#if so valid the felt and midnight crew should have made out

[sunsetinmyvein]

I Know That I’ll Lose - Chapter Eight - I’m So Fixated

The boys never bothered to tell her about how moody Matty had been while she was away, because as soon as she had returned, he was back to his normal self anyway. It literally took the space of the taxi ride from the airport back to the venue before he started feeling the relief of her presence washing over him. He was back on his game for the show that they had that night, and everyone was able to see it from those on stage to those in the crowd. That usual magnetism of his had returned. Due to the typical chaos of the show and then having to get everyone back into the bus and on the road to the next one, Y/N/N and Matty didn’t really get to properly hang out with one another until they were finally at the next venue. Whenever the others in their group were around, everyone just wanted to find out if everything had been okay when she got back home.  So, Matty figured that he could wait. He still had plenty of time across their remaining two weeks of the tour, and maybe it was best to give her some space after a long-haul flight and dealing with a house break-in. However, he was happy to discover that once they had the chance, she was as eager to spend time with him as he was her. The next day saw the two of them hanging around the stage waiting for the other guys to arrive for soundcheck.

“Teach me the Tootime dance.” She said to Matty from her spot sitting on top of the barrier.

“What?” He asked with a frown, looking up from tuning his guitar.

“You know, that dance that you do in Tootime with Taitlyn and Kaylee near the end of the song.” She elaborated.

“What?” He asked again, this time laughter seeping into his incredulous tone. “Why would you want to learn that? That thing is only four steps.” He pointed out.

“And?”

He paused, thinking a moment before replying, “Why don’t I teach you the It’s Not Living stuff instead?” He offered.

“That’s just running on the spot.” She argued.

“No, it’s not. There’s more to it than that.” He said, trying to defend himself.

“I don’t wanna run on the spot while holding a guitar. That sounds like hard work.” She frowned, glancing at the guitar hanging from his shoulders.

“You’re the one who keeps complaining that working for Rome isn’t enough work.” He shot back. She just stuck her tongue out at him in response. “Fine, I’ll teach you the Tootime dance. C’mere.” He said, motioning for her to join him up on the stage.

  “Hann,” Ross called out from where he was standing near the lighting booth at the back of the venue, catching the guitarists attention who had been busily trying to set up the light timings for the newest addition to their setlist. He gestured for him to come over to where he was standing before directing his attention down to the two of them dorking around on the stage. “What’s the bet: how long before Matt notices that he is the one that’s into her?” He asked. Adam hummed thoughtfully, trying to come up with an accurate guess at how much longer their friend would remain clueless. “I bet you a tenner that he’ll work it out before the end of this tour.” He added.

The guitarist laughed loudly. “Really?? I think it’ll be at least another month.” He countered.

“Wanna put your money where your mouth is?” He offered again, holding his hand out for Adam to agree to the terms.

The two of them felt a hand clap down on each of their shoulders before they could seal the deal, looking over to see George standing behind them. “You’re both wrong.” He said, shaking his head. “He’s not gonna work it out until someone tells him.” He continued.

“You really have that little faith in him?” Ross asked with an eyebrow raised.

“I bet you both a fifty.” George challenged, holding his hand out. The two of them shared a look, before nodding and shaking George’s hand. It seemed pretty unlikely that someone as smart as Matty would be dense enough not to see it. “You guys saw him last week when she was gone; you both know how one track minded he can get. He’s way too caught up in his own shit to notice.” The drummer explained with a self-satisfied grin that he’s just made an easy hundred.

  Matty’s three bandmates decided to give him his space throughout the day after seeing how much he was relishing in finally having her company back. And it proved to be a beneficial decision, as his good mood was contagious to anyone in close proximity to him. When everyone on The 1975 crew was in a good mood, the entire process of the show was seamless. Setup and pack-down occurred in record time without Matty moping around the stage, and they were on the way to the next stop on the tour well before schedule. After winding down from their show, George was promptly reminded by a group text from Jamie that their latest single from Notes was dropping that night at midnight. Which he realised was only about fifteen minutes away. He rallied his friends around the small dining room on the bus to wait for the time to tick by. The anxiety in the air was palpable as the moment got closer and closer. Matty drummed his fingers on the table, staring out of the window at the passing road. First impressions were important to him with things like this - something that he had put so much effort and care into. As much as this was technically their third release off of Notes, it was still the first impression of this particular song that he was about to hear. This track also felt quite personal. To be fair, all of his tracks were - his lyrics were always directly referencing his life and desires. But this one dealt with a lot of his insecurities about, well, being insecure. Being sincere in life was hard, but doing it in song was much easier for him. Dealing with people hearing it in song? That was terrifying. What were people going to think? Were they going to respond positively? Were-

  The singer let out a deep sigh, trying to push the nerves to the back of his mind. “Are you guys ready for the reactions?” Matty asked as he tapped away at his phone. Y/N/N looked around the bus in mild confusion as she stepped into the kitchen, feeling like she was intruding on a band meeting or something.

“They’ll be good, I’m sure. We all agreed that it was a tune.” Ross said with a firm nod, Adam making a few noises of agreement from the other side of the table. The mood in the room was very tense, but trying to piece together what was happening from the limited information that they were offering was proving difficult.

George pretty quickly sensed her curiosity, “We’re releasing a new song tonight off of Notes.” He explained.

 “Which one?” She asked.

“It’s the song that you heard me working on the other week.” Matty answered, turning his phone to show her the post he was about to publish. Ah. That made sense.

“Oh, I quite liked that one.” She nodded, grabbing a bottle of water out of the fridge. “It’ll definitely be a positive response.”

  As much as he felt like he didn’t need the validation - that he had enough faith in the band’s skill by this point in time - he couldn’t deny that hearing her reassurance put him a step closer to being calm nonetheless. He watched out of the corner of his eye as she leant against the wall next to him, glancing over his shoulder as he shared the song to The 1975’s social media accounts. The comments started rolling in as soon as the post was up – every time they refreshed the page there were another set to go through. The band ended up using each of their own phones to keep up with the torrent of reactions, making mention of the notable ones as they saw them. Overall, it was a positive response for the majority. There were the odd comments about how different the track was, that it was so unlike their other songs and jarring as a result, but that was to be expected. Matty didn’t want to be releasing things this far into his career that sounded like what he’d done in the past. If you weren’t making progress and experimenting with new things, you were just stagnating. What was the point in that? And if they didn’t like this, then they definitely weren’t going to like the album. They were delighted to see a few texts roll in from friends and family remarking on their thoughts of the track. Those were the opinions that they valued most. The five of them crowded around the table continued chatting about the reviews that were still rolling in as they felt the bus roll to a stop. It was the middle of the night; they hadn’t expected to be stopping at this hour. Upon a quick glance out the window, Adam could see petrol bowsers. The bus driver shouted over his shoulder something about refuelling that made the pieces click into place.

  “Well, since we’re stopping, I’ll be back in a minute.” Matty said as he pulled a cigarette out of its packet and stood up. As much as he was normally fine with smoking on the bus, he liked to take the opportunity to do so outside when it was presented; even if just for the sake of those around him who didn’t smoke trapped in that space with him. Also, after how high strung he had been about dropping the new track, he really needed the relief. He was about halfway to the door when he heard someone speak up behind him.

“I might step out too.” Y/N/N added, pushing herself away from the wall.

“You don’t smoke.” He pointed out with a curious eyebrow raised.

“I’m allowed to get some fresh air.” She shot back as she breezed past him and outside of the bus.

“You could just open a window, you know.” He shrugged in response, but followed after her regardless; not wanting to decline good company.

  The night air had quite a bit of bite to it as the two of them stepped outside. She wrapped her arms around herself to deal with the sudden drop in temperature as she watched him lean against the side of the bus next to her and light up his cigarette. Taking a deep drag, he looked around the petrol station. It was always strange seeing what should be a busy establishment at any normal hour deserted at a time like this. The feeling reminded him of stepping into an alternate reality. Things seemed to exist differently in the early hours of the morning. Before he had the chance to make an offhand comment about this, he noticed that her gaze was fixed on the smoke he had just exhaled above them. He hadn’t realised before that she seemed to watch him every time he was smoking. Thinking back on it, despite that she herself didn’t smoke, she never made a point to leave the room when he did like most people had in his experience. Previously he’d been too focused on the fact that she constantly declined his offers to smoke weed with him to really notice. But he was suddenly very aware of the way that she watched his hands as he held the cigarette. She could be standing out here on her phone, or taking in their surroundings, watching the stars, something. But instead, she absentmindedly held her gaze on him as he released the smoke from his lungs. Interesting. He didn’t have the time to think of an eloquent way to bring that up before the driver was making his way back into the bus and ushering them inside to set off on the road again. That information would have to be tucked away for future reference.

  After an evening of being trapped in the bus with the two of them attached at the hip and swapping knowing looks all night, Adam was starting to lose his mind. It wasn’t unusual behaviour for them, but it only seemed to have gotten worse since she got back. Something had to happen either way in this situation. Whether they finally shacked up or she finally properly shut him down or god forbid Matty did turn around and fuck it all up, something had to be done. If he had to endure much more of this, he was going to go insane. He knew that ideally for the sake of his friends, he wanted things to end well, but the little voice in the back of his brain reminded him that Matty liked to go through… phases, with things. He would become obsessed with something and then drop it for the next greatest thing a few weeks later. To her credit, it had been a good few months now and he still seemed hell bent on her. But he didn’t really want to see Matty win this bet and then lose all interest once his goal was achieved. By his own confession, it was just a bet. Nothing more. And he seemed to be getting closer to that by the day. Adam had noticed the way that she watched him more than usual, how she seemed to turn him down less and less. It was inevitable at this point. George had mentioned that he’d had the odd chat with the both of them before, but Adam felt like he had to make things abundantly clear. He’d known Matty for long enough now to know that he had a bad habit of messing up good things. Despite that he was a very blunt person who was typically very clear with his intent, things often looked different through rose coloured glasses.

  So, when they’d reached the next venue, he’d suggested that himself and Y/N/N go for a walk to grab a coffee and have a chat before their day begun. Thankfully, neither her nor Matty seemed to bring up any issues with this when he offered it. Which saved him having from having to awkwardly explain his motivations in front of who he wanted to talk about. As she stepped out of the bus door onto the pavement, Adam took a quick glance behind her.

“Where’s Matt?” He asked with a frown, having expected her shadow to at least attempt to follow her out here.

“He’s been holed up in the back lounge trying to sort out some song for the last while.” She answered as they started walking.

Adam nodded in understanding. “Sounds like him to fixate on that…” He thought for a moment, before taking the easy segue that was offered to him. “That boy is typically fleetingly obsessive with things. He’ll turn up one day with a video camera and projector, ‘Look, I’m making a film.’ Yeah, all right, mate.” He scoffed with a laugh. “Two weeks later, he’s lost the charger and he’s forgotten about what he wanted to record.” He added, the both of them laughing at how typical that was of the mile a minute mind that was Matthew Healy. “That’s what makes him great when he focuses though, he is endlessly passionate.” He explained, trying to loop back around to his original point.

