#his article does him better justice than that interview ever could

[honeybunhalo]

Kara/Lena adopt Superboy AU Notes (Part 1)

I’m finally delivering on the content for this Supercorp AU

This is a Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor and Superboy (Kon-El) centric story. Specifically focused on exploration of one's identity and how you define yourself with the many aspects of your life and choices you made as well as what you consider important and precious to you. The effects of being constrained by how you were born and finding those who love you for who you are and don't ask you to change the core of your being to fit in. — this is not an action packed story at all.

Here are some of the ideas I have for this or things I thought Kon had in common with Lena and Kara that I find compelling.

Lena concepts:

Lena gets to know another Luthor, her biological nephew, who isn’t a trash person and is someone to not just for her to protect but who’s existence assures her that it isn’t blood that makes someone bad and maybe she isn’t so different from other people and she’s not “irredeemable”. Sometimes he reminds her of her older brother when he was kind to her growing up. Likewise, everyone usually sees the Lex in Kon as an inherently bad thing and thus he learns to hide it and hate himself for it. Lena presents an alternate because she remembers bittersweetly a simpler time when she looked up to her brother. Not everyone sees the Luthor genes in him as a threat, Lena finds it comforting to be able to help someone like her in a way she was never helped as a young girl. 

Lena thinks she can’t interact with kids well, much less the kid Lex had grown in a lab, but she totally warms up to him and can talk to him about familial rejection (via Clark) and if it’s because he’s a Luthor and if that makes him wrong. Is it because he’s artificial? Is it because he’s some strange illegitimate lab child? Smothering this kid with love and protection.

Plus Kon is like Kara in more than just being kryptonian but also in dorkiness. Lena’s life is just trying to wrangle an overpowered golden retriever and her lab puppy. She can’t stay mad at them for long.

Lena finding she is capable of loving and being loved and being with Kara makes it harder to ignore the crush she has on Kara. They talk together about love and acceptance now they have a shared kid they don’t want to hide personal things from that could later hurt him and many things become open secrets in their now shared house. Soon enough, it becomes obvious she needs to be truthful with Kara about her own feelings for her. 

Lena could learn about the difficulties of hiding being an alien that Kara had to deal with and the onslaught and exhaustion of developing powers in young kryptonians. She gets to see first hand what it does to a child and wonders how that must have affected Kara’s emotional development and sense of self. 

Lillian and Lex won’t get anywhere near this kid if Lena has something to say about it. Lena knows what it’s like to be the odd one out in a family and for people to reject you for simply existing from other people's sins

Kara concepts:

Kara recounts how she felt like a failure waking up on earth to find out Kal had grown up without her. Now she can maybe make peace with that by taking in Kon even if everything that motivates her choices with him is primarily for kons sake. 

Kara can share with another person krypton's history and culture which is something she’s had to keep seperate from her primary identity for years now *cough* it’s almost like she’s an immigrant who has to hide her identity and culture to be accepted and you could use that in the story *cough* 

Kon lived through being created as a lab rat and the only living experiment left. Kara could sympathize with his own grief from her experience with survivors’ guilt. 

Being open with Kon so that he doesn’t feel that same overwhelming pressure when she was told to hide with a human family also gives room for Lena to learn more about the world Kara came from beyond what she knows from interviews from Superman. Having Kara speak openly about her life on Krypton is much more personal and feels much more real than any article could do. 

Teaching Kon how best to control his powers and her and Lena being able to have the resources for him to do so safely 

Alex is very alarmed by the new addition to the family, mostly because how shitty Clark was in relation to the kid. From her perspective, this is not the first time the guy has dumped an unwanted kryptonian child on someone else’s doorstep. Whatever, she gets to buy leather jackets for her new nephew and be scary overprotective of him. “I don’t care if you think you’re nearly invulnerable at your age, do you have ANY IDEA what type of trouble your mother got us into when we were growing up? Or even when she just started hero work?”

Conner Kon-Cepts:

His sort-of-aunts can be his adoptive moms and be much better to him than his biological dads ever were to him in the comic canon. Kon actually being allowed to be close to other Superman family members!!! I need it like the air I breathe. Kon could get to know a Luthor that isn’t trying to hurt him or use him. Someone who defies part of why (Kon thinks) Superman could never accept a thing like him. 

(I have too many things to say to put in a brief bullet point just know that he’s my fav little boy and I think that he deserves parents who would love him unconditionally and Lena and Kara deserve to live a slower life where they can be cute and domestic)

(If he’s raised by these two then I can give a solid reason as to why we just ignore all the blatant misogynistic and horny writing from the 90s comics that made me really uncomfortable and didn’t completely fit with his given backstory especially with how over the top the specialization was. It helps make up for that)

Kon has to deal with being constantly compared to his two genetic fathers mirroring how Kara and Lena both are constantly being compared to Superman and Lex Luthor as they are the female counterparts of those two more infamous members in their respective families

Kara and Kon have very complementary stories and could become what the other needs to fill a hole in each of their hearts. Canon is way too personally tragic. I’d rather have a bittersweet world that’s also soft so I can spend more time with slow paced character analysis.

(In the beginning, Kon’s much more timid given he’s still so young and is coping with being rejected by superman. The tone at the beginning of the story is very serious. As the story unfolds, kon will loosen up to be goofier like his comic counterparts personality)

Both Clark and Lex don’t deserve this kid in any way. If all they are gonna do is mistreat or neglect him in their own ways, Kon is better off with his aunts. 

Conclusion:

Kara and Lena can be happy together by fully trusting themselves with each other in domestic bliss for once AND Kon doesn’t have to cry his eyes out knowing he’s an unwanted experiment child who is “undeserving” of family and home who never got to experience childhood

Everyone who's always saying “you can’t trust a Luthor” better shut their trap when Kara walks in with Kon-El Luthor, her newly adopted son, and her fiancé, Lena Luthor. These new moms will tear you apart if you try to instill that internal hatred of being a Luthor in their son’s young mind. 

Kara and Lena both defying what people say about them and instead raising a well adjusted boy from both their warring families. 

Kon is gonna be raised by a true power couple.

DC refuses to deliver on giving this boy a home or parents so I’m gonna do it instead. Just look at the family they could be together:

(FYI: This has nothing to do with the version of Superboy in the Young Justice cartoon TV show, so if you’re only familiar with that you may be a bit confused about this Superboy who that one was loosely based on. This whole punk fitted kid is indeed a real character and I stay pretty close to his original design from 1993.)

[keyofjetwolf]

We’re All Just Guys

Well it took the entire fucking season, but I FINALLY get the purpose for Henry Fondle: Sex Robot. And while the entire episode (and season, honestly) has been tremendous, that this ridiculous fucking punchline was the vehicle to deliver the overarching point with a solid knockout punch of meaning AND pathos? Absolutely floored. That BoJack Horseman can be (and often is) brilliant isn’t a surprise, but the ways is keeps proving it often are.

So “The Stopped Show”, a tale of accountability and responsibility and how we’re all just guys.

Each of our main characters closes out this season alone (sort of), in assorted stages of realizing the main themes, or completely failing to. I find Diane’s arc the hardest for me to make a decision on, which isn’t surprising, as I think in many ways, Diane’s the most complicated character in the show. She delivers, directly and succinctly, one of the major points of not just this season but the entire show, but how does it relate to her? I’M NOT COMPLETELY SURE. I think part of the problem with (and for) Diane is that she knows better. She’s the most insightful character, she has a fantastic head on her shoulders, but only for everyone else. She’s this fucked up little disaster prophet, her vision clear and her message concise, unable to ever apply her gifts to fix herself.

Diane is just as trapped as BoJack, but in a fun twist, is now lagging behind him in trying to do something about it. Nearly every single scene with Diane this season has been in this sad little room of her sad little apartment with all her sad little unpacked boxes, and no matter how much truth and wisdom she spits out, HERE SHE STILL IS, failing to correctly assemble IKEA furniture with names like Bȧcksleid. She already feels like shit for sleeping with Mr. Peanutbutter, so what does she do? THE SAME FUCKING THING. To which I groan and roll my eyes, while simultaneously being proud of her for directly and immediately setting him straight about not getting back together. Diane rides this constant line where she gets it but also doesn’t, which is so interesting to me in the level of additional frustration this makes me feel. BoJack is so self-absorbed you don’t really expect any better of him, which has the flip side of your expectations being so low that even the whiff of progress feels exceptional. Diane doesn’t come with any of that though, she knows better, you KNOW she knows better, and the consequence of this for the audience is that she winds up being more unlikeable than the guy who literally last episode nearly strangled his girlfriend and co-star in the middle of a paranoid drug-induced frenzy.

Which is fucked up! It’s intensely fucked up! And also, I think, the point! We expect more of Diane, and so feel more disappointed when she doesn’t deliver. Is that fair of us?

But there’s more here, as we pivot to the accountability portion of this episode/season. From the beginning of the show, it’s been incredibly upfront about how everything is unfair. We come back to this time and again. Privilege rules the day in the world of Hollywoo. Fame, money, charisma, gender, power. BoJack has been an asshole from pretty much the moment he set foot in the spotlight (possibly before?), and the only thing ever even attempting to hold him back has been the moments his guilt manages to scream loud enough to be heard over his internal narrative. Whatever he does, however he fucks up, he always stumbles back to his feet, and NEVER with any (broad scale) consequences. Meanwhile, here’s Diane, in her sad shitty apartment. Consequences haunt Diane, even if she’s the one doing the haunting. The crap things she’s done and the shitty choices she’s made cling to her.

There’s no fairness in that either, no justice. But Hollywoo (and the entire world around it) (and our world too oh yes) has that privilege carved into its bones, and Diane bears none of its marks. Her situation is very different from but parallel to Gina, who is just so fucked over, it keeps legitimately making me angry for her.

Gina, of course, brought none of this on herself. She made the mistake of caring about BoJack and trying to help him. OOPS YOU WERE A GENEROUS PERSON WITH AN OPEN HEART FUCK YOU LADY. For her trouble, Gina has been assaulted and traumatized, AND she is in very real danger of her career being over when it’s only just finally beginning. And she KNOWS THIS. That’s the part that I keep coming back to. All this should be an aberration, an anomaly, and while that may be true of the specifics, conceptually, it’s so commonplace that Gina already knows how it’s going to play. She’ll stop being Gina and become The Woman Nearly Strangled To Death By BoJack Horseman. Even if she’s able to keep working, this is what she’ll be asked about in every interview forever. Even if she convinced people to genuinely listen to her, BoJack would, at worst, get a slap on the wrist as he stumbles back to his feet. We know that, WE ALL KNOW THAT, because it happens all. the. fucking. time. Gina did nothing wrong, but this would still define her for the rest of her life, while for BoJack, it would maybe become a footnote on his Wikipedia page.

Nothing about that is FAIR. Nothing about it is JUST. Gina’s choices shouldn’t have to be “this becomes my entire life” or “swallow this down and pretend it never happened”. But it is, as it has been in perpetuity for the victims of the privileged.

So then what can we do about it? Well that’s really the question, isn’t it? This episode answers it in an assortment of ways (I think the entire SHOW is very much about this, really, but this episode is for sure coming with guns blazing), while also showing us why none of those answers can work. It’s funny and sad and awful and true, but also, ultimately, the most hopeful answer because it’s the only one you can actually affect: It’s you. It’s me. It’s each and every one of us, individually, making a choice to be better.

And believe it or not, we embody this with Henry Fondle: Sex Robot.

I thought the whole thing was so unbelievably stupid. Half the season, we’ve had this goddamn multi-dildo’d juvenile frat boy joke running around with its stupid ass Speak-and-Say voice, doing the same shtick over and over, and I’m like, “okay this is just the shit I have to put up with to get the clever stuff, I guess.” BUT THAT’S EXACTLY THE POINT I’M SITTING THERE LIVING THE ENTIRE GODDAMN POINT AND MISSING IT. Henry Fondle: Sex Robot is seventeen shades of overt horribleness, AND WE ALL JUST GIVE IT A PASS. It’s just the way it is, the way the world works, the price of doing business. When the whole time -- THE ENTIRE FUCKING TIME -- all it took was one person to say no. One person who could see the game we all are playing and was willing to give up everything to stop it.

Hilariously, Henry Fondle IS a metaphor, sort of, but of the saddest kind. He is literally a robot, he can’t possibly change. What’s more, media fervor will never affect him, fallout will never touch him, and the powerful will always rally around themselves to retain their power. It takes Todd, the head of the company, the creator of Henry Fondle, and the one person who would benefit most from the unending efforts of the rest of the world bending over backwards to avoid the truth, to put a stop to it. In doing so, he immediately returns to his old, homeless, destitute self, but doesn’t once hesitate or look back.

It’s Todd, and only Todd, that stops that madness, because while individual people are a problem, the world at large is too. Stefani makes a great point that Diane holds herself and everyone else to impossible standards and a little forgiveness and grace wouldn’t go amiss, but when Diane suggests they apply that philosophy to their clickbait gossipy shit on their website, it’s just

Which again, is beautifully cynical and depressing, but not untrue. Fostering a more forgiving culture isn’t in stopping websites from posting clickbaity takedown articles, it’s each person deciding not to take the clickbait. We can absolutely have a conversation about the people creating their world or the world creating its people, but when you boil it down, only one of those things can you yourself absolutely and directly change, and it’s not the entire world.

A THING DIANE GETS BUT SIMULTANEOUSLY ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT.

I can’t take myself away from this Diane thing, I know, but only because she’s the fucking CORE of each and every one of us struggling with this idea. She’s the simplicity of it and the complication all in one. Not BoJack, which is NOT where I thought we’d be when we started this journey. BoJack is more an action on the people around him at this point in the story, he IS the world you cannot change. He’s pointed to rehab, and off he goes -- or doesn’t! I don’t think it’s coincidence that we stay with Diane and watch her watching him.

Oh, Diane, indeed. As she tells her story of her friend Abby, who threw her over for the cool kids, who turned every confidence into a scar. Who Diane still helped anyway, because Abby needed her. Did Abby learn from that, did she get better? We don’t know; we stay with Diane and watch her watching Abby. Diane, who can so completely understand about personal responsibility while failing to recognize her own enabling for the shitty things that keep happening to her.

You can control yourself. That’s it. That’s the only playground with a guarantee.

Will BoJack go off to learn that? Will Diane stay and figure it out?

THAT’S WHAT NEXT SEASON IS FOR

Something I was toying with including in this, but ultimately decided against for a variety of reasons, was the contrast between BoJack’s take on personal responsibility independent of external response, and The Good Place’s argument that people need external support for personal growth. An idea I may not have even considered contrasting save that Doc’s talked before about these two Jewish creators with what are clearly very different philosophies, and basically, if she were ever able to manage a discussion between them on this, I’d love to be in the room. I’ll be very quiet and not get in the way, I promise.

[struwwelzeter]

Ok, here it is. This is one of my all time favorite interviews. It doesn’t really contain anything new, and I am still convinced it has been translated before, but that is beside the point. He is so chatty, and I get the impression he was quite at ease with the interviewer, and he’s just and adorable dork. I gave up on trying to capture his “voice” pretty fast because it’s impossible. Maybe it’s because I know how he sounds when he speaks english, but he’s ... a bit of a hazard, in that he sounds dumb one minute and sophisticated the next, and some of the things he says are actually not translateable, so I just concentrated on trying to get what he says across and gave up on the how.

Interview with Richard Kruspe of Emigrate and Rammstein

by Marcus Schleutermann of Rock Hard Magazine, August 22, 2008

—-

Richard, where and in what kind of circumstances did you grow up?

Until I was seven I lived in a small village called Weisen. That was a beautiful childhood with alot of nature, cats and dogs and a big family with two siblings. Then the big break came unfortunately, with the divorce of my parents. My father was gone from one day to the next, and we moved in with my stepfather in Schwerin. We didn’t ge on at all. The situation between me and him escalated quite a bit and I often ran away from home quite often. Sometimes I slept on park benches or in a friend’s basement and was looked for by the police. When there was the chance to start an apprenticeship somewehre else I jumped on it right away and went to Hagenau. Since there was nothing there other than a big army base, I did nothing but spend two and a half years worth of sparetime playing guitar. Looking back, I have to say that my stepfather at least taught me basic discipline. I profit from that by now, because as a musician there is no outside obligation to sit down and compose every day.

Where would you most like to live?

At the moment, I live both in Berlin and in New York. I like that duality. New York has a unique energy that drives me. I never really warmed up to Berlin on the other hand. When I first came here, the negative attitude of the people here totally spooked me. It’s always a no at first. Apart from that it’s pretty cold here. But by now quite a few things have changed for the better, especially this refreshing multiculti-thing, which of course doesn't only work between germans and turks, but between all sorts of nationalities. I would most like to live in Cape Town. You have the mountains on one side and two oceans on the other. The people are open and friendly and there is a very beautiful light that is good for my mind. (I feel obligated to say that he uses the word «Gemüt» which could also mean mood or soul and kind of means all of those 3 things at once.) I can imagine that as a retirement retreat.

Were you more of nerd or a bruiser in school?

I think that goes without saying - quite a bit of a bruiser.

So you did end up in brawls now and then.

Certainly. At the age of 10 to 14 I got into situations all the time where I - lets say - could let loose physically. But when I started wrestling I learned how to chanel my aggressions. I trained 5 times a weekand had competitions on the weekends. Unfortunately I was way too offensive most of the time and had no patience while fighting. I wanted victory right away, like tyson.

Are your parents proud and of you?

I think my biological father is very proud of me. My mother always wanted something else for me, but by now my muscian’s life is okay for her. At the end of the day it doesn't matter what you do, as long as you are successful. Especially for the post-war generation of my parents materialistic value is still held above evrything.

So what does money mean to you?

Essentially, only the freedom to be able to do what I like to do. Money means independency to me most of all. The problem with that is of course that you get used to a certain level of luxury and lifestyle. When I earned the first bit of money with Rammstein I was in seventh heaven and thought I would never need more. With my two apartments in London and Berlin and the constant travelling I need a bit more nowadays.

How do you define success?

Success is relative. With Emigrate I got great reviews, sold a good number of albums worldwide and got releases in America and Australia. Therefore, I could assess my solo project as a success, but in comparison with Rammstein, who sell millions, Emigrate are small fry.

What was the most miserable job you ever had?

The worst job was window cleaner, because I suffer from vertigo a bit [laughs]. Initially I was a truckdriver, but I lost my license after an accident. After that the company deemed I was supposed to become a window cleaner and climb up the Schwerin television tower. No way! I just put up the ladder for them and told them: See you later! (He actually uses english for the see you later. More impactful, you see.) To get by, I made shoes myself and sold them. Espardrilles and the likes. That is funny, because I am actually not talented in crafts at all. But I am streetwise and inventive when it comes to survival. I always had to improvise to get by because I couldn't handle authority at all. As a teenager I apprenticed to be a cook/chef (Same word in german. Probably more a cook than a chef to be honest here.) That's a tough job going off the tough hours alone. Apart from that it gets quite hot by the stove after a while.

That is not that different with Rammstein’s pyro show.

Quite true, hahaha! I believe cooking and making music has so much in common anyway. I have always cooked without a recipe. I just take what is there and conjure up something delicious. Some things maybe don't fit that well in the beginning, but you learn that quite quickly and then you develop an intuitive sense. That is the same with composing.

What would have become of you, if you hadn’t become a musician?

Hm, good question. I would like to produce a band some time - so kinda switch to the other side. Other than that I love to write and could imagine screenwriting would be a suitable job for me.

Speaking of Hollywood, how about being before the camera? Are there characters you would have loved or love to play?

Two characters I find brilliant: Taxi Driver and Leon the Professional. And those gangster flicks are cool. Goodfellas and Reservoir Dogs for exemple.

So more the underdogs and the villains - not the heroes.

Yes, they just have more potential. After I shot some erotic scenes for a video the other day I could also imagine doing an entire film in that direction. I was quite nervous in the beginning, but the longer we were shooting the more fun I had. Erotic, mind you, not pornographic.

So, you’d undress for Playgirl?

Not anymore [laughs]. Although probably not before either. I do have a pretty easy going relationship with my body and run around naked in my apartment alot, but then I am not that exhibitionistic that I'd strip for some glossy magazine.

So you’re a at-home nudist.

Yeah, that's an east thing, I think. When I opened my apartment door in New York naked once when the door rang while I was in bed with my then wife, she was completely bewildered. The shameless ossis (east germans) and the prudish americans - that was a meeting of the worlds. [laughs]

Are you vain?

Unfortunately, yes. I'd like to be more above that because vanity is a negative quality that has something to do with insecurity and ego. I work on myself and as I got older I luckily developed a more casual attitude. At some point you start to accept the degredation of the body.

Theoretically you could counteract that with plastic surgery. How about an appointment with Nip/Tuck, hm?

That's not something for me, but I don't have anything against plastic surgery. If people are unhappy with their body and gain new self esteem and sense of life through an operation, they should go through with it. I do see a problem in the danger of it getting exorbitant and to develop some kind of addiction like with tattoos that goes far beyond the reasonable. The body won't go along with everythig after all, and such things as calf implants are pretty crazy.

Speaking of crazy, what’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?

That must have been asking a woman to marry me two days after meeting her. She said yes, and the rest is history. (They are divorced at this point, as the article points out here - in brackets too.)

Cue: Woman: What type do you prefer?

Like almost everyone I do have some sort of type. You need a relationship that mirrors yourself and to develop. So in that sense you're looking for a partner that drives you forward in certain aspects. To have a good relationship you need to keep a balance of passion and friendship - if it's just one it will overturn at some point.

What do you think of groupies?

They just belong to it all. This symbiosis of star and groupie is like theater. The relationship between both has of course nothing to do with reality, and is just an illusion, but you shouldn't destroy that. I'm personally not really tempted by groupies because I like it when I have to fight for a woman. But I like the glamour their presence emenates.

Do you believe in god or reincarnation? Are you spiritaully inclined?

More and more. I don't believe in god in a church sense, but I'm a spiritual guy and believe in a form of justice; that the things we do come back to us in some way eventually. Karma, so to speak. I also have the slightly feminine habit of using astrology to understand people. I use it as a tool to decipher characters. Once you know how someone's house is build, it's easier to place their actions. To be clear: I don't mean horoscopes or such nonsense. There's alot of maths in astrology and you can't compare that with the usual star-sign pulp in TV programmes.

Could you live without television?

Nah. I have a huge beamer in my New York apartment's bedroom. I love lying in bed, smoking and watching good movies more than anything. That is the only thing where I can really switch of other than sex. Lots of both, please. [laughs]

Reading isn't your thing?

I used to read alot, but now I'm unfortunately too lazy for it most of the time. Even on the plane you get a monitor and a huge selection of movies since a while now. But I still have a good reading recommendation: The New York trilogy by Paul Auster.

What's the most important invention for human kind?

Each century has it's own big invention and right now that is clearly the internet. Before that it was electricity, which made everything else like the light bulb and the elctric guitar even possible.

To which era would you most like to travel if there was a time machine?

I guess the sword and blade time as I always call it. Knights templar, 11th century. I can answer that this well, because I like to watch even stupid movies when they deal with that period. I just have a huge affinity to it somehow and would love to find out how things were going back then.

Do you have a phobia?

Other than the aforementioned fear of heights I have a phobia of snakes.

When did you cry the last time?

Now you got me. That is a huge problem of mine because I just can't cry. I think that is a pity myself, because crying is an outlet with which you let grief go. Maybe that's why my music is so important to me, it's like my tear duct and helps me to live out my feelings.

——————-

- sorry for any spelling mistakes but I’m dyslexci and I can’t be bothered.

[amillioninprizes]

Some thoughts on Veronica Mars, fan service, and noir

I’ve been on winter break and at home with a nasty combo cold-ear infection-stomach virus the past couple of weeks, and as so often happens when I don’t have much going on, my thoughts have turned to ruminating over the steaming pile of excrement that was season 4 of Veronica Mars. Why yes, almost six months and one cancellation notice later and I’m still complaining about it--as I told someone on Twitter, it was so stupid that it’s going to take years to unpack.

This particular rant is brought to you by a common refrain seen in both professional critics’ and S4 supporters’ reviews of S4: the movie was schlocky fan service, while S4 is TRUE NOIR. I’m here to argue that neither of those things are true, and that in the grand scheme of things trying to definitively call Veronica Mars noir or not isn’t the best qualitative judgement of the series.

A note on “fanservice”

Something that’s been very strange to me in the critical discussion around S4 is that the fan-funded movie has been retconned as a fanservicey failure. This is weird because it did get a positive Rotten Tomatoes score, actually turned a profit despite the unorthodox distribution model, and was overall well-received by fans except for maybe the 5 Piz lovers out there (he absolutely did not deserve better you guys; he works at This American Life and lives in Brooklyn, he’ll be fine).

A lot of the things pointed to in the movie as fan service actually weren’t. In every interview about the movie and S4, RT and KB always talk about how they started with the image of Veronica punching Madison at the high school reunion and worked from there. The problem is that almost no one had been asking for that. If they had bothered to read any online discourse about the show (and we know RT definitely does), they would know that fans are actually somewhat sympathetic to Madison--after all, she was the intended recipient of the drugged drink Veronica received at Shelly Pomeroy’s party, plus growing up in a family that she wasn’t meant to be a member of must have negatively impacted her. When the preview scene of Veronica encountering Madison at the reunion welcome table was released, Veronica didn’t come off sympathetically. In a similar vein, as much as I liked Corny as a side character in the original series, I didn’t need him to come back for that random scene at the reunion. Nor was anyone asking for an out-of-nowhere James Franco cameo (which given what we know about him now is super gross in hindsight).

So why was the movie well-received by fans? Veronica was in character after an unevenly written and performed S3, and she was back in Neptune, doing what (and who; Ay-yo!) she was meant to do. So while the mystery was subpar (and what Rob Thomas mystery isn’t?), the character side of the story made sense and was satisfying. I wouldn’t call that fan service so much as good writing. Plus, what is even the point of wasting time, money, and effort on making a tv show or movie if it’s going to actively alienate the audience?

S4: more trauma porn than true noir

Admittedly, I’m not exactly the world’s foremost scholar on film noir (in my opinion, the height of cinema is teen romcoms c. 1995-2005), but I do feel I have enough pop cultural knowledge to have a working understanding of what film noir is, and as internet folk would say, S4 ain’t it chief. Sure, S4 was bleak subject matter wise, but that does not automatically equal noir. HappilyShanghaied, who does have a film studies background, wrote a pretty excellent post about why that is shortly after S4 dropped that I could not improve upon, so I will just leave it here. 

In addition to this analysis, I would also point out that S4 was lacking in a unique visual style common to noir films, especially compared to the original television series and the movie. The original series made use of green, blue, and yellow filters to fulfill a high school version of the noir aesthetic (quick shoutout to Cheshirecatstrut’s color theory posts for more on what we thought this meant before it turned out that Rob Thomas did not actually intend to imbue meaning into any of this), while the movie adopted a more mature muted blue-grey palette. S4, however, was more or less shot like a conventional drama and was brightly lit, perhaps signifying Rob Thomas’s apparent plans to turn the show into a conventional procedural.

The movie: more than fan service 

If anything, the movie was more noir than S4. Take Gia’s storyline for instance. While Veronica was off obtaining elite degrees, Gia spent 9 years in a virtual cage being forced into a sexual relationship without her total consent (because that’s the only storyline women can have on this show), and then set herself up to be murdered at the very moment she could potentially break free. That’s pretty fucking grim.

Then there is the whole police corruption storyline, which is a hallmark of noir fiction. The glimpses we get of the Neptune sheriff’s department point to a larger conspiracy at play than just crooked cops; Sachs lost his life trying to expose it and Keith was gravely injured. This was the story I was excited for future installments of Veronica Mars to address, especially given its relevance to today’s politics. Unfortunately, this thread was entirely dropped in S4, where the police department (because, as Rob Thomas revealed in interviews but not onscreen, Neptune has incorporated) is merely overwhelmed by the scope of the bombing case rather than outright corrupt. (Side note but Marcia Langdon was also a more complex and morally grey character when introduced in the second book than she was on screen in S4. Another wasted opportunity).

Noir is also marked by a sense of inevitability or doom as a result of greater forces at play. An example of this in the movie is Weevil’s storyline. After building a life and family for himself, he ultimately ends up rejoining the PCHer gang he left as a teenager due to a misunderstanding based on his race and appearance and the assumptions authority figures make about him because of those things. No matter what he does, he is still limited by an unjust and racist society. Contrast this with the final explosion in S4; it’s not inevitable, just based on Veronica’s incompetence. Rob Thomas claims that he tried to create a sense of doom to LoVe’s relationship between the OOC Leo storyline and the last minute barriers before the wedding, but those aspects just served to make the story unnecessarily convoluted.

What is noir anyway? Was Veronica Mars ever noir? Does it matter?

But this is all assuming there is a set template for noir anyway. This New Yorker essay points out that trying to definitively establish a set of rules for noir is difficult and that the classic noir films were more a product of midcentury artistic and political movements than a defined genre. The noir filmmakers working at the time would not have described their work as such. The kicker of this essay is the final sentence: “But the film noir is historically determined by particular circumstances; that’s why latter-day attempts at film noir, or so-called neo-noirs, almost all feel like exercises in nostalgia.” I found this particularly amusing because as Rob Thomas infamously proclaimed in his S4 era interviews, he wanted to completely dispense with nostalgia going forward. Rob Thomas and S4 supporters have said that Logan needed to die because noir protagonists can’t have stable relationships; but, if there isn’t a defined set of rules other than “an element of crime”, then was it strictly necessary? Hell, writing a hardboiled detective who does have a stable relationship and maybe even a family could have been an interesting subversion of genre expectations. Unfortunately, Rob Thomas isn’t that imaginative.

There’s also the issue that noir and hardboiled detective fiction aren’t interchangeable genres. This article lays out that idea that they aren’t the same because noir is ultimately about doomed losers; in contrast, detective fiction, while dark, contains a moral center and has an ending where a sense of justice is achieved. An interview with author Megan Abbott makes a similar argument; she states that in hardboiled detective fiction, “At the end, everything is a mess, people have died, but the hero has done the right thing or close to it, and order has, to a certain extent, been restored.” Based on the descriptions laid out here, I would argue that in its original format Veronica Mars far better fit the detective fiction model; while she wasn’t always right, she was never a loser, and she solved the mystery. S1-3 all had relatively hopeful, if not totally happy, endings, but you never see anyone complaining that they weren’t noir enough; if anything, they were more emotionally complex than the ending of S4, where Logan’s death is essentially meaningless. One could make the argument that S4 did push Veronica towards a more noir characterization by the definition of these articles by making her more incompetent and meaner than she was in previous installments, but that is a fundamental change in character, which is not coherent writing.

And that is ultimately why S4 was so poorly received by longtime fans and why there will be no more installments of Veronica Mars anytime soon (at least on Hulu). Even if S4 had been noir (or at least shot like one), the serious issues with plotting, characterization, and lack of adherence to prior canon that this season exhibited would still exist. Defending the poor writing choices made in S4 with “it’s noir!” does not mask them or automatically heighten the quality of the product. Perhaps ironically, in ineptly trying to be noir in S4, Rob Thomas likely prematurely ended Veronica Mars by failing his creation and fans with lazy storytelling.

[impressivepress]

Charlie Chaplin: Jewish Or Goyish?

As nearly as can be determined, Charlie Chaplin is virtually part Jewish almost most of the time. John McCabe, Charlie Chaplin

In March of 1978, Charlie Chaplin’s body was stolen from his tomb in Switzerland and held for ransom. Two months later it was discovered buried in a farmer’s field and returned to his wife Oona, who remarked, dryly, ‘Charlie would have found this ridiculous.’ According to rumour, the Swiss government suspected that his remains had been stolen by anti-Semitic groups, upset that a Jew should be buried in a Christian cemetery. Chaplin’s Jewishness made him an enemy of the FBI and put him on the Nazi’s list of international targets. He is perhaps one of the most famous Jews in American history hence it is all the more surprising to learn that he was not, in fact, Jewish. Since his early days as the Little Tramp, a role he assumed in 1914, Jews had believed Chaplin was secretly Jewish. The fact that his name was not Jewish was irrelevant; it was common practice for Jews to change their names when entering show business (Al Jolson was born Asa Yoelson). In the 1948 edition of a Jewish encyclopedia, Chaplin is listed as a Jewish movie star, and the name ‘Israel Thonstein’ is mentioned alongside the claim that he was from an old Eastern European Jewish family. As proof, the encyclopedia cited a 1931 article from the New York Herald Tribune, which commented upon the way Chaplin’s eyes could convey both sadness and joy in a uniquely Jewish fashion, and a Budapest Jewish paper which claimed to trace his Jewish ancestry (as Thonstein) back to Hungary.

More important than birth records and names was the fact he looked, acted and ‘felt’ Jewish. To Jewish eyes, Chaplin told Jewish stories. Famously, one critic recalled watching The Gold Rush (1925) next to a middle-aged Jewish woman: ‘Oy!’ she wailed, as the Tramp tried to escape from his on-screen tormentors, ‘What do they want with him, the goyim?!! What has he done to them?’ The Tramp, small and powerless, was taunted and hounded by authorities who hated him without reason, in what appeared to American Jews as the enactment of the Jewish condition. Hannah Arendt wrote in 1944 that Chaplin symbolised the ‘effrontery of the poor ‘little Yid’ who does not recognise the class order of the world because he sees in it neither order nor justice for himself ’. Meanwhile, in Sholem Aleichem’s 1916 story, ‘Motl in America’, the hero spends his time watching Chaplin films and extolling the virtues of free America in which a Jew like Chaplin can become rich and famous.

For film scholar Patricia Erens, the Tramp is a variation on ‘dos kleine menshele’ or ‘little man’ of Yiddish literature, the poor and long-suffering antihero, the shlemiel (a little man with no luck), and the luftmensch (the ‘man of air’ who lives on dreams). Erens cites the numerous Jewish references in Chaplin’s oeuvre, in particular the prevalence of skullcaps and Yiddish newspapers as props, and a scene in The Vagabond (1916) in which the Tramp finds a Jewish man eating pork at a buffet and helpfully changes the ‘ham’ sign to ‘beef ’. Many of the characteristics we associate with ‘acting’ Jewish—the nasal voice, the New York accent, and the verbal wit a‘ la Groucho Marx—were unavailable to the makers of silent pictures. Chaplin, however, was a dancer, an acrobat, and a pantomime extraordinaire and able to communicate other, non-verbal cultural indicators to a savvy audience—the comic shrugs, the outdated black coat, the facial pathos combined with frantic body movements, the chaotic presence that mocks the establishment. Above all, Chaplin achieved a subtle gender inversion through the graceful, almost balletic eluding of his macho tormentors. Jewish audiences recognised this physical portrayal from the Yiddish stage and read it as a visual metaphor for the disempowered Jew in a hostile world.

Across the world this misconception raged, gaining him enemies to the left and the right. The German-American Bund helped spread the rumour that Charles Spencer Chaplin was born Israel Thonstein and in the book that accompanied the Nazi propaganda film The Eternal Jew, Thonstein is cited as the maiden name for the mother of ‘The Jew, Chaplin.’ In 1948 the US Navy investigated Chaplin on suspicion of Zionist activity: shipping guns to Palestine, as well as around 36 tanks. But it was the FBI under Hoover that became Chaplin’s greatest political and legal enemy. Chaplin’s FBI file is a comprehensive laboratory for identity construction that began in 1922 and remained open until after his death. The file chronicles Chaplin’s downfall, the suspicion of Communist activities, the Mann Act trial for transporting unmarried women across state lines for deviant purposes, and further rumours and innuendo that led to his expulsion from America in 1952. Chaplin is continually described as ‘of Jewish extraction,’ given the name of ‘Thonstein’ as an alias (though there is no proof that Chaplin ever used this name himself), and assigned attributes such as ‘Jewish accent,’ ‘talks with hands,’ and Russian birth.

Crucially, it was not Jewishness that alarmed Hoover but ambiguity. According to Omer Bartov in his compelling work The Jew in Cinema, Jewish characters are often portrayed as slippery and protean, possessing an insidious ability to obscure their Jewishness and blend in. The emancipation of the Jews from the ghettos of Europe at the turn of the last century had left them free to shave and dress in modern clothing, making them impossible to detect. This new found ambiguity of Jewish identity made them, in many gentile eyes, the most dangerous minority in civilised society. Ambiguity was the dominant paranoia of Cold-War America, which felt itself threatened by the enemy within—the Communists, Jews and homosexuals who were so hard to detect. The insistence on Chaplin’s Jewishness helped reinforce the notion of an ‘authentic American’ by establishing firm conceptual borders through identity construction and categorisation.

Not only did both Jewish and gentile audiences see him as a Jew, but Chaplin himself very nearly became convinced of his own Jewishness. While he did not officially doubt his mother’s version of his parentage, in which her legal husband, Charles Chaplin, Sr., a non-Jewish pop singer, was his biological father, there were times when he clearly wondered if the questions surrounding his lineage were true, and if they were more scandalous than imagined. His step-brother Sydney had a Jewish father and the world’s insistence on Chaplin’s Jewish origins prompted him and many others to wonder whether their birth stories had in fact been reversed.

‘All geniuses,’ Chaplin was heard to remark,‘have some Jewish blood in them.’ Flattered by the widely held misconception about his Jewish identity, his understanding of Jewishness was simplistic and stereotypical: Jews were blessed with superior intellect and financial acumen than non-Jews. Further, he believed that his physical attributes compounded the myth: he was short with curly black hair, ‘Oriental facial features’, and a prominent nose. In footage taken of famed British comedian Harry Lauder’s visit to Chaplin Studios, Lauder draws Chaplin on a chalkboard. Chaplin makes great show of stopping him, pantomimes ‘too Jewish,’ and re-draws the nose. Quite how to interpret this is unclear, but Chaplin either believed himself to be Jewish or was making fun of those who did. In the absence of confirmed roots, Chaplin may have sought to align himself with a group that, although outsiders in mainstream society, seemed to him possessed of an ancient and mystical national bond. When the great cantor Yossele Rosenblatt visited Chaplin’s studios, Chaplin told him that he owned all of the cantor’s recordings and that ‘Whenever I feel a little blue, I take them out and play them. They do something to me. They unite me, oh so closely, with my Jewish ancestors.’

Chaplin was an actor, and he played one role after another all his life. He occasionally told people he was Jewish, which sounded better to his director’s ears than ‘poor English gutter trash.’ But sometimes, including in his interviews with the FBI, he denied it, once commenting, ‘I am afraid I do not have that good fortune.’ Of his anti-Nazi picture The Great Dictator (1940) Chaplin said, ‘I made this film to show my unity with all the Jews of the world’. While American politicians and agents worried about the film’s ‘Communist’ message, the American Jewish establishment feared that an anti-Hitler film made by a Jew might make things worse for Jews in Europe. Chaplin’s own response—‘How can they get worse?’—indicates his own fearlessness. For the Jew in America, it was as if, as Stanley Kauffmann put it, ‘a David had arisen—a comic David—to fight Goliath!’

~

Holly A. Pearse · Oct 19, 2018.

Holly A.Pearse holds a PhD in religion and culture, and specializes in the representation of Jews in art and media. At the moment, her research delves into the portrayals of Jewish-Gentile romance in American film, and she currently teaches at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada.

[honestandsincere]

reputation part four

There’s something about living in a city that only those with experience can truly understand. Its disquiet is unending, each hour spirals into the next without any time for composure or evaluation. Sensory overload is a regular occurrence; sound and light and smell and feeling all rage into incessant cacophony.   Life never ceases its movement, at least not until an apartment door is slammed shut on the outside world.

Y/n presses her back against the cool wood, closing her eyes and exhaling a sigh of relief. The elevator has been broken for the past month and having to take the stairs is a task that one would assume gets easier with practice. Sadly, that is not the truth. She doesn't have the energy to take off her coat or her gloves, so she rests against the door as she tries to regain her breath. Her eyes scan the apartment; her dishes are still in the kitchen sink from her rushed breakfast, the faux fur throw hangs off the arm of her velvet sofa in an utterly unattractive manner and the magazines scattered across the coffee table and dog-eared and worn with age. Y/n tips her head backwards allowing a small painless thud from its contact with the stained wood. She doesn't have the energy to tidy up, the day has extracted every tiny ounce of motivation to achieve or accomplish anything she has.

LIFE Magazine has been buzzing with activity for the past month, y/n, in particular, getting the most attention as a writer. Of course, this is extremely flattering and brilliant for her career, but juggling multiple projects at once has proven to be harder than she'd anticipated. Y/n loves working; it's what spurs her to roll out of her paisley duvet set every morning, it gives her life structure and she didn't struggle through four years of college to give up her dream job now. It seems that every journalist on her floor is coming to her for advice, asking her to proofread articles for their website or offer ideas on points they should discuss. Again, this is all very laudatory, considering she's the youngest published writer the magazine has ever housed, but reading has become tiresome and strenuous rather than enjoyable and writing almost insufferable.

