#in a lot of ways the truckers make me feel the same way nightmare did as a teenager so it just feels natural to write this story

[sciendere]

What’s This?

Snowdeke fluff, post S7 in my self indulgent headcanon where everyone gets a happy ending and absolutely nothing bad happens to anyone. 

Summary: The holidays can  be stressful, especially when it’s your first Terran Christmas and you’re still learning how to properly people. Deke is trying to help Snowflake navigate the holidays through the help of movies, and she finds herself relating in particular to the misadventures of one Jack Skellington. A series of scenes of Snowflake discovering and trying to understand Yuletide, as set to the lyrics of What’s This? from The Nightmare Before Christmas. Inspired by my Snowflake Christmas headcanon post.  Just tumblr now, this is the first fic I’ve completed in literal years and I’ve lost my AO3 login information because I’ve never really had anything to put there until tonight. Enjoy my odd little story please!

~

Adjusting to new cultures is never an easy thing. At least that’s what Deke kept repeating to himself under his breath as he tried, with his limited modern-day Earth knowledge, to help Snowflake acclimate herself to Terran life. She’d managed a basic grasp of most mundane daily situations- be friendly, be polite, and knives stay in your pocket- but special occasions, holidays in particular, were still a bit foreign to her. Routine was so much easier, especially when for years it was literally the only constant in her life. Something he even understood, so when words failed him, he had a secret weapon- passwords to every streaming service he had. Television and movies were his teacher, and now they were hers. December had come before they knew it, and as she watched the Thanksgiving Day parade, confused and bewildered by the strange-to-her things on display, he realized the time had come to teach her about the winter holidays, Christmas in particular. Christmas meant parties, parties meant company, and company meant the fiancee needed to be on her best and least embarrassing behavior. This was already a bit of a tall order for Snow, and for the most part, Deke let her eccentricities slide as long as there were no injuries or casualties, but he also didn’t want her to feel left out. “So,” he said one day, handing her the remote to the TV like a proud father handing his child the keys to their first car, “Christmas is coming. You need to learn about it.”

“Ooh, is it binge-watching time again?” she asked. Her eyes lit up. “I love binge-watching!”

“It’s binge-watching time,” Deke replied. “Your mission: gather as much intel on the Terran celebration of Christmas as you can. Preferably in the next week or so. Parties start early, yo.” “Mission accepted!” she squealed. She snuggled into the beat up couch in their apartment’s living room, making herself comfortable. “Great, have fun,” he said. “You want me to order pizza or anything?” “You know my regular order.” Deke rolled his eyes. Engaged life had its ups and downs, and one of them was having to recognize your woman, as much as you might have in common with her, will always disagree with you on extremely important topics. He sighed. “Pepperoni, canadian bacon, and pineapple,” he said, disgusted and horrified but still a supportive man to the very end.

“That’s my boy,” she said.

~ A few hours later, stacks of pizza had been devoured by both of them during that evening’s Christmas movie marathon, and Deke had dozed off beside Snow on the couch. They’d worked their way through several of the classics- Elf, Muppet Christmas Carol, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Miracle on 34th Street, and A Christmas Story- and Snow clicked her way lazily through the titles on the screen, looking for one that really caught her eye without Deke’s helpful advice to guide her. She’d come to understand the holiday a bit from them, but it was still so foreign. The movies were good, but she just didn’t grasp entirely the sentiments behind them.  One in particular truly stood out to her, one that from the poster art didn’t even look like much of a Christmas movie at all, but instead, bore a smiling dapper cartoon skeleton man. “The Nightmare Before Christmas?” she read off the screen. It was certainly different from the other titles she’d seen. “Awesome.” She hit play on the menu and watched as the stop-motion puppets filled her screen, already in love with the morbid imagery. Finally, a movie that spoke to her soul. Deke woke up about half way into the movie, to find Snow beside him paying rapt attention to it. “Huh what’s this… oh Nightmare Before Christmas? Always watched it at Halloween myself but I guess it’ll do too.” “This movie is amazing! Jack’s just like me.. He just wants to learn and figure out Christmas and he sang a whole song and he’s just trying to make Christmas for everyone!” Snow pointed to the screen, where Jack was puzzling over the secret to Christmas. “See? That’s me now,” she said. Deke just smiled, happy his woman was happy. Maybe she’d figure out this Christmas thing in time… ~

Nightmare became a favorite for her over the next few days. Though she still puzzled over Christmas, Deke had begun to walk her through the holiday by explaining it to her the best he could, but late at night she’d return to Halloweentown, feeling a little less alone in Jack’s bewilderment at a world he loved but also didn’t totally understand. Of all the songs, “What’s This?” captured her feelings best, she thought, not just about Christmas, but getting used to another world entirely.

~ What's this? What's this?

There's color everywhere

What's this?

There's white things in the air

What's this? “So.. the white ornaments on the trees are-”

Snowflake had never cut Deke off faster, and she was used to him saying several stupid things a day. “I swear to gods, Deke, if you even try to explain the concept of snowflakes and snow to me. Like I don’t know what my own damn name means. It’s the one thing I DO get about the holidays.” She smiled, but it was one of her smiles laced in venom and dried blood on the blade of a dagger, one where you were reminded, and fast, she’d spent years as the galaxy’s deadliest assassin, and she could go back to that life anytime if she really wanted.

He chuckled nervously but knew she meant business, even if she was joking. And God help him if he ever wound up on her bad side. “Yes’m,” he said. 

“False advertising, though, there’s none out here right now even though it’s winter. I feel like it’s just a tease to throw those picturesque landscapes at you when we don’t know what the weather on the 25th will be at all just yet. This is a planet with varying climates, is it not?” “Well, yes…”

“Then why is it being advertised like we’re on a frozen planet?” “Snow, honey, it’s stylistic, just don’t overthink it. Don’t overthink most of it. In fact, thinking? Highly overrated in general.” “First time you’ve made sense all day. You know, though,” she said, “it’s not hard to pretend half the songs on the radio right now are actually about me. Because everyone here just loves me that much.” “You were wanted for murder and larceny in five states before I bribed Daisy into hacking their law enforcement’s networks to clear your name.” And it was expensive as hell too,  he thought to himself. “Let it Snow. Is about me.” “Right, right,” Deke said. “You’re right.”  

~

What's this?

There are people singing songs

What's this?

The streets are lined with

Little creatures laughing

Everybody seems so happy

“So you’re just telling me people go out in big groups and sing in public places, not even for money, and no one really cares? And they’re called… Curlers?” Swing and a miss, Deke thought, but he gave her points for genuinely trying. The two were on a park bench listening to a choir sing in the city park. “Carolers. Curlers play a weird ice sport with brooms and a rock.” “Who’s Carol? What’s she got to do with it? Should I know about her? Is she the lady statue over there?” Snowflake pointed to a nearby church’s Nativity scene and Deke quickly pushed her hand down, praying the awkward stares from passerby stayed at a minimum.

“It’s just another word for song, they just.. They sing. To make people happy, make them remember stuff. It’s fun.” She still struggled at the idea of being a street performer just for the enjoyment of it, not sure why anyone would do anything like that without it getting them money, but it was simultaneously the most adorable thing she’d ever heard. “I’m glad they’re doing it. Their singing is pretty.” ~ Oh, look

What's this?

They're hanging mistletoe, they kiss

Why that looks so unique, inspired

It was the afternoon and Snow couldn’t help but notice the weird little bit of twigs hanging over the doorway of the kitchen. “Deke, there’s plants on the doorframe! What have you been up to this time?” “Decorating?”

She reached for the leaves the best she could with her tiny frame and sniffed up into the air. “Mistletoe,” she said. “We had this on my planet. Leaves and berries are poisonous. Really good for if you want to take someone out without a lot of mess- is this a present? For me? Who do you need-” “Wait wait wait- Snowflake NO, no one is getting poisoned.” 

She frowned. “Waste of good mistletoe if you ask me. What is it for, then?” “So… you hang mistletoe from doorways, and if you and your love walk under it… you kiss.” “We kiss under the poisonous, parasitic bush?” She was confused but intrigued by this strange custom. “Look, it’s tradition, don’t ask questions, I don’t know either.” “And I thought Terrans were soft… that’s the most badass thing I’ve ever heard of in my life. Kiss me under the poison.” “You really don’t need to put it like that-” Deke said, but before he could finish, Snow had pulled him in for a kiss. One he happily returned. He wasn’t about to waste some good mistletoe, after all. ~ They're gathering around to hear a story

Roasting chestnuts on a fire

Snow threw a copy of The Night Before Christmas across the bedroom. “No, I’ve tried to understand so much of this holiday, most of it I’m coming around to, but this? This is where I draw the line.”

“Sweetie, it’s a kid’s book, it’s not that big a deal-” “No, I’m not upset about a book,” she said, “This… this Santa? No sense at all,” she said. “The sleigh is just magic, like any other kid’s story, you really don’t have to try that hard to understand it.” “Oh no,” she replied, “the sleigh makes perfect sense to me. Santa knows what’s up, you put in your coordinates, fiddle with a few things, the ley lines get you to the nearest destination. Easy, basic dimensional travel, even if it might be a bit more efficient if he didn’t insist on using reindeer. Makes all the sense in the world to me, the rest of you all just need to get on our level. But everything else about the big man… No.”

“I’m going to hear about your problems with him whether I want to or not, aren’t I?” Deke asked. “Bingo,” she said. “You people are just okay with a man in a red suit breaking and entering? To leave presents for children? A man in velvet and fur does that, it’s holiday spirit, I do that, and it’s ‘creepy’ and ‘wrong’ and ‘next time, Snowflake, just knock’” “I warned you Nana and Bobo have been Terran all their lives and they were going to take your ‘extreme baby surprise’ a bit differently than you thought they would.” “And I told you it’s good for the little brat, keeps them on their toes and gives them a bit of exciting mystery in life. So I get why the Terran children love this story so much, even if I think it’s a case of double standards. But the man’s clothes are simply not stealthy or tactical. You can’t sneak in red, especially on your mythical white Christmases, you’re going to stick out from a mile away! And don’t get me started on the chimney… what happens if you don’t have one. We don’t have one, would Santa just climb in through the window? Lockpick?”

