame it on thoughtless dudes, but who the fuck knows? we all pretended not to mind it anyway. 

waide ended up being a connection with other people who i met later. my hometown is weird in that it’s actually a pretty big part of the southern punk scene, so a lot of punks i meet have spent time there, and anyone over a certain age probably spent time at the bar waide worked at (the stone lion, and then maybe also the pickle barrel) so he’s one of those people who i’ll end up mentioning even though we haven’t spoken in years. 

at some point a kid named ory showed up. i think he was 16 when he started coming around, and i used to call him puppy because he was excitable and silly, full of energy one minute and then mopey crashing the next. like a lot of people there he drank a lot and would be fucked up sometimes and make dumb choices. i always wanted to protect him. when i was 22 (and he was 19, i think) we ended up sitting together at the second lotr movie and having some kind of weird chemistry. that summer i drove him home one night and we had a super heavy make out with lots of clothed grinding. honestly the furthest i’ve ever gone with a cis straight(ish, he hooked up with a couple dudes but idk if he’d say he’s bi) dude and it was awkward in that we never talked about it? and then he came to visit me a couple years later in new york because he was in the navy, and he got super drunk and passed out on my couch and was a mess because he literally never stopped being a puppy. 

he’s fucked up now, fully cancelled bc he said shit about girls rock camp (really dude?) and also probably cheated on his wife on their honeymoon? idk, it was fb rumors and then he deleted. but i’d believe it, honestly. 

and then there were all these absolutely random downtown characters: dirty mark (a crusty punk who was drunk or high most of the time) and shirtless dave (yeah he really didn’t wear a shirt that much) usually came as a pair. sometimes dave hung out with a guy my friends and i called blue hair. he once hit on my friend and she panicked and gave him my number instead of hers because her brain didn’t make up a fake number fast enough. 

there was sandy the flower man, who just passed away a couple weeks ago. he’d get flowers from local florists and go around on his bike, stopping into the coffee shop or to bars with roses and carnations and daisies. people gave him money usually, but sometimes he’d just hand you a flower because he wanted to. i saw a picture from a memorial and there was a portrait of him that was sat on top of his bicycle, all of it surrounded with flowers on flowers. so pretty. it’s what he deserved. 

things changed around 2005 or so, i think. by that time, all the old baristas had left and the kids who came in were all weirdly religious and went to the christian college on the mountain. they made shitty coffee and sometimes played xtian rock and most of the old regulars couldn’t take it anymore. ian got sick around that time, too, and ended up selling the place. they stopped carrying much tea, if any. 

but they finally sold the space and moved in like 2015. i remember the first time i drove by and didn’t see the lights on inside. it felt like seeing a friend from grade school all grown up, maybe the kid you had a crush on but they have a family now and you don’t think they’d recognize you at all so you just have to walk away. gone. 

fuck this post is long as shit, i’m sorry for anyone on mobile. but damn it was good to get my memories out. 

[koganphrancis]

Actual footage of Ian trying to wake up his dick.

Season H8 Episode 3: Where Everything’s Made Up And The Points Don’t Matter

The good(ish) news about this week’s episode is that compared to last week’s, nothing hurt all that much and no groups of innocent people were shamed.  

The bad news is-it still sucked.  It was written by the evil Krista Vernoff and had very little to do with what had gone on the week before.  Ian and Terror, in particular, seemed to have no connection with what happened in the last episode (except we saw a shot of Ian’s shitty tattoo at the end).

Since the demon show is continuing at least one more season, I wish they’d force writers to read the scripts they didn’t write, instead of (I’m assuming) just getting summaries or following general ideas on the white board.

Anyway, almost all the troubles the gang was facing last week disappeared as if by magic-or really crappy script writing.

Svetlana and Vee made up in less than 30 seconds.  While I’m glad for Svetlana, what was the point of even having her “impounded” for such a short time?  And the authorities are just going to drop the whole sex trade excuse Vee used to have her taken into custody?  And I guess maybe this will set up tension when they’re all working together at the bar again-but maybe not?  It was dumb.  

Kev had a bunch of DNA testing done-um, how are they going to pay for that?-and found out he’s Bart from Kentucky and his family tree only has one branch.  Can’t wait to see where this inbred storyline is going (please read that in a very sarcastic tone).  Last week’s bears are about to be replaced by next week’s hicks, maybe.  Smell that comedy gold!  

Youens plowed his car into a house and even that-or the threat of prison-wasn’t enough of a wake up call to try to return to sobriety.  (Why is he off the wagon after getting Lip on it?  I’m pretty sure Krista didn’t bother to write a reason, or maybe I was so bored I missed it.)  The main thing I took away from this part of the story was when Youens says if he had killed the woman in the house with his car, he would’ve gotten 20 years for vehicular homicide.  Really?  And Mickey got 15 for NOT killing a woman who was shooting at him when the cops showed up?  And with no physical evidence or witness testimony that he had tried to kill Sammi?  Wow, ain’t that a bitch?

Neil dumped Debbie (something Snore and Terror can’t seem to do with their Gallaghers) and told her she’s a horrible person.  When Debbie repeats that to her family, none of them even question it or try to tell her she’s not.  

Liam was barely in it.

Frank is all into this mellow “I’m a saint” thing now and it’s just zzzz.  

Fiona gets a tenant for the empty apartment, but the evil gf of Nessa is waiting on the staircase in her daisy dukes when he comes out from seeing the place and lies to him about bedbugs so Fi will rent the place to her friends, but for less money.  Cuz all these coincidences could totally happen-from her friends needing a place to Mel being on the spot when the one qualified renter comes to see the place.  Later Fi goes all South Side on Mel and it was so damn boring.  Rumbling over an apartment rental?  Yawn.

No Snore in this episode, but Lip does mention how he can’t even take care of Lucas anymore, so I’m betting we don’t see the kid ever again again.  It’s no big loss to the show, but it’s so stupid that Snore has no problems/struggles raising a kid on her own.   

Carl loses the hot tub (has to sell it for quick cash-or the meth dealer took it-I wasn’t paying close enough attention-he’s there when it’s taken away and he takes Carl’s towel from around his neck and that was actually kinda funny), and somehow (magic?) knows how to drive and operate a backhoe.  That someone left the keys in at the cemetery.  Krista, how many coincidences am I supposed to swallow?  Not to mention the rip off of Ian stealing the helicopter?  Get some fresh ideas!  You also have had them dig up a dead relative before.  

Now for Ian who every week is truly this show’s blank slate.  Last week he was acting like maybe he was manic-this week?  No sign of that.  Things start with a family-except for Fiona-council of war about the drug dealer that’s after them, and we get a new piece of Ian canon-he was a crack (or some other drug that Monica was using-Frank doesn’t specify) baby.  Ian tells Frank if he doesn’t help them figure out a way to get out of the shit they’re in with the drug dealer, Ian will take a tire iron to “old Frank”.  Frank says, “You’ve been a drama queen since the day you were born, Ian.  Wouldn’t stop screaming until you were fully detoxed.”  Ian does one of his stunned big blink looks, and the story moves, well not ON, but people keep talking.  

Oh, and just a side note, but Ian’s been shown drinking coffee at least twice in the Gallagher kitchen this season, and the cock mug is nowhere to be seen :(  

Next scene is Ian walking into Terror’s office area, all cocky.  “Brought you that chocolate flavored soy shit you like, then there’s coffee.”  (I’m not sure exactly what he says after “like” and Charter/Spectrum cable doesn’t communicate with my TV so the close captioning doesn’t work-don’t get me started on how I have to use different remotes to do different things.)  Terror says, “With a side of snark just how I like it,” in the most annoying, whiny voice possible.  WHAT is Ian supposed to see in him?  And, was that comment all that snarky?  And, should Ian be having what’s at least his second dose of caffeine on his meds?  

If I’m going to count how many times they needed Mickey in this episode, the meeting about how to deal with the drug dealer was one, Ian and his coffee intake is two, what fucking Terror says next is three...

“Thought you had to work today.”  NO!  Terror does not know or care about Ian’s schedule!  That was a Mickey thing and a Mickey thing only!  Ian LIES to everyone else about when he’s at work!  And so far in canon, Terror is way too into himself to know where or when Ian ever works.  Grrrr.

Ian says, “Soon, yeah.  So... that drug dealer that chased me?  Can’t seem to shake it off, don’t know what’s wrong with me.”  And he says it all small and scared-after walking into the place boasting about his cafe purchases-I don’t like how they keep having Ian’s moods change on a dime-especially since again, I just think it’s bad writing and not trying to tell the audience he’s slipping or anything’s wrong.  

Anyway, Mickey thought #4-Ian seems to be acting like if there’s something wrong, Terror will get into being his hero and fixing things for him, LIKE MICKEY USED TO DO ALL THE FUCKING TIME.  So, not only so much for “this isn’t me anymore” (which is so hard to take with all this running from killer meth dealers shit), but also WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU CAN’T FIX ME BECAUSE I’M NOT BROKEN?  (more of that in a minute)

Terror just smirks at his computer after Ian’s lines and Ian says, “You laughing at me?”  Terror answers, “Only cuz it’s still hard for me to tell when you’re joking-are you serious?”  And, WTF?  When has Ian EVER joked with Terror?  “I’m into cock. I’m a top.  I don’t want that up my ass.  I don’t want to hang out with Monica.  I told you I didn’t want to hang out with Monica.  I was with Mickey.”  Have they had any other conversations?  Has Ian ever said anything he didn’t mean to this asshat?  

Ian doesn’t answer, just sort of shrugs to answer the are you serious.  Terror says, “Wow, well nothing’s wrong with you.  I think it’s probably hard for a normal person to shake off a drug dealer chasing them.”   Ian says, “Gallaghers are not generally normal humans.”   T: Grief can change people. I: What? T: Ah, grief.  I mean, your mother died.  It changes you.  Maybe you should talk to the counselor.  (Krista!  We went over this ground LAST week and, while that should’ve been Terror’s advice then, it wasn’t, and why isn’t this story going anywhere, ever?) I: (creeplily turns the conversation into a come on) I’d rather talk to you. (Sits up, leans in towards Terror)  In fact, I’d rather do something with you that doesn’t involve talking. T: (closing down immediately and going cold) Ah, well, sorry, I’m busy trying to help out at risk youth.

So, yeah, that should’ve been his reaction LAST week-wtf?  It’s truly like last week never happened.  I wanted Terror to reply to that “I don’t feel like talking” call back in Mickey’s bedroom with, “Bitch, I just got you laid last week!  I’m never gonna sleep with you again, so there’s the door.”  But, no.  And Ian going from “I’m sad, please help it” to seductive or whatever the hell they think it is, is just...OOC and not attractive and as always, their total lack of chemistry makes everything worse.  But now that Terror has said no for the millionth time, it’s really coming off as rapey whenever Ian tries.  

Then, before he even starts his shift at work, Sue tells him his “uncle” was there looking for him and describes the meth guy, so Ian goes tearing out of the EMT station with Sue yelling after him that he has a shift.  If he STILL has his job after this 18th strike or whatever he’s up to...well, I won’t be surprised at all because Shameless has given up on reality more than ever and Gallaghers never get into any real trouble.  

There’s the scene at the hot tub with the guy dunking Carl and Ian trying to protect him with the bat, and then there’s another meeting to try to figure out what to do because they only have $9000 left from all the meth Carl sold, so finally they cave and go talk to Fiona and there’s a painful scene where she makes them admit she was right-which in this case she actually was, but in other cases she’s fucked up just as badly as they have-plus I’m NEVER forgiving her for saying Mickey would set a match to Ian’s life-what about what he’s managing all on his own since he’s been back?  What about the fact that Mickey did everything he could to always keep Ian safe and happy once he was back from the army?  Grrrrr.  

Anyway, the family digs up Monica and Krista waves her fairy wand again and has the meth dealer listen to Frank’s reasoning that half the meth belonged to Monica so them coming up with almost half the money is good enough-and that if the meth guy ever goes near his family again he’ll put him in the ground with Monica.  Yeah, meth dealers are known for compromising and listening to ownership rights theories.  And who wouldn’t be threatened by old broken-down Frank?  Eye roll.  

