#but referring to what i just said- can we start acknowledging that despite the actress change she is the same character?

[m4ndysk4nkovich]

the way that in mandy’s first ever scene she stands tall and walks and speaks with such confidence, but by her last scene she seems embarrassed and more timid. free my girl she did nothing wrong

[captainobviois]

Ok thanks to @grinn-amadan and @l0v3c0r3e I will be telling.

I want to start with what many conservatives will consider as this movie being over “woke.” There were several moments in the movie where the narrative was slightly broken to insert a quip or a voice over that covered some kind of acknowledgment of something that that could easily have made a rando on Twitter/tumblr/tiktok/whatever mad. There’s a point where Barbie says she’s not pretty and a voice over quips that Margot Robbie was bad casting to make this point. Another time Sasha, played by hispanic actress Ariana Greenblatt, makes a quip about Barbie being a white savior. There’s other moments like this in the move but I think it’s not to just have every possible message covered in this movie, but to protect it from having the important feminist message it contains from being destroyed by the culture of canceling or ignoring the valuable lesson of an entire pierce of media because of one thing.

On to actual messages of this movie. One of the first things that my dad said about the movie was that Ryan Gosling and Margo Robbie are too old to play these characters. I think the casting was genius in so many ways. Gosling is 42 and Robbie is 33. One of the supporting themes in this movie is the way that society devalues you as you age. It’s mainly shown in the context of women losing their youth and being seen as worthless when they gain cellulite, wrinkles, eye bags, whatever else that comes form just living. But they’re all still beautiful and worthy of love despite growing up and aging. There’s no big comment about men getting older in the movie because overall society doesn’t start undervaluing men as they age. However, they do in industries like film. Gosling still looks so good at 42. But somehow people are age shaming him just so casually. It’s an incredibly meta part of the commentary of this movie. I sincerely hope Greta Gerwig made this casting choice with intent.

While we are still on age, I also want to talk about the perceived young mess of Barbie. The point do this doll was that she was an adult. The first major line of dolls for girls that were not babies or children. She could have a fucking career because she’s an adult. My dad (a great man, I love him. Although I will be ragging on him in this post a bit) always thought she was like 17. 17 years old. He, and most likely many men, thought this woman doll with perfect curves and makeup and full tits was 17. I broke the news to him that Robbie was too young to be Barbie last night, since Barbie is in her mid to late 30s. Several careers that Barbie has would take years of med school, PhDs, and not to mention that being the fucking president has an age minimum of 35. And somehow somehow men believe that this movie is still somehow meant to please them. Because they were surprised that the hot blonde doll wasn’t played by the youngest 20 something actress possible for their being pleasure. No one is saying it that plainly, but just thinking that Robbie isn’t good enough to be Barbie, makes this true, and proves the point that I had sort of referred to in a scene earlier when she says shoes not pretty enough. (Margot fucking Robbie is gorgeous and was also an awakening for me when I was 15 so everyone who thinks otherwise can fuck off)

Let’s talk about the message that women are never good enough. Who hates Barbie? Everyone. During a certain stage in everyone’s life, you hate Barbie. Little boys will be told that it’s girly and too feminine, so they’ll foster that toxic masculinity (or sometimes give it up, but I guarantee more most amab people, at some point you tried to live in that toxicity just to fit in and feel accepted). So many girls will hate Barbie while they are in the phase of feminism where you realize that just being associated with female anything is going to hinder you in life so you try to throw away every bit of pink you own and all tour Barbies and other dolls. Many afab people will come back to these things and the color pink and realize that just rejecting femininity isn’t going to solve thier problems. There’s someone else who has explained or talked about this phenomenon better than me, so I’m not getting into it. Y’all all know what I’m talking about. But the bottom line is that people hate Barbie. A doll who was literally made to just be liked. She’s pretty to appeal to the male gaze. She has every career imaginable and branched (imperfectly, but efforts were made) into different ethnicities and body types. And yet she’s still hated. But what is Barbie? Barbie, at her core is just the idea of a woman. And this movie points out, that just that, the idea of a woman is so hated by everyone at least once.

A C-suite of men can have the best intentions for women and think they are great feminists, and still get it so wrong. Ignoring the problems with large corporations for this post, men in charge can do good things. They can belive themselves to be good people. But it is fundamentally a problem for products made for women to be made by men (and this goes for any group to have something made by an other group). This extends to men speaking for women. To have the element of female voice missing from products, policies, spaces, anything made for women results in something that just doesn’t work. I’m not a gender studies expert or someone who knows everything about this manifesting in society. But I know it’s there. I live through the society built by men for men and women as an after thought.

Barbie was made to uplift women, but instead contributed to poor self esteem and oppression. Right so this is partially due to Mattel being run by white men predominantly. And honestly I think it’s really interesting that they chose to affiliate themselves so intensely with the movie (giving all permissions to use their logo and brand and everything). So a lot of girls also hate Barbie because she’s a standard of beauty and imperfection that is unreachable. And the point of Barbie was to help show women in more roles than just mothers. But at the same time it put the pressure on women to be extraordinarily to be valued at all.

There is so much gender binary in this movie. I can see how it’s unappealing for nonbinary people to want to watch it. I myself and somewhere on the spectrum of nb (but as you can probably tell I keep being afab as a major part of my identify because it’s shaped me in fundamental ways that I can’t remove from the structure of my being without crumbling everything I am). There’s something in this move for nb too. Allen was a doll made with the tag line “Ken’s best friend. All of Ken’s clothes fit him too.” It’s marketing to sell another doll with the assurance that he can also wear all the boy clothes that kids would own from the ken doll. There are multiple Kens. There’s only one Allen ever made. This character feels out of place in Barbie land. They’re not one of the Barbies or Kens. But all of Kens clothes fit. He could be like a Ken, but he takes the sides of the Barbies. They are someone other than Ken. They aren’t included in either side. I’m not sure how intentional it was, but there’s a metaphor somewhere in Allen for the trans and nb experience.

Ok now we are reaching territory that may be considered spoilers

The patriarchy is learned behavior. That’s all I think really needs to be said. The movie did such a good job with showing this. The Kens weren’t taught that men are better. But just a few hours in the real world, and Ken learned all these biases and harmful rhetoric about women. And it wasn’t shown as some thing where Ken really hated women, it’s just that a world that caters to your gender specifically is so enticing that he’ll let women be oppressed to have it. And really I think Ken was a good way to just attempt to show men what it’s like to be a woman in the real world. It’s too hard for most men to sympathize with women’s struggles, so here’s a man going through the same thing. Do you get it now? Does it make sense when you see the tables turned?

Ok and the point where Barbie feels guilty for rejecting Ken and dismantling the patriarch he built. The fact that she had to have it pointed out to her that dismantling a broken system that someone made to specifically systemically oppress you because you rejected him isn’t wrong. That is the experience of being a woman. That you are taught to not fight for your rights if it might hurt someone’s feelings. To be empathetic to a point of self harm.

Any kind of gender oppression is wrong. Full stop. Feminism means equality. This movie didn’t end in a perfect society of equality for the Barbies and Kens either. It’s not a perfect ending. It’s supposed to give men that watch it the feeling of disappointment because hey wait a minute that’s still not fair. Even if there was a step made in the right direction in Barbie land towards gender equality. It’s not there yet. BECAUSE ITS NOT THERE IN OUR WORLD EITHER.

The movie captured what it’s like to play with a doll. In the scene with Barbie floating down from her house. Skipping to the good part where the dolls have their parties and award shows without showing the in between because that’s how we think up play scenarios in our minds as kids sometimes. The Kens fighting is just what it’s like when you get a boy to play dolls with you, which is just as fun for girls and just not usually something that we are taught to do in play.

The discussion at the end of the move that Barbie has with her creator Ruth made me sob. Barbie is the idea of a woman. And she stands before her literal god, who loves her so much. The idea of a woman, hated by so many and only created to be loved, asks permission to be human. The idea of a woman asks to just be thought of as human. That’s heartbreaking.

The absolute last scene where she went to see a gyno. She’s dressed with a blazer on and you think she’s going out to her big job or a job interview. Because the two main happy endings for female characters are that they get a man (and it was established her happy ending wasn’t being forced with Ken) or a a corporate girlboss. But it’s a fake out. Because the point is that women are just ordinary people and all still human and she’s going to do something so ordinary and human in just seeing a gynecologist.

There’s so much more that could be said, but I’m not a professional or expert in film analysis or feminist thinking. I really hope someone writes something more eloquent than myself that can go around for people to see why they should take the message of the movie seriously and why it’s so good. It’s not “anti-man” as so many aware saying. It’s just showing what the world is like for women. It’s Mattel taking some responsibility for how their doll lines have affected women.

And on top of all that. It’s so damn FUNNY. I got whiplash going from crying to laughing. It’s so fun, the dialogue, the music, the costumes, the gags. It was just an enjoyable film

I have so many feelings about the Barbie movie. If one person asks I will be spilling paragraphs

[claudeleine]

Did it ever occur to anyone that Wanda’s Roma background in the comics was BUILT on racist stereotypes? Similarly to M’Baku but also several others. And maybe that’s why the show runners stepped away from that..?

okay, so i think what we have here is someone who skimmed the original post in question (paragraph 2) and likely didn’t ready any of the links attached because that first message has been addressed already... but for anyone else in the same boat:

from gavia baker-whitelaw’s article:

Wanda and Pietro's Romani heritage was canon for decades (including in their non-mutant backstory), although this depiction often had problematic undertones. Wanda is literally a mysterious foreign witch, a damaging stereotype that acquired more nuance in later comics. But instead of updating Wanda and Pietro as modern Jewish/Romani superheroes (much like how Black Panther's charismatic M'Baku started out as a villain named "Man-Ape"), Disney whitewashed them. This casting choice was divisive in 2013, when The Atlantic highlighted the negative connotations of casting a white blonde actress as Scarlet Witch. Roma people are a marginalized ethnic minority, and Disney chose to erase their presence from the MCU.

...This rewrite was rather tone-deaf, because it involved Wanda and Pietro volunteering for neo-Nazi experiments. In the comics, their original parents were Holocaust survivors. Whedon also ignored the most obvious solution to Wanda and Pietro's non-mutant backstory: Django and Marya Maximoff, their Romani parents from the comics.

white washing characters is never the best solution. it doesn’t address the issue in so much as it just sweeps it under the rug. as well as perpetuating the idea that white is some unproblematic neutral that ppl can just default to. like can you imagine if in an attempt to “fix” how m’baku is portrayed in the comics, they just...put a white guy in the role? you can’t just remove a characters racial or ethnic background. no one is saying that her comic background hasn’t been problematic, but this isn’t the way to remedy that.

@scarlet--wiccan has an amazing post about the erasure of this whole family’s ethnic identity in the fox x-men films (x).

@villyns also has a good post outlining some examples of the mcu white washing rather than actually fixing the problem (x).

and here’s a decent article on white washing in media and why it’s a problem (x), quote from this article below:

Making a movie is not an easy feat; there are many things to take into account and even more people that you have to please, but there are also standards and morals to uphold. Whitewashing, blackface, brownface or yellowface is not just about denying jobs to minority actors, appropriating the stories of these groups, perpetuating stereotypes or keeping them invisible, it is about undermining their value as human beings and turning them into stepping stones, props, for white artists.

as for the second part. i think that’s entirely possible, actually. it’s done a lot to characters, where they won’t explicitly state their ethnicity but give them attributes from one (often stereotypes) and make them a caricature without making it, like i said, explicit. take the concept of jewish-coded villains in media. no one from disney has ever said that mother gothel in tangled is jewish, but it’s been pointed out by everyone that she’s jewish coded through stereotypes, ones specifically often used for “evil” witch-type characters, which is no coincidence: large, hooked nose, curly hair, greedy, etc. edit: hollywood uses coding like this often for racial/ethnic groups and the lgbtq+ community.

the maximoffs in the mcu and xmcu have never been explicitly made romani, with disney going so far as to change their parents romani names (django and marya) to oleg and irina. the name changes were unnecessary, except to distance the maximoffs from their original romani identity. the mcu changed their origins stories and cast non-romani actors to portray the maximoffs, and considering they went as far as to remove their jewish heritage as i mentioned before, it’s not a stretch that this is all an attempt to veil their romani background too. while they often joke about stealing and fortune tellers and poverty (the wv halloween episode really put it all in one place, but they’ve been doing it forever in the xmcu and mcu), i wouldn’t say this is an attempt to make them romani as much as it is to use a romani-esque caricature, to use it as a sort of “aesthetic” for the twins without acknowledging that it’s an ethnicity. the aspects they choose to keep are often either negative or painted in a negative light. i think the fact that el*zabeth ols*en continuously uses the g-slur to talk about wanda and costume design, speaks to that. 

and even if the mcu came out and said, “oh, our wanda is romani,” that wouldn’t change the fact that she’s played by a non-romani actress (who continues to use anti-romani slurs, despite knowing she shouldn’t) and that so far, they have not explicitly stated in the mcu that she is.

from gavia baker-whitelaw’s article:

Wanda and Pietro's whitewashing feels like an attempt to "neutralize" them. It frames their ethnicity as a problem to be avoided, rather than an opportunity to celebrate an under-represented group. This also meant that Marvel could cast famous white actors instead of sourcing an unknown Romani actor, during a period when the MCU was visibly uninterested in racial diversity.

But Marvel Studios wanted to have its cake and eat it, too. While Wanda is now white and Sokovian, her role isn't completely divorced from its Romani origins. It can't be, because everything in the MCU is informed by the comics. That's how we end up with El*zabeth Ols*n describing her Age of Ultron costume as "kind of this g*psy, vagabond feel"—terms that usually wouldn't come to mind for a simple black minidress and maroon jacket. Wanda's Romani heritage remains visible through veiled references and superficial costume choices, sidestepping any hint of meaningful representation.

from jessica reidy’s article:

Today, some Roma do call themselves witches, and serve as healers and spell-casters in a community, but make no mistake, being a witch is a job like any other. I was trained by my grandmother, I studied hard, I started a business, and I take bookings in my Google calendar. This is the context that most people miss when creating (or, in this case, adapting) Romani witch characters like Wanda Maximoff, and while the Scarlet Witch has plenty of magic, she does not need to fall into the stereotype, nor have her identity erased.

Representation matters. Wanda’s Romani ethnicity has been well-stated in the comic books, sometimes capturing the discrimination and violence that Roma face, and other times falling flat and stereotypical. Marvel also owes us, as Roma are often rendered as mentally unstable thieves, such as Dr. Doom, Wanda and Pietro’s community, and Wanda herself, and the entertainment giant capitalizes off of these stereotypes, reinforcing them all the while.

Every opportunity we get for accurate and positive representation is essential to us because it shapes the way people understand us.

linking the post i made again, because it has a list of articles and posts i’d recommend really taking the time to look through and engaging with them, as well as following folks like jessica reidy and @scarlet--wiccan​ on social media for more info from romani folks. 

[jjheejz]

What is Fate?

[Part 5/5] WOH concert and after

WOH Concert (3-4 May 2021)

- The fact that they even have a grand scale wedding ceremony drama concert

- GJ did not attend ZZH's first solo concert, but both of them have their own concert together for the first time

- Chinese have a traditional tradition of calculating auspicious dates (metaphysics). It can be calculated commonly for when to move in to a new house, bury a deceased, open a business, hold a wedding etc. 3 - 4 May were auspicious dates for Wedding and marriage registration.

- The concert was held at a stadium in Su Zhou, but the entire city was blatantly supporting everything and anything about WenZhou like it's New Year's Eve. Eg. Building, helicopter banners, bus advertising, drone show, lantern display, subway endorsement, city's official account using WOH quotes applying to safety regulations, curated photo booths, life sized figurine of WenZhou (YouKu kept it as prideful display at their office entrance after the concert), crowds of fan support and cheers etc.

Drone show snippet:

- Both of them were given the center of attention for the entire 2 days of WOH concert. It was WenZhou/JunZhe concert in disguise as WOH concert.

= This gave them both the opportunity to show what they feel for each other openly (whether as WenZhou themselves or as JunZhe)

- To have a stage to be what they are* and have fun, while being accepted and greatly supported by a sea of Mountain people (山人), no matter how one sees it, it's an extremely touching form of support for them

*Disclaimer: obviously they weren't 100% themselves, mindful of the fact that this stage was monitored by important media bodies (not exactly sure what kind, but somewhat government-ish regulators I presume), but their gaze and body language is just as natural as what they are.

= The fact that the country in general is not open to this kind of relationship, yet they were in a place where most of the people were supportive.

- Yes, there were some important bodies (or eyes) during the 2 days concert. Which was why all the actors and actresses were warned. For whatever reason they chose to continue in their own way, it's daring consensus of support. And for whatever reason the regulators didn't do anything (there weren't any big news at all from them), is also a miracle.

- They had the opportunity to sing a duet on stage, live. For the audience, GJ's singing skills started from November 2020, ZZH likes GJ's singing, and 5 months later, they have a duet on stage.

- Official acknowledgement of cpfans

= First in history where the recognition was officially verbally mentioned in-person. You can say this fate belong to the fans.

- ZZH had the opportunity to vow a promise to GJ witnessed by X million of people in the stadium and those watching livestream, that he will always be there for GJ. He did not only vow as a companion to GJ, in ZZH terms, he actually vowed "I will love you forever" [ZZH on 'love' saga]

- The in-ear mic had the voices of the backstage crew's coordination. ZZH took it off early, but GJ was still wearing them during the exchange. That itself is a stressor as the backstage coordinator must have warned extremely sternly and loudly and GJ was shakingly nervous. When ZZH was giving this vow (which in the concert BTS release, we see him say "Don't I have a segment to speak to WKX?" Note, it's WKX, not GJ), the backstage crew was cursing and swearing when ZZH went with "I have things to say to Jun Jun." (as WenZhou, they have a disguise/a shield, with direct GJ, it's just...danger danger red light) Try imagine being the backstage crew and going all mad and crazy over what ZZH said that moment.

= ZZH's daring courage to say things like these was probably built up from his sportsmanship, hot-blooded passion from his past. It's beyond my peasant mortal's comprehension.

- Supporting Cast shenanigans and warnings for them, link here

After

- After the concert was over, solo fans expect the main leads to break up even as co-workers or say, being even in the same frame. This expectation is extremely strong in the industry for years. The same goes for JunZhe despite this time many are cpfans but they do know this prevalent expectation. So imagine crying over the vow and the next moment, just hours after the concert, JunZhe is happily sticking to each other singing in the same frame as if they did nothing big a few hours ago. They sang a phrase together with this lyrics: 30% arranged by fate/god, 70% arranged by hard work. A love for perseverance will lead to success/winning.

= Debunking expectations, breaking many years of industry's common consensus successfully. They invented after after-sales CP service.

- Stage, endorsements, film scripts, major public events, variety shows, top brands etc. Poured in, and although it's all solo events, we see traces of the other half.

- Aside from that, we now see social media exchanges (almost always for the other half), brand endorsement captions (almost always about the other half), official brands partnering with each other because of them (despite being legit competitors) etc.

- The word 'support' or at least 'love seeing them together', is the general reason CPfans are fans of them. But to both GJ and ZZH, it really goes beyond the word itself. Acknowledging is just the beginning. ZZH does take LLD to heart and GJ is very interactive with LLDs in his own quirky way.

*From the [Star X Moon Saga], to the developed feelings because of this drama and actually accepting their feelings, to the fact that the pitiful budgeted amount for WOH was not well received at all before it was broadcasted but boomed records in the end, to the open shipping support by the production crew/casts/general media/fans/brands/cities, to the climbing successes and mountainous opportunities opened for GJ and ZZH overnight, everything was unprecedented and unexpected, but they all dramatically happened to the two of them in a span of one year.

Bonus

A fan went to a temple to check out JunZhe's fate. You can only check for one person and she checked for GJ. She passed her result to a Master and he immediately tell her to give up because that person is taken and turned away. The fan quickly corrected and say she's actually checking for someone else, the master turned back and checked her read again and said, everything is aligned to their favour, it's blessed by the Gods. (If I can find the full article again, will add on more but that's the gist, surfing in China made me love Google's search engine algorithm so much more).

A few other fans who 抽签 (Chinese praying tradition - simply put: draw a stick of varying luck). They all got the bestest of luck for JunZhe. (Reading the readings, I'm just...in awe...I...)

= Borrowing the meaning of another famous novel title, to me, this is a true "Heaven's official blessing" pair.

-------End of series-------

🌻To returning readers: Updated info are in purple for your easy references!

🌸Part 1 - Before filming here

🌸Part 2 - During filming here

🌸Part 3 - After filming, before broadcast here

🌸Part 4 - Broadcast/Promotion period here

🌻Upcoming: JunZhe Saga series

🌻[Ongoing updates] Will add if I remember or found new ones - last updated 220721

🌻For long posts like this, I tend to look back for grammar and phrasing mistakes (sometimes info updates), so when you reblog for future references, do keep in mind that there may be updates in the original post! :)

[causeiwanttoandican]

Harry, Meghan and me: my truth as a royal reporter

I've covered elections and extremism, but nothing compares to the vitriol I've received since I started writing about the Sussexes

By Camilla Tominey, Associate Editor27 March 2021 • 6:00am

It is probably worth mentioning from the outset that I never, ever, planned to become a royal reporter. I mean, who does? It’s one of those ridiculous jobs most people fall into completely by accident.

I certainly wasn’t coveting the position when I first found out how bonkers the beat could be after covering Charles and Camilla’s wedding in 2005. Desperate for ‘a line’ on what went on at the reception, journalists were reduced to flagging down passing cars in Windsor High Street and interrogating the likes of Stephen Fry about whether they’d had the salmon or the chicken.

Watergate, this wasn’t.

Yet when my former editor called me into his office shortly afterwards and offered me the royal job ‘because you’re called Camilla and you dress nicely’, who was I to refuse?

Having planned to get married myself that summer, and start a family soon afterwards, I looked to the likes of Jennie Bond and Penny Junor and figured it would be a good patch for a working mother as well as being one I could grow old with. Unlike show business, when celebrities are ‘in’ one minute and ‘out’ the next, the royals would stay the same, making it easier to build – and keep – contacts.

So if you’d told me that 16 years later, I would find myself at the centre of a media storm over a royal interview with Oprah Winfrey, I’d have probably laughed in your face. First of all, only royals like Fergie do interviews with Oprah. And since when did journalists become the story?

Yet as I have experienced since the arrival of Meghan Markle on the royal scene in 2016 – a move that roughly coincided with Twitter doubling its 140-character limitation to 280 – royal reporters like me now find themselves in the line of fire like never before.

We are used to the likes of Kate Adie coming under attack in the Middle East, but now it is the correspondents who write up events like Trooping the Colour and the Royal Windsor Horse Show having to take cover from the keyboard warriors supposedly defending the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s ‘truth’.

Accusations of racism have long been levelled against anyone who has dared to write less than undiluted praise of Harry and Meghan. But even I have been taken aback by the vitriol on social media in the wake of the couple’s televised two-hour talk-a-thon, in which they branded both the Royal family and the British press racist while complaining about their ‘almost unsurvivable’ multimillionaire lives at the hands of the evil monarchy. And all while the rest of the UK were losing their loved ones and livelihoods in a global pandemic.

Having covered Brexit, general elections and stories about Islamic extremism, I’ve grown used to being sprayed with viral vomit on a fairly regular basis, but when you’ve got complete strangers trolling your best friend’s Instagram feed by association? That’s Britney Spears levels of toxic.

Having a hind thicker than a rhino’s, it wasn’t the repeated references to my being ‘a total c—’ that particularly bothered me, nor even the suggestion that I should have my three children put up for adoption. At one point someone even said it would be a good idea for me to drink myself to death like my mother, about whose chronic alcoholism I have written extensively.

No, what really got me was the appalling spelling and grammar. I mean, if you’re going to hurl insults, at least have the decency to get my name right.

Yet in order to understand just how it has come to pass that so-called #SussexSquaders think nothing of branding all royal correspondents ‘white supremacists’ regardless of who they write for, or sending hate mail to our email addresses, offices – and in some cases, even our homes – it’s worth briefly going to back to when I first broke the story that Prince Harry was dating an American actor in the Sunday Express on 31 October 2016. Headlined: ‘Royal world exclusive: Harry’s secret romance with TV star’, the splash revealed how the popular prince was ‘secretly dating a stunning US actress, model and human rights campaigner’.

Despite my now apparently being on a par with the Ku Klux Klan for failing to acknowledge Meghan as the next messiah, it was actually not until the fifteenth paragraph of that original article that the ‘confident and intelligent’ Northwestern University graduate was described as ‘the daughter of an African-American mother and a father of Dutch and Irish descent’.