  “But that’s, uh… actually what I wanted to talk to you about.” Adam added sheepishly.

“Oh?”

“Because currently what he’s stuck on, is you.” He admitted.

“Oh.”

“He’s very hung up on this bet thing, and I just wanted to make sure that you’re not thinking that it’s…” He waved his hands dismissively as he tried to find the right words, “something else.” He was struggling to find a way to make this sound nice. But at the end of the day, this conversation wasn’t nice. He was throwing his friend under the bus and potentially hurting another.

“No, I know.” She said with a nod. “I know that it’s just a weird thing he has going with himself. He’s made it clear that he doesn’t know what he wants.” Her greater sense of reasoning knew that what she had said was true, but saying it out loud made it hit differently. Hearing the words come from her own mouth after spending the last five weeks on tour with Matty stung a little bit more than she’d care to admit. The issue was, she was already in too deep. The damage was done and a naïve part of her still held out hope that maybe he was going to change his mind. That wasn’t going to change unless her feelings for him magically dissipated. But him not being clear on what he wanted was the entire reason that she hadn’t admitted anything – she had to remember that.

  Adam sensed the sudden dampened atmosphere between them, trying his best to change the topic and lighten the mood now that he had said his piece. But she’d already dragged herself back to reality and been slapped in the face with the harsh reminder that she was probably going to get burned by the Matty sized hole she’d dug herself as soon as the tour ended. She couldn’t really change any of it now. The best she could do was just try and not let herself get too much more invested, and the stubborn part of her definitely didn’t want to let him win that dumb bet. So, it was business as usual. Keep lying about it and hope for the best. She opted to skip soundcheck that day, instead deciding to hang out on the bus and get some space to herself. The only issue was that it proved difficult to relax in such a small area when it was littered with everyone’s stuff. Her eventual boredom inspired her to want to clean up this mess, which wasn’t exactly an easy feat for how their gang left it sometimes. But it needed to be done and it kept her mind occupied.

  However, her attempt at some alone time ended almost as soon as it felt like it had begun. George had been the first to get back to the bus after soundcheck, only an hour after having left. He threw a quick ‘hello’ and ‘thanks for tidying up’ over his shoulder as he made his way through to the back lounge. Experience had taught her that his best friend probably wouldn’t be far behind, and she was right – because her absence hadn’t gone unnoticed by Matty. Once he’d realised that she wasn’t around, and his band nor Rome had any idea where she was, he went looking for her at the soonest opportunity. The bus door opened again, and she was unsurprised to hear steady footsteps approaching her as she stood at their small kitchen sink, attempting to scrub the grime build up off of a plate that had been sitting on the counter for a few days now. She knew full well who it was before he said anything, but she didn’t anticipate his next moves. His hand came to rest on the small of her back as his head all but rested on her shoulder. Matty watched in amusement as her movements tensed and she abruptly stopped washing the dishes that she was in the middle of.

  “I didn’t see you at soundcheck,” He said in a low voice, intentionally letting his breath fan across the side of her neck, “just thought I’d check in.” The gears in her mind simply stopped turning as her heartbeat hammered in her ears. It seemed like the gears might have just fallen straight out of place and were now tumbling steadily down to the pit of nerves that had formed in her stomach. The feeling of him being so close sent a shiver down her spine as her skin prickled under his breath. For how close his breath felt, his lips must’ve been within a few centimetres of the side of her neck. This was a targeted attack. She didn’t know how he knew, but it was abundantly clear that he knew exactly what he was doing. The self-satisfied smile was evident in his tone and gave away his intentions. This was a whole different game to what they had been playing thus far. Matty in the past had been all bark and no bite, which was easy enough to shrug off. It was one thing for him to look attractive, or to throw a flirty remark out there, but this? This would prove majorly difficult to not cave in to if he started hitting buttons as sensitive as this.

  Her knuckles were turning white from how hard she was gripping the counter in front of her to force herself not to react to him. She let out a jagged sigh when he finally moved back a bit and she could regain control of her thoughts. “How do you even know about that?” She asked, trying her best to keep her voice steady.

“Know about what?” He asked innocently.

She turned around to face him and he couldn’t help but grin at the bright red painting her cheeks. “You fucking know what.” She glared.

“If you’d just admit that you were into it-”

“Being into it doesn’t mean I’m into you.” She interrupted.

“The two do correlate.” He reasoned, still far too happy with himself that he worked this out.

“Correlation does not equal causation.” She shot back, falling back onto her university teachings to try and get him to shut up.

He leaned in slightly, holding her gaze. “Even in your case?” He asked lowly. She didn’t reply, instead choosing to brush past him and head towards the back lounge. Matty let out a quiet laugh of satisfaction, figuring that he should get himself off of the bus before something was thrown at him.

“Matthew!” George’s voice shouted from the back of the bus, catching his attention before he shut the door behind him. “Give the girl a fuckin’ break, would ya?”

  Y/N/N had stormed her way into the back lounge, and upon seeing how flustered she was George felt obligated to ask what was wrong. But he should’ve known that it would be Matty’s doing. It was naïve to think that he might let up on this stupid bet of his. George was pretty surprised that she hadn’t already left. She was clearly frustrated at how annoying he was being, though apparently not mad enough to actually leave. But he was also fairly sure he knew exactly why she hadn’t left yet. “You are into him, yeah?” The drummer eventually asked without looking away from the game that he was playing. She looked up at him from the other side of the couch, trying to form an answer but her brain still reeling slightly.

“No.” She lied instinctually. “Yes.” She corrected, before suddenly doubting that answer as well. “Maybe, kind of. How do you know?” She asked as she frowned across at him.

George just stared at her sarcastically. “You flew all the way out here just to hang out with him for a few weeks.” He pointed out.

“And the rest of you!” She said, trying to defend herself at least a bit. But she was pretty confident that he was right.

“I’m not daft,” He laughed loudly, “and neither’s he. Why won’t you tell him?” He asked, turning his attention back to the game.

“His ego is big enough as it is.” She answered. “And…” She was reminded of her conversation earlier with Adam, “if I tell him then I need to deal with the aftermath of that. He’s already said he doesn’t know what he wants, so why would I put myself out there with nothing in return?” She admitted quietly.

“Fair enough.” He nodded. There was a pause in the conversation before George decided to state the obvious, just in case it wasn’t already common knowledge: “He already knows that you are.”

“Then why is he pushing so hard to hear it?” She huffed in annoyance.

“He wants you to say it for the same reason you won’t tell him; ‘cause he’s an arrogant wanker.”

Last Chapter

Next Chapter

[expresstheobsession]

can you sit on my lap please? with bakugou

Wow! Okay, I wrote way more than anticipated, but I couldn’t help myself. What’s bad is I really wanted to write the morning after too and I stopped myself. :( I wasn’t sure how people would like this part, but if you would like to see a part two, let me know. I get too excited sometimes and I also changed the wording just a bit, sorry.

There is now a pt 2! You can check it out here. 

Word Count: 1300 | Warnings: Drinking, Cursing

“I vote we go out dancing!” Mina exclaimed, jumping around in her chair. 

Usually when it came to girls night out, the ladies would just have a movie night where they could eat popcorn and gossip about the up and coming new heroes. However, tonight was a special occasion. 

“Come on, Y/N, you’re of legal drinking age now. We have to go out and celebrate.” Jiro agreed, pushing your shoulder with hers. 

“I’ve drank before. Just because it’s legal now doesn’t mean it’s something new.” You argued, pushing the club tickets back to a disgruntled Mina. You really didn’t want to go get wasted at a club that you knew nothing about. It was a recently added attraction to your small area, but that didn’t stop it from doing so well. The club was packed almost every weekend since it opened, you weren’t even sure how Mina scored the VIP tickets. 

“I’ll stay sober, Y/N! I promise. We’ll watch out for you.” Mina grabbed your hands, squeezing them in anticipation. “Plus, we already told the guys to meet us there.” 

The last part was mumbled, but you heard loud and clear. “I’m sorry, what? Which guys did you invite, Mina?” 

Your palms were sweating now, you knew just which guy she would invite. It was bad enough they knew about your crush on Bakugou Katsuki, but did they really have to meddle in your love life?

“He promised to buy you your first drink..” Mina mumbled, a fake smile now adorning her face. 

“You didn’t.” You blurted. “You did not ask Katsuki to buy me a drink.” 

“Well..” Mina drawled, pulling herself back out of your reach. “It wasn’t much asking, but nevertheless he’s buying your first drink.” 

You could feel your face heat, unsure on whether it was the anger or humiliation creeping up on you. With an uttered curse, you quickly went to get ready. 

–

Two hours later, your crew of friends arrived at the club. It was packed, as expected, but with Mina’s tickets you were able to slip past the line. The inside was less crowded, but it exploded with multiple different colors and a vibe that made you want to join the couples on the dance floor. 

You were standing at the bar, waiting on the employee to notice you when the man you were dreading finally showed himself. His eyes trailed from your glossy shoes, to the dress you were snuggled up in, to your done hair and makeup. The instant his eyes landed on yours, you flushed. His eyes were tinted with a hint of appreciation before he broke the contact. 

“I’m buying your first damn drink, remember? So, don’t run off and buy your own like that.” He muttered, waving his hand at the bartender. The pretty girl came over instantly, taking the order Bakugou whispered into her ear. 

Once his attention was back on you, you stated, “I didn’t think you’d really show. This isn’t really your scene.” 

Bakugou just shrugged, taking a few of the chips in the basket between your hands. You forgot that you hadn’t eaten anything before coming and had been munching on them religiously while waiting for the bartender. It was bad to drink on an empty stomach, it turned even the strongest into a lightweight. 

“Here you go, cutie.” The bartender chirped, setting a glass down in front of Bakugou. He handed her a card to put on file before motioning for you to follow him away from the ogling lady. 

“How come you got service quick and she slipped right past me?” You mumbled, following him back to the VIP section your friends occupied. 

–

Mina lied. Your pink friend did not stay sober, not even close. The girl had more shots than you, but was still up and pushing for more. The two of you danced, sang, and even bought more shots on Bakugou’s dime. Oddly enough, the angry male didn’t seem bothered by it as he remained the only sober one of the crew.

 By the time midnight rolled around, your friends were all chatting and having a good time. They were all spaced out, taking up most of the seating as they were lounging in comfort. You glanced back and forth between the seat next to Jiro and the seat between Kaminari and Kirishima. You contemplated on sitting beside Mina, but the girl was so drunk you were worried about being in the puke zone. 

Before you had a chance to choose, a hand tugged on your wrist. “Sit on my lap.” 

You twirled around to find Bakugou patting his lap with his free hand. His crimson eyes were glazed with bad decisions, but you couldn’t help the excitement as it bubbled through your stomach. “Okay.” 

He tugged you down, wrapping one of his arms around your waist. His smirk was deep as he picked up his water to ding it against your alcoholic one. “Cheers, Y/N. Happy Birthday.” 