Anyway, Ian returns to the cemetery alone to try to put Monica’s headstone back together, but the pieces fall apart and he sits hard on his bum.  The camera’s behind him-and his shitty tattoo-so who knows if he’s crying or finally giving in to the fact that she’s dead and gone or what, but I won’t be surprised if he’s now completely over her death and ready to become a brand new man-yet again-next week.  Which is the episode where Ian supposedly crosses a boundary with a teen from the youth center.  Will his months of no sex except last week’s blowjob lead to him having sex with a teen?  Probably not, but cripes, what else could it be?  

[nemrut]

Star Wars - The Last Jedi thoughts

So I saw it last night and I have mixed feelings. There were things I liked a lot and things I didn't like at all, but overall, I think it was mostly a positive experience to me. Like, I didn't regret seeing it, I never was really bored, even though I rolled my eyes a few times and had instances where I had to exchange a suffering look with my mate, when seeing something particularly dumb.

I liked it a lot more than Rogue One, that's for sure but then again, all the prequel movies were better than Rogue One, so not a high bar to clear.

The movie definitely did have problems but Rey being a "Mary-Sue" wasn't one of them. As with most times, that term is thrown out a bit too easily for female characters and I honestly doubt that most people using that term would have applied it to Rey had everything been exactly the same but her gender.

It just didn't really feel like Star Wars at times, not the way TFA did. I think in that regard, TFA was the better Star Wars experience.

Well, to the more in-depth stuff after the spoiler:

- I think one of my biggest problems though, that I have a bit of a hard time understanding the state of the galaxy at the moment and who exactly each faction is and how many factions there even are, because both new movies really did a bad job at explaining things. Who exactly is who? There is the Republic but that one was destroyed in the last movie, kinda, but do they have nothing else left? Then is the First Order the new faction that has absorbed the old Empire bits or is it a different entity from them? I would think the former but honestly, the first movie kinda implied that the First Order and the Empire Remnants are different things. Also, why is the Resistance so ill-equipped? Did nothing from the Rebellion/Republic remain? Weren't they kinda in control for a good while? Why and how is the First Order so massive? And why was the movie behaving as if the First Order was constantly winning? Sure, the Resistance lost a good portion of their fleet and the Republic planets, but their fleet was nothing to write home about anyway, about a dozen ships if you counted the bombers, but hell, the First Order lost 2 of their dreadnoughts, one massive fleet with more than a few star destroyers, their starkiller base and the fleet around that and their supreme leader. Since I don't know the scale of anything, I can't tell if these losses have been devastating or something not even worth mentioning. Was this a "darn, lost two dreadnoughts. Oh well, let's roll out our other 60" moment or a " FUCK! SHIT! FUCK! WE LOST 2 OF OUR 3 BIGGEST SHIPS!" moment? It could be either one, seeing the potentially unlimited resources and manpower the First Order seems to have. At the same time, whenever we see a planet that isn't any empty battlefield, the people on that planet never really seem to give a shit about what is going on one way or another. So what's the deal there? Are the people of the galaxy so jaded about the Rebellion/Empire conflict that they are so done with it that they are just living their life and hope they won't get hit? Who is in control of what? I don't know and honestly, I doubt even the movie knows. All I got is that the Resistance lost a good portion of their people, maybe, but they have allies sorta waiting and the way these movies treat these kinda things, those allies could be anything from a full-fledged fleet of destroyers to a few junk ships with misfits and cast-outs. Say what you will about the Prequels, but they did give the GFFA a tangible feeling of scale and life. We saw how things worked there, we understood how different kinds of people lived in different places in the galaxy. We knew who was what. Sure, people joke about the taxation and border politic stuff, but honestly, at least it gave us something. I kinda knew how people on various planets lived and felt about the state of the galaxy as it was, whereas I have really no clue whatsoever about anything in these movies, except that the First Order is evil. - And while TFA was way worse in the sense of how it used time, this one also had moments where the timeline was questionable, to say the least. The excursion to the gambling planet, while I appreciated the message they were going for and I did actually kinda like that, the gambling stuff itself was rather meh, it didn't really feel Star Wars-y. It was just a 20s-30s casino with an alien paintjob, which was disappointing. - The movie's humor was a bit obnoxious as well. Most of the shoehorned in plushies can die in a fire, as can the humor that came with them. I could tolerate those ice pokemon on the last planet but those furbies which you can no doubt buy for 9,99€ at some point with Chewbacca were just obnoxious and broke the illusion for me whenever we saw them. That one weird alien pushing coins into BB8 was just dumb, for example. In general it seemed to me there were a few inappropriate for Star Wars moments in it, but then i remembered the things Jar Jar and R2 did in the prequels so never mind. - I too feel that Luke got a bit shafted and I can see why Mark Hamill would hated these things. I have a really hard time believing, that even for split second emotional reaction, that Luke Skywalker would have considered decapitating his sleeping nephew who at that point hadn't done anything yet. Luke wasn't really supposed to be jaded at that point. He was willing to give his father a chance in the face of the Emperor and I have a lot of trouble that he would even consider walking up to his sleeping nephew with his lightsaber on his person, let alone draw it "in a moment of weakness". What I would have believed is that after the Kylo debacle, that Luke would have been tempted to kill Rey, sensing the same darkness potential in her that he saw in Ben before he turned. That at that point, a Luke who lost his faith, sense of self and was plagued with doubt and guilt, would be tempted to do such a heinous thing. And that Rey would wake up, and see him doing that and would have served as a similar point of her hero falling from the pedestal, only it would have made more sense, imo. But not a Luke who at this point was by all intent at a good point in his life with a new jedi order on the rise, the galaxy seeming okay, his family being okay and all, that that Luke would even for a second have the notion that killing a sleeping family member is something he should do. - Similar to the factions thing, I think I would have liked to know a bit more on Snoke. I guess that we didn't really need to know anything more than that he was basically the Emperor for all intents and purposes but I dunno, I felt he fell short of that. The Emperor was initially like Sauron, in that even as barely as he appeared in the first movies, he cast a long shadow on the Empire and we felt that it was his will and influence that drove things, that behind Vader was an even bigger threat. Didn't really have that with Snoke. - Rey being a nobody. Don't know how fair that complaint is, since it is mostly because I had liked the idea that she would be a Kenobi. I do like the concept that it is the Skywalkers fucking things up/fixing things in the galaxy and Rey having been someone completely unconnected to that was a bit weird. Like, I got what they wanted from that, and fair enough, but I felt a bit let down. Things that I did like: - I quite liked the characters. I like the new characters Finn, Rey, Poe, Kylo and Rose. Didn't really care much for the hacker guy. That whole side-quest thing and resolution with him was just meh. I liked the Vice-Admiral and the lesson/conflict she had with Poe. That clash of vastly different viewpoints and the lesson that there is a time and place for everything and that you can't solve everything with grand actions and risky gambles was actually nicely done and I appreciated it. -The old guard was really great to see again. The robots didn't get a lot to do and I am honestly disappointed with how they used Chewbacca as he seems to have resigned himself to just be a follower. I had hoped he would take charge at some point, like he would tell Rey and others what to do in certain situations but he wasn't really active. I guess him not being able to talk English/basic is kinda the reason but dunno. Luke and Leia were of course great and had such a great presence that they always stole the show. Their scene together was great. Leia's dynamic with Poe was interesting and compelling, as was the Luke and Rey thing. The Rey-Kylo dynamic was a bit...difficult. It wasn't bad, it just was, I found the change that Rey underwent with regards to her opnion on Kylo a bit unrelatable. She got sympathetic to him a bit too fast, for not good enough of a reason. Sure, redemption is a good thing to seek and probably the reason why Rey got so force chosen to begin with, being the thing that Luke is no longer, but at the same time, I felt a familial connection would have gone a long way to explain that better. Like, if they had gone with the Jaina-Jacen thing in the books, or even the family relationship to the Kenobi's or something else. I dunno, it wasn't terrible but for Rey it felt a bit like too fast of a jump, from "you're scum" to "we all make mistakes and it is not too late for you". I get that she had a vision but come on. I also quite liked the Rosa and Finn team-up. It was interrupted by a bit of a lame humor at times but the perspectives they shared were interesting enough. And not going to lie, i really liked Rose's sister and was rather sad she died, would have loved to see more of her. - maybe a bit childish but I really loved that they finally used the activating/deactivating mechanism meaningfully in a fight. That was pretty neat to see. And while I think TFA had the best lightsaber battle scene in the whole star wars franchise, the battle against the Imperial Guards was a pretty good one. The lightsaber fights all around are handled excellently so far, in both movies. A lot more visceral and brutal than the jumping around in prequels but also more impactful and exciting to watch than the OT, where it was always more of just a conversation between the characters. Which wasn't bad or anything but the new ones were that as well on top of exciting and raw fights. That said, weird that Kylo forgot his ability to freeze enemies/things in place, but maybe he was too emotionally torn to use his fancier force powers. - Luke being all badass. Every AT-AT unloading on him and him just walking out, completely unphased was such an anime moment, that I kinda loved it, cheesy as it was. The twist there, that Luke was projecting from his backwater planet, was rather interesting. The force in general is used rather differently all around. - I actually liked the Yoda scene, was a great moment and when i first saw him, I was prepared to hate it but honestly, really good use of the character. He didn't look horrible either. - the space battles were fun enough.

-Luke dying was a bittersweet moment and I expected to have a stronger emotional reaction but I was kinda alright with it, the way it was done.

That's as much as I remember right now, probably some other things that I might recall later on. But yeah, overall, I didn't love it but nor did I hate it. It had its many, many flaws but it also did a lot of things well, so, overall sitting on a more pleasant experience than a bad and boring one like Rogue One but I can't deny that I was somewhat disappointed despite going in there with the expectation that it would be horrible. Apparently I didn't, and believed deep down it would be amazing.

[scottstiles]

clarz

replied to your post

“hi divvy! i know you are MAD right now, so don't answer this until you...”

thanks so much for answering this! tbh i love the fact that you're religious and that you clearly love it so much. i went to a very catholic college, so that kind of thoughtful and deep connection with religion and tradition is important to me, and i love seeing it in other people. it's an important part of who you are! and part of the reason i asked is because you mentioned disliking the performance thing in your initial post, and i really connect with that. when i was growing up, the church i went to was pretty plain and traditional (despite very liberal politics and interpretations of scripture.) most of the other people i knew who went to church were evangelical and/or southern baptist, and i always disliked that their churches had like, full rock bands at services, and poppy contemporary melodies to "hymns." i understand that they're trying to make church fun, but it always made me suspicious and felt disingenuous.                  i don't think religious services should be a chore, certainly, but i also don't think that they should be "fun" in that way. that's not the purpose of religion. i don't think religion should become more like entertainment or performance, because it's supposed to be a space that's completely different from the rest of the world. it makes it feel less holy to me. so i definitely relate to how you feel there. also, how did you end up feeling about the service in the moment? (and i'd love to hear about the ma'apilim sometime)                                            

SORRY I DIDN’T ANSWER THESE BEFORE CUZ I REALLY WANTED TO BUT PROCRASTINATION IS MY MIDDLE NAME (jk it’s tzviya but try saying that ten times fast. or just one time. slow.)

HERE WE GO:

1- i love finding other people who feel close to their religion, no matter what it is. i remember in teacher’s college i just naturally gravitated to the only catholic girls in my classes i guess simply because i enjoyed talking to them? we weren’t there learning to teach religion, but i’m always fascinated by what other people feel about it. i’ve found myself thinking on more than one occasion that i feel more comfortable with people who have that side to themselves, like me, rather than people who don’t interact/think about/believe in any of that kinda stuff. (im being purposefully vague because it’s a huge generalization, but nonetheless true-ish for me, i often find myself sharing much more common ground with palestinian muslims, for example, than a french canadian montrealer). i guess especially because religion is not something i consider a defining trait of mine, and im just in constant evolution with respect to that. judaism is so much more than just a belief in god or a practice of the rituals and commandments.

