#clicking on an episode and already regretting several life choices

[shadow-the-crow]

me during the daytime: "i'll wait until it's dark outside to listen to the next episode of TMA so i'm properly scared :D

me once it's dark outside: "why... why did i want to do this again??"

[diyunho]

The Joker x Reader - “Trapped” Part 4

Almost one year ago, someone tried to kill The Joker in a speeding car and Y/N pushed him out of the way, getting hit instead. With a fractured skull and broken bones, she was out of business for 6 months; when she finally recovered, The Queen of Gotham wasn’t the same anymore. Trapped inside her own mind and exhibiting severe cognitive impairment, Y/N’s life switched upside down without any hope of ever returning to normal.

Part 1       Part 2      Part 3      Part 5

Next Morning

“We’re done here, OK?” The Joker shouts and you stomp away, furious at his behavior.

“Of course we are done, who the hell would put up with you?!! You’re horrible!!!”

“It finally clicked? Good!!!! Come on, speed it up and disappear!!!!” he points at the top of the hill where your car is parked.

You walk faster and J is increasingly frustrated with each step you take.

“So what you said was a lie?!” he yells before he can stop himself. “You assured me I’ll get used with being loved and here you are running from me! Hypocrite! Who’s the liar now, huh?”

You turn around, stunned.

How dare he twist your most intimate confessions in such a manner?

Y/N and The Joker glare at each other for a few moments before you voice all the bitterness and resentment building up in your heart loud enough for him to hear:

“I hate you!”

“Oh yeah?” he smirks. “Perfect! I’m used to it!”

You reprise your stroll, determined not to fall into his little traps anymore: this time is over and you have to put as much distance in between the two of you in the next few seconds before he attempts one of his tricks.

Not that you would fall for it again, but you never know…

One last glare while you try to open the car door and you see him flair his arms around loudly screaming at his phone; your fingers keep missing the lock and you kick the metal frame, irritated. Another glance and you spot a vehicle driving in the parking lane towards where The Joker is.

“J?...” you hesitantly call out to him yet The Joker probably has the earbuds in so he can’t hear you. “J!!!” you wave to get his attention without success. “Oh my God!” you rush back in his direction when you realize that SUV will hit him if it continues the present trajectory. “J!!! J!!!!”

The King is too absorbed in his business conversation thus he finally sees Y/N next to him as she violently pushes him out of harm’s way.

The strong impact wakes you up and you gasp for air, panicked. Your troubled mind has difficulty catching up with reality: a damaged brain can’t possibly render any type of comfort in this situation.

“Why are you crying?” J mumbles half asleep. “Did you have a bad dream?”

You seem confused and unresponsive to his questions, no other choice besides waking up to check on you.

“Calm down. You had a nightmare, ok?” he pulls the agitated Y/N in his arms. “ Hey, it’s me!”

You whimper at the pain paralyzing your body and don’t complain when he drags you on top of him; it actually feels soothing having someone close that understands what’s happening to you.

“Don’t hold me so tight, I can’t breathe,” J pecks your forehead where the blood clot pressing on your frontal lobe should be. “Better?” he asks a tearful girlfriend that ultimately begins to understand she wasn’t hit by a car minutes ago: it’s an ordeal she already went through months ago despite the aftermath of the accident still creating problems. “Such an early bird,” The Clown yawns since he won’t be able to doze off after your episode. “Only 7 am Princess…” the grumbled noises make you receptive to his complaint. “What about you give me some sugar in exchange for my services?” J suggests, quite puzzled when you roll off him and stumble out of the bedroom. “Where are you going?!”

You don’t answer because you’re concentrating just on what your neurons were able to translate in such a short notice: your man wants sugar. That’s why you’re in a big hurry to bring him a bag containing the sweet product, happily offering the item to his majesty The King of Gotham.

“For God’s sake, Pumpkin!” he accepts the gift nevertheless and places it on the covers. “That’s not what I meant,” he snatches Y/N in his arms and kisses her.

“No…sugar?...” you inquire out of genuine curiosity.

“I already got it,” he mischievously smirks at your bafflement, deciding to exercise your skills at once. “Say Princess: if I give you two kisses and then I give you two more, how many kisses do you get?”

“Ummm…” you debate on the question,”… not enough?”

“Due to your high standards, certainly,” The Joker huffs at the genuine reply. “Your solution is not wrong, but I’m looking for a number. Two plus two? Come on, you already know this one!”

“Mmmm… Four?...” you blur out and get groped as reward.

“Good girl!” J proudly applauds your abilities at crack of dawn. “Enough algebra for this morning,” he changes topic. “Your doctor appointment is at 10; you should take a shower soon,” and he rambles on until something is clear: the blank expression on your face hints at the outcome.

“You’re not listening, are you?” he suspiciously inquires.

“No.”

Why would you? Your brain’s self-defense mechanism prevailed at all the information flooding your deteriorated synapses and the result was blocking the outpour of sentences.

“That was a 10 minutes speech, Pumpkin!” The Joker grouchily admonishes the carefree Y/N.

“11,” you gesture at the clock on the wall.

“11 what?”

“11 minutes, not 10,” you nonchalantly conclude.

“Oh, so you have the audacity to time me while you don’t bother keeping up?!”

“Yes,” you giggle and hide your face under the pillow.

“That’s preposterous!”

“Hm?...” your nose emerges from under the cushion at the fascinating word you can’t recollect being in your current vocabulary.

“Preposterous, Princess!” J repeats.”… Stop laughing, would you?” he forcefully hijacks your pillow and you snicker because whatever-the-heck- it-means Preposterous Princess sounds like a hilarious nickname. “You wanna play games?” The Clown Prince of Crime sucks on his silver teeth willing to bring a final showdown to this magical day. “Fine, remember you made me with your abominable behavior!” he reaches for the nightstand in order to grab his favorite deck of cards. “Pick a card, any card; I won’t peak,” J watches the captivated woman pluck her choice from the mound. “Now put it in the stack,” he urges and you follow the instructions.

The Joker vigorously shuffles the cards then searches for yours.

“Is this it?” he triumphantly flicks the Joker card out of the bunch.

You nod a yes completely smitten he guessed again and your terrible half steals a kiss, triumphantly growling to himself:

“Who’s  laughing now, huh?”

*************

After Your Doctor’s Appointment

J slides the screen on his phone and before he can utter anything you announce:

“Hi, this is Pre… Pro… Mmm… W-wait,” you stammer and gather your thoughts. “This is Preposterous Princess.”

The Joker sighs, definitely unamused at your 5th call in a row to tell him what’s going on at your routine consultation: he barely finished counting the ammo boxes he received with the shipment after you left and going over the heist scheme for next week it’s made impossible by Y/N.

“Pumpkin, I will remind you that’s not what I meant when I said that word. It was Preposterous COMA Princess!! Two separate entities, alright? We need to have a serious discussion after you get home.”

“I have to go, Pro… Ummm… Preposterous Princess is at…at the gates,” you say it very fast and hang up, excited to share news with him.

Yet The Clown is already acquainted with the whole development on your condition: the doctor’s office contacted him after your departure in order to brief him on Y/N health. The blood clot is a bit smaller since it keeps reabsorbing; the cognitive issues are there, tests ended up pretty much within normal range except one, thus it’s necessary for the two of you to have the dialogue he mentioned about.

Five more minutes and you barge in his office holding your yellow teddy bear and for the first time in his life The Joker can’t help regretting he’s about to burst someone’s bubble.

You approach the desk and set the ultrasound picture in front of him waiting for his reaction; your bright smile doesn’t go well with how gloomy he appears, literally an understatement anyway.

“Baby,” you tap the image just in case he didn’t realize what he’s staring at.

“I know, Pumpkin. We can’t keep it.”

“Hm…?” your smile gradually dies out as you comprehend he’s not on the same page with your wishes.

“We can’t keep the baby, it’s very dangerous given you merely survived a severe trauma. I was told it’s nearly impossible for you to have kids, that’s why I didn’t use… Anyway… I admit this one’s on me and the conclusion is… … we can’t keep the baby.”

“No baby?” you sniffle.

“Nope, it would be too harsh on your body. Plus, you won’t be able to use your anti-inflammatory medication if you’re pregnant.”

“I want baby!”

“Are you deaf??!” J slams the desk with his fist, annoyed. “You can’t have a child, it could kill you. Do you want to perish?!” he rises from his chair.

“No… I want you and baby.”

“No way in hell!” he snarls at your defiance.

“Why can’t I h-have baby? Because… because I’m stupid?” you cuddle with your plush toy, heartbroken at his approach.

“You’re not stupid, but I’m beginning to have doubts if what I told you doesn’t make sense!”

“I want baby!” you whisper on the verge of crying.

“I want baby,” The Joker mocks and watches your demeanor change: it doesn’t take a genius to detangle the mystery of how hurt you seem.

“Are…are you making fun of me?!”

The King is a jerk, no doubt about it. Despite his obvious flaws he never ridiculed someone’s disability; it’s simply beneath him. One could say this is a new low for him and he cannot erase it: Y/N’s cognitive impairment is clearly sacred ground he trespassed on a whim when he shouldn’t have.

“If…if you were like me… I wouldn’t laugh at… at you,” you wipe your tears, sobbing. “I’m not smart… anymore but I can m-make decisions, ok? I want baby!”

“I said no!” J yells, fired up you won’t listen to reason.

“I don… I don’t care!” you storm out of the office and trip on the carpet, almost falling to the ground. “It’s my baby!”

“It’s mine also unless you have another boyfriend!!”

**************

You’ve been gone for the last hour; it’s a big place yet it shouldn’t be so difficult to find one’s partner.

The Joker dials your number and inquires as soon as you blow your nose on the other side of the line.

“Is this The Preposterous Princess?”

Dead air again; Y/N isn’t in the mood to speak to the man she can’t forgive for his transgression. In addition to him disregarding her intention of keeping the offspring, he made her feel dumb and that’s unforgivable.

“Y/N, where are you?!” J descends the steps leading to the basement, the last area he didn’t searched for his missing woman. He opens the boiler room, nothing. The pantry reveals zero clues either. The janitorial supplies closet is a different story; a box of sponges flies by his ear, immediately accompanied by a hateful tone:

“Go away!”

“You almost broke my nose,” he over exaggerates. “What are you doing here anyway? I’ve been looking all over the house!” “I’m hiding baby from you,” you clearly enunciate without stammering.

“Give me a break,” he drops on his knees in front of you. “I don’t want you to kick the bucket, why is that a bad thing?”

“I want baby!”

“Stubborn mule, you sound like a scratched CD that skips and skips and skips,” he barks at your persistence.

“Hm?” you crinkle your nose.