Deke nodded. She made several points, even if it was a bit much for her to approach Santa through the perspective of her area of expertise. “I got nothing on those last two points.”

“He goes to all that work… for snack food,” Snow said. “At least you lot could tip your home invaders a bit better. I’d expect at least large sums of money, in small unmarked bills, for that kind of performance.” Deke nodded. Milk and cookies really did seem like an unfair trade-off for overnight delivery. “I hear what you’re saying but that’s just the Christmas spirit for you, he’s grateful just for the snacks. He does it to be giving. At least, I think that’s supposed to be the point of it all.” 

His reply took her aback. She would rather lose her right hand than admit Deke was right in this conversation, easily, but at the same time, she could see the little nugget of truth in what he had to say. One that made her stop and think. Snow pulled herself out of bed and walked across the room to pick the book up. “But all that aside, it’s a lovely story,” she said quickly. “Even if nothing about it makes sense.” “You never make sense. Like. In general.” “I know. Get used to it, because we don’t do sense in this household.” “Wouldn’t have you any other way.” ~ What's this?

In here they've got a little tree, how queer

And who would ever think

And why?

They're covering it with tiny little things

They've got electric lights on strings

 “This one,” she said, “this is the perfect ornament for the dead tree.” Snow waved a Christmas ornament in front of Deke’s face in the packed gift shop, a kitten in a gift box holding the banner “Meowy Christmas.”

“For the last time, it’s called a Christmas tree,” Deke said. “Even if it… is… a dead tree. Technically.”

“Well the dead tree needs a festive Flerken on it,” she said, putting the bauble in his shopping basket. “They’re cats here, snowbunny,” Deke whispered, “cats.”

“Cat, Flerken, potayto potahto, isn’t that how it goes? We have to buy these too,” she said, putting a box of round glass ornaments into the basket. Deke looked in and was unsurprised to see glittering snowflakes painted on all of them. 

“These are just regular ball ornaments we have plenty of- oh,” he said. He knew despite her original misgivings about the guarantees of weather, the snowy motifs made her feel a little less alone and out of place, and had been playing along for a while with her insistence they were about her. “Of course we need them.”

“That’s how everyone will know the tree is mine,” she said proudly. 

“We have enough now,” Deke said. “Our tree isn’t that big, and we still have lights and garland for it-” “No,” she insisted, and another boxed ornament was in her hand. “Just one more?” The ornament was a ceramic retro styled semi truck, decked out in Christmas lights and wreaths. Deke looked at it, and spent a second in confusion as to why she’d want such a mundane thing on the tree, until it clicked.  Despite the hard times she’d had in her past, she still had a few fond memories of her adventures with the crew- Jaco in particular- and an occasional homesickness for her intergalactic, interdimensional home for so many years. And for all her confusion, she’d seemed to figure out part of Christmas was celebrating the past. “We.. we never had Christmas… or much of any holidays, really, it happens when you can’t really stay in one place for too long, on there… but it’d be like this, if we had,” she said. “You know.. Just in memory of the family who couldn’t make it.”

Deke nodded. He’d lost his family going back in time too, and understood how Snow felt. The tree was covered in lemons as a sort of nod to his past, and adding snowflakes and trucks to that mix just seemed right. 

“You’re right,” he said. “We’ll buy this one more thing.” “One more? Oh no,” she said, and in her hands was a strand of lights with clear snowflakes around the bulbs. “That dead tree isn’t done until you can barely see tree under it.”

Deke smiled. She was starting to get it.

~

The smell of cakes and pies

Are absolutely everywhere

 “What’s your favorite sweet?” Deke asked, out of nowhere at breakfast on a cold December morning, a few days before Christmas. 

“Huh?”

“Nana and Bobo are coming Christmas morning. So we’ll be doing the cooking this year and having our dinner with them. I thought I’d make the actual dinner, you could maybe do the baking and something sweet for dessert? I know you love sweets.” 

Snow thought for a moment, then started listing things, counting them off on her fingers. “Cookies.. Pies.. cakes.. Bread-” She stopped suddenly. 

“What’s wrong?” Deke asked. “I thought you loved all the treats you’ve been trying this month.”

“I do, they’ve all been divine. I just thought of my options for baking and then I thought of how much Jaco would love this time of year… He taught me a few things and I can probably use that knowledge to make just about anything, but it’s just not the same without him there to give me advice.” Her blue eyes grew big with bittersweet memories and Deke could see the sparkle of tears forming in them. Her sad face always destroyed him, knowing all the pain and loss her expression held. Deke grabbed for her hands and held them tightly. 

“We have cookbooks… we can call Nana for advice, she’s a biochemist, baking is just chemistry you eat… we can watch videos if you get stuck. I know it won’t be the same, and I know nothing will ever replace what he meant to you, as a big brother.”

Snow nodded. 

“But he’s also always right there in your heart, no matter what,” Deke said. “Nana taught me that about loss, people never really leave us, as long as we remember them. So bake the most delicious Christmas treats you can, and make him proud. And as long as you do that, as long as you use what you learned from him, Jaco will be with us.” 

“You’re right,” she agreed. “I’ll do the best baking anyone’s ever tried, and it’s all going to be in his memory.” “That’s the spirit. So what are you making, then?” Deke asked her. 

“Everything!”

~

The sights, the sounds

They're everywhere and all around

I've never felt so good before

This empty place inside of me is filling up

I simply cannot get enough

 Navigating last minute shopping downtown was the last thing Deke expected to be a challenge for the two of them, but it had become one. It was a case of Snowflake’s natural, corvid-like attraction to shiny, sparkly objects- and Deke trying to stop her before her natural kleptomaniac impulses could kick in-against her lack of acclimation to so much sparkling, bright, merry surroundings. Spending a  good part of your life in a dimly lit truck was something that stuck with you for a while, and even on the most neon lit planet she’d paid a visit on her journey, nothing could top the spectacle of Earth during the Christmas season. Every surface sparkled and shone with bright lights and glitter and tinsel and foil, every storefront played happy tunes about warm feelings, and the jingle of bells was never too far, as though magic simply floated through the atmosphere at that time of year. 

It was everything Snow ever loved, but it was also so, so much, almost too much for her at times. The sensory overload tired her out and she quietly pulled on Deke’s arm, guiding him to a nearby bench. He understood immediately and followed her to sit down beside her.

“I think I’m finally starting to understand this Christmas,” Snowflake said. “It’s still strange to me in a lot of ways, but whatever, life is boring without a little strangeness, isn’t it?” 

“Guess that means as long as I’ve got you my life will never be boring, then,” Deke replied. Snow playfully punched him in the arm, even though she knew he was right.

“I’ve seen so much in my short life and so many different worlds but this is the first I’ve seen where everyone spends a month just being kind to one another, giving out of the goodness of their hearts, inviting others into their homes to share food and company and good times, just loving each other. Before I came here… we didn’t have a lot. We were poor constantly, we only really had each other, and we ate almost every meal like it was our last because we never knew when our next would be coming. It’s so different going from that… to all this.”

Deke held her tight. “But you know things are different for you now, right? You don’t have to worry anymore, you know that.”

“I do, and that’s why I understand. Because I feel like that’s what all this is about. The winter is dark and cold and long, and sometimes, people don’t have what you do, and we just have each other. So we make everything brighter and warmer and share what we have with people who might not. We remember the people we love who might not be here. And it makes that darkness just a little easier to get through, if we get through it together.”

Deke was at a loss for words. He himself had never considered Christmas that way, but what she had to say was absolutely right. The two were from such different backgrounds, but in the end, they weren’t that different, two people who were thrown from their normal into something totally new. He was proud of her for coming to that conclusion by herself, because deep inside, it sorted things out for him, too. 

“You know, I don’t understand as much as I pretend to sometimes, in fact I understand literally nothing, but I think you’re right.”

“I figured it out with your help. I’m so grateful I have you to help me learn and feel less alone, less weird, less different. You’re better than any present anyone could ever give me.”

“Really? I just do my best…”

“It’s all we really can do, isn’t it?”

~

I want it, oh, I want it

Oh, I want it for my own

I've got to know

I've got to know

What is this place that I have found?

What is this?

Christmas Town, hmm

 It was Christmas morning, and the grandparents were due, and Deke was mildly nervous about how well the future granddaughter in law would go over with them. Although it took a while to get them acclimated to their… eccentric… new family member, Fitz and Jemma, on the whole, were able to move past their initial misgivings and find aspects of her they could both admire and focus on, rather than the fact a woman they met after she tried to murder one of their found family, would soon be married into theirs. “Just… try to not horrify them too much,” he reminded her that morning. “I know in-laws can be difficult, but I think we can manage the best Christmas ever as a family, too.”

“Deke, I’ll be fine,” Snow reassured him. She was dressed for the festive occasion, wearing a knit sweater, covered, of course, in silver foil yarn snowflakes. The words LET IT SNOW filled the front of it. “It’s not like I’ve never met them before.” She reached into the oven and pulled out a tray of gingerbread people to cool. Sitting on the kitchen table was an array of the goodies she’d stayed up all night baking. After all, she needed something to do to pass the time in case Santa paid them a visit, so she could sit down with him and teach him basic stealth principles. Platters of cookies in various shapes and varieties- snickerdoodle stars,  sugar cookie snowflakes, and a small pile of shortbread butterflies- and a big basket of fluffy herbed rolls, a recipe she’d learned years ago from Jaco, covered almost every surface. “What do you think? They’re going to love it.”

Deke smiled. “It’s great but.. Where am I going to put the turkey, or just about anything else?”

“We have a whole living room,” Snow said, and Deke raised a finger and opened his mouth, ready to point out maybe that was a better place for the sweets, but he wasn’t about to be a buzzkill when she was in such an excited mood. 

“Right, right, living room turkey. Classic Christmas tradition. Right.” This was going to be a fun one to explain to Nana and Bobo… who were ringing the doorbell that very minute.