2- how fascinating to find someone in my age bracket who feels the same way about music in prayer. my problem has always been that i LOVE music, and its so personal and emotional that i DO see it fitting seamlessly with prayer but... it’s the setting that has always bothered me. it just never felt right for me in a synagogue. like you said, it’s just a different space. i don’t know about church and ‘making it fun’ but i definitely can imagine plenty of religions use music to draw in otherwise disinterested people who find prayer “boring” or pointless. music is awesome! i just wish people could feel the music in their soul as a separate entity from external music, like from an instrument. idk i guess i just really love singing XD and i wish it wasn’t always a performance or a competition of voices, because i think prayer should be personal. even if it’s between a community, its still voices connecting to each other. i’m reminded of Hannah’s prayer, in the book of Samuel (the prophet- his mother), she’s at the temple on one of the annual pilgrimages with her family and she’s depressed because she doesn’t have any children and her husband’s other wife just keeps popping out babies left and right. so she goes to be alone somewhere in the temple, and she’s weeping and praying to god for a child. Eli, the high priest, comes in and sees her shaking and moving her lips real fast so he goes, “hey, you shouldn’t be drinking in here” and she’s like “im not drunk, i’m praying”. so that’s the first place we read about a person actually praying, and not out loud. this was like a huge revelation to the priest cuz clearly he’d never seen that before, and now the tradition has become to pray like hannah. (as an aside, if u ever see the propaganda videos made by the nazis, they use footage of synagogues to show how loony tunes those jews are with their muttering and their rocking back and forth). cuz like, prayer is supposed to be out loud? ahaha anyway i forgot where i was going with this but... oh ya, okay, so prayer didn’t really exist (as we know it, in judaism- and therefore christianity/islam/western monotheism) until that point- it was all about the sacrifices. and the temple ritual was replete with music and instruments like the shofar, timbrels, lutes, blabla other ancient instruments. but since then, we’ve been meant to use our voices alone. so says tradition, i guess.

3- so i did go to services on yom kippur (kol nidre) but not at my shul. i went with my sister to the chabad house near my parents, and it was....not great. but it was compounded by a lot of factors- i got a wicked cold the day or two before, so my nose was running a marathon and i was coughing like a 90yr old with emphysema. i got my period that morning so i was on an extra steep emotional rollercoaster that i just somehow could barely control. so we sat on the other side of the mechitzah (the separation barrier between men and women), the rabbi/cantor stood at the head in the middle so we could all see, and we all prayed out loud, no hush on the women’s side or anything (pretty typical from what i remember of camp/school prayer services). but of course the tunes were not quite what i’m used to, and there was a bit of annoying stuff that just irks me as a perfectionist (like they use a lot of yiddish pronunciation of the hebrew words, injecting a bunch of oy oy oys and ahoyhoyhoys in random places, in fact i leaned over to my sister at one point and was like ‘did ned flanders write this nigun (tune)?’), but altogether i guess it was better than watching an orchestra perform the prayer? idk it was pretty bad, on an emotional level, but not in hindsight. im very good at ruining things for myself through sheer stubbornness. i must have embarrassed my sister just by existing next to her, poor girl, she really wanted me to like it. i’m glad it’s over, and hopefully by next year ill be back in nyc or some other city so i wont have to worry about it.

4- MA’APILIM!!!!! okay so this was my absolute favoritest thing as a kid and i can’t wait to describe it to you. one night in camp, every summer, the counselors and cits would wake us up at like 3am by barging into our cabins chanting (screaming, really) “MA’APILIM, MA’APILIM BEH-MASSAD, BEH-MASSAD. MATCHIL HALAYLA MATCHIL HALAYLA BEH-MASSAD, BEH-MASSAD.” which translates to : “ma’apilim at massad (the name of my camp) starts tonight.” i’m singing it in my head as i type XD. so they’d be screaming and we’d be tumbling bleary eyed out of bed to grab our socks and sweatshirts and run over to the flagpole (keep in mind i was 8 when i first experienced this, and we’ve had kids as young as 6 at camp). once we had all gathered in line with our bunkmates, the counselors and cits put on a little “skit”.

basically they acted like they were nazis and jews, and did a little skit of some basic bad holocaust stuff (don’t ask me to remember the exact details we’re talkin at least 20 years since i last did this) to scare the pants off of us. kids would always cry already at this point from the shouting. we’d all kinda follow into this “play” (sorry idk what else to call it), and marched over to the gym where we watched a fake hanging on the stage. they literally. hanged someone. in front of us. a fake noose, of course, duh, i remember my counselor showing it to me, but traumatizing to say the least (i still remember the name of the counselor they “hanged”- not sure this ever happened more than once but ill never forget it).

then we’d all hustle down to the waterfront, again “playing” the role of holocaust victims/survivors after these little “skits” had sort of put us in the headspace, and we play along, imagining we’d just experienced these things and were now running from it. it was terrifying and exhilarating as a small child, and an even more unbelievably emotional thrill ride as i got older and became pseudo-obsessed with holocaust lit and facts in general in my life (it never did go away but everything changes with age). ANYWAYS so down at the waterfront we got a speech from another counselor playing a member of the haganah (the main jewish defense force in palestine leading up to independence, which ben gurion later turned into the IDF). sidebar for a little history: in the 40s the yishuv (jewish agency) and the haganah began a mission called aliyah bet, “the second immigration,” an illegal smuggling operation to bring refugees from the holocaust into palestine under the noses of the british, since almost all countries in the world had barred their doors to jewish immigration from europe (a high level member of the canadian government is famously recorded as having answered, when asked how many jews they should let in, that “none is too many”). volunteer seamen from the US and canada and other countries crossed the ocean on cargo ships hastily refurbished to fit hundreds of people, picking up thousands of refugees in europe to smuggle them onto the beaches of haifa and tel aviv. paul newman has a lovely half nekid scene of this in the movie Exodus when he jumps off the ship in the middle of the night and swims up onto the beach- one of my fave movies ever and pretty much the story of aliyah bet (albeit with tremendous hollywood embellishment and only mild accuracy). these refugees who became illegal immigrants (caught or not) were known as “ma’apilim”- the root of the word is to “climb” or to “rise up”, and is found in the bible referring to the israelites who were still eager to enter the land even after the negative report of the spies.

okay so basically this was the idea. we were “playing” these illegal immigrants who had just escaped the holocaust, and were now facing another threat in the form of the british who were doing their best to keep them out of palestine. k so we’re down at the waterfront. all the kids get divided into small groups of about 10 or so, with one or two counselors at the helm to be our “haganah operatives” and guides to the end. what end, you say? so the camp is spread out into 2 areas, the main camp where the younger kids cabins were, and the dining hall and the gym and the waterfront, etc. then there’s a road in the middle of the camp, and beyond it a hill leading up to the senior cabins and some sports fields at the top. the goal was for each group to make it through camp to the top of the hill without getting caught by the “british,” played by the cits who were roaming around camp.

idk if i have to describe camp further for people who don’t know the concept, but basically we’re all in the middle of the damn woods with nothing around us for miles except the lake and the camps on the other side of it or down the road. ill never forget my first ma’apilim (tbh most of my description is from then, which is why its so fuzzy cuz these memories are 20+ years old), i was so lucky to get the tripper as our group leader (the tripper is the “nature dude” in camp, the survivalist ;). he immediately led us underneath the gym (which of course was just insane to my small mind... UNDER the gym??) to plan our route and give us instructions. we organized a roll call and signals, we practiced walking in a single file line silently and dropping to the ground on his signal. we smeared dirt on our faces for camo in the woods. it was *mason voice* intense. k so then as you can guess, we snuck our way up the hill through the woods. sometimes we’d encounter other groups, once in awhile i remember getting caught by a cit, and they’d take all or some of us to the “jail” on the basketball court” where we’d have to wait for a jailbreak (idk how that worked but it did, i remember it happening but not in any detail). a famous prison break that DID happen was at acre prison in 1947 when the irgun (another paramilitary jewish group) blew up the prison and broke out 28 of their members and 214 arab prisoners. if im not mistaken they briefly refer to it in exodus by recreating a prison break. exciting times. ANYWAYS fuck im such a tangential bitch sorry XD, by the end of the night we’d all make it to the top- “jerusalem”- and we’d have hot chocolate and say morning prayers as the sun rose over the hill. 

i feel like my description is a little lacking, but hopefully u get the basic picture. ma’apilim wasn;t even the heaviest part of camp- that was tisha b’av- the fast day when we commemorate the destruction of the temple and every other traumatic destructive event the jewish people have gone thru. that night they’d prepare the camp with candles in sand filled paper bags lining all the paths. after dinner we’d walk with our bunks on the path and watch little skits in different parts of camp- scenes from these moments in jewish history, like the holocaust, pogroms in europe, the spanish inquisition, terror attacks in israel, etc. after walking the path we’d all convene back at the waterfront, where they’d set out a small reconstructed “temple” on a makeshift raft in the lake, and a banner on the beach that said “yizkor”- remember. then they’d light both on fire and we’d sit and watch them burn while singing appropriately somber songs like eli eli, by hannah senesz. after that we’d go back to the gym and lie on the floor in small groups huddled around candles. we’d listen as some people chanted the book of eicha (lamentations), and would slowly fall asleep (depending on our age, of course). anyone that was still up after that was over got to stay in the gym if they wanted to watch exodus- a 4 hour movie. the next day we’d fast all day (only those who wanted- 13 y/o +) and treated it basically like shabbat- no regular activities.

MAN did i get some wild shit imprinted on me from camp!! but i don’t regret one second. i only wish other people could have the experience i did, but i dont even know if they still do that there. they probably do, but this old lady has no excuses to step foot in a summer camp anymore :(

as a completely coincidental aside and not at all as a self promo, idk if u knew this but i’ve been working on a documentary for over a year now and this whole thing is a major part of the plot. i interviewed a lady who was a passenger on the exodus, and about 4 or 5 people who were volunteers from montreal/new york/new jersey/toronto that picked up and smuggled the refugees. the stories are incredible. i just hope the rest of the world will get to hear it from their mouths one day. all we need is 100k to finish the film XD

[ikonxmx]

I’ll be Waiting | Donghyuk x Reader x Wonho [M]

“Straighten things out on that end first… I don't think I can date you while knowing you're still sleeping with him.” Hoseok says sincerely.

word count: 5,870 (give or take)

Warnings: There’s a bunch of smut in a bunch of different places.

can i request a scenario? the reader is dating donghyuk. he comes and go from the reader's apartment and the reader is into him and believes to be in love, but apparently he's not. He's not bad, but they only have a phisical relationship and they don't talk that much. wonho is the boy of next door (literally) and he gets to know the reader while donghyuk isn't there and they become closer and fond of each other and it gets messy. Thank you so much I hope this is ok for you <3

Donghyuk: Can I come over? seen ✓

Usually, you'd respond in seconds eager to see the man you believe to be the love of your life, but you can't seem to get yourself to type a reply. You lean against a wall that's rattling, the vibrations from whatever house beat the DJ has decided to play, shaking artwork in the dimly lit hallway. What club has artwork anyway? No one is going to stop and analyze the symbolism of two aliens holding a brain with an eyeball while they're on their way to take a piss.

Your phone dings again and you look down to see another text from Donghyuk.

Donghyuk: Too busy tonight? Then let's hang out tomorrow, yeah? seen ✓

You don't even like clubs. Coming here was your friend’s idea. A guy she's been dating casually for a few weeks now decided to throw himself a birthday party and she refused to come alone. Of course, she'd ditched you in favor of him the moment you two walked in. You can't really blame her. He's an attractive guy with a great body and an adorable smile. Had you been in her shoes, you would've chosen his company over yours as well.

Since you were here anyway, you decided having a couple of drinks wouldn't be a bad idea. Three shots of tequila and a shot of vodka later, and you were still sat at the bar bored out of your wits. Men had offered to sit with you, but you'd firmly declined each of them stating you were already taken. Which you are.

Donghyuk is your boyfriend. Well... the closest thing you have to one. Essentially, he's just a fuck buddy. He calls or texts you during late hours asking to visit and often disappears before sunrise. You don't think much of it, though. He's busy, and you're understanding. Tonight had thrown you for a loop, though. Even in your slightly inebriated haze, you could make out your “boyfriend’s” figure stepping through the double doors of the clubs entrance. He had a smile plastered on his face as he greeted person after person before making his way to the V.I.P section and hugging the birthday boy. A girl then excitedly ran into his arms. He laughed a bit before pulling her away to see her face. His smile widens before he dips down to connect his lips to hers for a quick peck.