“Scratched CD!” he brings his face close to yours, pleased an opportunity for his plan has arisen. “First of all, if you want to keep the kid you have to promise not to die; second, I have no desire to become a father and third of all pick a card!” he shoves them in your fingers, perfectly aware that if you can’t process all the stuff he’s yapping at an amazing speed, you’ll get distracted and forget you’re mad at him; including one of your favorite games to the equation should seal the outcome.

“Hm?”

“Chop, chop, pick a card Pumpkin!”

You suspiciously pluck your item and then shove it back in the bundle.

The Joker steals a kiss while figuring out your card and you protest:

“I don’t… I don’t want your four kisses!”

“That’s too bad, I do come with four kisses, it’s a bundle deal!” J dismisses your logic connected to this morning’s algebra lesson. “Is this your card?” he shows you the Jester card and your mouth opens in amazement.

“A-ha!”

He fights with himself if he should disclose the secret: you don’t seem totally diverted and his plot could misfire due to inaction.

It’s not worth it.

“Do you know how I select the correct card?”

“No.”

“Each single time Pumpkin you invariably pick The Joker card.”

You sulk at the revelation since it’s true: you don’t recall sorting another card from the deck.

“I do… I always choose you…”

He doesn’t have a response and the chat is taking a strange turn, not precisely what he was aiming for.

“Yeah, well… good for you, Princess…” he stands and offers his hand to help you up.

Another smooch as bonus for his assistance whilst The Queen pouts at his impertinence: he has such a nerve!

Perhaps because he comes with four kisses.

It’s a bundle deal.

 Also read: MASTERLIST

You can also follow me on Ao3 and Wattpad under the same blog name: DiYunho.

[cornholio4]

Down with the Miracle Queen

author’s note: A comment by Gryphinwyrm7 on my End of the Queen’s Reign inspired me to do this. Consider this a spiritual sequel to that story even if it’s not the same universe. I have only seen a  bit of the episode online but I have read about it and working with what I have. Haven’t seen the first part of the finale yet (though read about it online of course) with episodes still yet to air, not because of some controversial content but because the show has the most bizarre air schedule I have ever seen for a show. I have seen episodes aired out of order before but usually they don’t do it for the season finale. In here Lukanette gets together and stays together. What does it say when I don't want a redemption for Chloe and Lila and yet I am a She Ra: Princesses of Power fan who does want one for Catra? Plus as a fan of Once Upon a Time I was rooting for Rumpel to get his redemption? But I didn't want one for Starlight Glimmer and still don't?

Marinette Dupain-Cheng had just been declared the new Guardian of the Miraculous and her mentor Master Fu was now retired. Plus while Chloe as Miracle Queen had the Miraculous box (including her own one) taken from her, she would now have to retire her temporary Miraculous holder allies since Hawk Moth now knew who they were.

It was bittersweet and Chloe losing her idol worship of Ladybug didn’t really sting, she did truly hope that Chloe would learn how to better herself. Even despite having been bullied by her for years and everything else she had done but it seemed that for Chloe, she would always go back to doing only what was best for her own self interests.

She was about to bug out when she noticed a video camera on a stand and curiously she went to inspect it and saw it was still rolling. It was at a position where it would catch what just happened.

Then a man came up to her and told her “sorry Ladybug, I forgot about it. I was doing a blog video about Paris but then everything happened and I went to hide. I can delete the footage if you want.....”

Marinette then thought about an idea and wondered if she should pull through with it. It seemed a bit mean and a bit unfair but she realised and remembered it was thanks to Chloe, Hawk Moth had so many victims from her school.

It was thanks to Chloe she had to save her parents’ life from a train accident. Just now it was thanks to Chloe that Hawk Moth was so close to winning.

“Actually, do you think I can please have that footage and I will make sure you will be credited for it.” Marinette asked and the man was happy to comply with the request from one of Paris’ superheroes. He gave his name and Marinette thanked him for it after getting the footage.

She needed to take the video footage to Alya for her plan, just because she will now have to retire Rena Rouge doesn’t mean that Alya can’t help her.

Chloe was beyond furious upon getting home to the hotel and learning that her parents were now lovey dovey with eachother. After all she had done for Paris and Ladybug herself, she does this? Ridiculous, utterly ridiculous!

She will make sure Ladybug rues the day and she will find a way to get her Miraculous back one way or another and then she will make sure that Queen Bee will go down as Paris’ best superhero.

After taking a few hours to vent by punching her Ladybug stuff, she decided to text Sabrina about how unfair everything was. However she had seen that Sabrina texted her already. She looked at it and was wide eyed:

Sorry Chloe but we can’t be friends, you becoming obsessed with Ladybug was one thing but this....

Chloe blinked and then furiously wondered how that brat got off texting her like this and for what reason? Whatever, she will come crawling back just like the last time she had done this and tried to replace her with Dupain-Cheng.

She went on the computer and saw that something posted a quarter of an hour ago on Cesaire’s Ladyblog was gaining traction. She sneered and knew it would be congratulating Ladybug and Chat Noir for what happened but clicked on it.

It was titled “Direct Message from Ladybug” and there was a video with her talking to the camera:

“Greetings ladies and gentleman of Paris, I am Ladybug and I am sorry to say that today Hawk Moth came the closest he had ever come to actually winning. I am sorry to say that the secret identities of my allies except for Chat Noir have been compromised. Hawk Moth knows who they are and I can’t risk their saftey but relying on them again, I trust them but I refuse to put the saftey of them and their loved ones in jeopardy. It is all thanks to a betrayal by one of our own. Chloe Bourgeois who you know as Queen Bee betrayed us and sided with Hawk Moth.”

The video then showed the footage of what happened but anything that could reveal the identities of the other Heroes were edited out along with a caption crediting who caught the footage. It clearly showed Queen Bee continuing to fight against Ladybug and Chat Noir even without the Akuma. The audio managed to be heard as well.

Chloe fumed thinking that Ladybug was truly dead to her at last.

“I am sorry that I feel I had no choice but to post this message but you must know this. Chloe Bourgeois sided with Hawk Moth due to the fact that I didn’t want to jeopardise her saftey or her loved ones by letting her to continue being Queen Bee. I can no longer trust her and I am afraid that my previous trust in her was misplaced. I am sorry about all this: Bug out!”

The video ended and Chloe went back on her tantrum, deciding she needed air she went to her balcony only to have her ears filled with furious shouting. She looked down and saw the hotel was swarmed with an angry mob.

The video imploded with views and shares, easily becoming the most viewed and popular anything on the Ladyblog in its history. It easily eclipsed any interview with Lila Rossi.

Chloe had to stay inside for the foreseeable future for her saftey, the mob caused several VIP customers to check out in no time. The Media were in frenzy with this but then came the interviews:

Several parents of students at Francois Dupont talked about how Chloe bullied just about everyone without consequences thanks to her father’s status as the Mayor. Several parents who were in that Parents day relayed the story of how the Mayor wanted to arrest her daughter’s most bullied victim for stealing based on no evidence and fired the police officer when he refused to do so.

The interviews of the students themselves told similar stories and the most popular one came from Aurore Beaureal:

“She had directly told me that once a villain was always a villain, yet at the time I was only akumatized once and she had been akumatized twice before. I guess she was right though.”

Her father had to tell her that the school was suspending her indefinitely while this was going on. Principal Damocles had most parents refusing to let their children attend school with not only a huge spoilt bully but a willing accomplice of Hawk Moth.

But then the interviews of the ones who were on the train she caused to be out of control come out and then things really picked up more than they did before if possible:

It turns out her father had to bribe them into staying quiet about it and not seek legal charges against her. Her father had told them it was a juvenile mistake that will not be repeated and they begrudgingly agreed for the moment, especially since Queen Bee was helping the Superheroes afterwards. They were now going forward with it saying they now regret not doing it before.

Plus the fact that a couple of those passengers were the parents of Marinette Dupain-Cheng, who was Chloe’s most bullied victim.

Her father resigned from office, he knew his days were numbered and felt better to do it gracefully than be forced out.

Then came the authorities from the French Government who were seeking on trying Chloe on top of the yet to be filled cases against her.

It turned out they were watching Paris intensely and were waiting for a sign of anyone working for Hawk Moth of their own free will. The Government and City Council had issued a law saying someone couldn’t be prosecuted for actions not done of their own free will while being Akumatized. But if they had done so of their own free will and out of being Akumatized........

Chloe eavesdropped on conversations her parents had with their lawyers and knew how much of a hopeless case everything seemed for their end. There were talk that they didn’t know if they could get her out of having to attend a juvenile facility and going to an adult prison when she was of age.

She tried to call her two friends Sabrina and Adrien but Sabrina had blocked her number and Adrien didn’t respond except for one message:

Sorry Chloe. I will always treasure my friendship with you.

Even her oldest friend had turned against her it seemed.

She just sat waiting for Hawk Moth to use her feelings to Akumatize her, which never came. He was angry at how close he was to winning and while he could Akumatize her now, if she failed then she would be no use to her anymore.

With her in custody he can no longer rely on her making new victims for him to Akumatize anymore. She was no use to him anymore and so was discarded as an ally. The same thing he will do so without a second thought to Lila Rossi if he saw her no longer useful.

DDDD

Marinette still couldn’t help but feel sorry for Chloe throughout it all, but deep down knew that Chloe had brought this on herself.

Things were hectic to her and not just her new responsibilities as the Guardian of the Miraculous. She had stopped going after Adrien thinking he would be happy with Kagami and now started a relationship with Luka.

She was feeling guilty that it felt like he was a backup choice but told her not to worry about it, the directions of music changes at a whim he had told her.

She admitted that she was now happy with Luka and felt the good thing about having to retire with Viperion was that she realised it could have impacted their teamwork with him being her boyfriend.

Nadja Chamack told her parents that she was fighting pressure and requests from studios executives to try and get Marinette to be her guest on Face to Face. They thought it would bring in the ratings to interview Queen Bee’s most bullied target and knew Nadja was friends with her parents. She felt that Marinette didn’t need this attention and the Dupain-Chengs were grateful.

On the bright side along with having a boyfriend, she had gotten her website set up and there were no shortages of a demand of the Ladybug and Chat Noir dolls she was selling.

After school she had Sabrina nervously walked up to her and she greeted Sabrina, Sabrina didn’t say anything but she could tell that Sabrina had quit ties with Chloe. She was always looking down and silent when Chloe was brought up and made no effort to defend her.

“Marinette, after Chloe......... I realised I don’t really have any other close friends and our partnership plus everything that happened.......... I don’t know if you want to give being friends another shot?” Sabrina asked softly and Marinette smiled in response. She may regret giving Chloe her second chance but she was confident she will not do the same with Sabrina.

After seeing the answer Sabrina jumped with joy and told her “so I am guessing you don’t want your homework done but anything you want done instead? I could help you with your website or help make everything, since we’re friends now you don’t have to pay me! I hear you babysit so I could do it for you and I hear you are going out with Luka, I could spy on him to learn all his likes for you!”