She's currently finalizing an article on the trials and tribulations of attending New York's state-funded schools; travelling across the city to interview students and teachers alike. It's fascinating, honestly, considering that for the past four weeks y/n has been mingling with the city's elite. She has her dear 'boyfriend' to thank for that. But the project is time-consuming, she desperately wants to do these kids justice and present them in their truest, most honest form. She's been in the office from eight in the morning until ten at night, eyes squinting at her computer screen despairingly trying to formulate coherent sentences as well as the most applicable lines of dialogue. The whole thing is a digitalized headache.

Mustering her very last measure of strength, y/n pushes herself upright and takes a few steps into her disordered apartment. She peels her coat from her body and hangs it on the hook attached to her wall, her fingers wriggle free from the woollen mittens adorning her hands and they are placed on the side table along with her keys. The hum of the central heating is comforting, but it's offset by sporadic beeps from vehicles passing outside and the steady purring of traffic. This is the sound of the city. This is her version of quiet. Y/n slides off her pumps and shuffles towards her couch, flopping unrefinedly into its plush embrace. The blanket falls over her feet but she cannot bring herself to readjust it. She's exhausted. Her hand reaches outwards towards the table at the centre of her living area, fumbling for the television remote. The screen lights up in a blinding glow and she winces at its vibrancy.

"And in today's news; multi-millionaire businessman Ethan Dolan has decided to donate a staggering $50 million to NYC's very own Project Change, a charity that helps students from government-funded schools apply to Ivy League colleges."

Y/n's tired eyes enlarge, her mouth is suddenly slightly agape. How coincidental.

Her mind flashes to the last time she'd seen Ethan; they were on one of their staged dates last week. The pair walked arm in arm through Central Park, stopping at a quaint coffee shop for a seemingly riveting conversation. Tabloids went crazy, they were followed by cameras for the entire duration of their rendezvous and stopped by a few passersby for selfies. It was unnerving but necessary if they wanted to appear convincing. Y/n had told him all about her latest work and he had listened with acute concentration, nodding his head and humming in agreement after she'd vented her frustrations.

Ethan Dolan is extreme, but he is not this extreme.

Certainly, y/n can't help the way her heart swells with pride as images of Ethan flash across the screen. Him petting an elephant, dressed in safari gear from his trip to South Africa last year. Him standing in a school playground, a child clinging to each of his limbs, huge smiles on their faces from his month in Namibia. He and Grayson stood beside the City's mayor, smiling widely as they open a recreation centre for children in Brooklyn. Him.

"This is the organization's biggest ever donation, commentators are calling Dolan one of the greatest philanthropists the city has to offer."

The newscaster's voice melts into an indecipherable babble, their words dissipating into incomprehensible sounds. Y/n's eyes stay focused on the footage of Ethan Dolan. Her 'boyfriend'. It cannot be denied that the man is consistently portrayed as a saint. His work is commendable, amazing even. She just yearns for different circumstances, prays that his donations are not dirty money. The truth taints everything, it reminds her that ignorance is positively bliss. If she hadn't rifled through those documents, tried to dig up some dirt on Ethan Dolan, then maybe everything would be altered. Y/n knows that if she was not hyper aware of the truth, Ethan Dolan would have her hook line and sinker. Straight sushi.

There's a knock at the door. Not the delicate kind, those that resemble some kind of rhythm or upbeat pattern. Two heavy thuds hang in the air. Y/n grumbles and forces herself to her feet. She already knows who it is.

"Mr Dolan," she croaks as she swings the door open, "I wish I could say I've been expecting you."

He's dressed in his typical suit, but his tie is knotted loosely around his thick neck as if he's letting himself breathe. His hair is tousled and brushing the skin of his forehead, eyes heavy with tiredness but they brighten when they dance across her face. "Y/l/n," Ethan Dolan all but coos, "you're looking tired." "Tell me something I don't know," she steps to one side and he takes this as a verbal invitation, walking into her apartment.

He's all too familiar with y/n's place, he'd come to pick her up for their 'date' last week and she'd given him a brief and begrudging tour of her humble abode. She knows this is well below his standard of living, her mind conjuring images of huge penthouse suites with infinity pools and surfaces that can't be touched with bare hands because they're just too clean. But her space is a perfect chremamorphism of her, an amalgamation of all things y/n in one little space. Ethan studies the pictures she has hung up on the wall. He recognizes her friends from Delevigne's, their smiles all reflections of unadulterated joy. She stands out, she always has to him. Her smile is a little more radiant, her eyes shine with such vivaciousness it's almost painful. Her photographed lust for life is breathtaking. There are pictures of her with who he can only assume are family members, clustered together in somebody's living room, all dressed in matching Christmas pyjamas. It makes him miss home.

"What brings you here, Ethan?" y/n sighs, pushing her hair out of her face. He turns to her, his fixation on her memories interrupted, "I wanted to tell you something." Y/n rolls her eyes but he can see traces of a smile appearing on her lips, "Take it away." "I've talked to Grayson." "Right." "No, y/n. I've talk talked to Grayson." "Oh." She shuffles past him in her pencil skirt and creased navy blouse, making her way to her deliciously comfy looking couch and sitting down. Ethan does not know what to do with himself. He's developed this habit since spending more time with y/n. He stays standing up, almost hovering in her living room.

"I don't think you get it-" "No, I do," she wraps the blanket around her shoulders and stares up at him intently as if he's reciting a trivial poem. "We're gonna change Dolan & Dolan. For the better, obviously," he fiddles with the chunky rings that adorn his fingers, she notices the way they catch the light and glimmer. Ethan Dolan is a magpie's dream. "That's really great," he wishes her voice held more sincerity, he understands she's fatigued but he was definitely expecting some kind of applause. "We're gonna start selling back the companies we took over, cheaper this time. So it's all fair." "Ethan, that's amazing. I'm really glad you've decided to do this."

As happy as she is, y/n knows this sweet is contaminated with bitter. Ethan Dolan has only changed his ways for the sake of his reputation. It was her threat, the idea of her first draft being out there for everyone to read, that pushed him to finally do some good. Beggars cannot be choosers, she knows this. But the reality is as hard-hitting as the truth.

"I know what you're thinking," he crosses his arms over his broad chest. She quirks an eyebrow at him, shuffling closer to the end of the sofa to allow him some space to sit down. She turns off the TV before he has a chance to comment on what she was watching. Ethan lowers himself down beside her, shifting his weight so that they're almost facing one another. "I didn't do this because of you. I didn't do this because of the article."

Y/n scoffs.

"Honestly, I didn't. Of course, it motivated me to make some kind of change, but it's not the only reason I did it." She looks at him; the firm line of his jaw that's now dusted with stubble, the curve of his nose, the furrows in his forehead. He looks sincere. "The truth is supposed to set you free, isn't it? But if anything, my truth makes me want to run for the hills. That's not a legacy I want to leave behind. I don't want to be covering my tracks for the rest of my life, y/n. I may as well change everything while I still can."

Ethan looks at her with such depth, watches as she hangs onto each of his words, analyzing them. He wants her to know that this is the truth, it's her job to find it and showcase it, he's hoping she can see it. Y/n's bottom lip gets pulled into her mouth as her teeth worry it. She's thinking about what to say, how to word things. "That's very admirable," is all she can manage. Ethan feels relief but he does an excellent job of not showing it, "It's not. I've just come to realize that I'd rather play fair than have to watch my back. You've helped me see that."

She shakes her head, quite rapidly for someone so tired. Y/n opens her mouth to say something but words escape her, she wants to tell him what she's been thinking, not the version he's created in his mind. "I think I gave you a wake-up call more than anything," she shrugs. "Yeah, I guess." They're plunged into silence, both trying to determine which way is best to fill it. He wants to thank her but he doesn't know how. She wants to talk, but she doesn't know what about. It's one of those conundrums that can be look back on with such embarrassment that one begins kicking themselves for not saying whatever was on their minds. Both y/n and Ethan are far too scared to do so.

"I saw what you did for Project Change. That's really incredible." "It's the least I could do after what you told me." "It's going to make such a difference." "I hope so." "It will."

Another silence bestows itself upon them. It's slightly more comfortable than the first.

"Listen, y/n. Do you want to maybe go out for dinner tonight? To celebrate? With me?" this is the first time in a while that Ethan Dolan has felt nervous, his usually cocky exterior disintegrating into a puddle of nothingness. She breathes heavily and looks at him with some kind of look that is a bizarre intersection between sympathy and apathy. He can already predict what her answer will be. "Thank you, but not tonight, Ethan. Work has been tearing me to shreds." He swallows, nodding his head in faux understanding, "Sure, of course."

She shows him to the door, still wrapped in her fluffy blanket. He looks defeated, but she brushes this aside as a reaction to her lack of enthusiasm. He spins on his heel to face her as he walks into the hall of her apartment complex. Y/n realizes he looks young again, she enjoys seeing him like this. Ethan Dolan looks closest to normal this way.

"I'll pick you up at ten on Sunday for our grocery shop," he chuckles half-heartedly, "the entire city is anticipating great things from our domesticity."

----------

"Help yourself to some coffee." "I'm fine, thank you, Mr Benson."

Early morning light streams through Howard Benson's blinds, casting horizontal shadows across his spacious office. The room reeks of some kind of sickly scented candle, fake and chemical. His desk is piled high with papers, some separated into folders and others strewn haphazardly across the mahogany.

Monday.

"Please take a seat, y/n," the older man's tone is severe but not stern. Y/n eases herself into the worn leather of the chair opposite his desk. Howard sips on his mug of coffee, purses his lips, then speaks, "You're probably wondering why I've called you in so early. The education article isn't due for another week." She nods, watching the way he places the mug on top of a stack of documents. "But this isn't about your work, at least not necessarily." Y/n can already tell by the way Benson is prolonging the gap between each of his words that this is about Ethan Dolan. Her boss has always spoken of Ethan in the same way one would a rambunctious child, tentative and temperate.

"What can I do for you, Mr Benson?" she asks. Howard folds his hands, weaving his slightly wrinkled fingers between one another and looks at her, "We've had a few complaints since Mr Dolan decided to cause a scene with The Daily Mail, which I couldn't have foreseen." "Right." "You see, y/n, you are an incredibly talented writer with a stellar future ahead of you," she can sense the contradiction approaching, she braces herself, "however our sponsors are not too happy with the credibility of your work following Mr Dolan's announcement."

Y/n doesn't intend on furrowing her brow, but she feels her forehead crease in confusion as she processes Benson's words. She knew Ethan's little games would cause a stir, after all, that's what he wanted, but she didn't think they'd affect her work. At least not negatively. Pretending to be Ethan Dolan's girlfriend is tiresome and inconvenient, but it's not as insufferable as she'd imagined. He's helped put her in the spotlight, helping her establish her name and her work within the field.

"I know it's hard to comprehend, especially because you didn't exactly sign up for this willingly, but they're not impressed, y/n. All of a sudden the whole premise of the Dolan article is warped, people are under the impression that you're biased. It's inevitable that you'd sing his praises in your article if you two are linked romantically." "But surely LIFE's sponsors understand that Mr Dolan announced our relationship a week after its publishing?" Howard sighs, "This is New York, people lie, fact-checking is nonexistent in the world of gossip." "But they must know that-" "Y/n, you've done an excellent job of keeping up the appearance that you are in a relationship with Mr Dolan. I don't want this to impact your career, your impeccable reputation."

Y/n exhales, her shoulders slumping a little.

"You can fix it, though. It's definitely not too late."

Her mind flashes to Ethan in her living room. He's changing, it may be a slow change but it's change nonetheless. Ethan Dolan is changing things while he still can. Before it's all too late.

"I think it's best that you inform Mr Dolan that your public relationship comes to an end."

She nods slowly, imagining old men with whiskers for beards cheering with joy as the reputation of the magazine is suddenly restored. The city's most unbiased publication, factual and fair, returns to its rightful position.

"I hate to do this, y/n, honestly I do. But if you cannot conclude your little games with Ethan Dolan, I'll have no choice but to take matters into my own hands," he looks sombre, full of regret. "You'll fire me?" y/n's eyes are wide and her mouth is now bone dry. Howard Benson's face morphs from an expression of severity to a look of amusement, "Of course not!" he scoffs, "I'd never dream of firing you, Miss y/l/n." She breathes a sigh of relief, her hand coming to her chest to try and still the quickening pace of her heart. Adrenaline had coursed through her veins as panic had set in, she knows now it was unnecessary. "But, I've promised Mr  Reeves that if you cannot escape Mr Dolan, I'll see that your first draft is printed."

Y/n wants to gasp, clap her hands over her open mouth and run from Howard Benson's office. She wants the floor to open, dropping her twenty-five floors until she smacks the hard concrete beneath her. Mary should run in, tell them there's a fire that's swallowed the entire building and they have no choice but to jump from the floor-length windows and onto those weird trampoline-like structures the fire brigade have brought to them. Anything would have seemed more likely than Benson, one of the meekest men she's ever met, threatening to publish her first draft. It is scathing, derogatory and brutal, casting nothing but an awful light on Ethan Dolan. All the lies he told her in order to protect his reputation. His inflated self-assurance, his flippancy. It all seems so separate now, thinking of Ethan does not bring y/n a sickening sensation, she no longer seethes when she hears his name. His promise of change has changed her.

"Mr Benson-" she stammers but can't quite finish her sentence. "For the sake of LIFE, y/n, it's for the best. Your relationship with Ethan Dolan is a hoax and I am certain that a young woman of your intelligence can't have developed a certain romantic attachment to the man."

Two months ago, y/n would have agreed wholeheartedly. She owed Ethan Dolan nothing. He had swanned into her life off the back of a project that was retrospectively destined for greatness. She'd saved his reputation. Nevertheless, y/n has come to learn that even the most stubbornly unyielding human beings have the capacity to change. Under pressure, Ethan Dolan saw the light, not the billboards of Times Square or the spotlights of Broadway, but the truth. It scared her how quickly he'd decided to appease her, shocked that all it took was a threat.

Y/n can't help but feel some kind of loyalty to Ethan. She's grown to find him somewhat likeable, his mannerisms are unfathomably chaotic and unpredictable but his wit is unparalleled. He's a comrade; a young soul in the heart of the most turbulent metropolis in the city, trying to navigate his way through his mistakes. Undoubtedly, their backgrounds are dissimilar but their intellects are not. Ethan Dolan fights with fire and so does she.

"But if I end things, the draft will not be published?" though she's regained some of her composure, her mind is still reeling. "You can shred the document yourself. I suggest you pay Mr Dolan a visit this evening, you should probably terminate your association with him face to face." Y/n shakes her head in agreement, rising from her seat and smoothing down her black cigarette pants. As she heads towards the door she's stopped by the editor's voice, "Again, y/n, I am sincerely sorry."

Something in his words tells her it's not about the article.

------------------

Ethan Dolan's apartment is just as she has imagined it. All her wild and impudent fantasies have manifested themselves into the reality of polished marble and the smell of incense. Y/n sits in the lobby of his apartment complex in Tribeca, it's a renovated commercial building from maybe the 1930s. Its exterior is bedecked in flamboyant carvings, making it appear old and worn which is heavily contrasted by its sleek and modern insides. She wouldn't be surprised to find out that Ethan owned the entire complex, perhaps he shares it with Grayson.

She rests on a deep purple velvet loveseat, her every move being analyzed by the woman sat behind the reception desk. Y/n straightens her back and pulls out her phone, waiting to see whether or not he was going to let her in. The elevator doors slide open but she pays them no attention, the sound of their shifting has become white noise, blending into the dissonance of sound surrounding her. "Y/l/n," she hears, her head shooting upwards to take a look at him, "how nice of you to stop by." He's in his black dress pants, they cling to his muscular thighs leaving little to her imagination. His white button-up sleeves are rolled up to his elbows and there isn't a tie in sight. "Can we talk?" y/n asks, standing from the comfort of her seat and pacing towards him. Ethan senses her alarm and nods, leading her to the elevator and sending a quick wave to the receptionist. Y/n almost laughs at the woman's hard stare.

When encased by the metal doors, y/n shifts towards him, "I've got good news." Ethan holds his index finger to his full lips, "Wait till we get into the apartment." The elevator pings and they're faced with more shining marble. His hand hovers over the small of her back as he guides her into his suite. He waits for the doors to close before speaking, "Paranoia," he says, "I don't ever know who's listening. The security cameras have microphones."

Y/n looks unsure but doesn't question him. She takes her time absorbing the sheer elegance of his space. It's open and airy, huge mirrors clasped in gold swirling frames adorn his walls, paintings and prints hang idyllically. The huge flatscreen television reminds her of the fact he's New York's most eligible bachelor and the Persian rug on the floor emphasizes the extent of his wealth. "My mother's big on interior design," Ethan shrugs from behind her. "It's stunning," she breathes. "Now," he walks towards his blood red coloured couch and sits down, "you said you have news." She finds herself situated in the crimson armchair opposite him, the space between them makes him feel slightly on edge, "Good news." "Do tell," he folds his arms over his chest.

"They're scrapping the first draft, I get to do it myself. We just have to break up." "I thought that was a given?" "It was but we have to end now. Benson sort of threatened to-" "He threatened you?" Ethan leans forward in his seat, his jaw clenching. "No, not really. Apparently, all the big shots at LIFE aren't happy with me and you being together. It supposedly ruins the integrity of the publication." "That's ridiculous." "Maybe, but if the magazine is supposed to be unbiased and I'm making you out to be God's gift, people are going to assume it's because we're together." Ethan purses his lips, "What was Howard's threat?" Y/n leans back into the armchair, feeling the soft fabric hug her closer, "It was more of an ultimatum. If we don't end things now, he's gonna print draft one."

She watches as Ethan rolls his eyes. He's less panicked than she thought he would be. Y/n was expecting a repeat of his tantrum in Howard's office, intimidations and hard looks, but instead, he looks unamused. "This is preposterous. What a joke." "Is it though? Ethan, this is all pretend, it's not that big of a deal."

He sighs and she notes the way his shirt sleeves strain against his built arms. Her eyes follow his figure as he walks towards a table towards the back of the room and he pours two glasses of what she assumes is scotch. Y/n takes the drink from his hands after he walks back towards her. Ethan Dolan runs a tired hand over his face, dragging his perfect skin downwards in its wake. "We'll just have to break up then," he says before taking a sip. "Yeah, I guess so." "My people aren't gonna be happy." "Your people?" "Friends, business friends. People high up in the company. They love us." Y/n smiles, "We really are New York's star-crossed lovers." "Even more so now that we have to be apart," he scoffs.

They sit in silence, sipping their drinks and stealing glances at one another. She feels the finality hang in the air, the impending climax to their performance. Ethan has grown on her, she realizes she does not mind admitting it to herself now. She feels as though she knows him, she enjoys his company and not having him around will be strange. "Are our paths allowed to cross again?" there's hope in his words but he doesn't sound hopeful. "I suppose so." "Do you want them to?" "Our paths to cross? I wouldn't be opposed to it." "Neither would I."

She swills the liquid around at the bottom of her glass, watching it crash against the transparent sides like miniature storms at sea.

"I never thanked you," Ethan Dolan says, his eyes now boring into hers. "For what?" "Everything; rewriting the article, coming to the Gala." Y/n shakes her head, "It's fine." "It's not though. I was a huge asshole, like a massive dick to you. I'm sorry." She licks her lips, cleaning them of any alcohol, "Apology accepted."

A telephone's shrill ringing interrupts the intensity of their exchange. Ethan leaves the room to go and answer it. She places her drink on the floor beside the armchair and moves towards the windows of his living room. They overlook this part of the city, the overpriced houses, glowing signs of real estate agents and the steady humdrum of traffic. The deep rasp of Ethan's voice is unintelligible, but its soothing mumbles resonate throughout the apartment. This is y/n's first time in Ethan Dolan's abode and she suspects this will be her last too. She watches the sun's bleeding orange light disappear behind the towers and concrete columns of New York City, fragments of light forcing themselves through the crevices between buildings. It's stunning. She feels herself fall under the city's spell, the same way she did when she first arrived. It may be romanticized, but that doesn't debase its unmitigated beauty. This is the embodiment of human craft, the legacies left behind in people's wakes, establishments left to their inheritors to stay solidified within the skyline.

"It never gets old," he says, coming to stand beside her. "This is your world," she utters, her gaze never faltering from the view. "It's your world too, you're part of this now." "It was mine, for a very brief fleeting moment, and even then it was all pretend." "Fake it til you make it." Y/n laughs, at his sentiment and at herself, "I guess I did." "It's gonna be weird not having you around, y/l/n." "You mean it'll be strange not finding time in your schedule to arrange a fake date?"

Ethan slings a heavy arm around her shoulders and pulls her into his side, the smell of his cologne is now familiar, almost comforting, "You know what I mean." "Yeah," she rests her head on the space between his neck and his chest, "I do." "Thank you again, for everything." "Ethan, I swear you don't need to thank me-" "Say it again." "I'm sorry?" she moves from his grasp to look at his face. He watches her, a smile across his lips, "Say my name again, but slower this time. Like we're friends." "Ethan." y/n puts an emphasis on the syllables. "Sounds nice," he hums, "I like the way you say things, y/l/n."

She's reading his expression as if it's the most riveting piece of literature she has ever been given. She wants to drink in every one of his features, learn them all by heart and save them for a rainy day. Nothing in her brain stops her from her admiration, no scream of dread reminding her that this is Ethan Dolan. He isn't allowed to be attractive, is he? Can she not appreciate his beauty and detach it from him as a being. Y/n recognizes that she doesn't want to do this. Ethan Dolan as an entire entity is alluring and gorgeous and irresistible. She wants to hate herself, but she can't. He's too dazzling. "What are you looking at?" his voice has dropped to a whisper, his eyes are a delicious caramel flickering over her face. "You." "I feel like I owe it to you to make a literary reference of some kind." She feels her mouth pull itself into a smile, "Only you could do-"

His lips are on hers before she can finish her sentence. Y/n is encompassed by Ethan Dolan. Nothing within her tells her she shouldn't kiss him back.

So she does.

---------------

Part Four! I had a tiny nightmare over the past few days because I did intend to upload this part yesterday but Tumblr decided to delete it from my drafts! I’ve definitely now been scared into saving my work on separate documents. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this part! I do love this series with every ounce of my being, but I have been toying with the idea of starting a new project as well as keeping up with this one. Currently in the process of doing research for a Gray piece, but only time will tell!! Let me know how you feel about this! Love always - K xx

THE TAGLIST

@lukescolours @honeybeeesworld @yslbailey @quickdolan  @dolancrew @sunflowerpseudonym @dreamergirl2727 @arrantsnowdrop @ceejay1163 @peruvian-bae @crown-jul @kinkbaby95 @takenbyheartstrings @loveyou3000-tonystarkzine @ergojenn @blackpinkdolan @sara29392 @someonedoingnothing @americasarse @dolanscello @siana2208 @

[lovelylogans]

where you lead, i will follow

previous chapter / chapter four / next chapter

start from the beginning!

ao3 | read my other fics | coffee?

warnings: food mentions, complicated parental relationships, mentions of transphobia and homophobia, verbal fighting, top surgery mention, classism, off-screen physical altercation (someone gets punched)

pairings: moxiety, logince

words: 4,557

notes: i’m back in the country now and hoo boy jet lag does NOT mess around

logan's reviewing study materials on the bus monday morning. it's fine. the weekend has been fine. he's fine. he should focus on getting into an ivy. that's the priority. he doesn't care about roman getting kissed, roman getting asked out on a date, roman spending the night with—

logan forcibly relaxes his hand before he snaps a highlighter in half.

anyway. he's fine. he has to focus on school. he has to focus on the consultation with the faculty supervisor of the franklin that all journalistically-inclined sophomores are having today. he has to focus on his midterms. 

he's focusing on that plan until he walks into the franklin meeting, sits down, and they're in the midst of talking about some journalism Hot Topics when dee starts loudly proclaiming about how lack of attribution isn't a bad thing.

(your friendly neighborhood journalism student here! as according to the lawyer for the publication i worked for: lack of attribution can often be the sticking point for a libel suit or not. plus, it's just generally good rule of thumb to show readers where i got that information—like how i told you just now i heard it from the lawyer for a publication. that's attribution, though of course in a published article i would include that lawyer's name/title/why they have the professionalism to say that. it's often answering the well why should i believe THAT?! question before it can ever get asked, or at least showing where i got the information, like citing a source in a paper.)

logan, as you know, hasn't had the best week. a nice, bloodless debate about journalism is exactly what he needs.

(when he says bloodless—)

cut to logan sitting in the nurse's office, pinching the bridge of his nose, as dee's getting chewed out in charleston's office. technically, louise punched him, but everyone saw dee goading her into it, so. louise has already been sent packing for suspension, which is apparently a rarity at chilton, and brings him right back into the frame of gossip. just when he'd shaken the matthew nickname.

"well," the advisor for the franklin ("god, please, it's mel or doc or kram, don't say dr. kramschissel, you're wasting time you could be using to tell me about a new story idea") comments. "can't say that i've ever seen someone get hit for saying lack of attribution was comparable to plagiarism before."

"i hope this doesn't sour your opinion of me," logan says, but with all the blood it sounds more like bi hob dis doesn' dour your obinion o be.

"honestly," mel admits, "i've had my eye on you since charleston brought up that you wrote your first byline at seven, sanders."

"oh," logan says, then, "good."

"i don't think this will be a blip on the radar when it comes to admitting you," she says. "honestly, it's points in your favor."

"good," logan repeats, and removes the handful of tissues he's been holding to his nose for the past five minutes, sniffing experimentally. 

"shame about grant," she tuts. "journalists are facing a rough enough time without in-fighting going into it."

logan nods, and she continues.

"your opinion didn't endear you to grant, i'll have you know, but keep it quiet. she got in trouble for plagiarism last year and it's a near thing that she wasn't expelled."

"ah," logan says. 

"not going to ask how i know that?"

"you're a teacher, and a journalism one, at that," logan says. "i'd think you'd want to stay informed."

she smiles. "good guesses are the basis of interesting journalism," she says.

"basis, not journalism in full," logan says. 

"of course, research and interviews and so on, but a good guess can set you down the path," she says, and logan nods.

"so," she says, "you want to be an investigative journalist?"

"yes," logan says simply. he hopes she won't come back with the why? question most adults tend to ask. how does he explain the adrenaline high of a hard deadline, the way he floats after a good interview, the inherent justice of it all, the way that when journalism, done well, changes lives? how does he explain the deeply understood ethics, the sharply defended principles, the roles each journalist is preached to hold—of watchdog, to call on things gone wrong, of marketplace, for people to discuss ideas, of mirror, to reflect society back at itself? how does he explain how do no harm is something he follows not only in journalism but in life? how does he explain the way he felt the first time he published a story that mattered? how can he explain the admiration he feels when he reads the work of others? how can he explain the duty of keeping everyone informed, of reporting on the stories that would otherwise go unheard? how can explain that responsibility? how can he explain that?

but mel smiles at him, and oh, logan realizes. she knows. she has a doctorate in journalism and a pulitzer nomination under her belt and three books to boot. of course she knows.

his phone buzzes. logan glances at it, and then at mel, who says, "oh, go on," and logan picks up.

"logan!" his dad gasps, and logan tucks the phone up under his ear. "the headmaster just called—"

"i'm fine, dad," logan says. "it's just a bloody nose."

"just," his father huffs. "there is no just about my son getting punched in the face! i have half a mind to send your grandmother in there, see if i don't."

"maybe you should," logan says.

"what?"

"i mean, she's closer," logan says. "plus, i mean. what's the use of grandma being grandma if we can't use it once in a while?"

"fair," patton says. "but i'm coming right up, i'm on my way now. should you call her or should i?"

"oh, dad," logan says. "obviously headmaster charleston should call her."

"i have no idea where you got this evil gene from," patton says admiringly, as if logan has not seen patton play innocent to get the upper hand a million times at the diner alone. "all right, i'll call back. how huffy should i get?"

"maximum levels of huffy. your son did get assaulted, after all."

"i can't believe you've been confronted by more delinquents there than you have at sideshire, i'm totally bragging about that at brunch slash our next dinner slash for the rest of time," patton says. "all right. i'll be there soon. i love you so much."

"you too," logan says, and then realizes that mel was listening, and god, that was hardly the language of a proper upstanding journalist—

she laughs like she's heard his thoughts, and she says, "we're journalists, not robots. honestly, seeing you act a bit like a normal teenager doesn't discredit your work."

logan offers a tentative smile, and then, "i thought your pulitzer article was riveting."

"aw, shucks."

"can i ask about—?"

"go for it."

"how did you get the correctional officer to talk to you? korinth, i mean," logan asks, fascinated, leaning forward. 

"well," she begins, and begins weaving a tale about how she'd unveiled a story about suspicious prison deaths across the county, and then across the nation, and logan listens and does not bother resisting the urge to take notes in his notepad, juggling another handful of tissues for his still-bleeding nose with a pen (which she nods at approvingly.)

he doesn't notice the aggravated clacking of heels down the marble hallway getting increasingly noisy until the voice comes with it.

"—incredibly displeased that my grandson got punched by some hooligan, hanlin!"

logan scowls—mel was just getting to the part where she'd finally gotten into the office of a prison superintendent. 

"is that someone of yours?"

"my grandmother, yes."

mel nods, and stands, wiping her hands off on her slacks, and the door flies open.

"logan," emily frets, and logan blinks accusingly at charleston. 

"hi, grandma," he says, possibly overemphasizing the way the bloody nose transfigured his speech. 

"is it broken?" she asks, and snaps at the nurse when she doesn't answer in 0.05 seconds, "well?!"

"it's not broken," the nurse says. "it might hurt for a couple days, but it's not broken."

"small mercies," emily huffs. "what even happened?"

"sanders and a couple other students got into a spirited discussion about attribution in journalism," mel says. "slange was urging grant on—"

"not dee slange?"

"—but grant got rather heated when sanders said that a lack of attribution was close to plagiarism—a view i share, i might add—and her temper rather got the better of her," mel finishes. "and yes, the same." 

"emily, i assure you, the student in question has been suspended," charleston says.

"oh i should hope so!" she hisses. "someone hit my grandson, i will ensure those consequences are enforced!"

logan, internally, is kicking back to watch the show, seeing how charleston shrinks and shrinks in front of his grandmother that reminds him a little of his dad, but in a much less blood-boiling way because charleston actually deserves it. externally, he is sure to look as mournful and as much like a kicked puppy as he possibly can.

"here, here, here!" a much more familiar voice pants, and patton stumbles into the nurse's office, wheezing, clutching a stitch in his side.

"dad," logan starts.

"logan," patton says, "my son," and he sounds upset, immediately crossing over to frame logan's face in his hands.

"how is it still bleeding?! it's not broken, is it?!" he asks the nurse frantically.

"no, it's not broken," the nurse says. 

patton swivels to stare at charleston, and he's genuinely teary-eyed. "you said you'd take care of my son."

"well, now—"

"you did," emily confirms. "you said you'd do your best to take care of my grandson."

"how on earth is this taking care of him?!" patton demands. 

"emily—mr. sanders—"

"how could this possibly be the best school in the state if he gets punched during a scholarly debate?!" patton nearly shrieks. 

"mr. sanders, if you would calm—"

"no, i will not calm down!" he shouts. "how can i possibly trust this school to take care of him if he gets beaten up within its walls?!"

"emily, surely you can—"

"my son's making a valid point," emily says coolly. "i sent one child here, and did you see what happened to him? you said that children would be children. you said you were trying your best to control the bullying. i found my son crying in his bed and hiding any possible sign and refusing to talk to me because it had gotten so bad. my son. when i brought up concerns about my grandson, you said that it had gotten better, and he's been attending for barely two months when i get a call that he's been assaulted?"

oh shit, logan thinks, they're pissed. they're pissed and they're teaming up.

"we should sue," emily says, and patton jabs a finger at her in agreement. "i should have sued when patton was here!"

"well, now, a lawsuit is—" charleston says, sweating very nervously indeed.

"my son's nose is still bleeding," patton says, "and you're telling me that a lawsuit would be overreacting?!"

"dad, grandma," logan says, finally cutting in, because patton might start angry-crying at any second. "maybe not a lawsuit, though i am going to have to protest to dee slange just getting a stern talking-to and nothing else."

"he's not even getting detention?!" patton snarls. "i got detention for politely telling people to respect my name and pronouns, and someone who prodded someone into hitting my son is getting nothing but a talking to?!"

"i agree with sanders," mel says. "the role of instigator is not a small one, and from where i was standing, grant may not have been so incensed without slange's commentary. mr. sanders—patton, isn't it?—i'll personally ensure that slange gets some form of detention, which i'm sure headmaster charleston will agree with, won't you?"

"i do!" charleston says hastily. "or, he will get detention. yes."

"oh, he'd better," emily says. "hanlin, why don't we continue this in your office, and you can outline exactly what your plans for discipline are moving forward. i won't be making the same mistake twice."

"yes," he says hastily. "yes, of course, and an excused absence for mr. sanders, if you'd like to take him home—"

"i will," patton says hotly. 

"emily, if you'd—?"

and they make their retreat.

mel lets out a low whistle. "god, sanders, i hope you can grill a source like that."

"i have good examples," logan admits.

"sorry," mel adds hastily. "dr. melissa kramschissel, but i insist on mel or kram. i'm the faculty advisor for the franklin."

"oh!" patton says, and tries for his best meeting-new-people smile, shaking her hand. "of course, logan's told me all about you. he's very excited to work on the franklin."

"oh, we'll have a place for him, but if you'll excuse me, i think the bell's about to ring," mel says, and nods to him. "sanders."

"mel," he says with a nod, trying not to outwardly celebrate too much at we'll have a place for him. 

"okay, give me your face," patton demands, digging wet wipes out of his pocket. "does it still hurt?"

"a little," logan admits. "i'll probably ice it later."

"i'll be gentle," patton promises, and begins swiping the dried blood off his face. 

"so," logan says, "you and grandma might have terrified charleston into giving me preferential treatment until i graduate."

patton snorts, but his tongue pokes out of the corner of his mouth in concentration as he attempts to scrub off a stubborn bit of blood without pressing down too hard. "yeah, well. one of us should have it."

"i didn't realize grandma wanted to sue. when you were here."

"that makes two of us," patton says. "dinner this week is gonna be interesting."

"i suppose it will," logan agrees, and patton sets aside the wet wipe. he frowns, tilting logan's face side to side.

"you're going to bruise up something terrible."

"i'll ice it," logan repeats. "louise grant apparently has a hell of a right hook."

"that she does," a voice drawls, and logan instinctively stiffens as both sanders look toward the door.

"she's a black belt, you know," dee continues. 

"i didn't, but you certainly did," logan grits out. 

"hm, innocent until proven guilty," dee says, with a little bow. "good job on getting your grandmother to solve your problems, logan."

"are you upset i marred your otherwise perfect record, or something?" logan sneers. 

"or something," dee says lightly. "now if you'll excuse me, i have an appointment with charleston to attend. and this," he says, face breaking out into a grin, "why, this has only just ended."

he sweeps off.

"jesus, i've never seen a high schooler so clearly destined to become a marvel supervillain," patton says with a shudder. "that's him?"

"that's him," logan confirms dryly. 

patton pats him on the shoulder, and says, "well, on that slightly unnerving note, you wanna come home?"

logan hops to his feet, and follows patton out of chilton, to the car. they're on the highway by the time patton talks again.

"this has been a rough week, huh?"

"i can't say i've ever been punched at school, no," logan says, sidestepping the other part of his week.

patton scowls, briefly, before he says, "not just that."

logan jerks up a shoulder in a shrug, looking out of a window. "i should be focusing on school anyway. getting into an ivy. they start really focusing on how i'm doing now, so—"

"it's okay to feel sad."

"i'm not sad."

"it would be okay if you were, though," patton says.

"right," logan says. "anyway. we really need to get a new soap dish for the upstairs bathroom, it's been broken for months."

"and i'm here to listen if you wanna talk about it, okay?"

"...we're going to need to call the heating company, too, you remember how it got so odd last year. we might need to replace the unit."

"okay, okay," patton says, and they talk about the house and nothing but the house until they get to sideshire. the length of the drive makes it so that—logan checks—both chilton and sideshire high will have just gotten out of classes.

"you wanna jam tart, or something?" patton offers. "my treat."

"i was," logan says, and licks his lips. "i was actually thinking of going to lucy's and dropping by the studio."

"oh!" patton says, startled. "oh, i mean, of course, but i thought you might be—"

"why should i have opinions on the situation?" logan says. "he's just my friend. it's not like it's my place to say anything about it."

"logan," patton begins, but sighs and puts up his hands. "okay, okay, fine. let me at least drive you to lucy's, i want a double-chocolate shake."

logan gets their regulars, withstands some fussing from patton and lucy, and walks down the street to the studio.

ms. prince has taken over that class, but roman's sitting in the furthest corner from the door, head bent, working on homework. he looks up when the bell rings.

logan holds up the milkshakes in answer, and roman beams at him, waving him eagerly down the hall.

as soon as logan gets close, though, the smile slides right off, immediately replaced by a look of concern.

"oh, my god, what happened to your face?!" roman hisses.

"journalism gets heated at chilton," logan says, and hands over the chocolate-covered cherry shake. 

"someone hit you?!" roman demands, setting aside the shake immediately and taking hold of logan's face (logan's growth spurt means that he's a little bit taller than roman, now. no telling if it'll stay that way, but for now, logan has to get used to the new angle.)

"grandma and dad both came to yell at the headmaster," logan tells him. "now grandma knows that dee slange is... well, the way he is."

"he hit you?!"

"louise grant did, actually, but everyone knows dee goaded her into it."

roman shakes his head in disbelief, cracks open the top of logan's milkshake to steal his maraschino cherry. "you go to school without me for, what, two months? and you got punched. in the face."

"the nose, more precisely," logan says, starting to spoon through the whipped cream. "apparently, she's a black belt."

"your dad yelled?"

"a little, yeah," logan says. "i mean, he looked pretty close to angry-crying, but my grandma definitely yelled. apparently she nearly sued chilton for the way he got treated when he was there. hearing i got punched in the face has kickstarted that desire right back up again."

roman lets out a low whistle, and takes a long slurp of his shake, smiling at it. "um. thanks, by the way."

"i owed you for last time. and technically my dad bought—"

"no! um, not the shakes, but thanks for those too, i guess," roman says. "i just—i didn't know if things would be weird now. with jess and everything."

logan blinks at him. "why would it be weird?" he says, in a carefully normal tone. "we're friends. why should i care if you went on a date?"

roman freezes, lets out an absolutely false laugh, and looks down at his lap. "right," he says, quietly. "right, why should you care."

"how was it, anyway?" logan says, as if an odd and painful thing wasn't clenching in his chest.

"oh," roman says. "it was—nice."

"nice," logan repeats.

"yes. nice."

"roman. i once heard you describe yourself as talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show-stopping, spectacular, never the same, totally unique, completely not ever been done before, and when it comes to your first date, you just say that it's nice?"

"okay, first of all, i can't believe you cannot recognize that i was referencing lady gaga," roman says, "second of all, i was just starting to describe it, calm down."

logan rolls his eyes, and keeps his face frozen in polite interest as he hears roman start to gush about jess, and thinks this hurts worse than his bloody nose.

meanwhile, patton walks into virgil's, shake in hand.

"no outside beverages," virgil says.

"you know what would go great with this one, though?" patton says. "a hot cocoa/coffee."

"you had three cups at breakfast."

"no, virgil, you don't understand, i need another one," patton says. "i actually was in agreement with my mom today—"

virgil opens his mouth.

"but patton, it's monday, you're about to say? well, i got called up to school because logan got passionate about journalism, like he always does, and some—some girl punched him in the nose!"

"wh—is he okay?!"

"he's fine," patton says, "he seemed to think that i was making too big a deal out of everything, he went to get shakes for him and roman. i'm hoping that's a good sign, but i'm just—he got hit, virgil!"

"he's okay, though?"

"bloody nose, nothing broken," patton says. "please can i get a hot cocoa/coffee?"

"i'm sending you home with a dozen jam tarts," virgil decides, and fishes out a mug. "oh, wait, you said your mom—?"

"my mom might have actually killed a man today, i don't know, she made him take her back to his office," patton says. "she was yelling for a solid fifteen minutes before i got there, i think."

"well, if your mom has to be who she is..."

"logan said the same thing," patton says. "he actually said that i should make charleston call, which." his lip twitches. "makes up a little for the time i got a month's worth of detention because i kept correcting teachers on my name and pronouns and ignoring them if they called out my deadname."

virgil high-fives him, face hardened. 