“I’ll get it-” Deke insisted, but Snowflake was already opening the door to welcome the two in. “Merry Christmas!” she squealed, in a cheerful singsong voice. Fitz tried to dodge her embrace by sidestepping her, but her well-trained reflexes were faster, and he found himself in an awkward hug from the tiny woman, sending desperate looks Jemma’s way. His wife gave him a look that said, without any words, oh no, she’s your problem now. “Bobo!”

“Pleasedon’tcallmethat,” Fitz muttered under his breath. Jemma helpfully pulled Snow off him to give her adopted future granddaughter in law a hug, only for Deke to quickly swoop in on his grandpa before he could even enjoy his newfound freedom.  Snow was surprised. She’d always had a harder time getting through to Nana, but maybe it was the holiday spirit bringing them a little closer today. Just a bit more of that magic she’d never totally understand, but that was fine.

“Oh, Snow, how have you been hanging in there?” Jemma asked her. 

“Baking!” Snow said proudly. “So many cookies in the kitchen, and more coming, please eat them so Deke doesn’t have to put the turkey in the living room!” Jemma mouthed something that looked like “what?” to Deke and he replied silently with one of his usual “don’t ask” shrugs. 

“Great, I need coffee. We grabbed the redeye flight and I wasn’t about to pay ten dollars at the airport,” Fitz said. “Bloody crooks.” 

“Also in the kitchen, unless Snow finished it in the ten minutes since I made the pot,” Deke said. He was eager to diffuse some of the awkwardness that was growing in the apartment. A little awkwardness might be part of the holidays, too, but it seemed to run more in this family than others. A little strangeness keeps life from being boring, that’s what Snow said, he reminded himself. But if he could help it, he preferred to not exhaust the entire day’s supply this early in the morning. 

~

After a delicious Christmas dinner -where the turkey, thankfully, remained on the kitchen table- the Fitzsimmons-Shaw-Snowflake family gathered in the living room to enjoy one another’s company by the fireplace. Card games were played, stories were told, and everyone just seemed to come a little closer together.

“Hey Snow,” Deke said, during a bit of a lull, as their feast began catching up to everyone and making them tired, “why don’t you put on a Christmas movie for us?” 

“I’d love to!” she said. “Deke taught me about Christmas watching these, and you know? I really love Earth more now. It’s the only planet that does all this.” She turned the TV on and from the menu, flipped over to the movie that had been making her feel like she  truly belonged over the last few weeks, the one she knew almost by heart. The soundtrack kicked in and a voiceover started. “Now, you’ve probably wondered where holidays come from… if you haven’t, I think it’s time you’ve begun-”

“Snow, are you sure you want to go with this one?” Deke asked, realizing oh god, she’s really going to play Nightmare Before Christmas for Nana and Bobo. Not Elf, not Christmas Vacation, this one. 

“Of course! It taught me so much, the least I can do is share that with your grandparents,” she said. Deke looked desperately at Jemma and Fitz, hoping for at least disapproving or bewildered expressions from them to convince Snow- well, really, him, and he knew this- that this was a bad idea, but to his surprise, they seemed okay with her offbeat choice. 

“That’s so sweet,” Jemma said. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen this one, either.”

Deke shrugged. If the grandparents were happy, so was he. He poured everyone another mug of hot cocoa,  as This Is Halloween started playing in the background, 

Sometimes the best gifts at Christmas didn’t come in packages. Sometimes the best gift was the gift of family, the gift of memories, the gift of time spent with those close, and if this Christmas brought his family, new and old, closer together, then for him, it was truly a Christmas worth celebrating. 

[sj-ficrecs]

1,000+ followers fic rec!

Recently noticed at some point a little while ago I passed 1,000 followers on this page! In honor of that here’s another fic rec of some good ones I’ve been reading lately. As usual, no specific order. 

PREVIOUS FIC RECS HERE!

(Hopefully this shows up in tags bc my last one didn’t & tumblr wouldn’t fix it) 

Thanks to @whimsicalrogers for this divider I’m using below :)

Bucky x reader:

3B by @softlybarnes Bucky x reader

“Bucky is used to being alone, so is the girl living in apartment 3B. He keeps to his routine, to crossing off amends. But mutual loneliness forges an unlikely friendship. Alone and reclusive, sweet and incredibly strange, with deep secrets and regrets, 3B has more to reveal than meets the eye.”

(un)cool by @belowva rockstar!Bucky x reader

“in the summer of 1973, after covering the howling commandos’ concert for a night, you - a young and inexperienced music journalist - accidentally end up following the up and coming band from new york city across the country. between shows, parties, backstage nonsense, interviews and failed attempts at writing a cover story for rolling stone magazine, you end up developing a love/hate relationship with their brooding, but devilishly handsome, guitarist james “call me bucky” barnes. (based on “almost famous”)”

Your Song by @summergrls​  Rockstar!Bucky x reader

“it’s not summer without you. or, that’s what your favorite rockstar always says. it’s all happening.”

Last Love by @wicked-mind Modern!Bucky x reader

“Based on the quote “He may be your first love but I intend to be your last” by Klaus Mikaelson.”

Remember Me by @wicked-mind​ Modern!Bucky x reader

“Y/N and Bucky were the unlikely match when it came to love, but they were inseparable since they met. After a fight, Y/N left to be a trauma surgeon in the military and returns without her memories. How will Bucky remind Y/N how she is the fire in his bones?”

Cake by @tellmealovestory (Part of the Something More universe) Modern!Bucky x reader

“The wedding plans continue as you and Bucky try to decide on a cake flavor.”

My Eyes by @invisibleanonymousmonsters Bucky x reader, past Steve x reader

“Steve is a good man, America’s golden boy, a hero. He’s Captain America for christ’s sake! So it’s normal to want what he has… right? Bucky knows he doesn’t deserve her. He doesn’t even deserve the second chance at life he’s been given. But Bucky can never let him know. Steve can never find out that his friend is in love with his best girl.”

The Mess by @sanguineterrain​ Bucky x Avenger!reader

“A wild night in Vegas changes everything between you and Bucky. Suddenly, all eyes are on you and you’re left wondering just how much can change between you and a man whose guts you hate (and who also hates yours).”

The Devil Has Lilith by @write-orflight Bucky x reader, soulmate AU

“They say your soulmate is supposed to be the one person you love unconditionally. So why did they make yours so insufferable?”

College!Bucky series / Couldn’t Be Me by @drunken-imagines College!Bucky x reader

Bucky is a known fuck boy trying to win over reader

Best of Friends by @anna-phora Modern!Bucky x reader

“When your best friend steals marries Bucky’s best friend, the two of you are left with only one solution: to become best friends yourselves.”

Back to You by @celestialbarnes Modern!ex-Bucky x reader

“desperate to find a place to stay after your boyfriend cheated on you, you end up crashing at bucky’s apartment, the problem is he’s the ex that you never really got over and he’s got a new girl who doesn’t like you very much.”

It’s Been a Long, Long Time by @luminnara Alpha!Bucky x Omega!Reader

“When HYDRA had their prized asset, the Winter Soldier, they did something no one ever thought was possible: they gave super soldier serum to an omega. With the sole purpose of tending to him during his ruts, she spends decades living in HYDRA facilities, denied her humanity and her life. Now, years later, Bucky Barnes has his mind and his own life back…and the last thing he ever expects is to see a familiar omega again. Bucky/OC, a little angsty but mostly smutty/fluffy/romantic!“

Friends Don’t by @watchtowerindistress Bucky x reader

“Reader is in a friends-with-benefits relationship with Bucky Barnes. Rule #1: no feelings - so don’t get attached (written by Bucky). Rule #2: don’t ever stay over (written by (Y/N)). After a fateful mission, one of them is going to break all the rules.”

Just a Touch by @buckychrist Bucky x reader

“Your powers? Controlling any feeling a human can have, from emotions to pain, with a simple brush of your fingertips. Your mission? The traumatized soldier with sad stricken eyes and scream filled nightmares.”

Under Pastel Skies by @redgillan Modern!Bucky x Artist!reader

“Bucky doesn’t need anyone, especially not a sugar baby. He isn’t that desperate… but she smiles so sweetly and she’s endearingly awkward, and he’s so lonely. She’s an artist, a painter, the type of person who always puts others before herself. Throwing caution to the wind Bucky offers her a place to live, a place where she can finally paint whatever her heart desires. He doesn’t need much in return; a friend, a muse.”

A Long Ways Away by @ai-unknown Bucky x reader

“Connection, reconnection, and a small miscommunication. Bucky will travel however far, if it means making you smile.”

No Rest for the Wicked by @abovethesmokestacks Trucker!Bucky x reader

Based upon this ask: “i have the absolute weirdest urge today to get railed by trucker!bucky in a motel in like southern florida🤨 and it’s late too, maybe 3-4 am. the place is kinda seedy & it’s rlly humid and hot outside & the ac barely works so we’d both be sweating a lot but it makes it hotter”

Meanwhile in Louisiana by @multifandomwriter Bucky x reader

“You are Sam’s best friend and you meet Bucky when Sam organizes a party down at the docks.”

A Tender Heart by @river-soul Alpha!Bucky x Omega!reader

“You’ve been sweet on Bucky since you started working at the compound six months ago. Normally quiet and mild mannered, an unexpected fight with a coworker brings Bucky into your orbit.”

Steve x reader:

Jane Doe by @justkending Modern!Steve x reader

“They weren’t next door neighbors, but they did live in the same apartment complex. However, they were on completely different sides of the complex. Steve always sees her across the way doing her daily routines and way about life on her balcony from his own. Something about her has him checking in on her from across the way when he can… She’s intriguing and has a way about her life that he finds calming and captivating. He wants to know more about who she is, but there’s no non-creepy way of approaching a neighbor that doesn’t know you exist. Is there?”

[waywardmoeyy]

4am Food Coma

Dean Winchester x Sister!Reader

Word Count: 1,784

Warnings: insomnia, just some familial fluff. 

A/N: This is as much of a feel-good story as I can write late at night. Haha. I hope you all like it! 

My Master List

You sighed as you stared at the drab bunker ceiling. Your body was practically aching from exhaustion, but you mind was racing. Random, deep-rooted memories flashed through you, some causing your heart to pound with regret. This lifestyle had really been taking a toll on you lately, and you knew it was only going to get worse.