Alya and Marinette’s other friends were fighting back laughs looking at them while Marinette was exasperated. She then started their new friendship by starting a long explanation of what friends actually do and don’t do for eachother.

[nellie-elizabeth]

Suits: One Last Con (9x10)

Okay, so then what happens next is that Harvey and Donna move to Seattle, and they become closer than ever to Rachel and Mike. At least once a week, Harvey and Mike have a "guy's night" while Donna and Rachel have a "girl's night." And then, gradually, they realize they've ended up with the wrong people. So they all get divorced and then Donna and Rachel become a couple, and Mike and Harvey become a couple. Someone please tell me they're writing that fic.

Oh, sorry. Was I supposed to talk about the episode? Let's get to it.

Cons:

I predicted last week that this episode would be overcrowded, and I wasn't wrong, exactly. I'm grateful that the conflict with Faye was over before the midpoint, so we could have a nice long goodbye with all of the characters. But while I do enjoy that, I also must admit it doesn't make a lot of sense. Faye was a season-long threat, and she's dispatched a third of the way through the finale. It just goes to show that as interesting of a villain as she might have been in the beginning, she didn't really matter. She was a figurehead. She didn't really change anything about these people and their perspectives on their lives. It all felt pretty pointless in the end.

No matter how much fan service a finale has, there are always going to be things that get missed. For example, it seems strange to me that Jessica couldn't have made a cameo at Louis' wedding. She's working on another show for the same creators; how hard would it have been to get her in for a few minutes? And I hate that Alex was the one to go to Katrina. On the one hand, I get it. They needed to find something for Alex to do in this episode, because he's been a pointless character for several weeks. But Harvey and Katrina never get a moment of apology, and that really sucks.

I've talked a lot in these reviews about my issues with Donna and Harvey. It's not that they're painful to watch, or actively unpleasant. The actors do a good job. It's perfectly serviceable. But I think I've finally figured out one of the reasons why they never quite clicked for me as a couple. Harvey is always talking about how Donna knows him better than anyone. But this is what editors mean when they say "show, don't tell." Donna knows Harvey. We've seen it throughout the years. But how does she show that she knows him? Well, she has the supernatural ability to read his mind and predict his requirements whenever the plot requires it. And she acts like is mommy just as often as she acts like his girlfriend, guiding him through his emotions like an enabler.

But Harvey can say again and again that Donna is the one for him, and how well she gets him... and then we can see Mike in the same episode, showing that same thing, instead of telling it. I'm not even pushing for a romantic interpretation, necessarily. It's just that Mike comes in, and they have their quippy banter. They work together to take down Faye. They re-enact Mike's interview with Harvey but in reverse. They find excuses to touch each other. And in an episode that involved two weddings and a health scare, the single most emotional moment in the episode is when Harvey tries to leave Mike's apartment dramatically after telling Mike he's never stopped trusting him, and Mike says "no," like the very idea of Harvey losing his license is torture to him. They have the chemistry. They have the beating heart of this show, and that's been true from day one. It makes the romance between Harvey and Donna pale in comparison.

Also, in an episode that had to accomplish so many things, so quickly, it was odd to add in that little health scare for Sheila. Why did her pregnancy have to have complications? It felt like something to add just to make for some more drama, but we really didn't need that. I'm glad that mother and daughter were both okay.

Pros:

I was always going to rant and ramble a lot in this review, since it's the last one for the show. But just because I had a lot to say in the "cons" section doesn't mean there was nothing to enjoy here. Let's start with my girl Katrina.

As I said, I was irritated that she and Harvey didn't have an on-screen reconciliation. But I am so, so happy for her that she gets to be name partner! It's so refreshing to have a character arc on this show be about a woman choosing her career over her love life, and having that be an empowering and rewarding choice to make. I'm all about it. She gets to come back to the firm, newly powerful, and stand with Alex, Samantha, and Louis.

Samantha and Alex were both underutilized in this finale, but I get it. I'd rather focus on the longer-standing characters, too. And the show did a good job of making this episode the end of an era for Harvey and Donna, and yet also a new beginning for the others. The image of the new firm name on the wall was really lovely. I especially liked that Samantha acknowledged how crazy it was that they'd kept changing the name, and decided that they can't change it anymore for at least five years. But Litt Wheeler Williams Bennett will be stronger for Katrina's presence among them.

Louis has one of the best glow-ups in TV history. There were times over the years where I didn't think I'd be able to forgive him. I still selfishly hold a grudge for that time when he physically attacked Mike. But at the end of the day, he has actually grown as a person. This is a great example of show vs. tell, actually. We've seen it all season - Louis has been calmer. He gets angry or worked up about something, but he doesn't fly off the handle. When he tells his therapist that he's ready to have him as a friend and have him officiate the wedding, it doesn't feel like empty words. Louis might still need therapy in his life, but he has the tools now to know how to get himself the help he needs. It was so fun to see his "final form" as it were. And then we see it put to the test, as Sheila goes into labor during their wedding ceremony. You might expect him to freak out, but he's calm. He's planned for this, and he's there to be supportive for Sheila during this difficult time. Even while he's frantic for her and the baby in the hospital, he keeps a cool head and doesn't do anything he would later regret. Yay Louis! (ps - Louis learning that Donna and Harvey were leaving was more emotional for me than Harvey and Donna's wedding). (pps - that scene of Donna and Louis holding hands in the elevator gave me LIFE).

It was predictable that Harvey and Donna would step up and take advantage of the pre-arranged wedding - a lot of fans predicted this exact outcome. And while I've spoken extensively on my mixed feelings about their relationship, I can't deny the cuteness of the scene. We get that lovely proposal, with Harvey's mother's ring. We get Mike putting his arms around both of them, with his little quip about being unlicensed to officiate. We get Harvey and Mike gripping hands as Harvey leads Donna out for their first dance. It's all very cute, and I feel happy for the big Darvey fans out there. They totally deserve to see all of that happiness, even if I don't agree with the couple at its core. This is the inevitable conclusion, and it was done quite beautifully.

Will I ever be over how much Harvey and Mike love each other? I really don't think so. Let's talk about the best parts of the episode.

First of all, I already mentioned it above, but that scene at Mike's place was just golden. Mike walking in to find Harvey already there was great - they have always just barged in to each other's personal spaces and that's such a testament to the trust between them. And then you have Harvey telling Mike the truth, and telling him that he's going to have to go on the stand and risk getting disbarred. Mike's reaction is genuine panic, and then the two of them concoct a plan that will save the day. I just love the idea of Harvey going over there not to ask for Mike's help, but because he couldn't stand the thought of Mike thinking he didn't trust him. That's love, baby.

Then you've got the interview-in-reverse thing at the end. I could spend hours just squealing about the fact that Donna and Harvey are leaving the firm and moving to Seattle (my home town! woo!) to be with Mike and Rachel. Hey, maybe the four of them could all be in a poly relationship... but that's for fanfic to decide, I guess. Good finales need to come full circle, and also need to set the characters up for changing futures. This idea of Harvey moving to Seattle, of Mike being Harvey's boss, manages to do both. They are quippy and cute with each other, but also genuine. Harvey decides to leave the firm in order to take out Faye, but he also genuinely wants a fresh start. His life changed forever when Mike walked into his life, and I really do feel like that was the final message the show left me with, when the dust had settled.

So... yeah. I can't find it in myself to be a hardcore Darvey shipper. This finale was never going to cater to all of my needs. But at the end of the day, I was mighty pleased with several of the scenes, and I love where it left all of the characters, in terms of their careers and happiness. For this finale, I'll give a rating of...

7.5/10

For the show as a whole? Well, I hate to break it to anyone who's unaware of this, but Suits isn't that great of a show. It has a couple of really strong elements, but over the years its stories became repetitive, and there's quite a lot that doesn't actually make sense about these characters and their motivations. But I don't grade these shows based on objective quality. I grade them based on the elements that I enjoy most in a show. For years, whenever Suits came back on the air, it was one of the things I looked forward to most each week. I longed for every scrap of content between Harvey and Mike that I could possibly get. There are moments over the years that I have gone back and watched in a loop because of those two. I also liked the way the show deconstructed toxic masculinity, and had a feminist message that didn't feel like something out of an after school special. I had fun watching this show, and I will think of it fondly for years to come. The show over-all gets:

8/10

[fortisfiliae]

Against the Odds [James Potter x reader]

Prompt: College AU ❃ Jocks are disgusting. Too good looking, too aware of it, too drunk and too dumb. Or so you thought.

A/n: This is for @marvelcapsicle ‘s writing challenge. Congrats on 3.5k my lovely Beth ♥ I hope you like it! GIF is not mine. If you need to zoom in on the texts, just click on the picture to do so.

Find the other parts on my Masterlist linked in my bio!

Warnings: swearing, alcohol & awkwardness

Word count: 3.7k

Part 1 - Idiots like that

College was fine. Sure, sometimes it was tough during exams, but overall fine. That’s what you would tell your parents and friends when they texted you and asked how you were doing. Fine with a smiley face. Not the boring kind of fine, just the averagely “not much going on in my life” kind of fine.

So was this Saturday. You woke up around nine and noticed that your roommate Louise hadn’t returned from her boyfriend’s dorm, as usual on the weekends. Pleasant. Having the room to yourself in the morning was nice. If there had been a possibility to get a single dorm room, you would have taken the chance immediately. Privacy was underrated.

Not that you didn’t get along with Louise. She was a nice girl. But you were two very different kinds of people and she liked to talk. A lot. Both of you had realised how little you had had in common after a few weeks of sharing the room in freshman year, so you had given up on making friends with each other rather quickly. It wasn’t a result of malicious intent though. Just two people who didn’t have enough common interests to keep a conversation going. So you had started sharing the room while not getting into each other’s business too much. You helped each other out when something critical was going on, but other than that, you lived your lives separately. Almost like co-workers who got along well at work, while both knew they would never spend a day with each other in their free time.

This Saturday, after lying in bed and scrolling through all sorts of social media for half an hour, you decided to lie in bed some more and picked up your laptop to watch an old season of Brooklyn 99 on Netflix. Some minutes into the second episode your phone vibrated once and you saw Remus Lupin’s name popping up on your screen.

A frat party. Wow. Not a thing you would have thought to be attending ever again. You had tried it out once when your best friend from back home had texted you to “come out of your shell more” and enjoy college. The party hadn’t been enjoyable a tiny bit tough, so you’d gone home and had called it quits for partying.  Remus was right though - you needed friends. It wasn’t that you had no one at all, but none of the people you were really close with were going to your uni, and anyone you had met here wasn’t worth the effort to stick with. Remus was a good guy - a friend of some sorts. You had partnered up with him several times in English class and got to know that even if he was quiet at first, he also was witty, smart and reliable.  You weren’t entirely sure why he would go out of his way and invite you to a party. You knew he wasn’t asking you out; that wasn’t the kind of relationship you had with him. But if he was nice enough to ask you, you should be nice enough to at least show up there for a minute.