"also it turns out my mom wanted to sue when i was there," patton adds, distracted. "like she started yelling at him about me. i didn't know she was so..."

"loud?"

"upset," patton says softly. "i didn't know she was that upset about it."

"oh."

"i just—i dunno. i always felt so alone back then, and i can't help but wonder..." patton shakes himself, murmurs a thanks when virgil sets the mug in front of him. "it is what is now, i guess. can't change the past."

"i mean, if i could change the past," virgil says, an attempt at a joke, "i'd change the way we met."

patton smiles. "you weren't that bad."

virgil gives him a Look.

"okay, you were a little bad," patton amends, "but to be fair, i was on the verge of a breakdown for days and you fed me basically immediately after, that made up for it."

"well, i'd change it," virgil insists. 

"i wouldn't," patton says, smiling. "i wouldn't change a thing in the world about us."

except for one thing, they both think, except for one thing—

but they don't want to risk it, changing this silent, maybe-unrequited love into something said aloud. not yet.

⁂

logan keeps going to the studio after school. he did that a lot, really, did his homework in the pews, or read the courant, or compiled research for an article, but he'd stopped doing it as often after he transferred to chilton.

it makes sense that his date (boyfriend?) would come to visit him one day.

it's the wednesday after he brought roman a shake, and logan's busy perfecting his outline for his english essay that's due in two weeks when the door to the dance studio opens. logan blinks, looking up, and—oh.

the boy—jess, logan thinks snidely—hovers near the door.

"hell of a shiner," jess says, and he sounds impressed. "what happened?"

"journalism."

jess blinks at him in utter confusion, and roman bounces around the corner, beaming. the dancers (mostly around the age of ten) filter toward their bags. one of them is giving logan a pitying look. logan refuses the urge to bury his face back into his book.

"jess, what are you doing here?! my mom might kill you!"

"i brought you something," he says, bringing a bag out from behind his back, and logan barely suppresses his smirk.

roman hates al's pancake world. 

"oh, hey," roman says, rallying from the briefly disappointed look that flashes almost too quick to catch across his face. "thanks, jess, that's really sweet. oh, i didn't even—jess, this is logan. he's my best friend, he goes to chilton now."

"chilton?" jess echoes.

"it's thirty minutes away," logan says, and jess' eyes drop to the uniform.

"private school kid, then."

"fairly recent, but yes," logan says, trying not to get riled up. "i just transferred in this year."

"logan's going to be a journalist," roman says brightly, "and he—"

"yeah, he mentioned," jess says, cutting roman off. logan tries not to inflate too obviously, because sure, he might cut roman off, but roman always gives him that Look, the 'i'll-get-you-for-that-later' Look, not the way he's scuffing his ballet shoes over the carpeted floor of the hallway right now. but roman rallies, because roman always does.

"he's going to get a pulitzer one day," roman says. 

logan smiles at roman. just a little. "well, i'm not just focusing on journalism for that."

"yeah, but you're so good at it you're gonna get one," roman says. "maybe two. who's the record-holder for pulitzers?"

"carol guzy and david barstow are tied at four."

"amateurs!" roman declares, and logan laughs.

"as interesting as all that is," jess drawls. "should i...?"

"roman has class until six, then an hour's break, and classes again," logan says. "schedule varies depending on his mother, of course, but considering..."

"you could skip," jess offers, and roman actually laughs, before he blinks.

"oh. you're serious?"

"yeah, why not?"

because roman loves teaching the kids. you would have been better off asking if he could skip the sunrise yoga for the over-55s.

"because my mom might actually bludgeon you to death with a pointe shoe," roman says. 

that too.

"what else can she do?" jess says, with an eyeroll.

"oh, you're definitely new to town," logan murmurs, unable to help himself.

"what?" he scowls, swiveling to face logan. 

"you're definitely new to town, for two reasons," logan says, neatly shutting his book as roman slips back into the studio and a shadow looms behind an unsuspecting jess. "one, because ms. prince is rightfully the most feared person in town. and two, you haven't yet learned that she can be lurking around any corner."

jess rolls his eyes. "what, like she's the boogeyman? i think i'll take my chances."

"boo," ms. prince says coldly, and logan doesn't even try not to smile when jess jumps about a foot in the air.

"ms. prince," logan says, slipping his book into his bag and nodding at her respectfully. 

"logan," she says, without taking her eyes off her latest prey. "you have some nerve showing up here without so much as an apology."

logan steps out of the doorway, even as he's loathe to miss a ms. prince lecture directed at someone who's not him or roman, and quashes the urge to do something foolish, like skip his way to virgil's.

[dragonofyang]

From the Sock Puppet’s Mouth

Well folks, good news and bad news.

Good news: the ABTV interview on March 4th confirmed for us that WEP is the reason for the last-minute changes and that certain things were fought tooth and nail for until they came down and axed it.

Bad news: WEP is still using the EPs as their meat shields to hide behind, and despite not being really able to refuse, Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery still said some fucked up shit in this interview and the one before. And we probably should gird our loins for the next interview with Let’s Voltron!

But Yang, why in the fuck are we not going after the EPs, then?

The answer to that and why this is happening is three little letters, my friends.

NDA.

Non-disclosure agreements.

AKA the bane of your existence. And ours. And almost certainly JDS, LM, voice actors, animators, and literally anybody who has to comply with the season 8 we got back in December and the resulting fallout.

These are fairly standard in lots of situations where you’ll be working with confidential material, stuff like stories, military paperwork, movie production, that sort of thing. They generally tell you that you can’t spill the beans until a certain date when the contract expires, or when the information becomes public knowledge and the need for secrecy is lifted. Pretty standard in the entertainment business, keeps people from getting spoiled to trade secrets or important plotlines and ensures that you can trust your employees with whatever you need done for the project in question.

One other thing that these pesky little pieces of paper do is give your employer (say, the owner of a franchise or a superior officer), the ability to order you what to say just as easily as what not to. Don’t believe me? Look up interviews with the people who were in The Last Airbender (yeah… THAT movie). During production and when it was new, they all said how excited they were to work on the movie and be a part of it, but once those magical dates came by to free them of their legal obligations, they spilled more tea than the American revolutionaries did back in Boston. As soon as they wouldn’t get sued, they changed their tune about working on TLA.

Sometimes you just don’t like a project, sometimes your boss is a dick, whatever, but the fact is, if you sign one of those little things titled “Non-Disclosure Agreement”, you are bound by law to say whatever your boss tells you to. It’s very much a “they say ‘jump’, you say ‘how high’” situation. The only time this sort of shit doesn’t apply is if it implicates you in a crime. So like, your boss can’t embezzle money and then tell you to say you did it, or that you helped, or whatever. If it means you’ll get pressed charges, then you’re free to stand up and say “fuck this noise” and leave.

But JDS and LM aren’t being forced to admit to a crime, as heinous as some of what they’ve said in the past two ABTV interviews was. I’ll admit, I saw red the first time I heard the interviews on February 25 and March 4, but ya know fuckin’ what? That was the goal. Those interviews were meant to be a targeted blow against those of us in the VLD fandom who want the real s8 and for the characters to get their stories told correctly, rather than the slipshod stoic nonsense that ultimately created a story with zero meaning.

WEP/World Events Productions/Bob Koplar holds the Voltron intellectual property. JDS and LM are their puppets right now because unless they’re ordered to admit to a crime or otherwise break the law, they could be ruined legally, financially, and closed off from their trade. Would it be nice if they stuck to the scruples they displayed back when the show first started? Fuck yeah. I’d love it if they said, “screw it, here’s the real s8 with the heroine’s journey and the parallel storylines and the ending you deserved to see and get catharsis with.”

Fact is, they can’t, but we, who have never signed an NDA with WEP, DreamWorks, or Netflix or whoever the fuck else is involved, can.

They’re lying, yes, and they said despicable things that would make anybody’s blood boil, but the fact is they’re just the unfortunate human shields that will let WEP get away scot-free and it sets a very dangerous precedent about what happens when a story is being told and someone up top doesn’t like what they see. The narrative LM and JDS are being told to spin is that when the writers left, they went ham and ruined the story and that the real season 8 would be worse than the concoction we got on December 14. LM and JDS have said awful shit as WEP tries to demoralize fans and chase them off from going after the original season 8 and deflecting blame off where it should be aimed. But why would they have to write a story that’s animated and would have been completed before the writers left? LM said it herself that animation is extremely ahead of schedule compared to releases, and if you’re a fan of HTTYD like myself, you’ll know that the third movie’s release date had to be pushed back multiple times to account for the animation schedule because they failed to accurately project when it would be complete, and so pushed it back as opposed to releasing a shoddy product.

It’s simple enough to realize that the story being spun is just logically fallible and factually untrue, but because so much of what’s been said has been attacking the fandom, it’s easy to believe it. I almost wanted to believe that, too. It’s easy when there’s already a face and a name to blame. It’s harder to dig through stinging nettles, even if you know there’s a pot of gold under it all. Luckily I brought work gloves and have friends who know how to wield gardening shears.

We knew before that there was last minute edits to season 8, and @leakinghate did an excellent breakdown of that here in case you want to settle in for a nice read to see what should have been. But the interview on March 4th confirmed multiple times that the problem with the changes and story didn’t come from the EPs or even Dreamworks. The pushback came from the IP owners. JDS says so right toward the beginning, about 12 minutes in when he’s talking about Adam and Shiro’s romance. JDS and LM both discuss how it was the IP owners who gave the order to change an already-storyboarded and approved plotline for Shiro, which directly negates their tweet on March 1 claiming that the store has no creative control and the letter Bob Koplar wrote to a few fans, also written March 1, which claimed the same thing and seemed intent on absolving him as a responsible party for s8. Sure, the person tweeting and the person handling orders might not have to approve things, but that account and the store are both owned by WEP, which is easily proven if you dial WEP’s number. But the IP holders got discussed multiple times throughout the entire episode, more towards the first half than the second, which is when what they’re saying gets really screwy in terms of logic and what they’ve said before and general bullfuckery. Until JDS and LM are thanking the hosts for the unprecedented two hour interview and JDS says, “I don’t agree with myself” at 43:03, they were thanking the fans and apologizing for what happened and explaining that it wasn’t them or Dreamworks, but rather the IP holders who were pushing back.

Don’t believe me?

Click to 12:10 of the March 4 interview. JDS talks about Adam and Shiro’s relationship and how it was originally meant to be portrayed, and at the 12:50 mark he says that they got pushback about their relationship, not from Dreamworks, but from “other controlling parties with Voltron.”

Click to 18:52, where JDS mentions how they didn’t have the position as being creators of the IP. He also points out that, “We were, for all intents and purposes, like, started as a show for boys 6 to 11 to sell as much toys as possible.”

Does that phrase bother you as much as it bothers me?

Because it should.

Ever since VLD ended and the fans started pushing back against what got published as season 8, the EPs have been silent, at least for the first two-ish months. They didn’t say a word anywhere publicly about the show or if they liked it, because their NDAs probably had an “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” clause. Generally, that’s the case because part of your job is to build good PR and hype up your project. Don’t believe me? Look at how they were after literally every other season, they came out immediately saying how much they loved it and how much they hoped the fans would too, and when there was pushback about Lotor’s abuse and the colony plot they were like, “please trust us, we want to do his story justice” even when it probably would have served them better to remain silent.

Not with S8.

Until these interviews, nobody talked. And when they finally did start talking?

They all kept saying the same things.

“This is a show for boys and their dads” and “this is a show meant to sell toys to little boys.”

At no point before this did anybody on the production team say anything even remotely related.

You can look for yourself, but I guarantee you won’t find anything. “Boy toy show” has been the go-to phrase for everybody ever since the silence around season 8 broke, and it’s not their words.

It is, without a doubt, from the IP holder.

We were promised that Lotor’s arc would continue and that “there’s a lot that is at play in his brain and his mind,” in the GeekDad article about him. Narratively, Lotor and Allura were meant to foil Zarkon and Honerva/Haggar. We should’ve gotten an alchemist-versus-alchemist showdown and a cool Lotor and Lance arc. Many things that were built up in seasons 1 through 6 were dropped, and if you refer back to Hate’s meta “Seeking Truth in Darkness”, you’ll find her analysis on what was cut, why, and the plot she pieced together based on the inconsistencies in the details of the season 8 that got released. In the latest interview, JDS said, “We were just trying to break the trope, our own trope. You know what I mean? Like Voltron was its own trope and the sort of little nook that we inhabited was, like, sort of boys toys was its own weird tropey situation.”

And despite all this talk of family and love and complexity and breaking barriers, we received two things from December 14 and on: VLD season 8, and silence.

Complete and utter silence.

The VAs were trotted out to face the wrath of the fans at SAC Anime 2019 and there was nary a word to be heard from the EPs, Dreamworks, WEP, Netflix… Nobody had anything to say about the final season of Voltron. The VAs even commented that there were things they were and weren’t allowed to say. And if they wanted to say anything, their NDAs and general social etiquette prevented them from saying whatever was actually on their mind, because I guarantee you nobody happy about the season would have kept silent. Even when all the season 7 backlash happened, JDS and LM asked us as a fandom to please wait and see, because there would be narrative payoff.

Which is why the latest two interviews with ABTV are all the more rightfully infuriating.

In the February 25 interview, LM specifically says that the initial pitch was to kill everybody, everybody would die and that would be the end of it, and that they had to back off from that. After the broken promises of season 8, that’s pretty damn believable to a fandom who’s rightfully hurting and grieving what could have finished a great show. But then with this March 4 interview, she says that she wanted to go Sailor Moon with it and have Allura come back as a baby after sacrificing herself. Kind of hard for those two stories to mesh when the person LM says would raise Allura would also have been one of the ones to die in the initial pitch.

So what exactly is the truth there?

Frankly, I think neither of those ideas is the truth. At least completely.

Why? A) It sounds like a super early pitch idea and B) because their general behavior disagrees with every interview leading up to season 8. Because if LM and JDS were proud of this product that got released, they would have said so and behaved as normal, if maybe a little more reserved due to fandom backlash. Because they wouldn’t be silent and only coming out with interviews after two months and several of #TeamPurpleLion metas that poke massive holes in what exists of season 8, CallVoltron has been sending letters, and #FREEVLDS8 garnered over 30,000 signatures. WEP has been trying to do damage control ever since we as a fandom started putting two and two together about where these disastrous last-minute changes came from, and only when the petition got updated to include WEP as a point of focus did WEP start trying to discredit the fans and meta writers who were coming too close to the truth. Here is a complete list of everything that’s happened since December 14, to give you an idea of just how wild of a ride this has been.

One main consistent thing throughout everything that’s happened since season 8 dropped is that everybody from the EPs up is lying, whether by omission or outright or through someone else, people have been lying like mad. WEP doesn’t want you to know that they own the IP and have strong input, despite confirming it by liking a tweet on February 13 and how you can be directed to their store if you call WEP’s phone number. WEP doesn’t want you to know that they gave the original season 8 the axe. WEP got scared that we got close and so they trotted out their EPs after two months of silence to try and break those of us hunting for the truth. These two interviews, which, mind you, came after what was scheduled to be the last one.

The official story continues to fall apart with every word of these last two interviews, too. JDS says that they were crafting the epilogue for season 8 during the aftermath of season 7, but according to him they completed season 8 back in June.

Again: which is the truth?

I stand with @leakinghate and the rest of #TeamPurpleLion and think that the original season 8 was completed back in June, but that the backlash from s7 and the general disapproval of a story of empowerment caused the truly-eleventh-hour edits to s8. The EPs are being forced to lie to you due to their contracts, WEP wants to keep hiding and lying and calling their customers liars and mocking them. But the funny thing is that the more intricate the lie, the harder it is to keep it straight versus the truth, as evidenced by how JDS and LM seem to be confusing what was in s8 versus what was pitched versus what they were told to say.

So what’s it all mean, then?

It means you should be watching and writing letters and calling WEP and calling them out publicly whenever WEP and Bob Koplar lie to the consumers and customers that express dissatisfaction with their service and their products.

WEP forgets that there is more to fandom than diehard dads and young boys.

The more they ignore the majority of their consumers, the more money they lose, the more faith they lose, and the less people will want to follow their future projects (like if they decide to do an MFE spinoff). Let’s Voltron is coming up with a new episode with JDS and LM, and they’re hoping to get it up soon. I’d just like to remind y’all that it’s scripted and pre-recorded, it’s not live, and it benefits from being the official Voltron podcast and has to keep good relations with WEP in order to retain that status. So don’t stop calling, write letters, hell just leave a Facebook or Twitter review of the business to express your satisfaction or lack thereof with how WEP treats customers and its show and everything. After all, the road to s8 is paved with honesty.

@felixazrael @leakinghate @crystal-rebellion @voltronisruiningmylife

[slutforbroadway]

i have some thoughts about the prom movie casting

you can read it if you wish, or not. I just need to vent. Also feel free to like/reblog.

Some of these may be popular opinions, others may not be. These are just my thoughts and I’d be more than happy to have a (respectful) conversation about the casting choices they’ve made 😊

First I’m gonna start off with the fact that Ryan Murphy is directing this. I have mixed feelings. While I was absolutely obsessed with Glee growing up (it very much still is a guilty pleasure) and have watched some of his other shows (American Horror Stories, Scream Queens, etc), I do still have my worries. He isn’t necessarily famous for his outstanding wlw representation so I was kinda surprised when he jumped on this. Maybe this will be his redemption, I don’t know. He does seem to be worrying more about big names than getting actors who are true to the characters. And his lack of diversity in his casting has me worried. With that being said, lemme jump into the four broadway stars.

Meryl Streep as Dee Dee Allen. She was good in Mamma Mia, she was good in Into the Woods. She can definitely sing, I have no worries she’ll do this role well. I really wasn’t that surprised to find out she was doing Dee Dee. I’m excited to hear her sing “It’s Not About Me” and “The Lady’s Improving.” While of course I wish Beth Leavel could reprise her role in the movie, I do believe Meryl will do a great job.

James Corden as Barry Glickman. This one I have mixed feelings about. I have been a fan of James since his old BBC Show “Gavin and Stacey.” I loved him in Into the Woods and think he’s done an amazing job both times he’s hosted the Tony Awards. I do believe he could sing “Barry is Going to Prom” well and sound good, he is a strong singer. Here’s my issue. Barry is a gay Jewish man. Brooks Ashmanskas is a gay man (I’m not sure if he’s Jewish). James is neither of those things. He’s just a straight, cis-gender, white guy. In all honesty I believe he’ll probably do a good job, I just wish they had cast someone else (like idk maybe Brooks, just a thought) that wasn’t straight, white, and/or cis. One name I’ve seen thrown around that would’ve made a great Barry was Tituss Burgess, and he would’ve been great. He has the Broadway experience from The Little Mermaid and the screen experience from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

Nicole Kidman as Angie Dickinson. This one I’m just kinda meh about. I don’t have a strong opinion one way or another. I know she can sing since she was in Moulin Rouge and did an amazing job. She has the look, and maybe I’m going crazy but I thought I saw an interview where Angie said she would be fine with Kidman playing her in the movie. Although now I can’t seem to find that article, so maybe I dreamt it. All in all, I think she’ll do okay. I’m just happy they still have Angie and Trent in the movie and aren’t writing them out like the book.

Andrew Rannells as Trent Oliver. This one I am super excited for. I think Andrew would make an amazing Trent. I am so excited to hear him sing “The Acceptance Song” and “Love Thy Neighbor” and depending on who they end up casting for Emma and Alyssa those two may be the only songs I listen to from the movie soundtrack lol. I think he’s really gonna do this character justice and I’m very happy they found a gay man to play this role. I just wish they would’ve done the same thing with Barry. I think Andrew and Meryl (depending on how she does) may be the saving grace of this movie.

Awkwafina as Ms. Sheldon. I can’t speak on this one too much seeming as how I know absolutely nothing about her. I haven’t watched anything she’s been in or listened to any of her music. I do know she’s at least been to see the show which I don’t know if anyone else that’s been cast has. I could be wrong though. I do think it’s cool that they’ve cast a female in this role though.

Keegan Michael Key as Principle Hawkins. This is another one I don’t have a super strong opinion on. I have no idea how he is singing wise, but Hawkins only has the one song. Which they better not cut, because I think it’s a beautiful song. I think it’ll be interesting seeing him interact with Meryl Streep, hopefully they have as strong of a chemistry as Michael and Beth did. This is one of those wait-and-see things for me.

When it comes to Emma and Alyssa.

Obviously I would love to see Caitlin and Izzy reprise their roles. The likelihood of that happening? Not very. If Murphy wants to cast a big name in this movie for Alyssa Greene, I personally think he should go for Zendya. She can sing, she’s been in movie musicals before, and she’s a woman of color. She also could pull off playing a teenager way more than Ariana Grande ever could. When it comes to casting Emma I think they should look to the Jimmy Awards, as there are huge sources of talent coming from them. And the people that compete in the Jimmy Awards are (or were, as some of them have obviously graduated by now) high schoolers and are musical theatre performers. Lord help us if Murphy ends up casting Taylor Swift. 

TL;DR Meryl should be fine. They should have cast Tituss Burgess for Barry. I have no opinions on Nicole. Andrew will be great. I know nothing about Awkwafina, and Keegan I have no strong opinion on. Thank Jesus Ariana isn’t playing Alyssa. While I want Caitlin and Izzy to reprise, Zendya is my choice for Alyssa and they should look for actual musical theatre people to play Emma. I have hopes, but I’m setting the bar low.

[malexfan10]

What is it about Malex?

I was playing around on my phone at work (when I should have been working lol) and came across some article about the best TV couples. It was published in 2018 so Malex wasn't in it lol

But I was going through the pictures in the article and I saw a lot of the couples I've liked & enjoyed over the years listed. Pacey & Joey, Captain Swan, Haleb, Stydia, Kurt & Blaine etc.

I started thinking...what is it about Malex that makes them extra special for me? What is it about them that made me join Tumblr and Twitter for the first time? I never had either before this year. What is it about them that made me write more fan fic in the span of 3 months than I have in years of watching other shows? And I'm someone who studied English Lit in university and have written many novels, hoping to finally pursue publishing this year with one of them. But the amount of fan fic I've typed out the past 3 months? My hands seriously hurt!

So why is Malex so special?

(I made a collage below)

Is it because they're an LGBTQ pairing? There have been other LGBTQ pairings I've rooted for. Malex isn't the first and they won't be the last. Times are changing in TV land and we're seeing more and more representation. It's progressing slowly, but it is changing.

Is the reason Malex is extra special a shallow reason? The actors are both incredibly good looking. No getting around that. But I loved Haleb too and Tyler was one half of that ship. I adore Joshua Jackson and Dylan O'Brien. I think Holland Roden is beautiful. In the couples I've followed over the years, all the actors & actresses have been attractive in their own ways.

-- side note -- I know I put Destiel (SPN) in the collage below even though technically they're not a couple but some of their lines over the past decade, I mean come on! It's so obvious! --

Anyway...

Is it the chemistry between Tyler & Michael? I thought Katie & Josh had amazing chemistry. Only reason I watched PLL was for Haleb and the friendship between Tyler & Ashley. Some of the couples I've rooted for really sizzled on screen. Do I think Vlamburn has better chemistry than all the others? Not necessarily. I think they tie for first with some of my other faves (although I would probably rank them above right now just because they're current).

So what is it about Malex that made me so emotionally invested that I joined social media like this? That I've written a bunch of fics and have so many other concepts cooking in my head.

I think it comes down to the angst at the end of the day and how the story has been written.

I've directed a lot of disappointment and anger towards Carina and the writers since that finale because I'm afraid the triangle will grow and span multiple seasons. I'm afraid the writers will show Michael really starting to have deep feelings for Maria the longer M&M exists (I know Vlamis said in those last interviews that his feelings for her are already very deep but sorry Vlamis. I love you but I don't see that yet.) I'm afraid now that they know they were renewed, they'll drag this storyline out, pursure M&M and then Michael with other relationships if/once M&M ends with Alex just waiting in the sidelines, moping and heartbroken.

But despite all my fears and disappointments after that craptastic finale (seriously, I can write a 20 page essay), I have to give the writers their credit.

The story they wrote, the beauty they created in Malex, with that amazing angst and history and love is the reason I'm so invested.

"Where I stand, nothing's changed"

"I never look away"

"That I loved you and I think that you loved me."

"Cosmic"

"But you are mine"

"I don't look away Guerin"

"I love him. I probably always will"

I mean, these lines all exist. No one can take those words away. Yes, the writers can try and diminish it by shoving another relationship down our throats & attempting to give that relationship the same level of meaning and importance (sorry, not buying it. Hardly anyone is). But those lines will always be there.

The epicness of Malex will always be there.

That beautiful first kiss in the reunion will always be there.

Their connection in senior year, bonding over their painful childhoods and living situations will always be there.

Caulfield, although bittersweet, will always be there.

Michael Guerin wanting to be Alex's hero will always be there.

The angst and love between them is just unbelievable. I don't think any other couple I've rooted for over the years has had the same amount of angst or history. Their story is just beautiful.

I don't cry too much in movies or TV shows unless there's a really sad death that hits me hard. LOST was one of those shows where I sobbed constantly (Jin & Sun's death, Juliet's, Charlie's...I could go on).

But I cried after that last scene in episode 6, when Jesse destroyed such a beautiful and pure moment 🥺

I cried at that moment in Caulfield 🥺

I cried at the finale, watching Alex just waiting there while Michael....let's not remind ourselves 🤨

So yes, the chemistry is unbelievable between Tyler & Michael. How close they are offscreen shines through their performance and this is in a cast where everyone's close. But with Vlamburn, especially from Michael, he's so unfiltered when he talks about Tyler's eyes or the way he kisses or just how much he loves him. What can I say, they make me love Malex more ❤

Yes, they're both incredibly good looking but that's a miniscule, shallow reason. How good looking a couple is in no way compares to how much their emotional connection matters, at least for me.

So really, it's the story. It's the history. It's all that profound, made for each other, soulmates love that they share. It's the incredible angst that makes me root for them even more.

And yes, as much as Carina and crew have angered me after that finale and after their insistance of shoving this triangle down our throats and in our faces, they did create Malex so I have to be grateful for that. Vlamburn perfected it and made it epic but the concept came from Carina (trust me, it hurts to give that credit).

So as much as it still hurts with what happened, as much as seeing the M&M promos bothers me, as much as I'll be a sobbing mess once season 2 hits and Alex realizes what happened, I have to believe that this much care and heartbreaking angst was given to this couple for a reason. That reason has to be that Malex is endgame.

Can Carina change her mind about Endgame Malex? Sure she can, if she wants to lose a substantial percentage of the fandom. But I can't believe she'll do that.

I can't believe that Malex is anything but each other's ending.

I can't believe that this beautiful love story we've seen between 2 men who started as scared, lonely boys and are now broken men trying to put themselves back together is anything short of EPIC.

I can't believe that M&M, however painful and ridiculously unnecessary, is anything but a bump in this road for Malex.

All that matters is how the writers take us from point A to B.

Does their separation last for 4 more seasons (pending renewals) and Malex reunites in the series finale, season 5? God I hope not. I need to see them existing as a couple together on screen, not just a kiss and makeup moment last episode and assume they made it. So once this teenage level of triangle nonesense has been dealt with (please let season 2 be the end of it!!!!), I really hope the writers realize the amazing couple they created and give them their due justice by bringing Malex together for good.

Episodes 1, 2, 3, 6, 8, last Malex scene of 9, beginning of 10 and all of 12 point this show towards one inevitable ending with Malex and that's reuniting (did I get the episodes right?). Just keep your fingers crossed it happens sooner rather than later. Right now, that's where my main fears lie.

This fandom has been super great about lending support to one another when things get tough. Unfortunately, things will get even tougher next season so it will be good to have this great support.

As far as the promos and interviews we'll be getting between now and 2020, I'll try to only watch interviews that Michael & Tyler give together and avoid anything that seems like M&M promotion (outside of full cast interviews or festivals etc). I love all the actors on this show. They're all wonderful and talented and deserve our love and support (not commenting on that Nathan instagram thing).

But as a Malex fan, I have no place in my life for unnecessary stress from a TV show because honestly, as invested as I am, it's still just a TV show. No need to give myself more heartbreak before season 2 even airs by watching pro M&M interviews like yesterday. I'll just stay in my happy Malex bubble until then (and then die when I see M&M next year 😭).

In the end of this long post, all I wanted to say is that Malex is extra special, head and shoulders above others ships I've rooted for and that's mostly because of the beautiful story I've seen on screen but Vlamburn defintely plays an imortant part in making it epic ❤

I'm a Malex lifer. Nothing will ever change that.

❤

[fortheheavenssake]

PG MM Anon Interpretation Collection - 21

💜💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻PG INTERPRETATION OF MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜💜

137: Dec 7

💜💜💜DISCLAIMER, I HAVE STATED FACTS AND SUPPOSITION THAT IS IN THE MEDIA AND DISCUSSION ON THE BLOG, PLEASE DO NOT ATTACK ME 💜💜💜

MM Anon

MM ANON …… subpoenaed to swim uphill…… “withdrawal with notoriety”……… “pony!! “ she has no fear Catherine”……… “wherever did she get this wilfulness ?…… YOU!!!!…… “Philip will help me write it!!”……… “caution ma’am”……… “no colourful language”…… “ are you pensive LG”…… “frighteningly apprehensive ma’am”…… “I trust my subjects”………”one communicates with Netflix” ………”OMG😱😱”……”The Diana Years”……” it’s confidential LG!!”

💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜

December 7/2019 RIDDLE #137. 1105 hrs CST

subpoenaed to swim uphill…… “withdrawal with notoriety”

PA has sunk so far so fast! He has a far way to climb to pull himself up. Swimming , will he have to, be forced to cross the Atlantic and go to the F.B.I. Instead of them coming to London? He will have to give interviews to the F.B.I. and likely to French authorities investigating JE and GM. Another woman in America has now come forth with accusations. He will need to voluntarily or be subpoenaed be compelled to be interviewed. Whether he will be required to go to America or the authorities travel to London there is no hiding for him. Again, the usage of swimming makes me pretty certain that he will be compelled to go to America! This is so shocking and unprecedented. His life has been completely pulled out from under him, the long friendship with JE and GM has resulted in this. Normally it’s withdrawal from society, but he has become such a pariah now to the Royal family he has become notorious and strong calls for justice and stripping his HRH status. I dare suggest he will not be seen publicly again and despite British law saying a Royal cannot be arrested in palaces or in front of the reigning Monarch, there is no hiding for him. PC and PW will not allow it and HMTQ, despite the constant rumours for years as the favourite son, can no longer shield him. Annus horribulus 10.0 not 2.0!!!!

“pony!! “ she has no fear Catherine”……… “wherever did she get this wilfulness ?…… YOU!!!!……

Little Lottie, she has such a strong!!! Personality!!! Love and adore her! She is jonesing for a pony for Christmas big time! Sounds like William and Catherine and giving a go at each other about where this strong will comes from! 🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂. As my mum used to say, better to be a leader than a follower in a child!

“Philip will help me write it!!”……… “caution ma’am”……… ““no colourful language”…… “ are you pensive LG”…… “frighteningly apprehensive ma’am”…… “I trust my subjects”………

Big discussion between HMTQ and LG. HMTQ will along with PP be writing a statement, likely video, about PA, and possibly the change to Regency when she is 95. No specifics regarding accusations, none proven but the drums are beating louder and louder for PA to face law enforcement investigators. TO BE CLEAR I AM NOT IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM THAT HE IS GUILTY SO PLEASE DONT JUMP ON ME PLEASE!!! Well l dare say, the public wants his HRH status gone, l think HMTQ may not go that far. LG is extremely concerned about how this is all going to go over with the public and advises caution. To him to saying frighteningly apprehensive there is more going on! Madam is figuring into this somehow. Long been rumours of some associations with SoHo and the Rchildren family in Canada, l am not typing their name! This is one big soup of filth. Is PA a victim in it? Really naive about JE and GM? There needs to be answers for investigators. HMTQ is placing trust in the public accepting what her decisions are, let’s pray she is correct. Who are the backers behind this endless assault on the BRF? I think truly it’s a combination of attack and in the case of PA really crappy judgement and having the highest ego of doing and living without ever answering to anyone which PC has found very frustrating at best, and at worst who knows what the at worst truly is. All told this is horrible, just horrible.

”one communicates with Netflix” ………”OMG😱😱”……”The Diana Years”……” it’s confidential LG!!”

We know HMTQ and PP, and likely other Royal family members are binge watching The Crown onNetflix. Are we to believe HMTQ is in communication with the producers as consultant?? THAT IS SHOCKING!!! Sharing her perspective on Diana and her time with the family. Shocking, outs it mildly. But it’s strictly confidential!! Wonder if there are more secrets or details to come. I wish that Diana could be left alone, she been gone for so long and people still trying to make $$$££££€€€ off of her!

I want to say to HMTQ, PC, PW and the York family and the entire family, my prayers are with you. No one is immune to justice in 2019, unless you’re a backer. PA is being the sacrificial lamb when the alleged list of Je snd GM friends and visitors to his island and homes are well known public and polite figures. You all know who they are. Will they be crucified like PA?? I dare say, Justice is not equal and we all know that!

1140 hrs Thank you MM ANON glad l could do this before my wonderful Christmasy day starts with my friend!

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

Thank you PG. Seems much still going on in the background….I can’t wait for HM’s speech. Greatly appreciate this, thank you!😊💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

Ask Skippy

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138: Dec 8

MM ANON …… not an engaging situation …… my LITTLE pony……… WOC-less……… We’re just mild about Harry …… a charitable laundromat ……… expenses,expenses ………”it’s a Multi million business, trim it”…… hangers OFF!!……… ‘‘twas the night before Christmas”……… a conservative Royalist ……… 12th night ……… morning sic -ness……… “ say goodnight Gracie

💜💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜

December 8/2019. RIDDLE #138. 1300 hrs CST

not an engaging situation

Princess Beatrice And Edo Mapelli Mozzi have cancelled their planned engagement party at the Chiltern Firehouse that was schedule for December 18/2019 due to paparazzi fears regarding her father lest they end up spoiling the party. Likely they will reschedule, keep date, time, location ultra secret so as to not have it spoilt by any interruptions. My heart aches for this young couple, but especially for Princess Beatrice when this is meant to be the happiest time for a bride.☹️

my LITTLE pony

Our dear Princess Charlotte, affectionately known as, Little Lottie has been pleading for a pony for Christmas, love that LITTLE uppercase. My little pony years ago was a toy, l gave my niece one. I believe little Lottie means the real deal a live pony! The Daily Mail most certainly reads your blog 🐼, because we knew this days ago!

WOC-less

WOC women of colour, less. Or is it WOKE less, 🤔 Photos were in the paper today of madam volunteering regularly at a soup kitchen, St Felix Centre, in Toronto whilst filming Suits. She was well liked, reportedly called ‘the lovely Meghan’. In the photo, there does not appear to be any obvious WOC, although other ethnicities are evident, it’s Canada we are a melting pot, as it’s called here. I am uncertain if this is what MM ANON is referencing.

We’re just mild about Harry

The song is l’m just wild about Harry and Harry’s wild about me, again from when music was music. Harry used to be the most popular Royal, his popularity level has been dipping whilst Williams has been sky rocketing. I wonder if it’s related to madam?🤔🤔🤔

a charitable laundromat

Is there money laundering being done through madams charities? Foundation, ‘charitable’ ones, real estate and advances of huge sums of money for ‘consulatation’ fees are often ways that illegal guns are transferred or the term money laundering, make dirty illegal funds clean and soluble. This has long been suspected by of certain political family’s foundation. Is mama dam being investigated for this as well?

expenses,expenses

I wonder if this is regarding the York family and who is going to fund their expenses now. I have read articles that PA had lost money in some investments and now his privy purse funds are gone, no staff, his consulting and other areas of income are gone. I imagine the entire York family is used to a royal standard of living, is HMTQ going to fund their expenses? It’s all sad☹️🥺. If he needs legal help, he will need the best as well as American lawyers as well, it’s going to be exorbitantly expensive! Lawyers being lawyers will drag things out as long as possible for more billable hours and thus more fees earned! Lawyers allegedly do this😧🙄. There is also Princess Beatrice’s wedding coming up!

“it’s a Multi million business, trim it”

Sounding like what l just wrote. Is PA telling PC, who holds the privy purse strings now, that his status and the ayers estate, family is a multi million dollar expense, and his consulting fees or whatever he does for business in all his travels requires to earn vast income requires planes, RPO’S etc etc. Sounding like no sympathy from PC, telling PA flatly, he needs to trim his lifestyle and budget/expenses, full stop.

hangers OFF!!

Hangers on, is a sycophantic person, or persons, Who associate with another person or a group for the purpose of gaining some personal advantage. Like sugars, me oh, my oh. Now it’s OFF! I read yesterday that the Sussex instagram only gained 16 fans in one day, apparently is far far far lower, the sugars seems to be fleeing and the money for bots less and less. This upper case OFF with two exclamation marks makes me think of PA, all the charities, businesses,worldwide, organizations etc that have clung to him because of his Royal,stays are dropping like flies. Now that he is not of use to them, he’s been shoved onto the proverbial shelf.

“twas the night before Christmas”

The Cambridge children are going to be unbelievably hyper, it is my understanding that the Royal family, going back to their Saxe-Coburg Göethe /German roots open gifts on Christmas Eve, my family did as well. I wonder if the Cambridges will have the little ones wait till Christmas morning. Imagine getting them to sleep!!!! I certainly hope we all get our gift before then, the gift being the announcement of another Cambridge baby on the way!

a conservative Royalist

The ultra left, wants rids of the Monarchy, allegedly, the NWO definitely! Bojo and his party of conservatives endorse the constitutional Monarchy. The Brexit issue is still in play. The outcome of the election on the 12 th could permanently alter the future!

12th night

Shakespearean play but this is not that. The general election takes place on the 12 th of December, l was just reading the weather is supposed to be horrendous with wild winds. It seems nature is echoing all that is going on in the country. The results of this election could completely change the country permanently.

morning sic - ness

Sic is a let in term meaning “thus.” It is used to indicate that something incorrectly spelled or written is intentionally being left as it was in the original. Sic is usually italicized and always surrounded by brackets to indicate that it was not part of the original. Catherine is pregnant, l have been saying that for a few weeks and confirmed it yesterday with a photo and my rationale. This is the clincher. She’s is most definitely marvellously pregnant! Congratulations!

“ say goodnight Gracie”

At the end of the George Burns and Gracie Allen radio and tv show, she always portrayed as kind of ditzy. If you have never seen or heard YOU MUST!! At the end, he would say to her as meaning to the audience, say good night Gracie, she would reply Good night Gracie! I think the Edith Bunker character from All in The Family must have been partially based on her!

What’s or who is this referring to, someone misunderstanding what they are being asked to do, then doing it and being wrong, and getting laughed at. Or is it something is completely over and done with and they are being told to say good night and leave the what? Job? City? Party? Politics? I have no idea, it could be so many things. The only thing l know for sure is a Burns and Allen are classic and that’s the origin of the phrase!

1405 hrs CST. GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

Thank you PG! Interesting….waiting for the 12th. Much appreciated 😊💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

Skippy submission

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139: Dec 9

MM ANON ……… Re-Hab-itual behaviour ……” Gone In sixty seconds”…… ( six weeks?) ……… no sight, sound or visual,no optics???? …… old photos, photo shops and disinformation!!……… “ there OK, ma’am!!”…… “ones duty is, keep muddying the waters”…… The Peoples Princess, WHAT!!! ……… “capitalise on it ma’am”…… “AMERICA”…… “are you a gambling man LG?”……… “ only on absolutes”…… Charlotte’s wish-list Web 🤣🐴🦄🎼💕……… “what’s that racket basil”… “It’s Brahms, Brahms 4th racket”🤣🤣🤣🤣

Thank you😊❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

💜💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANOM🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜

December 9/2019. 1715 hrs CST RIDDLE #139

Re-Hab-itual behaviour

Invisibility, when one is used to constant visibility breeds rumours of all sorts. Is she/they in rehab? What is she up to! Where is she up to it? Is she incarcerated, in custody, in psych care, in SoHo, in Siberia? Where where where? What is she up to? Hobbies, yachting, hiding out, in an opium den in the Far East?? Her irregular patterns or behaviour are regular, so some of these must be correct, maybe even a combination of them.

“ Gone In sixty seconds”…… ( six weeks?) ……… no sight, sound or visual,no optics???? …… old photos, photo shops and disinformation!!