He kissed her.

Watching the scene made your stomach turn. Donghyuk sleeping with other people had never crossed your mind. You'd agreed to a no-strings-attached relationship, but for your protection and his, you refused to sleep with anyone besides him. At least that's the excuse you tell yourself. It's a damn good excuse too. You figured he'd be smart and do the same. Now you aren't so sure. Gosh, what if he caught something from someone else and gave it to you?

Underneath the anger and betrayal you felt, there's heartache. You've been in love with Donghyuk for some time now. You've been completely sure about your feelings for four months and planned on telling him on the one year anniversary of your little sex agreement… two weeks from now. Your heart broke into a million tiny pieces seeing him so nonchalant as he kissed someone that wasn't you. As he embraced her warmly, like he does when he hasn't seen you in a couple of weeks, everything around you seemed to shatter. Before you could break down, completely lose your sanity, and confront him, you made an escape to the bathroom.

Now as you stand looking at his messages your anger has disappeared. He wasn't planning on sleeping with the girl. He was trying to see you. Maybe you'd read into things wrong and it wasn't everything it seemed to be. Donghyuk isn't an idiot and you don't have to worry about getting any STDs from some girl he's fucked in a bathroom or backseat. (You'll still get things checked to be safe.)

You: Out with a friend right now, heading home soon though. Meet me in 30 minutes? delivered ✓

He's still the love of your life, and you'll do anything to spend even a moment's time with him. Besides, if he's with you tonight he'll have no time to be with that girl. The one who he kissed. His lips and body will be yours for the night and you plan on reminding him why he doesn't need anyone else. Your phone dings again with another new message

Donghyuk: Okay :) seen ✓

You send a quick text announcing your departure to your friend so that she doesn't worry and make your way out through the back door so Donghyuk doesn't see you leaving.

Catching a taxi is rather easy since the club hasn't ended and let out. There's no clump of drunk girls stumbling to beat other drunk girls to taxis and no problem giving your address to the warm taxi driver who politely reminds you to wear your seat belt and asks if you're comfortable before taking off.

There's no traffic on the street and you make it to your apartment complex in a short ten minutes. You quickly hop in the shower to rinse off the smell of the club making sure to keep your makeup intact. Once you get out you brush your teeth freshen it up, pressing a bit of powder into your t-zone and reapply the red lipstick you'd worn all night. 20 minutes passed so quickly. You sat on your living room couch waiting for Donghyuk to make his appearance. Another 10 minutes goes by before you hear light taps against your front door. You stand but halt so he doesn't think you were waiting for him. During the second round of the light tapping, you make your way to the door and answer with a small smirk.

“You're late.” You say as you pull a smiling Donghyuk in by the collar of his shirt.

“I know, I'm sorry. I was out too and had a little trouble getting a taxi.” He answers. You know it's a lie because you'd gotten one no problem but you don't think much of it. He probably just got held up telling people bye or something.

You shut the door behind Donghyuk and connect your lips to his. He responds quickly, brushing your lips against each other’s in a heated kiss. You pull back a bit and let your tongue swipe across his upper lip before pulling the bottom one into your mouth and sucking it lightly. Donghyuk groans and lets his hands fall to your hips. The touch is feather light but still sends small tremors through your system. Your sex heats up, the thought of what's to come making you damp down below.

The kiss continues, lips parting and tongues connecting in a fierce battle for dominance, rolling over each other in a rather sloppy fashion. Your teeth click together every now and then and you can only imagine how absolutely disgusting this must look, dissimilar to how it feels. Donghyuk's mouth and tongue moving against your own is your heaven. His lips are soft and swell to a nice plumpness the more you nip and suck at them and you wouldn't have them any other way. They're Donghyuk’s lips and that's the only reason why you love them so much.

You pull back from the kiss to pull air into your aching lungs. Breathing through your nose can only bring so much air in during your aroused state. Donghyuk pants against your lips a little out of breath himself. Breathing the air he's put out makes your head swim, the dizzy feeling only fueling your sexual desire.

Without another thought, you sink to your knees in front of Donghyuk. One of his hands quickly finds the nape of your neck and his thumb gently caresses your cheek. The gesture is sweet. You hurriedly rush to rid him of his belt. The moment you've got it undone you're rubbing him through his jeans, panting near the thick material, working to get him harder.

“Shit.” He breathes bucking lightly into your palm.

You smirk and unbutton his jeans. Once you've got the zipper down you yank them a bit to get them from directly around his hips and pull his semi-hard dick from the confines of his boxers.

You pump him in your hand a few times and watch as he grows the veins on his length getting more and more prominent as your calculated movements continue. You hear him hiss from above you when you sweep your tongue over his slit, licking up the bulb of precum that's formed there. Pleased with his reaction you swipe your tongue across him again, this time up the most prominent vein on his bulging shaft.

Donghyuk's hand tightens against your nape. You search his eyes with the most innocent look you can muster, your bottom lip caught between your teeth and your eyes wide.

He sighs, “Please… stop playing with me.” He mewls and loosens his grip.

“Should I stop? I thought you like when I'm a bad girl.” You tease.

“I do, but I really need to be in your mouth.”

You smirk at your small victory but give into his plea and engulf his length with your mouth. He sighs at the feeling, caressing your cheek with his thumb once again as he watches his cock disappear into the warm cavern of your mouth.

“Yeah, just like that baby girl,” He rasps as you take as much of his length as you can and swallow around it. “Fuck.” He groans when you sputter for air.

He leads your mouth back to his length, bucking his hips to chase the warmth and holding you still when he bottoms out in your mouth. He moans softly when you choke against his length before pulling you back, letting you gasp in all the air you can, and repeating the process. He's always liked fucking your mouth. You're not sure what it is but for some reason seeing you choke against his cock turns him on more than anything else ever can.

“Fuck baby, get up. I want you to ride me.” He husks letting go of your neck and almost losing his balance.

You let him out of your mouth with a lewd pop before standing on your feet and helping guide his pleasure filled figure to your couch.

You take off the satin robe you're wearing to reveal your naked form underneath. Donghyuk bites his lip in approval before reaching out and grabbing your hips. He pulls you toward him and smiles when you fall onto his lap, your naked crotch connecting with his hardened member. Donghyuk moves one of his hands from your hips to grab his erection. He rubs the tip back and forth between your wetness and you moan in response, arching your back forward and throwing your head backward.

“Look at you, so wet for me. I didn't even touch you.” He smirks, cockiness dripping from his cool tone.

Your breath hitches, the dirty words obviously having their intended effect.

Donghyuk places his tip against your entrance and looks at you expectantly. You say nothing and lower yourself onto him. The stretch brings small jolts of pain, but you gladly welcome them knowing the pleasure that'll come. Donghyuk’s thick length fills you up in the familiar way you've become accustomed to over the past 12 months. You moan and he grunts when he finally bottoms out, his entire length filling you deliciously. You sit still waiting on your body to adjust before lifting your hips experimentally. The stretch is still a bit much so you lower your hips again and wait awhile longer.

Donghyuk grabs your face and connects your lips to his in another heated kiss. You loosen your tense body and melt into it. He takes the opportunity to flex his hips up into your heat burying himself further inside of you. You bite his lip in surprise but moan as he continues letting his hips drop and then pushing them back up to delve into your heat once again. You moan out in pleasure and work to meet his thrust, pushing down as he pushes up and vice versa. Donghyuk throws his head back and shuts his eyes rather tightly gradually allowing the pace to quicken.

You purposely clench your walls around his length and draw out a broken “Fuck” from his clenched teeth. He bites his lip and rolls his head til it's facing down and he can see his dick sliding in and out of you. The lip pops from between his teeth and his mouth hangs open, loud pants rushing past his lips.

“Look at you, taking all my cock like a good girl,” Donghyuk growled in your ear before letting the hand on your hip grip much tighter and forcing you to move faster.

You moan again as his dick rubs against your g-spot, the squishy flesh enjoying the stimulation causes an involuntary squeeze of your walls against Donghyuk.

“You like that don't you baby? You love taking my cock.” He growls once again lightly slapping your ass afterward.

He'd learned pretty early on that you're a fan of dirty talk and never failed to implement it in your sex life. Your body’s response is always enjoyable. A moan here, a whimper there, or you sex clenching around Donghyuk's dick, which is undoubtedly his favorite.

With his own climax approaching Donghyuk dips his free hand between the two of you and plays with your clit in hopes of pushing you to yours first. You buckle, the steady pace you'd manage to keep slowly turning sloppy as your climax approaches. Donghyuk continues to whisper dirty words and praises in your ear. “C’mon and cum for me baby. Be a good girl and cum on my cock.” He purs repeatedly against the shell of your ear.

With a loud moan, you're rocketing over the edge, fire pools in your abdomen as your hips shakily continue to buck down onto Donghyuk's throbbing cock in hopes of prolonging the pleasure.

Donghyuk grunts, his own climax rushing through him. He pushes your hips down one last time before holding them still and coming deep inside your sex. He grunts as spurt after hot spurt of his cum coats your still pulsing walls.

The two of you pant having trouble catching your breath. When you finally do, you giggle and lift yourself from him.

“Well, that was amazing.” You smile and raise yourself completely from his lap.

“Yeah. It was.” Donghyuk smiles.

“Come to bed?” You ask grabbing his hand.

He nods and stands up a smile still on his face. “Only for a little while. I have somewhere to be early tomorrow.”

Honestly, where does he have to be so early on a Saturday? You want to ask but you refrain. Since you're not really his girlfriend, it's not really your business. You'll take what you can have until you are. Even if it's just a couple of hours.

BANG BANG BANG

You were always a lightweight when it came to alcohol. It didn't take much to get you drunk, and you have pretty much the worst hangovers ever. The four shots you'd had at the bar were enough. You were drunk but not shit faced, and still completely coherent. Had you left it there, you would've been fine. But you'd stupidly decided to drown your sorrows in a bottle of tequila after Donghyuk left at 3:30 in the morning.

BANG BANG BANG

You groan and close your pillow over your head in hopes of muffling the incessantly loud banging coming from the wall shared between you and your next door neighbor.

BANG BANG BANG BANG

Upset, you lash out throwing the pillow from your head and the cover from your body. You stand up and make your way to the wall.

BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG

You send back and pause. You wait to see if your neighbor will continue on. When it doesn't seem like they will, you make your way back to your bed. No more than five minutes pass before the banging starts again. Just a bit slower. You groan and hop up once again, this time you put on your shoes and head out the door.

BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG

You send the meaningful hits to the center of their door.

“One second!” A male voice calls. The door is swung open just a short few seconds later. The man standing before you now has got to be one of the most beautiful beings you've ever had the pleasure of beholding. The smile he's got on his face is so bright it almost helps to further your headache, and you squint in hopes of shielding your retinas. When that doesn't do much you opt to place a hand just above your eyebrows to block the light. The other naturally lands on your hip.

“Can I help you?” The man asks still smiling.

You sigh, “Going slower doesn't make it any less loud, you know?”

His lips form a small ‘o’ shape, “I'm sorry, I just really need to get these pictures hung up.”

“It can't wait even just a little while… people are trying to rest at this time.”

“I'm sorry I thought everyone would be up by 3 pm.”

You blink, “What time is it?”

He pulls his phone from his back pocket and checks. “3:11 right now.” He says before placing it where it had been.

The hand above your eyebrow collapses and you cover your eyes in embarrassment. “I'm sorry. I was… drinking last night.”

“Oh! That explains.” He laughs. “Why don't You come in for some coffee and maybe sober up a little? Promise I'll stop with the hammer.”

You laugh. Honestly, he could've taken you coming here way worse. It'd be different if it were 6 a.m. on a Monday and you were in the last bouts of your sleep, but at three in the afternoon on a Saturday he had every right to assume his neighbors would be up and get whatever housework he needed to done.

Removing your hand from your eyes you nod, “Coffee sounds awesome.”