So it was official. You would go to a frat party. Yikes. Even if the thought of drunk jocks put you off a little, you were excited to meet new people. Remus and his friends would surely be nice to hang out with and if they were like him, they would be far from the pissed-drunk guys you once fled from.

It was a few minutes past ten when you were on your way to the Kappa Delta Rho fraternity. A few minutes past ten and you already regretted your outfit choices. The burgundy top and black jeans felt fine, what you were worried about were the sneakers. Some groups of girls here and there were swarming to the house as well, but almost all of them wore high heels. The one’s that wore flats were rocking ballerinas and left you feeling like a fashion outlaw, a tomboy with no manners. Whatever - at least you weren’t going to suffer in half an hour. No one could make you believe that those shoes were even slightly comfortable.

When you could see the frat from afar, you took out your phone to send Remus a quick message.

Once you entered the house you were glad to be wearing your tomboy shoes. Someone had already spilt a gallon of sticky liquid all across the floor, and most girls struggled to walk without slipping. Joke’s on them.

As you looked across the room to check for a familiar face, Remus suddenly appeared between two people whose backs were facing you. He squeezed through the crowd and greeted you with a smile.

“Hey there,” he called, loud enough to drown everyone else’s voices and the music coming from another room. “I’m glad you came.”

“Hi,” you said as he pulled you in for a quick hug. “So am... I.”

He grinned knowingly. “Doesn’t sound too excited.”

“Well. I don’t come to these sort of things usually.”

“I know, I know.” He turned his head to watch the people storming in. Everyone seemed to be excited to get drunk and kill off their brain cells. “It’s not my favorite time to be here either.”

A girl next to you almost tripped and held on to your shoulder to stabilize herself, apologizing curtly before she went off. “Why are we here then?”

“To pretend we like being squished and yelled at,” he laughed, then turned around and started walking to the next room. “Come on, I saved us some seats.”

You followed him to what you assumed to be the living room. It was big enough to fit fifty people; they must have removed some furniture for the party. There was a table tennis table on the far end, where some dudes already arranged solo cups to play beer pong.  In the center of the room stood four leather sofas, two four- and two two-seaters, all facing each other in a rectangular constellation, with a wooden coffee table in the middle. One of the smaller sofas was unoccupied even though the room was packed, which left you guessing this was the reserved seat Remus had been talking about. You were right, he headed directly there and sat down on the end of the four-seater, next to a dark-haired guy in a leather jacket, leaving the two-seater for you alone.

When you finally reached it and sat down, you glanced around the room once more, still baffled why all those people would rather stand and be jostled every other second than take a seat. Your eyes darted back to Remus and you watched him talking to the guy next to him. The stranger’s hand rested comfortably on Remus’ shoulder, his tired grey eyes drawn to Remus’ mouth as he spoke until he suddenly looked over to you. His glance made you realize how awkwardly you were sitting. Your back perfectly straight, both hands folded on your lap like you were in church class. While you tried to relax and sit like a normal human being, who wasn’t extremely nervous to be at a random party, the guy drew Remus’ attention back to you by nodding your way.

Remus turned his head towards you and leant over the armrest so you could hear him better. “Oh, sorry. I haven’t introduced you yet,” he said. “This is my... This is Sirius.”

You reached out your arm to shake Sirius’ hand and introduced yourself, but didn’t miss the dirty look he sent Remus’ way.

“I’ve already heard a lot about you,” Sirius said, his nonchalant expression back in place, as he let himself fall onto the cushion again.

“Oh really? Only good things I hope,” you joked and begged he wouldn’t notice that you’ve never heard of him before.

Sirius grinned and clicked his tongue. “Of course.”

“So,” Remus said and raised both arms as if he was presenting the house to you. “What do you think? Not that bad here, huh?”

“Yeah, well,” you breathed and looked around the room again. “Not bad when you’re not getting pushed around in the crowd. How could you even save those seats when it’s full to the brim in here?”

They looked at each other with pleased smirks and Remus laughed inaudibly.

“Are you some sort of VIPs, or what?” you asked when suddenly your eyes went wide in realization. “Wait a minute... Oh my god, are you frat guys?!”

Now both of them laughed, Sirius scratched the side of his neck and laid his arm around Remus’ shoulder again. “We’re not.”

“They’d wish though,” Remus added.

Your hand landed on your chest automatically, thinking of how often you had made nasty comments on jocks and frat guys before. “Whew,” you whispered to yourself and swallowed down the lump in your throat. “Honestly, I was just preparing my funeral. But really, I wouldn’t have thought you were idio-”

“MAKE WAY FOR THE HOLY GRAIL!” Someone’s obnoxiously loud voice interrupted you. “For the golden liquid! The refill you all long for!” People started to part from the archway to the other end of the living room, until a tall black-haired guy came through, carrying a beer keg on his shoulder. He looked at you on his way to the beer pong table and winked. “No need to ask darling, I’ll save one for you!”

“Idiots like that,” you said as you pointed to the guy with your thumb and turned back to Remus and Sirius.

“Um yeah. We’re not in the frat, but our best friend is,” Remus explained and grinned again. “That’s him.”

Well fuck.

“I’m... sorry,” you said and tried to think of a way to take back every word that had left your mouth in the last five minutes. “I didn’t want-”

“All good,” Sirius chuckled as he stood up from the couch. “No big deal, we already know he’s an idiot. You guys want a beer?”

You just nodded along with Remus, hoping he wasn’t mad either. When Sirius had left to get drinks you took a moment to fester in your embarrassment, hiding your face in your hands, your elbows pushing down onto your upper legs. “I am so, so sorry. I’m just stupid.”

“Come on.” Remus’ voice still sounded like he was amused by the situation. Either he really didn’t care or he was good at hiding it. “I already know how you despise frats. You’ve told me. A hundred times I guess.”

“I know! And you’ve never told me your best friend was the cliche beer-keg-carrying frat king!”

“Isn’t that funny?”

“It’s not!” You watched Remus laughing, he let his head fall back onto the cushion of the backrest, his hand holding his tummy like he was a little boy. “I’m so embarrassed. Oh god.”

“It’s okay. We’re good, okay?” Remus said and you could tell he still had trouble hiding his grin. 

“Yeah, I guess.” You still felt like an absolute bitch and hoped Sirius would return soon, so you could hide your face behind a solo cup. Sirius! A good change of subjects. “So,” you began and quickly turned your head to check if he was still out of sight. “Sirius, huh?”

Remus’ grin vanished as soon as he saw your wiggling eyebrows. He moved closer to the armrest and leant forward towards you. “What about him?”

“Is there something going on? Between you? You and him, him and you.”

“It’s complicated,” he sighed and seemed to check for him as well. “Always complicated with us.”

“Oh.” Dropped a brick again. “Sorry. You never tell me about those things. Remus, you need to start telling me about all this!”

A tiny smile reappeared on his face. “Okay, okay. I’m gonna.”

When Sirius returned with two cups in his hands, he wedged himself back to his place next to Remus. Just when you started to wonder why he had only brought two cups, you noticed some abrupt movement from the corner of your eye. You looked over to your right just to witness Beer-Keg-Frat-King jumping onto the free spot next to you from behind the couch and were able to avoid being spilled on just in time.

“Whoops, sorry darling. My apologies,” Frat King said as he wiggled on his cushion and offered you one of the cups he held. “Promised I’d save one for you.”

He was the complete opposite of what you had imagined Remus’ friends to be like. Tall, broad shouldered, confident. Too confident, too aware of how good he looked. Messy black hair that looked like he just got out of bed and hadn’t bothered to do anything with it, because he was attractive anyway. The pair of round hipster glasses made him look cute and you hated that too. Careless, loud, annoying. Probably a huge douchebag as well. 

“James, this is Y/N from my English class,” Remus introduced you and made you realize how long you must have stared at Frat King.

“Oh, I thought so already. I’m James,” he said and raised the cup again. “I’d shake your hand but I’m a little occupied.”

“Hi,” you answered and took the cup. “And thank you.” Why the hell were you so nervous?

“How come I’ve never seen you around?”

Because you don’t care about your surroundings. “Um. I guess I’m not around much. I don’t go out very often.”

“What a shame, huh.” James grinned before he took a sip. What a fucking shame.

The hours passed quickly, you kept talking to Remus the most because he was the one you felt most comfortable with. James and Sirius shared some stories from freshman year and how they’ve managed to stay drunk for sixteen hours straight once. Smart? Not really. But quite impressive nonetheless.   Later on, another frat guy brought a tray full of shots and just placed it on the coffee table where you were sitting. Twelve of the small glasses were still full, so Remus did the math and placed three shots in front of each one of you. You took part in the first two rounds but backed out at the third. Lukewarm vodka was the worst. So James sacrificed himself and gulped down the last shot for you. Heroic. 

It was past one a.m. already when three other guys asked Remus, Sirius and James if they wanted to play beer pong. They agreed, so you got yourself another beer and watched them making fools of themselves for a while. All of them swore they were usually really good at targeting, and blamed it on the shots every time they missed a cup. After a while of watching them, when they were almost done, you felt yourself getting dizzy from the thick, warm air inside and told Remus that you would go outside for a minute. He offered to come with you, but you teasingly declined. You couldn’t stop them from winning now.

The house was still packed, so you wriggled through the crowd and tried not to get spilled or puked on until you finally made it to the other side of the living room and opened the glass door to go out on the terrace. The backyard was beautiful, even in the dark. The grass was nice and well kept, they had a pool and sunbeds all around. No flowers or fancy plants, but you guessed the pool must have been enough work to maintain for a bunch of twenty-year-old guys.

A girl was smoking a cigarette, but quickly stubbed it out and went back inside when you walked towards the pool. You were alone for a minute. Good. It wasn’t silent, the blaring music was still present, but a lot more damped than inside. You sat down sideways on a sunbed, just breathing in cool air and scrolling through Instagram for a while, until you heard the glass door behind you rattling and the music getting louder for a moment. Someone was walking your way. You turned around and saw him. James. Beer Keg James with his hands in his pockets. Damn. 

“Mind if I sit with you?” His voice sounded completely different suddenly. Calm, quiet, likeable. Soft.

“Sure,” you said and moved a couple of inches to make room. “I was just about to leave anyway.”

“Oh, why?”

“I don’t know. Just tired and dizzy,” you shrugged but smiled at him. “Did you win?”

“Of course!” He sighed when he sat down and moved his arms backwards to support his weight on his hands. “What a... What a night, huh?”, he asked and started chuckling. “Sorry I had one too many shots. You want to have some shots? I can get us some shots if you want. Nope? Okay, no shots.”

His babbling made you laugh and you shook your head lightly. “What’s the matter with you?”