It’s a film , l have not seen, because you all know by now, the films l prefer. Will she gone after this six weeks? Is she already gone? There has been nothing new at all, in any media format! The only ‘new’ was last weeks Instagram of a years old visit to Hubb bakery with photos so poorly photoshopped it MUST HAVE BEEN done purposefully! A blind individucoukd see the horrible photoshopped job. Her hairstyle was different in two of the photos! So again, disinformation, love how a makeup les Adele was squeezed in at the top, unrecognizable without her trademark black eyeliner!

“ there OK, ma’am!!”…… “ones duty is, keep muddying the waters”……

LG assuring HMTQ they are ok. HMTQ feeling strong that her duty and instructions being followed are to continue to muddy the waters, sew seeds of confusion regarding madam. Her sugars are falling off the sticky cone like flies who normally stick to it!!

The Peoples Princess, WHAT!!! ……… “capitalise on it ma’am”…… “AMERICA”…… “are you a gambling man LG?”……… “ only on absolutes”

Madams goal/obsession has been to be Diana 2.0, sacrile en Francais! She wants to be America’s Princess now, they don’t have titles there but the truth has never ever stopped her before. HMTQ enquiring of LG his gamesmanship! He replies only on things he knows, sees, can confirm 100%! Madam is counting on her home country to Dave her and welcome her as their princess huh, nary princess, THEIR QUEEN!!

Charlotte’s wish-list Web 🤣🐴🦄🎼💕

Our Princess Charlotte, yes of course loves her unicorns, but a living breathing rideable horse, THATS THE TICKET! Christmas gift! She is singing her pleas for one, with all the sweetness that we know a little girl can muster, and l have no doubt she can muster with the best of them!💜💜💜💜💜💜 If she cannot have a pony, or even if she can, she still wants a unicorn, this is the song sheet she is reading from!

“what’s that racket basil”… “It’s Brahms, Brahms 4th racket”🤣🤣🤣🤣

Every time l hear Basil, l go straight to Barcelona and Fawlty Towers in Torkey , or kortey, or yer knot , orketort.. etc etc If you are fans of the classic you will immediately undestand my letter switching and no doubt be laughing madly now. The episode where Basils wife Sybil, henpecks him, well that’s every episode🤣🤣, but the one about him needing to do two tasks, the menu and hang a picture, but he is listening to music Brahms 4 th, is hilarious! I am not sure how this relates to things. I am rather out of the loop today. I haven’t read a paper, no tv, nothing, not the blog except to find the riddle. Please forgive.

THANK YOU DEAR MM ANON for the Fawlty Towers memories, l grew up on that and Monty Python!!! Back when CBC was more BBC than CBC!!! The good old days😊.

1745 hrs CST

Thank you😊❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Thank you so much dear PG….sounds great. Much appreciated 😊💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

Ask Skippy submission

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140: Dec 11

MM ANON …… Predictions Guaranteed …… W&K increases commitment …… 🎼”no other love have i”🎼……… mummy serves a Christmas ace……4-0-tee-love…… advantage HMTQ …… nutmeg, FAULT!! …… DOUBLE FAULT!!…… Game, Set and scratch🤣🤣🤣…… “ these are actors,as I foretold you “………” thar’s gold in them thar Hills”………… 🎼”HOLLYWOOOOOOOD”🎼……… “An exit strategy LG.”……🎄seasonal Sandringham🎄…… “I WANT A POOOOOOOOONY” ,please.🎅🎅😘😘😘………… “ ask your father!!……… ask your mother!! ……… ask Gan Gan. !!😂😂😂

💜💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜

THANK YOU FOR YOUR HUMBLING WORDS TODAY💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜

SORRY KIDS THIS IS SO LATE MY INSOMNIA CAUGHT UP,WITH ME 😴😴😴💤💤💤

DECEMBER 11/2019 riddle sent December 10/2019

RIDDLE #140. 0155 hrs CST

Predictions Guaranteed …… W&K increases commitment

Well hints and interpretations are 100% guaranteed! For the millionth type l shall type OUR CATHERINE IS PREGNANT!! CONGRATULATIONS-GLORIOUS-WONDROUS-BLESSED-LATIONS!!

With PA off the roster, they both, despite their growing family needs will need to pick up the slack, as it were, left by PA absence. It’s going to be a mighty big juggling act to be sure!

🎼”no other love have i”🎼

The unbeatable team of Rodgers and Hammerstein, in fact listening to Perry Como right now. He sings the lyrics of true love so beautifully, his voice is like liquid floating through the lyrics and notes. This is definitely magic how the two intertwine. It is an absolute reference , the team of R and H, Perry Como’s liquid intertwining of the nites and lyrics, absolute comparison to how William and Catherine’s love and the relationship intertwines. That’s so beautiful MM ANON!THANK YOU!

mummy serves a Christmas ace……4-0-tee-love…… advantage HMTQ

Well an ace is a tennis term, a serve so good, no matter how skilled the opponent is, or thinks they are, it cannot be returned. MM ANON has used a number of tennis terms in this riddle. Forty love mean one person has 40 score and love means zero. Advantage means the one player needs just one more to take the game! Ok let’s interpret! We will all know, well l have already know based on observation alone,not by consultation of spirits, that Catherine is pregnant! The palace will release an official announcement as a Christmas gift to all! Forty love? Well Catherine will have four and madam zero OF THE BODY!! ! Remember that little law, that will be important in legal days in the future for madam! Thusly, the advantage is ours of course but it further secures the Monarchy!!! Plus it’s marvellous!

nutmeg, FAULT!! …… DOUBLE FAULT!!

A fault in tennis is simply that, a serve that hits the net etc. Archificial fault one, is she planning another fauxmegnancy? Madam has made so many mistakes/faults, l have no doubt she will be seething to find out. Catherine is pregnant and will pull another fauxmegnancy!

Game, Set and scratch🤣🤣🤣

The Crown wins if course,due to the law l just spoke about. MM ANON is being cheeky here because of all the photos we see of madam , sometimes in gowns, scratching her vag. It’s disgusting, there are always people around too. I have never in my life seen any woman do that EVER! Except her!

“ these are actors,as I foretold you “………”

Huh, this makes me wonder as our dear skipoy has often said, are her ‘family’ paid a tors and not really her family? This would be unbelievable but then London Scoop told us this several years ago. I think we should be prepared for everything and anything. As far as JE too, expect anything because l think the world will change once all that information is out. Just as Prince Andrew and HE GAS NOT EVEN BENN INTERVIEWED OR CHARGED!!

thar’s gold in them thar Hills”…………

That goes back to 1849, used to. All them the 49 ‘res, no l did have to look that up, just sing oh my darling clementine, it’s in there. They went in droves to the west both Canada and America seeking their fortune, some made it, most didn’t. Is madam hoping to live in the Hollywood Hills like a star and live the life? She is sadly delusional!

🎼”HOLLYWOOOOOOOD”🎼……… ““An exit strategy LG.”……

HMTQ with LG, in discussion, are they using this as an exit strategy to rid themselves of madam?? Setting her up there, or telling her this, the law will come a calling, for certain the IRS. This confuses me, l think these clues are for Miss Rachel! Are you salivating Rachel? Thinking HMTQ, or what do you call her again? Refresh me? Rachel, they are going to put you in the most gorgeous massive mansion, fill your bank and simply let you and archficial leave, after the terror you have wrought. Ok Rachel stop reading now, your part is done. after the terror you have wrought. IF YOU THINK THAT, YOU’RE MORE DELUSIONAL THAT I THOUGHT!

🎄 seasonal Sandringham🎄

The usual traditions of a Sandringham Christmas will be marvellous and enjoyed by all. No madam, the first time after two years of her being there!

“I WANT A POOOOOOOOONY” ,please.🎅🎅😘😘😘………… “ ask your father!!……… ask your mother!! ……… ask Gan Gan. !!😂😂😂

Yes dear Charlotte continues her jonesing for a pony!! Did they take her to see Santa and she begged as hard as she puked and as loudly as she coukd🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂. Santa , as Santa does with requests such as this, redirected her to ask her mum her dad, if that fails ask again Gan who loves horses to bits, pardon the pun!!

0230 hrs CST

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

Thank you death PG…this looks great..Charlotte wants that pony! Thank you for always getting our riddles done!🙏🏻💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

Skippy submission

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141: Dec 11

MM ANON ………🎼 jingle smells, jingle smells 🎼……… 🎼” I’m dreaming of a POC Christmas”🎼…… “ no Christmas chemicals or alcohol in re-hab”……… “ on a whiter note”…… “ come on Lottie ‘ aunties found a little pony” …… “ So !!! You caved darling.”…… “well ‘ it’s Christmas!!”……… “not turkey ‘ Dover sole!!”… “ but it’s tradition Philip”……“ f**** tradition !!”…… “I’ll inform Sydney”…… “are you going to announce it old thing?”…… ANOTHER COUNTRY … “He’s a brilliant speech writer” …… “you’ll bloody need it

💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜

December 11/2019 RIDDLE #141. 1050 hrs CST

…🎼 jingle smells, jingle smells 🎼……… 🎼” I’m dreaming of a POC Christmas”🎼

The proper lyrics are Jingle Bells, and White Christmas. Everything madam, who has gone from self identifying as Caucasian to self identifying as a woman of colour, has done smells, smells off! Not in terms of scent, although many say her personal care lacks majorly! Her behaviours, merching, and on and on don’t pass the smell test meaning something isn’t right. And in this case, of madam, TRUER WORDS HAVE NEVER BEEN SPOKEN! Her sugars and many others are dropping her, no one can find her!

“ no Christmas chemicals or alcohol in re-hab”

Madam is likely court mandated to rehab and for a psych evaluation in preparation for court.Substances are banned for obvious reasons, searches are done on admission and fairly routinely whilst they are in groups etc. People try and sneak things in, that’s why there is a blanket drags on visitors usually for 90 days. So there are ways of getting stuff, but it’s tricky, uncouth staff being one, but they don’t last long. So the medical detox done, now come the “ work” of dealing with issues leading to use, and the beginning of learning new life skills and the long permanent rode to sobriety and keeping oneself sober. Madam is likely forced into rehab, which we know will not be a permanent solution but they want her clean for being charged! And assessed and cleared of any or diagnosed if any psychiatric diagnosis is present. This is all essential before any court case, common practice.

“ on a whiter note”…… “ come on Lottie ‘ aunties found a little pony” …… “ So !!! You caved darling.”…… “well ‘ it’s Christmas!!”……… “

Whose hoping for a white Christmas? Probably every child in the world. Where l am this morning -33C ish, so l would/will be ever so happy to share! I do believe Zara and her mum have intervened into Charlotte’s horse dilemma/battle🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂. William and Catherine are fighting a losing battle , no stables at KP, but l believe a few do exist on England and funnily enough l do believe close family members have ridden for decades AND have stables! So there is a plan in the works, pony has been purchased, a white one from sounds of it, stable arrangements made. Now her lifelong love of horses and fun begins. There was no fighting it, it’s most definitely in her genes!

“not turkey ‘ Dover sole!!” “ but it’s tradition Philip”……“ f**** tradition !!”…… “I’ll inform Sydney”…… “”are you going to announce it old thing?”

HMTQ and PP discussing aspects of upcoming Christmas. Menu is to NOT contain turkey traditional Dover sole. After all the hoopla of madam and Thanksgiving PR, nobody ever wants to hear turkey again!! Trying to convince PP it’s tradition, although l thought goose was traditional what do l know?? PP kindly gives his opinion, no turkey and no tradition!! Sydney, as we all know by now, is His Man, as we used to say, his Valet as now would be said. PP asking if she is going to announce the Regency in 18 eighteen months when she turns 95. No reply but l am certain we will be told if and when she feels is the right and proper time, as she has always done.

ANOTHER COUNTRY … “He’s a brilliant speech writer” “you’ll bloody need it

I wonder if this is not regarding tonight diplomats banquet and her speech. I thought HMTQ’s speeches were written by herself. I do think there is massive concern regarding tomorrow’s election, if LABOUR wins, active work to dismantle the Monarchy will be underway. England will no longer be England as we know it to be, despite it changing with immigration, this would be a primordial change of titanic proportions! I am NOT EXAGGERATING!!

As far as HMTQ announcing Catherine’s pregnancy via speech that would be unprecedented, it’s usual an office statement released by KP. I think this is more relation to the next words she utters following the election, the Monarch is to remain apolitical. The next opening of parliament speech is always traditionally written by the PM. I am not certain which speech this is other than the last possible which when all other options ruled out, must be the one, l learned from Sherlock, it is her Christmas speech/message. I am certain this will be a very difficult speech because it truly has been a terrible year and pending election results it could be outright horrific.

1135 hrs CST. GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

Thank you dear PG….what will tomorrow bring….very insightful deciphering indeed! 😊💜💜💜💜💜💜

Skippy submission

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142: Dec 12

MM ANON ………emeralds should do the trick …… they certainly did…… W&K the lovers knot ………💍 a ring (Rock) of ages…… No Sin-ders you WON’T go to the ball😂😂……… 🎼”re-hab’ I said ,know know know!!!”🎼…… “ we ALL KNOW nutmeg!!”…… “GOD’ she’s in all the papers Philip”…… “ I see, she’s beautiful old thing”…… “she shines Philip”……… Wanta Konta and Kate🎾🎾…… Boris the spider…… “ doesn’t matter who you vote for, the government get in !!”…… sneezing ponytails 🐴🐴

💜💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜

December 12/2019. 1220 hrs CST. RIDDLE #142

emeralds should do the trick …… they certainly did…… W&K the lovers knot ………💍 a ring (Rock) of ages…… No Sin-ders you WON’T go to the ball😂😂

Well we were not all gobsmacked last night?? We saw HMTQ dripping in gorgeous emeralds and THE tiara!!! Catherine looked divine in blue velvet just dripping in diamonds!!! As l posted last night HMTQ sent those out to defeat her, those backers and individuals attacking her and her family AND the Monarchy that she is strong and has been vastly underestimated!! Catherine was right behind her. The full future of the Monarchy was solidly supremely gloriously on full display! Nary a sign of any undercurrents or any serious issues going on! NOW THATS THE TRUE BRITISH STIFF UPPER LIP!!

Catherine looked a star in the Lovers Knot tiara, the Hyderabad necklace, which HMTQ received as a wedding gift, actually the gift was hers to choose and that’s what she chose! Catherine was wearing a massive diamond and something?? Unsure ring on her right hand. I have never seen her wearing a ring on her right hand. I haven’t seen any really clear photos nor any attribution of the ring. Cinderella, ended up going to the ball, thanks to some mice and her fairy god,other! Our madam aka Sin-ders, sinderblock ??jail?incarceration? Looming?? Regardless of her present locale or her future, she was not invited nor welcomed nor present at the ball!!

🎼”re-hab’ I said ,know know know!!!”🎼…… “ we ALL KNOW nutmeg!!”

Classic I song by the gone too soon, Amy Winehouse. Madam is most definitely in rehab, and EVERYONE KNOWS! Is there truth to her trying to get into our country, Canada 🇨🇦, and was turned away? I would say then she is rehabbing in America which makes most sense due to frame of reference and long term sobriety. I wish that for her. If she eloped from rehab, that’s the term we used, she could be in rehab near the border. There are some awesome rehabs that have a strong outdoors focus, team building, skills etc.

“GOD’ she’s in all the papers Philip”…… “ I see, she’s beautiful old thing”…… “she shines Philip”

HMTQ and PP having a morning phone call, checking in and talking about the massive success the Annual Diplomatic Ball at Buckingham Palace. I believe HMTQ, greatly misses having PP by her side, not that she shows it, but how on earth could she not? And him as well, not missing the formal stuff but hearing the crack and being with HMTQ. They are absolutely delighted with Cather! With good reason! No one EVER EVER could have imagined or dreamt up a better partner for William, God’s Divine Handwork! She has fully come into her own, her confidence is unbelievable and she just oozes beauty, class and as if she were born a blood Royal!!!

Wanta Konta and Kate🎾🎾

We know Catherine loves tennis! She is the Patron of Wimbledon. Roger Federer is a friend and rumours of him playing with her and giving her lessons. Wants Kanta has me super duper stumped! I am ashamed but the urban dictionary definition of Wonta is a girl who doesn’t know what she is doing, sorry Catherine 🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂 using the same source, a Konya is a handsome man, great personality and a MASSIVE ‘racquet’.🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂 I don’t know about the size of his ‘racquet’🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂 but a Roger is handsome and Catherine, sorry , maybe seriously needs help with her tennis game. I must say, before these riddles, I NEVER KNEW THE URBAN DICTIONARY EXISTED!MM ANON HOW ON EARTH DO YOU KNOW THESE THING??🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂

Boris the spider…… “ doesn’t matter who you vote for, the government get in !!”

Boris Johnson has made a very trick web starting way back when he misled HMTQ into proroguing parliament. Today’s election results will show if his webs have been effective in a minority government, a majority or an astounding loss. I read today the BBC political reporter made a major error talking about the results of the mail in votes which is not permitted until polls close. I shall not repeat what she said, you can find it online. The last line is funny, because in an election you’re electing a government so of course one will get in!🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂

sneezing ponytails 🐴🐴

I think, l fear our little Lottie may have a wee allergy to her pony! Or horses in general. That will work itself out, she will outgrow. It’s in her blood to ride and be a horsewoman her entire life. A tradition from HMTQ and even Queen Victoria!

1300 hrs cst. GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

Thank you so much dear PG! Looks great! Poor Charlotte! She must have her mother’s allergy…..poor baby! Much appreciated PG!😊💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

Ask Skippy

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143: Dec 13

MM ANON …… Cor’ bin a long night!!…… “ Darling ‘ it’s an allagee-gee” ……” majori-ty and crumpets ma’am”…… “ “That’s all ,I’m orf to Sandringham”……… George&Kate set and match…”that’s it Lottie ‘ walk on !!”…… “ I did it auntie Zara”…… “ Ducks in a row then Netty?”……… “Nurse!! What’s the bleeding time”?…… A little procedure!!…… “ the lids screwed down ma’am”……… “ones writing ones screech”…… “he’s coming Philip!!” …… “backlash old thing?”………… “it’s a Norwegian Blue Philip 😂😂”

💜💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜

December 13/2019. RIDDLE #143. 1005 hrs CST

Cor’ bin a long night!!

Oh Jimmy Crickets a sound! SOUND!!! RESOUNDING DEFEAT OF JEREMY CORBYN AND THE LABOUR PARTY! THANK GOD NO THREAT TO THE MONARCHY! Massive blow to the ego of JC and the celebrities whose importance and opinions they deemed were of superior importance to the populace. People turned out in droves giving BOJO and the Conservatives a resounding majority government. I know we don’t talk politics but now the British people’s vote for Brexit can progress and no more talk of ridding of the Monarchy. Other issues continue, but will be far less prominent! The usage of Cor’ its a British phrase like Cor blimey, l don’t know the origin of Cor but l bet lots of you do!

“ Darling ‘ it’s an allagee-gee”

Catherine explaining to Charlotte the reason she is sneezing and stuffed up is because she has an allergy to horses. Terrifically cute to call it an allageegee💜💜💜💜💜💜

” majori-ty and crumpets ma’am”“ “That’s all ,I’m orf to Sandringham”

HMTQ and PP sharing breakfast. Major-ity play on the phrase tea and crumpets! MM ANON I LOVE YOUR SKILLS!! PP heading back to Wood Farm/ Sandringham.

George&Kate set and match…”

Sounds here like George is as keen at tennis as Catherine. They playing each other and likely both taking lessons. But a different WONTA KONTA THAN I WROTE ABOUT YESTERDAY HILARIOUS!!!!

“that’s it Lottie ‘ walk on !!”…… “ I did it auntie Zara”

Despite sniffles and being stuffed up, our dear Charlotte will outgrow those allergies and Zara, the consummate horsewoman is the best person to help her learn the ropes, pardon the pun! Learning to lead , and having success!! Confidence building and trust building with her pony! This is marvellous!!

“ Ducks in a row then Netty?”……… “

PP, speaking Lord Maldon or Netty his old pal, who, to those who do not know,l shall explain again because it’s very important now and will be in the coming days!! Jiminy 🦗Crickets!!! Ian Duncan Burnett, Baron Burnett of Maldon, is a British judge and the current Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales. PP checking in that everything is in place for legal issues related to madam!

“Nurse!! What’s the bleeding time”?…… A little procedure!!…… “

I wonder if PP is getting his flushot and it’s taking too long! That is not really a procedure,per se. The way the second line is written it’s a harumph, as if he was told it was little but turned out to be more. Could be a variety of tests, at his age, colonoscopy, DT scan etc. etc. I have not read anything about this in the papers.

“the lids screwed down ma’am”……… “ones writing ones screech”…… “he’s coming Philip!!” …… “backlash old thing?”

HMTQ working on her screech🤣🤣🤣😂, Christmas speech. The lid screwed down on what, the ink well? Why, so she won’t toss it at him? 🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂 NEVER NEVER!! Awaiting the arrival of the new PM for the formality of greeting the new PM and meeting with him. PP asking if she will get on him about misleading her to proroguing the government? The lids screwed down confuses me……

“it’s a Norwegian Blue Philip 😂😂”

Earlier this week, many royals attended the funeral of the car park king, Sir Donald Gosling. He left 50,000,000 £ for the Monarchy to put towards a new yacht!

This is flipping hilarious because my two favourite Monty Pythons Sketches are regarding Canadians and the Lumberjack song! I cannot tell you how often l was called that in Scotlad😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣. The other one is with the Norwegian Blue dead parrot🤣🤣🤣🤣😂, the guy tried returning it be he wasn’t happy with it.🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂 YOU MUST LOOK THEM UP, IM A LUMBERJACK AND IM OKAY. I SLEEP ALL NIGHT AND I WORK ALL DAY..OK EVERYBODY JOIN IN AND SING!

1045 hrs CST. GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

Thank you PG! Well things seem so much brighter today. All is well….love it! Much appreciated PG!🙏🏻💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

Ask Skippy submission

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144: Dec 15

MM ANON ……… Blueeeeeeee velvet …… pop pop Poppins ……… she met Mary ………” Mmmmmm , a bit sneeeeezy”……… “ we’ll go and get something really silly for her” …… it’s not a phone, it’s a MPC…… “ it’s all very Cloak & dagger”…… “ Catherine, I’m deadly serious!!”……… “meals on bloody wheels!! piss orf”……… Shut down everything!! ………… “A new broom,old thing”…………… “ well, ones not amused “………… “I’ll inform Sydney”……… From Cromer!!……… “Cromer???”

💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU DEAR MM ANON🎄🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜

RIDDLE #144

December 14/2019, however l am doing it December 15/2019 due to somebody napping the 14 th away😜🙄🤔. 0025 hrs CST

Just so you all know, l have not read any papers since this morning so, accuracies may be a bit funny🤣🤣🤣. Please forgive my typing errors etc, my left hand is very numb and the challenge of balancing my iPad and typing is more difficult. Yet we all know the riddles are meant for fun, yet l learn lots from MM ANON about so many things and l do my best to try and pass that on the my often elaborative explanations☃️❄️☃️🎄☺️🎄

Blueeeeeeee velvet …… pop pop Poppins …she met Mary

Catherine wore an absolutely gorgeous blue velvet gown by Sarah Burton for the House of McQueen to the Diplomats Annual Ball on the 11th of December. She was dripping in jewels and looked amazing. Velvet, animal print, all thing sparkles are so on trend right now!! However, anything Catherine wears looks fabulous. I love the sort of retro, 1940’s look she has been wearing the last year or so. The wide trousers she has worn on some day occasions, example the Chelsea Flower show, her garden, when she wore the linen coloured wide legs trousers reminded me so of Lauren Bacall or Katherine Hepburn. If you do not know either, they were amazing stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, when films were films and magical! My favourite!! How long winded and elaborative am l? You can tell that l have rested!🤣🤣🤣😂😂☺️.

Mary Poppins has been a classic film and play. It has been recently redone on the big screen in film and is currently playing in the West End, the theatre district in London at the Prince Edward Theatre, l believe until June 2020 unless it’s run is extended. At the Royal Variety Performance show that was aired on ITV recently showed William and Catherine in the Royal Box. They also enjoyed several comedians especially one who jested about family issues and managing a busy household! They did meet the actors afterwards and there are pictures from that!

Blue Velvet is a classic Elvis Presley song. Black Beauty is a classic children’s book/film about a black pony. I wonder two things, does Charlotte want a blue velvet dress for Christmas like her mum wore so beautifully or does she want to name her pony Blue Velvet? I am strongly leaning to the latter, naming of her pony!!

Catherine has such a varied list of patronages, interests, and activities, she fascinates new! I marvel at her. My sister and l for years now have watched and greatly enjoyed the Great British Baking Show! We now have our own Canadian version!🇨🇦. The original GBBS, hosted by the amazing Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood. We won’t talk about him!🥺😤. Mary Berry is a woman of world renowned pastry and baking skills and author of many books. She and Catherine have worked on a Christmas tv special. A Berry Royal Christmaswill air on BBC One at 8.30pm on December 16. In the show, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will team up with Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain and Mary Berry to create a festive feast for charity workers and volunteers who are working over Christmas. I hope CBC shows it!!!! Red velvet cake is a classic, might Charlotte want a blue velvet cake?? There are so many lovely interpretations of this marve riddle MM ANON💜🎄💜🎄💜🎄

Pop pop is often what grandfathers are called. I wonder if grandpa and grandma Middleton took Charlotte to see the play Mary Poppins? And Charlotte was able to meet the actress portraying Mary afterwards?? Or did they watch the new film and have popcorn ie pop pop during it? A few options here, all wonderful!!

” Mmmmmm , a bit sneeeeezy”……… “ we’ll go and get something really silly for her”

Catherine and William discussing dear Charlotte’s allergies to horsies/ponies. As parents do, they worry and want to do something for her. I wonder if she has some antihistamines OTC, over the counter or more likely seen the doctor and perhaps given some allergy medicine. I am sure she is so not happy to finally have a pony and then feeling yucky!! They will get her a treat of some kind to cheer her up, sounding like a fun jokey kind of thing. The royals are known for each gag/funny/silly gifts at Christmas 🎄.

it’s not a phone , it’s a MPC…… “ it’s all very Cloak & dagger”…… “ Catherine, I’m deadly serious!!”

William and Catherine are discussing security issues and things he learned during his time with MI6 a few months ago. I really wonder if that has been ongoing and started long before we were told publicly. Again, for the l don’t know how many times l have brought this up, but Harry’s wedding band IS NOT AN ORDINARY, RUN OF THE MILL, WEDDING BAND!! William is discussing a device, maybe looks like a phone but it’s not and does much more. Mobile Personal Communicator. Technology built into anything from something innocuous like perhaps a wedding band?? She is saying it sounds very spy-ish, 007, or cloak and dagger which is an old phrase used to describe the work that spies do. Now we often say intelligence, or in the field, when they are in the environment they need information/intelligence from. So is William talking about what has been part of his Royal trips recently or in the past? Or is he also talking about our Harry? I truly think both!!! Regardless, William is telling her how deadly extremely serious this device and reason for it’s use is!!!

meals on bloody wheels!! piss orf”……… Shut down everything!! ………… “A new broom,old thing”…………… “ well, ones not amused “………… “I’ll inform Sydney”……… From Cromer!!……… “Cromer???”

HMTQ and PP in conversation. It’s colder now, the 🔥 fire is lit and it’s roaring, crackling, and smells wonderful. The room is decked for Christmas, the smell of the Norwegian Blue tree is just fresh and ever so Christmasy 🎄. Both dressed with cozy wool sweaters and HMTQ a wrap over her lap. Meals on wheels, for shut-ins or elderly or people who have health issues, this is a fantastic program where a daily hot meal is brought, providing nutrition and a daily personal contact which is all many people have. We used to have that here. But TPTB in government, a year or so ago, cancelled Adult Day Care, which was a great day respite for spouses or caregivers of people with dementia or long term illness, aging issues, strokes etc etc. they would get a day off to do errands, cook, rest whatever, while the person needing help spent the day in care. So we have none of that now, no ADC or Meals on wheels and it’s been devastating. There is private meals on wheels now but it’s very expensive. ANYWAYS I DIGRESSED…. I cannot fathom why MOW would be an option for PP because he has a full staff at Wood Farm, however he is having none of it, judging by the comment l am assuming is his!

I do know the NHS has been a massive issue in the U.K. in terms of wait times etc. My sister listens to the monocle podcast. She told me that the NHS is sending patients to India for hip surgeries because it’s so much cheaper!

Shut down everything!! Double exclamation, is this to give everyone a good Christmas break after all the stress of the year? My first thought was electronics/devices/computers/ smart TVs etc etc. Has there been a hacking attempt? A virus? Shutdown and stop any intelligence theft or Trojans? Smart tv’s and things like Alexa or Echo, that follow voice commands to turn lights on, off, lock doors etc. I read yesterday about the Ring doorbell, being hacked so a man was attempting to speak with an 11 year old girl. I am unsure if this is what the shut everything down means, but it might be!

New broom for a New Year, New Years resolutions, changes, etc. Sweep out the old bring in new, fresh positive changes. To me, this is an absolute 🧹 sweeping out of madam and all the filth and evil she has wrought amongst the a Royal family, the U.K. and Commonwealth, the entire world also in terms of the Royal families reputation etc etc.

Alas l too wonder if this is also related to PA, sweeping out alleged accusations. Attacking him specifically, l am surely hoping all will be revealed about others , the backers, their plans and misdeeds etc etc. I pray and continue to pray for ⚖️ justice and people are made to face justice!!

HMTQ is not happy or amused about this, the used of the word amused makes me wonder if there was some cartoon in the paper or an article jesting about the Royal family or demanding changes. I truly do not know but she is not amused!

PP will inform Sydney, as we all know by now, but if it’s your first time, Sydney is PP long term valet. He knows and does anything and everything and is above reproach in the trust department!! Whatever is upsetting HMTQ is from Cromer! She is both shocked and uncertain at the same time. Cromer is a little town along the North coast of England in the county of Norfolk. Well known for its fishermen, especially crab!

I am stumped with Cromer! You have stumped me yet again MM ANON!! Unless it’s a continuation of a previous riddle, no turkey for Christmas sweep that out, bring in the new from a Cromer crab and seafood in abundance! Hence informing Sydney to make these changes in arrangements for the Christmas menu 🎄.

0200 hrs CST. GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

Thank you PG, sharp as ever…thank you….interesting….leaves us pondering…much appreciated!💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

Ask Skippy submission

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145: Dec 15

MM ANON ………… 🎼” give a little, take a little”🎼…… “Mary, Mary, quite …………”……FBI , (under the stones)……… “ very succinct old thing”…… “ blunt’ Philip!”……… “its a beautiful yacht ma’am” ………… “ I fear 20, more than 19” ………TO THE VICTOR……”………… a little late dear friend ……… WHITEHALL NOW!! …… only one came ……… IF , dear boy IF”……… “ you were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off”

💜💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻🎄THANK YOU EVER SO MUCH DEAR MM ANON🎄🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜💜

December 15/2019 RIDDLE#145

1330 hrs CST

I hope you are having/have had a lovely weekend ☺️💜☺️

🎼” give a little, take a little”🎼

Interesting song by Jimmy Cliff. Lyrics speaking of a woman in a broken relationship, she need to lear to give and take, not just take, sacrifice and pay the price. These are all things that madam has never allegedly done. She has only ever sought to serve one master, and that is the master of self! She has never been able to maintain any sort of successful relationship , be it intimate, friendship, collegial, work, family, none, l find that incredibly sad. She is a product of the choices she has made all through her adult life. These choices have certainly left her the worse for wear, physically, emotionally and spiritually. I truly pray she is seriously working on these issue if she is indeed in rehab or hospitalized.

Also fits in with merching and other financial “issues” give a little speech take a lot of cash. Have a little lunch take a little cash. Wear a little ring, take a little cash. You get the idea. Add that to whatever has gone on in the Sussex Foundation, MM, etc etc, taxes, undeclared income etc etc etc WOWZERS bit of a legal problem that! Give a little speech, take a little snort, take a little pill, take a little drink, take a little drink take a little snort. You get the idea, many ways this could go!

“Mary, Mary, quite …………”

Contrary, how does your garden grow?

With silver bells and cockleshells

And pretty maids all in a row.

Tis an old English nursery rhyme, according to Wikipedia, which one must take with a grain of salt as anyone can add to it, alter it etc, this rhyme may refer to Mary, the mother of Jesus or it could have Royal references. I wonder since we are so close to the Nativity if that is not the meaning here. How will the Royal family be spending their Christmas, who will be there, who will be absent. More specifically now, will PA been there, will he attend Christmas Day services with the family as usual, will Fergie be there, Bea and Edo? As they are not yet wed, the tradition until madam came along to plus ones until marriage. Will Harry attend, will madam and archficial attend. Will PP attend. These are all the morning church l mean. As far as Christmas at Sandringham and the traditional Boxing Day Shoot, who will be there and who will not?? Some of these things we may not know. However it is pretty certain that The Cambridge Family, minus little Prince Louis, will be walking to church Christmas morning. I am so excited to see that!

FBI , (under the stones)

We know the F.B.I. Has been very keen to interview PA for quite some time regarding his long term friendship with JE and regarding the accusations made by VRG? Under the stones, is that supposed to mean information has been buried and dug up, or simply buried?? Found dug up on the Island?

“ very succinct old thing”…… “ blunt’ Philip!”……… “its a beautiful yacht ma’am” “ I fear 20, more than 19” ………TO THE VICTOR……”………… a little late dear friend ……… WHITEHALL NOW!! …… only one came ……… IF , dear boy IF”……… “ you were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off”

HMTQ and PP are reviewing the content of her annual Christmas Day message that she has been working. He has read it and tells her it’s succinct, short and to the point, no digressions, unnecessary elaborations, in other words, it’s exactly the opposite to how l would write something 😂😂😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣😂😂. I am NOT making light of the seriousness of this message in any way, shape or form. She corrects him by saying her message is blunt! No beating around the bush, she will lay things out exactly as they are and have been!

As l mentioned the other day with the Norwegian Blue clue, the Royal family was left £50,000,000 by Sir Donald Gosling, specifically to buy a new royal yacht, whose memorial service on December 11/2019 was attended by many royal family members. He was known as the car park king. Anyhow, HMTQ has obviously been looking into yachts, he passed away in September, so his memorial was held just four days ago but the bequest would have been known for quite some time. The last royal yacht was Britannia! It has become a permanent visitor attraction moored in the historic Port of Leith in Edinburgh, Scotland, and is cared for by the Royal Yacht Britannia Trust, a registered charity.

It sounds like HMTQ and LG are looking at one she has chosen and he concurs it’s beautiful.

“ I fear 20, more than 19” Continuing their conversation, l wonder if HMTQ in this comment is referring to Christmas and fearing 20 more than 19 means she fears, 20 guests for Christmas more than 19, meaning madam forcing herself onto the family for Christmas yet again!

TO THE VICTOR……GO THE SPOILS”. The victor, person who took the victory, is entitled to all of the rewards, bonuses, or benefits of success that were wagered in the contest, game investment or whatever scheme was afoot! Also written as “To the victor belong the spoils.”

A hard fought election with Brexit wanting revisit by the losing side saw a landslide majority victory for BoJo and the Conservatives. They can now, with a majority government, get Brexit done and finally move ahead and forward from the ,muck and mire of revisiting a vote that had already been done and dusted! The spoils are political power and decision making. The NHS is a massive issue as well, but we do t discuss politics here really, it l had to mention it because it just happened and was so obviously applicable.

HMTQ and LG and his team have masterfully played the game of real life cat and mouse. As many previous riddles have stated and one just a day or two ago, PP is keeping in close contact with Lord Maldon aka Netty regarding the legal charges at play. I truly believe it’s simply a matter of right timing and HMTQ is the only one who will make that choice! She will not be hurried, pressured or manipulated! NOT ONE WHIT! But to be sure, there is absolutely NO DOUBT THAT SHE IS THE VICTOR, THE CROWN WILL ALWAYS WIN! ALWAYS! The spoils in this case will be her family being able to resume its life, justice regarding madam, baby Archie shielded from EVER BECOMING PUBLICLY KNOWN, that bit l don’t know how they will manage that in this age of social media and if madam is the biological mother and MA? The father?? I pray for that innocent baby! The spoils may also include finding out the truth of these allegations against PA and why he is the sacrificial lamb so to speak for all the other billionaires who allegedly were friends of JE!

a little late dear friend…….. I think HMTQ is saying to LG despite justice against those who backed and were part of the assault on her family, severe irreversible damage has been done, years wasted, Harry’s health, both physical and mental changed in a way that would otherwise never would have happened, PA and his family, so damaged by allegations that thus far have been not even charged with. The victor may HMTQ be, the disaster in its wake is tremendous!

WHITEHALL NOW!! ……

BoJo and his new Conservative majority will return to sit before Christmas, HMTQ will give the speech he has written for her but the whole opening will be pared down version as it was just a few weeks ago, not the whole formal horse procession, crowns robes . etc This will take place December 18/2019, members sworn in and likely a big shuffling of the cabinet!

only one came ………

Only one what came where?? Who came? MM ANON YOU’RE MYSTIFYING ME BIG TIME TODAY!! Is this PA saying only one of his fellow members of the Grenadiers came to visit him or enquire after him to see if he was ok and why he was just a no show at the banquet when he was the guest of honour. I think anyone or everyone understands why he didn’t go.

IF , dear boy IF”………

l think this is PP speaking to PA, If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. If things were different, if this has never happened, this would have remained the same instead of becoming a pariah and having his life and his family life yanked right out from under them all. Prince Andrew took over from Prince Philip as Colonel of the Grenadier Guards in 2017. They had their annual banquet December 11/2019, PA was due to be the guest of honour. Despite assurances that he would be there, he simply was a no show, didn’t call or notify.

“ you were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off”…..

Well known phrase from the film The Italian Job, Michael Caine yelling in his Cockney accent at the literal overkill by a partner in crime, he blew up an entire security van when he was meant only to blow the doors off so they could get inside. This is a massive metaphor for way overdoing this in life. PA has had everything ripped from him and has not even been interviewed!! Talk about blowing up the entire van before even knowing if there are any doors!!!

The same goes for Harry, he has been playing a role, yet he has by most been 100% lumped in with madam! His reputation in tatters, let’s pray this ends soon, please🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻.

My brain cannot think anymore, l hope this makes sense

1500 hrs CST. GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

Thank you PG! This looked like a tough one indeed! Great job. We much appreciate all the work you put in….thank you🙏🏻💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

Skippy submission

[aion-rsa]

A Hopepunk Guide: Interview with Alexandra Rowland

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We talked to author Alexandra Rowland about hopepunk, a term she coined in 2017.

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This interview with Alexandra Rowland was part of my research for "Are You Afraid of the Darkness: A Guide to Hopepunk," a feature written for Den of Geek's New York Comic Con print magazine that delved into the hopepunk term, first coined by Rowland in 2017. I recommend beginning with that article before diving into this full interview transcript.

Den of Geek: What is your current definition of hopepunk?

Alexandra Rowland: Well, there's the glib answer: “Hopepunk is the opposite of grimdark”, and there's the more nuanced answer: Hopepunk is a subgenre and a philosophy that “says that kindness and softness doesn’t equal weakness, and that in this world of brutal cynicism and nihilism, being kind is a political act. An act of rebellion.” (from my essay,“One Atom of Justice, One Molecule of Mercy, and the Empire of Unsheathed Knives,” which is the closest thing that I've written to a hopepunk manifesto.) Whichever you choose, it's important to remember that punk is the operative half of the word – punk in the sense of anti-authoritarianism and punching back against oppression.

Has that definition of “hopepunk” changed since you first coined it in 2017?

Yes and no. The heart of it hasn't changed at all, but my efforts to remind people of the angry part of hopepunk definitely have grown. The instinct is to make it only about softness and kindness, because those are what we're most hungry for. We all want to be treated gently. But sometimes the kindest thing you can do for someone is to stand up to a bully on their behalf, and that takes guts and rage.

Do you consider hopepunk a genre or something else?

I mostly talk about it in the sense of a subgenre, yes – similar to how we use the words grimdark or cyberpunk. But it's important to remember that the sorts of stories that we tell (and how we tell them) reflect our values and perspectives on the world, or at least a value or perspective that we're striving to understand in some way.

By telling hopepunk stories, we necessarily have to be asking questions like, “How do we care about each other in a world which so aggressively doesn't care about so many of the people in our communities? Who do we consider community, and is that definition too narrow? How do we fight back against the people who want to make us sit down and shut up?”

By asking ourselves these questions, hopepunk expands from simple “genre” to an entire life philosophy. It sticks in the back of your head and changes you, a little bit.

What are your favorite examples of hopepunk?