The intoxicated state you were in caused you to giggle, taking another sip of your Margarita. You laid your head down on Bakugou’s shoulder, “You should have a few drinks, Katsuki. Loosen up.” 

“Fuck, someone’s gotta stay sober. How else are you idiots going to make it home?” He gestured over to Kaminari as he attempted to steal Mina’s drink. The blonde failed at a sneak attack and the whole drink ended up toppling to the floor. “Tsk, dumbass.” 

You burst into another fit of giggles as you watched the scene before you. Bakugou was right, the group did need a babysitter. 

A few more minutes passed as you nursed your drink, debating on whether or not you should just burst out your feelings. Alcohol was liquid courage and you definitely had your fair share of it. Right now, your mind was telling you that honesty was the best policy. 

And you honestly loved Bakugou Katsuki.

“Hey, Suki?” You mumbled, tapping your finger against his cheek. He glanced down at you with a grunt, scrunching his eyebrows together in question. “Do you have a girlfriend?” 

He coughed out a surprised laugh, shaking his head vehemently. “No.” 

You gulped down the rest of your drink, setting the empty glass down beside you. “Welp, you’re single? I’m single. Coincidence? I think not.” You corrected yourself multiple times when trying to get the word coincidence out. Why the hell was that one so difficult? “Ask me out.” 

Bakugou scoffed, raising his eyebrows in shock. “Are you seriously trying to flirt while you’re drunk off your ass? I’m not asking you out tonight. You don’t even know what you’re saying.” While his arguments were valid, you still felt the need to make your feelings known. 

“Being drunk is like being injected with truth serum, right? So, I won’t lie to you and say I’m sober, I’m most definitely past my limit, but that doesn’t change my feelings for you, cutie pie.” You tapped the end of his nose, giggling when he scrunched it under your fingertip. 

“Don’t ever fucking call me that again.” He grunted, grabbing your wrist in his hand in a tight grip. “How about you see how you feel tomorrow?” 

You argumentatively shook your head. “How about you kiss me?” 

“How about you stop asking me to do things you may regret come morning?” His words were soft, pleading. You could see the irritation clear in his eyes, but there was something honest there too. Bakugou didn’t want it to seem as though he took advantage of your intoxication. 

“If I tell you I still like you sober, would you kiss me then?” You mumbled, inching your face a little closer to his. 

“I guess you won’t know unless you try.” He whispered, giving you one last smirk before backing away.

[cartoonfangirl1218]

Winner’s Curse Ch. 11

Yep this is a long one, and I’m sorry since it’s mainly an exposition chapter. But I was trying to set up familial ties and character dynamics and inner conflict so it kinda came out like this...Though I’ll admit it may not be the best, I still enjoy it and I hope you do too. Especially with the obscure references. I hope someone can guess whose children, the new characters that appear at the very end are. 

“Did you get any news last night?” Aziz sighed when he saw Jordan’s pinched frown.

It was early dawn and the small group was waking up to the smell of stale coffee, the garbage cans, and preparing to start the day.

They had been at it for four days now. Jordan, Jay in his goon disguise Calix magicked up for him, and Calix would leave to meet Uma at the castle and look around for any important documents and spy, always coming back around midnight or later when he and Lala were already fast asleep from full day of frustration and confusion.

Their days were like the blind leading the blind since Aziz didn’t know anything or anyone here, and Lala didn’t frequent the urban section of the Isle enough to know who to potential recruit or where anything was.

They did the best they could with mixed results. Asking questions like “Where is the Aladdin-hating club?” or “Do you want to overthrow tyranny?” was met with suspicion. To be fair, most questions Aziz asked were met with suspicion, even what he thought were innocent ones like the bathroom. He still hadn’t got an answer to that last one and he was a bit concerned.

They had tried following particularly bad-tempered and miserable folks to see if they could be goaded into joining a revolution, but it was clear that no matter how unhappy people were, they weren’t willing to fight against the Coven.

Yesterday, they broke through with one small lead. That lots of minor followers like the Forty Thieves and Hun soldiers, and Hook’s crew liked to go to Gaston’s bar, and tended to have loose lips about their bosses’ going-ons after three kegs of beer. Aziz was hoping in their alcohol-fueled state, they would divulge where to find big guns like Clayton or Morgana. Or at least rile them up to join their people’s revolt.

Jay stretched and yawned, and rubbed the dusty window pane that showed the backroom of Jafar’s Junk Shop. The alleyway behind it was their current sleeping place.

Aziz had wanted to ask why they didn’t just sleep inside since it had been confirmed that the Coven members rarely left Maleficent’s castle and that Jafar’s Junk Shop had been closed for weeks. There was no chance of them getting caught but he sensed that would be a sensitive topic.

There was a certain sort of sadness, nostalgia and perhaps even fear that crossed Jay’s face whenever he peered through the windows which was quite often. Usually when he thought no one was looking.

But Aziz was always observing people around him. He just found it fascinating to watch people’s quirks. Those quirks were always so telling of what people, and usually hinted at something going on beneath the surface of those perfect princess smiles or in this case, the suave confidence of a thief.

From what little he knew of Jay’s relationship with his father was that though Jafar had been neglectful, Jay had idolized the man and was still having a hard time breaking away from all the lessons he had been taught and encouraged over the years such as focusing on himself and viewing relationships as a give-and-take rather than a bond of mutual trust and equality.

Perhaps Jay was remembering his childhood sitting in that junk shop with useless shiny baubles, waiting for praise to be turned away to  get something better.

But Aziz’ thoughtful imaginings of the potential inner workings of Jay’s mind soured as he saw Jay take another discreet glance around the group to see if anyone was watching, looked directly past him, and then turned to look through the window again.

Maybe Jay did know Aziz was watching but didn’t care.

It wouldn’t be the first time someone looked right through Aziz. After all, he was apparently a forgettable despite the prestige behind his parentage and what he thought were moderately sizzling good looks.

Very rarely was he featured in Auradon news. Is name was always behind more well-known princes like Chad and Ben or even behind Doug since the media loved the story of the Evil Queen’s daughter falling in love with a dwarf.

It was the same in his own kingdom. He was the third child, third for the throne. Well, second since Zahrat formally relinquished any rights to becoming sultana to Cassima. And he doubted Cassima would ever tire of the job of being Sultana.

It was not like he wanted to be Sultan, but since he was not heir to the throne, people didn’t pay much attention. He wasn’t like the other princes who had royal training for ruling and their marriages and lives planned out.

He was on his own, and his pursuits of parkour, and people-watching and the occasional theft was not that interesting enough to make him stand out.

Unless it was Jay who did it. When Jay did parkour or thievery, people immediately noticed it was he. People easily recognized his swagger and smirk.

Whereas he was a pale imitation of his father, and inferior skill set to Jay to boot.

That’s why Jordan chose him to scour the streets of the Isle without a disguise. In her words, “Aziz you’re great at blending in with a crowd, no one will even notice you. They’ll just think you’re the son of one of the forty thieves or something.”

He blended with the crowd. He looked like any other prince. Like any other thief. Forgettable.

“Day 4 of Castle Reconnaissance has brought no new results. It sucks.” Jordan sighed dramatically, and turned around to pace by the dead-end of the alleyway, tapping at the earchip Carlos had given her. “I’m going to talk Ben and Evie,and see what we should do next if results don’t come quickly.”

“Fine, can you at least give me some baklava before I head out?” Aziz asked which Jordan casually did with a snap of her fingers and a warm piece of baklava appeared in his hands.

“Oh, you’re talking to Ben and Evie. What did the say about Uma?” Jay jumped up to join her and Aziz rolled his eyes.

Jay was still admentally against Jordan’s decision to team up with Uma, and had been hoping the two would agree with him that it was a bad decision and no matter what happened, they wouldn’t help her or Harry or the rest of her crew off the Isle.

However, Ben and Evie both were of the mind to give Uma, and her crew a chance since Ben felt like she had a valid point of how he had broken his pledge to invite other kids off the Isle. Evie believed that every teen on the Isle deserved a chance to grow their potential in Auradon, and that everyone included Uma.

Aziz did agree with Jay that it was probably a bad idea to trust Uma, and an even worse one to promise her a chance to go to Auradon, but he trusted Jordan more. She wasn’t naive, and she undoubtedly was inwardly preparing herself for ways to combat an inevitable betrayal. He also knew that Jordan was still insecure about her role as leader and was probably glad to latch on to Uma who was so put-together and already a respected captain.

“Finally, you’re ready.” Lala got up from where she was polishing her spear, dangerously close to the nose of a still-sleeping Calix.

“Well, you know how it is, I’m a pampered prince. I don’t wake at sunrise like you common hunters.” Aziz faked the haughty air that Chad often used which Lala answered with an eye-roll and mock curtsey.

Surprisingly, he and Lala had settled into a comfortable rapport despite only knowing each other for a week and forced to complete a fruitless, irritating task together.

They worked efficiently together, studying potential targets to follow and ask, and shared the bond of being bored and hangry as they walked through the dusty, surprisingly cold streets. They even shared some jokes over some exceptionally dumb sidekicks getting the boot or wonderings of how one could stoicly walk around with a six arrow embedded into their shoulder like a pincushion. She called him a pampered prince and he jokingly humored her by acting the part.                        

It probably helped that Lala didn’t think much of him to treat him with hostility.

On the second day of their recruiting mission together, she made a joke, and Aziz didn’t stop himself from saying, “The jungle princess is capable of joking?”

Lala shrugged and replied, “Well, you’re not much of a threat to me. I can relax. I mean you’re so quiet and not such a loud-mouth fake like Jay or anything really. You’re like…. hmm like a sidekick. You observe. You’re not going to outshine me or be able to go up against anyone.”

“He was so quiet.” “Not a threat.” Not like Jay who always managed to draw attention. He didn’t come up with witty lines on the spot like his father.

He was like a supporting character. Friendly, smart, capable of surprising people, but not very special.

He tried. Allah knew he tried. He maintained his grades. He was great at conversation with adults, he studied up on foreign affairs and he could charm diplomats with his mom like a pro. He did tourney and he practiced as much as he could, but he didn’t want to get so over muscled as Herkie as to not being able to perform his usual flips through Agrabah’s alleyways. He loved to go to the dances, and going on adventures in the dunes with some street rats during vacation. He did all the things that fellow royals did, his father did, all the heros did.

And the secret thing was that though he had fun, he always felt like an exhausted, nervous wreck after every single event.

He was never able to stop his mind from thinking during the conversation. Thinking of what he was going to say, if what he wanted to say was stupid or lame, what if the other person got offended, what did the person mean. He would think of a bunch of conversational scenarios, ones geared toward topics he knew, and witty remarks he could use, but those never went into effect because it felt awkward to try. He didn’t want to appear like he was trying too hard.

He was only able to relax and stop those racing thoughts with people he had known for years like his family or Ben and Lonnie. But with others..he always ended up listening more than talking.

He was perfectly fine listening to people. He didn’t feel the need to add useless, extraneous remarks just so he could talk. He would talk when he had something meaningful to say. That’s why he and Jordan got along so well because when she felt like it, she could talk for hours and Aziz could listen to it.