“With me?” he asked and placed one hand on his chest over-dramatically. “What’s the matter with you is the question. I’m not the one sitting outside while there’s a party going on in there.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Well yeah. But I wouldn’t have... Whatever. My point issss.” He seemed to be thinking of something to say.

“Your point issssss?” you asked.

“I don’t know actually,” he said and laughed again.

You looked him up and down, watched as he had a great time with only himself and had to smile as well. “How come you’re friends with Remus?”

“Huh?”

“You’re so... Different.”

He sat up straight, still grinning, but squinted his eyes. “How would you know that, darling?”

“I know Remus-”

“Yeah, but you don’t know meeee.”

“From what I’ve seen today, you’re as different as can be. No offence.”

“Sure, but that’s my party alter ego. My drunk self, you know?” He smiled foolishly again and looked so innocent all of a sudden.

“Okay, I guess you’re right,” you gave in. “I don’t know you. The sober you at least.”

“That’s what I’m saying! We should go out sometime.”

“What?” 

“Yes!”

“Why?” You wouldn’t have thought that this conversation would go this way. Did he just ask you out on a date?

“Because,” he said and hiccuped. “I think you’re cute.”

“You’re super drunk my dude.”

“I know. That doesn’t make you less cute though. So, next Wednesday?”

His overly confident attitude paired with a decent amount of vodka and beer in his system made you laugh again. How could one human have so much poise?

“James, I’m flattered, really,” you grinned. “But you’re so drunk, I don’t think you’ll even remember talking to me.”

“Of course I will.” Now he seemed a little upset. “Let me at least get your number then. You can block me anytime.”

“Really?” you chuckled.

“Yeah!” he said and took out his phone from his back pocket. “There you go.”

You shook your head while you typed in your phone number. If someone had told you, you would have given Beer-Keg-Frat-King you number tonight, you’d called them crazy.

“Alright, thanks,” James said and pressed the call button. “Let’s hope you didn’t give me a fake number, or this will be pretty unpleasant for both of us now.”

A second later your phone rang and James hung up the call. “There you go. You can save me as Jamesssss. With an S.”

“I think I’ll save you as Beer Keg James,” you said as you unlocked your phone.

“Creative.”

“Or Jimbo.”

“Oh god.”

“I’m surprised no one’s calling you Jimbo actually,” you laughed.

“That would be... Awesome and terrifying.”

“Why?”

“The guys have always called me James. I guess because they’ve got these ancient names themselves. Back in high school, we were a group of four. Just imagine us.” He raised his hand and looked into the distance as if he was telling you something really fascinating. “Remus, Sirius, Peter.” His voice went really deep. “And Jimbo.”

You laughed out loud, even threw your head back for a second. Who would have thought he was so funny? “You’re right. That wouldn’t fit.” He nodded and still chuckled at his own joke. “Alright Jimbo,” you said. “I think I’ll head home now.”

“Oh already? Why?”

“You should always leave on a high note,” you told him and winked. You winked? Dear lord. “Good night, James.”

You left him sitting on the sunbed and could hear his voice mumbling ‘Goodnight’ along with another hiccup.

Sunday morning was slow and heavy. The hangover wasn’t that bad actually. You weren’t nauseous, just really drained. After noticing that Louise hadn’t slept in your dorm once again, you got up and took a much-needed shower. The thought of having to put clothes on and leave the house to get food put you off, so you lay back down in your bed with your bathrobe on and contemplated watching Netflix on your laptop until you would starve to death. 

When you scrolled through the comedy section you had to think of James and how funny he had been yesterday. Stupidly drunk, but funny. You wondered if he would even remember any of it. Surely the alcohol had made him forget everything. Still, there was a tiny spark of hope that he had texted you, so you took your phone from the nightstand and your heart almost skipped a beat when you saw his name on your screen:

Find the other parts on my Masterlist linked in my bio!

A/n: That’s it! I could see myself doing another part, so if you’d like that, let me know! ♥

Permanent tags: @geeksareunique @ren-ela @marauderskeeper @way-obsessed5 @oreofrappiewithblueberry @draqcnheartstrinq @dogfatherpads @whatisthisthingcalledlife @obscurilicious @maralisa124 @sjriusblck @siriuslyimmoony @theboywhocriedlupin @igotmadskills @moonlitdiggory @jamcspotters @thisismysecrethappyplace @vulpecula-minor @emi-loser @snarledblack 

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Bold = Can not be tagged, sorry. If you want to be tagged/untagged let me know!

[talihahiman-blog]

Finding Home and Starting a Blog

All my life I have been a curious, questioning seeker of Truth.

I think most people encounter a severe period of Questioning in their lives before they fall back or abandon their quest and resign to stop even thinking about it. But some, like me, remaining searching for a Truth that seems immutable. Finally, Alhamdulillah, I feel like I have found that Truth. And its name is Islam.

This is not a discovery that I happened upon in an instant: there was no thunderbolt from the sky demanding I give myself to it, no massive horde trying to bend me into shape, no men with knives at my throat denouncing me for what I was; no angel hovering beside my pillow, no giant billboards on the highway trying to point me where it thought I should go, no conversion school telling me I was inherently flawed.

This discovery came from a lifetime of asking questions, not accepting vague, mediocre and uninformed answers, the realization that the only way I would find the right answers was to embark on exploring matters of the sacred on my own, and then reading, researching and experiencing first-hand several different paths to the Ultimate. 

Each path taught me profound lessons about myself and my relationship with God; each brought me closer to Him and helped clarify what was really important to me. 

Last year, in particular, after an unexpected end to my marriage, going completely broke, homeless and feeling worthless, I found myself lying on the floor of my greataunt’s bedroom one February evening, still alive after two suicide attempts in one night, with an acceptance that if I was still alive, it was because God willed it.

“You have to show me why You’re not letting me leave,” I demanded of God. “Clearly You’re keeping me here. And I don’t know why. I still don’t even know You like I want to. I have nothing left. I have no will to stay. I’d leave now with no regret if You just let me. But if You won’t let me go, then show me why You want me to stay.” It was a moment of utter surrender.

The answer was not immediate. 

There was a period of three months from that moment where I felt like I was in limbo. No answers, no direction.

In March I decided to move back with my family in Trinidad indefinitely to let the situation and my demand incubate. Slowly, I felt an urging in my heart to come back to NYC and start over, completely alone. It was not at the only option by any means - but it was the craziest possible option. I had nowhere to go, no money, no family here. Yet I was completely homesick. I never understood homesickness was an actual thing until I was in the place that I was born and raised in surrounded by my entire family, and all I could think about was NYC! 

To everyone else - and, admittedly, to even myself - it seemed as if I were jumping into shark-infested waters when I could barely even swim, but somehow I understood that coming back would be the catalyst for God’s answers to my sincere plea that February.

By mid-May, I used the money I saved from working in Trinidad to buy myself a plane ticket back to NYC on June 2. Getting off the plane with nothing but one suitcase and a carry on bag of belongings and marching into the homeless shelter, I steeled myself with faith that if God was bringing me back, He would get me through anything that life could possibly throw my way.

So began the most incredible turnaround of my life.

I was faced with trial after trial, and in oftentimes what appeared to be impossible situations, He always showed up. On time. I learned in a very tangible, undeniable way that a true relationship with God was not simply talking to Him, but an active conversation with Him: you talk, you ask, you explain - then you shut up, you watch and you listen. 

The answer is not always in obvious places.

For most of the year, I also identified as Hindu if anyone asked, and I hated when people asked because it never felt like it correct answer, which I found common to all to all of the religions I involved myself in at some point or the other. While the nature of the missing pieces would change, something was still missing anyway.

As a major world religion, naturally Islam was on my to-do list of religions to learn more about, but l thought that the only thing we might have in common is my belief that Jesus was a prophet and not the Messiah. The end! After all, it was a war religion that suppressed women, right? And they couldn’t listen to music, right? And they could only eat food from halal places, right? And you had to take a Muslim name! Right?! 

And how could I forget: a Muslim group in Trinidad known as the Jamaat-Al-Muslimeen was responsible for an attempted coup d’etat in 1990 that resulted in 24 deaths, severe injuries to the President of the country, and my birth merely three years later meant constantly hearing the story of the “bad Muslim guys” even long before 9/11. Then 9/11. Then ISIS. 

Everywhere I turned the narrative was the same: Islam is oppressive and dangerous. And living in NYC, where the new World Trade Center stands tall reminding us of the tragedy that befell this city and the world before it, it also reminded us constantly of that running narrative. 

How could I ever be one of them? 

Also as a languages enthusiast who loves spending time listening to different things from around the world, I suddenly started to stumble upon several Arabic and English Islamic songs that I really loved and listened to on a regular basis, moved, sometimes to tears, by the beauty of them and pure sense of joy, connection, and devotion contained within them. 

While there were many such songs which captivated me at that time, these two became very special to me:

Listening to these, I couldn’t help but think, “Perhaps we’ve got this Muslim thing all wrong.” 

But I couldn’t seem to get past that point.

It turned out that I started a new job this year, and in doing so found myself a close friend in a Bengali-American Muslimah from a neighboring department. She did not wear hijab nor was fussy about her shirt necklines, but was outspoken about her belief in Allah (SWT) and her excitement about Ramadan, as well as the role that Islam played (and continues to play) in her choices. For the first time, I had a wonderful Muslim woman in my inner circle who was my age, so relatable and so...normal. 

Almost like instinct, I began asking her to tell me more about her beliefs and was fascinated to hear of her stories about the Jinn and why Ramadan is important. Even though I was raised in a country where Muslims were very visible and Ramadan was celebrated visibly, I discovered through conversations with her that even Ramadan was not what I thought it was - and it was certainly more than just getting bags of yummy treats on Eid. (Barfi, kurma and gulab jamun, anyone?)

From the little I had learned through my new friend and my quickly-expanding catalog of saved Islamic songs on YouTube and Spotify, my interest grew quickly about what Islam really said about the big questions. Shortly before Ramadan, another new hire at our organization came in - she was my age, proud feminist, fresh out of breaking up with her neglectful boyfriend, a real move-maker and unapologetically herself. We, too, became instant friends and quickly found ourselves contemplating modern religious thought and female empowerment. She was also an Arab-American Hijabi.

Neither of these new Muslimah friends tried to tell me that I should be like them, but they were both excited to hear of my interest in Islam, and both proud talk to me about their understanding of and experiences in it. I was being pointed in one direction by God now, and it would have been stupid of me to ignore it.

As the days counted down to Ramadan and conversations continued, it felt very natural to decide that for Ramadan this year, I would sincerely undertake to learn about Islam with an open mind. I had technically already started, and I was surrounded by equally open-minded people who would support me along the way - it finally was the right time. I told my friends of my intent to learn for Ramadan but did not tell them that I would also fast.