Sense8, Meg Elison's The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, the Russian movie Stilyagi – these are all amazing (and sometimes difficult and emotional) works. But as far as I'm concerned, the face of hopepunk is Sam Vimes, a character from the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. He's a gritty, hardened cop who is introduced when he’s lying blind-drunk in a ditch. He's tired, he's flawed, he's jaded and cynical... And yet he still, right at the basement foundations of his heart, believes in something. He gets out of the ditch, sobers up, gets his life in order. He holds onto his principles with a white-knuckled grip because he knows how easily they could slip away from him. He knows how easy and comfortable it would be to let himself become corrupted by his cynicism. But he stands up, sometimes against whole armies, and refuses to budge from what he knows is right and just. He is the very embodiment of: “No, you move.” And they do. The whole world does.

How intentional was that initial post? Was “hopepunk” something you had spent a lot of time thinking about before you wrote that initial Tumblr post?

Hah, the first Tumblr post was just that glib line “Hopepunk is the opposite of grimdark” and it was entirely off-the-cuff. It wasn't until a few hours later, when people were reblogging it and saying, “Wait, I think there's something here and I think I understand it instinctively, but can you explain so I can be sure?” that I started actually examining what I meant and discovered that oh, actually, yeah, this is important and it's something that I care about deeply.

I have seen some criticism, generally, of the overuse of the word “punk” as a suffix. Do you ever wish you had used a different word? Were there other words/phrases you considered?

We think that “punk” as a suffix has been overused because many of the recent genres that have invoked it did so for aesthetics (ie: to reference “cyberpunk”, the first instance of the compound), rather than because it meant something, and that’s annoying. Cyberpunk is punk. Steampunk is not – in fact, steampunk often reinforces the imperialist, colonialist narrative and ideals, which is the opposite of punk.

I have never wished I used a different word. The purpose of language is to communicate meaning clearly, and “hopepunk” seems to have carried its own meaning with delightful efficiency.

Do you think there’s something specific to Tumblr as a social platform that allowed hopepunk as a vibe to flourish?

I think that the very format of Tumblr was part of it – while Tumblr is terrible for having an actual conversation with someone, there's one thing it's really good for: you can write an essay as long as you want and then people can share it effortlessly. With Livejournal and Dreamwidth, you could do the former, but not the latter. With Twitter, you can do the latter, but the former is tedious in the extreme. That said, hopepunk didn't stay on Tumblr very long. People were crossposting screenshots of the post to Facebook and Twitter within the first 48 hours.

I think that hopepunk as a vibe flourished simply because it was the summer of 2017. We had a new president and the world was terrible and frightening. We didn't know what was going to happen, and whether it was too late to change anything, and so many of us were looking around for... something. Guidance, or comfort, or a promise that Good would eventually triumph, or ways that we could make a difference and heal the world. We were starving for stories that would tell us how and why to resist. I didn't invent the vibe – the vibe was already there and already burning. All I did was name it.

Were you surprised by the amount of attention this Tumblr post and hopepunk as an idea has gotten?

Initially, I was just vaguely bemused that anyone was listening to me, but at the same time I understood intellectually why hopepunk was resonating with people. Simply put: they were hurting, and hopepunk was a thing that helped comfort the hurt. In hindsight, I'm just very happy – when so many people find a philosophy like hopepunk meaningful and compelling... it sorta restores a bit of your faith in humanity, doesn't it? Maybe all is not yet lost, if there are enough people around to say, “Oh. Yes, this.”

Why do you think there is a need for an idea like hopepunk right now? Do you think culture is becoming more or less hopepunk?

There is a need for hopepunk because our president is a fascist. Because there are children dying in concentration camps within our borders. Because Jeff Bezos makes nearly nine million dollars per hour while his warehouse employees risk homelessness. Because we think it's normal that people should go bankrupt if they get ill and need medical assistance, or that they should get an Uber to the hospital instead of an ambulance. Because climate change is real. Because children have safety drills to practice what to do in case of an armed shooter in their school. Because racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism exist. And there is a need for hopepunk because it reminds us that these dragons can be slain. Because it reminds us that there's power in a union, that communties banding together can make a difference. Because the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice. We've beaten them before, and we can beat them again, and the next time after that. The work is never finished, and the fight is never permanently won. But we keep fighting anyway, because it is the fight itself, not “winning”, that’s the point.

As to whether we're growing more or less hopepunk... It is easy to embrace despair and to think that the world is unrelentingly terrible, but at the end of the day, we're all just human. As individual humans, we haven't appreciably changed in tens of thousands of years. We still struggle with personal flaws and failings, we're still rude and inconsiderate and selfish, and we're still all making the same mistakes that our ancestors were making hundreds and thousands of years ago. And yet, as a society, we haven't managed to kill each other off yet, and we do keep striving relentlessly towards something better.

Do you think of hopepunk as a reactive idea? Does it have to be in relation to grimdark/noblebright or is it something bigger than that?

I think that all genres are reactive -- the purpose of storytelling is to show us possibility, and authors, since they are humans living in the world (sounds fake, I know), naturally react to the social context around them. Trends in horror movies, for example, reflect the shared cultural fears that we face. In the wake of WWII, the horror genre was fixated on the monstrous side effects of radiation. In the wake of 9/11, we got a spate of horror movies about airplanes.

Grimdark and hopepunk are reactive to two opposite social contexts -- they are the man standing at Julius Caesar’s shoulder as he rides his chariot through the cheering crowds, whispering to the emperor: “This too shall pass.” In some contexts, it is a warning (grimdark). In others, a comfort (hopepunk).

You are involved in lots of fandom spaces. (Love your Good Omens fanvids! Thank you for your service!) Do you think transformative fanworks tend to be more hopepunk than mainstream works or curatorial fandom?

Oh absolutely. I think of transformative fanworks as Marxist creativity. It is a group of people literally seizing the means of production and making the canon anew in their own image, often because so many of us haven’t seen ourselves reflected in mainstream media. Also I just have big feelings about Art being an ongoing conversation, and how Fan Art is a valid and legitimate part of the conversation and that it deserves to be acknowledged and honored. (And on that note, thank you for the lovely compliment!)

Tell me about Choir of Lies. Would you consider it hopepunk?

A Choir of Lies is the standalone sequel (meaning they’re a thematic pair but you can read them in either order) to my debut fantasy novel from last year, A Conspiracy of Truths. They are about fake news and the power of stories, and Choir specifically is about fantasy tulip mania, grief, recovery from trauma, and how we use stories to heal ourselves. It was deliberately and explicitly written with hopepunk in mind -- problems are solved by communities rather than by heroic individuals, and sometimes the most important and meaningful thing that you can do is to make a small and simple gesture of kindness, something on the scale of holding out a hand to help someone who’s tripped. Small, yes, but important -- and to the person who is receiving the gesture, it might change everything.

More generally, do you intentionally try to write hopepunk stories?

In general, yes, I do tend to. I write about characters being emotionally vulnerable with each other and relying on communties and networks of support, and characters who knowingly engage with systems of power and oppression. I write about ways to solve problems that don’t involve violence. I write about ethics and what we owe to each other. I write about basically good people being flawed and messy and broken, and about basically awful people having complicated moments of shining grace and humanity. I write about characters who are smart and who think about themselves and their impact on the world, and who wonder out loud how they can do better. I write about characters who care, ferociously, about other people.

What else are you working on right now?

Ongoing projects include my two podcasts: Worldbuilding for Masochists and Be The Serpent (the latter of which was nominated for a Hugo Award this year!). I’m always writing something or other, but nothing that I can talk about publicly yet in any detail, beyond that they’re book-shaped things.

Kayti Burt is a staff editor covering books, TV, movies, and fan culture at Den of Geek. Read more of her work here or follow her on Twitter @kaytiburt.

Read and download the Den of Geek NYCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!

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Interview

Culture

Kayti Burt

Nov 6, 2019

NYCC

NYCC 2019

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[ghostflowerdreams]

What Is The Time Period In The Devil May Cry Series?

From what I’ve gathered the Devil May Cry series takes place in a Retro Universe -- basically where retro, vintage or antiquated technology, styles and aesthetics are still used, but which otherwise is or at least resembles The Present Day. Often cultural styles from different time periods are mixed and matched, usually with those that date no later than The '60s or so.

This makes sense as the technology in the series varies. For example, in Dante’s office he has a rotary phone, a boombox, a jukebox and a old color TV (in the anime). Later on in the series Nero shows up with some modernized-looking cordless headphones. This makes it hard to pin point the time period with just the few pieces of technology we’ve seen in the series. There’s also the possibility that Dante is just too poor to upgrade (or he doesn’t bother with it because his stuff keep getting broken every time). But that doesn’t explain why the rest of the DMC world isn’t up-to-date with modern inventions either. 

In Devil May Cry 5 each of the characters used telephone booths to make their calls. But when Nero was at the fancy-looking hotel, he made his call with a rotary phone. However, with Nico in order to receive those calls from him, she used what looked like one of those first ever mobile phone (which probably took hours to charge, lasted 35 minutes or so, and cost a lot too). Or it could have been a satellite phone? At that point, it was clear that the DMC world isn’t modeled after a particular time period and it’s not going for realism either. 

After all, modern cell phones would have been a thing for them by now and even computers. Instead, it borrow things from different time periods to create a retro and aesthetic pleasing game for us to enjoy. With a bit of digging around I also found out that Hiroyuki Kobayashi (the producer of DMC1, DMC4 and the DMC:TAS) once stated in an interview that the DMC world is very much like ours and it has phones -- just not cellphones. I can’t find the original article, but there was another old article that had a similar discussion with him about it...

Hiroyuki Kobayashi: In Devil May Cry [series character Dante's] office, they do have a phone, but it's a black analog kind of phone. That feeling of what the world is like is something that we really want to protect, so even though it does have phones, we don't want it to be a world where there is a cell phone and you can immediately talk to anyone in the world.

Having said that, it is a world where they do have motorbikes, so creating this mix between high-tech and analog technology -- a world where some things have advanced and some things haven't advanced -- is pretty difficult.

For example, there's a jukebox in Dante's office, but it plays old vinyl records. Some parts of technology have advanced, and some haven't advanced. Keeping that true throughout the series and the game is difficult, and we need to have all the core members on the same page. That is certainly one of the challenges in making the game. Having said that, it is a lot of fun to be able to create this kind of unique world of our own design.

After a little more digging I found more information on this subject and it’s actually a lot more recent too. On the Polygon website, Editor Matt Leone was at Capcom’s San Francisco office during this year’s Game Developers Conference. He met with Devil May Cry 5 director Hideaki Itsuno, senior producer Michiteru Okabe, and producer Matt Walker to discuss DMC5. Source: Devil May Cry 5: The post-mortem interview

Matt Leone [Interviewer]: To a certain degree, the game — and Devil May Cry in general — feels like a kitchen sink of different ideas; a lot of things could fit in the Devil May Cry world. Can you think of any things that have come up that felt too out of bounds for that universe?

Hideaki Itsuno: It’s interesting. I know this isn’t quite the direction you’re going for with that question, but there are things that technically don’t fit in a Devil May Cry, and it generally falls around the sense of style that we have. For instance, it’s not as cool for someone to take out a cell phone and say, “Devil May Cry” [with a normal voice]. But when you have a big landline phone on a desk, you can pick it up and say “Devil May Cry” [with a deep voice]. And that really comes down to the fact that we grew up in a certain era. We grew up in the ’70s and ’80s, before there was technology like this. That sense of style is something that’s been ingrained into us from having grown up in that period. There’s a lot of stuff in the game where they don’t use the latest technology, because from our point of view, this is what’s cool.

Eventually, if we ever have a director on a new Devil May Cry game who is in their 20s or something, they’ll have grown up with completely different stuff. So then the sense of style might change, and you might have stuff where in the game they’re watching YouTube or whatever.

But there’s also kind of that element of, what’s stylish? What we know to be cool is really based on our experiences in the ’70s and ’80s, but then also we have the cool dark hero element. Like with Dante, sure, he doesn’t really do terrible things — he doesn’t kill humans, that kind of thing — but there are dark aspects to him, or to the heroes in these games. Yet really, they’re pure, proper heroes that are very all about justice and protecting.

What got me thinking about all this was because when I was going over my old fanfiction I noticed something, well, more like the lack of something. I was wondering why I was making my original character go to the library to research books for information on the occult when she could’ve just google’d it (or use an equivalent of the search engine). 

But then I realized that it felt out of place if I did that because not once had I ever seen or heard any mention of computers in DMC series (especially in DMC3 as that was the game my fanfiction was focused on). Maybe they do exist, but it was still in the early stages of creation? Or that it wasn’t available for the public and only scientist, military, government or whatnot were the ones using it? I do not know, but books are a valuable source of information and will always be around. So I figured I couldn’t go wrong with having my character do some old-fashion research. 

It also makes sense that when Devil May Cry was first released it was in 2001, so of course that had some influence. At the time of writing this post it’s been 18 years since then and technology has made many advancements and will keep on advancing. But even before that in 1998, after the completion of Resident Evil 3, DMC originally started off as a part of the Resident Evil franchise, under the name "Team Little Devil". Early research and development work included a trip to Spain to examine various castles as a basis for the game's environments. So, of course, that also helped to shape DMC into what it is today. 

I get the feeling that DMC4 to DMC5 is kinda like when the 90s meet 2000s. In which those who live in the era know what it was like to see cassettes and VHS tapes turn into CD-ROMs. Floppy disk to USB flash drives, Walkman/Discman to mp3 or ipods and so on. 

Now, what about cameras? Hm, I do wonder which version of it is fitting for the DMC series. There’s a painted portrait of the whole family in Dante’s childhood home, but on his desk there is a photo of his mother. It might be one of those hand-coloring photograph? I figured because of the clothing they’re wearing looks old-fashion, it may suggest that photography might not have been that common during that time. Paintings were probably popular, but Eva’s photo on Dante’s desk is in color. Maybe it is an actual photo from a camera (the kind that’s not black & white -- film camera possibly)? Unless it’s a small hand-painted portrait of her? 

I’ll research this later. Anyway, these were just my musings that spawn from my old DMC fanfiction. Obviously, I don’t have to be canonically correct but I personally like to do my best in sticking with the source material. That usually means I have to do a bit of research to properly understand whatever peaks my interest and then figured how what I want to do with that information. Sometimes it helps me to better build up the DMC universe in my stories from. I also find that it even helps to make it feel very immersive for my readers.

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

Swan Song

Sequel to A Place to Roost and Seventeen (Once and Never Again)

There is a legend that just before death, mute swans will sing once, and beautifully; naive, really, to think they will not carry their silence to the grave.

Klavier Gavin, a jailbird, and a tightening noose.

on ao3

Klavier volunteers to juggle extra cases through the end of December, acting as a counterweight to the coworkers who take vacation days. He could, himself, but with no one to spend the time with he might as well just do his best to get justice for the poor bastards murdered on Christmas. Sebastian does the same; he always has, Klavier gathers from their conversation, in imitation of Prosecutor Edgeworth, who “has the least holiday spirit of anyone I’ve ever met,” Sebastian adds, in a tone suggesting neither indictment nor judgment but a camaraderie between them. Los Angeles’ Lonely Prosecutors Club.

He got the hawk a bandana with snowflakes on it, despite the local climate being the opposite of such. Klavier liked the snow, whenever they ran into it on their tours, but he likes the sun more. Such was not the reasoning behind declining several offers to appear as a solo artist at Times Square for the new year; he would rather tell the outgoing year to go fuck itself in the sole company of alcohol in his own apartment. Alcohol and Kris’ — no, his — dog.

Prosecutor Edgeworth enters the too-quiet courthouse, his footsteps echoing, while Klavier is cooing at the hawk. “I see you’ve met Taka,” he says, and Klavier flinches in surprise, not at Edgeworth’s appearance, but that he is actually addressing Klavier. The past year Klavier has spent very sure that Edgeworth would like to trip him down at least a dozen flights of stairs.

“It has a name?” Klavier asks, which is silly: obviously it has a name. It was obviously someone’s pet. The better question is how Edgeworth knows its name.

“Yes,” Edgeworth replies, offering a hand to the hawk, for it to stare suspiciously at him at response. He lowers his arm. “Taka. He was once Prosecutor Blackquill’s.”

“Oh,” Klavier says, very softly, all the air feeling to have vanished from his lungs.

“You know him, then?”

“Not personally, but I would be remiss as a prosecutor were I to not recognize his name, ja?”

Klavier had left the office by the time of Blackquill’s conviction. His first trial had been in April; he hung on until the next year before the Gramarye ghosts ate away at too much of his spirit, and the road and adoration of the people who had rocketed his little garage band to stardom was too tempting. He can’t remember where on the continent he was in October, while the trial eventually designated the UR-1 Incident was going on, but he remembers reading about it: just a few hours on one day for an open-and-shut guilty.

“That was seven years ago,” Klavier adds, suddenly wondering whether Edgeworth expected him to recognize the name Blackquill or whether he doubted that Klavier had been paying attention. “Has Herr Falke lived in the courthouse for all that time?” He scratches Taka under the chin. “Were you not allowed to be a jailbird?”

Edgeworth snorts and when Klavier looks at him he hastily composes his expression. “Truthfully, I do not know,” he answers. “I have spent most of the past nine years in Europe. I cannot say I have been here often enough since Blackquill’s conviction to know whether or not Taka has been here this whole time.”

“He has since April,” Klavier says. “Since I returned.”

Edgeworth heads for the stairs, leaving Klavier behind with Taka. “Prosecutor Gavin,” he says, glancing back over his shoulder. “You might do well to familiarize yourself with Prosecutor Blackquill.”

A few days later, Edgeworth is named Chief Prosecutor, and Klavier wonders what he meant.

His suggestion is one easier made than fulfilled. News articles about Blackquill from the time harp on his guilt, the injustice committed by someone who was supposed to carry out justice, but didn’t have much concern for minor details like where or who; most outlets were focused more on the HAT-1 rocket launch and the series of mechanical failures that followed once the craft was in space. The UR-1 case file contains a sparse summary and a transcript and evidence log sealed entirely with the necessary clearance far beyond Klavier’s head. When Edgeworth comes into his office to find a copy of the case summary on his desk, he gives Klavier a copy of the transcript, heavily redacted. The victim’s name, the location of the crime, a motive, pages of testimony and pages more of supplemental details that did not make it from the investigation into the trial — all buried beneath the black bars of redactions. What is left are two damning pieces of evidence: security camera footage showing Blackquill leaving the murder scene (wherever that was), and a picture (from an unknown source who was at the unknown location for reasons unknown) in which he could be seen holding a bloody sword.

Open, and shut.

Klavier knows he is missing too much to actually understand the case, the verdict, and even why Edgeworth told him that he should look back into this now, going on seven years past, but what he can see on the page of the man leaves talons sunk into his heart. Blackquill might as well not have had a defense attorney at all, because the state-assigned defender clearly gave up less than ten minutes in, when Blackquill made his guilty plea. He spoke for himself, often speaking over the aforementioned defense attorney, to make the statements that plunged the legal system into darkness: It was me. I killed her.

He would have been convicted without the confession, but his words were the first thing to leave him dead in the water.

And Klavier has prosecuted many cases, seen reactions of guilty and not to accusations, confessions, indictments, convictions — but he has never seen a man walk so willingly to his death as Simon Blackquill.

Sometime in March, a case takes him down to the prison to interview a supposed accomplice, already convicted of another crime, of the suspect. He doesn’t leave right away after and instead sits to reexamine his notes, absorbing none of it, thinking instead about how his brother is right here and Klavier could visit him, now.

— Or he could visit the jailbird, instead, the other prosecutor in the other inciting case of the dark age of the law.

So that is what he does.

Having submitted himself to reenter as a visitor and not an interrogating prosecutor, he waits and wonders if Blackquill knows his name. Did the man keep an eye on what happened — surely then, but now, now eight years later, seven of them imprisoned, does he remember the name of the first young prosecutor to snuff out the lights? Their time at the Prosecutors Office intersected briefly, just enough that Klavier thinks he can remember Blackquill, younger, haunting the halls. They were both so young then.

The man who emerges to meet Klavier has long, tangled hair, going gray at the roots in uneven patches, and dark, sunken eyes. “For what reason does the glimmering golden boy stoop from his spotlight to meet me?” he asks with a scowl.

So he does remember him — and not impressed, either.

“A little birdie told me it may be worth my while,” Klavier says. He stands, because Blackquill has remained standing, and it puts him almost at eye level to the prisoner. He is tall, a towering void with not a speck of light or life in his eyes. “The chief prosecutor has mentioned you several times of late and though I find him typically inscrutable, I thought it perhaps a decent use of my time to meet you.” He searches Blackquill’s expression for any trace of a change. “I’ve also had the pleasure of making Herr Taka’s acquaintance. Quite a smart bird, that one.”

There. A reaction, the twitch of an eye, and moving to sit. “And how is Taka?”

They take the next twenty minutes to discuss Taka and hawks in at large; at several moments Klavier feels he is being interrogated. Time spent at the office researching hawk biology and habits has its payoff in the way Blackquill’s glare softens from frigid to cold. When he leaves, he still doesn’t know what Edgeworth has been hinting at, but he thinks it time better spent than having nothing new to say to his brother.

In April, as the anniversaries of two cases that shook Klavier to his core draw closer, a year ago, eight years ago, something else too approaches. Blackquill has not had a retrial. He has not been cleared of any charges; yet the Twisted Samurai will be brought out of prison to prosecute a case. A convicted prosecutor — a prosecuting convict — one of four men, one of two prosecutors, who Klavier marks as the harbingers of the dark age of the law.

When the chief prosecutor confirms it, throughout the office there are not whispers about the decision; there is a cacophony. Klavier has long learned to filter out most of the talk, because so much of it has been about him, and there are only a few colleagues to whom he bothers to listen. “I trust Mr. Edgeworth’s judgment,” Sebastian says, which is decidedly not the overall office atmosphere, “and this is still…”

“Fucking weird?” Detective Skye asks, batting Kay’s hand away as she reaches for the Snackoos bag.

“That’s not exactly what I was going to say, but you’ve got the right — sensibility? No—”

“Sentiment,” Kay fills in. “I was gonna say ‘fucking weird’, too, though. Klav?”

“If Herr Chief thought it a wrongful conviction, why not a retrial, why not reopen the case? Why instead this performance? This—”

“This fucking weirdness,” Skye says. “Like sure there’s a lot of incompetent fucking prosecutors in this office” — she is looking at neither Klavier nor Sebastian, but instead shoving Kay away from the Snackoos again, and Klavier knows her well enough to know that if she meant one of them she would not hesitate to make that subtext text — “but if Mr. Edgeworth wants to get some more employees who aren’t useless, grabbing one out of prison is a weird fucking choice.”

“Hey,” Kay says, pulling her hand back away from Skye’s snack bag but still eyeing them, “Blackquill’s not a twofer, at least, and maybe that’s all we can ask for.”

“A ‘twofer’?” Sebastian repeats.

“A two-for-one evidence-forger and murderer. Like sure he stabbed a human being to death with a katana but he’s not, like, corrupt.”

“I think murder is a kind of corruption,” Klavier says.

“You know perfectly well what I mean without being pedantic,” Kay says.

“I know what you mean,” Sebastian says, which is no surprise. Professionally and personally, he and Kay are two halves of an incomprehensible whole.

“Like it’s fucked up still, obviously,” Kay says, glaring at Klavier as though he is about to suggest that she fails to grasp that murder is bad, “but it’s a separate different type of fucked up, you know? Like usually when it’s lawyers or detectives murdering, they’re forging evidence too.”

The silence that falls over the four of them is the silence of all having experienced that far too personally.

“Okay but it’s still really fucking weird of Mr. Edgeworth to do,” Skye says.

Klavier put the striped bandana back around Taka’s neck the prior week, as soon as he heard the rumor — still a rumor, back then then — that Blackquill would be back in the courthouse. Ever since he learned that Taka was Blackquill’s, those stripes have looked to him like the black-and-white of old prison jumpsuits. Jailbird, he thinks, but he cannot summon a laugh.

The trial lasts two days. Klavier is not at the courthouse for the first, and on the second he does not get the chance to speak with Blackquill before he is ushered out, in handcuffs, by a detective that Klavier does not recognize. Was he in handcuffs while prosecuting, too? Taka wheels about in the air, shrieking, when the doors close him off from Blackquill. “You will see him again,” Klavier says, when Taka finally comes over to him, the poor replacement for his favored human. “Herr Edgeworth intends him to prosecute more cases, I believe.”

The day after he goes to visit Blackquill to check that Taka’s weight is acceptable and that Klavier has not spoiled him, now that Blackquill has had a chance to assess the progress of the past year. When Klavier asks him about the case, Blackquill gives him the alleged reason that he, specifically, was called up out of prison to prosecute this case. With his background training in psychology — which Klavier did not know about — who better to handle a case shrouded in superstition, a murder alleged to be by a mythical monster passed down through village stories?

“Well, ‘who better’ would have been a prosecutor knowledgeable in the realms of psychology who has not committed murder,” Blackquill continues, “but our options are only so many, and so often we do not get as we wish.”

And he grins, and it is threatening the way Taka is — that Klavier knows he has talons and is aware of the damage they can do even though at this moment they are not pointed in his direction. It is a grin of a man laughing at his own joke, but said man happens also to be a convicted murderer.

“You studied psychology?” Klavier asks, because he is enjoying the conversation, happening though it is in the visitation area of a prison, and he is eager to know more about the man who is haunting him.

Something shifts in Blackquill’s face, like a shadow gone darker, a motion Klavier could easily have missed were he not treating the man like a crime scene whose every last detail needs the closest attention paid. “I thought it useful in the line of reticent witnesses and obfuscated motives.”

What was Blackquill’s motive for murder? For what reason did he cut down a woman with a sword and plead guilty to it on the stand? “And yokai now as well, ja?”

“There are no monsters,” he replies sharply. “Only men who hope to glove their own bloody hands in the guise of something else — a demon’s mask in a fool attempt to shift blame from the demon soul beneath it.”

Who was it that asked for the diary page forged?

It was the Devil.

“I wonder what you would make of my brother,” Klavier says.

He wonders what it would be like to be a witness, or worse, a suspect, underneath the icy spotlight of Blackquill’s stare. Even here, a conversation with no stakes, a chill settles along Klavier’s spine. He wonders what Blackquill is trying to read from him — the intention of that offhand remark, perhaps, or how Klavier feels about his brother (to which he wishes him good luck).

“Would he deign to be in lockup with the rest of us common murderers, I could answer.” Blackquill’s smile is not the expression of a man with no answer. “As it stands,” he adds, that smile folding into something that looks more like a barbed snarl, “he having bought himself into the nicest of the clink’s accommodations, I have not had the misfortune of meeting him.”

“The misfortune,” Klavier repeats. “I see his reputation, at the very least, has reached you.”

And then, with none of the finesse that would make the switch in topic seem like a natural progression of the conversation, Klavier asks him again about yesterday’s case. Blackquill had already outlined the progression of it, but he humors Klavier’s clumsy redirection to flesh out the details. He has a lot to say about each of the witnesses. He does not mention the defense team at all.

They talk until visiting hours are over and Klavier decides that it is better not to pull his badge to stay longer. The explanation given for Blackquill-as-prosecutor makes no sense when he steps back out into the sun’s lengthening shadows. Edgeworth made that cryptic statement back in December — he could not have known that in April there would be a case that would play to Blackquill’s strengths. There is no way that something like this could be called together on a whim. There is no way, from what he knows of the chief prosecutor, that Edgeworth would do something like this on a whim.

Why not just reopen the case?

He sees Blackquill again that Monday, at the Prosecutors Office, talking to Edgeworth with the same detective trailing after them through the lobby. Klavier catches Blackquill’s eye and waves and decides to linger — out of earshot, because Edgeworth has also noticed him and is glaring — to see if the conversation will be over quickly and he will get the chance to say hello. When Edgeworth leaves for the stairs, Blackquill is still left standing there, a tall black figure to whom everyone but the detective, a white-clad shadow, gives a wide berth even as they slow to gawk.

Klavier walks over. Eyes are on him too, now, but that is nothing new. “You garner quite a reaction, Herr Blackquill.”

“Jealous that their eyes are not on you?” Is that a smirk or a sneer that crosses his face; is he tactless or malicious? “No doubt these nosy onlookers wonder if I am to be moved into an office here,” he continues. “The chief prosecutor, however, thought it quite wasteful to go to the trouble of installing bars for the window and door when there is already a perfectly fine jail cell for me to occupy.” And he chuckles, and when he moves the chains around his wrists clink. “No great loss; I doubt they would allow a convicted murderer such as myself to decorate in the same manner. I wonder what dullard now occupies my old office.”

“Dare I ask what your old office looked like?” Klavier says.

The smirk returns to his face. “I found a simple way to dissuade halfwits from quibbling away my time was to keep a katana near at hand.”

All Klavier can see now is the decisive evidence, the still image of the bloody blade in Blackquill’s hands. That katana? No, the location in the picture was more like some sort of workshop and could not have been the office — and even if the room had held more ambiguity, there have been murders at the Prosecutors Office before and word got around quickly. That couldn’t have been kept a secret. “I am picturing a wall of a dozen of them,” he says.

Blackquill stares at him and for the first time, Klavier catches confusion on his face. “For what reason would I need that many?”

“I have a wall of guitars, so I was thinking along those lines.”

“I reiterate: for what reason do you need that many?”

“Do you want the answer, because I can tell you, and we will be here a while.”

“I don’t think Prosecutor Blackquill has the time for that,” the detective says. Klavier tries to remember if he has worked with him before. He thinks he would probably recognize the white suit and the gleaming smile if he had. “I’m afraid I do need to get him headed back to prison.” He thrusts a hand toward Klavier and all he can think is how many bloodstains this detective must need to wash out of his gloves and suit on a daily basis. “Detective Bobby Fulbright! Defender of the citizenry and champion of justice, at your service!”

Daryan didn’t like a lot of his fellow detectives; Fulbright, if they ever met, doubtlessly would have been on that list. Klavier wonders if he has heard complaints about Fulbright before, just detached from his name. “Prosecutor Klavier Gavin,” he replies, accepting the proffered hand. “Quite nice to meet you.”

Blackquill’s eyes, over Fulbright’s shoulder, narrow ever so slightly with what Klavier thinks might be skepticism about Klavier’s statement. “I’m the detective in charge of managing Prosecutor Blackquill here, so if you’re seeing more of him, you’ll be seeing more of me!”

Managing. That is certainly a choice of a word. Blackquill’s lips twitch in a smirk. He thinks it funny? Spending more time with the man hasn’t given Klavier a better grasp of him.

“Gavin-dono,” Blackquill says, as though he has not noticed Fulbright at all, as though the detective is a figment he does not hear, “do you know that wretched imitation of a ninja attempting to hide around the corner?” When he makes the gesture to direct Klavier’s attention, rather than point with one hand, he moves both, like a marionette whose arms are controlled by the same string. His wrists never stray far enough apart that the slack in the chain tightens.

Klavier turns in time to see Sebastian duck out of sight. “He lacks both the stealth and grace which he will find necessary for such maneuvers as he attempts,” Blackquill says dryly.

“That’s Prosecutor Debeste,” Klavier says.

“As in Blaise Debeste?” Blackquill asks.

“He — yes, that is Sebastian’s father.” Is, or was? Will Kristoph, once six feet under by the state’s decree, still be Klavier’s brother, present tense?

“You sound surprised,” Blackquill says. His dark eyes, sunk into shadow in the chasm between his thick unkempt hair and the bony peaks of his cheekbones, rove over Klavier’s face. “As though you expect that seven years should have rotted my memory. Did yours atrophy while you played the entertainer? Then do not act shocked that my blade once finally unsheathed is still sharp.”

“Point taken.”

“Good. Some dunces need the point driven between their ribs several times before they understand.” When he looks toward Fulbright, he does not move his eyes; he turns his whole head, subtly abandoned or perhaps just never known.

“I did not, if you would believe, intentionally set up the sword metaphor,” Klavier says.

“In the end, that is always where we return.”

Back to the bloody blade in Blackquill’s hands.

Blackquill might not have acknowledged the detective’s words, but he obviously heard them, because he takes several steps toward the door, away from Klavier. “I suppose I shall see you around again, ja?”

“I do not know how often I shall find myself in this building,” Blackquill replies, “but you well know where to find me, and I as yet have nowhere to go.” Sometimes when he laughs at his own jokes he closes his eyes, and without that dead stare emerging from his gaunt face, he looks a little less like a ghost. “And as penance for what I have done, when I will finally leave, it will only be by a short ferry ride down to Hell.”

The smile does not fade from his face.

Klavier doesn’t move from where Blackquill left him, watching the doors swing closed behind the dark ghost and the white wraith. Sebastian creeps up at the corner of his vision, nervously wringing his hands together and plucking at the fingertips of his gloves. “You didn’t need to run and hide like that, Herr Debeste,” Klavier says. It takes effort to tear his eyes away from the space which Blackquill formerly occupied.

“He’s a murderer!” Sebastian is grasping at the air, hands flexing until he closes them around each other with a nervous force which leaves him visibly trembling. “Not just allegations but a whole conviction and you just walked over to him like it’s nothing!” He looks at Klavier with wide eyes. “Do you think he did it?”

“Have you read over the case?”

“As little of it’s available. I was curious what Mr. Edgeworth was basing his judgment on but…” Sebastian shrugs. “I guess he probably had clearance to read the whole thing? I mean, the evidence that’s there was damning but there’s so much more behind the scenes.” He spreads his hands apart, as though to gesture at the scope of information that they are missing, and then with a sigh his arms drop to his sides. “There’s always, um, mechanations—machinations, behind the scenes.”

“That is how this office greets new prosecutors, ja?” Klavier asks. “‘Guten Tag! Here is your own personalized conspiracy, guaranteed to leave you with residual trauma!’ Very welcoming.”

Maybe Blackquill would have laughed, maybe even Skye or Kay, but Sebastian, twisting his hands together, only looks concerned. “I have no more information than you with which to make a judgment on Herr Blackquill,” Klavier adds, “and we both are lacking.”

“But from talking to him,” Sebastian says. They start for the elevator. “From talking to him, what do you think?”

Klavier jams the button to call for the elevator with more force than necessary. “I think I am proven to not be able to tell whether someone I know is capable of murder, ja?”

When later that week he is back at the courthouse, he poses to Taka the question: is Simon Blackquill a murderer? Taka studiously ignores Klavier to preen himself. Klavier would swear the hawk, doubtlessly hoping for Blackquill’s return, had looked disappointed when he saw him. “And would you even tell me if you knew?”

Taka scratches his head.

“And were I to put you on the witness stand, it would accomplish nothing, because you are a bird, and birds do not understand perjury.”

Taka continues to scratch.

“Though in fairness to birds, many witnesses do not seem to, either.”

Taka sticks his beak into Klavier’s briefcase. “You already had your snack,” Klavier says. “Are you looking for more? Don’t be greedy.”

He watches as the hawk pulls the autopsy report free of its folder. “You know that is not food, ja? I need that. Please don’t eat that.”

But rather than tearing it up, as Klavier feared he would, he hops forward, his head thrust toward Klavier as though he is presenting the paper. “Why thank you, Herr Taka. I suppose I should take the time to review this.” Taka flutters his wings as Klavier takes the page from him. “Herr Blackquill hasn’t… trained you to assist him in the courtroom, has he?”

Taka raises his head, one eye fixed on Klavier, demanding scratches under the chin. Klavier obliges. “Are you his only friend, as you were at one point mine?”

Being a bird, Taka again has no answer.

These are the facts of the case which Klavier knows:

A     woman was murdered.

Simon     Blackquill was sighted at the location of the murder.

At     that time, he was holding the bloody murder weapon.

He     again was spotted when leaving the scene.

He     pled guilty.

The     trial ended on the first day.

These are the facts of the case which Klavier does not know:

[REDACTED]

This is another fact which Klavier knows:

More     of the information than not about the case is redacted.

Somewhere in that blacked-out text must be, at the very least, the identity of the victim and location of the crime. He doubts the on-record existence of a motive. Blackquill’s admission would be enough. Why bother asking why when he is already willing to say he did? Motive isn’t always even necessary for a conviction — Kristoph, sentenced for the murder of Shadi “Smith” long before the victim’s true identity became clear, can attest.

And there is one last fact that Klavier keeps returning to:

There     must also be something beneath those redactions which seems to Chief     Prosecutor Edgeworth a reason to doubt the verdict.

The moniker Demon Prosecutor has been whispered more and more again these days, in tandem with Twisted Samurai, but Klavier has never felt reason to doubt Edgeworth’s honesty. He respects him, and always has, even when it looked like that was not a two-way street — and as many stories of the Demon Prosecutor as there are, there are more of a man who alone has thrown himself against the tide of corruption, and won. It is why Sebastian trusts and admires him as he does — it is why all of them do. Edgeworth is to Sebastian and Kay and even jaded, cynical Skye, what Courte is to Klavier, or perhaps more. Some history has bred in them an unshakeable faith of a strength that holds even through this that Edgeworth has not tried to offer an explanation for. It’s some kind of secret club that Klavier is locked out of and couldn’t even join if he tried. They have all been burned, too, but somehow they still trust.

But he — he can’t trust anyone like that. He wonders, certainly, because of Edgeworth’s strange behavior; at times he doubts, but Kay believes. If Edgeworth thinks there is something about Blackquill’s case worth reconsidering, then Kay will believe not just in Edgeworth, but in Blackquill, too.

He learns that one night in June, when at Kay’s behest, her pleading that none of them have met up and relaxed — “Fuck does ‘relax’ mean?” Skye asks — in months, they get together at a bar again. Skye is dead-eyed and cursing when she arrives; she has been reviewing well in advance to retake the forensics exam and thinks all of them distractions. “Mandatory fun kinda bullshit,” she grumbles, awkwardly clambering into the chair across the table from Klavier. “Bet Kay’s late because she knows I’m gonna kick her ass.”

Kay and Sebastian arrive five minutes apart, both looking exhausted from the case they’ve been pursuing. Kay has a list of grievances against half of the detectives in her department from the week, which she announces she will complain about alphabetically as she reaches over and plucks the paper umbrella from Klavier’s drink to stick in her ponytail. Klavier decides to head her off by jumping to the Fs: “I have meant to ask — what do you think of Herr Fulbright?”

“Ugh.” Skye glowers at the name.

“You feel that way about everyone,” Klavier says to her.

“You all deserve it,” she says. “Especially Fulbright. He’s so fucking annoying.”

“Herr Blackquill calls him ‘Fool Bright’.”

“Ooh, I like that one,” Skye says. “I’m going to steal it.”

“He’s enthusiastic,” Kay says. “Very, aggressively, enthusiastic.”

“The fucking audacity of not being dead inside like the rest of us,” Skye says.

“I think not being dead inside is an admirable trait that we should try to, um, emulate,” Sebastian says. “Though…” He taps his finger on the side of his glass, frowning. “He sounds really patronizing when he talks about Prosecutor Blackquill, sometimes. Yes he’s a murderer but it’s still—”

And that’s when Kay interrupts to say, “Allegedly a murderer.”

“He was convicted,” Klavier reminds. “That puts it more than allegations, ja?”

“Yeah, I know.” Kay glares at him. “But I don’t believe that, if he was just a murderer, case-closed, Mr. Edgeworth would be bothering with him.”

Skye shrugs. Sebastian is drumming his fingers on the tabletop now. Neither objects.

“And he doesn’t seem like a murderer, either,” Kay adds.

“As though that’s easy to tell,” Klavier says. Now Sebastian is conspicuously staring at the floor, while Skye throws her head back and downs the rest of her drink. “I will remind you here, it is not.”

“Klav,” Kay says plaintively, her chin in her hands, pouting. Something hits his shin and he glances beneath the edge of the table to see that she is kicking him. “I thought you liked Prosecutor Blackquill.”

“I… do,” Klavier says, and the admission is the reluctant realization that at the office he has less friends than he needs all of the fingers on one hand to count, and one of them is a convicted murderer. “But that hardly precludes him from having committed the crime of which he is accused.”

And honestly, the more Klavier thinks he likes Blackquill, the more certain he becomes that there really is nothing more to the case than Blackquill murdering someone. After Kristoph, after Daryan, why would it work out any other way?

“He’s right,” Skye says. Her mouth twists like she has tasted something unexpectedly sour. “I’m not drunk enough to be saying shit like that.”

“I will treasure the memory of it forever,” Klavier says.

“You do that.” Skye slides from her chair and heads for the bar.

“Weren’t we talking about Detective Fulbright?” Sebastian asks after some twenty seconds had passed. “You’ve never worked with him, Klavier?”

Klavier shakes his head. “Most of my cases have been with the detective who just left this table. Have you?”