He’s nothing but a gentleman, as he leads you into his apartment and gives you a small tour. Although the layout is very similar to your own, the color schemes are different his light and dark gray a big contrast from your white and tan. It fits the space well. He has silver and white ornaments strategically planted in different areas. They’re cute and make the space feel more inviting. You take everything in as he leads you back to the kitchen.

“Go ahead and have a seat. I'll get you some coffee.” He says with the same smile he'd answered the door with.

You send back a small smile of your own before hopping up onto a stool at his breakfast bar.

“What's your name neighbor?” You ask.

He turns around to face you for a second, “Hoseok. And yours?” You tell him and he nods. “Beautiful name for a beautiful girl.”

You push a small chuckle through your nose, “That was cheesy.”

He laughs, “It was honest… I'm hoping I wasn't crossing any boundaries by saying it, though. I don't need a crazy boyfriend trying to chop my neck off.”

You return the laugh, “Don't worry. He's not crazy.”

Hoseok nods and turns fully with two cups of coffee in his hand, “But he does exist?” He asks as he hands you a mug. You accept the drink and take a small sip before nodding. He sighs, “Too bad.” He says before taking a sip of his own.

2 weeks later

“Look I'm sorry but-” Donghyuk starts and you don't bother to let him finish.

“It's fine!” You say raising from your seat beside him and quickly grabbing the glasses of wine you'd poured after the two of you had finished the meal you cooked and a shared slice of the cake you'd baked. “It was stupid I was just…” you say and stop.

It wasn't stupid. Your feelings are valid and you love him more than you've ever loved another man in your life, but after being rejected… what can you really say? What can you do to save face here? Nothing. So you stop your sentence and make your way to your kitchen sink. You pour the wine out and sigh. Your body tenses feelings a pair of arms wrap loosely around your waist

“We’ve got a great thing going here,” Donghyuk says against the shell of your ear and your shiver from the feeling, your body reacting how it normally would to his close proximity. You sigh and tilt your head to the side allowing his now roaming lips access to your neck. “Why go and ruin it with titles?”

Titles… they don't ruin anything for you. You've more or less been living as if you were his girlfriend for the past year. You ignored any other man that made an effort to get close to you in favor of Donghyuk. You waited for his calls at ungodly hours of the night in hopes of spending a sliver of time with him. You put your happiness aside for his with the hope that one day… he would love you how you love him. He would see how much you mean to him and the two of you could have an actual relationship, one not confined between the hours of 11 pm and 3 am. That doesn't seem to be the case though. He doesn't want that at all. And so your choices have turned to:

1. Live with it.

Or

2. Leave.

As Donghyuk's kisses trail down your neck you aren't sure of what your decision will be. You go through the works of sex with each other. Foreplay followed by great sex that leads to a mind numbing orgasm. But this time as he finishes and falls limply beside you, you say nothing.

Donghyuk looks at you expectantly, “That was great, right?”

You turn to him with a smile, bite your lip and nod.

He sighs and slowly starts to shut his eyes, the post-orgasm bliss ridding him of any energy he'd had, but his eyes shoot open when your next words pass your lips:

“When are you leaving?” You ask softly.

He eyes you a bit confused, you always want him to stay and sleep beside you after the two of you are done having sex.

“I’m uh…” he starts and shakes his head trying to rid himself of his sleepy state. “Why?”

“I have somewhere to be early in the morning.” You repeat the words he'd told you a short two weeks ago.

On a Saturday? Donghyuk questions to himself with a raised eyebrow. “Where are you going early on a Saturday?” He asks out loud.

“Why does it matter?” You laugh.

Very true. Why does it matter? Donghyuk’s not too sure why and he doesn't have time to read into it.

“I guess I can leave now.” He says raising himself from your bed with the little energy he does have. “Am I seeing you tomorrow?” He asks a bit unsure of where you two stand. This is the first time you've ever kicked him out.

“Sure,” You smile. “Just call me.”

Donghyuk nods and dresses slower than he normally would. Once he's done he looks at your relaxed form laying in the covers, your eyes closed shut and your breathing even. He sighs and makes his way out of your front door.

Your eyes pop open when you hear the door shut. You're still unsure of what your decision will be, but you know whatever you choose, you'll have to remove your heart from the equation. No more cuddling after sex. No more begging him to stay the night. Nothing that could make you get the wrong idea. The idea that your relationship is anything but sexual, it can't cross your mind again.

You get up and clean yourself and your bed. You make quick work of replacing the sheets, cover, and even the pillow cases. Don't leave anything with his scent on it. You make your way to your kitchen for a glass of water, but upon seeing the half drunken bottle of wine opt for a glass of it instead. A soft hum catches your attention. It's muffled and you can't 100% make out what it is, but it fills your silent apartment. You move closer to the sound and find it's coming from the other side of the wall you and Hoseok share. He's singing. It's soft and you can't really pick up what the tune is, but his voice sounds nice, soothing really. You raise your fist and lightly tap against the wall. His singing stop instantly and you let out a laugh. The small knock gets returned and you smile.

“Want to come over and drink with me?” You somewhat shout, just loud enough for him to hear it.

“Do you have a drinking problem?” His muffled voice throws back.

You laugh, “I don't. I've just got a bottle of wine from dinner and no clue how to close it.”

“Well as long as I'm not contributing to the enabling of your addiction… I guess a glass of wine wouldn't hurt.”

You smile and move to unlock your door. You leave it wide open so he can enter as he pleases. A minute later Hoseok is walking through and taking a quick look around. “You sure do go all out for dinner don't you?” he says as he takes in the roses and burned out candles placed here and there before shutting the door behind him.

You chuckle, “I thought it would be a special night.” You answer and make you way to the kitchen to grab him a wine glass.

“Hm,” he hums looking over your saddened state. “What made it go from a special night to drinking wine with your sexy as sin neighbor?” He jokes with a large smile.

You smirk, “I'm single.”

His smile falls, “Ah… you and your boyfriend broke up?”

You exhale a long breath and stretch your back, “We were never really together. Just hopeful wishing.” You slowly pour the wine into the glass in front of you and hand it to Hoseok. “I have been and will forever be just a… hole for him to fuck whenever he pleases.”

Hoseok winces and takes the glass, “Don't be so hard on yourself.” He says and takes a sip. “He didn't deserve you anyway.”

“Fuck.” You sigh moving your hips back and forth. Donghyuk's length is buried deep inside you and his hands are planted firmly on your hips.

“Fuck yes.” Donghyuk hisses and throws his head back. “Just like that baby.”

You speed up, frantically chasing after your own finish and slump forward as the spring that had tightly coiled in the pit of your stomach loosens and the beginnings of your climax wash over you. Donghyuk pushes his hips upward chasing after his own release and stills deep within you, filling his condom to the brim.

You started forcing him to wear condoms. It was fine before because you were on birth control and sure you were the only person he was sleeping with. That's all changed now, though. Not only that, but having him cum inside you was an intimate thing and you're working hard to remove all levels of intimacy from your relationship.

You slouch down and fall face first onto his chest. Donghyuk chuckles and wraps his arms around your waist which makes you tense. Things like this… they give you a hope you don't need. You sigh and raise yourself off of his softening member before rolling to the side.

“Did I do something wrong?” Donghyuk questions. He's confused on why you've become so cold and doesn't try to hide it.

“No, you were great.” You praise him with a smile.

For some reason, your words don't seem as sincere as they use to. They're flat and he hates them.

“You leaving?” You ask turning your head a burying your face in the warmth of your pillow.

“No, I wasn't planning to.” He answers.

“Well, I guess you can stay. There are extra blankets in the cabinet and you can take one of the pillows from up here.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“For the couch,” you yawn.

“I literally always sleep in the bed with you.”

“Not anymore.”

“What the fuck has gotten into you?”

“Some sense.” You scoff.

“Look is this about last week? I thought you were cool with not having a title. I don't need to be your boyfriend.”

“Right. You don't. I'm just… done treating you like you are my boyfriend.” You say and listen as he scoffs and stands to his feet. He quickly redresses and makes his way out of your apartment, slamming the door shut behind him.

“Wow…” Hoseok laughs and sticks his thumbs up into the air. “Good for you. Stand your ground.”

You return the laugh, “It feels good really. I feel free. All that's left is moving on.”

“Sounds so easy right?” Hoseok sighs.

“Isn’t it?” You ask with a brow raised.

He scoffs, “You're in for a whirlwind of emotions. You'll probably fall for the next guy you meet.”

“Ah, I don't think so. I'm sitting here with you and I'm okay.” You tease.

“Just wait. Your heart will waver.” He smiles.

You laugh and push his shoulder. “Maybe I should give you a try.”

His smile widens, “If you're truly single, I'm down. You know I've been interested in you since the day we met.”

“So you say.” You roll your eyes.

“With no reason to lie.” He mocks your tone. “Let's try dating for awhile, yeah? Just to see where things go.”

“I'll think about it.” You smile.

“Straighten things out on that end first… I don't think I can date you while knowing you're still sleeping with him.” Hoseok says sincerely.

“I haven't even agreed to date you!” You scoff.

“You will.” He smiles and winks.

3 weeks later

“Ah! Hoseok you got it on my dress!” You whine and stomp your feet. The chocolate ice cream leaves an undesirable stain on your white dress and you're happy it happened just in front of your apartment and you'll be able to go in and change.

“Oops.” He laughs and shrugs. You pout and punch his shoulder. “Ow! I'm sorry I'm sorry.” He says still laughing.

“Hey.” A voice calls out.

You and Hoseok both look up to see a smiling Donghyuk. You know him, though, and the smile spread across his face right now is the fakest you've ever seen. You send him a small smile back and turn to face Hoseok.

“Can you give me a minute? I'll come over once I'm finished… changing and everything.” You tell him.

Hoseok nods and hugs you tightly before making his way into his apartment. You sigh aloud as he walks in, his door shutting loudly behind him and filling the quiet hallway with a small echo. You make your way to your door and open it.

“Are you going to talk to me?” Donghyuk asks from behind you.

You say nothing but motion him inside your apartment. He nods and walks in.

“What do you want?” You ask as you close the door and set your things down on the counter.

“Who was he?” Donghyuk immediately questions.

“Don't worry about it.”

“You're running around with some guy I don't know, of course, I'm going to be worried about it,” Donghyuk says. You remain silent and roll your eyes. Donghyuk sighs, “You haven't answered my calls for 3 weeks now.” Again you stay silent. “Look you've got to talk to me here, babe… I thought a lot… just being away from you has sucked. These past few weeks have been terrible for me, and to come here and see you like this… smiling and shit with some other guy like we didn't have something going on for a whole year, just imagine how I feel right now.”

“Yeah, and imagine how I felt when I saw you kissing another girl at a club like we didn't have something going on for an entire year.” You spit.

“Nothing exclusive.” He quickly adds.

“Exactly! So why the hell are you getting mad?”

“I don't know… I know it sounds like a serious double standard when I say it out loud, but I don't want you to be with anyone else.”

“You had that chance.”

“And I want it again. Look if that whole boyfriend thing is what it takes to keep you happy, the way you were before, then I'm all for it. You're my girlfriend. I'm your boyfriend. And it's just us two. No other girls, alright?”

“Donghyuk-”

“Don't tell me no. Don't tell me it's too late. Just- if this is what you want if you still want us… I'll be waiting for your call.” He says and quickly walks past you and out of your door.

You sigh and drop your head.

“Wow…” Hoseok says. He's staring at you wall with a blank expression on his face.

“Yeah…” you sigh and sink further into your couch.

“Are you going to call?” Hoseok asks turning his head to face you. You shrug. “Should I give you a reason not to?”

You look up at him and nod. With Donghyuk's return and him saying everything you'd wanted to hear… you can't seem to find a reason why you shouldn't give him a call. This was what you had wanted. The man of your dreams wants to be yours and only yours.

“I was thinking, maybe you and I could be together.” He says still looking at you and your heart speeds up. “The dates we’ve had… we go great together, you know? I really, really like you.”

You say nothing and move your eyes to your carpeted floors. Him saying this couldn't have come at a worse time. You'd actually started to like Hoseok quite a lot as well and had he asked you this without Donghyuk being in the picture, you would've said yes with no second thoughts. Hoseok is every bit of amazing as Donghyuk. He's smart, and a gentleman, and he treats you with so much respect… your head starts to spin and you place a few finger tips at your temples and slowly massage them.