Call me superficial, but I was genuinely far more interested in the fact that Harry ‘I-come-with-baggage’ Wales was dating a former ‘briefcase girl’ from the US version of Deal or No Deal than the colour of her skin. A ginger prince punching well above his weight? This was the stuff of tabloid dreams. Little did I know then that covering the trials and tribulations of these two lovebirds would turn into such a nightmare.

The online hostility began bubbling up about eight days after that first story, when Harry’s then communications secretary Jason Knauf issued an ‘unprecedented’ statement accusing the media of ‘crossing a line’.

‘His girlfriend, Meghan Markle, has been subject to a wave of abuse and harassment’, it read, referencing a ‘smear on the front page of a national newspaper; the racial undertones of comment pieces; and the outright sexism and racism of social media trolls and web article comments’. Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, had apparently been besieged by photographers, while bribes had been offered to Meghan’s ex-boyfriend along with ‘the bombardment of nearly every friend, coworker, and loved one in her life’.

Suffice to say, I did feel a bit guilty. Although I hadn’t written anything remotely racist or sexist, I had started the ball rolling for headlines like the MailOnline’s ‘(Almost) straight outta Compton’ (referencing a song by hip-hop group NWA about gang violence and Meghan’s upbringing in the nearby LA district of Crenshaw), along with her ‘exotic’ DNA (which I subsequently called out, including on This Morning in the wake of ‘Megxit’ in January last year).

Omid Scobie, co-author of Finding Freedom, a highly favourable account of the Sussexes’ departure from the Royal family, written with their cooperation last summer, would later insist that the couple knew the story of their relationship was coming out and were well prepared for it.

I can tell you categorically that they weren’t, since I did not even put a call into Kensington Palace before we went to press for fear of it being leaked. (I did later discuss this with Harry, when I covered his trip to the Caribbean in November 2016, and to be fair he was pretty philosophical, agreeing it would have come out sooner or later. But that was before the former Army Captain decided to well and truly shoot the messenger, latterly telling journalists covering the newly-weds’ tax-payer-funded October 2018 tour of Australia and the south Pacific: ‘Thanks for coming, even though you weren’t invited.’)

The royal press pack is the group of dedicated writers who cover all the official engagements and tours on a rota system, in exchange for not bothering the royals as they go about their private business. It was a shame this ragtag bunch, of which I am an associate member, was never personally introduced to Meghan when the couple got engaged in November 2017.

I still have fond memories of a then Kate Middleton, upon her engagement to Prince William in November 2010, showing me her huge sapphire and diamond ring following a press conference at St James’s Palace with the words, ‘It was William’s mother’s so it is very special.’

I replied that she might want to consider buying ‘one of those expanding accordion style file holders’ to organise all her wedding paperwork. (Reader, I had given birth to my second child less than four months earlier and was still lactating.)

Not meeting Meghan did not stop royal commentators like me writing reams about her being ‘a breath of fresh air’ and telling practically every TV show I appeared on that she was the ‘best thing to have happened to the Royal Family in years’.

As the world followed the joyous news of the Windsors’ resident strip billiards star having finally found ‘the one’, the couple enjoyed overwhelmingly positive press culminating in their fairy-tale wedding in May 2018, which we headlined ‘So in love’ above a picture of the bride and groom kissing. I tweeted the wedding front page, along with the original story breaking the news of their relationship with the words, ‘Job done’. Yet, as Meghan would later point out in a glossy Santa Barbara garden, that was by far the end of the story.

According to the Duchess’s testimony before a global audience of millions, the seeds for their royal departure were actually sown by an article I wrote in November 2018 suggesting she made Kate cry during a bridesmaid’s dress fitting for Princess Charlotte.

Claiming the ‘reverse happened’, the former Suits star railed, ‘A few days before the wedding she was upset about something, pertaining to, yes, the issue was correct, about flower-girl dresses, and it made me cry, and it really hurt my feelings.’

She then went on to criticise the palace for failing to correct the story – suggesting that royal aides had hung her out to dry to protect the Duchess of Cambridge.

All of which left me in a bit of a sticky situation. As I told Phillip Schofield on This Morning the following day, ‘I don’t write things I don’t believe to be true and that haven’t been really well sourced.’

Having seemingly been completely bowled over by Meghan’s version of events, Schofe then went for the jugular: ‘I have to say, though, that’s all addressed in that interview, isn’t it, because she [Meghan] couldn’t understand why nobody stood up for her?’

Yet someone had stood up for her, on that very same This Morning sofa: me.

As I told Phil and Holly on 14 January 2019, as more reports of ‘Duchess Difficult’ started to emerge, ‘I think she [Meghan] is doing really well, she looks amazing, she speaks well. She has played a blinder.’

So you’ll forgive me if I can’t quite understand why Meghan didn’t feel the need to correct this supposedly glaring error once she had her own dedicated head of communications from March 2019 – or indeed when she ‘collaborated’ with Scobie, who concluded in his bestselling hagiography that ‘no one cried’?

Moreover, how did the Duchess know a postnatal Kate wasn’t ‘left in tears’? And if she doesn’t know, what hope has the average troll observing events through the prism of their own deep-rooted insecurities?

It appears the actual truth ceases to matter once sides have been taken in the unedifying Team Meghan versus Team Kate battle that has divided the internet.

Make no mistake, there are abject morons at both extremes spewing the sort of bile that, ironically, makes most of the media coverage of Harry and Meghan look like a 1970s edition of Jackie magazine.

It perhaps didn’t help my case that the day before the interview was aired in the US, I had written a lengthy piece carefully weighing up the evidence behind allegations of ‘outrageous bullying’ that had been levelled against Meghan during what proved to be a miserable 20 months in the Royal family for all concerned.

The messages – to my Twitter feed, my email, my website and official Facebook page – ranged from the threatening, to the typical tropes about media ‘scum’ and the downright bizarre. Some accused me of being in cahoots with Carole Middleton, with whom I have never interacted, unless you count a last-minute Party Pieces purchase in a desperate moment of poor parental planning.

Another frequent barb was questioning why the press wasn’t writing about that ‘pedo’ [sic] Prince Andrew instead – seemingly oblivious to the fact that no one would know about the Duke of York’s links to Jeffrey Epstein if it wasn’t for the acres of coverage devoted to the story by us royal hacks over recent years.

It didn’t matter that I had repeatedly torn the Queen’s second, and, some say, favourite son to pieces for everything from his propensity to take his golf clubs on foreign tours to that disastrous Newsnight interview.

Contrary to the ‘invisible contract’ Harry claims the palace has with the press, royal coverage works roughly like this: good royal deeds = good publicity. Bad royal deeds = bad publicity. We effectively act as a critical friend, working on behalf of a public that rightly expects the royals to take the work – but not themselves – seriously.

So when a royal couple preaches about climate change before taking four private jets in 11 days, it is par for the course for a royal scribe to point out the inconsistency of that message. None of it is ever personal, as evidenced by the fact that practically every member of the monarchy has come in for flak over the years.

If Oprah wasn’t willing to point out the discrepancies in Harry and Meghan’s testimony, surely it is beholden on royal reporters to question how the Duchess had managed to undertake four foreign holidays in the six months after her wedding, in addition to official tours to Italy, Canada, and Amsterdam, as well as embarking on a lengthy honeymoon, if she had ‘turned over’ her passport?

While no one would wish to undermine the extent of her mental health problems, could it really be true that she only left the house twice in four months when she managed to cram in 73 days’ worth of engagements, according to the Court Circular, in the 17 months between her wedding and the couple’s departure to Canada?

And what of the ‘racist’ headlines flashed up during the interview purporting to be from the British press, when more than a third were actually taken from independent blogs and the foreign media? The UK media abides by the Independent Press Standards Organisation’s Code of Conduct ‘to avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual’s race’, as well as by rigorous defamation laws. And rightly so – the British press doesn’t always get it right. But social media is the Wild West by comparison, publishing vile slurs on a daily basis with impunity.

Some therefore find it strange that such a litigious couple would claim to have been ‘silenced’ when they have made so many complaints, including resorting to legal action, over stories they claim not to have even read. There is something similarly contradictory about a couple accusing the tabloids of lacking self-reflection while refusing to take any blame at all – for anything.

In any normal world, informed writing on such matters would be classed as fair comment, but not, seemingly, on Twitter where those completely lacking any objectivity whatsoever are only too willing to virtue signal and manoeuvre.

As the trolling reached fever pitch in the aftermath of the interview, veteran royal reporter Robert Jobson of the Evening Standard called me. ‘Don’t respond to these freaks,’ he advised. ‘It’s getting nasty out there. Watch your back!’

Yet despite my general sense of bewilderment at the menacing Megbots, I can’t say it didn’t appal me to discover a close friend had received online abuse, purely by dint of being my mate. After discussing the lengths the troll must have gone to to track her down, she asked me, ‘Do you ever worry someone might do something awful to you?’ Er, not until now, no.

Of course it’s upsetting, even for a cynical old-timer like me. Worse still are people who actually know me casting aspersions on my profession on social media. Often these are the same charlatans who would think nothing of sidling up to me for the latest gossip on the Royal family, while publicly pretending that reading any such coverage is completely beneath them.

Most pernicious of all though – not least after Piers Morgan’s departure from Good Morning Britain following a complaint to ITV and Ofcom from the Duchess – is the corrosive effect this whole hullabaloo is having on freedom of speech. When you’ve got a former actor effectively editing a British breakfast show from an £11 million Montecito mansion, what next?

I cannot help but think we are in danger of setting race relations back 30 years if people are seriously suggesting that any criticism of Meghan is racially motivated. It’s the hypocrisy that gets me. When Priti Patel was accused of bullying, the very same people who willingly hung the Home Secretary out to dry are now the ones defending Meghan against such claims, saying they have been levelled at her simply because she is ‘a strong woman of colour’.

Of course journalists should take responsibility for everything they report and be held to account for it – but Harry and Meghan do not have a monopoly on the truth simply because the close friend and neighbour who interviewed them in return for £7 million from CBS took what they said as gospel.

If she isn’t willing to probe the disparity between Meghan saying someone questioned the colour of Archie’s skin when she was pregnant, and Harry suggesting it happened before they were even married, then someone must. There’s a name for such scrutiny. It’s called journalism.

The public reserves the right to make up its own mind – with the help of the watchful eye of a free and fair press. But that press can never be free or fair if journalists do not feel they can report without fear or favour. I’m lucky that a lot of the criticism I face is more than balanced out by hugely supportive members of the public and online community who either agree – or respect the right to disagree. Along with the hate mail, I have had many thoughtful and eloquent missives, including those that good naturedly challenge what I have written in the paper or said on TV, which have genuinely given me pause for thought.

I am more than happy to enter into constructive discourse with these correspondents, who are frankly sometimes the only people who keep me on Twitter. I mean, let’s face it, I wouldn’t be anywhere near the bloody thing if this wasn’t my day job.

With the National Union of Journalists this month declaring that harassment and abuse had ‘become normalised’ within the industry, never have members of Britain’s press needed more courage. As Winston Churchill famously said, ‘You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.’

Who would have thought that the preservation of the fundamental freedoms that we hold so dear should partially rest on the shoulders of those who follow around a 94-year-old woman and her family for a living?

If I’d known then what I know now, would I still have written the bridesmaid’s dress story?

Yes – doubtlessly reflecting sisterly sobs all round. But after two decades in this business, I am clear-eyed enough to know this for certain: whatever I had written, it would still have ended in tears.

[letterboxd]

Natural Woman.

Filmmaking power-couple Julia Hart and Jordan Horowitz chat to Jack Moulton about exploring untouched female perspectives in genre films, a fateful viewing of Michael Mann’s Thief, the humbling magic of babies on set, and Letterboxd’s small role in their filmmaking process.

I’m Your Woman puts the gangster’s moll, a classically underwritten character, at the heart of the action. We barely meet the gangster himself in this taut, 1970s-set crime thriller from director Julia Hart and her co-writer and producer husband Jordan Horowitz. Rachel Brosnahan occupies a tense and unusual space as Jean, wife of Eddie, a no-good chap who turns up one day with a very young baby then abruptly disappears, leaving her to raise this unnamed child.

In other versions of the story, we’d follow Eddie to a guns-blazing conclusion, but this is a Hart-Horowitz jam, so we’re quickly on the run with Jean and the baby, and we stay with her. I’m Your Woman is a compelling, unsettling twist on the genre. “What impressed me most … was how well it keeps its cards close to the vest,” writes Mikey on Letterboxd. It’s also an empathetic portrayal of new-motherhood in all its exhausting confusion, where getting a baby clean, fed and sleeping is as much a priority as finding the next safe house. “Despite valuing tension quite highly, Julia Hart still has the wherewithal to let it sit in its more tender and thoughtful moments,” writes Paul. “The ending really sneaks up on you in terms of the specific feeling it elicits.”

Marsha Stephanie Blake and Rachel Brosnahan in ‘I’m Your Woman’.

Hart and Horowitz have children, aged two and six, who have grown up around film sets. Before becoming a filmmaker, Hart spent her days with other people’s kids as a teacher; her 2016 debut, Miss Stevens, stars Lily Rabe as a high-school educator, but her follow-up films have been wider-ranging, from Fast Color to this year’s Stargirl. Hart credits this genre-jumping to her absolute love of movies. “I don’t have a favorite genre. I love musicals, Westerns, crime dramas, coming-of-age movies, superhero movies. It was so fun getting to learn about how to create musical numbers in Stargirl and how to direct a car chase in I’m Your Woman.”

Horowitz, meanwhile, is known for producing The Kids Are All Right and La La Land. Yes, he’s the “Guys, guys, I’m sorry, no, there’s a mistake” guy. Horowitz is also a Letterboxd member, and a hunt back through his diary reveals the date he first watched Moonlight, along with his wholesome reviews of Julia’s films. “I always tried to remember to log my movies in so many different ways,” Horowitz explains, “and then once Letterboxd came out it was a very easy solution.”

Jordan Horowitz corrects that famous Oscar mix-up.

Horowitz keeps diligent lists of references for his upcoming films, years before they’re even announced. It’s here that the roots of I’m Your Woman are found, if you’re looking closely: a fateful viewing of Michael Mann’s Thief nearly seven years ago was the primary influence on I’m Your Woman, “especially Tuesday Weld’s character, and the moment where she is basically asked to leave the movie before James Caan burns everything to the ground,” he tells me. “Our hope with this movie was to follow some of the women in those movies that don’t necessarily get the spotlight and shift the gaze of the camera to follow this car as it drives away with her in it, instead of staying with the criminal of this movie.”

Hart picks up the thread, naming Diane Keaton in The Godfather, Ali MacGraw in The Getaway, Theresa Russell in Straight Time. “Those were interesting characters played by incredible actresses but they only have a handful of scenes so I loved the idea of exploring a woman in that world and time but telling the story through her perspective.”

Horowitz defines master filmmakers Sidney Lumet, Martin Ritt and Jonathan Demme as Hart’s “spirit animals”, for their humanist takes in multiple genres. A particular recommendation of a Lumet classic from an Amazon executive changed the way they looked at their writing. “Running on Empty has this great scene where they all sing [James Taylor’s] ‘Fire and Rain’ together. Originally in our script, the ‘Natural Woman’ scene was just [Jean] singing. After watching that movie it inspired us to consider what if the Cal character joins in with her? What happens to the moment if it becomes a bit more of a community moment?”

Bill Heck in ‘I’m Your Woman’.

When talking about their writing process, Horowitz admits that he always has his producer hat handy: “I’m never thinking about writing for the sake of writing. I’m always keeping how we make this thing in mind. Do we have too many extras? Is this location gettable? That can help me when we get into production because I’ve already considered some of those things, but I do wish sometimes that I could just sit down as Julia does and just write.” Once the duo makes it into production, Horowitz admits “[I] definitely put writer mode behind me, to the point where we’ll be on set and someone will ask me something about the script and I’ll be like ‘I don’t know, ask Julia’ and they’ll say ‘didn’t you write it too?!’”

However, Horowitz credits Hart as the “idea generator” of the two. The premise to have Jean struggling to connect with her adoptive baby was always part of the conception of the character, largely based on conversations Hart had with mothers, pre-lockdown. “It sometimes feels like Hollywood sees mothers as a monolith where there isn’t much nuance and subtlety, especially when it comes to negative feelings about motherhood, so they’re often shamed into not talking about them,” Julia laments. “It was really important for me to explore a side of motherhood that isn’t talked about as much and make sure that mothers know that they are seen and heard.”

The decision to have a baby (performed by brothers Justin and Jameson Charles) in almost every scene was a big risk, and not one Hart took lightly. “Movie people can think what they’re doing is very important, but there’s nothing more humbling than when you’re on a whole set with hundreds of people [and] you’re waiting for a baby’s dirty diaper to be changed. It made everything feel so real and immediate, so everyone on set really had to live in the moment and adapt. You prepare, and prepare, and prepare, but you have to throw out so much if the baby is sleeping instead of crying, or crying instead of smiling. I think it’s important to portray babies as real people, because as a society we often forget that.”

Lead actress Rachel Brosnahan came on as a producer many years after the script was already in Hart and Horowitz’s heads, but Hart explains that Brosnahan brought a history and interior life, “more in the wordless moments of acting than in dialogue itself.” Along the way, Jean meets Cal and Teri, who guide her to refuge. They’re the heart of the film, and Hart elaborates on their importance to the narrative: “they have been through the hell that Jean is currently going through and her circumstances force them to go through it again, but this time they have honesty, truth and love on their side. In watching Teri and Cal, Jean starts to understand what real love, family and support are.”

Rachel Brosnahan with director and co-writer Julia Hart.

When you examine Hart’s filmography, it’s impressive how productive she’s been in such a short time, releasing four films within five years, with those pre-schoolers under foot. Horowitz makes a comparison to a prolific filmmaker like Steven Soderbergh, who advises to “fail as fast as you can”. Horowitz acknowledges that “I don’t think we set out like, ‘we’re gonna have two children and we’re gonna make four films in five years.’ If we knew that we were gonna do that we would’ve said, ‘wow, that’s a little bit insane, maybe we shouldn’t do that!’” But they did, and the film world is richer for it.

We always like to ask about the film that made filmmakers want to become filmmakers, and Hart lands on All That Jazz. “I’ve always been a fan of Bob Fosse since his [early] work. How he turned moving your body in a way that people haven’t really moved their bodies before into an empire is very inspiring. [Roy Scheider] is also my favorite actor, which doesn’t hurt. He’s so good.” Horowitz, meanwhile, is a huge fan of Back to the Future. “That was the movie when I was a kid that just opened my eyes to the power of movies, to make you obsess and dream about what other movies could be.”

“I remember going with my parents to see Back to the Future Part II on the Friday night it opened and when we got there it was sold out. We saw some other movie, but I was so upset so all I was thinking about was Back to the Future Part II. As we were leaving the movie theater, I saw through the back little window of the screen where Back to the Future Part II was playing and watched the end scene where Marty is standing in the rain and someone comes and gives him a letter. I did not sleep the entire night. That feeling of anticipation and imagination defines the way I like to look at movies and the way they can make me feel.” A subsequent look at Horowitz’s Letterboxd diary reveals that this conversation perhaps inspired him to take a trip back in time the following day.

Related content

Jordan Horowitz’s list of research for I’m Your Woman

She did THAT!—A list of women who kill

Mothers, Mommy Issues, Moms, Matriarch, Grandmothers

Letterboxd’s Top 200 Crime Films

Disillusionment in Sun-drenched 1970s American New Wave Cinema

Follow Jack on Letterboxd

‘I’m your Woman’ is on Amazon Prime Video now.

[taelme]

Disneyland actor!Hendery

genre: disneyland actor!au, kind of workplace!au? (fluff) 

pairing/s: Hendery / Reader, (ft. KunTen)  

word count: 8k+ 

tw: none!! hehe 

a/n: saw all those posts about Hendery as Prince Eric n I knew .... had to take matters into my own hands .....  

"Hello Prince Eric!" Hendery was nudged aside roughly, almost causing him to choke on what was left of his churro in his mouth. He recognized the voice to be his friend Kun, who glanced sideways before lowering his voice to a mutter, "you know you're not supposed to be snacking on the job right," his harsh tone emphasized by his frown.

Hendery pat his chest firmly, shooting a (very defensive) wide-eyed look at his friend, "I can't help it when all these little mermaids," he waved at the two girl toddlers dressed in mermaid costumes who waddled past the princes with a smile, "keep giving me free food, can I, prince charming?"

Hendery sighed, licking the excess sugar and cinnamon off his lips, "What are you doing here, anyway?" he asked his brown haired friend, who was busy greeting the children and park-goers that strolled past them.

"Had to entertain myself cause all the princesses are gone for that performance thing," he shrugged, turning and placing his hands on his hips as he analysed Hendery's area ( or lagoon, he figured ). "I see Ariel's sisters don't seem to be very busy," Kun smiled, waving at one of the girls he'd seen beckoning him to the pool area.

"Sure, go wild." 

Hendery waved him off distractedly, not without giving Kun an uncomfortable look as he approached one of the mermaid actresses. Contemplating on whether to buy himself a drink, he was approached by one of the park rangers, “You guys can go for your break now,” he said, repeating the same thing to Kun and the other actors there, leaving Hendery to go by himself to the breakroom, desperate for actual food after just surviving on a churro since the time he woke up.

Upon reaching the break room he’d spotted his co-worker Ten, who didn’t waste any time in latching onto Hendery, practically following him around the breakroom like a little puppy ( or in this case a little puppy that really wanted to ask Hendery for a favour )

“Bro...Hendery....you know I love you right?” he murmured, earning a hum of acknowledgement from Hendery as the latter was more focused on picking which bento set looked more appetising to him. “And you know I would do anything for you if you asked....right?”

Hendery turned to give Ten a knowing look, waving his packet drink in front of Ten’s face, “And you know that you might as well just tell me what you want from me now,” Hendery sighed, walking back to his usual table in the break room and placing his things onto the table.

Ten let out an offended gasp, hand to his chest to emphasize his offence, “I don’t want anything from you!”

Hendery quirked an eyebrow at his co-worker, just wondering how he’d managed to become friends with someone as annoying as the person seated before him. “Okay, then we’re done he-“

“Okay, fine, maybe I do want something. But it’s nothing big I swear! I just need you,” he pointed a finger at Hendery, a small sheepish smile appearing on Ten’s face as he continued, “to figure out something for me,”

“Is he asking you for another favour again?” Kun flopped with a tired sigh onto the seat next to

Hendery, Ten simply sticking his tongue out at Kun in response. 


“Okay, so before I was rudely interrupted, I was saying. Okay, let’s say I’m supposed to have this work thing tonight. And for this work thing, it’s you know that thing where they book out the whole park and we can just do whatever we want and use the rides and all, you know?”

“Yes, Ten, I work here, I know.”

Ten narrowed his eyes only momentarily at Hendery before continuing, a big smile plastered on his face in the hope that it would increase his chances of Hendery saying yes, “so, I was supposed to bring one of my friends here because I got to invite one person and she really wanted to come see the park in the evening, but! But, okay, this is the part you gotta help me out,” Kun shot a look at Ten as if asking why he was beating around the bush so much.

“Ten just get to the point already,” Kun snapped, his eyebrows furrowing slightly and a slight scowl on his face. 


“Can you...perhaps....accompany her?”

Hendery shrugged, he already knew he was going to say okay to Ten’s request he just felt like he needed to make Ten work a little for his ‘yes’.

“What’s in it for me?” he asked Ten, making Ten purse his lips, raising an eyebrow at the younger boy.

“A burden,” Kun snickered, shaking his head and patting Hendery on the back.

Ten rolled his eyes, “First of all, she’s a girl, and this is not a burden- in fact, it’s a blessing for Hendery.”

“In what way?” Hendery laughed, enjoying the exchange even more than he was letting on.

“I’m helping him land a date! It’s no news that Hendery over here hasn’t dated in like what ten years-“

“2 years,” Hendery cut in with a proud grin on his face, holding up two fingers for emphasis.

“Yeah, same thing. I’m just saying man, it’s a blessing in disguise that I couldn’t make it tonight, ‘cause I’m literally giving you a great romantic evening in the park with a pretty decent girl and no one’s gonna give you shit for it because literally everyone will be with their own people!” Ten grinned, holding a thumbs up next to his face, nodding excitedly.

Hendery had to agree, the prospect didn’t even sound all that bad, giving Ten an affirmative nod, finally letting himself smile widely after Ten’s whole monologue. 
 “Yes!” Ten whipped out his ticket and slammed it onto the table before him, “Thank you, or you’re welcome in advance? Whatever, you’ll have fun even if it’s not fun,” Kun nodded in agreement at Ten’s last comment, giving Hendery a nod as he pointed at Ten.

“Hate to say it but it’s true.”