When he listened to others talk about a school scandal, he could hear all the different views and biases and piece together what happened, he could analyze their actions and motives, and why they were reacting in a certain way. It was like a psychological puzzle, and standing behind and listening allowed him to glean more information and more pieces to add in. 

For example, everyone saw that Audrey had dyed her hair to match her mother, and assumed it was ‘save face’ after Ben publicly dumped her for Mal, pretending she was over it. Aziz had seen Queen Leah berate Audrey, and surmised that the hair dye was less a reputational pressure but at the influence of familial pressure.  

Jordan said he was an amateur psychoanalyst which amused her because she liked listening to his theories about the motives of their classmates; Yet it annoyed her when the tables turned and he tried to encourage her to talk about her feelings like a normal person. She always shut it down with, “Not now, Sherlock Freud. Analyzing me is off-limits.”

Yet in this world, he was required to contribute to the conversation or else, people would forget he was there. Being the backgrounder he was he already heard other students discuss party invitations and he was left off the list since he was ‘boring” and ‘just there.” On the other hand, he was also invited to parties for the same reason. He was so forgettable that it didn’t matter to people if he was in the room or if he wasn’t.

Rationally, he knew he wasn’t boring. He had great stories to tell, and if anyone asked, he would take them for an adventure of a lifetime in the dunes of Agrabah, and teach them tips to tame wild horses, but that wasn’t how people saw him. People usually went by first impressions, and he wasn’t interesting enough to warrant a deeper look.

Though he tried to change and be outgoing as was expected for a prince- He asked his dad for advice under the guise of flirting tips, he memorized Genie’s standup routines, he forced himself to attend every one of the Tourney teams fundraising events, games, and afterparties- But he was always outshone by the other extroverted people in the room. He could act outgoing, but it was always harder for him. It was never going to be enough compared to those who were naturally outgoing. There was always going to be someone better than him.

“Aziz,” Lala snapped her fingers in front of him, “Stop zoning out, and let’s go to the bar.” “You know where the bar is? Yesterday, you said you knew where the docks were and led us to Facilier’s shop.” Aziz said. “It smelled like sea water.” Lala defended.

“It was bayou water. I’m pretty sure bayou water should smell different than sea water.” Aziz retorted.

“Whatever. I do know where Gaston’s bar is though. I have actually been there before, and you find it by following the crowd.” Lala nodded toward what was indeed a large crowd of shuffling, drunk-looking men and women shoving each other to enter the large front entrance that boasted moose antlers in front.  

Due to their healthier bodies and sober states, Aziz and Lala were easily able to edge through the sluggish crowd and enter the vast bar area with its permanently wet and sticky floor, numerous wooden tables and roaring French-styled fireplace.

Lala didn’t slow down, tugging Aziz’ arm to go to the backroom where another door led them to a junkyard with more tables, and a hastily constructed wrestling ring with a cage.

They sat down at the nearest table, and began their wait, disinterestedly watching the current match between a Hun and the infamous Stanley that was on Gaston’s team. But their primary focus was on the patrons surrounding them, unfortunately none looked like Agrabahian or like a sea monster in cahoots with Morgana. He did spot one young woman who looked like a more sinister version of Cruella if her black and white hair and maniac smirk was anything to go by.

A few minutes went by when their silent observation was interrupted by a voluptuous yet haggard blonde barmaid with a tray of ribs that were half boiled, and what looked like mold surrounding the edges, “You’re Lala, right? Dad sent this. Good. Enjoy. Bye.”

“Oh, thank you.” Lala flusteredly broke off a bone marrow and handed it to him.

“Your dad’s here?” Aziz looked around trying to spot another Atlantean in the crowd just as everyone jumped up to cheer when the Hun body-slammed Stanley against the cage and began beating him with his own hands. “Wait..you know your dad? I thought most Vks--”

“Most Vks don’t know both their parents, it’s true. But my dad stayed around a little longer. Stop looking around like that, you look like a frantic meerkat. He’s not out here. He must have seen me when we were inside or something. I’m kinda easy to spot with the white hair and all.” Lala said, chewing a bit too nonchalantly on a bone.

“I guess he must have liked you enough for him to send-” Aziz began to say but Lala held up a hand.

“Now don’t get your little happy Auradon beliefs up. He doesn’t like me. I remind him too much of my mom. The women who tried to strangle him. If he comes out to greet us which I sincerely doubt he would ever, you’ll see the marks around his neck. He’ll give you an action-packed story of how he fought off Turblat with only his bare hands, but it wasn’t the gorilla. It was mom.”

“Oh okay,” Aziz deflated a bit. He wasn’t as naive as Lala, and Jay and Uma seemed to think he was. He couldn’t imagine villains like Jafar or the Evil Queen would find it in their selfish hearts to love their children, he was just surprised that Lala seemed to have some sort of relationship with her other parent, and what he thought was a good one with free food. “I can imagine that your dad doesn’t love you as I know most parents love their children. But he hates you specifically because you remind him of Queen La? It’s not like you’re the same.” Aziz said before sheepishly adding, “And would I know who he is? Is he a villain? Or is he just a sidekick?” 

“Ha! My mom sleeping with a sidekick? That’ll be the day. My dad’s Muviro. He came from the same tribe as her. Though they didn’t know each other then, and got exiled at different times. And I am like my mom. I look like her. I’m jealous like her.” Lala fiddled with her food.

“You’re not..” Aziz was about to protest, but he trailed off. The Core 4 had proven that they weren’t like their parents, but that didn’t mean they didn’t share the same flaws as their parents, and weren’t capable of acting like them in some moment of anger or weakness. He remembered that Lala wasn’t helping them out of a sense of moral righteousness, she was getting a wish out of this, a wish to have her own kingdom. She wasn’t one of the good guys. 

“What do you mean?” Aziz asked, automatically getting riveted with what he imagined should be an intriguing backstory.

Lala hesitated and Aziz could imagine cat-like hackles rising as she trained her slitted cat eyes at him. She looked like she was about to snap with some comment to put him in his place, but then her eyes softened as she considered his face.

She must have remembered how she didn’t consider him a threat and began to speak.

“Well my mom, and dad..um I guess. I don’t know how to say this. I know they weren’t in love. There is no such thing here. But they stayed together for a while. They had had a child before me, and my dad stayed around till I was 7. My mom usually cheated on my dad, but then she found out he dared to cheat on her too. That was bad, but what really made her snap was that he said he could do better than her. You do not tell my mom there is someone better than her. She still hates Tarzan for choosing Jane, and she considers him to be her perfect mate. And my dad, someone who is just a warrior, not a prince or anything saying he could do better than the Queen of Opar…” Lala trailed off with a pregnant pause.

“Yeah, that is a bad move.” Aziz inhaled with empathetic pain as he imagined the vicious scene.

“After that he left, and…He actually didn’t hate me then. He invited me over here to this “civilized” area away from the “nutcase.” That’s what he calls her.

“But...my mom kept saying that he was choosing the slut over us, and I thought about how he could have children with this woman. Would he think those kids were better than me like that woman was better than my mom? And that wasn’t right. I’m his firstborn daughter. I’m the one he taught how to hunt. I’m the one who knows how to specially hunt eagle feathers.

I got jealous, I stalked him and his girl around and I found out she was a prostitute, but I thought she was cheating on him. I told him and said it showed that even she thought she was better than him. He couldn’t do better than mom and I. He didn’t take that well. He said I was just like my mom. Was I planning to murder ‘the other women’ so I could have his attention too even though I thought I was better than him?” So he stopped inviting me, and..yeah.”

“But what about now? If he hates you,why is he giving you food?” Aziz asked, surprised to find that he had almost finished the ribs, mold and all.

“He said one angry La mad at him is enough, he didn’t want to deal with two. So we sometimes come here and chat. We hunt. Not much now since puberty hit, and I got my white hair and all. It’s too difficult to look at me and not see her.” Lala shrugged again, looking down at the table, clearly trying to pretend the whole matter was cool with her and she didn’t care.

Aziz didn’t know what to say. He wanted to pull her into a hug and comfort her but he knew that wasn’t the way here. She’d probably scratch his eyes out first before admitting emotion.

But still.. It was slightly infuriating to think about. Lala had only been 7 years old. It was natural, she didn’t want to be replaced by some new family. Even if her stalking was unwarranted, the intention was kind of good, what with her concern that her dad was dating another woman who thought she was better than him. Albeit in a badly worded argument.

“So what about this brother you mentioned? What did he think of all this?” Aziz tried to smoothly turn the subject to a less intense topic.

“Oh umm nothing. He died before I was born.” Lala answered.

Aziz cringed, “Sorry. I mean not sorry. I guess you didn’t miss much since you never knew him. It’s just that I have a lot of siblings so when there’s family drama, we usually like to discuss it. Or sometimes fight about it if we disagree,” He saw Lala’s confused face, “Ugh, I’ll stop talking. I’ll stop. Right now.”

“I had a lot of siblings too.” Lala said, “Two sisters, three half sisters, and three half brothers. Plus Musala. That was the one I didn’t know.” Aziz whistled, inwardly contrasting her past tense with his present, “Wow nine’s a lot. I have two older sisters, Zahrat and Cassima, well three if you count Jordan, which we all do. One younger bro, Amal and another sister, Noor. Plus a nephew. That’s Zahrat’s son.”  

Lala had a pinched smile as she listened to him talk, not because she seemed disgusted but more like she was trying to suppress it. Not that she was succeeding too well, “What do you do together?”

“Uh lots of stuff. Mainly formal banquets because we’re royalty and all, but sand dune surfing, parkour. Though that’s just Cassima and I, but we’re getting the little ones into it. Horseback racing. That’s a big one. We have running tally between all of us, and I’m winning but Zahrat is going to beat me if I don’t win another one before her.” Aziz said, surprised by how enthusiastic he sounded as he talked about them, but then he realized how little he got to talk about his home life. In Auradon, everyone was so concerned with school and fashion and latest Vk gossip/rumors no one cares to ask about home life. They just figure they know all they need to know about Agrabah and his family.

“My siblings and I used to have a tally on our hunts too. We had such fun trying to get many prey as we could in one hour. One time I even convinced Ewuare that a speckled baboon was an actual creature, and he was so determined to be the first to..” She paused, caught in the memory before dismissing it, “I know what you’re thinking. But I didn’t actually care about them. Why should I? They succumbed to the jungle, they were weak.”  

Aziz didn’t buy it. If he had his eyes closed he was sure he would have believed her lie. Her matter of factness betrayed no wistful emotion. In fact, she sounded downright annoyed at the fact that weak people existed.

But her look didn’t match her voice. Despite not looking at him, where she looked was telling. She seemed to be staring out to the wrestling ring where the Hun was still beating up Stanley, with a brick this time, but her gaze was unfocused, and her lips were pursed thoughtfully. He wondered when her siblings died-if she had memories of hunting side by side in the jungle, secure in the knowledge that she had one person to trust on this Isle of liars, murderers and thugs. 