I started off Ramadan reading the Quran on my phone telling myself I’d just get the gist of it, but after a week it was inadequate - there was so much I wanted to reread and explore that I needed the real thing in my hands. I desperately wanted to let my mind dance between its pages and get lost in it, find gems and other surprises and come back out with a new understanding. After scouring bookstores for the right first* Quran, I decided on a translation by Tarif Khalidi.

 *I already suspected at that point that this one would only be an introduction and that I would desire to read more ‘advanced’ translations and even the original text in Arabic after having a good initial understanding it in English, and this translation struck me as a beautiful cross between capturing not just the meaning but also the poetic and linguistic beauty of the original Arabic.

Ten days into Ramadan, on the second day with my new Quran, one thing was as clear as day: everything that was portrayed to me about Islam was wrong. All of it. The media and sociopolitical landscape is riddled with severe misconceptions and abuse of Islam, and I was completely unprepared for how tainted and ignorant the media perception is when I began to see what it is really is. Seeing past the misinformation and blatant lies being told, I knew that sharing the actual beliefs of Islam with others would become a very important task for me, even if I did not embrace it as my own.

There was also another issue I was praying about in the past few weeks and keeping myself open to answers for, and on the following day the answer came to me in the form of a particular episode of a podcast. I was just scrolling through and clicking on random things to listen to at work instead of my regular playlists to get me through the day, and although I’d been listening to such podcasts of several days at that point, that one was the one that confirmed to me that God was truly listening. Call it convenient confirmation bias if you will - that doesn’t change the fact that it was a direct answer. 

I found myself suspended in time, awestruck and understanding in a different way from any path I had ventured into before that this was it. 

It was what I’ve been on the hunt for my entire life. Everything I’ve done, felt, questioned, experienced, hoped for, run from, aspired toward and battled with myself about converged into that moment. I didn’t know precisely what I was looking for...until I found it.

Allah (SWT) spoke. My heart understood. And without even knowing it then, I accepted it.

I finally found my spiritual home. I am a Muslim. 

Up until now, my travels led me to places that were interesting and useful, but still hollow and incomplete. For the first time, I feel whole.

And so here I am on the 14th day of Ramadan, feeling like simultaneously everything is different yet the same. I have not officially taken Shahada with witnesses, but I know that the real moment when I became Muslim has already happened. It was on that eleventh day on work when time stood still, and everything became clear. 

There are still two more weeks left in Ramadan, and I’m not sure yet if I’d like to take Shahada on Eid, as I will be spending it with my Beng-Am Muslimah friend from work and her family again, and I think that would be a wonderful opportunity to do so. Otherwise, I may choose to wait some more and continue to study a while and find a community that I can be a part of it, not just my bubble of work acquaintances. But if I hold off to ‘study more,’ I feel like I will end up never taking it because I may never feel ‘ready’ - and Islam is a way of life and an ongoing act of submission to Allah (SWT), so I understand that officially converting is only the beginning. I really appreciate how often I see and hear the advice that one does not have to know everything to take Shahada - one simply has to be prepared to know, with the guidance of God.

Regardless of when I decide to take Shahada, I feel quite certain that my wandering soul is home at last, and I feel immediately called to share the things I am learning, contemplating and experiencing as a new Muslimah in NYC. Inshallah, it is my hope that someone out there will be able to either relate or at least learn something new, wonderful and unexpected about Islam along the way!

[takadasaiko]

The Blacklist Appreciation Week, Day Four: Favourite Story Arc

                               Tom Keen’s Redemption Arc

I’m a sucker for deeply layered, dark grey characters that get fantastic redemption arcs. That could explain a lot about me and my love for Tom Keen. 

Tom is a dangerous man, there’s no two ways around it. He’s highly intelligent, highly skilled, and highly trained. He comes from a background in which, even though he was adopted and spent around a decade with the Phelps family, he never felt love or like someone cared about him. Then, on top of that, he was taken in by the Major at the impressionable age of fourteen and taught to be a deep cover operative. We’ve seen that he has weapons training, martial arts training, surveillance training, enhanced interrogation training, and probably a lot more that he’s picked up over the years. He spent years in his field and came recommended as the best from the Major’s St Regis program when Red needed an operative.

The set up for his redemption arc started prior to the show. In 2.19, Tom states that he worked for Reddington for two years, which probably means that there was around a year or so that he fulfilled the contract he was working and protected Liz from the shadows. Somewhere in there, something changed. He met Liz face to face on July 9, 2010 at a cafe (1.21) when a friend set them up.

There was something about her that made him willing to cross his own boss and Raymond Reddington.

I’ve said before, redemption arcs aren’t for saints, they’re for sinners, and Tom certainly had a few sins to contend with. He lied to Liz all through their time dating and throughout their first marriage about who he was and he continued to run ops while married to her (R1.01) behind her back. He may have loved her, but he didn’t know how to love her.

“Liz, I know who you are. I took that for granted for a long time, but I don’t now.” (3.04)

There were several times in S1 that he could have come clean to her and chose not to. The first was when he found out that she had found his go-box (1.05), the second when he realized that she knew who he was and when he left Hudson on the doorstep (1.19), and the third was when he was tied to the chair in their dining room just before she broke his thumb (1.19). Every time, I think fear got the better of him. He wasn’t at a place to understand that to love someone, to really love them, they have to come before everything. The job, his own fears, his own trust issues... everything. As dark as S1 and 2A got between these two, it set up the redemption arc both for Tom and for them together up very nicely.

Tom’s first big step in his redemption arc was hopping on that plane from Dresden to DC and marching himself in to the courtroom. Yes, he killed Eugene Ames. He was responsible for the man’s death, but as Bud said later on, he went to the feds for her. He didn’t care what happened to him. He had no safety net, but he was going to try to be hers.

It was a good first step, but he definitely wasn’t there yet.

Fast forward a couple of episodes. Tom tried to go back to his old life, contacted the Major, and just about took a bullet to the face for it. He was even willing to sell out his boss again to the Germans that kidnapped them if they promised not to hurt Liz, but it wasn’t enough. When Liz asked him about his passports in 2.18 (after they had spent most of the episode together working on her case) he lied straight to her face. He goes back to that fear, which while it’s understandable, wasn’t the right move. He didn’t choose to trust her. Instead, he fell back on a lie instead of fessing up about Reddington, working for him, and everything that could have added yet another target on his back if Liz chose to go to Red with it and Reddington lashed out (which we’ve seen after Kate is a very valid fear).

Liz’s line in that scene is, to this day, one of my favourites in the show.

He needed to hear it. He needed her to walk away. Liz did it for herself, but it gave Tom the kick that he needed to jar him into a decision. What did he really want? Did he want to be the cold blooded operative that just walks away from a life and someone he loves? He could have gone solo. It would have been tough, but he could have. He could have taken his boat and left too. Instead, he called her up and told her everything about Reddington, working for him, and all the many, many things that could have gotten him in trouble. For the first time in full, he chose Liz over the job.

From there he chooses to fight for a man he hates because Liz cares, tells her what he knows about Red, stalls his plans to leave (with McCready on his heels) to help her track down Andropov, and then when she says she has to go... he lets her. He doesn’t protest, he doesn’t manipulate. Instead of reminding her that she said she’d run away with him he gives her that sad little smile of his and tells her that she won’t be back.

So he goes. He thinks she has everything she needs to clear her name and he leaves.

Until he finds out that she didn’t and that she’s still in trouble and he turns right back around and goes to the man that, last time they ran across each other, threatened to throw him in jail.

Tom gives up his own chance to run and start over to help Liz find her second chance (risking his life multiple times).

We see a huge change in him in the way that he approaches Asher Sutton during this time. Yes, he uses him, but the man was already chest deep in with the Russians, and when Asher is taken Tom saves Gwen and tries to save Asher. He doesn’t really fight Asher until the other man draws blood, and even when he kills him, there’s that moment where you can see the regret that takes over.

He works hard to give Liz her second chance, and when her name is (mostly) cleared.... he doesn’t push it. He doesn’t take advantage and he doesn’t tell her that he played a key role in helping clear her name. He waits until she’s ready.

He finds out he’s going to be a dad and I think that starts a whole new level of his arc. He regresses (because a good redemption arc isn’t easy) and goes to Gina for help when he feels pinned in by Red taking the Boston job off the table, but even that screw up is done in a different fashion than old ones. He acknowledges he was wrong and apologizes for the stress it’s put on Liz. Then, he gives Gina (who tried to kill him) a second chance, hoping that maybe he can provide to her what he’s received in that.

I’d say the next huge step is Tom and Liz’s wedding day when Gina shows up and Bud ends up dead in the Keens’ living room. He could have scrubbed the floors, buried the body, put on the tux, and said the vows (supposedly), but when he got there he went in immediately to Liz and confessed everything that happened and laid it out what that meant. His past was dangerous, which made their future dangerous, and he gave her a way out. This showed just how far he’s come since S1 where she was begging him for honesty at the table and he lied to her. This time, with the woman he loved and their child being in his life on the line, he chose to do what was right. He told her everything. He trusted her.

And she trusted him in return.

Not only did she walk down the aisle to marry him, but when Agnes was born and Kate offered a way out, Tom became a single parent for a month or more, solely responsible for their daughter’s safety.  I think he grew a lot during this time. Having a daughter, an innocent little soul watching his every move, has changed the way Tom approaches things. Yes, he can still kill, but he’s more hesitant since that moment in Cuba where he was about to break a man’s neck and found those little blue eyes staring at him from the crib. 

I think something clicked there. These days, he’s more hesitant to land the killing blow. Not that he won’t when his life depends on it, but he’s hesitant.

Tom Keen is still capable of dangerous things, but the events of his life since meeting Liz have changed his approach. This redemption arc has changed his approach. In S2 he didn’t even remember Eugene Ames’ name. It seemed to strike him as odd right then, like he realized just how terrible that sounded, yet in S4 when he tortured Little Nikos to find Mato to lead them to Agnes, you can see the guilt (something much newer in him) reflected in his stuttering apology to Kate.

He’s not perfect. He’s made good choices and bad. He’s chosen to go in behind Liz’s back when Kirk had Agnes and he chose to trust Howard when his father (seemingly) was using him to set Scottie up. Tom is human, but he’s more than a cold blooded killer. He’s assembled a soul, and that, without a doubt, is the arc that has a very special place in my heart, and I can’t wait to see where they take it next.

[missallycat]

Deal with it people. The new Gilmore Baby, is a Sophies Baby

That’s right, you read it correctly and is no apostrophe, if you’re not familiar with the term, the explanation is at the end of the post but you need to read it all 😉

“What if... ok what if it wasn’t the wookie, what if Rory is a surrgate for Paris to help Lorelai and Luke?” “Logan is far too obvious!”