Hendery glanced at his watch, it was at least 4 more hours till the park would close for Ten’s work event. That’s gonna really feel like 10 years, Hendery thought. Little did he know 5 hours later he’d be rushing to change into his casual clothes ( which in this case was his green white and black motif hoodie and his black jeans that were a little more ripped ) and meet you at the fountain near the old themed theatre. You didn’t recognize him at first, you doubted you’d be able to from the shitty description Ten had given you.

“Tall, kind of handsome when you look past the donkey features, long hair,” was all he’d told you, and that wasn’t what you were expecting when a boy who looked way too handsome to have fit Ten’s description had come up to you a little out of breath asking if you were Ten’s friend with a hopeful look on his face.

Momentarily distracted by how much he smelt like a tropical lagoon and his gaze that was intently fixed on you, you’d almost forgot to reply him until you realized he was waiting for your answer.

“Oh, yes. Yep, that’s me,” your nervous laugh did nothing to hide the awkwardness you felt. You were thankful that they’d chosen that time to start the event, meaning you and Hendery had to make your way to the big communal area, standing at the far back since you two were already late.

You fixed your gaze on what was going on at the main stage, admiring the display of lights and the way they’d lit the street lamps within the park, making you feel as though you were actually outdoors.

“Hey, man, what are you doing here still?” you saw somebody sling an arm over Ten’s friend’s shoulder.

“Oh, I’m here for the event,” he said simply, sparing you the introduction which you greatly appreciated, and you were busy navigating the map to see where you’d wanted to go to first, but that was proving to be a little difficult since you’d never been to the park before ( even despite your best friend working in the park ).

“Where should we go first? the map says that the lagoon’s pretty popular-“

“Forget the map,” Ten’s friend snatched the map from your hands, “I’ll be your map tonight,” he smiled at you, his styled hair falling over his eyes slightly, making him shake his head to move his hair away.

“You know this place well?” he nodded at your question, “like the back of my hand.”

Hendery figured he shouldn’t have promised that when you’d asked if he could bring you to the Jurassic area of the park and you’d both ended up at the canoe ride instead.

“Like the back of your hand, huh?” you laughed, but didn’t stop him when he gave you an unapologetic shrug, stepping into the boat and offering you a hand to help you in anyway.

“Ladies and-I mean lady, please keep your arms and legs within the vehicle at all times,” you smiled, nodding as you did as you were told. You heard the muffled speakers of the park start to play different songs, Hendery and yourself unconsciously mouthing the lyrics or humming the tune to the song playing.

You saw somebody wave at him while he adjusted the paddles of the boat, sitting before you with a smile. “Another friend of yours?” you referred to the person he’d just greeted, making him glance back at the person who was already almost out of sight, turning back to you with an amused expression.

“If I’m being honest, I see him almost every day but I just can’t seem to remember his name,” he confessed, making you let out an amused huff, shaking your head.

“I’m just not that great with names,” he followed your gaze to see how you were staring at the lights decorating the bridge you were about to pass under. “Speaking of which,” he spoke again, directing your attention away from the lights to him instead, “sorry I’m only asking now but what’s your name?”

“What’s to say you won’t forget an hour after I tell you?” he scrunched his nose up, shaking his head.

“I promise, I won’t forget. My name’s Hendery,” he told you, tucking the paddles in a way that you were pretty sure was meant to make the boat move slower.

“I’m Y/N,” you told him, seeing him nod.

The conversation dulled momentarily, which you didn't mind, of course. You knew it was all part and parcel of a first meeting with someone. So you'd let yourself get distracted by the pretty lights and the way the decor of the streets in the park that you passed by in the boat seemed so pretty in the evening light.

“This is so nice,” you muttered to no one in particular, earning a sound of agreement from Hendery. “So, I’m guessing you work here with Ten?” he nodded.

“I’m part-time, unlike Ten. I heard from him it was your first time coming here?” You enjoyed the way his eyebrows would raise ever so slightly when he asked you questions, the light from the street lamps and the fairy lights casting this glow you couldn’t describe but made him look absolutely...princely.

Nodding in response for your sudden lack of the ability to form words, he replied you quickly, “Well you’re free to come as many times as you want, I could get you a free pass.”

“Is that allowed?” you laughed, wanting to slap yourself for that reply, earning a shake of the head from him, grinning at you mischievously. as if you didn’t know it wasn’t allowed, please.

“Well...there are a few other options I guess, you know, if you don’t want to go down the illegal route,” he hummed in thought, before his eyes lit up, “okay, so, you could work here part-time when you’re free, or you could come visit whenever you have time using Ten’s pass and I could properly show you around when it’s uh...you know, less...dark,” he waved his hands in gesture to your relatively dim environment, “and stuff.”

“And plus! more of the rides will be open, if you’re into that,” he added quickly, earning an enthusiastic nod from you.

Your hesitation got the better of you, though, expression faltering slightly, which Hendery hadn’t missed, tilting his head at you as a prompt for you to share what was stopping you. “I don’t know, though...Ten’s been asking me if I wanted to work part time since they needed staff, and I’m technically free for the holidays now, but I guess I was just putting it off for lack of a better reason...and also 'cause it's been a while since I had to talk to new people,” you laughed.

“Trust me, working here isn’t as bad as Ten makes it sound, it’s actually pretty chill. You could try out as a park ranger, you won’t have to do much most of the time other than occasionally helping park-goers, and it pays pretty good, and plus, I’ll be there too!” he told you, tone raising with his excitement, the both of you having reached the end of the river.

Hendery stepped out from the boat, holding a hand out for you to take, “so how ‘bout it, Y/N, you gonna take up the offer?”

You scrunched your nose up, nodding decisively as you took his hand, letting him help you out from the boat, feeling as though you’d taken him up on more than just getting a job here.

In other words, that was how you ended up in your customer service uniform, standing in the admin office waiting for instructions.

“Guess what,” Ten came into the room and led you out of the admin office, earning a grimace from you, “should I be afraid?”

Ten rolled his eyes, “why do you always think it’s something bad?”

You scoffed, “I only think it’s something bad when it’s you,” you huffed.

“Well, for starters, that’s no way to talk to your mentor,” he smirked, making you groan, “also, since I’m in charge now. First order of business is: tell me exactly what happened that day I bailed on you for the park event.”

You thought back to that evening, almost letting a smile slip when you recalled the way Hendery had asked for your phone number, how he’d promised you another day where he would have more time to show you around the park, but “only if you were okay with it.” Which, let’s be honest, you were more than okay with it.

“Firstly, why didn’t you tell me he was so good-looking! He looked like...like a prince!” Ten snickered at your choice of words.

“Well, I mean, close enough, if you think about it, but go on,” he prompted, shoving one hand into his pocket and swinging his other hand freely as he walked.

“He was very nice, it’s amazing you have friends like this, really. And single too! Which was even more amazing. Someone as nice and funny as him that’s available is so hard to find these days,” Ten scoffed at your last statement.

“Yeah, if you could just tell him that. He keeps saying he’s waiting for the right one,” Ten rolled his eyes, “I basically hooked him up on a blind date, what more is there to ask for?”

You gasped, “Hey,” you whined, but sensed some truth to Ten’s words nonetheless, “who is he, prince Eric?” you joked, said prince being the first one you’d thought of when Ten said he was ‘looking for the right one’.

“Uh....well you’re not wrong,” You heard the sound of splashing and children cheering, locating the source of the sound when you saw Hendery there, dressed in what you recognized to be Prince Eric’s trademark outfit, white billowy shirt and black pants, red sash tied around his waist, you barely noticed the boots with how hard you were staring at his face, and his hair especially.

He was busy taking pictures with the park goers with the actress dressed as Ariel, and you weren’t interested in getting involved in the crowd but you were thankful that there was a single big group of them who were already starting to disperse after taking their photos.

“Hendery!” Ten called out, making you wince, nudging him, Ten giggled, practically pulling you towards Hendery with a big smile on his face.

“Hey, man, also it's Prince Eric to you, I’m working,” he scolded Ten. Hendery looked at you, eyes widening, “hey! First day today?” you nodded with a smile, noticing from the corner of your eye that Ten had started to leave to talk to the actress playing Ariel.

“Yeah,” you cursed yourself for your voice coming out softer than you’d intended for it to, earning a tiny giggle from him.

“Hello, my lady,” he smiled, bowing deeply, making you let out a strangled sound of protest, moving over to get him to straighten up quickly, “..lemme try to remember...Mildred right?” he kept his expression serious, a hand placed thoughtfully on his chin.

Your mouth formed an ‘o’ shape, “No? Okay...Diana? Rachel?” a tiny pout formed on your lips, your hands raising to cross your arms over your chest, seeing Hendery’s expression change into one of amusement, “I’m kidding! I’m kidding. I remember, Y/N.”

You felt a wave of relief wash over you. “How could I forget,” he murmured softly, but before the tension could grow he raised his voice back to a normal tone and volume, “I see Ten has escorted Ariel to take pictures, so I’m guessing you will be accompanying me today?”

Your eyes widened, turning quickly to see that Ten indeed was starting to bring Ariel to other parts of the park, and you turned back to Hendery, having to look away and nod quickly in fear that you would blush if you maintained eye contact with him a little bit longer.

“It seems like it,” you nodded, starting to walk into whatever direction you felt like walking in, Hendery only stopping whenever children were there, choosing to simply wave and smile and greet the park goers otherwise.

“How’re you finding your first day so far?” he asked you, clasping his wrist behind his back as you walked.

You nodded, “I guess it’s pretty chill? Nothing out of the ordinary, other than the fact that Ten’s my mentor,” you laughed at how Hendery’s eyes had widened, pulling a face.

“Yikes,” he joked, suddenly stopping you and leading you to a small snack stand selling churros.

“You know what would be really good right now?” he told you, looking elsewhere but pointing towards the churro stand desperately.

“What are you doing? Can’t you just buy one-”

Hendery shook his head, “I brought you here so you can try it! Since we didn’t get to buy any the last time you were here, they’re great, I swear.”

You raised an eyebrow at his insistence, but bought a churro anyway, handing it to Hendery, who took a bite quickly after glancing left and right to see if anyone was looking, thrusting the churro back into your hands quickly, covering his mouth as he licked off the remnants of the sugar on his lips and smiled at you, leaning down to mutter a small ‘thank you’ to you.

“Go on, take a bite,” he urged you, watching your reaction intently as you did so, the widening of your eyes making him cheer, having to refrain from pumping his fist in the air, trying to stay in character for the families that walked past him.

“So...uh..I’m guessing you’re not allowed to snack while on the job?” he nodded at you, making you laugh.

“Well if you’re ever in need of a churro text me, I’d be glad to not spend my entire day with Ten,” you laughed.

“What do you do on an average day as…Prince Eric?” you asked, taking a small bite out of the churro. You glanced at the time on your phone, seeing that it was almost time for you to report to the customer service counter.

“I dunno, play with kids, walk around like this take pictures with people, occasionally have to pose and stuff with Ariel, that's pretty much it,” he shrugged, making you purse your lips.

“Well, I’m sorry but I’m supposed to report to the customer service counter pretty soon, so you might have to find someone else to accompany you.”

Hendery frowned, making an unamused expression. “That’s alright, can I walk you to the customer service counter, then?” you nodded and he smiled. Hendery cursed mentally that you were a park ranger and that you were both out in the open so he couldn’t link arms with you like how he wanted to, figuring he would have to use his amazing (his words) brain to formulate a plan to spend more time with you.

Though you were thinking along the lines of the same thing he was, that didn’t mean you weren’t surprised when you’d seen Hendery bringing a child that looked about 5 years old into the customer service area.

Hendery waved to you, soft smile on his face as he urged the child to walk towards you, pointing towards you, murmuring to the kid to walk over to the 'kind looking older sister'. The child went over to you, staring at your shoelaces as they nibbled on their ice cream.

“Kid over here came to me crying really hard just now, said he couldn’t find his parents,” Hendery told you, the both of you standing there and staring at the occupied child for a while, figuring the ice cream in his hands had served to calm him down a little.

“Does he know what his parents’ names are?” Hendery nodded, “I can make the announcement for you if you want, since I already know their names.”

You nodded, stepping back and gesturing to the mic, letting him step forward and work the functions smoothly, as if he’d been in there a thousand times.

You had to admit there was something attractive about Hendery’s demeanour as he handled this situation, calm as ever, and he seemed to be on pretty good terms with the child as well.

“Did Prince Eric find you just now?” you asked the boy, seeing him nod vigorously, practically slurping his ice cream from the cup.

“He said he can find my mom and dad for me!” you nodded.

“Uh-huh, I’m doing that right now! You wait, sooner or later your parents are gonna come here to get you.” Hendery told the child, earning a grin from the small boy. Hendery sat on one of the chairs, the boy climbing up onto Hendery’s lap, ice cream finished and discarded away, he’d reached over to play with Hendery’s red sash, making the older boy grab the boy’s wrists quickly before the ice cream could stain his costume.

You chuckled, reaching into your bag underneath the table and pulling out a packet of wet wipes, handing Hendery a few to clean the child’s hands with.

“Gross,” Hendery drew out the word, playing with the boy by scrunching up his nose in distaste as he sniffed the child’s hand, which seemed to entertain the child very much, waving his hands towards Hendery’s face to get a reaction, watching the interaction being enough to put a smile on your face.

It hadn’t been 15 minutes after the announcement was made that you saw a young-ish couple briskly walking ( or running, you couldn’t tell ) over to the counter, baby in a stroller and that whole thing going on.

“Where was he when you found him?” the father asked while the mother carried the boy, planting kisses all over his face making him giggle, saying he was fine because he had Prince Eric.

“Thank you so much, man. We were a mess trying to find him. Really, you can’t even turn away for 3 seconds with this one,” the father smiled, pinching the boy’s cheek.

“It’s no problem, we’re just thankful he calmed down pretty quickly,” Hendery told the couple, the mother set the boy back on his feet, and to your surprise he’d ran over to Hendery, who squat down quickly to accept the child’s hug.

“Follow your parents next time, okay? See you next time!” you saw the boy shove Hendery away, waddling over to you next, and you’d gladly accepted the hug, a loud laugh leaving your lips when the child had bid the both of you good bye as ‘older brother prince Eric and older sister Ariel’, hearing his mother softly correct him that you were a park ranger and that they’d seen Ariel just now at the lagoon.

“First day at work and already climbing to Ariel’s spot? Powerful,” Hendery joked, resting his interlocked fingers on his outstretched legs as he leaned against the tall bar stool, giving you a cheeky smile.

Shooting him a look as you tidied up the table, you got ready to leave since your shift had ended already and the park was about to close soon. Hendery had gone to get his things from the break room and lockers, and changed into his casual clothes before meeting you at the park entrance. You let out a small laugh at the contrast in appearance, going from looking all fancy and charismatic in his Prince Eric costume to suddenly looking a lot more youthful (but no less attractive) in his soft dusty pink hoodie and black jeans.

“Do you have dinner at home?” he asked you, earning an affirmative hum from you, much to Hendery's dismay.

“Yeah, my mom cooked already,” you told him, fishing around in your bag for your phone, seeing a text from Ten saying that your pay would come in only at the end of the month.

Hendery tried not to sound too disappointed, "alright, then, how are you going back?" he asked, hooking his thumbs on the straps of his backpack, you both found yourself walking towards the train station as you gestured to it in response, only realizing then that you two took the same train home, having some unspoken agreement that you would both take the train together.

Hendery held onto one of the overhead handles, letting you hold onto his arm for stability in the crowded train. You prayed your stop would come quicker so you would have less of a chance to embarrass yourself in front of Hendery.

"How're you feeling after your first day, Y/N?" he asked, raising his eyebrows with a small smile on his face as he awaited your answer.

"Tiring," he huffed a tiny laugh at your response, "and I’m not even quite sure why, I barely did anything."

Hendery was about to frown but you continued, "but it was fun," you added, making him smile. "Thanks to me?"

You rolled your eyes, "You wish," you scoffed. Though if Ten were here he'd be able to see right through you.

“How’d you get him the ice cream, by the way? Thought you weren't allowed to bring your wallets out of the break room?”

“Technically it was a free gift,” Hendery shrugged, making you shoot him a look.

“Wow, pretty famous around here, huh, Prince Eric? All the park goers spending their fortunes on you," you joked, not noticing the way Hendery simply smiled lazily at you, fatigue from the day's activities having hit him already.

"Guanheng," he murmured softly.

"Huh?" you frowned, not sure if you'd heard him correctly. "My name," he smiled, "I want you to call me Guanheng."

Your eyes widened, taken aback by the sudden piece of information, not noticing the train was reaching your stop before Hendery tapped you, "It's your stop."

You'd let the crowd trying to get out push and navigate past you, feeling Hendery squeeze your shoulder, "Bye, Y/N. Get home safe," he told you softly, his voice down to a low murmur.

Already beginning to step out of the train carriage, you figured now was the best time to start saying it, "You too, bye, Guanheng," you waved.

The happiness on his face after was priceless.

===

“Y/N! Best friend! Ride or die!” you made a face at the sound of Ten who was running towards the customer service booth yelling gibberish directed towards you to get your attention.

Your co-worker’s eyes widened, unconsciously pushing his chair further from the counter when Ten had stopped his run by slamming his hands on the counter. You swivelled your chair around to face Ten with a concerned look.

“Should I be afraid?”

“Yes and no! I need your help,” Ten pouted and clasped his hands together in a pleading gesture, making you tilt your head at him, twirling your pen in your hand absentmindedly.

“No,” you stuck your tongue out at him, turning back to the folders of feedback you had to compile.

“Okay, fine. It’s actually not me that asked, Hendery specifically asked me to ask you,” Ten shrugged, making you raise an eyebrow at him.

Nodding your head slowly, you wondered why you didn’t get any message from him, before realising he probably didn’t have his phone with him now, “go on....I’m listening,” you muttered.

Ten grinned, not wasting any time, “The girl playing Ariel is having a major hangover and she can’t leave the house because she’s been puking her guts out,” you made a face at Ten’s choice of words, but that didn’t deter him from continuing, “so here’s the plan, you dress as Ariel and take pictures with the kids and their families later!”

“Why me? I don’t look anything like her?”

“I mean, think about Hendery, dude, it’d obviously be easier posing with someone he was comfortable with, wouldn’t it?” Ten shot you an unamused look, making you wince.

“I’m really bad at that stuff, though, Ten.”

“No, you’re not! Remember when we were volunteering at the kindergarten the other time and we did a little mermaid performance for them? you were great!”

"Ten, I was playing Flounder back then, it's different." You laughed, shaking your head.

Ten frowned, grabbing your hands and shaking them desperately, slumping down onto the counter for dramatic effect, “Please?? We need to find someone in time for the photo-taking and if we start now, by the time we get you into hair and makeup it’ll be time!”

“Ten, but there’s all this work left to do! I mean, does the boss even know about this?”

“Yes, he does! He’s fine with it, seriously, just come with me, I’ll explain to you everything you have to do,” you shot a nervous glance at your co-worker, who simply shrugged at you.

“What are you waiting for, just go! I’ll settle things here, don’t worry,” he told you.

“Perfect,” Ten smiled, yanking your hands to pull you into a standing position, dragging you to a room where they’d already had Ariel’s puffy wedding dress laid out there, as well as the red wig and a pair of ( very pretty ) heels to complete the outfit. You recognized the girl waiting for you to be the actress that played one of Ariel’s sisters. She’d beckoned you to sit in the chair next to her, and you did albeit hesitantly.

“Thanks for agreeing to this, by the way. I’m really sure Hendery will appreciate it loads.” She told you, which for some reason made you even more nervous about this situation.

“Well, I’m glad to help,” you smiled, letting her start by putting the wig on for you.

“What’s your name?” you asked her.

She gave you a warm smile, telling you her name, almost instinctively making you smile back.

“I’m Y/N, nice to meet you,” you greeted, even though you couldn’t look at her very well from her hands blocking your view as she put the wig onto your head.

She let out a soft laugh, “Feels like I’ve met you already with how much Hendery talks about you,” your eyes widened, eyebrows raising in shock, but you quickly shook it off, not wanting to think too much into it.

“Where’s Hendery, anyway?” you asked instead, her arms no longer blocking your vision as she secured the wig and made it look less obvious.

“He’s taking a nap in the breakroom, said he'd come by to get you when you were done," you nodded, for some reason not being able to withhold your excitement to meet him, the last time you saw him being that same morning when the both of you had taken the train together to work, and he'd gifted you a free drink to 'start the day right' as he'd told you. The gesture was enough to send you reeling, not sure if Hendery was just too kind to everyone or if he liked you that way. You wish, he's probably this nice to every other girl in the park.

Ten had stayed to help Crystal wherever he could, his constant utterances of “Hendery’s gonna lose his shit” or “you look really stupid like this” only serving to stir feelings of anxiousness for what was to come.

After what felt like years of refraining from scratching your face from the ticklish feeling of the brushes against your face, Crystal finally let out a firm “Okay,” giving you the greenlight that you could open your eyes. Seeing her and Ten grinning at you when you did.

“Has anybody run through with you what you have to do?” you shook your head, “I did!” Ten defended, scowling at you as if accusing you of not remembering. Crystal turned to him with a skeptical expression, “What did you tell her?”

Ten opened his mouth quickly to speak, before shaking his head, looking more sheepish as he gestured from her to you, “Never mind, you go ahead, I think your explanation would be clearer,” he giggled, earning an eye roll from you.

“It's like-" Crystal stopped herself quickly upon hearing the door open and seeing Hendery peek his head out through the small opening of the door, scanning the room for people before opening the door wider with a smile, "you know what, I’ll just let Prince Eric explain that to you." Crystal gestured with the eyeshadow brush over your shoulder, and you'd turned to make eye contact with Hendery.

You weren't sure if there was any reaction for you to base your judgement on, his smile was the same, and he let out a sound that seemed impressed with Crystal's work. You wished you could do the same, with him dressed in what you could only describe as Prince Eric's royal event clothes, he looked absolutely breath-taking, and you were glad he didn't notice when Ten was gesturing to your cheeks to mock your blushing.

"Who's this? You guys didn't get Y/N?" Hendery joked, making you roll your eyes.

"Very Funny, you owe me big time for this," you stuck your tongue out at him, both Ten and Crystal shooing the both of you out of the room.

"I know I do," he told you, leading you around some sort of secret pathway that leads to the castle where the princes and princesses would wait before the park go-ers could come in for photo-taking. The both of you stood at the back of the princesses, some of them turning to shoot surprised looks at Hendery before returning to gossip amongst themselves.

"Does this happen all the time?" You asked, referring to the whole gathering and photo-taking and whatnot.

Hendery shrugged "I would guess so? I've been here so long I stopped keeping track," he laughed, pretending to fiddle with the tassel on his outfit.

"But there's fireworks after that," he spoke up abruptly, scrunching up his nose at how un- smooth the execution was compared to how it was in his head.

"Really? It's been a while since I’ve seen a firework display," you confessed, seeing his eyes light up in excitement.

"We can watch it together then!" he said enthusiastically, before clearing his throat, mustering a calmer tone of voice, "you know….if you want," he shrugged.

He was instructed to line up together with the princes at the other entrance of the room, in line with you, as he looked at you expectantly for an answer, half expecting you to say you already had plans and had to leave but pleasantly surprised when you nodded at him, mouthing the words 'of course' to him.

When you’d joined him again later, you’d spotted Ten a few people in front of you ushering the princes and princesses to their respective spots, furrowing his eyebrows at you and vigorously gesturing to his arm, making you look at the other princes and princesses and notice that the prince had held his arm out for the princess to hold, making you return a look of understanding to Ten and turn to Hendery, who seemed to have been prompted by Ten as well, seeing him hold up an ‘okay’ sign at Ten and look at you, soft smile on his face as he held his arm out.

Silently grasping his arm, you continued walking, unconsciously walking slightly behind him as you were led to this area, where you took pictures with more children than you could keep count of, Hendery pretending to be upset when the children paid more attention to you than they did to him, but of course, you didn’t see the way he smiled watching you interact with the children.

“Stealing your spotlight already?” Ten nudged Hendery with a smug smirk on his face.

Hendery simply shrugged, “I honestly don’t mind, she looks like she’s having fun,” he shrugged, even leaning over to pose in some of the photos without you noticing, which the children seemed to get a kick out of.

“You’re so gross, I don’t know which I prefer, those 2 years where you refused to date or this,” Ten joked, before raising his arms slightly in a shrug, “but come to think of it both were pretty entertaining,” he told Hendery.

Hendery wanted to tell you it was alright and you didn’t have to kneel on the floor, that you could pick the kids up as well, but refrained when he saw how you did it anyway even after Ten had told you, assuming it was an unconscious thing.

You were talking to one kid in particular who was asking you how scary Ursula was when you fought her, almost jumping from the shock when you felt Hendery suddenly squat next to you to face the child as well, “she’s been going on and on about how brave you two were for fighting Ursula after she’d watched the movie,” her mother told you, making you laugh, but nodding at the child nonetheless.