Or alternatively, if one of the siblings died just a few months old and she secretly wondered about it growing up. “When did they die?” Aziz ventured to ask, whispering with what he hoped was the appropriate amount of reverence.

Lala visibly tensed and then relaxed, and looked at him with a calm poker face.”When I was three, no two, I think, my mom gave birth to twins. One didn’t get a name because she died within a few hours. The other was Taytu Betuvira, she was my dad’s favorite because mom allowed him name her after himself.” The pinched smile returned but Lala bit it back, “I don’t remember much of her. I think, I thought she was cute. Like a baby cub. But she died a year later from a snake bite.”

“So when I was around four, my mom tried again with Rourke for a stronger child. You know, since dad’s kept dying off. Rourke didn’t stick around. Actually, I don’t think he even knows he had a son. Anyway, that son was Ewuare. He was the best.” Lala shook her head with a fond smile, clearly forgetting her “I didn’t care about them, they're weak” statement.

“But my mom wanted more than one child, so she slept with Clayton too. She got Leopold out of him. Clayton visited the jungle more often than Rourke but only when dad wasn’t around. His visits were more for hunting than for Leopold. Leopold was my mom’s son rather than Clayton’s. Clay was Clayton’s son.

It was nice for a while. Ewuare, Leopold, Clay and I. Clayton even let us use his gun sometimes so we could get used to a different weapon. But then Leopold got mauled by Sabor three years ago. He was only 8.” Lala reflexively clenched her fist and unclenched as she talked, her face growing stony with focused anger when she got to the part about Sabor.

“By then my dad was gone, Mom cheated on Clayton with Gaston and got a girl and boy, Amina and Shaka. They were the biggest babies by far. 8 pounds each. I was around 7 I think, and by then, I was expected to pick up the slack in the hunting department. It was awful. Ewuare was a natural hunter but Leopold kept dragging us down by wandering off. I mean I guess I shouldn’t expect more from a 2 year old, but by the time I was 2, I was a very obedient child. I don’t get why she was so relaxed when training him. I-“

“What happened to Amina and Shaka?” Aziz asked, seeing Lala was getting sidetracked by her mother apparently treating her differently from the twins.

“Oh, yes. They grew up, lasted a year longer than Leopold. But Amina ended up in quicksand, and Shaka tried to help her….” Lala paused again, thinking and composing herself to continue.

“Moving on. By the time I was 10, my mom decided she got the strong, powerful child she desired with Mozonroth. Her name was Sarraounia and she was mom’s favorite because she was starting to show natural magical powers once the barrier came down. She could make little illusions out of smoke. Her favorite was to pretend she was a panther. She was obsessed with panthers.”

“Oh no.” Aziz muttered to himself, half-listening to Lala’s comments about panthers and Sarraounia.

Lala cocked her head to the side like a cat which Aziz had to muse, so many things Lala did reminded him of a cat.

How quick her moods could change from curious look to ready to hiss and attack. Even her movements were catlike, full of grace and fluidity whether she walked on her two feet or as she climbed trees on all fours. The way she arched her back and stretched in  the morning, and whenever she smirked, it didn’t look human. It looked more like a crafty feline smile.

“What no?” Lala asked.

“Mozonroth’s my uncle.” Little known fact around Auradon was that Mozonroth was Aladdin’s half brother. Aladdin’s very evil sorcerer half brother that ruled over the Black Sands and wanted to rule over Agrabah too.

Aziz should have guessed that Mozonroth had a child. If a man like Lefou could have a child, surely Mozonroth was capable of it. Especially with the alleged hotness that he had heard so much about from Aunt Eden.

“Well, I’m pretty sure he has another child somewhere. I don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl though. It’s not Sarraounia. She died this year from fever.” Lala said taking a few deep inhales and exhales.

“My mom didn’t sleep with only one magical Agrabahian man though. She accidentally had a one night stand with Jafar.” Lala paused, clearly waiting for his reaction.

Aziz’s eyebrows shot up to hide behind his bangs, “So that’s how you know Jay.”

“Not that well. I was 13 and Jay was like 15 and even then he was arrogant and annoying. He kept trying to steal my teeth momentos, and pretended he could fight animals. He still keeps insisting that he is just as good a hunter as I am.” Lala huffed with annoyance at the memory.

“Jafar just came over to the cave to make sure my mom wouldn’t give him parental responsibilities of anything. Not that it mattered. My mom got sick with the yellow fever that was going around here, and almost died. I almost died trying to take care of her and getting the yellow fever. The baby came out dead so that was that.”

“Did Jay get to see it?” Aziz asked, starting to wonder if Jay’s pushed friendliness towards Lala was some sort of attempted almost sibling camaraderie.

“It was a she, and no. Jafar didn’t want to have anything to do with her.”

Aziz realized that she mentioned all her siblings’ deaths, but one. It was obvious she skipped over it, and he knew it must have been something terrible if she was glossing over it completely, but his curiosity urged him to know.

He stopped, opened his mouth and then closed it, and opened before finally asking, “What happened to Ewuare?”

Lala looked away, blinking rapidly, “He died four months ago. My jealousy struck again.”

Aziz waited as Lala pulled herself together after that cryptic comment.

“Like I said Ewuare was the best. He was smart, and fast, and such a good hunter. Such a good hunter. He always knew the right time to strike, and he was determined. My mom sometimes...she’d say Ewuare was better than I am in not getting scratched or I was better than him in hand to hand combat. She was trying to make us compete so we’d work harder. And Ewuare didn’t care who was better at what. But I-I got jealous.”

“Just that week, we got ambushed by coyotes and Ewaure got an awful bite on his shoulder, and I was happy. I knew it was going to leave a huge scar and Mom couldn’t hold my scars over me. So when we managed to fight them off, I continued hunting and let him Ewuare walk home alone. I let him because- “He was the magnificent Ewaure,”- he could heal himself.” Lala turned to face the wrestling ring as her nails dug into the splintered wooden table surface as if she was holding onto a liferaft to keep from drowning in emotion.

“..I-I was wrong. He didn’t get a scar. The coyote bit some vital veins and.. and he bled out as he walked….”

Without thinking, Aziz asked “How did you feel?” and Lala slowly  turned to give him a stony stare, her jaw clenched tightly and her eyes filled with unbidden tears.

The tiny voice in his head that sometimes sounded like Jordan berated him, “Not now, Sherlock Freud. Analyzing is off-limits.”

“I mean..um” Aziz stammered, and started talking about the first thing that came to his head, “Uh I get having a little sibling who's obsessed with big dangerous cats. Amal and Noor love our tiger, Rajah. They have these little posters and stuffed tigers all over their rooms. Noor pretended she was a tiger for a whole year and would only communicate in purrs and growls.”

Lala looked down at the table, and looked up, breathing shallowly in a clear attempt to keep grief at bay. At least she looked grateful for the topic change more than annoyed since she eagerly grasped at the opportunity to move on from Ewuare’s death. 

“Sarrounia was just as obsessed with panthers which made it pretty easy to train her. I would tell her all panthers had to know how to climb a tree properly so she would stop ignoring me and listen. And she was very eager to mimic cat sounds.” Lala followed it by a very realistic imitation of a leopard’s rasping yowl that caused Aziz to jolt back and nearby patrons stopped their cheering to stare at her.

Aziz laughed nervously from the sudden surprise, “Can you speak leopard?”

“No. I just sound like one. It scares other animals, and people.” Lala nodded satisfied with herself, and made a point to growl at a hefty looking pirate who was still staring curiously at her. “You’ll have to teach me that sometime. I tried to copy Rajah’s growling but I suck at it. I’m much better at speaking monkey.” Aziz said.

“You speak monkey? You’re a prince that speaks monkey?” Lala looked at him in disbelief, her lips quirking up in her usual feline grin as she tried to wrap her mind around the idea.  

“Yes. Fluently.” Aziz smiled smugly when Lala began to laugh at his talent, continuing to talk with some mock-indignation, “Though some of my classmates did think I was weird when I started to talk to some monkeys that broke out of the Auradon Zoo which is such a double standard. How come princesses can sing to the birds and the racoons without judgement but when I talk to monkeys in their own language..”

Aziz trailed off seeing that Lala was caught up in the hilarity of the fact he spoke fluent Monkey to listen to him. So he allowed himself the chance to observe her without fear of a berating glare. He was surprised to hear how it breathy her laugh was, ending with a snort after each gasp.

As he looked at her another figure caught his eye and made his heart jump into his throat.

He had seen that face many times in Uncle Genie’s magic “flashback shows.” Though the face was a little dirtier and a little bit bigger as if the man had been sampling one too many baklavas these days. 

There was no doubt that it was Abis Mal in the flesh. A helpful clue was the presence of a skeletal thin man that Aziz instinctively knew was Abis’ lazy and constantly annoyed assistant Haroud Hazi Bin.

“There’s Abis Ma!” Aziz hissed, jumping out of his chair to follow the bald bandit and his servant that were heading towards the alleyways.

As the pair left, two slender shadowy figures peeled away from western side of Gaston’s backyard wrestling ring. The dark side where no moonlight illuminated the area giving all manner of people the privacy to drink, to fuck and do what have they.

The two figures sat down where Aziz and Lala had been, licking their dark paws, their eyes glinting with fiendish delight.

“What would we have here, brother? A chance for a family reunion..” The female purred, her sharp teeth glinted brightly in contrast to her night black fur.

“Yes. Mozonroth and Marcellus should have a chance to kill the child of that infuriating Aladdin.” The male smirked, his shendyt fluttering in the night air caught the attention of a pirate’s kid who tried to grab it only to be scratched by the wearer.

“And not only the child of Aladdin, but...any other do gooder who helped him get here. It’s clear he didn’t come on his own.” The girl added, sharpening the claws of her right hand with her left.

The male laughed heartily, “Imagine how they’re going to lacerate him. This is going to be delightful to watch.”

Note on names: Like Ranavalalona, all the names are taken or slightly modified from real life African rulers like Taytu Betul of the Ethiopian Empire, Musa of the Mali Empire, Amina queen of the Zazzau city state, Shaka of the Zulu Kingdom, Ewuare of the Benin empire, and Sarraounia, the sorceress queen of Azna who was heavily associated with panthers. The only exception is Leopold named after King Leopold of Belgium who was a vicious colonizer of Congo and whose bloody hand would probably been respected by villains. 

[back-and-totheleft]

After the Fall

In Oliver Stone’s new film, World Trade Center, a rescue worker stands atop a pile of steaming rubble, planning his descent into the inferno below. “I need a medic up here,” he yells. “Anybody a medic?”

“I used to be a medic,” comes a voice from the darkness.

A tiny figure scrambles up the base of the hill like a large bug. As he passes into the light, we see that it’s Frank Whaley, an actor who got his start with appearances in Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July, The Doors and JFK.

“My license lapsed,” the figure says. “I had a few bad years. But I’m good.”