You pulled the scratchy, plaid blanket up to your chin and sighed. You could go back to your room, but Dean was snoring to heavily on the other side of the wall. You typically fell asleep before him, but tonight, you just couldn’t get your mind to shut off.

Grabbing your phone beside you, you unlocked the screen and checked the time. 3:34am.

“Well, shit,” you muttered to yourself with another sigh. There was no way you were going to get any sleep at this point. You had promised Sam that, in the morning, you would go with him to some outdoor clothing store a few towns over, and he was always up at the ass crack of dawn. So, that meant you probably only had an hour or so of time to get any sort of shut eye.

The tip-tap of heavy feet approached you from behind the couch. You turned toward the noise, sitting up a little to peer over the back of the couch. In the scarce light, you found your oldest brother approaching you.

“Hey, what the hell are you doing up, sweetheart?” Dean asked, shooting you a concerned look. You sighed and leaned back onto your makeshift pillow.  

“My mind has decided that now is a great time to replay every horrible thing that’s happened in every hunt I can remember. It’s making me nuts. You know me, I’m the one who is always saying that what’s in the past can’t be changed, just let it go. I’m not usually one to dwell, but here I am.” You watched Dean as he plopped down on the edge of the couch, lightly leaning against your feet.

“Sounds like a helluva nightmare, Y/N. Anything I can do to help?” That was a great question, and usually the one you were asking your brothers. You pursed your lips, then gently shook your head.

“I dunno. I think I just need some sort of distraction. I’ve tried watching TV, but my mind just drifts off into another world.” You rolled your eyes. “And I promised Sam I’d go to that store he loves. He wants to leave early. I’m going to be a zombie.”

Dean chuckled as he watched you, probably laughing at the dark rings that were undoubtedly plaguing your eyes. He patted your ankles and smiled.

“I have an idea. Grab a sweatshirt and meet me at the car.” You furrowed your brow as you watched him launch to his feet.

“Wha-wait. What? No. I’m not going out like this. Dean, it’s almost four in the morning! Where are we going?” You slid out from under your blanket. You were clad in baggy pajama pants covered in cat silhouettes, and a tank top that absolutely did not match. Not to mention the quarter sized hole under your right armpit.

“Relax, Bitz, no one’s going to care where were going. Just grab a sweatshirt and some shoes. You have five minutes.” You rolled your eyes at your big brother. He was always up to some sort of shenanigans. But, the two of you were a lot alike, so you usually trusted his crazy schemes.

“Fine, but I’m not going to say I’m excited until I know where we’re going.”

“Calm down, Bitz. You’ll like it.” Bitz, short for Itsy Bitsy, was the nickname Dean gave you when you were too young to talk. Since you were the youngest, and quite obviously the smallest, he thought it was funny. But over three decades later, he still called you by that nickname more than he ever used your real one.

One more unsure sigh left your lungs before you turned towards your room, in search of a jacket.

“I remember there was a place just like this in Omaha. We always stopped when we drove through. I totally forgot this place was here.” You peered down at the menu of the dodgy diner. Dean sat across from you, studying the same menu.

The two of you sat in the corner of the small eatery, only joined by an older man at the bar, obviously a trucker, and a homeless man drifting off on the other side of the building, still half-clutching a cup of coffee.

Dean smiled and nodded, peering up from his menu. “Yeah, it hasn’t changed a bit. It’s like they are all exactly the same. Still better than Biggerson’s, though.” You laughed.

“Yeah, definitely. Their milkshakes are the best! I’m hoping they still are.”

Dean grinned. “Well, let’s find out. I’m not going to eat a big meal then go back to sleep. But, I’ll never deny an Oreo milkshake.” Dean slammed his menu shut and nodded. “What’s your poison? No, wait, lemme guess. Mint chocolate chip?”

Your eyes lit up. You hadn’t had a mint chocolate chip milkshake in years. Most places in the middle of nowhere didn’t have that flavor. Vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry, you cold almost hear a waiter say in their ‘I don’t want to freaking be here’ tone. But this small chain in the center of the country had them, and they were heavenly.

“It’s like you know me or something!” you teased him, before closing your own menu.

Dean chuckled as he eyed the server as they approached your table. “It’s like we’re related.” He winked, before turning to the exhausted young man. He couldn’t have been older that twenty.

“What can I get you?” he droned, his eyes half open. You glanced over at your brother, then back to the young man.

“A mint chocolate chip milkshake please,” you beamed. You smiled, realizing that you were already starting to feel better. You watched as Dean ordered, feeling like you didn’t have a care in the world for the first time in a while.

You all had been hunting for months without any sort of real break. No wonder your mind was on the verge of exploding. You definitely needed to have more breaks and distractions to counterbalance the violent, crazy crap you dealt with day in and day out. But, your brothers were work horses, so that always proved a little difficult.

“Hey, do you think drinking a giant, sugary milkshake is going to be the solution to get me to sleep?” you realized, leaning back in your heavily cracked booth.

Dean shrugged. “Sugar actually helps in a weird way. You eat or drink a bunch of it, fill yourself with sugar, then crash and sleep. Or, the shear amount of food will put you in some type of food-induced coma.” You nodded slowly. It did make sense, weirdly enough.

“Do you think that’s the healthiest thing to do?”

“No, Bitz. But it doesn’t hurt every once in a while. It’s healthier than pulling an all-nighter, then running all around town the next day.” That was true. Plus, there was no way you were going to say no to sugar, whether it was just before sunrise, or sunset. You hadn’t hopped onto Sam’s kale salad bandwagon quite yet.

Within minutes, the server returned with your glorious milkshakes, and a full refill container. The moment your treat was placed down in front of you, you smiled up at your brother in thanks.

The next twenty minutes were quiet, other than the ravenous slurps that came from your straws. Dean finished a few minutes before you, instantly leaning back in his seat.

“Holy shit, that hit the spot.” He smiled as he closed his eyes, instantly in a food coma. You giggled.

“How you didn’t get a single brain freeze baffles me,” you teased, scooting your cup a little closer. A thin line of red light beamed along the horizon, reminding you that you had basically pulled an all-nighter. But, you didn’t care nearly as much as you did before. A sense of peace had enveloped you, or maybe it was the beginning of your own food coma. Either way, you felt a heck of a lot better.

“Thanks, Dean,” you whispered, offering a frozen smile. Dean returned the gesture and nodded.

“Hey, it worked when we were kids. I was sure it was going to work now.” You furrowed your brow.

“What?”

“Yeah, when we came to one of these as kids, Dad would let us order milkshakes. I know you remember. But, what you probably don’t remember is that once you got back in the car, you were out like a light. I don’t even know if the sugar ever got a chance to get to you. I think it was just the comfort food or somethin’.” Dean laughed.

Now that you thought of it, you didn’t really remember the ride afterwards. You just remember waking up just after sunrise, either in the car or arriving home. And, well, that would explain why.

You closed your eyes for a minute, feeling the intense fullness in your stomach. Maybe you were skipping the sugar high yet again, and satiety was leading you straight to real exhaustion.

“Wow, you’re a lightweight,” Dean poked as he lifted from his seat, tossing some money onto the table. You huffed out a chuckle, a little too tired to come up with a witty comeback. “C’mon kid, let’s get you home. You’re going to need some sleep if Sam is going to drag you all over hell tomorrow—uh, today.”

You nodded as you slowly slid out from behind the table. Your brother was already five steps ahead of you, stomping his way towards the door. You slowly followed behind, smiling as you watched him toss a five-dollar bill onto the sleeping homeless man’s table. Then, he opened the door, and waited for you to exit with him.

The moment you settled into your seat, you leaned your head back, resting your head on the top of the back rest. Your eyes were heavy, and your body was practically deadweight. Dean peered over at you as the engine roared to life. He patted your shoulder before putting the car in gear and heading for home.

A long, shuddered sigh left you as you settled into your seat. It was going to be a good twenty minutes or so before you were home. But, your eyes weren’t going to stay open for that long. So, you closed them as you yawned. Within moments, sleep slowly enveloped you, and you weren’t going to fight.

If you would like to be tagged in my works, please send me an ask! <3

*Due to many inactive/untaggable blogs, there have been changes to my tag lists.

Forever Tag List:

@sabsi2222 @beyond-the-nights-world @x-cassiopeia @meganwinchester1999 @cas-is-my-hero-blog1 @jenabean75  @emmii4 @akfonkin @fandom-princess-forevermore @deanwinchestersbitch-blog1 @chameleon-junkie @unlikelysamwinchesteronahunt @eideticindy

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@beanie-beebo​

[solo-23]

I'd debated about whether or not to post this because it's definitely a rant and there is definitely a lot of negativity, but I need to vent after last night's episode (with some leftover issues from earlier this season, too). If Betty is your favorite and you don't like to read anything negative about her, you will not like this post.

1. The way the voicemail has been blown completely out of proportion by the writers, reviewers, and some shippers is ridiculous. We keep hearing about how it was terrible, emotionally abusive, toxic, and something that Jughead definitely needed to apologize for, but nothing he said was actually out of line. There is absolutely nothing in that voicemail that Betty should have been surprised about, let alone treating it like it somehow turns her into the victim in the fall of Bughead.

It's not surprising that Jughead has now apologized twice for the voicemail, even if he doesn't actually remember all of it, because he knows that it hurt Betty. He can also probably guess what he said because he knows what he feels and how it can be exaggerated when he's feeling depressed or under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Generally if you actually admit what you're thinking or feeling when you know it would hurt someone, you feel bad about it. It doesn't matter if it's true or not, or if you're under the influence. A good person apologizes if they know they hurt someone. Jughead is a good person.

Just a note here, I've seen other people saying that Betty's actions while high should be excused just like people have said Jughead's voicemail should be excused because he was under the influence. Being under the influence DOES NOT excuse the voicemail.

The fact that Betty cheated on Jughead, did continue to sneak around with Archie while debating whether or not she wanted to "officially" pursue him, hid the whole affair until Jughead actually caught on and she had to make up a direct lie to his face or confess, never actually explained anything to Jughead (things like she was the one who stopped the affair, she wanted to stay with Jughead, etc.) even after he asked if they could talk about it, stood him up at Pop's a year later, and then stood him up again at the book release party justify Jughead's voicemail. And he has apologized for it twice.