“It was really scary, but I knew I had to be brave to save Ariel!” Hendery told her seriously, earning an equally serious nod from the child as well.

The child turned to you, waving a finger at you like a parent would, “he really loves you, you know,” she told you, making you have to stifle your laughter, nodding at her, yet refusing to look at Hendery who was nodding along with the child.

“I know,” you whispered, seeing the child erupt into a fit of giggles, her parents urging her that it was time to go.

“Come on, Prince Eric and Princess Ariel need to rest! They’re probably really tired already,” you heard the mother telling the little girl, who nodded, turning around with her hand still holding her mom’s to bid the both of you goodbye.

“Goodbye! See you next time!” Hendery and you had waved back at her, glancing at Ten who was looking at the both of you with an unreadable expression.

“What,” you snapped, a stark contrast from your ‘Ariel’ demeanour, making Ten huff as he walked over, glancing at the time on his phone.

“You guys can do whatever you want now, since the fireworks are gonna be starting after dinner time, you can take a break till then, I guess,” Ten said, leaving the both of you to go God knows where.

“Are you hungry? There’s some food in the break room for dinner if you want,” he suggested, bringing you to what looked like a lounge room with many tables and mostly actors inside, as well as some park rangers ( like in this case, Ten ).

Bringing you over to a table with who you recognized to be Prince Charming and Ten, “Kun this is Y/N, Y/N, this is my friend Kun,” Hendery blurted quickly, practically pulling you down into your seat as he went to get food for the both of you.

“Nice to meet you, you must be Ten’s friend, then?” Kun asked, he looked rather kind from what you could infer, so you nodded.

“Known him for like 5 years already I think?” you replied, and Ten nodded in affirmation which made Kun gasp.

“It’s a wonder how you put up with him.” You nodded in agreement, sighing dramatically.

“Tell me about it.” Hendery returned with your food, and you’d made small conversation with the 3 of them while you ate, Kun seemed to think the both of you were already dating, remembering what Hendery had told him about wanting to tell you how he felt since he knew he was too shy.

“So, when did you guys get together?” Hendery almost choked on his mouthful of food, practically shoving Kun with how quickly he’d reacted, making you frown in confusion.

“For this Ariel thing? I had no idea actually I only found out today,” you smiled, making Ten snicker, bringing his hand up in a poor attempt to stifle his laughs, nodding along with you making you think that was exactly what Kun was asking.

“Sorry, excuse me, I’m gonna go wash my hands,” you excused yourself, and almost immediately after you were away from the table Kun had turned to Hendery with an unamused expression.

“You haven’t told her yet?”

Hendery whined at Kun’s question, slumping down in his seat with a sigh. “It’s not as easy as you think, you know.” 
 Ten had shrugged, beginning to sing the lyrics of ‘kiss the girl’, swaying left and right as he sang, earning a glare from Hendery. “You know it’s true. It’s pretty damn obvious she likes you too, you know.”

Hendery frowned, turning to Kun for a more reliable affirmation, and his heart fell when Kun had nodded at him, “It’s true, from what I’ve heard from Ten, at least.”

“Also because I heard about the whole ‘Guanheng’ incident and have diagnosed the both of you as completely whipped for each other,” Ten giggled, enjoying the upper-hand he had over Hendery in this situation, especially because the blush on Hendery’s face was telling.

You’d returned from the washroom then, offering to dispose of the now-empty food packets, hearing Ten mumbling a faintly familiar song. “What song is that? I swear I’ve heard it somewhere I just can’t remember where,” you frowned, seeing Ten shrug, making eye contact with Hendery as he replied you sweetly.

“Kiss the girl.”

===

It was almost time for the fireworks, and Hendery had claimed there was a spot that you could see the fireworks super clearly and it was pretty away from the crowd, but you definitely weren’t expecting him to bring you to the bridge over the small river you’d rode the canoe on the first time you’d met him at the park.

Once again, the fairy lights decorated the bridge and he was right, you really did have a direct view of the castle from where the both of you stood, Hendery leaned on the wall of the bridge, resting his weight on his elbows as you did the same, eager to see the fireworks.

“How are you feeling?” you laughed at Hendery’s sudden question. “Excuse me, why are you laughing?” he gasped, a small pout forming on his lips.

“No, nothing, it’s just that you always ask me how I’m feeling, it’s such a you thing to do, feels like I’m being interviewed,” you grinned at him, seeing him huff dramatically, “fine if you don’t want me to ask, I won’t,” he shrugged, making you laugh.

“Guanheng,” you murmured to get his attention, and his head whipped around to face you the moment you’d said his name, a soft smile playing at his lips as though he was trying to conceal it, “I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, I actually....quite like it, no one I’ve known has ever really done that,” you told him, finally seeing his smile grow bigger.

“So to answer your question, I’m feeling tired. But a good kind of tired,” you held a thumbs up to him, and he’d reached his hand out to grab your raised hand, pulling it down as he pressed and played with the pads of your fingers.

"Are your knees okay? You were kneeling talking to almost all the kids just now, and from experience I know the floor is pretty rough," he asked, concern laced in his tone, you nodded.

"It's fine, no big deal, I barely felt it," you assured him, watching the way he touched his hair, smoothing down the hair at the back of his head.

“Thanks, by the way, for helping me out with this whole Ariel thing today,” he told you, making you shake your head, dismissing his thanks. “No, seriously. I know you didn’t have to say yes but, you were the first like....person I could think of to call when I heard what happened to the other actress,” he told you, leaning his head down and pretending to be occupied with your fingers to avoid your gaze.

“And why is that?” you prompted, hearing the first sound of the fireworks going off, but something in you couldn’t care to look.

On the other hand, Hendery’s head shot up at the sound, tapping your hand and gesturing to the fireworks, “Look! It’s starting, you’re gonna miss it!” he told you urgently, practically bouncing in place.

You shook your head, “answer my question first,” you rest your elbow on the stone wall of the bridge, looking at him as if you had all the time in the world, because you really felt like you did.

Hendery stopped playing with your fingers, looking at you blankly, “because you’re cute,” he blurted out, wincing at himself.

“I mean like, yeah. I think you’re cute, and you were the first person I could think of to call because I trust you, and I trust you because you make me feel like I can trust you?” he furrowed his eyebrows, nodding,

“Yeah, that, and because you know, I like spending time with you, and I wanted to spend more time with you, and I don’t know where I’m going with this already so I think I should conclude it now.”

Hendery shifted his weight to look at you, glancing at the fireworks momentarily before letting out a deep breath, “okay, conclusion: I like you,” he said, eyes widening because you couldn’t help but smile and nod at him the whole time he was having that monologue, the sight of such a well-dressed prince awkwardly fumbling with his words being so endearing to you.

“Are you shocked? You don’t seem shocked,” he tilted his head at you, making you laugh, nodding.

“Shocked, but I can’t say I wasn’t hoping you would feel this way,” you admitted, hearing the speakers on the lake play the instrumental of that song Ten was humming just now, kiss the girl. And Hendery felt like he was transported into that very scene in the little mermaid, where everything was telling him that he should do that.

So he did, albeit suddenly, in the way he’d grasped the hand he was playing with more firmly, pulling you towards him and pressing his lips against yours, and you even felt him smile against your lips from how ridiculously fairy-tale like the scene was to him, with the fireworks display ending, the sound of the water rushing beneath the bridge down to how close you were to him and how happy he was that you returned the kiss, his hand cradling the side of your face, pulling away gently and laughing when his eyes widened.

“Wow this lipstick isn’t even smudged,” he blurted suddenly, making you shove him lightly, only to have him pull you back with your hand that was still in his, contemplating hugging you from behind but shaking the thought, figuring he preferred to look at your face.

“This is gonna be hard, can’t hold your hand when you’re a park ranger,” he told you, making you scoff.

“Should I apply to be Princess Ariel, then?” you joked, not expecting Hendery to look at you seriously, giving you a thoughtful look, his intense stare making your face heat up.

He leaned closer to you, narrowing his eyes before leaning back with a shake of his head, “Nah, I think you’d fit the role of Sebastian more.”

[thatlittledandere]

id love to read your essay if you feel like sharing it... yosuke worms are consuming my brain and i need stuff like that to survive (no pressure tho if you dont feel comfortable sharing it!!)

I'd be very comfortable sharing it, I love attention, but there's nothing in it you don't already know. I originally wrote it privately for a friend who just started P4G and asked me to tell her about Yosuke's removed romance because she's a supportive angel. But here it is anyway, 863 words of "why Yosuke should be Yu's boyfriend", in its original form aka my very unprofessional side notes included.

First we gotta look at the dateable social links, sorry for minor spoilers maybe. Of course, if you're going to date one these girls, you need to lay on the groundwork so the confession or getting-together scene feels natural if you decide to go that route. So all the girls have some romance coded scenes and dialogue. Then you look at Yosuke's and he has some of the same things... Yosuke's rank 9 (like ranking from 8 to 9) is arguably one of the most romantic scenes in the game, and referenced in like 70% of canon compliant fanfics lmao

I'm mostly comparing Yosuke's social link to my girlfriends Yumi and Rise, because they're the ones I finished. With both of them, you got into a relationship by hugging them, and it's sometimes said that hugging is Persona 4 code for "we're dating now". It's something intimate, even more so in Japan. Strangely enough, the game also let's you hug Yosuke in his rank 8. (if you did everything right in RANK 7, which I think is UNFAIR. I ONLY LOOKED AT THE WALKTHROUGH FOR THE CURRENT RANK AND IT DID NOT WARN ME SO I TOOK THAT ONE CHANCE TO GO APE WHEN APPARENTLY I SHOULDN'T HAVE AND I GODDAMN LOST THAT CHANCE) So it's my theory that Yosuke's romance flag used to be there until it was removed.

Also, Yumi was able to come out and say "I love you" in clear words, but not everyone is that direct. Rise for example shyed away from The Three Words despite already being in a relationship with the protagonist; she's an idol and an actress and her line went something like "come on, I've confessed my love hundreds of times on TV, why can't I do it in person? ...You're special to me." The Japanese generally say I love you a lot less than many English-speaking people, and it's a very context heavy language and culture in general, so we're expected to understand that "you're special to me" is a love confession, just like hugging was a symbol of starting a relationship. 

Now, Yosuke also tells the protagonist "you're special to me" in the aforementioned rank 9. This happens after the rank where you had the option to hug him, so if his romance had been kept in, you likely would have been in a relationship with him at this point. It's a direct parallel to another, explicitly romantic scene, with the character many players see as something of a default dating option for Yu.

The romance was likely cut out very late in development, as some datamined deleted lines for Yosuke were recorded in English. It's on YouTube where anyone can check it out. It would fit neatly in Yosuke's rank 8, 9 or 10. The most important part of it in reference to this wall of text is that he goes and says "I like you" in it. "I never knew I had such... Heat inside. B-but don't make me say stuff like that! ...Don't go. I like you." Combine that with Yuri Lowenthal's delivery, and I'm convinced it's exactly what it sounds like.

But it looks like the only thing they removed​ in the end was these lines and the "you are now dating Yosuke" notice. The rest of his social link was left as is... Very romances-coded. And that's not even all of it! They didn't leave it at his social link! Yosuke has lines subtly hinting at being interested in or having feelings for the protagonist all throughout the game. Some even speculate it was supposed to be the "canon" romance.

Atlus has never given any answer to why it was removed. Maybe some people on the team made it but the main director, known to be somewhat homophobic, didn't allow it. Maybe it was a case of higher-up intervention. Maybe they didn't think it fit Yosuke's character or his story arc. Whatever it was, it must have been something heavy and irreparable, as they didn't take the easy opportunity to add it into Golden four years later. It would have required considerably less work than adding in two new social links, several group events and new dungeon/s (i don't know how many there are).

Anyway, I think Yosuke romance would have been beneficial. Not just for the obvious "representation is important" sense, but for Yosuke's character as well. It can be argued that if he was still grieving Saki in his later ranks he may not be ready for a relationship yet, but it is shown that Yu was of great help and importance for him, and would have undoubtedly had no negative influence on Yosuke as a boyfriend any more than as a best friend. But in acknowledging his feelings for Yu, Yosuke would have been forced to address and maybe overcome his homophobia. Choosing to date Yosuke and showing him he's desirable may have helped him with his self-worth issues. Obviously the route would be off-putting to many, but so are many of the existing romances. Nobody is obligated to play it.

In conclusion, we were robbed. And I bet I forgot something important.

[artificialqueens]

sometimes a fantasy [is all you need] (branjie) -- frenchy

a/n: hi hello!! i’m frenchy, & this is my first fic on here, despite being a longtime reader!! i sent an ask addressing my inspiration to write a branjie get-back-together fic, where they are hiding their still existing feelings behind a pr stunt/their social media interactions & fall back together through these/acknowledge that it’s deeper than they are pretending. it seemed to interest quite a few people so here she is!! this can be read as a long one shot, but considering how much content they are providing us with, i may continue it?? maybe!

ps. this does not include all the things they’ve posted thus far, but i will definitely try to include most of what we’ve seen so far as references/plot points in future parts if i continue this! ! this takes place while the show is airing, beginning action-wise after episode 4’s airing. it heavily involves the video with branjie that nina west posted on her instagram a few days ago! also, i am not giving into the assumption that they are actually broken up, but in the context of this fic, those rumors are true! okay that is enough, i am super excited about this, i hope you all enjoy ahhh!! <3

@Bhytes1: Hey Papi

@VanessaVanjie: @Bhytes1 What

*****

It had begun innocently enough.

Or, at least, that’s what the both of them would claim if ever asked about it. A tweet or two there, a cryptic emoji-strung comment here, and a handful of tooth-rotting gif interactions. It was almost rare for a day to pass without at least once mentioning of each other through social media, whether direct or not.

Brooke Lynn recognized the necessity for this. They both did. That’s why they were doing it.

They hadn’t necessarily discussed the inevitability of fans indulging in their on-screen romance, but there was an unspoken agreement between them, as well as with their fellow RuGirls. No one would bring up their current relationship status, and all would remain playful – that’s how fanservice worked, after all. Give the fans what they wanted, to ensure they would stay in tow. It reaped many a benefit not only for the show’s ratings, but for the queens involved. The season was only a few episodes deep, and already the interest in Brooke Lynn and Vanessa had spiked – both as a duo, and as individual performers. Brooke liked to believe it was her own doing that attracted so many new fans at such an early stage, though she had to give some credit to her more widely known castmate.

Still, as harmless as it posed to be, it didn’t take long for them to be accused of insincerity. A dozen tweets couldn’t change the fact that they were no longer together, that their relationship had ended before the season had even begun airing. They knew it, their fellow queens knew it – hell, half the fans knew it, even if they had not disclosed it officially. The fandom they found themselves thrust into wasn’t one unknown for spreading gossip and spoilers. The breakup had gone smoothly for the most part, at least when concerned with the public eye. It had been a quick discussion, albeit a tense one: was it smart to remain together when their lives were about to be changed? The two of them were self-aware and smart enough to recognize that their personal growth required separation. That the glorification of their growing relationship on TV would only put a strain on what they had in the present. Neither of them wanted to risk the prospect of resentment.

But they were being proven wrong, day by day. They talked and responded to each other every day, typically without any push from outside sources. They found themselves going from simply answering questions about each other and acknowledging fan reactions, to seeking out each other, interacting with no prompting. It was for the fans, yes, but Brooke never sensed any tension between the two of them. Maybe she was misinterpreting, but she and Vanessa seemed to do the whole “indulging the fans” thing flawlessly. Wishful thinking, perhaps.

And that’s what led them to where they were tonight, in a small office at REBAR Chelsea, too many people for too small a room. The music was almost deafening outside the walls, but was no match for the voices in said room. Specifically, Vanessa. Loud, brazen Vanessa Vanjie Mateo, in a glittery upside-down jersey dress, off her shoulders, her makeup freshly set and her adrenaline pumping even before having stepped out onstage for the night. She had been meticulously placing her blonde wig on her head in the mirror, making an effort to chime in more-than-occasionally to the conversation Nina West found herself deep in with a friend, despite being across the room. Brooke opted to sit in the corner, scrolling through her phone, Vanessa being the sole one of the three of them in drag for the night.

“More than iconic, really. The fans love it,” Nina’s friend had said, prompting Brooke to glance towards them. She hadn’t been paying attention to what was being said, though the mention of fans always peaked her interest. “Definitely need a recreation of that iconic moment at the reunion.”

“Iconic moment?” Brooke asked through a growing smile, interrupting, causing heads to turn towards the new voice contributing to the conversation. Nina laughed, with a hint of hesitation, turning her body fully to face Brooke, still sat in the corner of the seemingly-shrinking room.

She nodded enthusiastically, eyebrows up. “Untucked. Y’know how funny everyone found my reaction to you and Vanessa?” Nina clarified, gesturing towards the mentioned queen, who glanced at them through the reflection of the body-length mirror, still messing with her wig.

Brooke made a noise of understanding. “They live for their memes, bitch,” she answered. Naturally, she had seen the uproar that the last Untucked had caused, specifically when concerned with Nina’s shock towards the kiss. Brooke heard Vanessa laugh under her breath, accompanied by a curt nod signifying her agreement to Brooke’s statement.

“It’s crazy,” Nina nodded as well, proceeding to take a sip from the glass of water she held tightly in her right hand. She was halfway through swallowing when her eyes widened, an excited yet smug smile bringing the conversation back from its natural pause. “Why wait for the reunion? I mean, like, it’s fresh right now! Imagine how funny a recreation would be if we made it right now. We’re all here, aren’t we?” She nodded towards Vanessa before looking back to Brooke.

“So, milk it?”

“You and Vanjie should be pros at that with how you’re playing off this ‘on screen romance’ stuff,” Nina raised her free hand to provide seemingly unnecessary air quotes. Brooke scoffed gently. The romance was real, the follow up was not. It wasn’t, none of the tweets or interactions held any merit. But Brooke almost felt a personal offense at the implication that what they had before was fake, even if she had just misunderstood and Nina didn’t mean it that way. It shouldn’t have bothered her as much as it did. “It’ll fare well for the two of you, and it’s all good fun. What’s the consensus?”

There was a moment of tentative silence, a sudden hush. It was unusual for Vanessa to not be bouncing off the walls, her adrenaline from before nowhere to be found. Brooke looked over at her, making quick eye contact with her through the mirror. Vanessa raised a painted eyebrow at her, as if asking – no, suggesting, that it could be a good idea. It wouldn’t hurt. Right?

“Could be funny,” Brooke answered for the two of them, her smile returning.

Nina nodded, handing her phone to the woman at her side. “Let’s do it!” She straightened her denim jacket, water still in her hand, posing as a makeshift cocktail. Brooke stood from her seat, clearing her throat and watching as Vanessa finally turned her back to the mirror and faced the rest of them, a smile now adorned and her reluctance from before vanishing at the sight of a camera. The sight brought a certain weakness to Brooke, if only for a moment, just as it had every time she saw that smile. There was nothing different in how Vanessa made her feel still, she could appreciate things like that about her even if they weren’t an item.

“So, what, just kiss? Like in the Untucked?” Brooke made an effort to look away from Vanessa, but it felt like the reluctance Vanjie held was instead transferred to her. It was the same loss of focus she became familiar with during drag race, where even the just the knowledge of Vanessa being in the same room was enough of a distraction. She never complained, though.

“Yeah. Just like in the Untucked,” Nina kept herself at a distance from the other two queens, her body facing the now three people with phone cameras posed at them, others in the room joining in to capture the moment.

Vanessa again quirked an eyebrow at Brooke, who felt herself get uncharacteristically nervous. Why was she nervous? She hoped no one clocked her uneasy breathing, or heard her heartbeat as loudly as she did. She considered herself a good actress, but it was easier being playful and coy through twitter – how does one kiss their ex on camera, casually enough to make it look natural and real, but not too comfortable as to earn speculation from Vanessa herself, who clearly had no problem playing this up in front of the camera. It was certainly a tricky situation they were in. She wondered for a moment if Vanessa was struggling in the same way.

Brooke made a mental note to bring it up someday.

She wondered how long she stood spacing out, due to Vanessa no longer regarding her and instead living her directing fantasy. “You gotta start, like they did – like they did when we did this, you gotta say action,” she was instructing those who were filming, gesturing wildly.

“Ready? Yeah,” the woman nodded along, halfheartedly taking in Vanjie’s words, already having pressed the record button. “Okay ready?”

“Do it now,” Vanessa told her, and Brooke registered the deep breath that Vanessa took moments before they were to kiss.

“Action. Action.”

It was a blur after that – perhaps not in the moment, as she was conscious enough to chime in with a comically over-exaggerated “Did ya’ll see that?” after Nina and Vanessa both quoted it themselves. But when Brooke thought back to the video that ended up attracting attention on Nina’s Instagram later that night, she hardly could recall the details. It was foggy, most of it. Excluding the kiss.

Was she right in calling it a kiss? It was hardly that. A quick peck, reminiscent of the one they were recreating, not even enough for Vanessa’s lipstick to transfer onto Brooke’s unpainted lips. Not even enough to Brooke to over-analyze. Or so she thought.

Nina retrieved her phone as soon as they had finished the reenactment, smiling to herself as she hit play to watch the video. Vanessa quickly joined her to watch it, her smile losing its sincerity as they watched. Brooke remained across the room, attempting to gauge their reactions under the guise of gathering her own bearings, picking her own phone back up from where she had been sitting.

“S’it good? Convincing, too?” Brooke asked after the video had ended, the unasked ‘Too convincing?’ threatening to spill from her lips. She noticed that while Nina appeared overjoyed at the video, laughing to herself and pocketing her phone, Vanessa’s expression offered an air of concern. The look of trouble alone revived Brooke’s anxiety.

“Yeah, no, it’s good. Really good, thanks, guys,” Nina addressed both the ex-couple and those who had recorded the video, each from different angles, though only one would end up on the Ohioan’s Instagram. “I’m going to head out there, good luck up there tonight, girl,” Nina nudged Vanessa, who only gave a halfhearted smile and a quiet ‘Thanks’ in response.

Nina turned to leave, the others all following her, leaving after them a tension that filled the room. The room that only Vanessa and Brooke were left in.

“Hm,” Vanessa returned to her place in front of the mirror, lost in thought and not acknowledging that she wasn’t alone. Brooke sat back down, one hand occupied by her phone and the other fidgeting with the hem of her black blazer. Maybe she was overestimating how long and uncomfortable the silence felt, but Brooke wasn’t so sure it was that crazy of an exaggeration.

“Definitely should help fuel that fire,” Brooke spoke up, choosing to entertain the prospect of discussing the kiss rather than sitting in that loud silence. Vanessa didn’t stop touching up her makeup in the mirror to look at Brooke, just nodded. “Maybe we could post a picture together at some point soon. Is that too much?” Brooke laughed, not sure if her laugh was directed at her own question or Vanjie’s lack of an answer.

After another extended silence, Vanessa suddenly turned around to grab her own phone off the small table in the center of the room. “Let’s do it.”

Brooke was taken aback, needing a second to readjust to Vanessa’s usual volume returning after having been quiet in thought for so long. She watched as Vanessa snapped her fingers expectedly, waiting for Brooke to stand up, plausibly for a selfie.

“What, right now? We can’t post it right now, girl.”

“And why not?” Vanessa countered, her free hand going to her hip. “If we gonna do this, we have to keep feeding the children. We can’t let them go hungry,” she attempted to lighten up the tension in the room that had been there ever since Nina and the others left.

Brooke chuckled deeply, shaking her head. “Not after that video. Give it a week, maybe.” She hoped Vanessa would understand where she was coming from and drop it. She had thought they shared that logic in this situation, in the faux flirting and how it worked PR wise. It was bad to over-saturate this.

“Hmm,” Vanessa repeated from before, evidently unconvinced. She dropped her phone back, heading towards the door. Brooke felt relief ease her anxiety, focusing back on her own phone. 

She didn’t even notice that Vanessa had paused in the doorway, looking over her shoulder back at the man out of drag.

“That’s mighty shady of you, Miss Brooke,” the graveness in her voice forced Brooke to look up, making sincere eye contact for the first time that night. “Reeaaaaalll shady.” Vanessa’s tone held a certain hesitance, a caution. She was unique in that way, in the way that she carried herself in private compared to in the public eye. While most minded themselves and grew wary when being watched, in regards to what they say, how they act – she was the opposite. Upon the chaos of the Werk Room, the need to be recognized on national television, Vanessa tended to surrender her control. She was brash, and loud, and unapologetic; she was likable for this.

That wasn’t the Vanessa that stood now before Brooke in the stuffy room.

Brooke raised a single eyebrow, unsure if her growing smirk was welcome. Unsure of whether this was a real dig, or a classic shady Vanjie joke.