Such is the legacy of Stone — a towering figure in modern film who always seems to be wrangling his own personal demons — that it is almost impossible not to read a scene like that autobiographically. A three-time Oscar winner as both writer (Midnight Express) and director (Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July), Stone has spent much of the past dozen years surrounded by controversy or chaos: His satirical tabloid blitzkrieg Natural Born Killers caused novelist John Grisham to accuse him of engendering real-life murders. Nixon, his oddly sympathetic portrait of the ex-president, eluded liberals and conservatives alike. The jumpy, kinetic editing style he employed in the day-for-noir U Turn and the pro-football pageant Any Given Sunday inspired longtime Stone critic Elvis Mitchell to label the latter “the world’s first ADD epic.”

Then the first of two HBO documentaries (Comandante) on Fidel Castro was shelved for being too sympathetic, while a subsequent portrait of Yasser Arafat (Persona Non Grata) saw Stone’s crew fleeing Ramallah four hours before the Israeli army attacked the Palestinian leader’s compound. (A third film, expected to profile either Kim Jong-Il or Saddam Hussein, was canceled.) He has been arrested twice — in 1999 and 2005 — for DUI and possession of marijuana, respectively. During an appearance at HBO’s “Making Movies That Matter” panel at Lincoln Center in October 2001, he allegedly made inflammatory remarks regarding the September 11 attacks, earning him scorn and ridicule in The New Yorker and elsewhere. Most painfully, when Stone, in 2004, finally realized his 20-year obsession to make Alexander, a sweeping history of Alexander the Great filmed on three continents, the film failed to find a domestic audience.

Now comes World Trade Center, a delicate, contained and extremely powerful evocation of our 2001 national trauma, starring Nicolas Cage and Michael Peña as John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno, New York City Port Authority cops who were miraculously excavated from beneath the glowing rubble of Building No. 7. In an odd way, it brings Stone’s career full circle: His first student film, Last Year in Viet Nam, made at NYU in 1970 (for film professor Martin Scorsese), opens with a panorama of southern Manhattan and what would have been the Twin Towers, except that they weren’t completed until January 1972. But in another respect, World Trade Center may be Stone’s most subversive film yet — a rousing, populist, patriotic adventure story that kicks the legs out from under the right-wing criticism marshaled against him. It could prove the ultimate irony that the bête noire of American conservatives — the man who profiled right-wing death squads in Salvador, My Lai–like atrocities in Platoon, hostile takeovers in Wall Street, the anti-war movement in Born on the Fourth of July and, most notably, the fecund proliferation of Kennedy-assassination conspiracy theories in JFK — may find his most enthusiastic audience among the very partisans who have heretofore decried his lifetime of work. As no less a cultural observer than Mel Gibson said of Stone in the 1997 thriller Conspiracy Theory, “He’s a disinformation junkie for them. The fact that he’s still alive says it all. He probably should be dead, but he’s not.”

In person, Stone has an infectious laugh, seems genuinely engaged and takes the full measure of my questions before answering, at which point his ideas often come so fast they seem to be skipping across the surface of the conversation. He’s also the most fun kind of intellectual, in that he perpetually appears to be trying to figure himself out. Briefly a classmate of George W. Bush’s at Yale, he seems — at least on the evidence of our wide-ranging, three-hour discussion — to have absorbed a good deal more of its freshman syllabus. We spoke at his West L.A. editing suite, where he is currently preparing a three-hour, 45-minute DVD-only “road show” version of Alexander, complete with intermission.

L.A. WEEKLY: Where were you on the morning of September 11, 2001?

OLIVER STONE: L.A. Asleep. My wife put the TV on.

And what did you think was happening?

It was sensational. It was exciting. It was horrifying. It reminded me in its barbarity and ferocity of the French Revolution — the tumbrels, heads falling. And I had feelings of anger in me, and vengeance. I had a fight with my son, actually, because he was much more objective about it: “How do you know? Don’t assume anything. You’re acting like the mob.” But there were other feelings as well. You know, I realize I’m an older person; I’ve seen Vietnam and a lot of death and shit. Oklahoma City was horrible. JFK’s assassination. Watergate. The 2000 election. We’ve been through our times of shit in this country, so this was another version.

World Trade Centeris very powerful — emotionally powerful. I had a very visceral reaction to it.I think it’s obviously the film, but it’s also more than the film — it’s the fact that the subject matter is so loaded. If you make a film about fire jumpers, and a fire jumper comes to see it, he’ll say, “Well, you got this part right, you got this part wrong.’?” With this film, we’re all fire jumpers. It’s also very different from a lot of your other films — it’s gentle and contained and quiet. I’m wondering if you had to devise a different approach because the subject matter was so delicate.

I just want to say first that the way I look at myself — it’s not necessarily in the result — but with every film, I really have made an effort to make each one an island unto itself in this little sea that we go around in our ships. And every island has been a destination, a stop for a period of time. I’ve tried to take a different style for every film, because it’s the story that comes first, and the subject dictates the style. Even with something like Natural Born Killers, which seems very stylistic and eccentric, it’s still the content that I think is valid and important. With this film, certain things presented themselves: Obviously, the sensitivities of everyone involved, but ultimately that’s the sky around the project. With JFK, for instance, there were his children to think of, Jackie was still alive, Teddy Kennedy. Blowing his head off in Dealey Plaza didn’t go down well with them either. But there was a bigger story to tell.

Here we were limited by movement, so we worked out a style by which, methodically, the film would go in and out of light: Light would fight with the dark, or rather, light would try to make it up to the dark. Claustrophobia is an issue with a film like this. I did Talk Radio, so I know that feeling of being on one set the whole time. Also, Born on the Fourth of July: That was a very contained movie, in a way, because we had a young man in a wheelchair in the second half, where there’s very little movement. When I read this script, I said, “How do we make this movie watchable? How do we make the tension manageable for a mainstream audience?”

It may surprise a lot of people that you’re not using a lot of shock cuts, moving around inside the frame — what you’ve termed your “cubist” style.

Well, where can you move in a hole? A hole is limited. Finding the right point of view in the hole is crucial.

You once said about Platoon?, “I felt like if I didn’t do it now, I’m going to forget.” We’re five years out from 9/11 now, and there is much public hand-wringing about whether it’s too soon yet to deal with this subject matter.

I think it’s a bogus question. The consequences of that day are far worse today. More people have died since then because of the war on terror. There’s more war, there’s more fear, and there is constitutional breakdown left and right. Have the good sense to go to the psychiatrist quickly. If you’ve been raped, talk to somebody about what that day itself was like before you build up all this armor.

You pursued this film, correct?

Yes. Petitioned. My agent, Bryan Lourd, a man of taste, said to me, “Look, I read this script two weeks ago — it stays with me, it’s emotional. I don’t know if it will make a dime, I don’t know if I can get it financed, but just read it.” So I read it, and I said, “My God, I never thought of this — to do 2001 this way.” I knew [World Trade Center producers] Michael Shamberg and Stacy Sher. But no one would make it; Universal dropped it at the [proposed] budget. I was doing other things, I wasn’t stopping my life. But then it came back around. Paramount was just coming into being [under new management]. We were very lucky, because that new studio energy was coming in, and they wanted to make it so badly that it happened right away.

And did you talk with the producers about politics — if there would be a political viewpoint that informed the story?

There was no room for it, because John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno were not interested in politics, per se. They don’t talk about politics like you and I do. Their lives are not determined by it; they live according to what is given them. So it never entered into the equation. I loved the script [by Andrea Berloff] as it was. I loved the inspiration of the story. So I vowed to stay inside those parameters.

New York is probably the most liberal city in America, and yet the 9/11 attack has been so politicized, its imagery considered so proprietary, that right-wing skepticism has been mounting steadily against you since this project was announced. A story in The New York Times said the film is being strategically marketed to right-wing opinion leaders using the PR firm that advised the Swift Boat Veterans group. It even quoted the conservative National Review Web site as saying, “God Bless Oliver Stone.”

I knew [the studio] was doing grassroots marketing to everybody — Hispanics, cops, firemen, teachers, church groups. I didn’t know that they had hired a specific firm; I found out that day. I’m pleased they like it, because it goes beyond politics.

Could you foresee a left-wing backlash against the film?

If people on the right are responding with their hearts, I’m all for it. But if they’re making it into a political statement, it’s wrong. Those on the left might say, “Oh, this is a simplified context, and these are simplistic working-class values. You’re not showing a wider political context.” Or secondly, that we’re sentimentalizing the event — which would be unfair, because I think there’s a lot of grit there. But this is a populist film. We’ve said that from the beginning. In our hearts, it was a Frank Capra type of movie. And he didn’t necessarily get great notices.

In an odd way, I was reminded of Preston Sturges Hail the Conquering Hero — a wartime comedy that pokes fun at the notion of patriotism and, by extension, patriotic movies but which, by the end, almost subversively, fills you with this patriotic fervor. I’m wondering if you see this as your “Nixon in China” moment: Only the director of Nixon and JFK could get away with a film where the most heroic character is an ex-Marine who consults with his pastor before putting himself in harm’s way.

That character, Dave Karnes, is an unlikely hero. He goes to church — that’s a documented thing; he checks with his pastor in a born-again church before he goes down to Manhattan. He evaded the authorities. Get it done; that’s a Marine thing. I think you can argue that the Marine is an ambivalent character, because at the end of the movie, this sense of vengeance is what fuels the wrong war in Iraq.

But for him it’s the right war.

For him it’s the right war. That’s correct. I think if you really look at JFK or at Nixon, which are the two political films I did uncensored in my career — which is amazing unto itself — JFK is neither right nor left, and was attacked equally by the left, who did not like the Kennedy figure of 1963. It was done in the centrist tradition of American dissent: It questioned government and the authority of government. So I was taken aback that the right made such a big issue out of it. I suppose, because they were in office [when the film came out]. But they had never done that historically. They would have been on the side of the investigation; [Barry] Goldwater may well have been. JFK was not a bunch of fantasies strung together. It involved an enormous amount of research — as much as World Trade Center, if not more.

You could make the same argument about Nixon. You took the dominant political figure in our lifetime and gave him the Shakespearean treatment his life cried out for.

It was a psychological point of view. The right wing thought it was going to be a hatchet job; instead, it made him a human being. Unfortunately, in my career, I have spoken out between films, and that’s what’s gotten confused with the films themselves. I think the focus has been lost. Somewhere along the line, I guess, I said, “Look: I’m a filmmaker, but I’m also John Q. Citizen, and things piss me off. I have a right to say, if people ask me and they’re interested, what I fucking think.” And that’s the line I’ve always gotten in trouble with. It’s always between the films, if you look at the statements I’ve made. There’s nothing in the films themselves, as far as I know, that’s really offensive politically.

How much of the criticism against you do you think is organized for partisan political gain?

I’ve always wondered that — especially in the ’90s, after the JFK situation. You have to wonder: Will it come out one day in a government file? You hear about those programs from the ’50s and the ’60s. I was so grateful that Michael Moore came along. He helped me.

He seems to enjoy it. Maybe it’s the counterpart to how the left treats Charlton Heston.