No, she isn't. Yes!! Believe it or not IT IS THE OBVIOUS ANSWER! IT’S A SOPHIES BABY!!!! (clarification on the term for those who didn’t already know at the bottom of the post) Even the SHOW CREATORS SAID. “IF YOU WATCH THE REVIVAL IS PRETTY OBVIOUS WHO THE FATHER IS”.

Because let's look at the facts (ASP usually tries to be all about her facts) :

*clears troath, stands on a small stool, fixes her glasses*

Brace yourself folks! This is going to be LOOONG!

1. Besides the fact that Rory NEVER EVER DISCUSSED WITH LORELAI MUCH LESS WITH LORELAI AND LUKE ABOUT THEM CONSIDERING SURROGACY (watch again, those two are talking a lot and they DON'T talk about the surrogacy, Paris doesn't tell Rory. Don't you think it would have been IMPORTANT enough to be shown? "Hey mom? I know you're thinking about having a baby, I'll be your surrogate". Guess what: THEY 👏 DON'T 👏 TALK 👏 ABOUT 👏 IT! 👏). A surrogate has to have been a mother once already at least. From what I understand is not only about physical maturity to carry a pregnancy succesfully to term but emotional understanding to what is like to give birth.

2 Rory herself said she had "aged out" for a surrogate. In general terms, as a random surrogate for Paris, that is definitely out. We know Paris is nothing if not thorough, she only takes the best “breeders” (her words! lol not mine) and friends or not, Rory wouldn’t make the cut for a general surrogate. And even if it’s a private agreement, they are going throug Paris and Paris wouldn’t go for it, her reputation would be on the line.

 3. She can’t be a surrogate for Luke and Lorelai. Luke was totally against the entire thing and didn't really care to understand the proper procedure for it. So he'd never go for it, how are they going to get his sperm? Lol drugging him? Luke “proud papa Luke” who thinks Rory deserves the world and the entire milky way and should conquer it all, he'd never in a million years agree to Rory being a surrogate much less for them. For those who say it could be a donor's sperm. Luke was against adopting so what difference does it make adopting from conceiving a baby that is 100% NOT biologically theirs?

4. She can’t be a surrogate for Luke and Lorelai. Lorelai had already discarded the idea! THEY NEVER DISCUSSED IT WITH RORY! Rory had no idea they were thinking about this. And this IS something important that would have been shown to us, these two having that conversation. So she was NOT on board (Not to mention, they were fighting because of the book so they weren't exactly talking and/or in the best of terms). Surrogacy is not a process you can do without all the parties authorization and agreement lol I mean is not like “surprise, mom! I'm your surrogate! Even though you and your husband never donated anything from your bodies to make a baby! And you never even told me you were planning it, much less asked me to be your surrogate! I read your mind and decided to volunteer without any biological item of yours or your husband’s”.

5. The body language when Rory is telling her mom. Lorelai looks shocked, Rory looks sort of scared. That is not the body language of a happy moment to announce your mom “guess what the process worked I’m now officially your surrogate!” And if she were a surrogate for a stranger, not only the entire revival with all its conflicts would be absolutely moot but she wouldn’t tell people she is pregnant, she’d announce to a close few she’s going through the surrogacy process.

6. That bizarre very distant conversation she had with her dad. Christopher being distant from his daughter (his daughter who has a very flat stomach in those fitted pants she’s wearing so, #sorrynotsorry folks it was NEVER the Wookiee). About if he regretted not being there, involved with her life, if he regretted how things turned out her not growing up near him and him always being away not really a part of her life. Him saying it’s how it turned out and it was what had to happen at the time. If she was a surrogate why would she care about how her dad had any regrets or not, RIGHT BEFORE announcing the pregnancy to her mom?.

7. FULL.FREAKIN.CIRCLE: Contrary to what you may believe my darlings, full circle DOES NOT make Rory a carbon copy of Lorelai. It doesn’t make it that she’s going to have the exact same life as her mom. It means that despite all the changes she made and Lorelai made so that Rory would turn out different, that Rory would have chances and every door open in her world, that despite all the sacrifices they made so she would be responsible and thoughtful and wouldn’t do something so reckless as getting pregnant without PLANNING IT in the end she came full circle, to repeat the same starter point of her mom. WHAT SHE DOES NEXT IS ON HER. Why? Because Lorelai Leigh is a different if less buoyant and less brave person than Lorelai Victoria. She is in a different age (even if we went by ASP’s initial plans she wasn’t going to be 16, she was going to be a college graduate) with more experience, with a much stronger and larger support system than the one her mother had, with a different take on the experience of the single parenting, the take on what it is for the child. As happy as Rory was growing up loved by her mother she always missed her dad, her father figures of sort were Luke and RIchard, but she didn’t live with them and wasn’t that often close to them. With Richard she didn’t start getting close until she was 16. She has a different take on things. Full circle and endless loop aren’t the same thing. Oh the wonders of language

8. The entire thing with Logan, them saying goodbye (although with these two is never permanent  click on the bold letters and see what I mean), talking about the dynastic plan, them sleeping together regularly during that year in the life and looks like a lot longer than that, would be pointless then if she was a surrogate, why would she put herself in risk of misscarriage of alcoholic poison of the fetus, or of accidental pregnancy? (hello! trying to get pregnant as a surrogate so she would be in a fertile stage not taking birth control) and she drank heavily in all the episodes except at the wedding, she couldn't have been drinking if she was going through the surrogacy process; is the same way she can't be pregnant with the Wookiee. 

9. The Palladinos always always show the public EVERYTHING of importance. All the important characters may not be aware of everything but every RELEVANT detail is shown to the public. The same way she couldn't have had sex with Jess because they barely even touch each other, haven’t seen each other or talked to each other in YEARS (they discuss that), so although familiar and friends, they aren’t that close. And looks don’t impregnate. Same goes towards Dean, hugs don’t impregnate and he’s happily married with kids of his own. They’ve both moved on long and now are just good friends.

Rory, at the time we see her, only has feelings for Logan (she keeps going back to him every time)  and they don't talk about her sex life with Paul in the show, because is non existent at least during the "year" we see them.

10. ASP was very clear in an interview while not revealing the father of the baby she said they never meant for it to be a mysterious thing, that the answer is right there when you watch the show. They even included all sorts of easter eggs to point out who is the father of the baby!  She also said she told who the father of the baby was to both Alexis Bledel and Matt Czuchry. AND she told them they could do whatever they wished with the information but they have both been the kind to politely say that is Amy and Dan’s thing to say. Milo himself said Jess is not the father and also said his romantic story with Rory is over.

THREE MORE FOR BONUS POINTS ;)

*.1 The Wookie was in the begining of spring. She announces her mom by the end of Fall. is A YEAR IN THE LIFE, meaning a full year we see of them she’d have been showing or symptomathic or else she’d be giving that fetus severe alcoholic poison given the amount of drinks. SAME GOES IF SHE HAD BEEN PREGNANT BY LOGAN WHEN SHE’S FALLING ASLEEP DURING THE INTERVIEW PLEASE! keep in mind the times!! The Wookie was a metaphor to show how much Rory had lost her way. Yes cases exist that there are miracle babies that an educated mother simply believes because of the IUD she stopped her period and can’t get pregnant (very rare cases but the miracle babies exist) and she isn’t symptomatic so she doesn’t show regardless of gaining or not gaining weight, so that baby IS in risk because she didn’t take measures and could have done any number of things really bad for her pregnancy and just happens to deliver a healthy baby. But Rory’s case isn’t a rare case. The Palladinos said IT’S RIGHT THERE WHEN YOU WATCH IS THE OBVIOUS CHOICE. The Wookiee would make her a rare case, not the norm, (birth control does fail, doesn’t mean she didn’t use it with the wookiee it just means birth control fails and you’re more at risk when there’s regularity of intercourse) is not the Wookiee

*.2 For heaven’s sake is not Paul’s! Let’s assume they didn’t have a non existent sex life as it’s heavily implied since he hasn’t seen her in a while when we first meet Paul, and she forgets he’s even staying at her house. We see him only for one night at the begining of the year in the life, is A YEAR IN THE LIFE, please do the math, see there’s no baby, so please please, I can’t stress this enough. Rory doesn’t have the gestational period of an elephant... is not Paul’s.

*.3 Let’s go back to the surrogacy... hormones inyections, fertility treatment because they were going to use the surrogate eggs and Luke’s sperm. If she had been going through that process she wouldn’t have been drinking and wouldn’t have been sleeping with Logan much less the Wookie (at least with Logan she loves him) risking getting pregnant by some other person during the preparation for the surrogacy process.

Is impossible for it to be anyone but Logan because GG is a light dramedy not a soap opera and I think that once Rory sorts out her own issues she will go back to him because he’s the one she shows feelings for, not Jess, not Paul, not the Wookie, the father of her unborn child. Accept it folks, the new Gilmore baby, it’s a Sophies Baby!(*)

*mic drop while making a sideways V getting down of stool*

(*Sophies is the name of the ship of Rory and Logan together. I didn’t think I had to clarify this since it’s not a new term, is as old as the show but the fandom of the specific team of Rory with Logan we are known as Sophies. This is a play off of Logan's "Master and Commander" comment to Rory for what she should call him in episode 5.03, Written in the Stars. “- Master and Commander! - The movie? - No, that’s what I want you to call me from now on”

Master and Commander is the first of Patrick O'Brian's novels about Jack Aubrey. Sophie is the square-rigged ship that Aubrey is Master and Commander of, and those who crew in her refer to themselves as Sophies. It is the ship where Jack Aubrey first makes his name.

So, it is in this spirit that those who ship the Master and Commander and His Lady, His Ace, are known as: Sophies.)

[mrmichaelchadler]

Book Excerpt: The Sopranos Sessions by Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall

Below is an excerpt from the new book "The Sopranos Sessions," written by Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall. To order your copy of the book, click here. 

The pilot of The Sopranos built a world that was fresh and convincing enough to get viewers’ attention, and the next three chapters were strong enough to hold it. But it wasn’t until “College” that The Sopranos truly became The Sopranos—doing it, ironically, by separating three main characters, Tony, Meadow, and Carmela, from their carefully established community.

The audacity of the episode’s structure is itself notable: it concentrates on just two narratives, sidelining everyone else (except for Christopher, in a performance that’s literally phoned in). One plotline follows Tony as he tours universities in Maine with his daughter and spots Febby Petrulio (Tony Ray Rossi), a Mob informant whose testimony jailed several of his colleagues and might have hastened his own father’s demise. Tony’s obsession with killing the rat erupts on the heels of Meadow grilling him about whether he’s in the Mafia. His attempts to track and kill Febby with long-distance help from Chris are a source of farcical humor, with Tony taking an increasingly annoyed Meadow on a chase down a winding two-lane road, pawning her off on a group of local students in a bar, and constantly fabricating reasons for ducking into a phone booth.