2. That is why it was so intensely frustrating for Betty to just brush off his apology (again) and then turn the conversation to her, but without actually apologizing for anything. When Jughead mentioned not really being able to remember the voicemail, she could have brought up what bothered her in it so (a) he would know and (b) they could actually discuss the issues, which could have led into Betty actually explaining what happened with the cheating, including how the affair ended, and she could have apologized for that. It still wouldn't have been fully satisfying because Betty never apologizes first for her actions, but it would've been better than nothing. She also could have apologized for standing him up, although at least she explained why she didn't make it to the book release party.

3. However, she still didn't admit to or apologize for giving away Jughead's manuscript. The entire reason Jughead relapsed into drinking and almost plagiarized Cora is because Betty gave Jessica his manuscript. No, Betty does not get credit for "saving" Jughead because she was present when he got a phone call from Samm and admitted that he wasn't the author. She's the reason he was in that position in the first place. Yes, she had been drugged. Yes, Tabitha was present and didn't stop her. No, neither of those things excuse it. It also doesn't excuse her from sharing the voicemail with Tabitha and Jessica.

Why not? She and Tabitha were still shown as functional when all of this happened. Jessica admitted that she drugged them to try to get the manuscript. They were both capable of thinking and arguing. Betty chose to give the manuscript to Jessica. It wasn't until afterward that Betty and Tabitha started being really impacted by the drugs. Jughead's manuscript wasn't Betty's (or Tabitha's) to give away and doing so completely screwed Jughead over.

There are some questions here--did he switch over to his typewriter and that's why there was no backup? did he forget to save a copy on his laptop? did his laptop crash or get lost? who knows, but in the story it doesn't matter. There was one copy and Betty gave it away, placing Jughead in the position of losing his agent or plagiarizing another author.

Also, for playing the voicemail, Jessica had just brought the drugged fries to the table. No one is shown as having felt the effects of the drugs until Tabitha made a comment about being warm after the voicemail is over. Betty had been reluctant to help from the beginning, before Tabitha mentioned the "don't be a Betty" line, and made fairly rude comments about Jughead throughout the episode. I don't think she needs to apologize to Jughead for sharing it, but I also thought that playing the victim and having some people blame it on "being high" was ridiculous.

4. You cannot convince me that Betty cares about Jughead in the slightest when he was telling her he was an alcoholic and he's trying to get better and he's clearly drinking alcohol right in front of her and her response is "I'm an addict, too. I'm addicted to serial killers." She's struggling, yes, and it's good that she's opening up, but if she cared about Jughead at all an appropriate response here would be "So, why are you drinking?" or "are you okay?" Show some sort of concern for someone who is relapsing in front of your face. Jughead does it for Betty when he suggests she should take a break, even though he's in a moral quandary caused by Betty, depressed, and drunk.

Also, no, chasing serial killers is not an addiction in the same way as drugs or alcohol and it's insulting to say they're the same. Chasing serial killers could be described as a compulsion for Betty, or a hyperfixation, but it's not the same. It's difficult, but you can choose to not follow a compulsion without experiencing the often severe physical side effects experienced by actual addicts. I'm glad Betty recognized that she has a problem, but no, that is not an addiction.

5. The entire conversation is extremely awkward. It's clear that it isn't what Jughead had in mind, but his life that he had just been starting to get back together fell apart. He sank to new (or at least different) lows. Betty seemed like she wanted to leave as soon as she got there (understandable given how awkward it was, even secondhand) and disappeared once Jughead was distracted by a phone call. It's understandable, but disappointing. The part that was really frustrating, though, was that after talking to Jughead about how unhealthy her serial killer obsession is and how she's worried about her mom, she still goes out. Alice was passed out on the couch, which Betty paused to acknowledge. That should have been a turning point for Betty and it just wasn't. Screw these writers.

6. I loved that Tabitha and Jughead had mutual apologies, discussed their issues, and genuinely seemed to care about each other. I also loved that Jughead still cares and worries about Betty (frustrating as it is when it seems unreciprocated) because it's so true to Jughead's character.

7. It is absolutely fine and understandable if Betty has moved on from Jughead. She seemed to believe that if he found out about the cheating in their senior year, it would be the end of their relationship. She started shutting him out and trying to move on the next day.

However, as a Jughead fan, it's intensely annoying to see him still struggling with the lack of closure and continuing to have feelings for Betty after all of that. I would have preferred to see either both of them move on, then rediscover each other later (or not, depending on where the show is going), or have Betty be the one who still clearly has feelings for Jughead and have her regret blowing up the relationship.

8. Overall, I hate a lot of what the writers have done this season. I don't particularly like any of the backstories for the characters during the time jump, I don't like each character following a separate plot line(s), the lack of interaction between characters, and how disjointed everything feels.

The mothman plot was interesting, but seems destined for a disappointing end. There have been a lot of missed opportunities to bring storylines together (Jughead went missing while Archie was looking for escaped prisoners, he could have found Jughead; Jughead hitchhiked with a random trucker, even without the trucker attacking him he could have seen clues or found Polly; Sweet Pea or Fangs could have seen Betty playing hooker and organized an intervention instead of having the weird cult plot line; I'm sure there's more). Maybe it'll be better with a binge watch, but I'm having trouble maintaining interest in the final three episodes, let alone rewatching this mess of a season.

BONUS: I was relieved that the Bughead talk did not go with my worst case scenario. Based on the possible B/A return, I was a little bit worried that Jughead would apologize for the voicemail and remember what he said, then talk about how he always knew Betty had feelings for Archie. Betty, who said she'd been "wanting this since high school," would then nod along and say she was sorry for hurting him, but acknowledge those feelings. Then Jughead would ask why they never acted on those feelings after the breakup, Betty would talk about the FWB, and Jughead would go full B/A cheerleader and tell her to give it a chance (like the Pacey and Joey chat about Dawson at Mitch's funeral in Dawson's Creek). I was dreading that possibility and I'm so glad the show didn't go there. I'm sorry if I've given anyone nightmares.

[roswelldetails]

RNM 2x05 - I'll Stand By You

So just a little note from me, the person behind the season 2 detailing.  I am trying really really hard to keep emotion out of these posts...which is really really hard for me because I'm an inherently emotional person. I'm a glass case of emotion, ready to shatter at any given moment. (#dramatic)  But I want to be true to the intent of this blog and keep my feelings, biases, and, you know, shipping out of this blog.

It was really really hard to do with this episode. Because I straight up ugly cried for like, 45 of the 60 minutes. 😂

So I guess, the point is, I'm proud of myself and sticking to the details here. My regular blog is where I'm doing the emotional flip out thing! 😂

EPISODE SUMMARY:

ACCEPTING REALITY — The discovery of some complications with Max’s (Nathan Dean) pod forces Liz (Jeanine Mason), Michael (Michael Vlamis) and Isobel (Lily Cowles) to confront the possibility that they may not be able to save him. Elsewhere, Maria (Heather Hemmens) and Alex (Tyler Blackburn) make amends. Kimberly McCullough directed the episode written by Alanna Bennett & Jason Gavin (#205). Original airdate 4/13/2020. 

DETAILS:

Max/Isobel/Michael reunite at age 11 according to what Michael tells Alex in 1x10.  So that would make the opening of this episode set in 2002ish.

Michael tells Max and Isobel, "I remember you. I don't know you."

"After nobody adopted me for a year they just stuck me with the name of that trucker who found us."

"I didn't ask you for anything."

This is like the thesis statement of Michael's whole history with Max in the flashbacks.

"Don't pay more than you collect, kid. Passing credit back and forth is a good way to get stuck with somebody forever."

Rosa's art. 

What I can see says: "...what they all told me, but I didn't listen" and "Stand the shelter".

Rosa on her dreams

"I have not had any freaky dreams in weeks. Okay, Max is probably off haunting Isobel now that they're strong enough for their psychic twincest weirdness."

"How long has that been happening?"

"Um, I don't know. It's an old boom box."

"Rosa, have electrical appliances been malfunctioning around you?"

"I really thought it was just a side effect of the handprint."

"If being in the pod introduced a new protein into your system it could have altered your DNA too. You could be developing abilities."

"Liz, look. The handprint is changing.  It's smaller."

"It's fading."

"Tell me this is a good thing."

"I don't think so."

Michael and Liz theorizing on why the pod shorted out:

"The pod's got a charge. It's like a battery powering the preservation process. This one's gone dead."

"Did the generator blow the electromagnetic threshold?"

"I think a surge came from the pod itself. But that pod has lasted almost a century. It shouldn't glitch out."

"Okay, well, then, this one did."

"All right, stop. It doesn't matter why the pod is broken. It just is. So how long does Max have?"

"My theory is that being tethered to Rosa through the mark is what kept Max from going brain-dead, and in turn the stasis process is what kept the mark from fading. So he could be gone by tonight."

"Okay, well, we have three more pods. So let's just put him into another pod."

"No. He's just gonna do it again. I haven't told you everything. I didn't want to scare you. I didn't want to be the one that took the hope away."

"Talk now, Rosa. Right now."

"I was seeing Max in my nightmares months before I told you about it, and he was begging me to stop you. He said that he was in a lot of pain in there."

"That's Noah's pod. Noah told us it was broken. It wasn't keeping him in stasis. He could feel time passing. None of us thought of that."

"We've been doing everything we can to make Max stronger. He pulled his own plug."

Note...as far as we know Isobel was the only one who knew about Noah's pod being broken.  In 1x12 it was before Liz arrived at the house that he told them about the broken pod, so only Max and Isobel heard that part of the story.

Alex on his training. "NSA intelligence cryptology training".

Monitor screen in the secret lab:

Noah's heart is still too weak to transplant. Kyle says it needs at least eight more weeks

"I wrote a paper for a bioethics class on patients in vegetative states who feel pain. Sometimes it's all they feel."

As a non sciencey person, I was wondering if bioethics class was a real thing. Tonight I saw an interview on the news with a UC Berkeley bioethics professor on COVID. So yes, it's a thing.