Sebastian nods. “A couple times, a few years back. He’s — enthusiastic, like Kay said. Loud. He had a lot of thoughts about the concept of justice. It’d be a mistake to get him and Justine talking — the most just justice versus the Goddess of Law.”

“My money’s on Judge Courtney,” Kay says. She has plucked the umbrella from her hair and twirls it between her fingers. “I worked a couple cases with him back in the winter, some murders, missing persons, fun times that turned into cold cases like some unlucky dude with a busted-up face we fished out of a river.” She shudders and takes a long draught. “Or the dude found dead in a koi pond,” she adds, much more upbeat. “I like him, though, even when he’s out-enthusiasticing me.”

“I don’t think that’s a word,” Sebastian says.

“Hm.” Kay contemplates a stain on the table like it will grant her an answer. “You know, I don’t, either.”

“I mean, I guess he’s sort of nice,” Sebastian adds, and as he continues he starts to talk faster, his words running together, “but he’s just — sometimes, sounds so condescending when he’s talking about Prosecutor Blackquill, even when Blackquill’s right there.” He looks close to tears and Kay leans over to throw an arm around his shoulders. There is some context that Klavier knows he is missing.

“I didn’t notice,” Kay says, now leaning her head on Sebastian’s arm, “but I’ll keep an ear out and I’ll kick his ass if he does that while I’m around.”

“Whose ass are we kicking?” Skye asks, returning with full glasses for each of them in her arms.

“Fulbright’s,” Kay says.

“I’m down,” Skye says. With the volume of the bar, Klavier doubts that she even heard the reason why.

June rolls into July; time doesn’t slow to give him time to prepare for the next painful anniversary. Blackquill has prosecuted more trials since April, ones that don’t even pretend to need a specialist in psychology. Klavier sees him around the courthouse, has several times not spoken to him because Kay was already there, chirping at him and cooing at Taka while Fulbright attempted to get them to the doors. (“I want a pet crow,” she says to Sebastian and Klavier later, and Sebastian looks like he has been paralyzed with terror. Klavier knew her meeting Taka would be bad.)

Edgeworth has been predictably evasive when even Sebastian has put new questions to him; Klavier witnessed another of those exchanges in the hall this morning and is still turning it, and everything else, over in the back of his mind while he works. He thought if anyone could get an answer out of Edgeworth, it would be Sebastian.

“You really do have a plethora of guitars.”

Klavier jumps, yanking his headphones halfway from his head. “Warn me before you sneak up on me next time, ja?” he says, smoothing his hair back out of his eyes and spinning his chair to look at Blackquill in the doorway. Over his shoulder, there is Fulbright, the omnipresent shadow.

Blackquill raises his arms and shakes them, once, so that the chain and cuffs rattle loudly. “I thought that enough to herald my approach.”

Well, maybe he’s right about that one. “I would not have joked about something as serious as this,” Klavier says, standing and waving his hand at the wall. “To which I believe that you, Herr Blackquill, asked for a very detailed explanation of what makes each of these fine instruments differ from the others?”

“I most certainly did not,��� Blackquill replies. Klavier laughs. He wonders if that is simply Blackquill, or whether it is symptomatic of life on death row — that with nothing more left to lose, there is no reason to mince words. “Though I may make an attempt at supposing what sets that one apart,” he adds, raising his hands and motioning at the remains of Lamiroir’s guitar, hanging closest to the corner, half-hidden by a small table.

“Sentimentality does,” Klavier replies, “in regards to the magnificent artist who gave her guitar to me, and my best friend who torched it and murdered a man in attempts to cover up his smuggling operations.”

He runs out of air too quickly on that sentence. He can hold a phrase longer in song but finds himself gasping for breath. A year doesn’t lessen the sting. He realized that back in April.

(And god, it’s been a year now since Klavier lost his best friend, an entire fucking year.)

Blackquill’s dead eyes slowly drift from the guitar to Klavier. He says nothing and Klavier does not feel the pause is a deliberate one on Blackquill’s part, but rather, for the first time, he does not have a response easily at hand.

“So if it was not to discuss with me my collection of guitars, what brought you here?” Klavier asks, forestalling any response Blackquill might be about to make, because in the silence he realized he does not know how to talk about Daryan, at all, in the slightest. He has no words to say about Daryan, because all of the words he ever wanted to say were cut up and rehashed and transformed into something else by two bandmates, two publicists, and a manager, and he has taken all of the feelings that were stripped from those public statements and buried them somewhere deep inside his heart where he no longer knows how to reach.

“I doubted you had yet heard and as I was here to speak with the chief prosecutor, assumed you may wish to know — Phoenix Wright has his badge back.”

Now it is Klavier who does not have a response ready. Wright, behind the bench again — of course the Bar Association would have cleared him of the prior charges against him. The evidence that came to light was enough. He shouldn’t be surprised, he should have expected this to one day be the case—

“Ach, news travels faster in prison than I have heard, ja?” Klavier asks. “Enough that you have heard this before I?”

“Only because tomorrow I am to stand against him in the courtroom in his first case in eight years,” Blackquill replies.

Klavier wouldn’t count it as such — from the transcript, the trial which he ran from the defendant’s chair, before climbing behind the bench with Apollo, might as well have been one in which he stood with his badge. But he has just barely staunched the flow from the wound of bringing up Daryan, and he has no desire to reopen one more, not when Blackquill has just lodged another blade in his gut. “Oh,” he says.

One of these days he’s just going to fucking fall to pieces in front of Blackquill, isn’t he? Only one other man has loomed before him like a manifestation of all of his guilt, a specter of his failures, which he cannot just lock away like he does with grief. How does Blackquill, who Klavier only met a few scant months ago, so much resemble his brother in this regard?

“That will be quite the trial, ja?” His desperate attempts to feign detachment are grains of sand through his fingers. He spins his chair back to face his desk, as though some part of his work will have become so pressing that he needs to send Blackquill away. “Viel Glück, though of the two of you it will be Wright who needs luck, as his school of thought only builds cases on luck and bluffing, which — nein, you surely know already—”

“Gavin-dono.” His name has weight to it, like a heavy blanket thrown over his head, and he stops. “Yes, I thought given your history you should appreciate a warning, but should your inane and childish babbling not cease this instant you will miss the part which you will most like to hear.”

What else is there even to say? Klavier closes his eyes and reopening them steels himself to face Blackquill. He does not expect him to be laughing when he does.

“He is defending an orca.”

“An… orca?” This is a fever dream, surely; the Twisted Samurai is not here to tell him that Wright is defending an orca as his first client in eight years. “As in, a whale?”

“They are closer related to dolphins,” Blackquill says, “as both have teeth, while what you might consider ‘true whales’ do not — but I believe you understand the crux of what it is I am saying.”

Of all of the aspects of this which Blackquill could choose to overexplain—

“Wait,” Klavier says. “This means that you are — you are prosecuting an orca.”

“Yes,” Blackquill says, an answer given without hesitation, an unreserved admission to his role in this latest courtroom lunacy.

Klavier presses his hands over his eyes and tries to imagine the expression which Apollo made upon finding out that his boss is defending an orca. He tries to imagine the sequence of events that led to Wright taking up the defense of an orca. “Was your meeting with Herr Chief to convince him of the merit of this case?” he asks. “Or perhaps the logistics of flooding a courtroom to allow the defendant to enter? What will Herr Taka think about no longer being the only animal present?”

“I do not think that the orca will be physically present in the courtroom,” Blackquill says, but he again is laughing, the rattle of the chain between his wrists a discordant background track to it. “Though I would not be surprised should the defense make an attempt.”

“Nor would I.”

He always can’t help but think of Kristoph, the good and the bad and the murder, around Blackquill, but this, the laugh, is different. Kristoph’s final tirade against Wright was the culmination of over seven years stewing in resentment about losing out to someone he thought inferior, ending in a screaming breakdown insisting that the law is absolute, immutable, and sacred; what mockery would he think it that Wright, with a badge once again, having slipped free of Kristoph’s plots, is bringing an animal into the hallowed halls of justice? How furious would he be? “If by any chance you are ever to run into my brother,” Klavier says, “please, please tell him what Wright is up to.”

“And I will doubtlessly be able to enjoy the expression on his face when he hears of this?”

“Ja, ja. Most certainly.” Klavier leans back in his chair. “And you will have to tell me how this trial goes and what your delicate psychological technique is to draw out testimony from such a defendant.”

Blackquill smirks. “‘Delicate’ has never been a word I have heard used in conjunction with myself.”

“I cannot even begin to imagine why,” Klavier drawls. Blackquill laughs, again. Klavier remembers once thinking him stoic. That impression has not quite held.

He should hate him. It should be easy, lacking the history he has with Daryan and Kristoph that makes his heart stay softer than the courts have determined they deserve. He may know that there are no ends without proper means, and the information he lacks about Blackquill’s trial means that he cannot make a proper judgment, but if he trusts the verdict reached by those at the trial, with full evidence and testimony—

(Trust is a hard thing to give in this legal system; still, why does he assume the worst of the prosecution and defense but the best of Blackquill?)

No, he should hate Blackquill — not even for being the straw stacked on the scales of justice that caused them to break under the strain, but for ending a woman’s life. Doubt everything, but he admitted to it in court, on the record, plain to read in black ink. Who was she? How did Blackquill know her? What do her friends and family think seeing her killer stand in court as a prosecutor? Is it salt in that old, but no less painful, wound? Does it seem a mockery of justice, a mockery that Klavier should stand against?

(He wonders what Kristoph thinks of this.)

He could ask Blackquill if he knows the best way to deal with cognitive dissonance.

He does not ask Blackquill this. Instead, he asks about how he came to own and train Taka, and whether he knows that he chose the most boring bandana possible.

“Do you know that you have chosen the most eye-searing hues?” Blackquill asks in response, watching Taka survey the options Klavier has laid out for him. After several moments of what Klavier presumes is contemplation — though Taka is a bird and Klavier does not claim to understand bird psychology — he plucks up the bright yellow bandana and presents it to Blackquill to tie around his neck. Blackquill frowns.

“Yellow not your color, ja?” Klavier asks.

“Yellow is fine,” Blackquill replies tersely, in a tone making clear that this answer had better be fine to Klavier.

Blackquill arrived late to the first case he prosecuted, as he told Klavier, but since then he and Fulbright seem to have developed a schedule that leaves adequate “preparation time”. Privately Klavier believes Blackquill just wants to spend more time with Taka, but it makes for a system that if Klavier arrives early on a day when they both are prosecuting, he can spend some time chatting before witnesses arrive. The cushioned benches are much more comfortable than the prison visitation room chairs, though here, Blackquill has clattering chains around his wrists and Fulbright never out of earshot.

“What is your opinion of purple?” Klavier asks. “And the Gavinners logo?”

He grins as Blackquill gives him a once-over, eyeing his necklace. “Tacky,” he answers, “as your aesthetic sense is long proven to be.”

“You will be sorry when you find your bird blinged out in said logo, with no other bandana in sight.”

Taka, perched on the bench in between them, lets out a shrill chirp.

“And you shall be sorry when you find yourself, your bandana, and your glitz and glamour back in the dumpster, and while you are there you may wish to search for the fashion sense you lost long ago.”

“Oh, you think me glamorous?”

“Did I not just speak of a dumpster?” Blackquill shakes his head. “Still, it pains me to say that you are more presentable now than the imbecilic boy you once were, wearing sunglasses in the halls of the office in what must have been a poor attempt to fool us all into thinking you someone important and worth knowing.”

Klavier glances at Fulbright, who is, as he always seems to, wearing sunglasses indoors.

“Your past wardrobe keeping company with Fool Bright’s is a sad indictment of your state of affairs.”

“You often give this much thought to the manner of my dress?”

“You would refrain from flattering yourself—”

“Ach, I’ve been told that’s what I do best—”

“—because much nature’s most colorful and oft hideous beasts, you dress yourself with the intent to draw all eyes in what is an obvious warning to keep far away lest you be poisoned.”

“Nein, now you’re just mistaking me for my brother.” Klavier waves a hand toward the prosecutor lobby. “Well, feel free to leave at any time, Herr Blackquill. Is your drab monotone meant to be camouflage from the predators of the courtroom such as those defense attorneys and their orcas?”

“Much like the orca, I mean to mark myself as the peak of the food chain.” He chuckles. “And why should I leave? That dull blade you call your wit cannot hurt me as you swing it.”

“I thought the animal metaphors to be a bit of a surprise, but I suppose you are not quick enough on your feet to continue with it and must return to the usual.”

“Challenge me to a duel and you will see how ‘quick on my feet’ I am.”

“And the weapon? Guitars, perhaps? I have quite the collection to arm both of us.”

Blackquill looks like he’s seriously considering the logistics of that. “I suppose that would do. It is after all a blunt instrument.”

Klavier groans. “Get out of here.”

“Prosecutor Blackquill!” Klavier jumps; he had forgotten about Fulbright again. “I’m afraid we really do need to leave — your witness is here.”

“Then you get your wish,” Blackquill says, standing and looking back down at Klavier. “I am forced to blink first, and you are presently rid of me.”

He takes one step away and Taka for a moment hesitates, glancing between Klavier and Blackquill. Then, as Klavier expected, he takes to the air and settles into his usual place on Blackquill’s shoulder. He stops, and ahead of him, so does Fulbright. “I think your bird has taken a liking to me,” Klavier says. “Do you worry I will steal him?”

Blackquill shakes his head. “I have not the faintest fear of that. I…” He frowns. “I am grateful to you, Gavin-dono,” he adds, very quietly.

“What for?” Klavier stands up as well, so that the distance in height between him and Blackquill is no longer a chasm.

“For taking interest in Taka,” he replies. At his name, the bird flutters his wings and raises his head slightly higher, appearing dignified for almost a second before he looks at Klavier with his head cocked much the way Vongole does when she hears a sound she doesn’t recognize. “I am… heartened to know that there will be someone to care for him once I am gone.”

Klavier’s stomach drops.

“I hope he’ll get along with my brother’s dog, then,” he says, his voice wavering when he tries to make it sound like a joke.

“So long as you keep him properly fed, he should behave himself,” Blackquill replies, already moving again to the lobby where the witness waits, already burying vulnerable moment. “But you seem to have discovered that on your own.”

Not again. Not someone else ushered toward the gallows, and Klavier only to watch and care for a life they left behind.

He doesn’t need more reminders of Kristoph as the months pass, summer fading into October to mark a year since he last spoke to his brother. In what feels a mockery of the fact that he broke up the Gavinners immediately after, Klavier gets an email from Themis Academy asking if the remaining members want to come play a reunion concert for the school festival. He texts the others immediately: I’m going, he tells them, before firing off an affirmative response to the school administration. An hour later, a second email asks him if he wants to teach a class on prosecuting for the winner of the mock trial. We’ve reached out to Phoenix Wright to ask if he will be the guest defense lecturer, it reads, which Klavier thinks a cruel irony, to put the two of them together — but this he accepts as well. It all will force him to see Courte again, no excuses on his part.

He’s been ashamed to see her since he came back, over a year ago. His own brother, a murderer, and Klavier with no idea. He didn’t want to see anyone who might force him to confront that, or worse, to confront his first-ever case and his murderous brother’s role in it. Courte would have told him to stop doubling down on his adamant belief that it was all Wright, him alone the sole player in his own demise; she would have told him to keep an open mind, and he hadn’t wanted to think about what that meant. And then once he couldn’t run from the truth any longer, the shame had piled on too heavy like the weight of a grave filled in above him: he had been careless, too trusting, and a man’s life had been ruined for it.

Because for all the lingering doubts, and despite the fact that Gramarye had literally disappeared from his sentencing, he had been proud to go to Courte and tell her that on his first case he had brought a corrupt, dishonest defense attorney to face the music. It’s what she taught him, wasn’t it — above all else, the truth, through proper means. And he thought that was what he did. He thought he took down a man of dishonest means. And he was proud to tell her that.

And he was wrong, so very wrong, and how could he go back and face her?

Themis is just far enough outside the city that he can lie to himself and say that it was a bit too out of the way; he is just busy enough that he can lie to himself that he missed any emails from her even though he read every word. On the times he thought to send an email himself, shame kept him at bay: after avoiding her for so long, what excuse can he make to justify himself? What can he say to stop her from being disappointed in him? It’s too late, he thought again and again, too late to just reach back out after hiding from her for so long.

And then when he has ironclad reason, an outside force pushing him to see her, it really is too late.

He doesn’t feel angry, or grieved, or anything; the heart that he had that could ache was torn out long ago, and the pulsating void that remains pumping his blood offers him only numbness. All he feels is a small, soft, oh: oh, that was why no one had seen her this morning when he asked about her after he arrived. Oh. Oh, she’s dead, and that explains that.

Fulbright recognizes him as “Prosecutor Blackquill’s friend” and waves him over; Blackquill has been assigned as prosecutor, he learns, and has already determined a witness to call. Approximately half an hour later, Klavier passes this information over to the defense. He wants answers about Courte’s death, and the more informed both sides are, the better chance of reaching the correct verdict.

Apollo has seen him at two of the other worst moments of his life. Why not now, why not this moment? Klavier knows he is failing at putting on a brave face; Apollo knows him well enough to know to raise an eyebrow at the way Klavier’s accent thickens, German phrases dropping more and more heavily into conversation. Apollo can see he is pushing his rock star persona downstage to take the heat and leave the rest of him, the gaping emptiness, sheltered in the wings. Cykes is young but sharp, reading through his words to what lies below, and something about her reminds him of himself at that age.

 When he parts with them, he runs again into Fulbright, who has Blackquill on speakerphone; Klavier supposes that phone calls from on-scene is the best that Blackquill can do, and he doesn’t envy the difficulty of investigating remotely. Fulbright talks more about the case and the possibility of the crime scene being a different place than where the body was found. Klavier accompanies him up to the art room to look it over and on his way back down runs into Wright — literally.

He wishes he had Blackquill’s warning, like back in July, to cushion this.

Klavier had intended to — somehow, he hadn’t gotten that far into a plan — dodge Wright for the duration of this event. Instead, here he is in an empty hallway, with Wright making casual conversation like it’s nothing, like there isn’t eight years of painful history haunting them both, plain in Klavier’s face and tarnishing the golden badge on Wright’s lapel. Klavier stammers out some sort of response to some friendly, irreverent remark, tells Wright what he has learned about the real scene of the crime, and bolts. The hollow place where his emotions should be has again filled up with shame.

Wright is the reason he avoided Courte, and now she is dead, and Klavier—

Did she die ashamed of him, or having forgiven him, or had she stopped thinking about him at all when he stopped responding to her?

He hopes it was the last. He hopes she washed her hands of him. He failed her and then avoided her in an attempt to, even worse, avoid confronting his mistakes; and not having asked her forgiveness he does not deserve it, but neither did she deserve bearing the weight of his failure. He hopes she wrote him off as a lost cause and found better students to carry her teachings. He hopes she wasn’t looking forward to seeing him again when he accepted the position of guest lecturer.

But still he hopes, if he cut out the Gramarye-Wright debacle from his history, she would be proud of the rest.

That evening, starting too early, he drinks until the shame is gone and falls asleep on the floor, waking at four am with a hangover that is still not the worst ever in his life. He doesn’t go back to sleep but showers, drinks about a gallon of water, and goes into the office before the sun has risen to get some work done before he arrives at the courthouse for the first day of Woods’ trial. The building is still silent as a crypt when he arrives, curling into himself on a bench near the vending machines. Taka is not there, and Klavier does not move to seek him out, but before long the bird settles next to him.

“Why?” he asks.

Taka, being a bird, cannot answer.

This, no one can.

As people begin to trickle into the courthouse, Klavier remains there, saying to Taka any words that pass through his head: a story from his days at Themis, an idea for a new song, the color of a new bandana. It is as he rambles about this last one that from the corner of his eyes he spots the towering dark figure of Blackquill, and he expects Taka to immediately take to the wing and greet him.

Surprisingly, the bird stays right there next to Klavier, and it is Blackquill who moves to them. He stands there silently looking down at Klavier.

He is thinking green for the new bandana. He tells Blackquill this, an inane continuation of the inane conversation he was having, but now with man instead of bird — but now with someone who can actually respond, someone who can say something, anything, to break the silence that has consumed Klavier for the past twelve hours. What must he look like, how tired, how broken, to crack the stone-faced Twisted Samurai and the heavy dark circles around his dead eyes into showing pity?

He has heard Blackquill speak too smoothly so often to doubt that he could easily pluck some pretty and meaningless words of condolence from the air; he has heard Blackquill speak too sharply so often to doubt that he would not even make attempt at comfort if he did not genuinely mean it. Blackquill has no trouble brushing off Klavier, or anyone else, when he wants to; but he remains with words that are almost awkward. Even a few minutes later Klavier doesn’t remember exactly what was said — he is too dazed, too empty — but he knows that Blackquill’s comfort was of justice. He will cut down the one who did this.

Justice is the only comfort that Klavier has ever had: the guilty, found and exposed to face the punishment they deserve for the crime.

Funny, then, to be consoled in that way by a murderer.

Watching Blackquill stand at the bench is and isn’t what Klavier expects from him. Typical are his sharp words that even generously are hard to interpret as anything but threats and an excess of blade puns, but something about the jabs he lands on Cykes are different than anything Klavier has heard. Belittling at best, cruelly personal at worst — does he know her outside of the courtroom? And how could he, her so young, him in jail for seven years?

The trial ends with an extension to tomorrow when the defendant’s two friends offer up perjurious confessions of committing the murder themselves. The most generous thing Klavier is willing to call them is frustratingly, stupidly naive, to think that obscuring the truth is a way to help anyone.

Blackquill knows that Klavier assisted (leaked information to) the defense, mentioning such when they spoke about Courte before the trial; this does not stop Klavier from returning to Themis with the express intention of continuing to do such. Cykes asks him point-blank for his help, as though he wasn’t going to give it, but he does think that the girl is probably getting some strange ideas about what the dynamic between defense and prosecution should look like. That’s not his problem, though. That’s Apollo’s future problem.

They reinvestigate the scene where the body (the body, he frames it in his head like another crime scene, not someone he knows, not someone he loved) was found and try to reconstruct the stage as it was meant to be from the initial plans. When Cykes suggests rebuilding his statue, he cracks a joke about picking up the pieces of a shattered rock star, stunningly apt in both the literal and the metaphorical, but the more he thinks about it, the more inside he is screaming. Bickering with the two defense attorneys is almost relaxing, but the second time Cykes echoes his own original joke it stings and he tells her, perhaps too curtly, to reword what she has said.

Apollo and Cykes are more familiar with Fulbright than he is, enough that he and Cykes have some shared greeting or something. It’s funny in some sort of way that for however familiar he is with Blackquill — friends? Fulbright said such but Klavier does not know what to think — the detective who trails him is a fixture more like furniture. As the defense move on to investigate further, he remains, the weight of memory heavier than ever on his shoulders. With the art room window open still, he can hear the faint chatter of investigators as he sits alone on the edge of the stage, wondering how the one untainted memory of a victory he had, here at this school, in the mock trial, has become yet another shadow. Everything around him is shadows now, dark corners into which he can barely stand to look.

His Gavinners banner comes back to him as a sooty scrap of rags, an injurious insult on top of everything else. Later, he catches up to them in the main lecture hall to find the defense with suspicions of fabricated evidence. He makes a copy of the of the voice recording that so became a point of contention in the trial today and of the mock trial tape and drops them off at the lab for analysis, leaving them with his number for when they learn whether the former was fabricated using the latter, and goes home. The sun has dipped below the skyline on the ride back, the artificial lighting of the streetlamps not banishing any of the autumn cold that cuts him down to the bone.

He doesn’t drink that night but still falls asleep sideways on his bed, his head wedged up against Vongole’s chest so that he can feel her breathing. He needs reminding that there is something else alive in this house; some days he lives only with ghosts. Some days he thinks he is one of them.

In the morning he picks up the results of the audio analysis and heads to the courthouse, where for the first time in many months he does not seek out Taka but instead makes straight for the lobby where the defense team has gathered to make their scant preparations. Cykes is wild-eyed and visibly exhausted but still grinning when she sees him. He hopes that having proof the recording is a fabrication will ease some of her anxiety, but he doesn’t have time to find out for certain; someone thumps against the wall, unsubtle eavesdroppers looking for an edge, and Klavier takes off after them, leaving the defense to shout “I’m fine!” at each other.

He spots them, black, blue, and red, turning a corner, but the trio of students don’t make it any further than that; O’Conner is trying to run with his hand still in his pocket, and the girl in the box — Scuttlebutt? — and her lack of peripheral vision out of her cardboard box collides with Newman and sends them both into a wall. O’Conner appears to realize then that any attempt to flee is futile and recomposes his face into a cloying smirk while the other two scramble about on the floor, Scuttlebutt yelping and ducking into her box when Klavier’s eyes turn toward her.

He knows exactly what they were up to but still asks, and Newman, still on the floor, pretends that absolutely nothing is wrong and asks him what he was doing. Scuttlebutt has now retreated entirely beneath her box and is inching away from the scene of the pileup. Klavier takes one step closer and places his hand firmly on top of the box. She squeaks and then hisses — actually hisses, like a leaky steam heater or a snake. More entertaining than the usual paparazzi he deals with, but have teenagers gotten stranger in the years since he attended Themis? He doesn’t remember anyone like — oh, Mien Gott, he was the weird one, wasn’t he.

At least being famous means he can upgrade to eccentric.

Two answers he expected: Scuttlebutt, looking for a scoop, and Newman, going where her friends go. That leaves the one who Apollo and Cykes suspected as the killer. “And you, then, Herr O’Conner? What exactly were you doing, ja?”

“Heh.” O’Conner’s face is almost contorted as he stares down Klavier. “What does it matter to you? You’re not the prosecution or the defense.”

“And why do I need to be officially assigned to this trial to be concerned about some untoward suspects skulking about the courthouse?”

“Suspicious of me?” He laughs, an attempted deflection, but it sounds pained. “I’m a witness, not a—”

“Then perhaps a witness ought to be off preparing with the prosecution, not spying on the defense, ja? You seem awfully worried about what they will do, despite only being a witness.”

“They’ve accused just about everyone of murder! Why should I not think I’m next?” O’Conner rubs his neck and from the corners of his eyes glances at Newman and Scuttlebutt. “You’ve really got it out for me, huh,” he says to Klavier. “But of course, a genius such as myself should expect that — for a prosecutorial has-been to recognize the threat I pose.”

“A ‘has-been’?” Klavier repeats. Of all the insults—

O’Conner ignores him. “What defense attorney goes into court unprepared, besides that laughable pair at the bench yesterday?” So he really does want a punch in the teeth. “And since I’m probably next on their list of baseless accusations” — Klavier would hardly call it baseless but to each their own — “I have to prepare myself, as I’ve learned. The ends justify the means, don’t they?”

“No,” Klavier snaps. “They don’t. Not your desperate, underhanded means, and I will enjoy when that unprepared defense team rips you apart on the stand.”

“Is colluding with the defense ‘underhanded’?” O’Conner asks. “I don’t listen to lectures from lawyers who don’t know what badge they wear.”

“Fortunately, the lecture that I was to give would be to the prosecution course, not you.” Was Klavier this insufferable while he was in school? Probably. “I would be careful, ja? Or that badge you will so be happy to have will be stripped from you like—” He snaps his fingers.

“Oh, you’d know all about taking away the badge of someone who doesn’t deserve to lose it.”

He should have expected that, and it hurts. He doubts it will ever not, but missing every last chance he had to speak with Courte because of it is seawater far above his head, salt stinging in the open wounds as he drowns. He sinks. “You flatter yourself to think yourself comparable in any way to Phoenix Wright,” he says. “Nein, if you know his story, you should know how I mean it when I say this — if I ‘have it out for you’, as you seem to believe, it would be because you remind me very much of mein dear brother.”

O’Conner recoils; Newman inhales loudly, in preparation to yell. All of them, Klavier included, freeze as the clanking of chains heralds the approach of another. “My most sincere appreciation, Gavin-dono,” he says, his tone sickeningly sweet, deeply unsettling, “for softening up my witness for me.”

He turns his cold smile to O’Conner, who shrinks away and grips his neck like he is in pain. “I cede the stage to you, Herr Blackquill,” Klavier says, and he leaves them, Newman indignant and Scuttlebutt a large box tucked conspicuously in the corner and O’Conner still on the line between terrified and smugly thinking himself unjustly persecuted, to retreat up into the gallery. Blackquill’s lifeless eyes burn into his back as he goes.

Klavier thought the first day of the trial a mess, owing to the friendship drama of Newman, O’Conner, and Woods; somehow, he didn’t think it would get worse. But somehow, the cases that Apollo takes are still left throwing him for loops. O’Conner’s testimony starts solid and solidly unfavorable for the defendant and the defense’s theories, to the point that the judge nearly lays down a verdict, before suddenly he makes an objection and his new testimony takes a hard turn off the rails into incoherent.

Blackquill walks out of the courtroom.

What should he care of consequence? What punishment can he face greater than death for the crime he has already committed, and what mockery can he make of the courtroom more than his very presence as a convicted murderer at the bench? And worse — the judge barely bats an eye. What else has Blackquill done in the hallowed hall of justice?

(Well, there was the orca he brought to trial.)

But he would be frustrated were he at the bench, too; he is frustrated in the gallery even knowing that Apollo has pulled the truth out of the ridiculous before and Cykes seems to be learning that from him. Blackquill, though, has none of Klavier’s patience for their antics. He pulls the chain between his wrists taut, a motion that Klavier has not seen of him outside of the courtroom, when he slams his fists on the bench. One of them has to give, the prisoner or the bindings — and it is the chains that break.

The judge is shocked, terrified even, but as he cries out, Klavier catches the word “again”.

Blackquill has done this before?

O’Conner goes on, babbling about how he has to lie to protect Juniper because innocent though she may be, the truth isn’t enough in this dark age of the law. And Klavier thinks of a page out of a diary, though Kristoph loved nothing but his own pride and no one but his dog and would never perjure himself for the sake of another. The means are the same and it is not enough that they seek different ends. O’Conner goes on to confess the bribes that birthed his perfect grades and Klavier knows this story too: a student who believed the forged evidence of his genius and clung to the false confidence and bravado that his parents bought for him along with his grades, because that is a hard truth to face down. That story is very much not Kristoph’s. Klavier almost regrets what he said earlier.

A call from the lab pulls him out of the courtroom. Their further progress is no more progress; they suspect that the voice in the original recording is too deep to be Woods, but no substance is yet recovered. Klavier hopes that the proof that it was fabricated will be enough. He gets back inside, making a note on his calendar to send the lab a fruit basket, to find Cykes has somehow pulled Professor Means onto the stand.

From the gallery he himself wants to lobby an objection when she suggests that they listen again to the mock trial speech. He sat through it once before and that was more than enough. But the defense insists, and Klavier sinks in his seat and does not hide the fact that he has again pulled phone from pocket, because if the courtroom is now a lecture hall then he will act like it. Themis gotten no better about their corruption since we were there, he texts to Sebastian as Means’ voice on audio drones on. Witness’ perfect grades bought by parents.

Blackquill, with his back at the bench and his head bowed, hasn’t moved in three minutes. Has he actually fallen asleep?

What does a man on death row care for courtroom penalties?

The defense seem to be pushing to accuse Means now. For all that the professor surely would have loved Kristoph, he does not have his grace under fire and Means’ demeanor shifts quickly, courtesy giving way to lecturing as though this is lecture hall and he can win if he sways the defense to his side. They’re too surprised to do anything but agree that this is now a roll call; Blackquill does not play along until Means demands that he leave the “classroom”. He has already walked out once, after all.

But that was before the chains broke.

Blackquill straightens up from leaning on the bench with a smirk that suggests he will very well heed those words, and suddenly he flinches, twitches, and — no, he spasms, for a full second that is one of the longest of Klavier’s life, before slumping forward, gasping for breath. Fulbright appears — or maybe he has always been here, somehow in bright white still no more substantial than a shadow, a phantom who easily fades away when all eyes turn to the convict he shepherds around — near the stand, grinning, almost ghoulishly it seems to Klavier now, with a jab about discipline, and—

Blackquill sneers back in between heaving gasps, but he doesn’t seem surprised. Has that happened before, too? What goes on in these trials?

He has a text from Kay asking how the trial is going, and so he tells her exactly what has just happened. She is a detective. If there is anything standard department-issue about — fucking taser-shackles, whatever the hell it is that Fulbright has, she can tell him.

Cykes fights valiantly, but Means knows where to hit, and hit hard. What better way to break a teenage prodigy than to tell them that they are a failure, undeserving of their badge? And break she does; before the eyes of Klavier and the gallery, she folds into herself, arms curled protectively around her body. Blackquill’s barbed blades through the past two days could only dream of drawing out such a reaction.

But maybe that was never what he intended. Not when he calls across the aisle, harsh as always, with not quite reassurance, not quite encouragement, but a reminder: a purpose to why she has chosen this path in life. Someone that she will disappoint should she give up.

He must know her outside of the courtroom, but how? If Klavier is ever to get an answer he knows it will not come from Blackquill and the tangle of secrets he has locked away.

And for all the turns the trial took, the truth is laid bare: Professor Means killed her. As though Klavier didn’t hate him enough for “the ends justify the means”, as though Klavier had not already been thinking how satisfying it would be to punch him, to just bash him over the head with—

It is not for Klavier to think he can dole out what anyone deserves. Blackquill swore justice for Courte, and that, they got.

“Proudly serve her memory,” Blackquill says. “Do not let her death be in vain.” His words are to Woods, but Klavier remembers their conversation the prior morning; while the exact words still don’t come back to mind, he knows the shape of it was the same. And slightly more clear-headed than yesterday, he finds himself surprised at the sincerity, that to the whole courtroom the Twisted Samurai would again show a heart.

He slips out of the gallery at the clack of the judge’s gavel.

Again he finds himself playing that game of avoidance, fleeing the courthouse without a word of congratulations to Cykes for her win or Woods for her exoneration. He doesn’t have long to hate himself for it, spared by a call from Themis asking if he will be able to make it back tomorrow for an extension of the school festival. He’ll be able to see them tomorrow. He’ll be able to sing with Ms. Woods, Courte’s chosen successor.

After Daryan, he swore to never play the Guitar’s Serenade again, but he had also thought he was breaking up the band for good, so what does he know, really? When Woods was chosen as student representative to sing with him, they exchanged a few emails, and she told him she was a huge fan of Lamiroir. And that had been enough for him to offer to bring the song to the stage, one more time. What was it that Daryan always said he was — a sucker for a pretty face? He wasn’t ever wrong about that one.

Klavier had hoped that he could at least create for himself a new memory of the ballad, form a new association that wasn’t the murder case that took away his best friend. Now it’s the murder case that took away his mentor.

Apollo and Cykes look at him like he’s glass that will shatter with a glance head-on. Trucy is there as well, with an invitation to her magic show, and a smile dimmed just around the edges by the concern in her eyes that she doesn’t voice. She’s a performer, too. She understands the masks they wear. Time spent with the three of them, plus Woods, briefly lifts the weight off his heart; running into O’Conner doesn’t drag him down, even though O’Conner doesn’t look him in the eyes and Klavier still can’t bring himself to apologize to his face.

On the stage, pre-show preparation — that’s when it hurts. That’s when he awkwardly hops about the stage to avoid the white-tape outline that has been taken away but still is burned into his mind; that’s when he looks around and counts only four of them, a shadow left in place of the last. What is Klavier’s life now but shadows filling holes?

He doesn’t put his feet down where Courte’s body lay all night. He tries not to think about her otherwise, tries to keep himself only in the moment, and it holds him together until he’s left alone with the clouds blocking the last of the evening’s light. How he looped back to the stage he isn’t sure but he stands there now, thinking about his banner soaking up the last of her life as it bled away. There’s a song in that somewhere. It isn’t a happy one.

He sits with his back against the mock defense’s bench. “I’m sorry,” he says to the empty air over which he can superimpose the the crime scene photograph of Courte’s body. “You thought better of me, Professor Courte, and I let you down.” Just like so many others have done to him. “The dark age of the law you so valiantly fought, with I as a cause, only for it to kill you.”

Proudly serve her memory, Blackquill said, but Klavier is not proud.

“Prosecutor Gavin?”

Over the stage edge he sees the top of Sebastian’s head. Did he hear him speaking to Courte’s ghost, another regret to haunt him until his own grave rises to meet him? “I didn’t know you’d come, Herr Debeste.” His text informing Sebastian that the festival had been continued through today was sent this morning; it had only then occurred to him that it might be something his former classmate would want to know.

“I nearly didn’t,” Sebastian says. “Since sure I felt great about being a student while I was a student but now that I look back…” He stops on the steps. “My memories are all tainted and sour now.”

“Mine, too,” Klavier says.

But he’s growing used to that.

“After you told me about Professor Courte,” Sebastian says, “I asked Justine, and she said that she knew her. She admired her, too.”

Courte and Courtney; with names like that, what career can there even be but one in the legal profession? He can’t to find his voice to joke.

“I wish I could’ve met her.”

“I wish you could have, too.”

And in several ways, it’s Klavier’s fault that he never got the chance, isn’t it?

In the morning, he awakens with an ache in his chest from a backlog of tears he has not managed to cry and a text from Kay telling him that they are meeting up at her apartment tonight. It isn’t an invitation. It is a demand. If he backs out, she will show up on his doorstep and pick the lock on his door. He knows her well enough to know that, so he takes Vongole for a walk in his Saturday-morning anti-paparazzi disguise of glasses and unwashed hair in a messy bun and crawls back into bed for a few more hours to steel himself for the evening and the look of concern he knows he will find on Kay’s face.

Ema is already on her couch when Klavier arrives, Kay with a stack of flashcards in her hand when she opens the door. “When’s the test?” Klavier asks.

“First week of December,” Ema answers, too promptly for her to really have registered that it is him, specifically, speaking to her. She pulls a handful of Snackoos from the large back next to her and shoves them one-handed into her face. “I’m not cramming this time. For six months I’ve been fu—” She lifts her head and squints at him. “Oh,” she says. “Gavin.”

And he thinks that will be the last she speaks to him tonight, but she adds, “I asked him about the thing.”

“Who about what?” he asks.

“Mr. Edgeworth,” she says irritably, like she expects him to obviously understand her vagaries. “About Fulbright.”

“You — you asked Edgeworth?” He hadn’t expected that. He hasn’t expected Kay to take the question to Ema in the first place.

“Mhm.” She crunches another Snackoo. “Because it’s fucked up. How much have they vetted Fulbright — oh wait I don’t give a shit because I’m sure Gant was vetted way more when they gave him a fuckton of power and I still wouldn’t give him a remote control shock collar on anyone no matter what they’ve done or who’ve they murdered.”

Gant. The name feels some sort of familiar, but hazy and distant. Ema raises her head again and glares at him. “Damon Gant,” she says. “Police Chief, 2015 to 2017, arrested for murdering a prosecutor, forging evidence, murdering a detective, and threatening a different prosecutor into taking the fall for it” — she inhales loudly — “and the reason I’ve got trust issues. Sentenced to life, but I don’t doubt there’s more of his type in the ranks and I don’t want a single one of them getting their hands on that shit.”

Klavier realizes that he has stood paralyzed just inside the doorway for nearly a minute and moves to where Kay has piled some beanbag chairs in front of the couch. “So what did he say?” he asks, and face-first in fabric it sounds like a mumble even to himself.

Someone kicks one of the bags near his face. Kay and Ema are both on the couch now and Klavier suspects either equally. He lifts his head. “What did Herr Chief say?”

“That it’s not gonna be mass-produced or standard issue, ever,” Ema says.

“A special leash for our jailbird, then.”

“One of a kind, and they built the cuffs separate from the chain and fucked it up somewhere putting it all together and have to keep welding it back together now — or not even welding, I think welding was too much heat and going to damage whatever the hell mechanism is in those cuffs. Totally not an optimized design or construction process, and at that point I tuned Fulbright out because sure it might be science but it’s fucked and I am not a fan.”

Ema shakes her head and stares blankly ahead, even as Kay reaches over her and takes the Snackoos bag. The door handle rattles and Kay bellows “It’s open!” with a volume that makes Klavier flinch, lost as he was in trying to take in what Ema had said. Sebastian inches in, obviously still in the process of deciding whether he wants to back out of socializing now.

“I asked Mr. Edgeworth if he thought he was innocent,” Ema says, like she didn’t notice Sebastian had entered. She stretches her hand towards the bag and Kay places a handful of Snackoos in her palm. “He said the answer is above my security clearance.”

The blacked-out pages tell the same story.

“He must, though,” Kay says. “Why would he do any of this if he didn’t really believe it? Wouldn’t even a little doubt stop you from going this far?”

“He’s Chief Prosecutor,” Klavier says. “Who can stop him?”