The second story finds Carmela welcoming Father Phil Intintola (Paul Schulze), a celibate flirt, into her empty house on the same stormy night she learns that Dr. Melfi’s first name is Jennifer; distraught, she grumbles that Tony’s refusal to volunteer Melfi’s gender must mean he’s sleeping with her. A dangerous dance ensues. (Their chosen film is The Remains of the Day, a 1993 drama about a housekeeper and butler who are too repressed and bound by their obligations ever to be together—sound familiar?) The connections between the plotlines emerge organically via juxtaposition, without excessive prompting. Whenever “College” seems to hand themes directly to the viewer, it does so in such a plain-spoken way that they open new avenues of interpretation rather than close off existing ones. Meadow and Tony’s discussions about honesty, Carmela and Father Phil’s conversations about sin, guilt, and spirituality, and the scenes where both pairs ponder confidentiality and secrecy, refract off each other and illuminate the entire episode, and the series as a whole. “College” also gives us a clear sense of Tony’s strengths as a father—he can be a good listener when he takes off the tough-guy mask—as well as the better qualities that Meadow might’ve absorbed from Carmela: her ability to recognize others’ peace offerings (when Tony half-admits that he’s in the Mob, she admits that she did speed to get through finals) and her willingness to call bullshit on men she catches lying or evading. (“You know, there was a time when the Italian people didn’t have a lot of options,” Tony weasels. “You mean like Mario Cuomo?” Meadow counters.)

But all this is a mere sideshow to the hour’s bloody piece de resistance, Tony’s murder of the informant. It puts the Analyze This comparisons to bed forever, makes it clear that this isn’t some cute series about a henpecked Mob boss with troublemaking kids (“Wiseguys: They’re just like us!”), and announces that the evolutionary changes in TV storytelling that Hill Street Blues launched are about to be overthrown.

They attended SUNY Purchase together, and had acted together many times on stage and screen (and would continue to do so for years after The Sopranos ended, as toxic lovers on Showtime’s Nurse Jackie). There’s a shorthand and chemistry between them beyond the nearly romantic that’s enormously valuable for a story that has to push their relationship to its outer edges at a point in the series when we barely know either character.

This might seem an excessive claim to anyone who grew up on television after The Sopranos and watched countless protagonists do horrible things, sometimes defensibly, sometimes not. But back in 1999, the effect of this particular killing was seismic. Four episodes in, viewers had seen murder and violent death attributable to negligence or incompetence, but Tony didn’t commit any of the acts, nor was he directly responsible for their occurrence. Though he was way too free with his fists, Tony was a de-escalator: burning down Artie’s restaurant so Junior couldn’t have somebody whacked there, engineering Junior’s ascent to the top slot to head off a war, and so on. And although it seemed unthinkable that he’d go through the series without ordering at least one person’s death—he’d toyed with the idea—a killing like this seemed equally unthinkable, because TV protagonists didn’t get down in the muck like that. That was what henchmen and guest stars were for.

Let’s back up from the murder and examine its dramatic architecture to determine what made it so unusual. It’s not the choice of target. Febby may have left the life years earlier, but he hasn’t really reformed. Deep down he’s still a criminal, and he’ll always be a rat, and because we’ve spent lots of time with Tony and none with Febby, and accept that this is the kind of thing mobsters have to do because of their code, of course we’re going to take Tony’s side. Also significant: this is a crime of opportunity. Tony didn’t drag Meadow to Maine just to track down Febby and kill him, which would’ve been reckless and deranged versus merely impulsive. He isn’t killing some random person for disrespecting him or to cover up some other offense. This is a former gangster—and a poor excuse for one. He sold out his friends (one of whom died in prison), then entered witness protection until the FBI ejected him. Now he’s been living under an Anglicized alias, Fred Peters, and lecturing about his former life to college kids. We already know (from the pilot and “46 Long”) Tony and the others consider this sort of behavior a whackable offense. 

All of this places Febby squarely in the category of “work problems.” To frame things in terms of the Godfather films, as The Sopranos often does, Febby isn’t that anonymous sex worker in The Godfather Part II who the Corleones killed to indebt a senator; he’s more akin to Frankie Five Angels, the underboss in II who becomes a state witness and kills himself after committing perjury. The Corleones became American folk heroes despite being thieving, racketeering monsters because, with few exceptions, they only killed other mobsters and their collaborators, and only ones that were coded as worse than the Corleones.

That’s the case here as well, though we feel for Febby’s wife and daughter even if we don’t care what happens to Febby. No, Febby’s murder was startling because of the context—a father-daughter road trip, mirroring Febby’s life with the wife he’ll never sleep next to again and the daughter he won’t see grow up—and because of the joy Tony takes in doing the deed. There’s no regret or distaste on his face as he twists those cords, only glee. The most frightening thing about Tony is the way he seems to trade depression for euphoria when hurting people. James Gandolfini’s face splits into a predatory grin, practically a leer, and he throws his tall, broad frame into the action with the furious precision of a smaller, more graceful man. His arms and fists are a blur, his eyes blaze, and flecks of spittle fly out of his mouth as he curses the men he’s battering and tormenting. He’s never been scarier.

The lead-up to the strangulation reveals the scene’s primordial essence: we’re watching an apex predator stalk and kill its prey. We got a taste of this approach earlier in the episode when Tony visited Febby’s home and watched him tell his daughter good night while sitting in a hot tub with his wife. Right before Tony sneaks up behind Febby in the woods, Febby hears a noise in nearby brush and looks to see what caused it, and we get a cutaway shot of a deer gazing at him, its curious face framed by the greenery. The sequence of actions that brought us to this point represents a journey backward in time: Tony and Febby arrive by car, a twentieth-century form of transportation; Febby loses his revolver, a nineteenth-century weapon, during the struggle, and there’s a shot of the piece dropping onto the earth beneath his feet; then Tony strangles him and strangles him and keeps strangling him, an act of Shakespearean viciousness. The scene lasts much longer than you expect, until the audience feels assaulted as well. The editing cuts between tight close-ups of Febby’s face, Tony’s hands pulling the cords tight around Febby’s neck, and Tony’s face contorted in euphoric rage, his front teeth framed by his snarling mouth (like an upside-down smile) so that they evoke a carnivore’s bared fangs. Close-ups of Tony’s hands reveal that he’s choking Febby so hard that the cords are cutting his skin.38 After he drops Febby’s lifeless body, he stands up and walks past the travel agency as insects whir and birds caw. He looks up to see a flock of birds—ducks, probably—in a V formation, a shot that resonates in multiple ways, none of them reassuring.

Shots of birds in flight after a character’s death always evoke a soul departing. In this case, they also amplify the sense that we’ve just seen prehistoric savagery occur. These ducks harken back to the ones that left Tony’s swimming pool, part of a narrative that we associate with Tony and Livia’s relationship: her hold over his imagination, the genes that encoded half of the beast in him. And they stand in for the safe family and feelings of peace that seem to remain forever beyond his grasp. Carmela’s story is nearly as unsettling, partly because of how it fuses with Tony’s. Tony’s half of “College” is a scaled-down, two-character exploration of what it means to be Tony Soprano, a theoretically respectable man with a house, a wife, a kids, and a secret criminal life; Carmela’s half is about being his complicit partner. We get a sense of how repressed she is, thanks to her acceptance of the contradictory sexual values of Mob marriages (men are expected, even encouraged to take mistresses; wives are supposed to be faithful) as well as the sexual politics of Roman Catholicism. Two of the movies that are name-checked in this episode, The Remains of the Day and Casablanca, revolve around great loves that cannot be. It’s spot-on that she’d bond with Father Phil over these sorts of movies, and that she’d select a priest as the vessel into which to pour the specific desires, fears, and affinities that Tony would never entertain. There’s (almost) no danger that the frisson of attraction will become physical.

Nevertheless, her evening with Father Phil unfolds like a date from the start—she even takes a pass at her hair before letting him in. Their interactions show that they genuinely like each other, and that each is getting something out of the relationship. Carmela gives the priest-plus an outlet for his intellectual curiosity beyond matters of scripture, plus imaginative fuel for fantasies of a life where he could have a normal relationship with a woman (thus their discussion of Jesus coming down off the cross in Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ). Father Phil gives Carmela a sympathetic ear, appreciation for her food and her personality, and a means to discuss religion, philosophy, and movies as art. The script is clear on what’s at stake for them: it’s never a good idea to court a gangster’s wife, or for a gangster’s wife to step out. But the fact that Father Phil is married to the church adds another layer of taboo. When he rushes to the bathroom to retch after moving in for a kiss, it’s not just the alcohol causing his body to rebel.(The moment connects with the Last Temptation discussion, as well as with Tony’s line while killing Febby: “You took an oath and you broke it!”)

It seems fitting that “College” puts Carmela’s confession to Father Phil and her subsequent taking of Communion—the moments when she’s most emotionally naked—at the midpoint, where these characters’ first sex scene might go were this a novel about two lovers. The close-ups of Father Phil pouring wine into a Communion cup and delivering it straight to Carmela’s lips along with the Host are the true consummation of a storyline about sexual energy being teased out and shut down (or redirected). It’s in these scenes that we move beyond the question of “Will they or won’t they?” and enter darker territory. Carmela is in denial about her husband’s affairs, but those pale in comparison to the other sins, the literal crimes, that she can’t bring herself to confront. Her confession to Father Phil, delivered on the same couch where her family watches TV, sums up this series’ fascination with evil and compromise, false faces and self-deception. “I have forsaken what is right for what is easy, allowing what I know is evil in my house,” she says. “Allowing my children—Oh my God, my sweet children!—to be a part of it, because I wanted things for them. I wanted a better life, good schools. I wanted this house. I wanted money in my hands, money to buy everything I ever wanted. I’m so ashamed! My husband, I think he has committed horrible acts. . . . I’ve said nothing, I’ve done nothing about it. I got a bad feeling it’s just a matter of time before God compensates me with outrage for my sins.”

Late in “College” there’s a scene with Tony that explicitly connects the two stories. As Tony sits in a university hallway at Bowdoin College waiting for Meadow to be interviewed, he looks up at a quote emblazoned on a large panel hanging over a doorway: “No man can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.”43 It’s a slight misquote from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, about a minister who falls in love with a woman and breaks his vows.

Father Phil tells her exactly what she needs to hear about repenting and renouncing sin, even as we can suspect this is Carmela’s momentary burst of remorse before she returns to enjoying the benefits of being a made guy’s wife. By the next morning—after Father Phil is saved from a second moment of temptation by a stomach too full of pasta and alcohol—Carmela has, indeed, reverted to type. She couldn’t have been more vulnerable in her confession, nor could she be any colder or more in control as Phil stumbles around in his undershirt trying to apologize for his behavior.

The correct quote is, “No man can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true”—as in, “the true face.”

Excerpt from the new book The Sopranos Sessions by Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall published by Abrams Press; © 2019 Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall. To order your copy of the book, click here

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