Alex on Michael that summer post-Rosa's death:

Starting fights with jocks

Broke into the drugstore

Not going to UNM

Hasn't hung out with Max all summer

Got busted for stealing hubcaps (Kyle's hubcaps, we learn later) 

Became a walking bar fight

Was in jail when Alex left to enlist

Michael on Max in 2008:

"It's more than that. And it's less than that. We were friends when we were kids, but now Max reminds me of a bunch of stuff that I'd rather forget. The only thing that we have in common anymore is Isobel."

Max's yearbook had a pencil stuck in the page with Liz and Max's photo in it. (The one we first saw in 1x03).

"Biology Club. Max hated science. He was in that club for four years just to watch your sister chew on the end of her pencil."

Max's mindscape:

First just desert, clouds, and then lightning strikes (destructive energy?)

Liz's antennae -- they disappear from Isobel's hands

Rosa describes it as broken

Crashdown special is Max's favorite "Little Green Man milkshake".

The Crashdown counter is kind of merged with biology lab equipment. 

The juke box is there

The Crashdown booths

Jeep

Neon Crashdown sign

One of those claw drop game machines (from the Crashdown) but it's filled with baked good displays.

The yearbook

Later, everything else is gone except the one Crashdown booth, the Jeep, and the neon sign.

The distorted music they follow to find Max is the Cactus Groove song in the music list...just, messed around with. See @angsty-nerd's post here:

"I'm the hothead. You are the hero. It's always been that way."

"You stole the hubcaps off Kyle Valenti's graduation present. Both his parents are cops. Do you want to end up in jail tonight?". 

👀 Tonight, specifically. 

Michael seemed excited about the job at Foster's Ranch until he found out that Max set it up for him.  Max found out about it from his dad (only like the 2nd or 3rd mention of his dad in the series so far).

"When I got back in town I asked Max why you and your brilliant mind hadn't changed the world yet. He said you didn't care about the world enough to bother changing it. He believed you could."

Max and Isobel in the mindscape:

"You're okay. I could feel something was wrong with you.  Everything felt…"

"Cold. I know."

"You can't be here. It's finally ending.  I can feel it. But I don't know what happens if you're in my head when I die."

"So it's true? You want this?"

"I could feel my connection to the outside world getting stronger, so I snapped. I couldn't take it anymore. I released a surge. You have to let me go, Iz."

"I can't take it anymore."

"Okay."

"I am so sorry."

"I just want to memorize this."

"Okay. Okay.  I need you to tell Liz something."

"You can tell her yourself.  She and Kyle are prepping for surgery.  They're going to use the faulty heart. She just wants to talk to you before you die."

"No. No."

"You won't be suffering. They're just gonna bring you back and then let you go."

"No you have to stop this.  You cannot bring me back under any circumstances."

"Max? What is really going on?"

"I am dangerous.  Whatever Liz is bringing back is not me. It's just some broken shell."

Maria on her mom's computer 

"Her nurse said that for the two weeks before she went missing, when she wasn't trying to escape, she was talking to someone online."

The 21st birthday flashback

Isobel gets Michael to help move Max after getting drunk on tequila.  He passed out in front of the tattoo parlor. It's the same tattoo parlor Michael goes to at the end of the episode.

Max's weird drunken statement.

"The thing is, there has to be there. Okay? There's always three. Until the very end.  I'll show you...What it means is you should be here…'cause it's all broken without three. So we'll figure it out.  You'll find your way back."

👀 Until the very end. Interesting.

On Max becoming a deputy:

"You know he did the whole police academy thing because of you, right? He thinks you're gonna get into the kind of trouble you can't get out of if you don't know someone."

Back in the mindscape:

"I figured it all out. She, there's an energy to suffering, there's an energy to death, and when I heal people, I absorb that energy. So when I resurrected Rosa, I took in ten years of emptiness. So if you resurrect me, you will be bringing back an infection. Don't want… I don't want to come back as a monster. I don't want to hurt anyone that I care about."

"That's what this is about? We've been hurting, Max. We don't work without you."

"You will! You will. You are stronger now than when I died. All of you are. You, Michael, Liz, you will survive this. The three of you. No, you need to stop them, Iz. Now."

"Okay. I love you."

"You too." Isobel disappears.

Max is using pretty similar wording to his drunken rambles in the 21st birthday flashback

We don't see that Max is chained down until this next exchange with Rosa. Isobel didn't see that detail as far as we know.  Didn't hear the chains clanking when they stood and hugged. Only after Isobel left.

"I'm sorry this is happening."

"Isobel is lying. She is buying time.  You know she'll never let me go. But you can feel the darkness too, right? That's why you don't like being in my head. Because you know it's real."

"I didn't want that to be true, but yes."

"I know my sister and I know your sister and they'll never give up. So you have to be the one to stop this surgery, okay? Or I will destroy everything that we love. You have to stop them to save them. Now go.  Please, Rosa. Go."

Isobel explaining to Liz

"When he saved Rosa he absorbed all of that dark energy. He's gonna have to expel it."

"And he's afraid he's gonna kill someone when he does."

"Yeah. So we just need someone stronger than Max to take that hit...if he thinks he needs to protect us he obviously doesn't know how capable we are. Bring him back, Liz. I'll handle the rest."

"I get it now. It's gotta be the three of us."

"He would never pull his plug to end his own suffering. Unless he thought he was saving us from something. And I'm a little sick of his heroic martyr crap."

In case you missed it, Michael did not know that.  At the beginning of the hospital sequence Isobel is telling Liz what she learned in Max's mindscape and says that she hasn't been able to get ahold of Michael.  Michael figured it out on his own. He finally "got it".

The pacemaker:

Isobel with Max at the end… everything is gone except the Jeep. And Bright Eyes playing (the song he and Liz danced to on their first date back in 2008). And then his eyes close and Bright Eyes fades away.

“First thing I remember is the three of us. We woke up terrified and lost. But together. And then all of the sudden I was alone. I got real good at being alone. I had given up on people entirely. And then you found me again. Hell of hero move. You showed up just in time. When you are a kid who nobody loves, kindness is a currency. Friendship doesn’t means jack. Family just lies, and hurts, and leaves. I’ve only ever known love to be temporary. So yeah, I push people away. Every time someone threatens to care about me I test their love until they have to leave. Connection is conditional. Everybody eventually gives up on the guy who refuses to be rescued. But you were the only one who I couldn’t run off. You never believed me when I tried to be something I wasn’t. So this thing in your chest, it might give your heart a pretty solid kick every once in a while. Consider it payback. It’s my hero move, Max. If you wake up, you consider us even, okay? If you wake up, we can be a family.”

Good visual parallels during Michael's speech. Alex and Kyle drinking together during the "and then you found me again". Maria walking up on "the guy who refuses to be rescued"

Max is in the coma for three weeks.  Wakes up at the secret lab (instead of his house, which is where he was previously.  I'm guessing it was a planned wake up because he's no longer plugged into all of the IVs and whatnot.

"I begged you to understand."

"Max, it's gonna be fine."

"No… I told you to let me go. I can feel it inside me."

"It's...it's symmetry, okay? It's just energy for energy.  We can deal with that. Fight it, Max. This isn't you."

"I don't want to hurt you. I need to get out. I need to get away from you, from everyone."

"I can't let you do that."

Max shoves Isobel and runs. When he shoves her there's a slight ringing like the sound they use when the aliens use their powers.  Isobel follows and stops him with her powers.

"I made a promise that if you came back and you weren't Max, and you were actually going to hurt people that I would kill you. I figure, hey, you got to play God. Make life and death decisions all on your own. Well it's my turn now."

MUSIC:

1. Letters To Cleo "Here and Now"

2. Lady Antebellum "Love Don't Live Here"

3. Cactus Groove "Fallin"

4. James Talley "Big Thunder"

8. Ross Copperman "Stars Are On Your Side"

5. Lindsey Ray "Keep You Safe"

6. Tommee Profitt feat. Sam Tinnesz "With you Til The End"

7. Bright Eyes "First Day Of My Life"

The Cactus Groove song is the first song this season that I haven’t been able to find on Spotify… let me know if any of y’all had any luck with it!

[tropicalfreckles]

Friends Again CH 2

MASTER LIST found here B**TLEB*BES DNI

Summary:   Lydia wasn’t sure what to expect, but prepared herself best she could as that familiar figure filled her bedroom with smoke and fire.

WARNINGS: They talk about trauma briefly and Lydia impaling Beej

Lydia raised her voiced the third time, feeling the air around her becoming heavy. Books and knickknacks flew off her bookshelf, clothes flew out of her dresser. A gust of wind flowed through the room out of thin air whipping her hair around. The lights in her room flickered as a fog crept from under her dresser and bed. It swirled with a vibrant green glow that crackled from the floorboards, becoming more intense as the force of the wind joined it. An eerie cackle bounced off the walls of her room. Lydia was glad she raised the volume on her music earlier. Just as a thunderous boom rattled the windowpane of her bedroom, the fog exploded in a light show and floating before her eyes was the demon.

   Just as she remembered him. Though right now he was floating above her floor looking a little bewildered, yet elated with a malevolent grin plastered across his face. He scoped the room out as his body vibrated a little. Jagged, yellow teeth. His dirty disheveled striped suit. That electric, messy green hair bleeding into the brown roots that met his forehead. The moss still growing on the side of his face. Those sunken in eyes, wild as ever. He hadn’t even noticed that she was in the room with him.

    “Hooollllyyyy shiit! Someone actually summoned me! I’m out of that piles of paperwork, bureaucratic hellhole! FREEDOM! FREEE-EEEEDDOOOMMM!” That raspy voice rang out as his fingers rung through that grimy, soft hair of his. He was so ecstatic that he jumped right into being destructive when his eyes darted to the curtains. With a swipe of his hand it lit ablaze and he turned to do more mischief next. Lydia panicked, jumping off her bed as she grabbed at her pillow and threw it at his head to get his attention.