“Shady? And, what? You’re innocent in this?”

No longer looking over her shoulder, Vanessa turned fully to face Brooke, her back to the hall. Brooke noted the way her eyes subtly narrowed under her four pairs of stacked lashes, her head cocking with a void of amusement. She didn’t answer or play off of Brooke as she normally would have if this was a lighthearted exchange, instead opting to stay quiet, as if observing Brooke, sizing her up. Her painted eyebrows furrowed with the narrowing of her eyes, though her concentration felt deeper than her simply fabricating another shady comment to hit back with. If she wanted to, she would have already thrown it – she was quick witted enough to bypass usual brainstorming.

When Vanessa cracked a weak smile (albeit it didn’t reach her eyes), Brooke let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

“I never said I was innocent. In any meaning of the word. We both know that,” Vanessa took a step forward, back into the room, her voice knocked down a few volumes, for Brooke to hear only. “Even the fans know that, with some of the things we’ve been tweetin’ and sayin’. Whether they’re real or not,” she added, shrugging.

“They’re not,” Brooke challenged, saying matter-of-factly.

“See, that!” Vanessa laughed, pointing to Brooke. “You betta stop! Stop that, bitch.”

Confused, Brooke glanced Vanessa up and down. “What? Stop what?” She wished she could claim naivety. She knew exactly what Vanessa was saying.

Instead of answering her, Vanessa once again stood before her, looking down at her – not much, as even with Brooke seated and Vanessa in heels, the height difference made it so that they weren’t at an unusually unfair playing field now. She waited for an instant, to see if Brooke would say something. When she didn’t, Vanessa crossed over to sit in the empty chair beside her. Brooke didn’t ask if she sat so close to the edge intentionally, to be as close as possible to the Canadian queen.

That tense psychic feeling was back, but it felt different this time. She just couldn’t point to what changed. Was the whole room engulfed by this feeling, or just the few inches between the two? Regardless, Brooke felt her stomach knot, and had to stop her leg from bouncing in the space between them. If only Vanessa would get to the point. The point Brooke already knew she was making.

“Y’know, Brooke Lynn,” Vanessa drew out her words, in a sort of emphatic yet teasing manner, it being uncommon for her to use the second part of Brooke’s drag name unless addressing her by full name. Her gaze dropped, and Brooke instinctively followed it – they both watched as Vanessa’s right hand moved to draw mindless patterns on Brooke’s pant leg, right above the knee. If it weren’t for how close Vanessa’s voice was when she spoke, Brooke could have easily hyper focused on the way Vanessa’s hand traced gently up and down. “At some point we have to quit pretending like this is only for the fans.”

“We talked about this,” Brooke kept her voice solid, despite the way Vanessa dropped her’s to just barely above a whisper. They both looked back up at the same time, although neither one backed off. Brooke could have sworn they were closer than they had been before Vanjie had taken her seat.

“Really?” Vanessa frowned, puzzled. There was a cloud of doubt in her eyes. “Musta been out of it ‘cause I can’t seem to remember us doing that. I think you’re mistaken, Miss Brooke.”

Brooke swallowed, shaking her head weakly, and tried to look away. She trained her eyes to a bulletin board on the wall. She had more than enough time to push the other queen away, or scoot back, or even get up.

She stayed where she was, could feel Vanessa’s eyes on her.

When she realized Brooke was adamant on not entertaining the conversation, Vanessa continued. “So. Tell me, then… What you’re tryna say is that if I were to kiss you right now, with no one around to see it, you’d pull out a camera to take a picture of it? You’d tweet about it? It wouldn’t feel real to you, at all?” She knew what she was doing, she could tell Brooke was trying her hardest not to look at her.

Until she did, her eyes making contact with Vanessa’s again, mere centimeters from her face. “Is that hypothetical?” Brooke’s voice entered into a whisper. She made the mistake of glancing down towards Vanessa’s coated lips. She wasn’t fast enough in fixing her error, as Vanessa had already noticed and consequently did the same, a smirk playing at her lips.

“It don’t gotta be. That one’s up to you,” Vanessa breathed, yet the way she inched impossibly closer said otherwise.

“I–”

Before Brooke could allow the anticipation to drive her crazy, Vanessa’s lips were on her’s.

It was nothing like the kisses they shared on camera, neither drag race or the peck for Nina’s video. It was only the two of them, no pressure or expectation forcing them to maneuver with any caution. The kiss all too similar to the ones they would share after finally finding privacy in between filming, after not having seen each other for a week due to gigs, after spending the weekend together and waking up clinging to each other in the morning. It was all familiarity and comfort, butterflies and giddiness, as their lips moved in a passionate fervor. They didn’t think about posing, or the door to the room being wide open, or mixing nonchalance with playfulness.

Brooke had just released the tension in her body, the reluctance she feigned, when Vanessa broke the kiss.

“Mm?” Brooke blinked, fog passing slowly.

Vanessa moved away from her with a coquettish wink, flipping her wig dramatically over her shoulder that said wig didn’t even reach. “I got a show to do.”

That little fucker, Brooke huffed a laugh with an incredulous shake to her head.

“Maybe a reenactment later?” Vanessa paused again at the door, “Good luck tweetin’ unsuspiciously about that one and not bein’ urged to give me a private phone call after.” And with that, Vanessa vanished around the corner, Brooke not seeing the bashful smile she wore all the way to the stage. And she didn’t know that Brooke wore one to match.

*****

That night, the first thing Brooke saw upon opening Instagram was that damn video. As well as all the reposts and screenshots she had accordingly been tagged in. She prepared herself before playing it, not having seen it yet.

Stopping herself from smiling was out of the question as she watched the fifteen second clip. She watched it more than once, not breaking the natural loop it made whenever it ended.

And if she texted Nina later to send her the video, simply to rewatch the way Vanessa smiled into their kiss, well, she wouldn’t bring that part up.

*****

@Bhytes1: Because everyone loves a dramatic re-enactment

[bellaelisabeth95]

A reminder of the toxicity that plagues the legacy of Marlene King and Pretty Little Liars

TW: Self harm and suicide

I know that this coming week starts the Pretty Little Liars spinoff “The Perfectionists,” also directed by Marlene King and starring two cast members from the original show. PLL has been over for years now, but that doesn’t mean some of its most…… passionate? fans have forgotten it. I know many of us haven’t. Who could forget the disaster that was the end of Pretty Little Liars, as a small but very loud subgroup of fans decided to viciously attack anyone who stood in the way of their beloved ship? Before I go any further, I want to make it clear that everyone knows it was not all emison fans. If you are a person who shipped emison but did not bully other cast members or fans, then I feel truly sorry that you were in the same group as them. And I thank you for not taking part in what some of them did.   

  The reason I’m making this post is because of the Lindsey Shaw Fiasco. I know every single PLL fan on social media knows what this is, regardless of who you shipped/didn’t ship. I want to make sure in light of MK’s new show no one forgets what happened to her, and what could happen again. Marlene King watched as one of her own actors, as well as many of the fans of her show, were mercilessly harassed and said NOTHING. In fact, she pandered to the same people doing the harassing. Both Shay Mitchell and Sasha Pieterse, the two parts of the emison ship, said nothing, despite the harassers being their fans. Now, maybe you’ll say all the ships had crazy fans. They did. But none like this one. Because these people went beyond the typical mean comments about looks or weight. These people aimed to cause real, true harm, and in some cases they almost succeeded. And now, after PLL being over for two years, with the chance for this rabid fanbase to lose their flame, another show targeted at the SAME PEOPLE is airing next week. Another chance to bring them together, to attack anyone they see as getting in the way of their ship.  

   Fans of the ship Paily were targeted. And even more so than us, Paige’s actress, Lindsey Shaw, was targeted the most relentlessly and disgustingly of all. Whether you are a fan of Lindsey’s or not, you cannot justify what happened to her. Not even if you still choose to believe she “supports Trump,” which she made clear she does not. As a fan of hers, I will agree it was dumb of her to joke about that, and I think she forgot that people don’t always get her sense of humor. Not to mention, there were always people who weren’t fans waiting to pounce. But did you ever stop to think about what led to that little breakdown? (I think right around this time 3 years ago). At that point, Lindsey had already been taking abuse for YEARS, although it certainly got worse as emison became a possibility. She would post something unrelated to the show and be flooded with “kill yourself”, “die pigskin,” and “drink bleach.” How long can someone take that kind of harassment without snapping a little? I was always impressed it didn’t happen sooner. It was clear to me, as well as many of her other fans, that she was going through something personal at the time, and all of the abuse on top of it was a little too much. This all came to a head March 2016. No one from the show said anything.   

  Fast forward to May 2016, when I lost every ounce of respect for every single cast member of PLL. I used to be a huge fan of Shay. That started fading as she failed to even acknowledge her Paily fans as time went on. It was obvious she cared far more about being popular than she did about standing up for her fans or a co-star she claimed to love. And I don’t know, maybe she and Lindsey had some kind of personal falling out. I always wondered if that was the case, because how else could they all be cold enough to ignore someone’s obvious suffering? Even if that is the case, it isn’t an excuse for her never speaking up. On one day in early May, Lindsey retweeted something that got a portion of the emison base in a frenzy, with them claiming she called Sasha ugly (the tweet did no such thing. It was calling Paily a beautiful couple). Anyway, they POUNCED with a level of venom I had never even seen before. It was horrifying. There were lots of death threats, calls for her to hurt herself. But the one that stood out most came from a user who I won’t name because I don’t want her to have the satisfaction. She literally started a petition with Lindsey’s twitter handle in it, telling people to RT to get her to commit suicide. To which Lindsey responded that she had already tried. Anyone outside of that small pocket of emisons was HORRIFIED, frantically tweeting Marlene, Shay, Troian, all the big name people from the show to address this. Even if they didn’t address Lindsey, to just make an overall statement about how this behavior wasn’t okay. Fans from every ship were taking part. I was sure Shay, or at least Marlene, would say something.

  None of them did. Not a single one. It was obvious at that point how much Lindsey was suffering. But still no one said a word.

  These are all adults. Grown women acting like a group of middle school bystanders, too cowardly to stand up for the bullied. There is no excuse for them never addressing this. Especially since with a new show, it’s likely to just start up where it left off. In glancing through instagram comments, these same fans have already found a new target: Evan Bittencourt. I don’t know who he is or why they hate him, and frankly I don’t care, because I’m sure it’s bogus, just like their reasons for hating Lindsey. The point is, just like I was afraid of the second I heard Marlene was doing another show, they have already found a new target. I have literally seen them refer to him as “The new Lindsey Shaw.” And anyone who watched PLL knows that’s not a good thing. Just some snooping has already revealed some pretty ugly tweets/comments, which I’m sure he is seeing. We saw first hand how over time being bombarded with hatred took its toll on someone who was once very proud and passionate about the character they played.

  Mental health is important. Suicide is very serious. I won’t even get into why seeing Lindsey’s tweet that night shattered my heart or why it to this day infuriates me that none of those women said anything. The fact that so many people think it’s a joke, or that it’s okay running around telling people to hurt themselves, will forever remain a mystery.

  Marlene shouldn’t be allowed to have another show after what she encouraged during her last one, and especially not one directed at the same group of fans. PLL needs to be dead and buried forever. No spinoffs. The show, and the people working on it, became toxic, and that same toxicity will be revived the moment these characters are brought back to life next week. Real people got hurt last time. Real people almost died. Think of how crazy and serious that is. I shudder to think what social media is going to look like once this gets under way, especially if the fans of the emison ship feel threatened. I know I will not watch even a second of this show. I hope it is short lived and these characters, and the toxicity they bring with them, can finally be put to rest.

  So what happens if things get bad again, Marlene? Will you say something? Will you ever try to make this right? We haven’t forgotten what you let happen to us, or happen to Lindsey. We will never forget how badly she was struggling personally, or that she was driven off social media because of your fans that you never EVER addressed. It breaks my heart what you let happen to her, and it breaks my heart that with this new show comes the opportunity for it to happen again. I hope you’ve become a better person since the Lindsey Shaw Fiasco. It’s too late for you to ever make that right, and honestly, I don’t think you have any desire to. But I do hope that you at least have enough remorse, however small it may be, to make sure it never happens again.

Please share this. Here, to twitter, instagram, everywhere. Let’s make sure we stand up this time.

[presssorg]

Lies: Border Wall, Unemployment, Trade War, Unemployment, Mueller Russian Investigation, more

AP FACT CHECK: Trump’s untruths on Russia probe, wall, jobs WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is glossing over the facts when it comes to the Russia investigation and his economic performance. The president suggests the 34 charges issued or guilty pleas achieved by special counsel Robert Mueller have had little to do with him. But Trump’s ignoring reality. Most significantly, his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, has implicated Trump in a crime by linking him to a hush-money scheme. Cohen also pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about his efforts during the 2016 campaign to line up a Trump Tower Moscow project, saying he did so to align with Trump’s “political messaging.”

On the economy, Trump claimed record low unemployment for blacks, Hispanics and Asian-Americans even as the numbers have risen after the partial government shutdown. And he described the steel industry as “totally revived” despite 20,000 job losses over the past decade. A look at his past week’s claims, also covering global warming and purported progress in building a border wall: RUSSIA INVESTIGATION TRUMP: “Of the 34 people, many of them were bloggers from Moscow or they were people that had nothing to do with me, had nothing to do with what they’re talking about or there were people that got caught telling a fib or telling a lie. I think it’s a terrible thing that’s happened to this country, because this investigation is a witch hunt.” — interview with CBS, broadcast Sunday. THE FACTS: Trump’s correct that Mueller’s team has indicted or gotten guilty pleas from 34 people. He’s wrong to suggest that none had anything to do with him or were simply “bloggers from Moscow.” Among these people are six Trump associates and 25 Russians accused of interfering in the 2016 election. In particular, Cohen definitely was in trouble for what he did for Trump. Cohen pleaded guilty in August to several criminal charges and stated that Trump directed him to arrange payments of hush money to porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal to fend off damage to Trump’s White House bid. Prosecutors’ court filings in December backed up Cohen’s claims. The Justice Department says the hush money payments were unreported campaign contributions meant to influence the outcome of the election. That assertion makes the payments subject to campaign finance laws, which restrict how much people can donate to a campaign and bar corporations from making direct contributions. It is true that many of Trump’s former associates, including Cohen, were charged with either lying to the FBI or Congress. The 25 Russians charged were not simply “bloggers.” According to Mueller’s indictment last February, 13 Russians and three Russian entities are accused of attempting to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton by running a hidden social media trolling campaign and seeking to mobilize Trump supporters at rallies while posing as American political activists. The indictment says the surreptitious campaign was organized by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm financed by companies controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a wealthy businessman with ties to President Vladimir Putin. Mueller’s team also charged 12 Russian military intelligence officers in July with hacking into the Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic Party and releasing tens of thousands of private communications. The charges say the Russian defendants, using a persona known as Guccifer 2.0, in August 2016 contacted a person in touch with the Trump campaign to offer help. And they say that on the same day that Trump, in a speech, urged Russia to find Clinton’s missing emails, Russian hackers tried for the first time to break into email accounts used by her personal office. —— TRUMP: “You look at General Flynn where the FBI said he wasn’t lying, but Robert Mueller said he was, and they took a man and destroyed his life.” — interview with CBS. THE FACTS: That’s not what the FBI said. And Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, has agreed that he lied to the FBI, having pleaded guilty to it.

The idea that Flynn didn’t lie to the FBI picked up steam after Republicans on the House intelligence committee issued a report last year. It said ex-FBI director James Comey, in a private briefing, told lawmakers that agents who interviewed Flynn “discerned no physical indications of deception” and saw “nothing that indicated to them that he knew he was lying to them.” But Comey called that description “garble” in a private interview with House lawmakers in December. Comey, in essence, said Flynn was a good liar, having a “natural conversation” with agents, “answered fully their questions, didn’t avoid. That notwithstanding, they concluded he was lying.” At his sentencing hearing in December, Flynn acknowledged to Judge Emmet Sullivan that he knew it was a crime when he lied to the FBI in January 2017. Flynn declined to accept the judge’s offer to withdraw his guilty plea. Neither he nor his lawyers disputed that he had lied to agents. —— UNEMPLOYMENT TRUMP: “You saw the jobs report just came out. …The African-Americans have the best employment numbers in the history of our country. Hispanic Americans have the best employment numbers in the history of our country. Asian-Americans the best in the history of our country.” — CBS interview. THE FACTS: Black unemployment is not currently the lowest ever, possibly in part to the partial government shutdown, which lifted joblessness last month. Black unemployment did reach a low, 5.9 per cent, in May. But that figure is volatile on a monthly basis. That rate has since increased to 6.8 per cent in January. Hispanic and Asian-American joblessness has also risen off record lows last year. Hispanic unemployment last month was 4.9 per cent, up from a low of 4.4 per cent reached in October and December. Asian-American unemployment was at 3.1 per cent, up from 2.2 per cent in May. Moreover, there are multiple signs that the racial wealth gap is now worsening. The most dramatic drop in black unemployment came under President Barack Obama, when it fell from a recession high of 16.8 per cent in March 2010 to 7.8 per cent in January 2017. —— THE WALL TRUMP: “The chant now should be ‘finish the wall’ as opposed to ‘Build the Wall’ because we’re building a lot of wall. I started this six months ago — we really started going to town — because I could see we were going nowhere with the Democrats.” — comments Friday. TRUMP: “Large sections of WALL have already been built with much more either under construction or ready to go. Renovation of existing WALLS is also a very big part of the plan to finally, after many decades, properly Secure Our Border. The Wall is getting done one way or the other!” — tweet Thursday. THE FACTS: Despite all his talk of progress, he’s added no extra miles of barrier to the border to date. Construction is to start this month on a levee wall system in the Rio Grande Valley that will add 14 miles of barrier, the first lengthening in his presidency. That will be paid for as part of $1.4 billion approved by Congress last year. Most work under contracts awarded by the Trump administration has been for replacement of existing barrier. When Trump says large parts of the wall “have already been built,” he’s not acknowledging that previous administrations built those sections. Barriers currently extend for 654 miles (1,052 kilometres), or about one-third of the border. That construction was mostly done from 2006 to 2009. —— STEEL INDUSTRY TRUMP: “Tariffs on the ‘dumping’ of Steel in the United States have totally revived our Steel Industry. New and expanded plants are happening all over the U.S. We have not only saved this important industry, but created many jobs. Also, billions paid to our treasury. A BIG WIN FOR U.S.” — tweet Jan. 28. THE FACTS: He’s exaggerating the recovery of the steel industry, particularly when it comes to jobs. In December, the steel industry employed 141,600 people, the Labor Department says in its latest data. Last March, when Trump said he would impose the tariffs, it was 139,400. That’s a gain of just 2,200 jobs during a period when the overall economy added nearly 2 million jobs. On a percentage basis, steel industry jobs grew 1.6 per cent, barely higher than the 1.3 per cent increase in all jobs. Yet those figures still lag behind where they were before the 2008-2009 recession. When that downturn began, there were nearly 162,000 steelworkers. Some companies have said they will add or expand plants. It’s difficult to know just how many jobs will be added by newly planned mills. But construction spending on factories has yet to take off significantly after having been in decline between 2016 and much of 2018. Construction spending on factories has been flat in the past year, according to the Census Bureau. Trump’s reference to “billions paid to our treasury” concerns money raised from tariffs on foreign steel and other products. Such tariffs are generally paid by U.S. importers, not foreign countries or companies, and the costs are often passed on to consumers. So that money going to the government is mostly coming from Americans. —— VOTER FRAUD TRUMP: “58,000 non-citizens voted in Texas, with 95,000 non-citizens registered to vote. These numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. All over the country, especially in California, voter fraud is rampant. Must be stopped. Strong voter ID!” — tweet Jan. 27. THE FACTS: That “iceberg” quickly began to melt as officials found serious problems with a report from the Texas secretary of state’s office on voter fraud. More broadly, Trump is overstating the magnitude of such fraud across the U.S. The Texas report suggested as many as 95,000 non-U.S. citizens may be on the state’s voter rolls and as many as 58,000 may have cast a ballot at least once since 1996. Since it came out, however, state elections officials have been notifying county election chiefs of problems with the findings. Local officials told The Associated Press that they received calls from Texas Secretary of State David Whitley’s office indicating that some citizens had been wrongly included in the original data. So far no one on the lists has been confirmed as a noncitizen voter. Election officials in Texas’ largest county say about 18,000 voters in the Houston area were wrongfully flagged as potentially ineligible to vote and those officials expect more such mistakes to be found on their list. Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Trump ally, acknowledged problems in the report, saying “many of these individuals may have been naturalized before registering and voting, which makes their conduct perfectly legal.” Early claims by other states of possible illegal voting on a rampant scale haven’t held up. When Florida began searching for noncitizens in 2012, for instance, state officials initially found 180,000 people suspected of being ineligible to vote when comparing databases of registered voters and driver’s licenses. Florida officials later assembled a purge list of more than 2,600 names but that, too, was beset by inaccuracies. Eventually, a revised list of 198 names of possible noncitizens was produced through the use of a federal database. In the U.S. overall, the actual number of fraud cases has been very small, and the type that voter IDs are designed to prevent — voter impersonation at the ballot box — is almost nonexistent. In court cases that have invalidated some ID laws as having discriminatory effects, election officials could barely cite a case in which a person was charged with in-person voting fraud. —— JUDGES TRUMP: “After all that I have done for the Military, our great Veterans, Judges (99), Justices (2) … does anybody really think I won’t build the WALL?” — tweet Jan. 27. THE FACTS: He’s boasting here about his record of getting federal judges and justices on the bench. But that record is not extraordinary. He also misstates the total number of judges who have been confirmed by the Senate — it’s 85, not 99. While Trump did successfully nominate two justices to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, during his first two years in office, four other modern presidents did the same — Democrats Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy, and Republican Richard Nixon. Trump, meanwhile, is surpassed in the number of confirmed justices by Warren Harding (four), William Taft (five), Abraham Lincoln (three) and George Washington (six), according to Russell Wheeler, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and expert on judicial appointments. Trump’s 85 total judicial appointees lag behind five former presidents at comparable points in office. The five are George W. Bush, 99; Clinton, 128; Ronald Reagan, 88; Nixon, 91; and Kennedy, 111, according to Wheeler’s analysis. —— CLIMATE CHANGE TRUMP: “In the beautiful Midwest, wind chill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded. In coming days, expected to get even colder. People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Waming? Please come back fast, we need you!” — tweet Jan. 28. THE FACTS: Global warming does not need to make a comeback because it hasn’t gone away. Extreme cold spells in parts of the globe do not signal a retreat. Earth is considerably warmer than it was 30 years ago and especially 100 years ago. The lower 48 states make up only 1.6 per cent of the globe, so what’s happening there at any particular time is not a yardstick of the planet’s climate. Even so, despite the brutal cold in the Midwest and East, five Western states are warmer than normal. “This is simply an extreme weather event and not representative of global scale temperature trends,” said Northern Illinois University climate scientist Victor Gensini. “The exact opposite is happening in Australia,” which has been broiling with triple-digit heat that is setting records. Trump’s own administration released a scientific report last year saying that while human-caused climate change will reduce cold weather deaths “in 49 large cities in the United States, changes in extreme hot and extreme cold temperatures are projected to result in more than 9,000 additional premature deaths per year” by the end of this century if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at recent rates. Trump routinely conflates weather and climate. Weather is like mood, which is fleeting. Climate is like personality, which is long term. —— Associated Press writers Christopher Rugaber, Jill Colvin, Colleen Long and Seth Borenstein in Washington, Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Paul J. Weber in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report. —— Find AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd Follow https://twitter.com/APFactCheck EDITOR’S NOTE — A look at the veracity of claims by political figures

Published at Mon, 04 Feb 2019 05:28:50 +0000 Read the full article

[personalcoachingcenter]

Research Paper: Maternal Burnout and Transcending Boundaries

New Post has been published on https://personalcoachingcenter.com/research-paper-maternal-burnout-and-transcending-boundaries/

Research Paper: Maternal Burnout and Transcending Boundaries

Research Paper By K.Mariam Jafri (Parenting Coach, INDIA)

Before becoming a parent, it’s hard to imagine just how much of paradox motherhood can be. You’ll be the happiest, and saddest you’ve ever been, you’ll be elated, infuriated, and peaceful; and that’s all before breakfast! Kear Murphy (Clinical Psychologist, mother of three)

Motherhood is an emotional roller-coaster that comes without an instruction manual. Very few women would count the physiological discomfort of pregnancy and childbirth as the most challenging part of motherhood. It is mostly what follows after; the dedication required to fulfill every need of the child, juggling with constant criticism and expectations that the society throws at you, dealing with an identity crisis, judgments, and to continue being a partner, an employee, a friend and everything else. I have met many mothers from different parts of the world. What surprises me is how little difference there is in their experience of motherhood regardless of their culture, faith, level of education, and what part of the world they come from.