“Hey…” Hoseok calls and you look up at him. “I know it probably wasn’t the best time to say it, but I couldn't take the chance of you deciding to go back to him without telling you how I really feel… think it over. I'll be waiting in my apartment and we can talk whenever you're ready.” He says. You nod and watch as he stands up and makes his way out.

It wasn't an easy decision to make to start, and suddenly it became so much harder… Donghyuk or Hoseok?

FIN

I wanted to add more, like a date between Hoseok and the MC but I couldn’t really think of anything. Anyway, I still hope you enjoyed. Chances are No Happy Endings will be uploaded tomorrow. Sorry for the delay I’ve just been hella busy. and stressed but let’s not talk about that.

- AJ

[thisisevenharderthannamingablog]

6.12 Murder Most Foul

Quite the divisive episode this turned out to be. I admit, I had discarded the theory that they were going to go with Killian as the murderer, and although they obviously will resolve it, I can’t fathom how they might do so without feeling cheap.

That wrinkle aside, this was a far better episode than either of the ones preceding it. (Hell, the inclusion of badass Ruth alone lifted it over that bar.)

In the past: Robert and Ruth face a terrible decision. The twins are sick and will not survive the oncoming winter without medicine they cannot afford. Rumplestiltskin has a deal: give up one twin to be adopted by King George, and both can live. The choice is made by a coin toss. David stays; James goes.

Years later, drunk and broke in a tavern, Robert gets slapped in the face by opportunity when King George shows up. His son has gone missing, and whoever returns him will be richly rewarded. Robert bids farewell to his family, promises that he return to them as his true and whole self, and goes to Rumple for James’ location: Pleasure Island.

In this land of exotic temptation, Robert finds James with some help from Pinocchio. Robert proposes to take him home to his birth family. James does not like George, and is happy to agree, but of course they are intercepted before they can leave the island. Robert’s attempt at defiance avails nothing. James is whisked back off to the palace; Robert is whisked off to be disposed of by some of George’s soldiers.

Killian happens along and kills the soldiers and Robert for Reasons.  

In the present: Everyone celebrates Emma’s victory. Later, outside the house, David sees his father’s ghost, reviving his determination to find out how he really died (see 6.03). Snow is not around to urge him to give it up; he recruits Killian into helping him.

Killian, meanwhile, is most concerned with how to ask David for his blessing before he proposes to Emma, and goes along with the plan mainly it seems in order to keep David out of too much trouble.

Meanwhile, Regina comes to reluctant grips with the fact that this Robin is not her Robin but a very different man who really really wants to kill Nottingham and also he kisses weird, and that she may have made a mistake bringing him to Storybrooke.

Zelena shows up just long enough to warn Regina against letting him think that he has any claim on Robyn. Robin steals some “powerful” stuff from Regina’s vault.

While Killian distracts Emma, David steals some magical supplies. He and Killian make a potion to work out where the coin was the day Robert died, giving them the Pleasure Island connection; they visit August. August confirms that Robert was there for James, and that he was sober. He also mentions that he didn’t put all of his own story into Henry’s storybook; there are a few pages he kept back, and if he can find them, they may have more information about Robert.

Charming concludes that George must have killed Robert. He cuffs Hook to a bike rack and goes off to confront his twin’s adoptive father. George admits to having ordered Robert’s death. David gives George a knife and demands that he fight for his worthless life. Killian intervenes (so much for that cuff! Emma probably gave him a key), and a second, more intense confrontation ensues, this one over the question of what man David wants to be. Charming breaks down and abandons his murderous quest.

Later that night, at the docks, David tosses the coin into the water; his father’s ghost is put to rest. Killian joins him and asks his blessing to ask Emma to marry him, which is granted (duh). Ring in hand, Killian heads home, only to be stopped by August, who found those pages of the storybook. Those happen to show Robert’s face... which Killian recognizes as being that guy he killed that one time.

Buzz well and truly killed, thanks a bunch, August.

Parallels: Robert and Charming are both presented as having lost their way, their families in danger of destruction. Both men must face a choice and remain true to themselves. Robert is aided in this by a regretful Rumple, and Charming by Killian.

The title of the episode is a reference to Hamlet, although it’s a bit of a stretch to say the least. They both involve the ghost of a murdered father. (Given what we know about the Underworld, does this mean that Arthur has the phones running again?)  

Robert’s ghost says, “Family is everything,” a line used by King George to Snow in 2.03.

The Pleasure Island location is from Pinocchio, and referenced in the page August was typing in the end of 6.11. Pinocchio plays a guide role in both halves of the story -- a reluctant, lying guide in the past, and a more mature and rueful one in the present.  

Charming being six at this time, since Pinocchio became a real boy at most a couple of years before the Dark Curse, at which point I would guesstimate Charming was supposed to be around 20, that’s at least a decade of wooden-Pinocchio shenanigans for Gepetto to endure. Yikes.

Representing fate with a coin toss is a very old mechanism. I love when this show gets all classic with its symbolism.  

Wardrobe Department:

In Hindsight: The setup represents a bit of a retcon to the twin-trading dilemma as originally given by Ruth back in S2, but I can live with it. George is now responsible for ordering the deaths of both of Charming’s parents, which seems worth promoting him from enemy to nemesis.

We never find out the name of George’s queen -- presumably she had died by the time of the episode’s main action -- but that emphasizes how exclusively this plot is focused on fathers and sons, a theme that will carry through into 6.13 with Rumple and Gideon. “Family is everything” might as well be the theme of the show.

I really liked Robert appearing at Rumple’s place with nothing to pay; it puts the scene on an entirely different footing than their first encounter, and if it does not entirely remove the transactional element -- “You owe me” -- it does alter the resonance. This is not about money, not about anything material, not even about life or death, but about fatherhood in its purest form, the need to protect one’s child. That is a uniquely potent approach with Rumple in this context. (Of course the whole situation was Rumple’s connivance to begin with, but I think that by virtue of Robert being willing to make the deal, Rumple would argue that Robert deserved to be treated that way before.)

Having Zelena show up to deliver a patently obvious piece of information -- since Robyn is not his child by any definition, the entire scene was unnecessary -- seems like it can only have been intended to pave the way for future Robin 2.0/Zelena interactions.

Other than being certain that it will all end in tears, I’m curious what they have in mind for this plot. It was an interesting choice to say the least to place the healing scene in the crypt. Her attempt at a fresh start was doomed from the get-go, Robin wearing a dead man’s clothes in the place that symbolizes death-in-life, surrounded by the towering evidence of Regina’s past and her continued power-hoarding. She might regret the hearts, at least when reminded about them, but she has yet to do anything about it. I hope Sean had fun, anyway.

I liked the repeated shots of David watching Snow’s video on his phone; it really emphasized how isolated he feels. (I’ve seen a fair amount of annoyance over how Snow’s only waking scenes this ep were with Regina, but it fits with my assignment of the Devil’s Advocate role; Regina is currently under the sway of false hope, and it’s Snow’s job to argue with her.) Those moments preface Robert’s first two appearances to David. Can the ghost only appear when David is feeling particularly low and alone?   

“The one time I need you to be that guy” - thing is, David, you can’t be “that guy” just “one time”. It was a tough habit to break, and one Killian has no interest in resuming *cough* because you end up doing regrettable things like killing random civilians for murky reasons *cough*. I have seldom been so delighted by a line of dialog in this show as I was by Hook’s that he would try to dissuade anyone who set out on a course of vengeance. This really is the clearest possible marker of the changes he’s gone through, from thoughtless killer to someone who prioritizes others’ healing.

On the reverse note, David was being such an asshole, and I loved it! C’mon, bro, it’s just me, what are you, chicken? Fine, I’ll do it by myself (you loser, you’re not really my friend). It’s all painfully, deliciously adolescent -- he needs a lookout so he can conduct a petty theft! -- and so Back to Pleasure Island we go, to the voice of temptation. I loved all of the Charming scenes in this episode; Josh really cut loose, and it was glorious. (I should also note that I appreciated David’s apology later on for having put Killian’s relationship with Emma in jeopardy; that was a nice, clear touch.)

So Emma does her magic research out in the shed now, and not in the basement/dungeon. Check. That whole scene was golden, even with the undercurrent; turns out nothing is so distracting as full-on honesty. I could watch sunny, smiling Emma for hours. More important than defeating Gideon is that she’s defeated her own fear about her fate. She’s glowing with happiness, ready to enjoy life as it comes, content with her son and her lover. We are on the precipice of the final fulfillment promised by the Hero’s Journey. *happy sigh*

The Science Bros scene was a perfect moment of relative lightness in an episode that could easily have gotten bogged down in itself. Well done, show! See, you can do physical comedy without making fun of people. Amazing.

The bit between David and George and then David and Killian was just SO GOOD I actually don’t have much to say about it? Every instant of emotion was beautifully wrung out of those two confrontations. Moments like this, when we get to see Killian, who faced all of his worst battles alone, being a rock for his loved ones in their moment of testing -- that’s when I love this story.

I also love George, they could have done so much more with him as a villain. Some day I will write that fic (haha). Anyway, since Storybrooke doesn’t seem to have any other place to store long-term prisoners, I assume Isaac is next door.

On to the conclusion.

Hm. Well, if I must.

I’m sooooo tiiiiiiiired of Killian confronting something evil he did in the past, guys. So tired of David in particular throwing “pirate” at him like S4 and 5 never fucking happened. So tired of angst faces and secrets and angry confrontations. This whole situation is a painfully close retread of 6.06, right down to the age of the piratically orphaned boys. At least Killian had a motive for killing Brennan, whereas this setup is so random as to appear both pointless and contrived, so, uh, D- for effort, writers.

As I complained earlier this week, this would have been a Shocking Revelation back in, say, S3, before CS was a solid thing, before they had gotten used to being more or less constantly haunted by Killian’s past.

Really, they should just put a box up on the porch in which people can leave a short form explaining their grievance and their preferred form of restitution: blood, treasure, or saving their life/loved one/sanity please choose only one because episode length.

As it is, we know CS will be fine -- we don’t need the Swoopy Camera of Love Kissing, but I won’t complain about it.

We therefore know that Captain Charming will be fine. This whole “complication” is just wasting time that could be spent on something more interesting or more fun or both, like picking out something other than a plain, standard engagement ring for a fairy tale couple that has such a distinct aesthetic, both of whom have a series-long history of sentimental statement jewelry and one of whom wears a ton of rings, but that would require them remembering that S5 happened, which appears to be against the rules--

Ahem.

Okay. He’s feeling urgent about this. I can see him wanting to get something new, something that doesn’t have a Past because it’s supposed to be about their future. The only place in town that sells EF-style stuff is the Croc’s, which is a non-starter, so it would have to be whatever serves Storybrooke for a modern jewelry store, but even in a town this size, they should have SOMETHING a little unusual. The guy is the standout clothes horse on the male side of the show; he owns forty dark shirts in different but equally subtle patterns; don’t tell me he can’t pick out a ring with some flair.

Anyway. Maybe he’ll pick up something cooler when [spoilers redacted].

In under the wire again, as we prepare for tonight’s episode! I think this next one will signpost Rumple’s final fate in the series, so I am prepared to be interested in what happens even though my emotional investment is zero.

[darisu-chan]

The Lies We Tell Ourselves

Author’s Note: Hello! This is my second entry for the IRBB. This fanfiction is a result of the fiasco that was the Bleach finale. It got me thinking about people settling, which happens more often than not. How would our middle aged characters react to having fucked up during their youth? So, this fanfiction came to be. It’s a modern AU, because I don’t have any intentions of fixing the mess Kubo created. I’d rather play with the characters in a different setting. Anyway, I couldn’t finish all the fanfiction, and I only have some chapters. Although, I did meet the requierement of 7,000 words at least. Once I finish the rest, I will be posting them in here and on FF. I want to thank my partner c3-elly for making an amazing job with the fanart. It was a pleasure working with her. Her drawings make the story come to life, so check them out when you can. I hope you like this fanfiction, although it is weird. If you can, read it on FF when you can for extra notes. Here’s the prologue, you can read chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4 in my blog.