        “Put that fire out, you dumbass!” She hissed pointing the water gun at him. The joy that was once displayed across the demon’s features now was replaced with a more complex one after he looked down. Shock hit him fast. The flames that began to engulf her curtains died out. He let gravity plant his ass right on the floor. Lydia followed his body with her gun never letting up her stance.

    “You? You.. You.” His voice cracked at first. Then became more gravelly and hoarse on the last ‘you’ he managed to croak out. Realization hit like a trucker ramming into fresh roadkill when he noticed which house he was in. Staring up at the girl he once called his friend, his hands balled up into fists as he furrowed his brow. Streaks of blue, purple, and red shot out from his hair a vibrant mix of colors betraying him with it’s display of his emotions. He inhaled deeply as he went to stand up. Lydia stomped her foot down, causing him to flinch for a moment. Beetlejuice stayed where he was instead.

        “No! St.. stay there.” She frowned. His gaze traveled down to stare at the water gun. A guttural laugh ripped from him as he gave her a snort, shaking his head.

    “What’re you gonna do? Get my suit wet? Please. A little bit of water ain’t gonna hurt me. Even if I rather stay dry.” He mumbled, crossing his arms as he eyed her up and down. Clicking her tongue, Lydia rolled her shoulders.

        “It’s holy water! Look, I..” A flash of guilt hit her causing her expression to soften for a moment. “…I just want to talk.” She awkwardly shuffled her feet around a little. Beetlejuice’s shoulders slumped  as he rolled his eyes, giving a heavy sigh.

    “…alright, I’ll give ya ten minutes, kid. Then I’m outta here; now that I’m summoned I rather be any place than here.” He mumbled. Lydia took a step closer to him. In response he shuffled away from her. She opted to sit down then where she was, so she could look at him at eye level. He was curious why she would even want him near her after everything that happened. He’d never admit it but he did feel the tiniest, smallest bit of guilt for what he did to her. Alright he did actually feel guilty. Even though he felt she was a little selfish which he usually valued in a person. I mean really who chooses a mother over their own friend? Most people, probably. However he still had a  smidgen of a grudge about it. She was still fun to hang out with though and treated him nice in her own way. Nicer than anyone ever had been to him, in fact, as pathetic as that was. She even gave him a hug. The colors in his hair slowly faded back to his usual green though small streaks of blue were still branched out from his roots. Lydia seemed to be struggling with starting with whatever she had to say to him. BJ knitted his brows feeling a little anxious himself, though opted to be patient once in his life and let her speak when ready. Still had the gun pointed at him; that was fair with their track record.

        “So.. I just.” She groaned, rubbing a hand over her face. This was hard. This was harder than she thought it would be.

        “..I. I wanted to start off by saying, that. I’m not sorry about doing what I did. I couldn’t let you hurt everyone. I was mad that you almost made me get rid of Barbara. I was hurt that you betrayed me, I told you I just wanted to get my mom back. We could’ve gone back to scaring people after I figured it out. I was hurting, I missed her. I know.. it’s a sore subject for you. I get why parents are something that make you upset after meeting Juno.  But, my mom was nice.. I love her.” Her arm begins to tremble a little.

         "I am sorry for being the reason you had to see Juno again. I’m sorry she tried getting rid of you for good. You’re not a screw up, or a fool.. I just.“ She teared up a little, feeling everything she has been holding back for months begin to creep up on her.

He could just use this opportunity to split. It was uncomfortable dealing with an emotional teen. Plus she was talking about his mother the person he hated the most in any existence. A nagging feeling was keeping him there however. Something about watching this girl. That enjoyed scaring almost as much as he did, crying. It hurt a little for some reason. He rubbed the bridge of his nose when he heard her crying pick up, becoming harder. She hiccuped a little and it was annoying.

    "Okay, okay; no water works kid, please. Also it’s kinda hard to hear you over that music.” He snapped his fingers and the music turned down just a little. He sighed, glad that her attention came back to him when he spoke.

    “Take your time if you gotta. I suck at reading people outside of scaring them. It looks like this had been bothering you for a while. Don’t rush through it.” He mumbled not really knowing how to comfort her. “This the reason you summoned me?” He asked while leaning back as his hands moved behind him to hold his weight. Lydia nodded, wiping some tears away.

    “It’s. It’s more complicated than that… ever since you left. I’ve been having nightmares..” Lydia’s voice gave out near the end of her sentence.

    Nightmares usually were fun so he didn’t understand what the problem was. Although he knew breathers some times had nightmares about things that were really shitty. Maybe it was that. He motioned for her to continue.

    “I don’t know if. If it’s guilt, or my trauma, but.. I never killed someone before. I don’t really want to do it again either. It was.. it was scarier than anything I’ve ever experienced before.” Her voice trailed off barely an audible whisper. She set the water gun down now that she was sure he wasn’t going to do anything.

Even though he wasn’t usually around ankle biters. He had some understanding that while murder was fun for him, that would take a toll on a kid. It was different than him killing for her. She actually killed for herself. He grimaced a little, unconsciously grabbing at his chest where she had impaled him. Lydia had noticed this however and balled her hands into fists while she gripped her dress.

        “If this is too hard for you, you can leave.” Lydia spoke up again staring up into his eyes.

Beetlejuice wrinkled his nose. He wasn’t scared of this kid. He didn’t need any pity. Although maybe she did just want him to feel comfortable. Why was she being so considerate? They never really were friends, right? Even if he thought so. He snorted, waving her off.

            “Kid, I’m fine. So, what’s this nightmare.” He fixed his composure, tightening his tie.

Lydia shrugged as she looked for anything else to focus her gaze on. This next part was going to be hard. She didn’t want to open up to him but she no longer wished to feel dread whenever she slept. The nightmares had to come to an end. She wanted to move on with her life.

     "The nightmares are all the same one, actually. It’s the day I killed you. It starts of as it actually did. You talking about how life was too much to handle. Getting ready to murder someone because you couldn’t process it. Then, me stabbing you. After that though, everyone starts to turn into weird blobs. You and I are the only ones that still have a shape. Everything fades into a dark abyss. Mouths appear out of no where, laughing in a creepy way at us. Blood pours from their mouths..“ She starts listing the things off on her fingers. She was having trouble keeping up with what she was saying unable to make eye contact with him. Beetlejuice tensed a little when she mentioned murdering him, thinking of course she has to talk more about it.

     "Then your mom is there. She’s holding you up, like you’re her captive or something. Then a sandworm eats us. That part got kind of weird. Even compared to the rest of the nightmare.” She mumbled. Finally she manages to look back up at him. Beetlejuice was leaning forward now, his elbows resting on his thighs, hands in his lap. He was staring right at her.

        “Well fuck, Lyds; that is a lot to unpack.” He moved a hand up to stroke his chin. Not really sure what to say in the moment. He needed to collect his thoughts. When he noticed her fidgeting in place, tears brimming her eyes again, he didn’t want her to cry. Beetlejuice crossed his arms as he sat up straight.

       "Alright.. so. Dreaming about killing me, which, I gotta admit; now that I’ve had time to mull it over the past couple of months I’m impressed. You successfully manipulated me by agreeing to help me be alive. Then killed me so you could send me back to the Netherworld. Haven’t been tricked by a breather like you before.“ He gave a small smirk almost proud that the first person that agreed to help him scare in a long, long time could have a conniving side.

       "We should probably get to the bare bones of the matter.” He clapped his hands together and a bunch of bones came into existence. Clattering onto the floor around them. Lydia jumped a little then stared at them, trying not to let out a small snicker. Good, laughs, that was something he could work with to try and cheer her up.

      “Fiiiirrssst, even though I am impressed you killed me and fair enough since I was being kind of an ass…” Before he could finish his sentence Lydia had chimed in with a quip.

    “I’d say more than kind of. You did threaten me and my family to get me to do a green card marriage.” She quirked a brow, her fingers tapping on the ground as she gave him an unamused look.

        “Alright. That was shitty of me.” He conjured a white flag waving it in peace as he heaved a dramatic sigh.

     "For real I’m sorry I did that. It wasn’t cool and came off pretty sketchy. If you hadn’t noticed I don’t like being alone. So I panicked because I thought you were going to ditch me.“ The purple in his hair began to creep back and Lydia just gave him an understanding look to let him know he could continue.

        "Unfortunately the only way to bring a ghost alive again is to marry them. I should’ve weighed my options better. I’m.. uh..” He gagged a little as he tried to form the words, having a hard time. Saying sorry was one thing, yet doing a heart-felt apology made it feel like he was going to combust.

      “Gimme a sec..” He slapped his face, his head spinning around on his neck comically in a 360 spin as he came to his senses. When he was done being a ham he looked back to her.

        “I’m deeply apologetic about what I did. Normally I take being creepy as a compliment, however out of context of what I was trying to do it’s super…” He wrinkled his nose. “Yeah. Fucking creepy and not in the good way. Even in context it’s still shitty.” He mumbled. “Having a talk with Miss Argentina made me realize that. When I heard it outloud for the first time after the fact. I swear I didn’t meant to come off that way, though.” Beetlejuice raised his hand as if doing a mock boy scouts honor salute.

        “Oh, that nice ghost lady I met in the Netherworld..” Lydia leaned back against her bed, feeling like she could relax a little finally.

     "Well. You actually sound sincere, which is weird since your voice always drips with sarcasm or something like that.“ She looked away for a moment as if contemplating something. ”..I know you said that you were impressed. However.. did killing you hurt you? Like, besides the obvious.“ Her gaze drifted back to him.

    "Hurt me? I mean, yeah, it would fuckin’ hurt getting bad art impaled through a meatsack body.” He thought more on what she said then it dawned on him. She meant if it hurt his feelings. He ran a hand through his ever-shifting array of colorful hair trying to figure out how he should respond. Sure it did kind of did hurt his feelings. Yet it’s like he said, the situation he forced her in was pretty shitty. She also mentioned she wasn’t sorry for what she did to him. She was still being nice at least. Maybe those dweeby Maitlands rubbed off on her a bit. Even though he only knew her a brief time the Lydia he knew before probably wouldn’t have given too much a shit about this. While she was fun and sort of nice to him when they scared people. She still easily jumped to kill him.