I knew parental burnout was a reality, but to what extent did it affect women who happen to be the primary caregivers universally? I set out to discern this phenomenon by talking to 20 mothers from 20 different countries (from Europe, North America, Asia, and Africa). I designed a short questionnaire focusing on how women experienced motherhood, if they had ever felt burnt out and why the challenges they face, and the support they think they need.

The phenomenon of burnout refers to a specific syndrome of exhaustion related to prolonged situations of emotional imbalance, where the burden of perceived stress exceeds personal resources to cope with it. Furthermore, parental burnout is defined as exhaustion occurring as a result of being physically and emotionally overwhelmed by one’s parental role. Since my paper was focused on mothers, I prefer to call this ‘maternal burnout’.

Out of the 20 mothers I interviewed, 15 are professionally engaged. All of them have multiple children, ages of children ranging from newborn to 21 years. They all have partners and come from financially comfortable homes. Most names have been changed as the majority of the mothers preferred to stay anonymous.

The starting of this research coincided with the global lockdown of 2020. All the mothers were struggling to cope with this unprecedented situation, working harder than ever before and dealing with unforeseen challenges daily. I am extremely grateful to each one of them for investing their precious time in my research.

The Complicated Emotions of Motherhood

Whether your pregnancy was meticulously planned, medically coaxed, or happened by surprise, one thing is certain – your life will never be the same. Catherine Jones, Welsh actress, and mother of two

What are the most prominent emotions felt by mothers? The first words mentioned were love, happiness, and gratitude, and then; exhaustion, frustration, guilt, fear, and anxiety. The words happiness, love, and gratitude were mentioned 29 times, while the latter 45 times!

While motherhood can be joyous and fulfilling, it can also be emotionally and physically draining.

I was always stressed in the first years with my children because I felt I was not doing enough. Instead of accepting that I was tired, I kept pushing myself to do more and more. I put myself under so much pressure that I did not enjoy being a mother. Anonymous, Italy

I mostly have regrets. I am a working mother and I cannot spend most of the time with my children. I feel sad that I miss their special moments. They have a better relationship with their nanny than with me. It makes me sad and it also makes me angry. – Anonymous, Turkey 

From what I observed, mothers were not having an easy time parenting. Was it their fault, or were their partners not supportive enough or was the society failing them?  Or was it all of the above?

What is Stressful about Motherhood?

My biggest challenge every day is to be a great mother and a great businesswoman. Tory Burch, businesswoman and a mother of three.

Expectations – From Self and Others: They were all trying to be the perfect mother through multi-tasking and trying to achieve a work-life balance with limited time and unlimited responsibilities. This came at the cost of neglecting their own basic needs of nutrition and adequate rest which eventually led to mental and physical stress.

Expectations from ourselves, from those around us and the society in general; the biggest problem is that a mother wants to be everything. Anonymous, Austria

The children have so many needs that I find it impossible to fulfill them. It’s very stressful. – Anonymous, Egypt 

Self-Doubt and Fear: I found many mothers doubting their parenting style and decisions. The fear of failing as a mother seemed to be another underlying cause of the stress that women subjected themselves to. This often led to feelings of unreasonable guilt and frustration. The fear of something unfortunate happening to the children seemed to be deeply rooted in most of the mothers I interviewed.

Will they be treated unfairly because they are girls? – Anonymous, Italy 

I worry a lot! Am I screwing them up by doing or not doing something? I worry about whether I keep them safe; from others, themselves, and this mad world. I worry about whether they will make it on their own as adults or if they’ll flounder and wind up on the streets as homeless people.  Just worry!- Debbie, USA

Isolation: I, personally have never felt more isolated in my life (despite living in my own city) than I did in the first two years of being a mother. None of my other friends had children. I stopped relating to my childhood best friends because I felt they did not understand me. And these were the people I was closest to.

It can be very isolating. People should support mothers instead of telling them what to do.  It’s the structural problem of the society. – Anonymous, India 

Lack of Time and Support: Striving to find time for everything important, from child care and career to social commitments and household responsibilities, often results in frustration and exhaustion. All the mothers complained of not resting enough.

There just never seems to be enough hours in the day! Hamida, Wales 

I don’t sleep enough and that exhausts me and amplifies the stress. Anonymous, Ivory Coast

Household Responsibilities: Parenting is a 24×7 job, yet women are expected to somehow continue managing the household. Less than 50% of women could rely on their husbands for support.

My husband told me that I am only a good mother. Neither am I a good wife nor a good house manager. It is said that there is no appreciation for what you give to your children. Anonymous, Turkey

Running around is exhausting! When I’m exhausted; I’m less patient, less of a good listener, just less! We turn into doers – do your homework, do your extracurricular, clean up your room, take a shower, go to bed. That’s not parenting; that’s being a warden. I don’t like that! It becomes stressful because I want them to feel loved, cared for and special – not like little prisoners. Debbie, USA

How Common are Burnouts among Mothers?

Burnout is a bone-tired, soul-tired, heart-tired kind of exhaustion. Pennebaker, American Social-Psychologist

16 out of 20 mothers (80%) experienced burnout at some stage of parenting. 13 of them felt it was completely from parenting whereas, for others, the burnout happened as a result of other factors as well.

According to recent research published inwww.dailyvoice.com ( an Americanhyperlocal news site), the root cause of parental burnout is an imbalance between the demands and rewards of parenting.

Burnouts have become a part of my life. – Carmen, Germany

Neil D. Brown (LCSW) in his book ‘Ending the Parent-Teen Control Battle’ says, “Parental burnout is a state of physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion. It leaves parents feeling chronically fatigued, often experiencing sleep and concentration problems which can lead to depression, chronic anxiety and illness.”

What Does Maternal Burnout Feel Like?

When you become a mother, you are no longer the center of your own universe. You relinquish that position to your children. Jessica Lange, American actress, and mother of three.

From crying incessantly to emotional eating, from fearing that they will never be able to sleep again to reach a point where they felt they couldn’t offer anything to anyone anymore, mothers have battled these emotions and experiences without even acknowledging them.

While one respondent suspected her hormones to be the cause of these feelings and consulted a gynecologist for her condition, another participant went to a psychologist assuming the problem was in her mind. A third mother figured out her condition much later after discussing it with a friend.

I reached the break down point where I had to be hospitalized and have blood transfusions. My body lacked nutrients, I wasn’t eating well but I kept ignoring my needs because I was only consumed with the idea that I wasn’t doing enough for my family.  Anonymous, Egypt

Cooking is considered the purest form of expressing love in our culture. I realized how exhausted I was when I didn’t even have the energy to cook for my family. Anonymous, Japan 

I feel exhausted and start losing my temper. Anonymous, China

Other common feelings and experiences that the mothers shared were; feeling irritable and demotivated, unable to enjoy life, falling sick often, rapid weight loss/gain, and living with the feeling that irrespective of how much they do, it’s just never enough!

The Truth Behind Maternal Burnouts

Having children just puts the whole world into perspective. Everything else just disappears. Kate Winslet, a British actress, and mother of three.

Lack of Support: The unfortunate truth is that parenting is largely considered to be a woman’s job.  Motherhood in itself is not tiring, having to parent alone is. The most common reason for burnout among mothers was lack of support and empathy first and foremost by the family (partner and other family members).  9 out of 20, i.e. less than half the mothers, said they could count on their husbands for support. The partners either had very long working hours or did not offer support even when they had time. These partners have assumed the traditional role of contributing by bringing money home. However, 15 out of the 20 mothers I interviewed were professionally working mothers. This implies that even when the finances were shared, parenting responsibilities weren’t.

I wonder if it was me who started parenting alone or was I simply never offered any support. – Anonymous, Egypt

If you don’t have emotional support from your husband, you will burn out. I had to go to a psychiatrist to be sure of my stand. I was so lost. I could not think logically. No one understood my feelings. People told me that since I had two beautiful boys, what more could I possibly want? Anonymous, Turkey 

Maternal Guilt: The website www.healthline.com defines maternal guilt as “that pervasive feeling of not doing enough as a parent, not doing things right, or making decisions that may ‘mess up’ your kids in the long run”.  Its universality is apparent since it’s felt by both working and stay at home mothers.

A mother’s guilt is a trap that women unknowingly fall into. Unfulfilled expectations lead to guilt and frustration. These expectations could either come from within or outside i.e. family or society. Motherhood is glorified to such an extent that it tends to dehumanize women. Not sleeping for several nights, forgetting to eat, inability to take time out for social interaction, and self-care are unfortunately considered as a part and parcel of parenting for women.  Yet many mothers worry and doubt themselves; “am I good enough?” or “what if everything that I am doing is wrong?”

My expectations towards myself make life as a mother challenging sometimes. I want to give each child-specific attention depending on their individual needs; quality time, affirmations, physical touch, acts of service or gifts and that is not always easy. Anonymous, Switzerland

I feel disappointment and guilt when I see my children misbehaving and being unkind. I feel it’s because I was working full time up until one year back that might have caused these issues. Anonymous, Sri Lanka

If the mother works in a professional role, she will feel she doesn’t spend enough time with her family. But the stay-at-home mums feel they are not appreciated because there is no recognition for the work they do at home. Anonymous, France

Psychotherapist and author, Hilary Jacobs Hendel refers to guilt as an inhibitory emotion that blocks our core emotions. In her book ‘It’s Not Always Depression’, she writes: “Consistently prioritizing the needs of others is not good for our mental health, nor is it good for our relationships, as it breeds resentment.”

Life with Newborns: Many mothers felt high levels of stress while caring for newborns, especially with their first child. Dr. Benjamin Spock, an American pediatrician whose book ‘Baby and Child Care’ is one of the bestselling volumes in history wrote, “She (the mother) has been through an intense physical change. If it’s her first baby, she can’t help feeling anxious. Any baby will make great demands on her strength and spirit at first. Most women need a great deal of support from their partners at this time. They need help with the care of the baby and any other children, and with housework. Even more, they need patience, understanding, appreciation, and affection.”

“Dr. John Gottman, University of Washington, has spent years studying marriage. He has found that 40-70% of all couples experience stress, conflict, and a drop in satisfaction with their relationship when a baby comes home. Why? Well, moms often provide most of the hands-on care for infants, including nursing the baby, walking the floor when he cries and getting up several times during the night. A new mother may experience postpartum depression and may have little energy for fun with her dad. Fathers, on the other hand, often report feeling excluded by the mother-and-baby duo and may find other ways of occupying themselves while their child is young. Sometimes the patterns that form during a child’s early years are difficult to change as that child grows.” – A Conscious Parent’s Guide to Raising Boys- Cheryl L. Erwin and Jennifer Costa

Postpartum was a challenge as I had to tie some loose ends at work while also recovering and caring for a newborn. Anonymous, Lebanon 

I never rested even when I should have because my inner voice was telling me that mothers don’t rest. Anonymous, Italy

Balancing Household and Professional Duties: Double responsibilities imply a double amount of stress. A mother confessed she regretted working because she neither liked her work nor was she comfortable leaving her children in other people’s care. The world calls them ‘supermoms’ or ‘superwomen’, thereby acknowledging that no normal human being is capable of managing everything that is expected from a working mother.

Society’s idea of a supermom!

Seeing myself failing professionally gives me maximum anxiety. Anonymous, Ivory Coast 

I manage everything on my own; the kids, the house, my work, drop off, pick-ups, doctors, etc. In French, it’s called, ‘la charge mentale’ or the mental load! Anonymous, France 

I grew up in the countryside but now our lifestyle is very city-based. To make up for that, we have enrolled them in several activities. It gets a bit stressful. I feel like a taxi service a lot of times. Anonymous, Scotland

Sickness: When the mother is already overworked, a child’s sickness can take a toll on her health. Not only do sick children need visits to the doctor but also extra attention and care. Mothers often spend sleepless nights caring for their young ones. Saba, a mother from Pakistan, reported that she often fell sick by the time her kids recovered; from the stress and from completely ignoring her needs.

When Children are Dealing with Stress: “Emotional and situational challenges that affect my child also take an emotional toll on me because I am so connected with my kids. So it’s not just one thing – it’s a collection of reasons that leads to parental burnout.”- Debbie, USA

Having to Parent Alone: In many cases, the partner was either traveling frequently for work or was working in another country.

My husband was away for work and I was parenting my kids alone in a foreign country. Balancing chores and deadlines was so stressful that I felt I couldn’t take it anymore. Anonymous, Afghanistan  

There are no parenting books on living in a pandemic. I had to move to my country without my husband and now I am the only one responsible for the children. – Anonymous, Turkey

The Support Mothers Have:

Only 31% of mothers said they could count on their partners for support. Talking to friends and other family members were the next best option for most women.

Relying on oneself through exercise, rest, and scaling back is quite uncommon as was reaching out to professionals such as psychotherapists, coaches, and counselors.

The Support Mothers Wished They Had:

You are in a much better position to serve others when your basic needs are met and your tank is full. Michael Hyatt, Author 

Professional Help: Individual/couple counseling to strengthen the relationship between partners and with children to deal with stress and burnouts, coaching and free online counseling, expert childcare and helplines to deal with stressed out and anxious mothers are some of the ways mothers thought families could be supported professionally.

Norman Gabriel in his book, The Sociology of Early Childhood, writes, “With the growing trend towards more men and women employed full-time in the workforce, a range of professionals have to be employed to care for many of our young children.”

Support from the Workplace: 75% of the mothers I surveyed worked full time professionally and felt that maternity leave and flexible work hours could help ease their pressure to a great extent.

Informal Support Groups:  These can create opportunities for child support,  catering to individual needs. Mothers and children with specific issues need more structured support. One mother shared her experience with churches in England where exchange evenings were organized for parents to share common challenges and they proved to be very beneficial.

I wish there was a trustworthy daycare where I could send my children for some time.  I had to devote myself completely to my children and had no time for myself. Anonymous, Korea

An Empathetic Society: Parenting can be isolating. Awareness of issues like Postpartum Depression and maternal burnout could make it easy for women to reach out for help. Most importantly, we need a society that is empathetic towards mothers and does not judge them. An article on ‘Identifying Signs and Symptoms of Parental Burnout’ published by www.daily.com affirms; “there’s a stigma associated with parental burnout. As a result, parents hide what they’re going through, and don’t reach out for practical and emotional support”.

Family Friendly Public Spaces: Affordable public places where families can relax and children have the freedom to run around, without parents having to worry about their safety.

People should realize that kids are occasionally frustrating. Having time to do things apart from parenting, going in a different environment where people don’t interact with you as parents can be good ways to decompress for mothers. Julia, England

How Can Coaching Help Mothers Manage Burnouts?

Surround yourself only with people who are going to take you higher. Oprah Winfrey

The inspiration for this research came from the regrets I accumulated over the years as a mother. “I wish I knew then” came to define the subsequent stage of motherhood where I felt in better control of my time and emotions and more accepting of a flawed version of myself. I never understood why motherhood was glorified. I assume that it is society’s way to prepare women to make every sacrifice that may come in their way and put themselves last, with a smile and without complaints.

Since my coaching niche is parenting, I decided to dedicate my research paper to understand motherhood across cultures and geographical boundaries. Irrespective of differences, the struggle for mothers is the same universally. It is largely related to navigating with emotions such as fear, loneliness, and guilt, managing expectations, balancing life and work, and believing in themselves.

There is clearly a dire need for support and compassion for mothers, irrespective of the background they come from. Unfortunately, very few mothers find this support when they are at their most vulnerable. In many cases, what follows is burn out. Some of the respondents took years to recover, while others have been unable to break the cycle.

To be able to raise little humans, a mother needs to prioritize her own well-being. I believe that coaching can be an excellent service for mothers who are looking at making crucial life decisions, are struggling with parenting, or even trying to rediscover themselves. Mothers want to be heard, understood, and accepted. This is the space that coaching can offer, to listen without judgments and assumptions. Since every mother and her journey is unique, a coach can provide the right tools and resources suitable for her. A professional coach is sensitive to different cultures and contexts, to values and underlying beliefs, and can motivate the client by sharing appropriate intuitions and observations.  Coaching could enable client mothers to create structures and frameworks that would support them in creating sustainable change. By offering unconditional positive regard and asking powerful questions, the coach can change disempowering feelings to empowering ones. Coaching can help mothers focus attention on themselves because unless their own cup is full, they cannot pour into others.

Parenting is a journey that no mother should have to suffer. However, a mother can only have healthy relationships with her children when she has one with herself. The safety guidelines in flights always instruct us to help ourselves first before we help others, including our children.

I do hope that the findings of this paper will help me and other coaches facilitate a helpful and rewarding journey for mothers through their difficult times.

References:

Original source: https://coachcampus.com/coach-portfolios/research-papers/k-mariam-jafri-maternal-burnout-transcending-boundaries/

[yawnjockey]

Identical Cousins, Bitches.

Well, after reading this last night... I kind of can't stop thinking about all the ways this makes sense. I've shrugged off a ton of twin theories, because over all the idea bores me. But placing the characters in context, it really does fit the most empty spots.

 If you didn't follow the link, it's a still from the official 7B promo. It very clearly shows Sasha walking with Jenna, both apparently blind. Both wearing sunglasses and carrying walking sticks, walking side by side. Thanks to @charleswkingston for catching it and posting it! And thanks to @a-rebel-boy for posting his suspicion that it was a sign they were going with the Courtney/Ali twin plot (from the books) after all.

 So since then, my mind has been putting together a lot of pieces, and as dull as I always found the idea, there are a lot of ways it can sew up some open ends.

 So, my interpretation, literally just based on that post, is: 

-Ali has an identical sibling. 

-I would assume to thread together all the plot holes, that twin is Bethany. Obviously this explains why we've never seen her face.

 -Bethany is not her birth name. She is actually (placeholder name will be Courtney) Drake. 

-Bethany is the daughter of Mary and Ken (Or this Drake guy, that Mary may have taken her last name from?). 

-Ali is the daughter of Jessica and Ken (Or this Drake guy.)

That makes Ali and Bethany both cousins and half sisters. It ALSO makes them biologically identical, as if they were actually sisters. Jessica and Mary have identical DNA as twins, and if Ken is both of their fathers (OR someone else, but the father is the same), that means they have the same DNA both paternally and Maternally. Which actually makes them identical twins, despite having different mothers. Which, P.S., makes a ton of sense in relation to the "ADA or Ardor" post I made.

So to be clear here, We are talking about the Courtney/Ali story, not being just identical twins. But actual Identical cousins. (yes, this is actually possible.)

Ashley Benson said about her reaction to A.D. That: “I would have never guessed that it was even a possibility, so I was very shocked.” That could point towards her not knowing the biological possibility that half siblings can be identical if the differing parents were identical twins.

 We've all pointed out how very easy it would be for Mary to have seduced Peter, since Peter would have thought that it was Jessica. The same could easily apply to Ken. Though, for all we know, it was Jessica who was pretending to be Mary. 

Ooooh! Remember that Bethany was angry at Mrs. Dilaurentis, because she had been having an affair with her father? Well, if they have the same dads, then, yes... someone was definitely having an affair with someone’s dad. 

Remember the entire thing about Jessica taking Bethany to the horse farm, and asking her to call her 'Aunt Jessie?' Well, if she is Mary Drake's daughter, then that would be totally accurate. 

OK, so Bethany and Ali are identical cousins but also twins. from here the theory starts to ramble a bit... but I’m holding steady on the Identical twins things. 

Bonus: Remember when Yvonne and Toby revealed a fondness for watching Retro TV? This gives Toby the basis to acknowledge that it’s just like “The Patty Duke Show”. Which, if you’ve never seen it, is a mid-60′s TV show, where actress Patty Duke plays dual roles as cousins who are completely Identical. The theme song is iconic. “They’re cousins... Identical cousins, all the way...”

 Let's talk about Jenna and Bethany. 

Remember when Jenna came to town, and she said she knew all about Ali? At the costume shop in the Halloween episode, she made it pretty clear that she learned all about Ali before she got to Rosewood. And then at Ali’s memorial service, Jenna says “My whole life, I thought I knew who Ali was.”

  So imagine that Bethany and Jenna met before Jenna came to Rosewood? Maybe Jenna knows her from Radley? She would know as much about Ali as Bethany would've learned. And she would, of course, be a line to Bethany with info from that point on. 

In the promo, we see Ali and Jenna walking side by side, both seemingly blind. So we can assume that this is happening after 'the Jenna thing'. I don't imagine that Ali will be going blind and hanging out with Jenna any time soon, so it sort of stands to reason that this is a flashback? 

So what if Bethany was actually in the shed with Jenna? So both Bethany and Jenna sustained eye damage, and would both have gone through education and recovery at the same time. This makes sooo much more sense of why 7x10 took place in a school for the blind. Maybe Bethany only lost her sight temporarily. Maybe her eye surgery was successful. Regardless, I think she'd have to have regained her sight almost completely to be carrying on in any 'A' shenanigans. It would be hard to be blind and pretending to be Ali. And unless Bethany really did die that night, then yea, she would be pretending to be Ali at least some of the time. 

Bonus: In Ezra’s lair, as well as, I believe, several ‘A’ lairs... there is a picture of Ali, with eyes cut out. Clue towards Bethany having lost her sight?

It starts to seem like this entire story revolves around 'the Jenna thing'. But it's really 'The Bethany thing' the night that Ali showed her true colors to Bethany. 

OK, so fast forward to ‘That Night’: The part about Bethany being lured out by Ali would be true. It's hard to say what Ali's plan would've been? To stop the A notes? To kill Bethany so everyone would think it was Ali's body? I definitely do think that it was always Ali's intention to fake her death. "That's immortality my darlings." I’m just not sure what kind of timeline that would have had. If Grunwald definitely pulled Ali or Bethany out of the grave... then how were their remains found in the backyard? Someone would HAVE to have died that night, right? They can't both have escaped, unless there was a third person buried there? Of course, Ali being identified as Bethany or Bethany being identified as Ali makes sense, So it's possible that one of them died on 'that night'. But I don't think so.

 I'd wager more money that Bethany was buried by Jessica, while Ali went on the run. And then Grunwald came by and pulled Bethany out of the grave. Leaving both Ali and Bethany alive. And perhaps a med school cadaver buried in THAT place, so that Ali wouldn't find out that Bethany was alive? (Page 5 of Ali's autopsy anyone? Perhaps a reference to it clearly being a medical cadaver?) 

After that night, we have both Ali and Bethany out there. Bethany knows Ali is alive, but at first Ali believes Bethany to be dead. (Or maybe they're both playing together. But I think maybe not.) 

Now, fast forward to season 3. It seems sort of fair to say that up until that point, A's plan has been to draw Ali out of hiding? It certainly seems that someone is bent on proving that Ali is still alive. And proving that the body buried in her grave, isn't actually her goes a long way towards that. 

Premiere of season 3, Em gets seduced into leaving the house and to dig up Ali's grave. Before she digs up the grave, she's at a diner where someone has written the note "I'm sorry I left you." That's a very Emily to Ali message to me. So as of 3x01- this could very likely be Ali asking Emily to dig up the body, so that no one can prove she's still alive. Or it could be Bethany pretending to be Ali, so she can use the body as proof and lure Ali out. Since Jenna is the one who was driving, I'd guess that it was Bethany having Ali's grave dug up. (While she was there as Red Coat.) 

Mona was either working with Ali or Bethany. I would assume Bethany. This explains why when Mona was admitted to Radley after her A reveal, she said "Don't they know that's what WE want them to think?" And why we see her talking to Ali in a red coat while she is a patient. She's actually talking to Bethany when she says "I did everything you told me to." 

There’s a lot more to think about with this. Because I feel certain that Lucas, Ezra, Toby, and and, of course CeCe are more deeply entwined with this. And I certainly have ideas, but I think this is enough for one post. But I for certain think that someone might have had a romantic link to Bethany. 

[toldnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/politics/ap-fact-check-trumps-untruths-on-russia-probe-wall-jobs/

AP FACT CHECK: Trump's untruths on Russia probe, wall, jobs

President Donald Trump is glossing over the facts when it comes to the Russia investigation and his economic performance.

The president suggests the 34 charges issued or guilty pleas achieved by special counsel Robert Mueller have had little to do with him. But Trump’s ignoring reality. Most significantly, his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, has implicated Trump in a crime by linking him to a hush-money scheme. Cohen also pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about his efforts during the 2016 campaign to line up a Trump Tower Moscow project, saying he did so to align with Trump’s “political messaging.”

On the economy, Trump claimed record low unemployment for blacks, Hispanics and Asian-Americans even as the numbers have risen after the partial government shutdown. And he described the steel industry as “totally revived” despite 20,000 job losses over the past decade.