Summary:  Modern AU. Fifteen years ago, Kurosaki Ichigo wouldn't have known he'd end up like this: working at his father's clinic, married, father of one, and living a life he never wanted. Now, with the reappearance of Kuchiki Rukia in his life, Ichigo gets the chance to correct all of his past mistakes, while realizing his destiny will always be connected to Rukia's no matter what.

Genre: Drama, Romance

Rating: T

Warning: mentions of anxiety, depression, other mental illnessess and death.

Prologue: Her

“She was the most beautiful, terrible thing he'd ever seen, like an acetylene flame, an incandescent filament, a fallen star right in front of him.” ─ Lev Grossman

July 20th, 2015

The bar smelled like disappointment. There was no other way to put it. Beneath its glimmering lights, the putrid odor of desperation and pain was pungent. People were drinking glass after glass, getting drunk to escape the drunkenness of their own problems. They smoked, and they drank, and oh how they laughed, they sure did. They all pretended to be having fun, but their smiles never reached their eyes. Even a blind man could have told you that the happiness and excitement inside were artificial. Truth was, no one was happy. They were empty. As empty as the bottles they keep chugging one after another. They were all miserable. So miserable, only alcohol could make them laugh anymore. So miserable that even in the dim lighting, they had to pretend to be happy. Pretend, pretend, pretend. It was a grotesque scene straight out of a nightmare.

In this sense, Las Noches, as high profile as it was, resembled any other regular bar in Japan, and most likely, in the whole world. Inside its white walls, listening to electronic music which made your ears drum, drinking imported liquor, were people that were just so  goddamned tired of living, that they lived frivolously, but were never able to say it. Sure, most clients were the rich and the famous, venerated by mere commoners, but deep down they were just as sad and angry as the rest of the world. As hypocritical as the rest. Pretending, just like everyone else. Ultimately empty. Kurosaki Ichigo had never liked bars for this reason. He was tired of the hypocrisy of the world. He couldn’t bear to see it, staring right into his eyes, plain as day. He sometimes feared he was the same as them. Equally empty, equally sad. Pretending like everyone else. Stop pretending.

Of course, there also were the ones that had stopped pretending all along. The ones who weren’t laughing or singing or acting crazy. These people were the only real humans inside the bar. Most likely, you would have found them drinking glass after glass, telling the bar tender or whoever wanted to listen, their story. Most often than not, their misery came from a woman, or rather, their love for a woman. Keigo, the eternal bachelor, had told him back in college that the best way to pick up chicks, was to tell them about another woman. Apparently, if you told a girl your sob story regarding a lost love, she’d think you an eternal lover, like the ones you read about in romance novels, a notion so appealing, that she would take you home, and open her legs for you, as if in this way, you both could fill up your emptiness until you were full. Full of what, Ichigo didn’t know, but he was sure that move had never worked for anyone. He had never seen Keigo exit the bar with someone. Neither had Chad. Hell, he hadn’t either. The only person he had ever seen hookup was Mizuiro, and only because he was such a ladies’ man, he could have picked up a girl in the market, or while buying pajamas for his mother. Ichigo now had to wonder if Keigo remained the same, going to bars every weekend, trying, and failing, to fall in love with one woman to another, never settling for anyone, never finding the one. Was he tired of that too?

Ichigo had never liked bars. Not even once. Not even when he had been a college student, finally able to taste the wonders of alcohol. When he had been single and free to do whatever he wanted. It just wasn’t his style. Back then, he had had a reputation to keep. He had been a bad boy. Brash, rude and arrogant. The guy everybody liked to pick fights with. The guy most were afraid of. Everything bad you could think of, but not caring, never caring. But not a drunkard. Neither a womanizer. Definitely not someone that liked going to bars. He had never liked bars, which didn’t explain why he now found himself in one on a Saturday night.

As strange as it sounded, Ichigo was in bar. It had never been his wish to be here, but he had come anyway. Perhaps it was out of curiosity, perhaps out of idleness, but there was something which had brought him to Las Noches tonight. He wasn’t supposed to be there. And, speaking of reputations, he still had one he had to protect. Kurosaki Ichigo was a respected member of society. He was a doctor, who had taken over his father’s clinic. The elder son, who looked after his aging father. The older brother, who still looked over his younger sisters. He was married. He had become a father himself. Ichigo had a beautiful and doting wife, who looked at him as if he were the sun, and a seven year old son, who admired him more than anyone in the world, waiting for him at home. He wasn’t supposed to be there. Why had he even come, anyway? He didn’t even know himself.

A part of him urged him to get home, back to his family, and forget this had ever happened. Another part of him just knew he had to stay. Maybe he, in fact, needed to be there. Maybe, Kurosaki Ichigo was just like everyone else in that bar. Tired of living monotonously. Tired of going with the flow. Tired of being dissatisfied with life. And, more than anything, tired of pretending. Pretending, pretending, pretending. Pretending he didn’t want to be here. Pretending he wasn’t curious. Pretending he didn’t want an escape from the life he had been living for years. Stop pretending!

But, like it happens so often, it’s not always possible to break up from our habits. So Ichigo decided to leave the bar. He didn’t feel like he should be here to begin with. He wasn’t ready yet to face what would probably come from going to the bar. He wasn’t brave enough. So, he chose to leave. He started walking to the exit, going through rows of people who were laughing vainly, and others who decided to dance in the middle of the bar. He had just reached the exit and was about to leave when, as destiny would have it, seemingly having other plans for him, for, a gruff voice stopped him.

“Are you Kurosaki Ichigo?” The voice called him, loud and clear despite the noise.

Ichigo turned around and found himself face to face with a tall man, about his height, with broad shoulders, dark hair, and who was inexplicably wearing sunglasses and a tuxedo in a bar. “Yeah, that’s me.” Ichigo answered, raising an eyebrow suspiciously.

The man bowed. “Follow me. Ojou-sama has reserved a room at the back.”

Ah. Now Ichigo understood what was going on. Without another word, he followed the gruff looking man through the bar. They passed the same people Ichigo had already seen, and ventured even farther into the bar. Upon his first inspection, Ichigo hadn’t noticed exactly how large Las Noches actually was. It extended well into the back of the building, with more white tables, and white couches, and even a space for playing pool and dancing. It even had a second floor, decorated in the same way. But, in the farther back, Ichigo could see there were private rooms, which had large black curtains instead of doors. The man stopped in front of one of these rooms, and motioned Ichigo to go inside.

“Ojou-sama will wait for you here. She won’t take long.” And with that, the man closed the curtains, leaving Ichigo almost in darkness.

Now, the private room was very different than the rest of Las Noches. The walls inside were not white like the rest of the bar, but were painted a dark color, which Ichigo couldn’t decide if it was black or brown or even a dark red. The room was very simple as well. It had a single wood table in the middle of it, and on top there were a bottle of sake and two cups. He also noticed that one of the walls was decorated with a traditional Japanese painting of a Sakura tree. Besides all of this, however, Ichigo couldn’t see anything else. He also realized that inside the room you couldn’t hear the music as clearly as outside. There were no speakers inside the room.

After his quick inspection, Ichigo questioned again his reasoning for being here in the first place. It wasn’t right. He should leave instead of staying here. He should leave, go home to his wife and child, and forget this had ever happened. It was just a dream. It even felt like one. Of he left now, it’d be like nothing had ever happened. He could go back to his life, no matter how monotonous it was. Pretend, pretend, pretend. Keep pretending!

So Ichigo straightened his back, and took a deep breath, preparing himself to leave, when a voice outside the room stopped him.

“Kurosaki-san is already inside the room, ojou-sama.” The man from before spoke.

“Thank you, Iba-san, I’ll take it from here.” Ichigo could have known that voice anywhere. It was the person who had asked him to come here.

Taking a step back, Ichigo saw as the curtains opened and in came a woman. She was petite, but walked with the grace of a queen. She had midnight hair, which had been styled in a high ponytail. Her skin, in contrast, was as white as snow. She was wearing a navy blue dress, which had a sweetheart neckline, showing more of her creamy skin. The dress also had a slit, which showed part of her leg. She was wearing silver pumps, while her hand clutched an equally silver purse. Her slender neck was adorned by a black choker with a diamond in it. She wasn’t wearing much makeup, just pink lipstick on her luscious lips, and eyeliner. However, she looked flawless. And her eyes, which Ichigo had never been able to say if they were blue or purple, shone as brightly as ever. She turned them on him the moment she entered the room, and had the gall to smirk at him.

“Long time no see, Ichigo.”

Kuchiki Rukia was standing before him in all of her majestic and terrifying beauty. Like a hurricane or a tsunami or any other natural disaster. As beautiful as well as chaotic, engulfing everything she saw in her wake. Suddenly, Ichigo couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her either. Those eyes, as enigmatic as always, had captured him, and were pulling at his heartstrings. His will to leave the bar left him.

Maybe Kurosaki Ichigo was finally able to stop pretending, if only for one night. 

[diaryofanangrynerd]

So, This Is What It Feels Like

Logan

 Well hello again faithful readers, just want to say thank you for continuing to read this and bearing with me as I try to mold this into something that I can call my own. With saying all of that I think that I am going to change it up from the overdone aesthetic that many critics form their reviews into. So going to try and write this out as if I could afford for this to be an actual podcast and my words were coming loud and clear over a very nice listening device that you may own.

Welcome to another issue of my Diary where I indulge myself in everything movies and of course some TV. I have been watching a few movies of many different genres this week, a little more than I am used to. I really didn’t know where to begin so I am just really going to begin with one of the most popular movies in the past month or so, Logan.

Logan is set in 2029 and most of mutantkind has been wiped off the planet and seem to have been forgotten. Trying to live a quiet and uneventful life is Logan (Hugh Jackman) as a limo driver, while taking care of an elderly Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) who is slowly slipping into a state of dementia. Logan’s peaceful existence is shattered when he runs into a mysterious woman begging for his help. With her is an even more mysterious middle school aged girl who doesn’t say much at all. Trying to avoid helping this woman at all costs, trouble seems to find Logan anyway and soon he is swept up into a high stakes cat and mouse game that requires him to escort this girl named Laura (Dafne Keen) to North Dakota.

Like all of my other reviews, I am still going to start off with the positives because I truly believe that people like to hear the good stuff more than the bad. With that said, I am pretty positive that 20th Century Fox and X-Men producers Simon Kinberg and Lauren Shuler Donner should just hand over the X-Franchise over to director James Mangold. He obviously knows to tell a great comic book story and bring a sense of realism to the franchise that I so desperately lacks. The X-Franchise is starting to remind me of the Batman Franchise before Christopher Nolan took over. After seeing this film, I think that Mangold would do great things to the X-Franchise if given the opportunity to reshape and maybe reboot (I hate that word) the whole franchise. Playing off the same themes of western classic Shane, Mangold’s Logan is a story about an aging cowboy “roped” in to one last fight, all the while finding his purpose again. That couldn’t have been pulled off any better than how Jackman portrays his most iconic character. Hugh Jackman has always given life to Wolverine, but nothing like this. In this film Jackman presents Logan with more depth than a weapon that loves a beautiful red head. Jackman’s interactions with Stewart are most superb about this film. Xavier here seems to be suffering from mental illness, which I know is ironic seeing what his mutant abilities are, and it is hinted throughout the film that he may be the cause of the mutant “extinction”. Because of this, Logan has this love/hate relationship with Xavier almost to the point of a child caring for an abusive father. Logan loves Xavier, but knows that he is the cause of a great loss. Stewart pulls off the sympathetic abusive father quite well because somewhere in Xavier’s mind, he knows he did something terrible but he can’t really remember what. As far as the newest member of the X-Family, Dafne Keen and her character Laura are hugely welcomed addition to the franchise. Laura turns out to be a direct clone of Logan with all the fixings (adamantium claws in both her knuckles and feet).  Keen gives us a vicious fighter and introverted pre-teen that  does an amazing job of taking what Jackman has created with Logan through nine films and yet making Laura a little more feral.