The Prosecutorial Investigation Committee, if they aren’t corrupt as well; the Chief of Police, if they aren’t corrupt as well; whoever holds the cards to blackmail the Chief Prosecutor. He doubts Edgeworth has those problems, and he has never seen evidence of it, but he is not willing to say it for certain about anyone.

“I read as much of the case as I could,” Sebastian says, “and if he was innocent, why would he so ferverently—fervently proclaim his own guilt? What reason would anyone have to do that?”

“Kay, let’s hit the flashcards again,” Ema says. The expression on her face is one of wide, unfocused eyes, like she is seeing what none of them can. Like she had a revelation.

Like she has found an answer she cannot speak.

“If you can run tests to find out what kind of poison was used, why do you need to know all of the properties and symptoms from memory?” Sebastian asks, as Kay flings a note card labeled arsenic into his lap and reads off the next, cyanide.

“Ask the idiots who wrote the test,” Ema says.

“The more I’ve thought about it,” Sebastian says to Klavier, “the less surprised I am, I suppose, that Prosecutor Edgeworth has done this with Blackquill. It’s just what he does.”

“What do you mean?” Klavier asks.

“He’s giving Blackquill a chance, when no one believes in him, because he thinks — he must think — there’s a deeper truth and he wants to find it. Like he did with Mr. Wright.”

Klavier pushes himself upright. “What do you mean?”

— “Hexapsycho, um, hexacycle—”

“It’s pronounced exactly as it looks, Kay.”

“Well Emmy you know I don’t know how to read!” —

“Those cases that Kay and I worked with Interpol and Prosecutor Edgeworth over in Europe — sometimes he would bring Mr. Wright over as a consultant too. And he’d sometimes bring his daughter. She always made my badge disappear.”

Wright somehow never lost his touch in the courtroom after seven years. That could never be owed entirely to Kris. There’s a history between Wright and Edgeworth, one that everyone knows, even Klavier, though he never dug into it because he didn’t want to have anything more to do with Wright. It makes a certain amount of sense that Edgeworth would believe, believe there a truth to bring to light, monsters lurking beneath to burn to ash, even when the evidence said it was all Wright, only Wright. And there was and if they succeeded at drawing out the truth behind one inciting case of the dark age of the law, why not the other? Once he had fixed Klavier’s main mistake, why not push back against the dark that he and Blackquill brought on? Why not exonerate Blackquill, like Wright?

The notecard for hexo-whatever drops into Klavier’s lap. Kay reads off the next. “Atroquinine.”

Klavier rolls up onto his feet to see what she keeps in her kitchen.

November passes in a blur. He gets Taka an emerald-green bandana, like he said he would; he tries to broach the topic of Fulbright and the shackles to Blackquill and is shut down in an even more dismissive way than Blackquill usually does when Klavier tries to say something he is not interested in. Fraülein Wright is overzealous in inviting him to her magic shows, and he wonders if it was Apollo or Cykes who told her that he was coming unglued. He lands a case against the pair that lasts only one day but as complicated as he has come to expect. (Do they deliberately try to take the most fucked-up cases?) Kay and Sebastian invite themselves over to his apartment several times, and Kay doesn’t even try to claim that it’s Vongole she wants to see.

The arrival of December feels like the tiniest relief. He is ready for the year to end. Maybe next year, he thinks, maybe next year will be free of tragedy. With email inquiries from his manager and publicist about various New Years’ Eve celebrations that would be happy to host a Gavinners reunion (declined, as they all agreed that Themis was a very special and very one-off occasion) or a Klavier solo performance (also declined), he has been thinking about it again, the never-ending passage of time, the hope for a fresh start. With thirty-one days left to go he already wishes to just let the year die, to bid it to its grave alone, like the year before.

He is working on wording his responses to those emails, and an entirely different professional email to Ema, when there is a knock on the door. When he looks up, a dismissal ready on his lips to chase away one of the usual suspects, he sees Edgeworth standing in the doorway. “Do you have time for a word, Gavin?”

This seems — unofficial. Were it something on the record, Klavier would have been called up to his office, right? But with that expression of his — tight, closed off, bordering on anger — what else could it be but a reprimand? “Of course, Herr Chief,” he replies. The piles of cross-references on the floor betray that he is lying. Edgeworth’s frown deepens as he looks over the mess. He still doesn’t yet speak, and that further worries Klavier. The chief prosecutor is not a man who minces words or concerns himself with cushioning their impact.

“I’ve noticed that you and Prosecutor Blackquill seem close,” he says.

Many people have commented on that. From Sebastian, it was merely confusion as to what made Blackquill friendship material. From Kay, it was merely an observation, with perhaps a touch of jealousy as to the way Taka took to Klavier much more than her. From Fulbright, it was a statement almost glad that Blackquill has managed to form another human relationship. From most others, it is a jab — the two horsemen of the dark age of the law, together. From the chief prosecutor—

“What of it?”

Again, there is silence before an answer, and a heavy sigh as Edgeworth closes his eyes. If he has to brace himself to speak—

Ice is gathering inside Klavier’s ribs.

“Prosecutor Blackquill won’t tell you this — and I believe he has threatened Detective Fulbright as well to make mention to no one — but I thought it better that you be warned in advance. The date is set for the twenty-first of December.”

The cold has made its way through his chest and up his throat, leaving his mouth dry, his voice a croak. “The date of…” He cannot force the words out. “Of…” Edgeworth just looks at him; there is no pity in his gaze, no attempt to finish the sentence and help Klavier with the words that his lips will not form. “Of his execution?”

Of course it is. What else could it be?

And the damned emotionless Chief Prosecutor just lets him flounder. “Yes,” he says, sharply, and he doesn’t even have the fucking sympathy to have answered by saying I’m sorry instead.

December twenty-first. He doesn’t need to put the date into a calendar. Already it is burned into his mind — the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, sparse daylight with darkness encroaching too fast and too close on every side. Fitting, really, but for the fact that after that day, the light comes back, the night gets shorter. It doesn’t just go on and on like eight years, like forever, dark age of the fucking law, Klavier rolled out the red carpet for it, and now all there is to do is fucking watch.

Edgeworth is already starting to turn away, to leave having done nothing but tell Klavier that the long night he helped usher in is never, ever going to end. The ice in his chest layers thick on top of itself, squeezing out room for anything else but the twisted cold, and he is on his feet before he knows what he’s doing, spitting poison at the chief prosecutor’s back. “Then why the hell did you do any of it at all?”

Edgeworth stops and slowly faces Klavier. His expression is thunderous. “If you have something to say, Gavin, then—”

Then by all means Klavier already intended to say it. He slams his fist against the door. “Why? If you believe him innocent then you have had a year as Chief Prosecutor to do something! Instead the end is fast approaching and all you have done is—” give me someone else to lose.

Edgeworth, staring at him unblinking, pushes his glasses further up on his nose. The gesture reminds Klavier too much of someone else. “I do not answer to you, nor do I owe you an explanation of my actions, but I very much do resent your implication that I have done nothing—”

“Then what have you done, besides walk in here and tell me that in three weeks he will be dead! What have you done but watch the noose tighten?”

“Prosecutor Blackquill knows what I am doing, and you, Gavin—”

“And what is it that you’re doing? Putting him on a leash — a shock collar like a dog?”

“Detective Skye told me of your collective concerns and I very much understand and agree. I will have you know, however, that while the position of Chief Prosecutor is one which has been long abused by those who held it, I have sworn to not get my way through threat or blackmail. This means that while I am able to issue the writ to place a dangerous criminal back in the courtroom to prosecute other criminals, it is not a plan that has not met resistance every step of the way. Do you think that the police have not balked? Do you think with no negotiation I could simply force them to devote one of their detectives to the full-time task of shadowing a convicted killer who I let walk forth? Do you think I could convince them to do such while not having contingencies in place for the protection of both the detective and the rest of us?”

He doesn’t give Klavier time to say anything.

“This is the bargain I have struck for the chance to bring an end to the dark age of the law and save Prosecutor Blackquill from an early grave — this is the most kindness I have been allowed for him, because for his crime most are content to let him rot, and none willing to chance on the good behavior of a man who brutally murdered his own mentor!”

“His own mentor?” Klavier repeats, aghast. He thinks of Courte.

He thinks of Blackquill comforting him after Courte’s death.

The ice clings tighter to the edges of the hole where his heart was.

Edgeworth’s eyes flare open wider for the briefest of moments and then narrow back into pitiless steel daggers. “As you see, you, much like Detective Skye, lack a significant amount of evidence with which to understand both this case and my actions surrounding it, so if you have any more duly uninformed opinions, I would suggest you save them for another time.”

Klavier slams the door shut.

Stupid. Stupid. Blackquill has been on death row this entire time. He was convicted. What did he think, that he could draw the truth out of the man by being friends, that the truth would be anything other than the verdict cast down upon his head?

Eventually he finishes the email to Ema, but the ones about his musical career wait until another day, and when he finishes the work he throws himself back into as a distraction, he makes straight for the detention center. The sun is already sinking between the buildings, lighting up the sky bloody-red before it stretches up into darkness. He flashes his badge, submitting himself as a visiting prosecutor, and paces the detention center’s visiting room as he waits for Blackquill to be brought in on the other side of the glass.

“And for what reason does your path cross mine this evening?” Blackquill asks. He doesn’t look surprised — does he ever? “Or shall I guess? You are not the most predictable man, but you appear agitated, and oh what a fearsome glare with which you turn to me now.” He grins. “Perhaps a kitten would cower from you but I hold more doubts than not about even that.”

Klavier circles back to the glass, Blackquill sitting there with that frustrating smirk still set on his face. “Did you kill her?”

“Surely you have gotten your hands on at least part of the trial transcript by now. I made my plea very clear on several occasions and the stenographer cannot have been so incompetent as to improperly record all of them.” He chuckles. “Though, the quality of others I have had the misfortune to work with in this justice system does leave some room for doubt. Perhaps they were.”

Klavier slams his fist against the partition. “Did you kill your mentor?”

In an instant, Blackquill’s smile vanishes. “And from whom exactly did you hear that she was my mentor?”

“Edgeworth.”

“You have my admiration for managing to draw such information out of him. He does not usually give anything away.”

“I asked you a question, Blackquill.”

“And I did answer it — unless you have never looked at even the case file, which made plain that my plea was the same as my verdict is the same as I deserve. But I should hope that you are a curious enough man that you would not make association with me without first reviewing all of the facts and evidence available to you, however scant that may be. After all, you are not as the Wright Whatever Agency, with their aversion to thorough preparation, however you may ally yourself to them.”

“I wanted the truth,” Klavier snarls, “about my mentor — and yours, Blackquill. Did you kill her? Tell me!”

Blackquill slowly shakes his head. “I am disappointed, Gavin-dono, in your skill as an investigator and prosecutor if you have dismissed decisive evidence and a confession to stand here and plead like a child for a different answer. I have made no reservations about or attempts to hide from you what I am. Perhaps you thought better of me, given that I have not lied to you, and that is more than what the others in your history have done, but know this — better to leave me to sink than in folly to chain yourself to me in hopes of finding some secret truth. There is none. Yes, I killed her. Of course I did.”

Klavier sinks into the chair. “She was your mentor.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because there were things I wished to learn and that she was able to teach me. You should very well know what a mentor is.”

He is laughing. His laugh is the opposite of Kristoph’s unhinged hysteria; he is all-too composed for the situation. “This isn’t a time for jokes,” Klavier snaps. His rings clack against the sill when he brings his hand down on it.

“And why ever not? I met once in the clink a former comedian who imparted the wisdom that it is better to laugh at the darkness than wallow in it. I am the man upon the gallows; why should I not find it humorous?”

“Because you killed a woman! Because she is dead and you — why?” He inhales and tries to force away the image of Courte. “Why did you kill her?”

“It matters not.”

“It matters a lot!” Like Kristoph, and Shadi Smith; no confession of motive to hide something so much darker lurking beneath the surface.

“Why? Because you think of Professor Courte? Because you think the comfort I offered you insincere now that you know this of me?”

Klavier blinks.

“Do not look so surprised. I would not know well how to manipulate people if I could not read them well.” He settles back in his chair. “It is the word ‘mentor’ which has set you off, as though it is a fresh blade across a wound which has not even had time to scab over. Did I not just say I have never lied to you? I was more than sincere when I offered my sympathies for the loss of someone who meant a great deal to you, nor to Juniper Woods when I said to honor the memory of Constance Courte. Your mentor was not mine. They are in no way linked. That I killed her does not mean I cannot feel sorrow at the unnecessary death of another. And though my condolences are genuine, you should not stand so in need of them. You need concern yourself with nothing of what a damned soul as I thinks of you. Be rid of me.”

“Yeah,” Klavier says. The winter solstice looms. “I’ll be rid of you quite fucking soon.”

“Make it sooner,” Blackquill says. “Leave.”

Klavier gapes at him.

“I hardly know what keeps you here,” he continues. “I have never been famed for my magnetic or attractive personality, yet you remain. Disentangle your fate from mine.”

“Like it’s that fucking easy!” Klavier snarls. “Like the dark age of the law won’t still haunt me! Like you’re not about to die and leave me alone with our fucking legacy of this mistrusted mess of a legal system!”

And in that instant he understands why exactly he has been drawn to Blackquill, why the man has haunted him. He never thought so much about the darkness he was the catalyst to, not even immediately after the Misham trial, as he has since he first stared down Blackquill. Where he can’t face himself in the mirror, his fellow prosecutor, fellow herald to the so-called dark age, is there to be a twisted reflection that he cannot run from, a killer where Klavier was pawn. It is why he thinks so often of Kristoph, and and for that reason he is a man from whom Klavier should not, cannot, seek support in shouldering the burden of that legacy. Yet he has. Stupid. Stupid.

“You ask me, the man at fault for this darkness, for assistance in bringing back the light,” Blackquill says. “What a dunce I thought you eight years ago, and some part of you has not changed; still a child, thinking now that you have fixed your mistakes you can do anything for mine. I — ah.” He closes his eyes and heaves a sigh that is visible in the slump of his shoulders. “‘About to die’,” he repeats, like he has caught up to all of what Klavier said. “‘Rid of me soon’ — this is what you mean. It was the Chief Prosecutor who told you this as well, I presume, that on the calendar has been marked my final day?” Klavier nods. “So my request of the fool detective, that we not speak of it, needed to be extended as well to one man who I thought surely understood the value of privacy.”

“So you were just going to let me find out with no warning one day that you are now dead and gone?”

The light glints off his eyes when he opens them, glaring with all the precision and force of a hawk about to strike. “Yes, I was,” he says. “And you were not to wallow in it.” He sits up straighter but keeps his head bowed, scowling out from beneath his hair and the chasms around his eyes. “But seeing now that you appear imbecilic enough to care for me in some regard, consider it a practice run for when the rope necklace takes its long-deserved place around your dear brother’s neck. Did you beg him for an answer that was anything but the truth, too?”

Klavier feels like he has swallowed an icicle sideways — no, not swallowed. Had it lodged horizontally into his throat from the outside in.

When he leaves the detention center, the light is gone from the sky. He goes home and straight from his front door to his studio, soundproofed walls so if he wants to play the guitar until three am he can, and drops his briefcase on the floor. And standing in the middle of the room, he screams. He screams for a long time.

How can an unapologetic murderer help the public regain its trust in the legal system? And what can Blackquill be but a murderer?

And how did Klavier think he could uncover a truth that Edgeworth, with full access to all the details of the case, still hasn’t? And why did he think that exonerating Blackquill would relieve him from this crushing sense of guilt? As a prosecutor, he does not make cases on benefit of the doubt. Is this because of Wright? Is he trying to make up for the case he so badly bungled by affording Blackquill the benefit of the doubt that he never granted Wright?

It has gotten him nowhere but his own apartment, alone in it, screaming at the empty walls.

He is left alone with himself for most of the following week; he chats with Taka, sees not a shadow of his owner, and tries not to lend further thought to that ghost, the dead on earth, whose chains rattle through the courthouse. Then, T-minus fourteen days, Kay barges into his office, flinging the door open so hard that it bounces off the wall and smacks back into her. She upends half of the contents of a table once she makes it in past the threshold. “He — he threatened me!” Her voice is practically a wail. Usually when she is angry she can maintain some small level of apparent detachment and disdain, but there is nothing of the sort now. “With a salary review! He’s never done that!”

“Who did?” Klavier asks. “Herr Debeste?” That doesn’t seem possible.

Kay knocks the rest of the papers on the table to the floor and sits on it. “No!” Her expression is in flux between an indignant pout and something anguished. “Chief Prosecutor Edgeworth!”

“What happened?” Klavier asks; through his shock he at least has the presence of mind to phrase it that way and not the worse way that he is nonetheless still thinking, what did you do?

Still scowling, she folds her arms across her chest. “So I tried to pick the lock on his office door—”

“Fraülein.”

“—to get to the classified UR-1 case files. Because—”

“Fraülein—!”

“Because the truth is in there!” she yells over his second protestation. “And we aren’t allowed to know! Blackquill’s dying and we aren’t allowed to help! Mr. Edgeworth won’t let us help!”

He closes his eyes. “Even in service to the truth, that is—”

“A crime?” she snarls. “Yeah, tell me about it, Herr ‘stole the mock trial script to let the defense look at it again’ Gavin — or is it Herr ‘manipulated my fans in Criminal Affairs to get them to look at this evidence tape that I shouldn’t have because it’s not my case’ Gavin! You draw the line in a weird fucking place, huh, Klavvy.”

He doesn’t have any rebuttal, no justification or excuse to make himself into not a hypocrite. He wonders how she learned about the mock trial script, whether one of the detectives on that case told her enough that she was able to put it together.

“If he won’t give us the truth, then I’ll try and steal it.” She raises her chin, shaking her hair back, for a moment composed and haughty and almost regal. “I am my father’s daughter. I am the second Yatagarasu. I will not sit and do nothing!”

“And when the only truth there is to find is the one that has been plain in front of us all this time?”

Yes, I killed her. Of course I did.

“All those classified files, all this time Mr. Edgeworth has spent, and you think there’s nothing more?”

“He admits it, Fraülein — unapologetically.”

As unapologetically as someone else.

Phoenix Wright and Zak Gramarye both deserved what they got!

“Adamantly insists upon it, in fact,” Klavier continues, “and made clear that he thinks me an idiot for even the merest implication that there could be any possibility but that one. We spoke about it at length the other day.”

You have dismissed decisive evidence and a confession to stand here and plead like a child for a different answer.

“I’m sure he would be happy to have such a conversation with you as well, though perhaps not as happy, because I do not believe you bear as many open wounds as I for him to salt.”

Did you beg your brother for an answer that was anything but the truth, too?

“I don’t know what you look for that you think the Chief Prosecutor has not found in a year, Fraülein.”

She hits him in the chest with a binder which she retrieved from the floor to lob at him. “Stop it!” she screams. “Stop it! Your stupid rock star accent! Stop it! Stop trying to pretend you’re all cool and detached! You’re not! You’re his friend too! You care about him too!”

“And where has that left me, but with someone else to lose!”

“We’ve all lost people, Klavvy! In case you’ve forgotten!” Stooping again, she reaches for a file folder, and he springs from his chair and wrests it from her hands. “If Mr. Edgeworth thought he was guilty, he would say that. He wouldn’t do this. He won’t say he thinks Blackquill is innocent because — liability or some shit, I don’t know — but he does! I know he does!”

“Then why has he found nothing? Why does Blackquill fight him every step of the way? What innocent man would not fight the end as it draws so near?”

“Ask Emmy! Ask her about—” Kay throws her hands in the air. “Ask her about her sister! She would’ve told you and Sebby back in October if she wanted to talk about it but fucking ask her and she won’t tell you because she hates you and your annoying insincere German shit!” She jabs her finger into his chest and he smacks her hand away. “There’s always another possibility until there’s decisive evidence with no other explanation—”

“And what about the evidence from the trial isn’t decisive?” Klavier demands. He turns back to his desk. “You’ve seen it, ja? Shall I remind you? Show you the photographs of the man and his bloody sword at the scene of the crime? You work for prosecutors, not defense attorneys! What is this faith you have in him—”

“Not him!” Kay snaps. She grabs the UR-1 file he has retrieved from a drawer and drops it on the floor, spilling open to the black-marked pages of missing information and the pictures of Blackquill, so young when they were all still so young. “In Edgeworth! Who’s harder on corruption than anyone I’ve ever known—”

“Except when it’s Phoenix fucking Wright!” He remembers what Sebastian says again now. Wright, disbarred for corruption, and Edgeworth — what a farce. No matter if he was innocent, with the way the deck was stacked against him, the evidence that was everything, it was not the place of the future Chief Prosecutor to defend him. “He was one of you Interpol consultants while he was disbarred, ja?”

Kay wrinkles her nose. “What’s that got to do with any of this?”

“Edgeworth has his biases, like any other man; even he and I do not quite manage to be the impartial arbitrators of justice that we strive to.”

“Even if — and maybe he is — he’s biased toward Mr. Wright, he doesn’t have history or a preexisting relationship or anything with Blackquill,” she says. “And you just wanna be angry, huh?”

“I am tired,” he tells her, a redirect away from the very good point she made about the history of Edgeworth and Wright versus Blackquill. “I am tired of losing people. I am tired of them letting me down.”

Her eyes widen as she looks at him, pity welling up in their dark centers, and he would prefer her fiery anger. “But you care about him, though?”

I shouldn’t, he could answer, or, unfortunately, I do. “In the last conversation we had,” he says, “he made it quite clear that he wished me to accept his guilt. And because we seemed at some point friends, I will do for him what he wants.” He points at the door like he has an objection to it, rather than his objection being to Edgeworth, to Blackquill, to this entire abstract situation. “Please leave and let me clean up the mess you’ve made, Kay.”

She stops in the doorway, staring down at the mess. “Sorry,” she says, but she has the audacity to only look sheepish for a mere instant. “He — Mr. Edgeworth told you when the date is, right?” she asks. Klavier nods. “He didn’t tell Sebastian — not specifically, now, anyway. He’d said to him at some point that it would be the end of the year, but…” She fiddles with the cuffs of her gloves. “I guess he didn’t think Sebastian and Blackquill were — are! — close enough to… to need the warning.” Her hair falls across her face, eyes fixed on the floor again. “He mentioned it to Ema, too. To us together, I guess since she’d asked him about the shackles, last week. I only managed to get over here today to try and get the files. I’m going to try again.” She lifts her head, shaking her hair back, her face set like stone. “I’m only telling you so that you know you and Sebby are buying me ramen when my salary is down to pennies.”

The door clicks quietly shut behind her.

Klavier thinks about screaming again.

The days count down like sands to the bottom of an hourglass, the noose pulled tighter and about to drop. Thirteen, twelve, eleven: December tenth, Klavier at the vending machines after a trial, trying to retrieve the autopsy report that Taka snatched away from him as soon as the judge called his verdict. “You have no need of that,” Klavier says. Taka peers over the edge of the machine at him. “What will you do, eat the paper? Do not eat paper. Give it back. Herr Taka. Herr Taka.”

A sharp whistle causes Taka to stiffen, casting his eyes about for a moment before he takes to wing, talons buried in the paper, and lands somewhere behind Klavier. He can guess where, or rather, who, even before hearing his voice. “I see my darling beloved bird is not behaving himself.”

The autopsy report that Blackquill hands back to him is pierced through with holes. “Fortunately I only need this for my own records, now,” Klavier says. Taka lifts his head proudly. “Naughty birds get coal in their stockings, you know.”

He is about to walk past and leave it at this but Blackquill’s question stops him. “You do not actually have a Christmas stocking for this ungrateful bird, do you?” He sounds confident when he hit the word actually but faltering and turning it into a question, after all this time still not knowing when the joke becomes serious with Klavier.

“Where would we hang it?” Klavier asks, turning back around to look at the convict, soon a dead man, and his hawk, soon Klavier’s, on his shoulder. “Off the vending machine?”

Blackquill laughs.

Ten, nine: December twelfth, Kay comes down from Edgeworth’s office, again fuming; the UR-1 case files aren’t where they should be on his shelves. He hid them from her. Eight: December thirteenth, Klavier waiting for a witness, and Taka taking to wing at the approaching death rattle of chains. “Gavin-dono,” says the ghost. “I have something for you.”

“Ja?”

Blackquill jerks his head and Fulbright, always, to the end, following in step as his shadow, is suddenly at his side to hand to Klavier a stack of papers. All are covered, front and back, in straight even rows despite the fact that none of the pages are lined, of the most beautiful handwriting Klavier has ever seen, like an entire document in calligraphy. Flipping through to a random page, he starts reading at a paragraph in the middle and finds Taka’s name. He looks up. “What is this?”

“It is as close to everything about this bird as I could put to page,” Blackquill replies. “All of those things which I presumed you may not know from your merely periodic exposure to him; what I guessed to be the best way to lure him out of the courthouse and convince him to adopt a new location as a home; again a guess, this as to how to acclimate him to yet keep him apart from a dog as friendly yet unintelligent as you have explained your dog to be; and more such as that.”

At the bottom corners of the pages are tiny numbers inked into place. In the body of the writing, Klavier spots at least one cross-reference. “How long have you been working on this?” Klavier asks.

“Many months,” Blackquill replies, a little softer than he usually speaks. “A labor of love and necessity both.”

Klavier is starting to feel a little nauseous, and more than a little dizzy. “Is there a section on how Herr Taka feels about hats?” he asks, flailing for something, anything, any deflection, because that is what he does, he deflects, he runs, he never faces head-on what he needs to until he is forced. “Picture a tiny Santa cap — or perhaps those New Years glasses with the year for the frame, but bird-sized.”

“Do not do this,” Blackquill snaps.

Klavier blinks. “What?”

“This,” he repeats. “You speak of a time that I will not be here but ask of me to imagine it — for what purpose? To deny that which is plain in front of you, as you have tried before? As you have asked of me my assistance? By Christmas I am gone. Whatever nonsense you attempt to usher in the next year with, I shall not see. Stop flinching from that fact!” He raises his arms up to his chest in tandem and brings them down like he has forgotten that there is no bench here to slam his hands on, but the clanking of the shackles is jarring enough.

The next wave of nausea that rises in Klavier’s chest is cold. Everything has been cold for a long time now. “Would he try to bite off a necklace of little tiny lights?”

Blackquill’s expression does not change. Have the hollows under his eyes gotten darker? His face is the sharp, barren surface of a faraway moon, and beyond that, a black hole, swallowing all light. Klavier can barely recall the time he moved him to pity. “Yes,” he answers tersely. “He would bite apart the wires, should he not simply tangle himself in them. Glasses would fall from his head as he plainly does not have external ears on which to balance them. And a hat he would shake off regardless of how you attempted to secure it.” He shakes his head. “Stick with the colorful bandanas of which you are so fond. Do not seek to overcomplicate the matter.”

Klavier slips the papers into his briefcase and hopes he will remember to secure them safely as soon as he is back in his office. Taka from his perch on Blackquill’s shoulder is preening his hair. “Steel your resolve, Gavin-dono,” he says, gesturing toward the prosecutor lobby. “You have a case awaiting you.”

That, and more to come. Klavier nods.

The cold has turned to numb.

Seven, six, five: December sixteenth, Sebastian slamming straight into Klavier’s door, too much momentum causing him to fail at opening it while on the move. “The news,” he gasps. There are tears in his eyes. “Did you see—”

Klavier turns his eyes back to his computer screens and silently points at three different news stations, each covering the explosion at the courthouse. “Kay had a case this morning,” Sebastian says, his hands curled tight into fists, one clutching his phone, his face twisting in a poor attempt at holding back tears. “I can’t get her or, or anyone. Who had cases today? I think Prosecutor Blackquill, he was going against the Wright Somethings, and—”

The pressure gathering at Klavier’s temple is threatening to burst and it feels like it will split his skull in half when it does. “It was contained in one courtroom,” he says, which is scant reassurance because he didn’t know a moment ago that half of the people he knows were down at the courthouse this morning and because—

“Someone died!” Sebastian yells. His voice cracks. “Someone died and Kay’s not—!”

Klavier lunges across his desk to his phone. One dead, one taken to the hospital in serious condition, numerous injuries treated on-site — was Kay in that courtroom? Was Apollo? What about Cykes, or Trucy even, Wright, Blackquill, Taka, Fulbright, where was Ema this morning? Apollo’s phone goes straight to voicemail. Trucy’s rings and rings. He doesn’t have Cykes’ number so he searches for the office website and calls their phone. Sebastian is still trying for Kay, no longer trying to stifle his sniffling. Klavier tosses him a box of tissues that hits him in stomach and drops to the floor.

“Herr Edgeworth might still be here,” Klavier says after his third attempt at calling Apollo comes up immediately unsuccessful. “If anyone has information about — about who — and…” None of the words come to him properly but Sebastian nods and they start for the elevator. At the ringing of his phone, he stops dead in the middle of the hallway, seeing the anxiety on Sebastian’s face dissipate to be replaced by confusion and a question that he does not get to ask but Klavier knows would be coming, is your ringtone really one of your own songs?

He’s answered before he has managed to process the caller ID, and Kay’s voice is a shriek at his ear. “Klavvy! Where’s Seb? He didn’t have a trial this morning but I’ve been trying and trying to call him and—”

Even with the direness of the situation, he has to laugh. “He’s been trying to call you, Fraülein.”

Now Sebastian is shouting in his other ear. “Kay? Kay!”

Klavier holds the phone between them and Kay’s voice echoes out into the corridor. “Sebby! I called Ema and then I couldn’t get you, what were you—”

“Trying to call—”

“One of you could have sent a text,” Klavier says, before realizing that he has not done so and he pulls the phone back closer to himself to send messages to Apollo and Trucy both.

“Oh, aren’t you so smart?” Kay says. “Bleh.”

“He’s not smart,” Sebastian says, wiping the tear tracks off of his cheeks with his sleeve. “He’s just going to text someone now.”

He has Woods’ email from the event at Themis, and she and Cykes were close friends, so if he emails her and asks her to ask Cykes to tell him if—

“Courtroom number four,” Kay says. “Blackquill was on the bench there — he’s fine, he dumped Taka off on me, Fulbright’s dragged him away now. No idea if I’m supposed to be here—”

“What happened?” Sebastian asks.

“That’s what I’m hanging around trying to find out. Detective who was supposed to testify in the trial is dead — Armie, I think? Arnie? Arme! Candice Arme. And the, the defense, Wright Anything Office, whatever those guys are called” — Klavier’s heart seizes up — “they carried the red one out on a stretcher, practically had to dig him out, poor kid—”

The phone slips from his fingers. He is at the elevator before he knows he is moving, jamming the button, not sure what he expects to get from Edgeworth now but something, anything, he is friends with Wright, he will know, or find out—

“Klavier!” Sebastian flings an arm through the elevator doors before they shut him out. “Klavier, wait—”

He knocks once on Edgeworth’s door before barging in, finding the chief prosecutor with his cell phone in one hand, scowling at it, and his desk phone in the other at his ear. “I am well aware of that!” he barks. His eyes are alight with fury when they turn on Klavier. “Nonetheless, what you suppose is that — no.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “One moment. Hold.” He jams the button and drops the phone to his desk. “Prosecutor Debeste, Detective Faraday is fine, and Detective Skye as well. Gavin, this wouldn’t happen to be about Mr. Justice, would it?”

Klavier nods, numbly. Edgeworth tosses his cell to him and it bounces off of his hands and to the floor. “What I know is that they took him out in an ambulance,” Edgeworth says. Klavier retrieves the phone to find it open to the call log, displaying seven unanswered calls to Phoenix Wright. “Anything more than that, I don’t know either. You might try calling Wright; maybe he will better respond to an unknown number. If he does, let me know, but otherwise, get out.”

He takes down Wright’s number into his own phone, moves to set Edgeworth’s down on the coffee table, and changes his mind and tosses it back. Edgeworth, snarling into the other phone again, catches it one-handed. Klavier didn’t know he had that kind of coordination.

Head still spinning, he follows Sebastian over to his office and slumps down into an armchair to try and get answers from someone. He alternates calls to both of Wrights, tries Apollo again, hopelessly, and finally sends a text to Wright: Is Apollo okay?

Sebastian has a baton in a pencil holder that he is now tapping against his desk to make an absolutely infuriating clicking sound. Klavier almost flings his phone at him. He almost screams. Ema shows up half an hour later with two bags of Snackoos that she does not offer to either of them but instead tears through by herself, sitting on the floor with her back to Sebastian’s desk. He has the news on but the volume is turned down to a low murmur that Klavier can’t make out. He could ask for it louder but doesn’t. It is a full hour that feels so much longer by the time his phone chimes with a text.

-At hospital. Looked bad but hes stable n shld b fine

Klavier slides halfway out of the chair, all of the tension that he was using to hold himself upright gone.

-Whos this

Ah. Right. Wright doesn’t know his number.

Klavier.

-K -How did u get my #

Edgeworth gave it to me. I was worried. Sorry.

-Dnt worry abt it

He was trying to get thru to you. You should call him.

-K

What kind of phone does Wright even have? Klavier hasn’t seen anyone text like this in more than a decade.

Thank you for the update on Forehead.

-Yw

It is still hard to breathe and his hands are still shaking but the heavy lump in his chest is starting to shrink. Sebastian launches his baton across the room while flexing it and without looking, Ema throws a Snackoo up over the desk. It doesn’t hit him. Edgeworth stops in the doorway, looking at the three of them, shaking his head like he is about to say something, but he doesn’t, not a word about the work they aren’t getting done, or that Ema doesn’t even work in this office, and he leaves them there. Too late does Klavier think to confirm with him that Wright called.

Kay arrives after another hour with takeout for all of them and a laptop tucked under her arm. “We’re not assigned to these cases so it’s not like anyone should expect us to get work done,” she says. “It’s fucked. You guys see about the Space Center yesterday?”

Ema nods; Klavier shakes his head, and Sebastian mutters a negative. “Bombing there too,” Kay says. “And someone stabbed to death. Center tried to keep it all hush but it didn’t work.” She snags a handful of Snackoos. “That was the trial for that murder there, in this courtroom that got blown up. Shitty unlucky break there.”

“You say like it’s a coincidence,” Ema says. “I doubt it is. Any other courtroom going to shit today of all days, maybe. That one? That’s fucked.”

“That’s what the investigation was thinking so far, though,” Kay says. “That it’s unrelated. Then someone realized I wasn’t supposed to be part of that investigative team and threw me out.”

Ema sighs. “Oh, Fraülein,” Klavier says. “Never change.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Kay replies, stealing a piece of chicken from Ema’s plate.

The afternoon wears on with Kay trying to extort information out of her coworkers on the scene and while she is engaged in her second argument with the supervising detective, Klavier gets another text.

-4hed says he wdnt mind if u came 2 visit

Klavier writes and deletes a response three times before a second message arrives.

-Figured u mght wnt 2 kno

He deletes a fourth message and simply sends: Thank you.

And because they weren’t doing anything anyway, he gets up and leaves.

Wright is not at the hospital when Klavier arrives, but Trucy is and she meets him in the hall, apologizing profusely for never responding to his messages. In a low voice she explains to him exactly how bad the situation was even before Apollo got blown half to hell: his best friend (Klavier thinks of Daryan and shakes it out of his head) was murdered yesterday and Apollo is defending the man accused of doing it. (Klavier thinks again of Daryan and thinks that what Apollo is facing would hurt worse.)

Trucy clambers back into the chair next to the bed and says nothing but watches Apollo with wide sad eyes, blinking much too frequently. He is unsurprisingly, but unnervingly, quiet, a bandage wrapped around his head over one of his eyes and his bracelet still on his arm, slid over a layer of bandages. Juniper Woods was arrested for the bombing, he says, and Klavier feels a pang of pity for the poor girl. He doubts she is the culprit, trusts Courte had better judgment when it came to all of her students but one, and evidently Apollo doubts it as well, as he says he will defend her. Klavier is about to ask how — you plan to be the first defense attorney to mount a defense from a hospital bed? — when Apollo abruptly asks Klavier about the cases he’s worked on recently. It is an obvious plea for any sort of distraction from the situation that Klavier willingly obliges. God knows he’s been there too many times — and he would even if he hadn’t.

He leaves not having shaken away the unease that, once panic had subsided, hung over him throughout the rest of the day. Worry has clawed its way into his chest, too; that look on Apollo’s face he has seen before in his own reflection. Balanced right on the edge of despair, tipping toward numb. When Trucy texts him that Apollo is released from the hospital, Klavier is lying on the couch with his face in a cushion and Vongole wedged in between him and the back of the couch, and he hopes that Apollo has something more the silence of the grave and the echo in his own skull to come home to.

Four: December seventeenth, Woods’ trial dragged out until a second day, Apollo back in the hospital. Three: December eighteenth, Woods not guilty, an email that Klavier sends Apollo asking how he is doing, no reply. Ema receives word that she passed her forensics exam and will be moved to that department with the new year. Kay wants to plan a party.

Two: December nineteenth. Taka affixes himself to Klavier’s shoulder and doesn’t leave when Klavier tries to shoo him off to go prepare for his case. He has a final pre-trial conversation with the witness with a hawk on his shoulder. This does not help said witness concentrate on what Klavier is trying to say. This does not help Klavier concentrate on what he is trying to say.

“How smart are you?” Klavier asks Taka after the trial, having left the courtroom to find the bird immediately there in a plant by the door, waiting for him. “Can you sense something amiss?” He scratches him beneath the chin. “I am glad you escaped that awful bomber,” he adds. He’s glad Blackquill did as well, for whatever difference the scant few days remaining could have made. “I need to go speak with your samurai soon.” He feels like he did over a year and a half ago, now, alone, lost, set adrift, no one to speak with but a bird whose name he did not know. “‘Soon’ is all he has left now, I suppose. Today? Or tomorrow?” Not the day of, and not just because he doesn’t know what time it will be — the stroke of midnight, an immediate end? Or with the sunrise, or noon, or sunset, his life gone with the last of the light? — but he doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want that countdown running in his head, and he doesn’t want to impose on Blackquill’s last day, not when the man so obviously wanted him gone.

One: December twentieth, waking in the morning to a decision. He skips most of his usual routine for styling his hair and heads for the detention center, having realized that he doesn’t want to face Blackquill after the workday, not when he’ll be stepping out into the dark after that, not when putting it off will mean that he will be haunted one last day searching for the words he could say to draw out the truth. They don’t exist. Better to end this now. Make a clean break of it.

Say goodbye.

Blackquill shakes his head when he sees Klavier, and first he thinks that it is about the hour, although Blackquill has obviously been awake for longer than him, and then he thinks it is about Klavier being here at all. But it seems to be neither. “You look like,” Blackquill begins, casting a critical eye over him, “a maggot-riddled corpse that the vultures will come swooping down to pick at any minute now.”

“Thanks,” Klavier says.

Blackquill sighs.

“What was it about your case that convinced Edgeworth that you could be saved?” Klavier asks. “For what reason did he even bother with you?”

“For sad naivety,” Blackquill replies, though Klavier would not describe the chief prosecutor as naive, “and an unwarranted, baseless hope for a future that could never be.”

“But why?”

“That is, I believe, still classified, and will remain so even after Hell has taken me.”

“Then I expect an answer when I see you there.”

“You won’t.” His smirk almost loses its edge to become sad, but in the next moment his mouth twists into a sneer. “Even now, you think you can draw some truth from me? You think there is some truth left yet not found? I hope not, or I have badly misjudged you these many months.”

“Deathbeds are good places for confessions, I hear.” Klavier can barely force himself to meet Blackquill’s cold stare, even knowing that this is the last time he will ever see him. How can he ever banish the ghost if he cannot face him one final time?

He shakes his head very slightly, his empty eyes never breaking from Klavier’s. “Yet dead men give no testimony, and I have been dead for a very long time already.”

“Was it worth it?” Klavier asks. He doesn’t know exactly what it is he is referring to.

But Blackquill raises his head, lips pursed together, and something about his eyes looks more alive than Klavier has seen him, the most proof offered that the grave has not quite yet claimed him. “Unquestionably,” he says, but even as he says it, the muscles in his throat tighten and he blinks twice in quick succession.

Klavier doesn’t know what to make of that. Klavier has never known what to make of him. All this time spent trying, and he has still not found an answer.

“I will take good care of Herr Taka. You need not worry over him.”

“Good.” Blackquill smiles.

The silence stretches out like infinity even when Klavier knows they have no time left at all. “This is goodbye, then, ja?”

Blackquill nods curtly, once. “It is, and one long overdue, at that. Do not mourn me, Gavin-dono. I am not worth your time or that soft fool heart of yours that would do you credit anywhere but death row. Take comfort that this fate of mine is justice well served.”

Justice is the only comfort that Klavier has ever had: the guilty, found and exposed to face the punishment they deserve for the crime.

Funny, then, to be consoled in that way by a murderer over his own impending execution.