A look at his past week’s claims, also covering global warming and purported progress in building a border wall:

RUSSIA INVESTIGATION

TRUMP: “Of the 34 people, many of them were bloggers from Moscow or they were people that had nothing to do with me, had nothing to do with what they’re talking about or there were people that got caught telling a fib or telling a lie. I think it’s a terrible thing that’s happened to this country, because this investigation is a witch hunt.” — interview with CBS, broadcast Sunday.

THE FACTS: Trump’s correct that Mueller’s team has indicted or gotten guilty pleas from 34 people. He’s wrong to suggest that none had anything to do with him or were simply “bloggers from Moscow.” Among these people are six Trump associates and 25 Russians accused of interfering in the 2016 election.

In particular, Cohen definitely was in trouble for what he did for Trump. Cohen pleaded guilty in August to several criminal charges and stated that Trump directed him to arrange payments of hush money to porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal to fend off damage to Trump’s White House bid. Prosecutors’ court filings in December backed up Cohen’s claims.

The Justice Department says the hush money payments were unreported campaign contributions meant to influence the outcome of the election. That assertion makes the payments subject to campaign finance laws, which restrict how much people can donate to a campaign and bar corporations from making direct contributions.

It is true that many of Trump’s former associates, including Cohen, were charged with either lying to the FBI or Congress.

The 25 Russians charged were not simply “bloggers.”

According to Mueller’s indictment last February, 13 Russians and three Russian entities are accused of attempting to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton by running a hidden social media trolling campaign and seeking to mobilize Trump supporters at rallies while posing as American political activists. The indictment says the surreptitious campaign was organized by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm financed by companies controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a wealthy businessman with ties to President Vladimir Putin.

Mueller’s team also charged 12 Russian military intelligence officers in July with hacking into the Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic Party and releasing tens of thousands of private communications. The charges say the Russian defendants, using a persona known as Guccifer 2.0, in August 2016 contacted a person in touch with the Trump campaign to offer help. And they say that on the same day that Trump, in a speech, urged Russia to find Clinton’s missing emails, Russian hackers tried for the first time to break into email accounts used by her personal office.

———

TRUMP: “You look at General Flynn where the FBI said he wasn’t lying, but Robert Mueller said he was, and they took a man and destroyed his life.” — interview with CBS.

THE FACTS: That’s not what the FBI said. And Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, has agreed that he lied to the FBI, having pleaded guilty to it.

The idea that Flynn didn’t lie to the FBI picked up steam after Republicans on the House intelligence committee issued a report last year. It said ex-FBI director James Comey, in a private briefing, told lawmakers that agents who interviewed Flynn “discerned no physical indications of deception” and saw “nothing that indicated to them that he knew he was lying to them.” But Comey called that description “garble” in a private interview with House lawmakers in December.

Comey, in essence, said Flynn was a good liar, having a “natural conversation” with agents, “answered fully their questions, didn’t avoid. That notwithstanding, they concluded he was lying.”

At his sentencing hearing in December, Flynn acknowledged to Judge Emmet Sullivan that he knew it was a crime when he lied to the FBI in January 2017. Flynn declined to accept the judge’s offer to withdraw his guilty plea. Neither he nor his lawyers disputed that he had lied to agents.

———

UNEMPLOYMENT

TRUMP: “You saw the jobs report just came out. …The African-Americans have the best employment numbers in the history of our country. Hispanic Americans have the best employment numbers in the history of our country. Asian-Americans the best in the history of our country.” — CBS interview.

THE FACTS: Black unemployment is not currently the lowest ever, possibly in part to the partial government shutdown, which lifted joblessness last month.

Black unemployment did reach a low, 5.9 percent, in May. But that figure is volatile on a monthly basis. That rate has since increased to 6.8 percent in January.

Hispanic and Asian-American joblessness has also risen off record lows last year. Hispanic unemployment last month was 4.9 percent, up from a low of 4.4 percent reached in October and December. Asian-American unemployment was at 3.1 percent, up from 2.2 percent in May.

Moreover, there are multiple signs that the racial wealth gap is now worsening. The most dramatic drop in black unemployment came under President Barack Obama, when it fell from a recession high of 16.8 percent in March 2010 to 7.8 percent in January 2017.

———

THE WALL

TRUMP: “The chant now should be ‘finish the wall’ as opposed to ‘Build the Wall’ because we’re building a lot of wall. I started this six months ago — we really started going to town — because I could see we were going nowhere with the Democrats.” — comments Friday.

TRUMP: “Large sections of WALL have already been built with much more either under construction or ready to go. Renovation of existing WALLS is also a very big part of the plan to finally, after many decades, properly Secure Our Border. The Wall is getting done one way or the other!” — tweet Thursday.

THE FACTS: Despite all his talk of progress, he’s added no extra miles of barrier to the border to date. Construction is to start this month on a levee wall system in the Rio Grande Valley that will add 14 miles of barrier, the first lengthening in his presidency. That will be paid for as part of $1.4 billion approved by Congress last year.

Most work under contracts awarded by the Trump administration has been for replacement of existing barrier.

When Trump says large parts of the wall “have already been built,” he’s not acknowledging that previous administrations built those sections. Barriers currently extend for 654 miles (1,052 kilometers), or about one-third of the border. That construction was mostly done from 2006 to 2009.

———

STEEL INDUSTRY

TRUMP: “Tariffs on the ‘dumping’ of Steel in the United States have totally revived our Steel Industry. New and expanded plants are happening all over the U.S. We have not only saved this important industry, but created many jobs. Also, billions paid to our treasury. A BIG WIN FOR U.S.” — tweet Jan. 28.

THE FACTS: He’s exaggerating the recovery of the steel industry, particularly when it comes to jobs.

In December, the steel industry employed 141,600 people, the Labor Department says in its latest data. Last March, when Trump said he would impose the tariffs, it was 139,400. That’s a gain of just 2,200 jobs during a period when the overall economy added nearly 2 million jobs. On a percentage basis, steel industry jobs grew 1.6 percent, barely higher than the 1.3 percent increase in all jobs.

Yet those figures still lag behind where they were before the 2008-2009 recession. When that downturn began, there were nearly 162,000 steelworkers.

Some companies have said they will add or expand plants. It’s difficult to know just how many jobs will be added by newly planned mills. But construction spending on factories has yet to take off significantly after having been in decline between 2016 and much of 2018. Construction spending on factories has been flat in the past year, according to the Census Bureau.

Trump’s reference to “billions paid to our treasury” concerns money raised from tariffs on foreign steel and other products. Such tariffs are generally paid by U.S. importers, not foreign countries or companies, and the costs are often passed on to consumers. So that money going to the government is mostly coming from Americans.

———

VOTER FRAUD

TRUMP: “58,000 non-citizens voted in Texas, with 95,000 non-citizens registered to vote. These numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. All over the country, especially in California, voter fraud is rampant. Must be stopped. Strong voter ID!” — tweet Jan. 27.

THE FACTS: That “iceberg” quickly began to melt as officials found serious problems with a report from the Texas secretary of state’s office on voter fraud. More broadly, Trump is overstating the magnitude of such fraud across the U.S.

The Texas report suggested as many as 95,000 non-U.S. citizens may be on the state’s voter rolls and as many as 58,000 may have cast a ballot at least once since 1996. Since it came out, however, state elections officials have been notifying county election chiefs of problems with the findings. Local officials told The Associated Press that they received calls from Texas Secretary of State David Whitley’s office indicating that some citizens had been wrongly included in the original data.

So far no one on the lists has been confirmed as a noncitizen voter. Election officials in Texas’ largest county say about 18,000 voters in the Houston area were wrongfully flagged as potentially ineligible to vote and those officials expect more such mistakes to be found on their list.

Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Trump ally, acknowledged problems in the report, saying “many of these individuals may have been naturalized before registering and voting, which makes their conduct perfectly legal.”

Early claims by other states of possible illegal voting on a rampant scale haven’t held up.

When Florida began searching for noncitizens in 2012, for instance, state officials initially found 180,000 people suspected of being ineligible to vote when comparing databases of registered voters and driver’s licenses. Florida officials later assembled a purge list of more than 2,600 names but that, too, was beset by inaccuracies. Eventually, a revised list of 198 names of possible noncitizens was produced through the use of a federal database.

In the U.S. overall, the actual number of fraud cases has been very small, and the type that voter IDs are designed to prevent — voter impersonation at the ballot box — is almost nonexistent. In court cases that have invalidated some ID laws as having discriminatory effects, election officials could barely cite a case in which a person was charged with in-person voting fraud.

———

JUDGES

TRUMP: “After all that I have done for the Military, our great Veterans, Judges (99), Justices (2) … does anybody really think I won’t build the WALL?” — tweet Jan. 27.

THE FACTS: He’s boasting here about his record of getting federal judges and justices on the bench. But that record is not extraordinary. He also misstates the total number of judges who have been confirmed by the Senate — it’s 85, not 99.

While Trump did successfully nominate two justices to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, during his first two years in office, four other modern presidents did the same — Democrats Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy, and Republican Richard Nixon. Trump, meanwhile, is surpassed in the number of confirmed justices by Warren Harding (four), William Taft (five), Abraham Lincoln (three) and George Washington (six), according to Russell Wheeler, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and expert on judicial appointments.

Trump’s 85 total judicial appointees lag behind five former presidents at comparable points in office.

The five are George W. Bush, 99; Clinton, 128; Ronald Reagan, 88; Nixon, 91; and Kennedy, 111, according to Wheeler’s analysis.

———

CLIMATE CHANGE

TRUMP: “In the beautiful Midwest, wind chill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded. In coming days, expected to get even colder. People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Waming? Please come back fast, we need you!” — tweet Jan. 28.

THE FACTS: Global warming does not need to make a comeback because it hasn’t gone away. Extreme cold spells in parts of the globe do not signal a retreat.

Earth is considerably warmer than it was 30 years ago and especially 100 years ago. The lower 48 states make up only 1.6 percent of the globe, so what’s happening there at any particular time is not a yardstick of the planet’s climate. Even so, despite the brutal cold in the Midwest and East, five Western states are warmer than normal.

“This is simply an extreme weather event and not representative of global scale temperature trends,” said Northern Illinois University climate scientist Victor Gensini. “The exact opposite is happening in Australia,” which has been broiling with triple-digit heat that is setting records.

Trump’s own administration released a scientific report last year saying that while human-caused climate change will reduce cold weather deaths “in 49 large cities in the United States, changes in extreme hot and extreme cold temperatures are projected to result in more than 9,000 additional premature deaths per year” by the end of this century if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at recent rates.

Trump routinely conflates weather and climate. Weather is like mood, which is fleeting. Climate is like personality, which is long term.

———

Associated Press writers Christopher Rugaber, Jill Colvin, Colleen Long and Seth Borenstein in Washington, Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Paul J. Weber in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.

———

Find AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd

Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck

EDITOR’S NOTE _ A look at the veracity of claims by political figures

[guylty]

Before I get to the “extRA questions” of the title, I need to share another great ode by Kathy with the world. As always, too good to get lost in comments:

Remember, kids: Smoking is bad for you. Don’t start!

  So, our need for hot eye candy intellectual stimulation fulfilled, I can carry on with my post…

While I was still finishing up my RA Challenge ♡, fellow fan SueBC had moved on to her reply to the ever-circling Liebster Award on her blog I’m Feeling This. Some of her own questions for the continuation of the blog award, caught my attention. They would have been interesting as part of the RA Challenge ♡, too, as well as the old Blog Introspection Challenge from early 2015. Sue gave me the go ahead to answer a shorter catalogue of questions, and if you feel in the swing of another little blog challenge, why don’t you answer this, too? (All credit and references back to her, please 😉 .) As usual, I am particularly interested in the views of the commenters. The comment thread is yours!

Here is Sue’s list of questions picked by me, followed by my answers:

1. What is your favourite photo ever of your favourite actor or actress? 2. What time of day do you usually write and/or blog and why? 3. Does your avatar have special significance and if so, what is that significance? 4. In your real life, how open are you about the fact that you have a blog? 5. What are the boundaries for you in terms of how much of your real life you share on your blog? 

1. Favourite Photo Ever

I love everything about this photo – the colours, the clever placement of the subject against the wall, the relaxed pose, the Lucas North styling, the perspective from slightly above, the off-centre composition, the lighting that creates a bit of shadow on the subject’s face, the intriguing look on the subject’s face, the evidence of strong thighs and biceps, the extended thumb… It’s not too polished, yet shot with the evidence of a professional photographer who knows his stuff.  I’ll spare you the denotations and connotations of the image (they were not a huge hit when I posted them on tumblr 😂) , even though they are part of the reason why I like this image so much. My love for this picture probably also comes down to my discovery of it at a time when I was hypersensitive to good photography – and to the appeals of Richard Armitage.

2. Blogging Schedule

Two favourite times: Either in the morning, on days when I don’t have much work; or in the evening, when work has been done. I prefer the mornings, though, because I tend to be alone at home at that time, so there is no “danger” of someone walking in on me and disturbing my train of thought.

3. Significance of my Avatar

I better show you my avatar in full glory before I explain.

It may not be self-explanatory anymore because it has been a long, long time since I last wrote an *ooof*. So here we go – when the original picture appeared on the entertainment site click, it caused a bit of hoohaa in the fandom because it was an answer to the question whether he was a cat or a dog person. While the cat lovers in the fandom were slightly put out by Richard’s cheeky two-part answer, the dog people were very pleased:

Dubious about cats?

More into dogs!

Guylty (self-confessed dog-lover despite being a cat-owner), however, only focussed on the chosen dog sound – because it fits very nicely with her moniker for her photo analyses… Besides – *ooof*, the man did look pretty hot in his slightly dishevelled early-morning-hair… (If you want to know why he looks that way, read this fan fic entitled “Bed Head” – It’s one of my favourites and I think it argues the case pretty convincingly… Note: It’s NSFW RPF, so if you don’t like RPF, don’t read!)

Anyway, I adjusted the picture sliiiiightly to fit my own agenda *coughs*, and it’s been my avatar on WP ever since. I’m usually not a fan of pictures of the OOA as an avatar (all my other Social Media accounts have a photo of “Armitage House” as the avatar), because there is always a chance that two people may use the same avatar – which can cause confusion. But this one was just too good to pass up…

4. In your real life, how open are you about the fact that you have a blog?

In my RL, a lot of people know that I am a fan, and a lot of my RL friends and family also know that I have a blog. I find it difficult to hide anything – mainly because a) I am not fond of secrets and lies, and b) my blogging activities have tangible, RL effects that I have had to explain to my friends and family. For instance, when my dad died (almost to the day) three years ago, my dear fandom friends and readers organised a fundraising drive in honour of my father which resulted in a massive donation to a cause that had been named by my mother and myself, in lieu of flowers, as well as donations to RA’s JustGiving pages. I felt that that had to be acknowledged by my RL family, and so I disclosed that I was part of a community of fans, by virtue of being a blogger. Similarly, I eventually had to explain to my children and husband why there was a continuous stream of parcels arriving at our house for a while – all thanks to my blogging (and crafting) activities.

So the upshot is that many people in my RL know that I blog. However, I have not told anyone the name of my blog and where to find it. I insist that I am not embarrassed about what I am doing on my blog. The reason I am not throwing that info around is connected to my unwillingness to justify my enthusiasm for an actor to people who may not understand why that gives me any kind of pleasure. Plus, since my work happens on the internet as well, I do not want my professional life as a rather serious, specialised writer to be associated with my entertainment-focussed hobby. That said – I don’t think I’ll be fired if my fandom activities were to be known. I think my bosses would actually find it quite funny. And who knows – it would even open up a completely new niche of specialisation for me?

5.What are the boundaries for you in terms of how much of your real life you share on your blog?

Ooops, caught in the act. So much for keeping pictures of myself out of this… Guylty accidentally appearing in the photograph by a fellow fan whose name I unfortunately do not know.

Well, a lot of that harks back to what I have written in the previous question: It starts with keeping my real name out of my blog, as well as my face, for the reasons cited above. I also draw the line at showing my children’s photos (an old habit from when they were young; I think that parents should *never* post images of their children publicly online, and that even includes quasi-private social media platforms such as Facebook.) Respecting the privacy of others is important to me, which is why I don’t name friends or family who are not part of the fandom. Plus, this is a fandom blog dedicated to RA – I write under the assumption that my audience predominantly want to read about Armitage, not about me. The occasional breaches of my own rules tend to happen in the context of photography (when I am posting a slide-show of my holiday snaps or when I have seen an interesting exhibition), when RL has had an impact on my blogging behaviour (such as my dad’s death), or when things happen in RL that may be of universal interest (like elections, or other news). But unless my RL has some kind of relevance to the topic of the individual RA-related blog post, I always keep references out.

Having said all that, I do realise that my RL sneaks into my blog, mostly in asides, or in individual sentences, when I am explaining something. The temptation to write more about myself, is always there – who *doesn’t* like to talk about themselves? – but I try to keep it in check.  This is a fan blog about RA, and I want to keep it that way.

Now, what about yourselves?

Link me your favourite pics (I could put them into a picture gallery in a separate post), tell me about your blog reading/writing habits, reveal the secret of your avatar, and tell us how much your RL knows about your fan girling activities. I am very curious!

And thanks to SueBC for the interesting questions!

Some ExtRA Questions Before I get to the "extRA questions" of the title, I need to share another great ode by Kathy with the world.

[horizonreviews]

Top ten best “Batman the Animated Series” episodes

While Batman has undergone numerous reiterations on its legendary 78-year run, few installations are as memorable or encapsulating as Batman the Animated Series. This episodic collection drew inspiration from previous stories, as well as reinvent several concepts for the lore. While many in production were hesitant to keep this series running, it proved to be one of the most iconic and valued additions to the Batman world. Out of all 85 episodes, there are a handful of gems that deserve high recognition for their ingenuity, originality, or ability to make Batman their own. Before we continue, I want to stress that these are heavily analytical reviews of each episode, and so we will be approaching spoilers. So SPOILER ALERT. Without further ado, let’s dive right in and see (in my personal opinion) the top ten best installments of Batman the Animated Series.

10) Over the Edge

“Over the Edge” proved to be an exemplary use of cliché. While many episodes of this series failed to get off the ground because they were clinging to recycled plots and chose safe plot points, this episode took the cliché of “it was all a dream” to the edge. After that, it jumped off of the edge without hesitation.

The episode opens with the unthinkable, the death of Batgirl. After defeating Scarecrow, the dastardly figure manages to escape, and Batgirl follows him to the roof. A struggle ensues, and she falls into an oncoming car…Commissioner Gordon’s car. Gordon rushes to help the fallen heroine, and discovers that it was his daughter all along. This makes Batman a public enemy and he is soon hunted by the same law enforcement officials he’s worked with for years.

Under normal circumstances, a premise like this would be answered with the phrase “this can’t be real.” Whether it’s a said in a state of unimpressed disbelief or profound shock, it holds true. But the ensuing events only make the payoff more effective, and it stands to reason why.

Jim Gordon hunts batman relentlessly, Nightwing is arrested, and Robin is told to turn himself in. These events stack right on top of one another, and leave no room for the audience to catch their breath. Yet for all the speed these events rush at the viewer, the plot never feels overstuffed. If anything, it acknowledges the fact that Batman lives a life that is being held together by a thin strand of self-righteousness and self-deception.

Since Jason Todd was never used in this series (given how horrific his death scene was), this was perhaps a necessary substitute. Batman’s adventures seem fun and exciting, but it’s important to realize that a mistake in the field could cost you your life, or the life of your friend. With Barbara dying, all barriers are broken and a lien of dominoes begins to fall. Yet as more continue to collapse, and more lives are ruined, it brings the truth of Batman’s world front and center. He may be a hero, but if the truth ever got out, his life would not be the only one that was demolished.

Barbara wakes up when the plot lines run their course, but the payoff of this cliché is substantial. We look at the collateral of Batman’s world, how thin the line is for disaster, and we also have a touching reminder of how integral Barbara is both to the Bat Family and the Gordon Family.

9) Baby Doll

In one of the more peculiar episodes, we see a young actress attempt to kidnap her old cast mates and have them reenact their glory days. While this seems to be the groundwork for a very forgettable episode, it is in fact one of the most memorable installments in the series.

Mary Dahl is an actress that has been off the radar for a long time. Yet with the only connection to the abductees being that they were actors on the same show, there is little need for Batman to investigate. He does however; remember her from a medical journal. It read that she was born with a condition called “systemic hyperplasia,” a condition that preventers her from growing older. This character seems to be ripped from a Silver Age comic book, given its murky science, and almost comedic nature. But instead of falling down the rabbit hole of cheap writing clichés, it capitalizes on this idea by showing the issue on all sides.

Meanwhile, the cast awakens to find that Baby Doll ahs recreated the set, and demands that each cast member play their roles from the old days. This seems like a desperate attempt to make the audience either laughs or cringes at how corny the situation is. But Baby Doll threatens to shoot them if they try to leave, the make-believe scenario become life threatening. This effect is intensified when Baby Doll recounts her profoundly lonely life after leaving the show. Since everyone else aged naturally, the had their whole lives ahead of them. Yet she was trapped in a life and a career where she was constantly defined by who she was, not who she could be.

This proves to be a brilliant utilization of both comedic and serious elements of the show. Most episodes of BTAS confine themselves to one of three types, each reminiscent with Batman’s many shifts in tone throughout the three ages of comic books. Golden Age short stories, which are quick, deliver on building a myth, and introduce new characters from time to time. Secondly, Silver age amusements with murky science and humorous and imaginative storytelling, and finally, Bronze Age self-analysis. Stories that look very closely at existing characters and ask the question of what made them the way they are. This episode manages to balance all three in tandem, with a massive payoff. The story is perfectly paced, is prone to laughing at itself, but can also make you feel sympathy for the one-shot villain.

Toward the end, Batman predictably defeats Baby Doll, and then chases her into a hall of mirrors. In one, Baby sees the grown-up version of herself, but is brought to tears at how she will never have this. After losing herself in a rage, she is in tears. Batman places a hand on her head, and the episode ends with Baby Doll crying.

For this character being a first-time appearance, it didn’t need all the intrigue of myth support that other villains did in order to succeed. So what makes this one succeed when most others who follow this path fail? As previously, mentioned, Baby Doll’s story is one that balances the three ages of Batman’s comic book history. It’s also humorous and serious, and few episodes can balance their aspects so well. It also comes closer than most episodes in solidifying what makes this series so special. It’s not meant to be campy Batman or brooding Batman, this is Batman. By understating the situation but keeping us grounded in the action, this episode excels with an original creation and makes for some of the most memorable moments in the series.

8) Harley’s Holiday

One of the series’ greatest achievements was creating Harley Quinn. At first riding on the coat tails of the infamous Joker, Harley Quinn soon took the series by storm, becoming a powerful presence in her own right. By virtue of her design, performance, and writing, she was a powerhouse in the series like no one else. Yet for all her successes, she was commonly overshadowed by her Mr. J whenever she cam eon the screen. Every episode Harley is involved in immediately rises in quality, but the influence of the Joker is always felt. Save for one episode where the Joker is never even mentioned and Harley is the focus, “Harley’s Holiday.”

After being released form Arkham on good behavior, Harley is determined to start fresh. Yet for all her efforts, her mannerisms and misconceptions of situations land her in constant trouble. Many of these moments are winning one-liners and are enough to make anyone laugh at the results. However, throughout the entire episode, Harley is constantly painted as a victim of circumstances, and rightfully so.

Harley isn’t trying to please the Joker, commit a crime, or even pester Batman. She’s attempt to live a normal life. This makes her shortcomings relatable, and even garners sympathy. Granted, she goes back to her criminal impulses later on, but she is frustrated that she doesn’t seem to be afforded a chance to be normal.

By the time that the episode concludes, we see her being carted back to Arkham, but not before Batman offers her the dress that she tried to pay for in the beginning. It serves as a touching moment between Batman and Harley, and reminds viewers just how amazing the world of Batman can be. An orphaned boy can become a hero, a troubled girl can start new, and enemies can put down their arms for one day and become friends.

7) Robin’s Reckoning

In this Emmy-winning two-part episode we see Robin as the focus as he tries to get revenge on the man who killed hi parents, Tony Zucco. It serves as an excellent insight into why Robin is so integral to Batman’s world. This episode serves to put their relationship in context, with fantastic results.