Now for my problems with Logan are twofold. First is the fact that I supported and still support Fox and Mangold’s decision to make this film a brutal R rating, there was some parts that I thought that were unnecessary and took the violence a little too far. One in particular scene is when the villainous Reavers come to capture young Laura. Holding Logan captive, the leader of the Reavers group sends a couple of unsuspecting goons to retrieve Laura from inside a building, while eating cereal no less…tisk tisk. The audience does not see the scuffle but hears the struggle. After the fight, we see young Laura walk outside backpack in one hand and a severed head in the other. I just didn’t find this needed. I think that the scene could have been just as impactful if Laura just walked out bloodstained. My second problem with this film isn’t really the films fault but the fault of all of the X-Men films. The continuity. This film doesn’t even connect to Mangold’s last Wolverine film. Logan makes references to the very first X-Men film but that is about it. Hey FOX, let’s put these films together and have them make sense!

Even with those minor problems, I found Logan to be quiet a potent film not just for the comic book genre but even for the modern western genre. In 2008 The Dark Knight elevated the comic book genre by using impactful crime film influences like that of Heat and here Mangold raises the bar for the genre yet again. If Logan is not mentioned come award season, a tragedy has befallen the world of film. Jackman and Stewart give powerful performances and Mangold conducts a brilliant orchestra of a film.

Definitely Worth Your Time.

[sometimesalwaysmusic]

JAD. Jad Hammoud (JH) is an Ottawa singer-songwriter who has gained experience playing many stages in Ottawa and surrounding regions, both solo and as the frontman of the defunct band, Tall Trees. We chatted about the importance of honesty in song-writing, his many influences, and his love for other local artists. Read on, and then check him out at an upcoming April gig opening up for John Wozniak (of Marcy Playground) at Pressed! 

VITALS

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jadhammoudmusic

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/jadhammoud 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jad_Hammoud

Latest release: Monster (Single, January 2017)

Upcoming shows: April 22, 2017 - John Wozniak, Jad. 7:30PM. $20/$25 doors. Pressed Cafe, Ottawa ON.

SA: How did you get your start in music? JH: In a van in 1999.  I was either three of four, and The Backstreet Boys had just released "I Want it That Way". My mother was driving around the city with my twin sister and I in the back seat and the song came on the radio, so I started singing along. Apparently, as far as children go, I was fairly decent. Just to make sure she wasn't giving me too much credit, being my mom and all, she phoned a friend of hers to listen in and give his opinion (it wasn't illegal to use the phone while driving yet). He agreed with her, and it just went from there. It was unusual for me to not sing. I was always practicing, in a sense, and everyone in my life had come to know me as a singer or musician. I've always known that music is what I wanted to pursue, so when the time came, I ended up in the music program at Canterbury High School, where I specialized in vocal performance. University's been somewhat convoluted, but basically I've continued studying music there. Music has always been a significant and essential part of my identity. So I guess I owe it all to the Backstreet Boys?

SA: What bands would you cite as biggest influences on your sound? JH: The Backstreet Boys. 

No no, I jest. I like to listen to a lot of diverse music, so I'm usually very influenced by whatever I'm listening to at the time. 

One of my favourite artists of all time is Elliott Smith. I could honestly do an entire interview on why his music means so much to me and why I see him as one of the best songwriters of our time. Musically and lyrically he is so sophisticated but also knows how to maintain that sophistication in the simplest of songs. There is something about his music that transcends the surface of the human condition and undeniably evokes a very profound wave of emotions and in a way forces us to feel, process, and accept them. I will always be most connected to him and his music until the day I die.

Mother Mother has also always had a big influence on me, since I first heard "O My Heart" back in 2008. Ryan Guldemond is one of the most incredible songwriters of our time since Elliott Smith. Quote me on that. I guess you literally are. I've been lucky enough to meet the band several times over the years and I'm determined to open for them one day and get mentored by Ryan. It's going to happen. Another GREAT band is Vancouver's JPNSGRLS. I opened for them a couple of years ago, and have kept in touch with them. Their frontman, Charlie Kerr is an incredibly creative and clever lyricist, and he's been a sporadic mentor to me. He's releasing a solo album on April 21st under the moniker Matt and Sam's Brother (do yourself a favour and check him out).

I have to also mention Frank Ocean. He is a visionary. He is another true artist. Channel Orange and Blond(e) are masterpieces. Okay, before I get too invested, some other artists I adore (in no particular order) are Sufjan Stevens, St. Vincent (Annie Clark could curb stomp me and I'd be grateful), Grimes, Father John Misty, Leonard Cohen, Broken Bells, The Black Keys, Alex Turner, Wilco, Mac DeMarco, The Cure, David Bowie, The Strokes, Simon and Garfunkel, Arcade Fire, Anderson .Paak, The Smiths, Nirvana, Nick Drake, Bon Iver, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Gabriel Fauré and the list just goes on and on and on. I will undoubtedly have more come to mind within seconds of completing this.

Oh, and Freddie Mercury. That man was a gift to this world. Never forget. I just love music.

SA: Thus far in your career, what has been your biggest success? JH: I don't think you can ever prepare for the feeling that comes with seeing a crowd lined up down the street waiting to see you play. This was in the summer of 2013 when Tall Trees was still around and we hosted an album release. We had just graduated high school, and we rented out an entire hall in a church for the show. I remember designing and printing a small run of t-shirts and stickers, getting in touch with media and doing interviews, as well as renting light and sound equipment -- basically tons of effort went into organizing and preparing for it. I should give a special shout out to my friend Ben Compton -- he designed the poster for the show and the album artwork. He is an incredible, unique artist and I highly suggest you familiarize yourself with his work when you have the chance. Anyways, the turnout was overwhelming. I think something like 250 people came out and packed the room. I've never felt something that special. 

We played Folkfest (now known as City Folk) right after that, and tons of people came out to that as well. It was so beautiful.

As far as a solo act goes, it would probably be the time I played a bar in Kingston packed to the brim with students singing along to my songs. But honestly, things are just beginning and the best is yet to come.

SA: On the other hand, what is the biggest challenge you have faced, and how have you dealt with it? JH: By far, being alone. After Tall Trees had come to a discreet end, I felt lost for a long time. Coupled with being painfully unhappy in university, I became very depressed. I felt that I could no longer write. I stopped listening to music, I stopped playing music, I stopped going to shows, I just lost my entire sense of self. This lasted for about three and a half years, and even now I'm still getting back to being at 100% again. So I guess it's something I'm still dealing with, and to be honest will likely always be dealing with. I feel like artists are never satisfied with their work, because in the process of creating it, they improved. I'll always be working on myself, and I try to find solace in knowing that it's part of my personal and artistic growth.

SA: How do you approach the song-writing process? JH: I wish I knew the answer to this... I don't have songwriting figured out, so songs are sort of born via differing methods and out of a need to write . More often than not a song will come to me as one or several fragmented ideas that I will develop and eventually synthesize into some sort of finished thought. Sometimes the music comes first, and other times lyrics will come first. Occasionally, I'll be blessed by Apollo (haha) and everything will come to me all at once, resulting in a song that writes itself. In the case of the song I'm currently working on, I had the music more or less figured out and let it sit and occupy my mind for a couple of weeks, slowly adding ideas here and there. Only now, after some recent experiences have I managed to put words to it, and even then I'm not 100% satisfied with them, so I'll be editing and rewriting both the lyrics and the melody until it's something I'm happy with. 

Honestly, it never happens quite the same way each time... I'm very contemplative and introspective in a sense when it comes to writing. I like to search within and feel things out so that I'm not only effective in the communication of it all, but more importantly I'm affective, vulnerable, and honest. That's more important to me than anything. At the end of the day, it comes down to sitting down and just writing and working out your feelings. You can never get better at something you don't do.

SA: What are your thoughts on the Ottawa music scene? JH: Short answer: it's complicated. Slightly longer answer: it's really complicated. Long answer: This city has a lot of incredibly talented, skilled, and hard working artists. It lacks the means to nurture these artists and encourage their growth and development. At the same time, there are a lot of great resources for artists in the city, such as OMIC, Megaphono, City of Ottawa grants, OAC grants, and independent venues that support local music. The city is doing a lot and things are happening so Ottawa is well on its way. I have faith in that. I think the rest needs to happen on an individual level. Artists need to develop a genuine sense of community with each other. I'm only one opinion, and it depends on who you talk to/who you surround yourself with, but there is also an unspoken, overarching sense of competition, and it's kind of hostile. Hearing "I support you!" or "I want you to succeed." seems to come with a small asterisk attached to it that says "...as long as you're not more successful than I am". I think that for the community to truly thrive, artists need to genuinely support each other and work together to build something that everyone benefits from. Again, it depends on who you talk to. Don't get me wrong, I love this city and there are people who will absolutely disagree with me, but this is just my opinion based on my experiences and I feel I have to be honest about that. Nowhere is perfect, but Ottawa is working on itself to get better, and things can only go up from here. 

SA: In your opinion: What is the best song you have written? JH:  Oh god...I pretty much hate every song I've written. Not really, but I sort of go through this cycle where I'll write a song, think it's good, then feel it's pretty mediocre until enough time has passed and I come to realize it's actually good. There are a few songs that are very close to my heart...from the Tall Trees days, I'll always have a soft spot for "Girl On My Mind", "Cheers to You, My Stone Cold Queen", and "Marionette". As for the newer solo stuff, I'm really fond of "Knuckle Sandwich". It's a little dark but I think it's one of the most honest songs I've written in a long time. It came to me all at once and I wrote the entire thing in an hour or two.

SA: How has your song-writing changed, or evolved, between your experience in past projects, such as Tall Trees, and your solo work? JH: I was around 16 or 17 when I started Tall Trees, so I think that while I felt mature in my writing, I was still approaching things from a somewhat naive place. I've always been a very emotional, sometimes verklempt person, and so if anything my connection to that contributed a sense of maturity to those songs. Since Tall Trees, I feel I've undergone a lot of personal and artistic growth, especially after having been unable to write for the past several years. I am very aware that I am still metamorphosing today and I've come to embrace that, and in fact it excites me. 

I would say that the biggest difference in the way I approach writing now would have to be in the way I view songs and the process. When I was younger, I always wanted to be cool, and I wanted my songs to be cool. I approached them honestly, but I was also preoccupied with wanting them to be cool and the verse-chorus structure was almost too present. I thought that songs had to be that way. Now, I think of songs as thoughts that we need to communicate, or things we need to disclose out of a profound visceral need. They are the things we have to say because withholding them would be too stressful on the soul. Some are observational, others emotional, some just to make a point. Following a strict structural guideline is not nearly as important to me as it used to be. I let the songs come and be what they will be, rather than trying to make them fit some preconceived notion of what constitutes a "good song". Art is art -- it is fluid, subjective, and will be what it will be. Good art is art that's made honestly and from the heart.

The last thing I'll say is that I'm no longer afraid to be completely honest in my writing. I used to hold back a bit because I thought people may find certain notions off-putting, but now all I want to do is be completely open and use that to connect with people in a way that transcends the surface. Growing up, I was always told I was too sensitive for a guy (social constructs are the worst) and I always wore my heart on my sleeve. I have felt unwanted, unlovable, and so very small. I have a lot of feelings, and an incredible amount of love for people -- I want them to feel loved. I want to do away with the notion that having feelings and being honest about them is a bad thing. 

I just want to connect with people, and hopefully affect them in a way that they'll hold on to until the end of their days.

SA: A question for fun: If you had to pick your favourite local band in Ottawa, who would you choose and why?  JH: So far, my answers have been long-winded, so I'll keep this one short and sweet. I like a lot of local bands, but recently I've been really into this local artist Trails. She's very young, but her music is so mature, honest, and unapologetic. I wish that I had been able to write that way when I was 17. A lot of love and respect for her.

SA: What do you have in store in 2017? Best wishes for your continued successes, Jad! KM: I've been in the studio working on an EP, so I'm really committed to that right now and planning the release. There'll be a small tour, maybe some merch, and I may or may not be playing some festivals soon (I'm still waiting to hear back). I graduate from university in April, at which point I'll be able to fully dedicate myself to music. Things are just beginning for me, and big things are coming, so (shameless plug) keep up with me and everything I'm doing. The best way to do that is on Facebook. Thanks for everything, Pierce. It means a great deal to me to be able to finally discuss the things I've been thinking about for so long.