Charlton Heston once said in an interview, “People like Oliver Stone would never hire me in the new Hollywood.” And I went out of my way on Any Given Sunday to hire him. I loved him. I said, “Forget politics, I love your character.” Political reputation pigeonholes you, and in a society that’s very busy, it’s an easy way to get rid of having to think too much about people and what they’re saying. I’m a dramatist; I’m a humanist. I protest.

There’s one line in World Trade Center — I think we hear it on a TV monitor in an office at the Port Authority — where the announcer says, “. . . the shock of the explosion that was coincidental with the two towers coming down,” and then you move on to something else. Was the suggestion that an unexplained explosion might have accompanied the towers’ demise the one seed of doubt you intentionally planted in an otherwise apolitical movie?

Well, I think that all reality is questionable, as you know. Frankly, I’m not an expert on that at all. And I haven’t pursued it, because I think the consequences of where we are now are far worse. But even if there was a conspiracy, it wouldn’t change where we are now. We’re into another place, where there’s more war, more terror, more bankruptcy, more debt, above all more constitutional breakdown and more fear than ever before. That’s very serious. And we’re on the edge of possibly something bigger and very dangerous. Richard Clarke’s book [Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror], at least, is about a true conspiracy that we know existed, of a small group who took over the government and did it their way — manipulated, created the war. It’s 30 or 40 people, right?

Sy Hersh says it’s 11 guys.

It was a conspiracy, and it was basically at the top. It’s Cheney and Rumsfeld influencing Bush. Cheney and Rumsfeld go back to the Ford administration, and when they got their way, they kicked butt. That’s a great story. But that’s not even all of it. When you’ve got a guy like Representative Pete Hoekstra from Michigan, who was a friend of the Bush administration — who had approved of the Patriot Act, the eavesdropping, the taxes, the bank records, all of it — saying in the press that there’s something worse that he’s pissed off about, because they hadn’t consulted him. Something worse? I mean, all the cards are not on the table, right? This is a big story. And we’re living it. How can you write about it? We’re fucking rocking in the boat. It’s like trying to write a great war novel when you might be going into World War II.

Were you at Yale the same time Bush was?

I was in the same class, yeah. I don’t remember him. I was never in a fraternity. I went twice — I dropped out one year and then went back for half of a second year and dropped out.

But at one point Bush requested to meet you, didn’t he?

Yeah, I met him. It was a political breakfast speech here in California at a club, the Republican right wing. They invited me — they’ve always had fun with me, I don’t know why — and it was a big hotel room and a speech about tough love and justice in Texas. He was governor then, around ’98 or so. I swear, I knew in that room on that day that he was going to be president. There was just no question. He had that confidence, and they adored him. There was an organized love for him. He asked for me to come up to the podium and we had a one-on-one. I was in the Bush spotlight — that thing where he stares at you and he gets to know you a little bit.

Assigns you a nickname.

There was one funny line. He knew I’d been in Vietnam. Actually, I didn’t know he’d been at Yale. He told me he’d been in my class; it was a surprise to me. But then he said he’d had a buddy who had been to Vietnam who’d been killed. “Buddy,” he said. It was funny — it was on his mind, he raised it. And it was the way he looked at me: I just felt like, boy, I bet you he’d rather his buddy had come home than me. But he was very friendly, very charming — a very sociable man.

Have you ever thought about going into politics — running for office? Would you consider doing that in a later part of your life?

Not seriously, no.

Orson Welles wrote a weekly political newspaper column during WWII — he was friends with FDR through Sumner Welles, a distant relative of his and a presidential adviser, and at one point he considered running for the Senate from California or his native Wisconsin.

Politics is about raising money and being popular and shaking a lot of hands and spending a lot of time with people. Those are not my strengths. It would be exhausting and would completely destroy my ability to do what I do.

You were pro-Vietnam before you enlisted in the infantry, right? You were fairly conservative?

Yes.

So we could say that you spent the entire 1960s across the political divide from most of what you’ve now come to stand for?

My story is complicated. I did write a novel about being 19 called A Child’s Night Dream. My parents divorced when I was 14, and being the only child, there was no family to go back to. Basically, going to Vietnam was really throwing myself to the wolves. It was a form of rebellion and suicide.

I’ve read a quote to the effect of “I felt like I had to atone for the act of imagination.” Was it actually the failure of the novel that sent you over the edge?

After I left Yale the second time and finished the novel — I was writing the novel instead of going to class, and that’s why I flunked out — my father was supporting me, and that’s an impossible situation: 19 years old, your father is furious at you for the tuition that he’s lost, and you’re living in his apartment trying to finish a novel. It’s like Jack Kerouac moving back home with his mother. But I really believed in it: I was insane with passion. It was the only thing I had. I had no woman friends in my life. I had nothing to support me beyond that. And when that failed, I went into the Army with the idea of “Let God sort it out, whoever I am.” It’s egregious to think that you can be on the level of Mailer or any of your heroes — Hemingway, or Joyce; I was into Joyce heavily at the time.

Part of the fun of watching someone like you working without a net, from a distance, is charting the rises and falls of your career. And sometimes there are films that don’t hit right, that suffer because of the moment or the context — the sky around it, as you put it. I’m thinking specifically of Nixon, which was a commercial failure, but seems to get more sophisticated every time I see it. Or, more recently, Alexander.

I’ve had three big setbacks, in terms of being completely dismissed: Heaven and Earth, Nixon — by many people, at least — and Alexander. On Alexander, it was just devastating, because in America and England, the numbers were so tough. It wasn’t just that people didn’t like it. It was ridiculed. It was destructive criticism. Meanwhile, in the rest of the world we were connecting, we were among the top 20 films of that year in the foreign market. We did better than four of the five Oscar nominees abroad. It was well respected.

Why didn’t Alexander connect? Do we agree that it didn’t connect with English-speaking audiences?

I like the director’s cut better than the first version, because I had more time to prepare it. And the structure is different. It wasn’t because of the homosexuality — that’s a red herring. The mother’s back story and father’s back story, which are really essential, don’t come in until later. We’re doing a third, expanded version now — we’re going all out. This is not for theatrical; it’s for the people who love the film who want to see more of it. It’s the Cecil B. De Mille treatment — three hours and 45 minutes. What I’m doing is going back and showing the whole thing in its sumptuousness, really going with the concept that it had to be an old-fashioned movie, with an intermission, like a road show. Be a showman, instead of trying to be a responsible filmmaker. Go all out on this one. This is my Apocalypse Now, my De Mille epic. [The first time] I was trying to step up to the plate, so to speak. I should have pulled it back, taken an extra year like Marty did with Gangs of New York. But it would have cost a lot of money.

In Oliver Stone’s America, the documentary included with the DVD box set of your films, you say, “I’ve always admired Alexander because of the momentum and the speed with which he traveled and conquered. In my small metaphoric way, I would say the countries were films, and I moved through them like him . . . he’s striking everywhere. I think it was great. We had a great run. But it’s definitely a new phase.” Is Alexander the figure you most closely identify with?

I am a Method director to a certain degree. I do become part of what I shoot. And I think with Alexander, the perception is of hubris, certainly — “Alexander the Great? Who the fuck is he? He thinks he’s Alexander.” I could see that coming. But I always knew who Oliver Stone was. I never lost track of that. And I made the film humbly, in 94 fucking days on three continents. I ran the crew like I always run the crew. Nothing changed in my habits. I walked in the deserts, we shot in a sandstorm once, and it was the same old Oliver who did Salvador. Hubris is taking 110 days on some stupid comedy. That’s an insult to filmmaking the way I was raised. I’m sticking to NYU principles, and I still do to this day. Movies are a tradition; we didn’t invent it — we take it from somebody else and pass it on.

But with Alexander, you faced a challenge like you’ve never faced before, because no matter how bruising the attacks on JFK and Nixon, your core audience was always still with you. For whatever reason, Alexander failed to connect with an audience.

Yeah. In America.

In America. I don't wish to judge it; this is an empirical observation.

No, it didn't connect. Alexander is the high point of my life, and it always will be. I’m not asking for universal love on that; it’s just impossible. It’s not paced to the American style, nor is he a conventional hero. He’s filled with doubts. But Alexander is a beautiful story, and I think I did him well. I mean, I wouldn’t have released it [otherwise]. But I can’t give up; I would never give up. I would be all wrong in my assessments of myself as I work. You have to hear your own self, follow your own drama, or whatever Thoreau said long ago at Walden Pond. [“Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour.”] Alexander was a huge setback for me, and it certainly hurt me in this business. But you have to understand that people have been saying bad things about me for years. I don’t listen; I have to try to keep going.

I don’t want to make specious connections, but you’ve had several high-profile drug arrests in the last few years. Before that, you were making supernihilist films in an edgy, frenetic style. I'm wondering if these are all moving parts of the same phenomenon.

I’ve smoked dope and drunk alcohol most of my life, okay? Getting pulled over and arrested is a fault, it’s a mistake — a wake-up call. I did get busted a couple of times. One was at a roadblock, so it’s not like I was endangering anybody’s life. The other time, I got pulled over by a civilian cop; I was actually busted for driving too slow. And when the tests came back, I was below the intoxication level. Nobody knows that, because it never got published that way. I should get a chauffeur is what I fucking should do. [Laughs.]

But nobody cares if you smoke pot. They care if it affects the work, if it’s part of a larger problem.

Okay, but I don’t feel bad. I got heavier, physically, at certain points, and I think that gives the appearance of degradation, like Jim Morrison. But I did have a pre-diabetic condition through my mother, and I was on too much sugar. Any Given Sunday, I love that movie, but it was more effort than you think — it was like a three-ring circus, to make five football games in five stadiums work. It took so much energy. There were some problems with the crew on that film. So by the end of that movie, my doctor said I was too stressed, and at my age it was dangerous. There were some issues of medications and stuff, no question about it. But sports people love that movie. With Alexander, there’s a fan site where there are people who have seen it 50 times. They go to the sites in Macedon. They love the romanticism of it. So it’s confusing to me. I’ve tried every fucking time to get it right, even if I haven’t been in my best physical shape. I will get it right. Not everyone is going to agree with me, but I’m going to get it right.

With World Trade Center, it's your first time to deal with studio financing in a decade; you look better, healthier. Has your life changed? Is this a new start?

Your story is a journalistic narrative, and it’s a good one, about Oliver coming back after Alexander, and how there’s a change in his life. And I’ve somewhat agreed with it, but I’ve also pointed out that my methods have stayed the same. But it is about your storyline, in a way — about life. If you go to film school, and you think about your career traditionally, you arc up, in the sense that your budgets get bigger, the stars, whatever. There’s a nice arc to a man’s life. You make your better films later — it’s horrible if you’re Orson Welles, if you make your best film first. And Alexander was a chance to do something on another level entirely. So I reached a peak of ambition. And the ambition was perhaps not matched by my execution, although there are points in the execution that do match the ambition, I think. So then it died a metaphoric death. Point of view died with it, as it died when Heaven and Earth came out. That [movie] was a very sensitive side of myself that I loved — it was tender, and the woman was tender. And it was ridiculed and killed, and part of me, you know . . . those feelings were hurt and eradicated for a while. Same thing with Nixon. You want to get rid of the person after you finish. You want to go back to being who you are, but you’re no longer the same person, because your journey has changed.