The episode opens on Batman and Robin preparing to catch a gang of criminals. A fight ensues on a scaffolding and they emerge victorious. However, most of the criminals get away, save one. At first, he refuses to talk as he’s about to fall to his death. Batman threatens to leave him, but at the last moment, he calls out that he works for a man named “Billy Marin.” After this, Batman says Robin is off the case. At first, it doesn’t make sense. But after some digging, Billy Marin is revealed to be an alias of Tony Zucco, the man who killed Robin’s parents. The sends Robin into overdrive, and his story is soon explored via flashback. The references to Batman’s involvement in Robin’s life have been limited to casually dropped details, and haven’t been explored in depth until now. A man was making Robin’s circus pay protection money, and when the ringmaster refused to pay in full, the man stormed off. Dick soon found that the same man was tampering with the trapeze equipment, and he quickly sneaked off. Despite his protestations, Dick’s parents continued and they died as a result of the sabotaged equipment. Robin was devastated and left without any blood relatives to turn to. Bruce takes him in, and the brief guardianship fills Dick with many questions. Who does Bruce go to see very night? Where does he go? And does he really have to go every night?

The mystery continues to build, and Dick soon overhears Bruce speaking with Commissioner Gordon. Apparently, Zucco is trying to skip town before Batman or the police get a hold of him. The last reported siting was in a shady section of Gotham. Resolved to get Zucco first, Robin takes the bus to this location. Dick does his own detective work and fights Zucco when he is spotted. Just when the fight seems to be lost, Dick is saved by Batman. In the end, a choice must be made of whether Batman will save Dick or apprehend Zucco. He chooses the former.

Dick is soon brought to the Batcave and Dick asks who Batman is. Everything becomes clear when Bruce unveils himself to his ward. This cements the history of the duo in stellar fashion, and also makes it clear that the stakes have never been higher. In teaching Robin how to fight, the Dark Knight may have put him in the same peril Batman has always feared. If Robin exacts revenge on Zucco, he may never be able to return to Batman or himself again.

As the episode enters its second half, and we see that Batman is hunting Zucco, the criminal underworld rejects him everywhere he goes. He has no options other than to try and leave town, or take down Batman himself. Zucco chooses the latter, and he is in on the brink of being captured by Batman or Robin. He is also becoming extremely anxious, and is making mistakes that leave a trail of breadcrumbs.

The race to catch Zucco is desperate, and shows how capable Robin is without his mentor. In addition, the flashback sequences that show Bruce and Dick interacting after the great reveal show how much they complement each other. This is especially touching when audiences reflect on how similar these two men are. The emotional roots of the episode take center stage, and show that more is at stake than losing a partner in crime fighting, this could end with a family being broken.

Soon, Batman confronts Zucco at the docks and suffers a side wound. And just when its almost too late, Robin saves Batman and has his hated enemy at his mercy. But Batman makes one final plea, asking for Robin to turn this man in to the police. Robin cries out that Batman can’t know the depth of his loss, and swiftly apologizes. With Zucco captured, justice is served and the duo returns home.

While this may strike some as a cop out, the episodes holds up. Largely because there was a strong middle section and a subdued ending. By acknowledging the importance of the conflict, the influence of the past, and the sense of family with the dynamic duo, the series gains an emotional tipping point it reaches only on rare occasions. At the end of the day, Batman developed the Bat Family to take in those who needed him, or suffered tragedies similar to his own. It exemplifies how human the Dark Knight can be, and how the life of Bruce Wayne is still important to the narrative.

Most works of Batman’s mythology focus on the Batman himself, as his life is filled with more exciting stories. But in this instance, it made Bruce Wayne not only interesting, but more engaging than Batman. We see that we’ve been missing half of the equation of the story for some time. Just as we see the story of Batman and Bruce Wayne, we’re here to learn the story of Robin and Dick Grayson. And in so doing, we learn that the masks makes them legends, but its what’s inside that makes them heroes.

6) Heart of Ice

In this acclaimed episode, we see the character of Mr. freeze become vastly more dynamic. Prior to this episode airing, Mr. Freeze was a typical villain with formulaic plots and was essentially a freeze gun-totting C-lister. But by the end of this episode, the concept of Mr. Freeze evolved from a throwaway villain to one of Batman’s most enduring and sympathetic characters.

Most renditions prior to this episode focused on Mr. Freeze’s theme rather than his personal history. The same could be said for many villains, such as the Joker or the Penguin. But now that the BTAS writers were reevaluating him, and character history was being given a massive amount of gravity (such examples include “Robin’s Reckoning” or “Mad Love”), he was given a story that elicited both heartwarming sympathy and brutal chills.

It’s revealed that Mr. Freeze is a man hell-bent on revenger after CEO Ferris Boyle tried to shut down the cryogenic preservation project that was keeping Nora Fries alive.  Victor Fries did all he could to save his wife, but he ended up exposing himself to the chemicals, becoming immortal.

This changes the concept radically, but makes him vastly more human and multi-dimensional. Anyone else in this position would do anything to save his or her loved ones. In doing so, Batman elects to stop Mr. Freeze before he kills Boyle.

Batman confronts Freeze, and meets with some new challenges. But in the end, comes up with new tactics. He confronts Freeze just as he’s about to exact revenge on Boyle. The battle is intense, but Batman manages to win by pouring hot soup onto Mr. Freeze, and subduing him so the authorities can take him into Arkham. While this method of winning seems more humorous than effective, it’s the reevaluation of existing material that makes this episode one of the best.

In addition to changing the nature of a prominent villain, this episode changed the standard by which the series was seen. It skyrocketed the series into fame, and won an Emmy for Outstanding Writing in an Animated Program.  

Having endured for decades and producing some of the most popular comic book characters of all time, Batman has had an immense legacy. But with this brilliant TV rendition, we see a character commonly neglected become one of the most prominent and perhaps the most human of Batman’s adversaries. It’s a story that has since been engrained in the lore, and left its mark on all mediums, a truly marvelous work.

5) Beware the Gray Ghost

While BTAS has proven to be an impressive addition to the existing franchise, few were episodes have been able to garner this level of acclaim. The story was engaging, the mystery is carefully crafted, but the casting is what really made this episode stand out. Batman enlists the help of a TV actor from his childhood in capturing a criminal before he commits more bombings on Gotham; Adam West, TV’s original Batman, plays this character.

If having the original Batman come to the set of the animated isn’t enough to strengthen your episode, then nothing will. But the episode itself is quite fascinating on its own. Batman is built on the foundation of loss and brooding. Therefore, it’s difficult to find moments of happiness, be it in his current life or in his childhood. All of it seems to be eclipsed by that terrible night he lost his parents. The animates series makes multiple mentions and even displays of that tragic evening, but this episode alone shows Bruce’s childhood as happy and inspiring.

Bruce has long been a fan of “The Gray Ghost,” a crime fighter on TV who bears a striking similarity to Batman. And the recent bombings on Gotham are exactly like an old episode of the series. However, young Bruce fell asleep the night this episode aired, and he cannot recall the ending.

Bruce tries to find a copy of the episode, but it turns out that there was a fire that destroyed the old copies. Pressed for options, Batman must find the actor who portrayed his childhood idol, a man by the name of Simon Trent.

Upon finding him, Batman learns that the aged Simon Trent is desperate for money and can’t find work due to his strong connection to the Gray Ghost. He even sold most of his remaining collection of Gray Ghost memorabilia just to pay rent.

Batman realizes that Simon won’t be easy to convince, and so he asks for a copy of the episode in question. Simon gives him the copy, and is left in a state of contemplation. Bruce watches the episode, and it’s revealed that a toy car was used to set off the bombs.

Batman soon encounters Simon again, only this time, he has resolved to be the hero he portrayed years ago, and he dons the mask and cape of the acclaimed hero one last time. Batman and the Ghost go to the Batcave, and he takes the time to show Simon a small shrine dedicated to the man who inspired him to be a crime fighter. It is an inspiration for Trent, and the two share a moment before continuing their investigation. It turns out that eh toy collector Simon sold his items to, a boy named Dymer, is responsible.

The two confront Dymer, and he reveals that he’s been bombing the buildings so he can sell the Gray Ghost materials at top dollar. They apprehend him, and the remaining bombs destroy Dymer’s store. Shortly after, the incident is reported and Simon becomes a hero. His Gray Ghost character experiences a resurgence in popularity, and Bruce visits him while he’s signing autographs. He says, “the Gray Ghost was my hero.”

This episode serves as one of the most engaging, by virtue of its casting, delving into Bruce’s history, and the overall solidarity of the episode’s significance in a larger body of work. While the villain of Dymer is rather weak on his own, the underplaying of his involvement in the plot made him a genuine surprise later. It’s also important to note that a look into Bruce’s past had never been done before, as it wasn’t needed. But with new information, Batman becomes extremely relatable. Just as Batman was a fan of the Gray Ghost, the audience adores him. It’s a brilliant work of mirroring to fans that has not been achieved with Batman, before or since.

4) Two Face

Toward the beginning of the animated series, there was a strong emphasis on building the formula for each episode and showing numerous villain origins. The creative license proved to be a double edged sword in that many possibilities were available, but the foundation of the show needed to be perfectly established. There were many episodes that were easily forgotten, while others made a shocking impact. Few episodes were as effective as Two Face.

Harvey Dent was a character that had already been present in previous episodes. He was a friend of Bruce Wayne’s, an upstanding District Attorney, and a man of the people. By all accounts, he was one of the few morally white characters among the cast.

Yet it all came to a boiling point when Rupert Thorne, a known crime figure had his men caught in a police raid. The arrest went smoothly with Batman and Gordon involved, and Harvey said he would not rest until justice was served. A disgruntled thug then splashes him, and Harvey goes wild. Everyone is shocked, and Harvey is extremely embarrassed. This marks the first time he’s made a public outburst, and the first time the audience has seen him act this way. Even if viewers were familiar with Two Face in the comics, the sheer intensity and laser focus of the scene is enough to make your skin crawl.

The situation intensifies when Harvey hears of Thorne’s men getting acquitted and he admits he’s not sure he can do this alone. Therefore, his fiancé tells Bruce in confidence that Harvey’s been seeing a psychiatrist. Bruce says he’s proud of him, and that he’ll keep his secret.

Soon, we see that Harvey is committed to getting to the bottom of this, and that Thorne is looking for any amount of dirt to blacken Harvey’s good name. Harvey makes some progress, and we learn that he’s struggled with his anger for some time. But in suppressing it for the greater good, he’s created a volatile personality, one that is coming to the surface even now.

But just when Harvey thinks he’s got it under control, Thorne tries blackmailing him when he learns about his “Big Bad Harv” personality. Harvey meets with Thorne in person, and when Thorne demands him to look the other way, this puts Harvey over the edge. He attacks Thorne and his men, and they intend to do him in. Batman saves Harvey, but not before he is exposed to a massive explosion. The result is horrific facial scarring and a rage that refuses to subside.

This marks the ending of the first half, and we see a great deal of turmoil coming form all sides. As Harvey’s world falls apart, we can’t help but sympathize, and it feels rushed in the course of one episode, and it’s precisely the speed at which its delivered that makes it so powerful.

Harvey was seen as early as the pilot, flipping a coin and conversing with law enforcement. Therefore, the reference is made the instant he appears, and is by no means milked over time. In fact, any reference to Harvey in the show is understated right up to this point. You can identify him by name or his coin from the comics. But his cool nature in all other occurrences make the shift as surprising to the viewers as it does to the characters on screen. By the end, he seems lost, and we can’t help but wonder how he got there.

As the second half begins, Harvey has embraced his fallen reputation and new resources. He uses all of his efforts to defeat Thorne, and relies entirely on his coin to make decisions. It’s no longer a prop or a gimmick; it’s the cornerstone of his world. Harvey managed to best Thorne and become the new kingpin in town. Batman tries to stop him in the name of his friendship as Bruce, and his partnership with him as Batman when he was District Attorney. But in the end, Harvey’s scarring, both physical and emotional, is too much to recover from. Batman manages to defeat Two Face by throwing mess of coins into the air, throwing Two Face’s world on its head. There should be a sense of victory, but the episode is concluded by a profound sense of defeat, the kind where a man loses a friend and gains an enemy.

This is a truly incredible episode because it utilizes the understating of several previous episodes, not just the action of this one. Even if you’re viewing this episode alone, the performance is enough to set it all in context, and to put you in Bruce’s position. An upstanding man is met with horribly unjust circumstances and must suffer as s result of trying to do well by him and others. And it reminds viewers that Batman’s struggle for justice is not just to avenge his parents, it’s to put right the wrongs of the present day. But even Batman is helpless to stop some tragedies. The episode is essential to the series because it captures the tormented nature of a secondary character and makes his struggle viewers can feel in excruciating detail. Whether you’re a die-hard fan of the Bat or a casual viewer, you still feel the pain of a man who tried to do right, but lost his way.

3) Mad Love

When Harley Quinn first appeared in “Joker’s Favor,” she was immediately acclaimed by fans and reused by writers. No one was expecting her to become so popular, and this made it all the more challenging ot develop an impressive backstory for her. After all, there were several facets that needed to be addressed. Who was she really? How did she get involved with the Joker? And who does she keep coming back to him? The series had already amassed a great collection of backstory arcs. But with so much on the line, and with few episodes left in the series, a great impact had to be made. And it blew everyone away when the truth was finally revealed.

After a botched attempt at dispatching Gordon, Joker and Harley retreat to their lair. Harley is rebuffed by her Mr. J, and she reflects on how her life got to this point.

She was a psychiatrist at Arkham that tried to learn the Joker’s secrets. But her sessions grew more personal, and even romantic. She would have done anything for him, and one night after Batman had returned Joker to Arkham, she was resolved to help him escape for good.

It’s a story that answers all of the audience’s questions, and puts the entire relationship in context. More impressive still is that the Joker’s mind warping capabilities surpass those of even his doctor. This makes the relationship a twisted one built on Harley’s good intentions, and shows just how skewed the foundation of it all is. However, Harley is never depicted as foolish. She’s shown to be intelligent, capable, and caring. It’s the Joker’s manipulation of Harley’s affections that make her so dedicated to him, and how he has such a hold on her despite all he puts her through.

As the episode continues, Harley believes that Batman is the key to her misery. With Batman gone, she’ll be free to settle down with her Mr. J. She therefore sets out a carefully laid out plan, and pleads through videotape that Batman protect her in exchange for turning state’s evidence. She manages to meet Batman on the docks, and tricks him into being sedated. When he wakes up, he’s suspended upside down above a piranha tank.

Harley tells Batman her motive, and the thought of Harley and thinking the Joker could love her makes him laugh. Batman reveals that the Joker has been manipulating him like this for his whole life, and that she’s just hired help to him. She refuses to accept this, and nearly lets Batman die. But he convinces her that Joker must witness the death to believe it occurred.

Harley calls the Joker, and he rushes to the scene. But on arriving, he’s not pleased, he’s furious. He claims that this can only end with Joker killing Batman. Harley insists that it’s still the Joker’s plan, and she explains why it works. But this angers the Sadistic Jester further. He exclaims that by explaining how this joke works, she’s ruined it. He follows up by pushing Harley out of a nearby window.

Batman and the Joker have a final battle atop a train and it ends with Joker falling to his supposed death.

Harley is soon returned to Arkham as a patient, where she resolves to never get involved with the Joker again. But before she can finalize her personal oath, she looks inside her cell and sees a small flower, and she knows two things for certain. Joker is still alive and that she loves him still.

This proves to be one of the saddest and most effective episodes of BTAS. With Harley appealing to so many viewers, she needed concrete backstory. This was worth the wait. The view of the Joker’s relationship with Harley is a take on abusive relationships in general, and makes us sympathize with her immensely. The episode does raise several questions as to what kind of message is being exposed to child viewers, but instead of acting as an informative PSA, it is a brutally honest take on a character who is imperfect and likeable. In the end, we can’t help but wonder why Harley is still hooked on Mr. J.

2) Trial

In one of the more self-analyzing episodes of BTAS, we see that Batman’s villains remain in Arkham and are on the brink of hatching a dastardly plot. But as to what that is, we are uncertain.

Janet Van Dorn, Gotham’s newest District Attorney has been taking the city by storm, and her take on crime and punishment differs greatly from the Dark Knight. She believes that Batman has no regard for the legal system and is not only deserving of jail time, but is single handedly responsible for creating these super criminals that plague Gotham’s streets.

This is a highly engaging episode, as it focuses on answering a long-held fan question: are Batman’s actions causing more crime than he is solving? This question has been probed several times over the course of the series, and is usually self-fulfilling. In “The Man Who Killed Batman” for example, Joker refuses to follow through on a jewelry heist because Batman doesn’t appear. This among other examples has drawn the motives of several villains into question, and viewers finally get to see their theories tested.

Batman is apprehended by thugs and taken to trial, and an intriguing challenge is posed. Joker is to be judge, Two Face the prosecution, and Batman is to be defended by the District Attorney that opposes his ideals. If he wins, then they’ll be let go. If not, Batman will be dealt with as the jury sees fit.

This launches a small series of cross-examinations of villains. Most of Batman’s rivals and enemies are present in the room, and this leads to a wide variety of examples you an choose from. The Mad Hatter, Poison Ivy, and Harley Quinn are among those chosen. When questioned, Mad Hatter claims that Batman took Alice away from him, and that he had no choice but to take criminal action. This proves to be a weak excuse, as he claims that instead of respecting Alice’s wishes “I would have killed her first.” With this shocking revelation, Janet Van Dorn begins to see a correlation.

She continues her interrogations, and this time questions Poison Ivy. The botanical beauty claims that Batman is a threat to her plants, and she makes him out to be single-handedly responsible for her actions. But instead, Janet begins plucking the petals from a flower in front of the witness. Poison Ivy demands she stop, but when Janet continues, a fight ensues. The more the criminal testimonies line up, the more Janet is convinced Batman is not the cause of their actions. So far, a madman refused to take the responsible course of action, and vile villainess cares more for plants than people.

And finally, there’s Harley Quinn. After an extended series of jokes and affections between her and Judge Joker, Janet insists that the Joker twisted Harley Quinn’s mind. Harley insists that Janet is jealous, but Janet reveals that the Joker ratted Harley out to get time off of his sentence. Harley inquires, and when the Joker doesn’t deny it, she goes wild.

The last testimony proves to be more humorous than relevant, but it shows that out of three statements, none of them can tie Batman directly to their actions. Instead, it seems that these super criminals project their shortcomings and motives onto Batman as an excuse. Therefore, Van Dorn comes to the conclusion that instead of Batman creating these criminals, these criminals have created Batman. This proves a shocking twist, and one that deserves special attention. There are other cases to consider, as there is only so much room for testimonies when the episode must run under thirty minutes, but it provides a unique insight into a complex issue.

By the end, the criminals declare that Batman is not guilty, but they proceed with their judgment on him. Just as they’re about to unmask the Caped Crusader, Van Dorn throws a stray batarang at the light fixture, and this gives Batman the chance he needs to escape. The fight ends, and Janet makes her peace with Batman just before dawn. They both hope that some day, despite their differences, they’ll achieve a world where Batman is no longer needed.

As this episode comes to a close, it offers a fascinating insight to an issue many fans have speculated over Batman’s extensive history. By reacting to criminal activity, it provides a motive on its own for Gotham’s Rogue’s Gallery. While some comic book writers have attempted to delve into the psychology of their villains (especially in the Bronze Age), Batman sets itself apart by making the psychology of each villain the dominating factor and drive that keeps readers coming back. However, with psychology acting as the primary focus, it’s easy to make judgments about psychology pertaining to the hero as well. Batman feels the need to fight crime because he failed to keep his family out of harm’s way that one night. It’s a simple solution, and one prone to over-simplicity.

By the same token, many of the villains have suffered numerous tragedies. The Riddler was swindled out of his earnings for a game franchise, the Penguin was treated like a monster, so he became one. And Clayface was morphed into a monstrosity, and Scarecrow’s obsession with fear morphed him into becoming a criminal. Yet for all these complex and varied backstories, one must wonder if criminals would bother taking to the streets if there was no challenge. Would Gotham be safer without Batman? Many are inclined to say yes.

However, Batman was born as a result of someone else’s criminal activity. Joe Chill (in the original and dominating storyline) killed Bruce’s parents and disappeared into the night. This left Batman in a state of psychological trauma that drives him even to this day. So perhaps it’s right to say that one man’s criminal activity caused Batman to be born, but can this be generalized to the entire Rogue’s Gallery?

Each criminal has a reason for starting out that is completely divorced from Batman. By not being able to cope with their grief, resentment, or trauma, they became an identity on their own. With such narcissistic and obsessive figures, it’s no surprise that they’re looking for someone to blame for their misfortunes. When Batman impedes their criminal progress, they immediately latch onto him, claiming that if it wasn’t for him, the game wouldn’t have the same appeal to them. But in the end, the roots of their damage go well before Batman. He just happens to be their current struggle. So therefore, it makes sense to say that they created Batman. In the same way that many of the Rogues became a monster they thought they were, Batman became the hero that he thought people needed. Any lingering resentments are built on soft foundations, and need to be redirected elsewhere. Thankfully, these villains focus on crime and give readers and viewers riveting stories that will last a lifetime.

If there’s anything to be learned from this episode it’s that snap judgments or projection of guilt never leads to a successful conclusion. Blaming others only renders someone unable to move on. Therefore, that pain should be used as a catalyst for the greater good, just like we see Batman do every night.

It appears that there are two kinds of people in Gotham, those who let their trauma define their lives, and those who let trauma drive their ambitions. So which will we be?

1) Almost Got’im

While there have been many stories that have captivated audiences throughout the course of this series, few are as recognizable and worth watching repeatedly as “Almost Got’im.” This serves as a laid-back, well written, and captivating story that balances five villains at once. Each tells the story of how they almost defeated Batman, and all of this is done amid the atmosphere of a poker game.

The episode begins with the villains gathering in underground club, each of them trying to hide from the Caped Crusader. The roster includes the Joker, Two Face, Penguin, Killer Croc, and Poison Ivy. The poker game begins, and the question is raised as to who has come the closest. In an attempt to answer this lingering question, each tells their story.

Poison Ivy recounts how she nearly defeated Batman with exploding pumpkins the previous Halloween. Two Face tells the story of how he apprehended Batman and how he flipped him on a gigantic coin. Penguin recalls his “Aviary of Doom” heist, and Croc recounts how he once threw a rock at Batman. Each story is confined to a short runtime, and is reacted to by the other villains in a casual, yet humorous fashion. Joker claims that he has the best story of all, and claims it was attempted just the previous evening.

Joker tried to electrocute Batman during a televised event called “Late Night Gotham Live.” He tied the Dark Knight to an electric chair activated by laughter. He then filled the studio audience with laughing gas, and he was nearly bested. But Catwoman saved Batman, and the Joker’s plan was foiled. The story seems to have ended, but Joker claims that the story isn’t over. As he tried to escape, Catwoman caught up to him, and Harley knocked Catwoman unconscious when she was distracted. Croc asks if that was the end of it, but Joker says the punch line is yet to come. He has Catwoman in a pet food factory. Harley is going to push the infatuated feline into the meat grinder, and will send a case of cat food to Batman.

Croc stands up, and says, “I don’t think so.” It’s revealed that Batman was really disguised as Croc all along. The Rogues presiding over the poker table say Batman is outgunned, but its revealed that all other patrons of the underground club are in fact police. Batman hurries to the factory, and stops Harley from disposing of Catwoman.

That night was a great victory, but Catwoman says that perhaps there’s a chance for her and Batman in the future where they won’t need masks. Batman smiles at the possibility, and Catwoman attempts to kiss him. She is distracted for a moment, and Batman flies off into the night. To which she responds “almost got’im.”

This episode is structurally and artistically sublime. While most episodes focus on one villain at a time, this venture had multiple villains all in one room. Yet the plot ever feels overstuffed or convoluted, because there are several short stories that are given enough time to react to. The insistence that everyone’s story be heard to judge its brilliance also keeps the plot (or multiple plots) moving. The episode is effortless in its pacing, and the chemistry between villains is not only rare, but supremely enjoyable. The ability for Joker to poke fun at Penguin, or Ivy to reference having dated Two Face makes for a laughable and enjoyable dynamic.

By the end of the episode, it turns out that all of these efforts to prove who was the best was leading to a satisfying conclusion. The addition of another twist isn’t convoluted or forced, but rather speaks to a profound sense of self-awareness. As great as it is to hear the villains shoot the breeze, each episode should be able to tell a comprehensive story with a rewarding takeaway. By having Batman present the entire time, a whole new plot develops in the course of a single line, and makes for an excellent payoff.

This episode is a joy to watch from start to finish. Plus the ability to use a plot twist and casual conversation to their fullest extent make for an incredible level of writing. This is BTAS at the peak of its powers, and this is the surest of itself that the series has ever been. With so many facets of the story working seamlessly, it makes us feel like we’re sitting at the table without favorite baddies. And what’s more is that we’re not afraid of them for an instant. They’re not demonized, overlooked, or undervalued, they’re not even acting like villains. They’re surprisingly human. Half of the power of Batman comes from him, and the other comes from whoever he happens to be facing in any given panel, episode, or film. With so many of these iconic villains gathered in one place, and with all of them at their most human, it’s one of the most cherished occurrences among fans to this day.