“Goodbye, Gavin-dono.”

If he has nothing left to say, then Klavier has nothing, either. “Goodbye, Herr Blackquill.”

The lump growing in his throat and his chest does not feel like grief; he does not know what it feels like. Anxiety? Apprehension? It doesn’t leave him but sits like a cloud across his shoulders, and he still gets more work done that morning than he has in the past week. The day drags on until sometime after two, when Sebastian charges in to once again tell Klavier to turn on the news, to reports about a hostage-taking at the Space Center.

“What a fucking week,” Klavier says. This new incident is related to the bombing there, he presumes.

“Prosecutor Edgeworth left to deal with some part of it personally,” Sebastian says. “I don’t know what is happening anymore.”

“Have we ever?” Klavier asks.

Sebastian leaves but calls Klavier up to his office an hour and a half later, saying that Ema has arrived with information. She is sprawled in the armchair, her shoes on the floor, angrily munching. “He’s prosecuting it himself?” Sebastian is asking.

“Yeah, and then he told me to stop pulling a Faraday — not in those exact words, mind, but he threw me out of the courthouse and told me to come back over here and wait to be on call for anything that he needs me for.”

“Who, and what’s going on?”

Ema throws a Snackoo at him. “Mr. Edgeworth,” she says, “is prosecuting a retrial of Blackquill’s case, at the demand of the Space Center hostage-taker.”

There are so many moving parts to that sentence that Klavier can’t exactly follow. “What does the Space Center have to do with—”

“I don’t know.” She chucks another snack at him. “I’m just telling you what I do know, which is that.”

“But if Prosecutor Edgeworth is prosecuting, then that would mean that he’s trying to prove Prosecutor Blackquill guilty, even after — even after all the time he’s spent letting him prosecute and all.” Sebastian frowns. “Unless they found a new suspect?”

Ema flicks a Snackoo into his face. “I said, I don’t know.” She scowls at the bag, which evidently is empty, and she crumpled it and flings it in Klavier’s direction. “I got out of a trial and there’s this commotion over in the Courtroom Four ruins, because that’s where they’re holding this shitshow, and this is what I learned before Edgeworth found me trying to sneak in.”

So that’s what pulling a Faraday means. He could have guessed as much. “And he asks me to be on call for anything he needs analyzed, except he still doesn’t tell me what’s happening with the case.” Ema starts to make the motion of reaching into a snack bag, only to realize that she doesn’t have one. “And that’s where we’re at,” she says, her arm dropping dejectedly over the side of the chair.

Again, he remembers this — sitting in Sebastian’s office listening to the live news coverage on his computer and simply waiting for any information. Sometime around 4:30 the report arrives that the police and the Chief Prosecutor have secured release of the hostages and have the culprit in custody. Ema arrives back in the room after wandering the halls searching for a vending machine, cursing prosecutors in general for not facilitating her stress-eating. Sometime after five, the door crashes open, hits the wall with a loud bang, and swings closed.

“That was unfortunate,” Kay says, pushing the door back open.

“What are you doing here?” Ema asks.

“Waiting for instruction,” she replies, blinking curiously at Ema, like she expected to have some Snackoos to steal and is utterly baffled as to the sudden lack thereof. “Just got off from the Space Center situation.”

“You were down there?” Klavier asks.

Kay gently pushes Ema’s legs off of the arm of the chair and sits down on it. “Yeah, me and Little Thief” — she pats the pouch on her belt where she keeps the device — “got called to help find another way in to the Space Center and do some sweet hack job to shut down the robots, but Mr. Edgeworth lawyered the way out of the situation before I had to pull off that heist.”

“Is the trial still going?” Sebastian asks.

Kay shrugs. “Dunno. Probably.” She stares at the floor for a long time before she adds, “The hostage-taker was his sister. Prosecutor Blackquill’s, I mean. She was a roboticist at the Space Center and she didn’t believe the verdict from seven years ago so she — she…”

“Was going to throw other people’s lives away?” Ema demands. “A dozen people she would’ve sacrificed for one? Even — even for the truth, no! If it was just her own life she was going to throw away for him, fine!” She sits upright now, but as Klavier watches, she sinks back into a slump, placing her face in her hands. “No. Still not fine.”

“And what if the truth still isn’t what she wants to hear?” Klavier asks.

What a strange thing, to believe so staunchly in her brother’s innocence.

Kay’s phone rings and she jumps like she didn’t expect it and unbalanced she falls off the armchair. “Yo!” she says, answering the phone while lying on the floor. “At the Prosecutors Office — yeah.” She scrambles up onto her feet, knocking her head against the arm of the chair, appearing entirely unfazed by such. “Really?” The way her eyes sparkle with delight is almost frightening. “Wait, really, you — okay, okay, yeah, I can do that. Where in your office? I checked the shelves like a week ago but they weren’t where they — I mean, no, I totally wasn’t in there again.” The grin leaves her face and is replaced by fierce concentration. “Okay. That won’t be a problem, not for a Great Thief like me! — I’m with her right now, actually. Want me to just hand the phone to her?”

She takes the phone away from her ear and hands it to Ema. “Chief Prosecutor wants to talk to you.”

Edgeworth? What does Edgeworth want from them? Is the trial over? “Hello?” Ema asks, frowning. “Yes, of course, why?” Her frown deepens. “Okay. I’ll call you when I’m there, if you aren’t already. Bye.”

“What’s Prosecutor Edgeworth want?” Sebastian asks.

“Trial is on a recess and Blackquill’s taking the bench after,” Kay says. “Chief wants the UR-1 files out of his office, and meet him over at Criminal Affairs, and something from Ema.”

“Go to Criminal Affairs, instructions to follow,” Ema says. “Who’s driving? I’m not waiting for you, Kay.”

Kay pouts. “Well, Sebby can take you, and I’ll go with the files and Klav—”

The beginning of a problem is forming in front of Klavier, along with another tension headache. “I rode my bike in today, Fraülein. Not the best for carrying objects of dire importance.”

“Gavin, you’re fucking useless,” Ema snaps. “I’ll wait. Fine. Go, Kay.”

“I’ve gotta crack the lock on his office and his desk,” Kay says. “You’re not going to want to — or okay I guess you might rather than—”

Ema pinches the bridge of her nose and closes her eyes, spinning in place. “Fuck. Fuck it. Gavin, do you have an extra helmet?”

His headache isn’t going away but this is not where he expected this to go. “I — yes, in my office��”

“Then fuckin’ get it and I’ll meet you in the garage.” Ema throws her hands in the air. “Dying in a motorcycle wreck in rush hour was not my life plan but fuck it, I passed the forensics test, dream fulfilled. Mr. Edgeworth needs my help so let’s fucking go die.”

She bolts from the room before giving Klavier time to absorb any of what she has said beyond rush hour and dying, which would both be slight obstacles in the plan of getting to Criminal Affairs in time. Can he get a police siren for his personal motorcycle? Of everyone he imagined that he would ever actually give a ride on his bike to, Ema wasn’t even on the list.

She is glaring daggers at his bike when he arrives with a helmet for her, but asking her if she is sure gets the helmet snatched out of his hands and the glare turned to him. Neither of them say anything more and Klavier speeds from the garage making the mental calculus of how reckless he can be with a passenger, someone else’s life in his hands instead of just his own, and though he doesn’t weave his way through traffic like he could were he an idiot, he suspects that he’ll have bruises around his ribs from Ema’s deathly forceful embrace.

A few blocks around Criminal Affairs are blocked off with barricades and police cars but Klavier sidles in and swings around the front of the building to drop Ema off. She springs off like she was sitting in lava and rushes up the front steps, and Klavier looks for a place to park and to negotiate his presence with the officers. He flashes his badge and drops both his own name and Edgeworth’s a few times before he is allowed to go, and inside he has already lost Ema. He has to ask the few detectives left in the building — most are currently scattered between the courthouse and the Space Center — where she went. He finds her in the lab on her cell phone, queueing up a fingerprint analysis but confusedly staring at the screen. “That — I’ll do it, but can you explain to me why?” Next to the keyboard is a bag of Snackoos and Klavier is almost impressed with how she has managed to acquire a snack in such a short time. “Okay. I understand. I’ll call you when she gets here, if you aren’t already.”

“What are we doing?” Klavier asks, trying and failing to catch the Snackoo lobbed at him.

“The chief prosecutor wants me to run a check on fingerprints for every still-unidentified victim from the past two years.”

“Against what?” Klavier asks, because he might not pay much attention to those little aspects of an investigation, but he’s pretty sure that a fingerprint for comparison is needed.

Ema pauses with her hands over the keyboard, frowning even more than before. “Against Fulbright’s,” she answers.

“That doesn’t make any sense, Fraülein.”

“Shut up, fuck you, I know that! Edgeworth says he has an explanation when he gets here.” She grabs something smaller, tablet-sized, off the table and swings it into his chest. He’s going to be bruised in the morning and not in the fun way. “You want to make smart remarks about fingerprints, here.”

It must be the instrument she uses to compare fingerprints (which was not within her investigative scope but he has fought and lost that battle before) but — “I don’t know how this works.”

She snatches it back out of his hands muttering something that sounds suspiciously like “glimmerous fop”, and she jerks her thumb at the screen which is now, slower than he expected, running the fingerprint analysis. “This thing is going oldest cases first, so I’m loading this one up newest first, and you can run it backwards and meet in the middle.” She shoves the machine at him again. “Just hit the button to go to the next one.”

It seems possibly the most mind-numbing task on the planet, but he accepts it, because when Edgeworth arrives, Klavier knows which of the two of them here is his favored employee. “So we are looking for a dead man with fingerprints identical to Fulbright’s, ja?”

Which doesn’t make any sense.

“Nobody has identical fingerprints,” Ema says, again leveling on him a glare containing all of the disgust she can muster. “We’re looking for Fulbright, period.”

“I saw him two weeks ago,” Klavier says. “Why is Herr Chief having us look back two years?”

“I saw him today, and I told you I don’t fucking know.”

The analysis comes up with another failed match and Klavier hits the button and thinks that a good interrogation technique would be to leave the suspect with this or the choice to talk. Ema sits on the table and starts angrily munching snacks. Time seems to go on forever, the two of them in the lab with nothing but fingerprint data for company. In the quiet, Klavier can hear when there is finally a clattering of footsteps down the stairs, long before they arrive with a cacophony of voices.

“—name is Ponco! Ponco! And I can move on my own, thank you very much!”

“Well, sorry, pal, but it seemed quicker this way than bouncin’ you down the stairs.”

Kay is the first through the door, skidding to an abrupt halt when she stops herself by grabbing onto the edge of the door to hold it open for Detective Gumshoe, carrying what appears to be a robot, which is squealing indignantly in its mechanical voice. Edgeworth and Sebastian trail them, Sebastian carrying two binders and an assortment of manila folders.

“Why are we running Herr Fulbright’s fingerprints?” Klavier asks at the same time Ema asks, “Why are you manhandling a robot?”

“Quicker than waiting for the elevator,” Gumshoe says, depositing the robot on its stubby legs. “Sorry ‘bout that, pal,” he says to it, patting it apologetically on its orange head.

“That is not my name!” it shrieks. “I am Ponco! Say it with me!”

“Yes, yes, Ponco,” Kay interrupts, hopping into its line of sight and patting it on his head as well. “Gummy and Mr. Edgeworth aren’t so good with names, okay?”

“Hey!” Gumshoe says.

“The robot?” Ema repeats. Sebastian already has the files open and is so absorbed in their pages enough that he nearly misses the table that he tries to sit on. “Anyone going to answer?”

“She contains a facial recognition database from all visitors to the Space Center,” Edgeworth answers, sounding very irritable and raising his voice to be heard over Kay who is chatting amicably with the robot. “I want to get from her information about all of the first responders to the murder at the Space Center seven years ago.”

“There was a murder there back then, as well?” Klavier asks.

Edgeworth fixes him with a piercing stare that Klavier can barely hold his ground against. “That is the crime for which Prosecutor Blackquill was convicted,” he answers.

“Oh,” Klavier says, very softly.

“Ms. Ponco is ready to help!” Kay says, springing back onto her feet from where she had crouched in front of the robot. “Not sure what you’re looking for, so your turn.” She drops her voice, but barely, so that it is more of a stage whisper, and says to Gumshoe, “I think calling her ‘pal’ upsets her.”

“Er, sorry, pal.”

“And the fingerprints?” Klavier asks, as Kay’s eyes turn to the screen and she asks, “Why are we searching Fulbright’s prints?”

Edgeworth stops on his way over to the orange robot. Gumshoe, bent over to examine it, looks up. “Is this like a Shih-na situation?” Kay asks.

“That is… about as close a precedent as we have for this situation, I believe,” Edgeworth says.

“A what?” Klavier asks. “What is going on, Fraülein?”

“Blackquill’s not guilty,” Kay says. “And I don’t know what Fulbright’s got to do with it but Blackquill and they” — she points to Edgeworth and Gumshoe — “have a trail on the real killer from Blackquill’s case seven years ago, and at the Space Center this week, and the bombings, and everything.”

That doesn’t answer anything but Klavier focuses on the first words that Kay said. “Blackquill isn’t guilty?”

Kay shakes her head forcefully, her hair flying.

“Then why would he claim he was if this — repeat criminal, was responsible?”

“Prosecutor Blackquill calls him a phantom,” Gumshoe says. “A real big spy trying to sabotage the Space Center back then and now, and Prosecutor Blackquill knew he was around back then, but he didn’t know it was the phantom who did the killing of the poor victim. He thought it was one of his pals who killed her, thought it was some mistake, no evidence of the phantom, so he let us convict him to protect his pal.”

This still leaves questions, so many questions, and too much to process while the fingerprint scan is still running up on the screen, hostages not long freed from the Space Center, that Klavier doesn’t even know what to ask. A spy? A murder at the Space Center — how, so many months ago when he read articles about Blackquill’s arrest, surrounded by celebratory articles of the Space Center rocket launch, did he never read about it? Who was Blackquill lying to save?

What the hell happened?

Ema closes her eyes and lets her breath out in a hiss. “Fucking stupid,” she snarls. “He was going to die to cover for someone who didn’t need covering for! If he’d just dug one layer deeper into it — he was a prosecutor! You’d think someone used to investigating would — I don’t know — assess the evidence instead of getting stupid for love and accidentally covering for the crimes of a monster?”

“Detective Skye,” Edgeworth says softly. She doesn’t look at him.

“Prosecutor Edgeworth!” Sebastian calls, waving a file at him. “I looked over everything, and Fulbright was not one of any of the detectives who were anywhere on scene during the incident, first responder or later investigator.”

Edgeworth nods curtly. “That’s exactly what I am seeing from this little robot here.”

“Ponco!” it yells. “My name is Ponco!”

“So what does Fulbright have to do with this?” Ema asks.

“Know why Prosecutor Blackquill calls him a ‘phantom’, pal?” Gumshoe asks.

“Because that is just how Herr Blackquill talks?”

“Nah, but y’know you remind me, the couple times I talked to him—”

“Detective,” Edgeworth says firmly.

“It’s ‘cause of him being a master of disguise,” Gumshoe says. “Got all fancy gadgets, but the worst part of him, reason why we’ve been chasing him for over seven years to no end, is he can turn into anyone. S’why we never found him, but let me tell you, pal. This time, he’s not gonna get away.”

They wait, watching the fingerprints scan, and the sky sinks into inky blackness outside the window. Klavier is relieved from his personal hell of fingerprint comparisons when Edgeworth gets a call from a court bailiff that Blackquill and Wright — of course Wright is involved in this — want prints from the Space Center murder case rerun. Gumshoe calls down an officer to deliver the results over to the courthouse and Kay tries to volunteer, for the sake of finding out what is going on with the trial, and is denied.

He is mulling over the mystery of Blackquill’s past behavior with the new information that is still not enough —there has never been enough to explain the man to Klavier in all the time he has known him — when the computer dings and the words match found flash across the screen, and everyone’s eyes turn to it. “Fulbright’s prints match to the victim in a cold case from last December,” Ema reads off, tapping a few keys and pulling up further details. “The fourth, body washed up on some rocks out of the Eagle River—”

“No,” Kay says, lunging forward and nearly pushing Ema out of the way to look at the screen. “Oh no no no no, that can’t be right! There’s some mistake, Emmy, you screwed something up—”

“Excuse me?”

“I worked that case!” Kay shouts, jabbing a finger at the screen and the photograph of the body, bruised bloody face and a bullet hole between the eyes. “I was one of two detectives to first respond, and that can’t be Fulbright dead there! Because Fulbright was with me! How can Fulbright be dead when he was right there next to me the whole case!”

Klavier’s mouth has gone dry.

“And we’d worked one two weeks before that!” Kay continues, and she has turned her fury from Ema to Edgeworth. “Together! And he was — he was the same, those first cases, and when we were at the river, responding to that one, he was—” One of her hands is clutching her scarf beneath her chin; the other is gathered in her hair like she wants to rip it out. “He was the same!”

“No,” Edgeworth says. “He wasn’t.”

“That’s what we mean by phantom, pal,” Gumshoe says. “Right under our noses.”

“Your phantom didn’t even burn off Fulbright’s fingerprints before he dumped the body?” Klavier asks. “Destroyed his face but not — and you — you didn’t even check the prints! If you had run a comparison you could have easily—”

“There’s a high probability that the wounds to the detective’s face were post-mortem injuries caused not by the phantom, but the river rapids and its rocks,” Edgeworth says tersely. “So depending on where their confrontation took place, the phantom might not have even had a chance to get to Fulbright’s body at all — not that he could have expected the body to ever be found. So few are ever recovered from those rapids; the phantom could not have chosen a better location to get rid of the evidence. The odds of the fingerprints coming back to haunt him were very low—”

But Edgeworth has avoided a key part of what Klavier said. “But they have, and would’ve much sooner had you bothered to—”

“Hey! Watch it, pal!” Gumshoe interrupts, rounding on Klavier, seething, shoulders hunched. “Prosecutor Edgeworth always does the best of anyone I’ve ever worked with! You wouldn’t have done any better yourself, pal!”

“Detective Skye, can you print these results, please?” Edgeworth says, like Klavier isn’t there, isn’t worth personally acknowledging.

“He was right there!” Klavier yells. “The whole time! The man responsible for this was right next to Blackquill, the entire time, and you—”

Edgeworth turns from the screen, slowly, one hand extended and still waiting for the print-out. “And how would you,” he says, voice low and dangerous, “have thought to compare a corpse’s fingerprints to those of a man very much alive right in front of you?”

“I would have taken more care with the detective I chose to hold Blackquill’s leash! The — you gave control of a shock collar to this phantom — we’re lucky Blackquill isn’t dead! Because you — you—”

Ema places the paper in his hand and Edgeworth folds it with very careful, deliberate movements, while his eyes never leave Klavier’s face. “For what reason would you ever run the fingerprints of a John Doe against the database of living detectives in our employ? How would you have foreseen that, Gavin? How would you have put together pieces that simply weren’t there? You berate me with the benefit of hindsight when you couldn’t even see that right in front of you your own brother was corrupt and a murderer!”

It never hurts less, never feels less like a hard kick to the gut, winding him, and not even Kay’s gasp, almost scolding, “Mr. Edgeworth!” like she thinks he has gone too far, helps put the air back into his lungs. Edgeworth rubs a hand over his eyes, his teeth gritted together, and he turns his head away from Klavier.

“We gotta get going, sir,” Gumshoe says to Edgeworth. “Who knows what they’ve got up to while you’re gone?”

“Call in more backup,” Edgeworth says, and they start for the door. “We need to close every possible avenue of escape in case the phantom tries to run, or his employers attempt an extraction.”

“Hey,” Kay says. “I’m here. That’s my job. Little Thief can help, too.”

“No,” Edgeworth says. “Detective Faraday, you will stay here with your three compatriots.”

“Hey!” She is indignant now. “It’s my job I’m trained to do, and I’m not a child anymore, Mr. Edgeworth! You can’t try to protect me, not after everything I did with you even when I was a kid!”

“Kay,” Edgeworth says firmly. “We have the entire courthouse locked down, but even then, I will count nothing out when it comes to this criminal, and I readily anticipate the worst. Should something happen to me, to Detective Gumshoe, to all of us — you are someone I trust to take up the mantle of putting this to an end. You all are, all four of you, which is why I expect you to look over those case files now that we know the truth” — he gestures at the screen, the damning fingerprints still displayed — “and to stay out of the way and stay safe should something go direly wrong.”

He turns on his heel and sweeps from the room, Gumshoe trailing right behind him. Kay remains standing stock-still in the center of the room, staring at the doors, and it is Klavier who finally breaks the pall of silence that settled over them. “All… four of us?”

“Yes,” Sebastian says, and that is all he says.

“I’m gonna go grab a radio,” Kay says. She returns after a few minutes, dropping another bag of Snackoos in Ema’s lap, with a small radio in her hands that is humming with static until she manages to tune it to the right frequency. The chatter from the courthouse is quiet, announcing Edgeworth’s arrival after about twenty minutes, where he heads straight into the courtroom to presumably announce the fingerprinting results. All on edge, they wait; Klavier expects an explosion, gunfire, something horrible, something dire, but the minutes crawl by and by with none of that. Ema leaves her seat to go poke and prod at the robot, which loudly complains about the treatment, and Kay moves to intervene in the growing conflict. Sebastian is still absorbed in the UR-1 files and Klavier paces circles around the room.

Ema is called by one of the detectives at the courthouse to test some evidence from the courtroom bombing earlier in the week; conversation over the radio heralds the arrival of another detective with a blood sample to be compared to the one Ema found. As soon as the results and the evidence, fragments of a rock, are sent out, the liveliness fades from her and she sinks back into her chair. Kay has begun pacing now too. There is nothing to do but wait, and wait, and over the radio there is a conversation about finding someone who can run specialized testing of mineral composition, a suggestion of getting back to the Space Center, and then there is a loud noise that Klavier prays is a car backfiring or even another part of the badly damaged courtroom collapsing in on itself, anything but—

“Shot fired! Shots fired!”

Kay lunges to the radio and turns it up too loud, loud enough to hurt, loud enough that Sebastian claps his hands over his ears, but nothing coming through is anything useful, any answers about who, what, more than that someone was shot — someone might be dying—

Klavier is on his feet, heading for the door, not sure what he’s going to do, how he could even help, and Sebastian and Kay and Ema are all loudly arguing about those same questions over the frenetic energy of the radio. But Klavier leaves them behind, up the stairs and out the door back into the chilled December night air. The roads are so much emptier now, and easier to traverse, the traffic lights all lit up only green. It takes him fifteen minutes to speed to the courthouse, and another five arguing with the officers closing off the scene about whether the danger is passed, whether they can let him through. It’s only when he takes his helmet off and hangs it on the handlebars that he left the one he gave Ema back in the lab.

The streetlamps along the sidewalk in front of the courthouse cast a cold illumination around two figures sitting on the steps; he recognizes them both, bright red, and a powder blue top hat. “Herr Forehead!” he calls, and Apollo jumps, jostling Trucy, who was resting her head on his shoulder. “Fraülein!”

“P — Prosecutor Gavin?” Apollo asks. His eyes are wide and hooked over his arm is an unfamiliar, dark blue jacket. “What are you doing here—”

“Are you both all right? Is anyone hurt? Is everyone alive? What happened?” He takes a deep breath and tries to choke down the rising panic. Neither of them look good — exhausted, upset, obvious even through the smile that Trucy turns to him — but if someone was dead he thinks they would look worse. “There were gunshots—”

“Just one,” Apollo says tiredly. Trucy’s head droops back down and her hat slips from her head into her lap. “Whoever the phantom’s employers were had a sniper try to silence him.”

Klavier leans against the railing to stop himself from sinking down to the ground. “The phantom.” Apollo nods. “The man pretending to be Herr Fulbright.” Apollo nods again. “And everyone else—”

“We’re fine,” Apollo says. “We’re all fine.”

It’s over, then.

“How are you feeling?” Klavier asks.

Apollo looks away, down at his hands. His arms aren’t wrapped in bandages anymore but still look red and raw. “Terrible,” he admits quietly, too quietly for comfort, “but I’ve still been worse.”

“Sometimes that is all you can ask for, ja?”

“What are you doing here?” Trucy asks. “Shouldn’t you be…” She pauses, pouting as she thinks. “Not here?”

“I was down at Criminal Affairs. We were listening to the police radio and heard them speaking of gunshots and—”

“And you decided you’d run right into what could’ve been a shootout,” Apollo says, and his voice is at a more typical volume for him, sounding stronger than before.

“I… Ja, I did.”

It had seemed natural then, because almost everyone in the world he cares about, besides three bandmates and his dog, all of whom thankfully stay out of the trouble that defines the lives of the rest, was either with him in the lab or here at the courthouse. What was there to do but rush in?

Even Apollo’s exasperated sighs are loud.

At the top of the steps, the courthouse doors open, Wright and Edgeworth deep in conversation and trailed by a young woman wearing a pink sweater and a robe-like dress. Wright stops abruptly in the middle of a sentence, looking down at Klavier and Apollo and Trucy. “My number of kids seemed to have multiplied,” he says loudly, and he bounds down a few more steps, leaving Edgeworth behind. “Hello, Klavier.”

“Guten Abend, Herr Wright.”

“Gavin,” Edgeworth says with a sigh audible all the way at the bottom of the stairs, “did I not tell you—”

“—To remain in the lab? Ja, and then Fraülein Faraday wanted to listen in over the radio frequency, and we heard gunshots—”

“And so you ran toward the gunfire?” Wright asks, a faint amused smile forming on his face, and Edgeworth’s frown deepens.

“Herr Forehead already gave me a lecture on the wisdom of that.”

Wright laughs, and laughs louder when Edgeworth says something quietly to him. After a short exchange between the two, Edgeworth’s glare settles again on Klavier. “Should I expect the rest of your entourage to be arriving shortly?”

His entourage? Klavier opens his mouth to respond, or maybe protest that specific way of referring to them, but the screeching of tires is a better answer than he could give. He glances over toward the parking lot, where Sebastian’s silver car takes a second corner too fast and hops up over a curb. “And it looks like Kay extorted the keys, at that,” Edgeworth says, shaking his head. He says something else, and Wright replies, but Klavier misses whatever exchange they are having as movement up at the courthouse doors again catches his eye. The bright yellow popping out of the gloom heralds Cykes, and next to her, fading into the heavy shadows that the streetlights leave—

Klavier pushes himself off the railing and weaves his way between the others up to face the ghost. He takes one step down to meet Klavier, and the movement is made with an unnatural emptiness, his every motion no longer accompanied by the clatter of chains. Even in the dark, Cykes’ eyes are visibly bloodshot and her face blotchy, but her grin doesn’t seem forced and there is something of a spring in her movements as she hops down to again stand next to Blackquill. “Guten Abend, Prosecutor Gavin!” she chirps. “Are you coming to Eldoon’s with us?”

“The — the noodle stand?”

Cykes nods. “It’s a Wright after-trial tradition, but with everyone tonight.”

He hears Kay, loudly introducing herself, and wonders if he will have to intercept her and stop her from bowling over Apollo. Trucy is chattering with a little more energy in her voice, saying something that Wright loudly tries to talk over, and then Klavier catches part of his name, “Prosecutor Gavin”, and he glances back down at the small crowd gathering, to find Trucy is already looking at him and she calls up, “You should join us! Your friends here are!”

“Simon’s coming too,” Cykes adds.

Simon?

“I suppose I will, then,” Klavier answers.

Cykes is beaming, and Blackquill is looking at her, and when he finally acknowledges Klavier he speaks with his chin raised but his head turned away. “Gavin-dono.” It is the closest to shame that Klavier has ever seen from him. “I shall not even pretend to be shocked to find you here.”

“Blackquill.” He thought he had spoken his last with the Twisted Samurai; he had thought he said everything he could. Now even having been given part of an answer, he still does not know what to say, how to process any of it. He manages to find three words: “What the hell?”

Blackquill laughs.

“What the hell happened?”

“It is a long story.”

“Seven years long?”

Blackquill nods. Cykes leans up against him, her shoulder pressed into his arm.

“Then perhaps you should now begin the telling, ja?”

“Tomorrow,” Blackquill says resolutely. Even in the dark, in the harsh shadows cast by the cold yellow lights, there is life evident sparkling in his eyes. “There will be time enough for the full story tomorrow.”

[pulitzerpanther]

Miss Grant...why did you become a reporter?

This question and Cat Grant’s answer were taken from the monthly-quarterly ‘Nine Lives Left’ column featuring CEO Cat Grant and editor of ‘The Trib’ Lucas ‘Snapper’ Carr. The column features questions towards both regarding journalism, ethics in the news industry, and–from Cat–fashion advice for the wilting middle-age ‘walking bearclaw’ editor taking said questions. 

While originally edited in format and featured in the article, the below blurb was taken from the podcast posted on CatCo-.Co with the title of the same name.

So, Cat, everyone always wonders–I know, I know, we get asked this often–and I know we’ve discussed it over the years.

“Oh, of course, I love repetitive questions. If I hear it enough, it’s like the dulcet, soothing tones of Donald Trump.” 

Why did you become a reporter?

“Hmm, yes, well–I’m sure you expect a wholly different answer, given the fact that I technically started in gossip.

Is there more to Cat Grant than high heels? 

“If there wasn’t, you wouldn’t work here. Fine. A similar answer was in my excellently-written memoir, Cat Got Your Tongue released in 2002, but, in order to take you on a journey of me, Snapper, we’d either have to get you a fashion sense, or gussy up a handy little time machine and skip that awful hair-teasing, leopard print phase of the 90′s to go back to the book-worm days of my youth and, namely, the news as an influence–or lack thereof–of my formative years.

Below is the excerpt written by Cat Grant for the ‘editorial’ column, read and featured on both podcast and Trib header.

My father was a particularly knowledgeable man–a great man who had this air of regal mystique about him, or so it might seem to a young girl who had a habit of tiptoeing around the corners of an old, two-bedroom apartment in the bustling playground of Metropolis, before skyscrapers built like towering trees in the ground would become a far more commonplace playroom than my father’s study. But when I was a little girl, I enjoyed that air of ‘fine things’ that he seemed to carry–suits and cigars; mystical brief cases with work-related things in them. It’s all very fantastical to play make-believe with, if you’re ambitious, and while my age is a carefully-kept secret (soon to be given away by this article like an old CIA agent in a bar) there was a time when I did enjoy that long-forgotten art of playing. 

As I tell my son, creativity is important–creating a rocket ship out of a box is the fundamental mind-set that will, one day, create a company out of thin air. It should never be repressed in a child, and I often found myself tempted by the utter adulthood of my father’s study like a creativity landmine. 

The door was always locked save for Sunday mornings, his coffee creating a fine brown ring along whatever ever-present newspaper had found its way to mahogany that morning–the business and politics sections the first read and neatly folded to the side. Saturday morning cartoons were not something my radical mother appreciated in the mornings, but both of them could be seen feverishly discussing current events over the sounds of a crackling, small television in the corner. Only on Sundays, of course, they were feverishly discussing far less important things every where else at much louder–far more grating–volumes everywhen else. 

It wasn’t uncommon to hear the soothing sounds of Walter Cronkite (prior to Dan Rather and Connie Chung’s overruling domain in my mother’s household) in my youth and this particular day, there was one singular, titular program on the television. 

Fortunately–as is an American right–the magnitude of war was lost on me at such a young age, and I had the benefit of merely being fascinated by war like it was some distant, fantastical teleproduction. Like H.G Wells was narrating events, materialized with sensationalism and haunting faux-realism–like I was always one step removed from its horror, because I was.I wasn’t aware of this at the time–what little girl would be?–but Nixon and Johnson ordered the bombing of the Eastern Cambodian line in order to usurp the then-communist Vietnamese strongholds. I wasn’t aware of the impact this would have, ultimately, on the American population–peace signs and drugs and love not war notwithstanding–but also on the Cambodian people.

For four years, with as many visits as an estranged aunt appearing solely for family functions that no one particularly wanted to invite her to, but she just obnoxiously showed up anyways–similar to Joan Crawford, the later years, at a party or Joan Rivers at your wedding (three times)–only to make one small, forgettable appearance, I learned of my first taste of media’s role in education the masses–

By learning that media was not educating the masses. 

From the time I was nine to the time I was thirteen, the Khmer Rouge regime, under the daunting, fanatical leadership of Pol Kot, committed the systematic genocide and elimination of approximately three million Cambodian people under the name of Democratic enstatement in the country. I heard the word Kampuchea (the government created by this regime after the slaughter) feverishly whispered around my father’s coffee mug like a dirty word–like that salacious affair my mother heard about the neighbor having with his nanny–and never understood the impact of it. It wasn’t discussed in my school and, save for a quickly-buried news report every week or two, it was lost, like some lack-luster movie hitting the box office, watched by a hundred thousand people never to be heard of again.

It was a transient sensationalist story. I didn’t understand the gravity of what occurred until college and the magnitude of such a death toll never truly touched Western newspapers save for blurbs. Not even in 1999, when Nate Thayer and Nic Dunlop interviewed a member of the regime’s command still awaiting trial. The story was picked up, ran once, and everyone’s fickle minds forgot about it come Monday, while the weight of the death toll was still being felt by the country to this day.

It was a systematic oppression of the people–a slaughter of a race and religion–and in my twenties, when someone mentioned it, as historical fact, an event that cost the lives of millions, I furrowed my brows like it was a word I couldn’t quite remember on the tip of my tongue.

Lost.

In the 90′s, I was far more educated and politically forward–I was nicknamed Hanoi Cat by a few particularly close friends (one of whom is on the ballot for president this year and should think wisely about the things that a girl might remember to blackmail her with)–and it wasn’t uncommon for me to be enraged by the cruel, cruel state of the world. 

Oh, I taped myself to trees in political outcry, usually hungover and in fabulous heels on a budget, before my palette for social change and fashion had both fully refined. I screamed at rallies and bemoaned the effect of war on the world while sleeping in my thin dormitory mattress that I thought toughed my spine into steel. I was war-torn and affected by the weight of the world’s decisions, unlike my unassuming friends and colleagues.

I’ve since grappled and come to terms with the fact that complacency within a world is a fallacy: ignorance of people assuming the blame doesn’t lie on their shoulders; ignorance of people assuming the blame solely does. Change is not as simple as strapping yourself to a tree and screaming about indignancies.  

I’ve also since made it a point to buy better mattresses. A girl needs her beauty sleep to change the world, after all. 

The Rwandan massacre was far more documented, at the time, than the Cambodian massacre was in the 70′s. But To some of you, who are about to swiftly make my own point about a disassociation of connection and responsibility for me, you might have furrowed your brows and wrinkled your nose at this very paper. 

I’m sure it’s a fabulous look on you. 

Perhaps you saw the movie with Don Cheadle in the early thousands–Hotel Rwanda–where the gripping dramaticism of it all might have dampened the weight of the events with Hollywood flare–provided a sense of detachment that comes with all things sensationalized.  After all, how do we, as a society, come to terms with the deaths of a million people? Another genocide and, though the emergence of electronic media made it far more televised, this one became just as forgotten. 

For a minor history lesson–don’t worry, I’m sure many of you have that hot for teacher fetish–let’s recap the events of the Rwandan conflict in a short, small, haunting blurb that does nothing of justice to the weight or impact of what occurred: in 1994, due to the loss of a political leader, over one hundred days, an approximate million Rwandans were killed by militias and the military under order of the interim Rwandan government.

The coverage of the event was minimal, at best, and the focus of most media outlets–save for a steadfast Perry White who I will credit with having a great focus on human rights, even if the Planet is a subpar paper in every way to ours thanks to one Lois Lane’s lackluster writing–was more on evacuating government officials than on the genocide.

Questionably as appalling as the genocide–in a moral way that, to a journalist, rivals the death of a people–was the treatment of the genocide after the fact. The Rwandan Patriotic Front followed the interahamwe and the Hutu-dominated military into Zaire (what is now called The Democratic Republic of the Congo) and pillaged–that’s slaughtered and raped for those unfamiliar with coy terminology–their way across the eastern part of the Congo. Two years later, Zaire was once again invaded and a puppet government was installed. When that government crumbled, the government once again ransacked the country like some sadistic Santa Claus stumbling in through your fireplace to devour all of your cookies. With a hint of a Krumpus flair.

These actions caused a total death-count of around five-million congolese people.

None of these actions were adequately covered in the news.

So what does all of this have to do with me being a journalist? Oh, I have a point–trust me, I always have a point. Maybe I’m still a writer, through and through and it might be lost in the superfluous overzealousness of my ideas, but there’s always a point. 

I became a reporter for one simple reason: to find truth.

Were there news stories surrounding these events? Of course. Coverage might have been ill-focused during the time–far more for the Rwandan genocide than the Cambodian, though that could be attributed to the times and the lack of such a fine political conscience that Americans carry with them, today–but it was covered. But these moments are forgotten. 

Lost in history. 

A girl with knit eyebrows, forgetting the effect of war and conflict in a country so far away from my own.

Not only were these events transient in the media–not only did I watch them fade underneath the fickle eye of the current press with no lasting coverage or true understanding of the events that took place–I watched the media effectively suppress information.

Stories need to be told and information cannot be suppressed. What do both the Cambodian massacre and the Rwandan genocide have in common? The same thing any government needs in order to systematically commit atrocities against the Geneva Convention–the same thing anyone needs to commit a crime against humanity, big or small: silence. 

Cooperated silence. 

These governments silenced the media within their countries. They controlled the information flow so tightly that there was only one story that was ever told and a lasting embargo was placed worldwide over these events to not endanger the lives of any officials left in the war zone.

No one was talking about it. 

The moment a government starts oppressing speech–the moment the government takes away a people’s voice is the same moment they ultimately take away their humanity. 

Their tie to the world is cut.

How would you feel? In the land of the Great, if we were slowly starting to be distorted–cut off from news, from information flow. If stories of truth turned to ‘stories that the government told us’ which, ultimately, lead to global news of stories of what the government said, since there’s no other form of information available…would you feel safe? Would you feel safe being involved in a ‘He Said’ ‘He said’ with Big Brother? 

Oh, I can hear the rackling shackles of Republicans even while I’m writing this, but it’s not political–it’s human.

What would have happened if one voice in a sea of millions fought for their right to be heard–fought for their right to exist? Is it likely that millions of people might be alive, due to one voice? Oftentimes, political stressors are overwhelming–we’re led to believe that we’re cogs in a system, barreling out of control. 

No. Oh, no–no. Fake. News.

I’m one woman and I have, a will continue to make a difference, and so can you.

That is why it is so important that we have not only a global conscience–but a global presence in the world–humanity is not just a contained problem that happens on the other side of the globe. It is not just a number on a scale of millions dead. It is a problem that could someday affect us and already should simply from the ethical position of allowing it to happen, in the first place.

I don’t say all of this to endlessly guilt you. I believe there’s nothing wrong with taking joy in the finer things in life–in indulging in the good things, instead of just entrenching yourself in the bad–and, like I’d earlier informed you, I do have a nice mattress. I’m not a pauper constantly toiling away underneath the stress of the hedonism of humanity. 

But I do stay informed–I think it is my duty to stay informed, just as I think it’s yours–and, furthermore, it’s my duty to inform you. To tell you the truth with integrity and steadfast objectivity. 

It is my job to ensure that you cannot be blinded by the ‘fake news’ of the world.

Perhaps I don’t tie myself to trees anymore, and my heels are far more upclass, but there’s still a fire of injustice within me. I think there is for anyone who’s masochistic enough to persue the truth of the world because, oh, it can be cruel. And it can be abhorrent. And human nature can be so bone-crushingly haunting that it aches–it leaves a hole within you where humanity used to be–but there’s a brightness to it, as well. 

There will always be people who fight, if you give them a cause–there will always be hope to survive; to push past; to assist those who have been faced with atrocities–and that’s why I became a journalist. To give them a voice. To give them a light.

To give them a choice to fight.

I became a reporter to give a voice to places that no longer have a voice–to make these stories have a lasting impact of relevance and to question not only my own complacency with silence, but to challenge the world’s. It is far easier to ignore the atrocities of the world. It’s far easier to pretend that war is non-existent and that we hold no part in it, if it’s not on our soil we don’t have to handle the short and long-term effects as someone in the country might.

But humans haven’t survived because we’ve had it easy–we’ve survived by building communities. Fostering innovation and pushing together, ultimately, as a society. 

Any cruelty the world faces, I will do my best to ensure that people don’t furrow their brows in forget a few years later–instead, we can all rise up against them, history that steel in our spine molded by information, not a rusty old college dormitory bed, and proudly proclaim: 

Not again. 

This article was published and hosted by CatCo Worldwide Media; edit et al: Lucas Carr; feat: Cat Grant; CatCo WW M - 2015.