And part of me did die [with Alexander] — that part that was enamored of “my very important storyline,” end of quote. Me being the storyline. I played it out. I did all my biographical figures. I have no need to be John or Will. I had a need to be Ron Kovic. I had a need to be Alexander. I had a need to be Nixon and Morrison and Garrison. That’s the change. So now I can be myself, maybe. I can be more authentic to myself. I think there was an attraction to go from the past into the contemporary world in its most hellish moment. It’s like I dropped out and I couldn’t get back in, until by going back to 2001, I could come back into this era. I feel liberated, in the sense that, not that it would be next, but I feel I could do a movie about those next five years. Not that I think it’s complete yet — I think there’s a lot going on that we don’t know about in the government. But I think there’s something in the air. I smell it, and I feel fresh again, having done something — my new, 24-hour, humble microcosm of that day. Wherever I go with World Trade Center, it’s going to spin off to wherever I go next.

-Paul Cullum, “After the Fall,” LA Weekly, Aug 9 2006 [x]

[decodingellipses]

“Surpassing Certainty” by Janet Mock

          On the cover of Redefining Realness, Janet Mock bares her presence with what looks like a blurred city far beyond her. The ambiguity of what place she’s in front of parallels with her heavy history that she once left behind out of circumstance, driven by heavier ambitions as a young person with multiplicities. She reveals that the cities of her past are Honolulu, Oakland, and Dallas. On the surface of the memoir, she stands at a far enough distance from the background to convey clear separation from what is behind her, yet also stands at close enough distance from the reader’s eyes for her to be detailed, but still untouchable. I can see her curls, free, vivacious, and parted to the side. I can see her silhouette clearly in the tight, short sleeve, V-neck, midi dress in her favorite color, coral, in which she said on Heben Nigatu and Tracy Clayton’s podcast, Another Round, “It’s a color that I keep returning to […] It’s a color that keeps following me […] but it also just looks good!” Her literal position between her background and the reader’s eyes reflects deeply on the ways in which her experiences are familiar, yet distant. She acknowledged this on Oprah Winfrey Network’s SuperSoul Sessions, by tearfully saying, “Just because I clicked my heels and I made it out of Oz, doesn’t mean everyone can.” In the space of otherness, you can still feel othered.

           On the cover of Surpassing Certainty: What My Twenties Taught Me, there is no background—only a black backdrop of what looks like the photograph was taken in a studio, indoors and more intimate. Janet is up close and personal, and that shows in the stories throughout the book. Her first memoir, like the cover itself, was expansive and full of depth. This time, the sole focus is Janet, in every multitude of who she is. I love that she wears a long sleeve, crew neck dress—it’s more concealing. Ironic that although she is significantly closer in the picture, she is less revealing. It spoke to me as the power of choosing when to camouflage and when to uncover yourself. She introduces the book with a one-night stand story, where in the midst of her physical nakedness with a stranger, she wore an armor that shielded her from undressing her truth—the complex relationship between privacy and intimacy, and how they are not always as mutually exclusive as we might think. In the picture, her curls are more defined and gentle, parted in the middle. She still wears her favorite color, but this time, on her cheeks, where the coral blush is placed just right to ignite her immaculate cheekbones. Intentional beauty is a kind of beauty I knew all too well—a beauty that has been redefined and refined in order to be granted access to opportunities. There is a relationship between the comfort of hegemonic identities and the ways marginalized folks strategically convey beauty to satisfy those comforts. This is evident in how you wear your hair to an interview (policing of hair textures), how “right” your skin tone is (colorism), and how well your beauty can chameleon itself for whiteness. These experiences Janet speaks of in Surpassing Certainty are beyond her transness. What makes trans women of color’s stories different from “popular” and well-listened-to trans narratives is that their race is involved. In this book, she touches on the roles of her race, disclosure of transness, womanhood, and how they intersect.

           ESSENCE’s Cori Murray and Charli Penn from the podcast Yes, Girl! sat down with Janet, where they asked her, “Do you ever grapple with being an advocate?” She responded with: “It’s part of the work that I do. Though I center myself and my experiences […] I can’t forget that so many people don’t know about all these other women who have not been given the same privileges and access that I have been given to be able to live, to survive, and ultimately to thrive and live my dreams.”

           My 20th birthday was pivotal in that it marked the end of my teenage years, years that I never knew I was able to give closure to or move on from. Especially the year of being nineteen, which was my expedition of disclosure, sex, intimacy, and its relationships with each other. I—someone who recently begun her twenties whose experiences were also of being a mixed trans girl from the islands, navigating transness in the context of stealth and intentional suppression— never expected to have a kind of resource like Surpassing Certainty, which covered the years from before Janet was even twenty, up until her thirtieth birthday.

           I thought Redefining Realness spoke to me in ways nobody ever has. Reading it three times, I felt recognized, cared for, and prioritized. But in telling her own story in Surpassing Certainty, Janet allowed me to see myself. By the end of the book, I had an awakening that in the midst of relationships, job opportunities, heartbreak, spaces, it was beyond crucial that I choose myself over all of these. Always. Oftentimes I catch myself in this tug-of-war of “Who would stand beside you—in public—and call you theirs?” (37) and “But you can’t escape your truth. It follows you. No matter how far you travel, how good you feel with it at a distance, it lingers and sticks to you” (33), and I resort to myself. Janet described the comfort of lonesome in a way I have not been able to articulate— “Perhaps no one would ever know me quite as well” (124).

           Choosing myself is healing; resorting to myself by default is lonesome. As a person who grapples with emotional unavailability, I submitted to men who knew I’m trans by only fucking them, and romantically getting involved with men whom I did not disclose my transness to. Spaces in between came with an expensive price of emotional labor, and I couldn’t afford that. My twenties is about being stingy and holding people on a higher level of accountability. When Phoebe Robinson of Sooo Many White Guys interviewed Janet, she asked “Out of all the important experiences that happened in your twenties, what’s one piece of advice that you would give to someone?” Janet responded with: “Not everyone is deserving of you, of your body, of your story, of your time […] Don’t spend it. Budget that shit!”

           I started to refuse crumbs to satisfy my hunger for desire. When James texted to see me at midnight, I knew the choreography by heart. I’d see him, he’d be inebriated beyond control. He’d make small talk bullshit before giving me a taste of his night’s bar tab. We’d slip out of our clothes and into my bed, and he’d slip into my body before slipping his way out of my room. I was exhausted of this kind of pleasure, the one-way-narrow-road kind of pleasure, so I texted him back, “No can do, tonight.”

           He texted me back with, “Ugh.”

           He didn’t even fight for it. He never had to, so why start?

           It felt good to know he was upset. It was also so foreign. He could fuck anyone, I thought, and he chose you. Who do you think you are? Why would you turn down a guy who will taste the secrecies of your skin when no one else will?

           I thought again.

           …Because I’m everything, and he does not deserve even the most sun-kissed parts of my flesh.

           A few weeks later, I met a 22 year old guy named Sam at a late night party event in a vintage boutique that hosted his band’s album debut. He sang the harmonies with one hand patting a cajón he sat on, wearing a white Manchester United jersey that looked like it was his favorite shirt to wear—stained and rugged. With cheap red wine and a few ice cubes in my red cup, I unapologetically let his eye contact mutualize mine while I stood in the crowd, which led us to introducing ourselves to each other afterwards. He told me about a rooftop party he attended in Chelsea for his job at an entertainment company, where well-known actors like Lucy Liu and Zoey Deutch surrounded him, boosting his ego. I went home, tired, and swiped on Tinder. His profile was the first to show up, and I swiped right. Instant match.

           “Tell Lucy Liu I say hello, will ya?” I teased.

           Within the next day, we progressed onto texting.

           “Come visit me in the city,” he said. I remembered then that this game of let’s see how long I can pull men into my life before I push them away to avoid disclosure, and possibly, rejection, couldn’t keep on going. That night, I told him about my transness.

           Taken aback and curious, he responded respectfully, and proceeded to thank me for being forthcoming. When I shared my relief of his reaction, he messaged me back with an answer that caught me off guard, revealing that he had much more to learn than what I initially thought he already knew.

           “Hahaha. You didn’t tell me you were the guy that killed my father. Just told me you’re a guy, that’s all.”

           “Mmmm, not quite. I’m not a guy, but you have Google to figure it out yourself. Also, your dad isn’t even dead.”

           This was my point of exhaustion and refusal to be anybody’s source of research—especially people whom I catch myself looking for validation in.

           Just like Janet in Surpassing Certainty, I was stuck in the pattern of not allowing myself to deserve the best; “I embraced the sweet delusion that ignited all affairs: This time, it will be different” (77). But it never was. It was the same shit every single time; men who prioritize their confusions over my own personhood, men who want me in the darkest of the unseen, men who do not know how to love and respect me.

           It is in friendships that I find myself the most powerful, and Janet and Lela’s is one I truly admired. Lela’s reaction to Janet telling her truth was the ideal reaction I never knew I wanted.

           “I felt lucky you told me”, Lela said. “But no one should ever feel obligated to know, you know? It’s your story to tell.” (148)

           I am so in awe of Janet’s generosity, willingness to give, and ultimately, welcome us into her story. So many of my parallel experiences with hers I dealt with alone, pushing me to a space of singularity. But for her to share them bare, and for me to even see just a spec of a dust of myself in that story, I was pulled out of that deepness. I especially found commanding power in the way Janet and Troy’s argument in the car (while she waited for her train to come) ended.

            “‘I love you’, he said.

           ‘Me, too.’” (208)

           There is a potential pronoun antecedent slip here, and I ruminate over what Janet meant by “Me, too.” In a quick glance, I figured that was her way of saying “I love you, too,” but after rereading that part, deep down I wonder if this was a turning point of Janet’s priorities that allowed herself to say “I love me, too.”

           Janet’s work makes me dig a little deeper, allowing me to heal numbed wounds I’ve forgotten were even there. Desire, hunger, and persistence are universal experiences that aren’t exclusive to trans women of color in their twenties. But the roots in which trans women of color’s desires, hunger, and persistence are grounded in are different, with respect to race, gender, time, histories, and traumas. Even in our shared communities, our layered experiences still have room for divergence—and that’s the importance of trans narratives; they aren’t monolithic. My chapter one looks different from Janet’s chapter one, and that is a truth to be untouched and unquestioned. Alike of the women in Club Nu, “We were marked by life, decisions, and mistakes” (29). We still are.

           I have so much love for trans women of color, even if our community is dying more than I want to admit. I believe in the strength of heart and the selflessness of sisterhood. Janet, you have given us oceans in a time of drought. I’ve surpassed certainty that I will always love you for that.

[stopsubstanceabuse1-blog]

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