   "Eh. Maybe just a bit. However I already said I probably deserved it. It’s better that I’m dead anyways. Being human was hard. Even if it was just for like four minutes, or less.“ He counted off on his hand.

    "Okay..” She looked him over, unsure if she should continue. Wanting to get back to the topic on hand she cleared her throat. “So, about the dream..” Beeltejuice took his hand, pounding a fist into the other one.

        “Right, right. The thing you summoned me here for in the first place. Yeah.. so, blood, my shit mom, sandworm. I ain’t really a shrink, Lyds. So what I’m gonna say next is probably gonna be some bullshit. Like.. I don’t know, is it a guilt dream? Why’d you tell me about it?” He was still unsure about some things that were going on her. Though he tried to give his best bet. Lydia shook her head as she grabbed onto her feet, tilting forward.

    “I already kind of understand what the dream means now thanks to my therapist. What I called you here for is I wanted you to hear it. I wanted you to know how I feel. What we all went through together and I wanted to hear your thoughts on it. Also how you felt about how we ended things. I did the apology I felt like you needed and I told you what I wasn’t sorry for. I kind of feel a little better. Although I still feel like crying a lot, too.” She moved her hands away to wipe as her face again.

   "It’s… so overwhelming. I’m.. I’m scared, Beej.“ Lydia softly spoke, admitting finally what she was afraid to say. Beetlejuice was stumped. She actually admitted for the first time to him ever she was afraid. Not of him, he was sure of that at least. Of what he wasn’t sure. The nightmare itself? It’s meaning? He really did suck at this. He grumbled a little then began to drift off the ground, floating into the air to move closer to her. He plopped himself down next to her. Startling her a little as she jumped from him. He raised his hands up in defense quick to respond.

    "Hey, hey, wait; don’t be.. uh. Scared. Just…” He began to hesitantly wrap an arm around her before realizing he probably should ask.

    “Uh.. this okay?” He asked, staring at her as he kept his arm in mid air. Lydia stared at his arm then at him. She wrinkled her nose from the smell of his unwashed suit along with the earthly-dirt scent that lingered off his body. The sentiment he was offering had to have been tough for him to do and it showed he actually cared about how she felt. She gave just a small nod and he wrapped an arm around her shoulder. He moved his other around around her front and gave her a small hug then patted her back.

     "I don’t actually know what you’re scared of kid. Although I’ve gotta say I’m hurt I’m not scary enough for you.“ Beetlejuice gave a mock-hurt tone to the end of his sentence as to try and lighten the mood. Lydia surprisingly clung to him as she let out a soft whimper. His shoulders dropped as he started to let go of her, only to be stopped when he felt her tighten the hug. She began crying again. He lost count how many times this made now. She buried her face into his chest, sniffling as she curled up in his arms. He wanted to just phase out of the room yet opted to stay since it seemed like she needed this. He rested his chin on top of her head as he just let her continue to sob.

    "I hate this. I hate feeling… this scared. It’s-it’s so suffocating. Why does this hurt? Why do I feel horrible.” She managed to choke out. Beetlejuice tensed while she spoke.

        “Wish I knew, kid; my specialty is scaring, not helping people stop feeling scared. But ya got a good support system Lydia. Those sexy, nerdy Maitlands actually nutted up to try and protect you. Your dad chased after you into the Netherworld when you ran off. That Delilah chick probably cares about you too.” He tried thinking up everyone that she actually had in her life that cared. He wish he had that. Wish he had someone who loved and cared about him. It was a hard concept to wrap his head around, he always felt like he never deserved it. Lydia shook her head, looking up at him finally.

    “Her name is Delia, not Delilah. You know, it’s weird. She actually does.” She sniffled, smiling softly.

  “You weren’t there for that part. Since your mom kind of tossed you out. Delia threw herself in front of me, saying that she wanted to protect me when Juno was threatening to drag me back to the Netherworld. Ever since then she’s been trying her best to understand me. Even if I’m not the warmest to her sometimes. I appreciate the effort at least. I know she’s isn’t faking it.” Lydia patted his side, indicating he could let her go as she sat back again. Beetlejuice moved his hand to rub the back of his neck.

  “You know for someone who says he sucks at comforting, you didn’t do that bad of a job.” She gave him a tired smile, then picked up the water gun again. He eyed it bit warily. She tossed it away then gently nudged him. “Can you believe I was gonna blast your face with that?” That made him crack a grin then gave her a snicker.

    “Yeah that probably wouldn’t have done much, anyways. Other than make me slightly clean.” He stuck his tongue out.

    “Well, it might’ve stung a little. I don’t know. I haven’t had holy water thrown on me before, if you would believe that. It’s rare I scare priests. It’s a hoot when I do even if it’s never in a church. Those places are waaaay too stuffy.” He rolled his eyes. He snapped his head back to her. “So, I actually helped ya..?” His tone shifted to a more softer one. She nodded giving his shoulder a pat.

    “You did; I never thought I would actually hug you again. Oh.. that reminds me.” She got up, walking over to her nightstand. He floated off the ground once more so he could peer over the bed to see. She pulled out from the small cubby under the drawer of her nightstand, a cowboy hat. She held it up as she turned around to show him.

    “I still have this. I don’t know why I kept it, honestly. Guess deep down I couldn’t let a piece of you go. I did hate you for a while. I’m not sure if I can forgive you for everything. Although.. it means a lot that you apologized. Maybe one day.” She walked over, motioning for him to float up a little higher as she set the cowboy hat on his head.

  “Maybe we could be friends again, some day. I’m not sure. I thought this exchange was going to go a lot differently.” He gawked a little. A warm feeling hit him, as he moved his hand up and felt his hat.

        'Be friends again? Is she serious? Why doesn’t she hate me. It’s okay if she hates me, I’m used to people hating me. She kept my hat, though. I just gave it to her as a sign of peace. Even if I was still a little mad. Did she really care about me, then?’  What she told him seemed impossible. He felt like life was just fucking with him again. There’s no way she would ever forgive him he just didn’t deserve anything good. As if sensing sort of what he was thinking, she poked his nose.

    “Listen, I’m not a shrink either. However I think you have a problem with self esteem. I can’t fix that right now. I meant what I said to you. I do appreciate what you said to me, how you tried comforting me. I would’ve liked if you didn’t toss all my shit everywhere when you got here though.” She looked around the room, putting her hands on her hips as she sighed.

   "You’re lucky you didn’t break my camera. It’s a family heirloom from my mom.“ Beetlejuice looked around the room, then gave a small laugh.

    "Hey you know me, Lyds; I gotta make an entrance! It feels nice to be out of the Netherworld. I had to stretch my legs.” He turned his head back to grin at her. There was a worm she hadn’t noticed before wiggling in-between his teeth and she stuck her tongue out. There’s that weird, gross charm of his. She flicked his forehead causing him to scowl. He rubbed where she snapped her fingers against his clam-y flesh. She motioned to her room when his attention was drawn back to her.

   "I know you can bend reality or whatever it is your demon powers do. Please clean my room, I don’t feel like doing it because I’m tired.“ Lydia politely requested. Beetlejuice groaned yet didn’t complain as with a flick of his wrists. Everything began to move back into place. The curtains were no longer fire-damaged, her clothes went back neatly into her dresser and her books were slid neatly into the shelves. Even the random bones he conjured up were gone. She gave him a pleased smile along with a thumbs up. He flipped her off which just made her laugh. He couldn’t help but join her in her laugh. He tipped his hat to her then looked towards the window a moment later.

   ”..so, that all you needed, kid? Guess… we part ways again?“ He looked back to her a tinge of sadness edged at the end of his words. She rubbed her arm as she looked towards the window as well. She walked around him and the bed, then opened the curtains to see it was raining now.

       "I guess so. You did say you wanted to get away from here, right?” She looked over her shoulder at him. He pursed his lips then tapped his fingers against his chin.

   "Yeah that was the deal. I hear you out, then be on my way..“ He sighed then floated over towards her and the window. He placed a hand on the glass, staring off into the distance. She still wasn’t sure how to feel about him yet she knew she wasn’t really scared of him. Even though he was acting off for how he normally was. Maybe he wanted closure as much as she did? He  couldn’t come back on his own before so she hoped this was good for him. She playfully nudged him with her elbow.

   "I mean; even though you probably shouldn’t show yourself around the house. I wouldn’t mind if you came back to my room some times. If you wanna try to build up trust again or something. If you don’t hate me. It’s kind of nice having someone I can weirdly relate to that isn’t a parental figure. Someone I can talk to about this.” He looked over to her then scratched his head.

   "I don’t know. Pretty sure everyone would hate it if they saw-wait. Did you summon me without telling anyone about it?“ He slowly became aware of the very lack of parental supervision as he peered over to her bedroom door. There was no way the Maitlands nor her parents would’ve let him near her without them being around. She inhaled sharply, staring a little bug-eyed down at the ground while pressing her lips together. Shit.

       "Uh.. maybe.” She mumbled. He looked to her. Then let out a bellowing laughter, slapping her hard on the back.

   "Well! Look at you, you little rebel! Ahhhh shit. Part of me feels like messing with the Maitlands again. Unfortunately for me they probably would try to send me back to the Netherworld.“ He grimaced then looked back to the window. "I’m not so sure if it would be safe to keep coming back here. However, other breathers are usually boring as hell. You were pretty fun. As long as the others don’t find out I guess I wouldn’t mind stopping in every so often. Maybe we could even scare together again.” His eyes flashed a mischievous glow as he gave her an malevolent smirk. She gave him an wicked smile back.

   "I probably am gonna have to tell them about you eventually. It’s kind of hard to hide all this.“ She motioned to him knowing how much of a show off he could be. He nodded.

   "Eh it’s true; we’ll just cross that bridge when we get to it.” He stretched out a little. Taking the cowboy hat off he slapped it onto her head. She stumbled a little, giving him a small scowl.

  “Well how about you hold onto this, lil scarecrow. So I have a reason to come back. Now if you’ll excuse me. I wanna go stretch my legs and scare the shit out of some Karen in her forties while she’s kicking back, sipping on her wine box.” He grinned while ringing his dirty hands together.

 "I’ll be back later, Lyds!“ He cackled, then dashed off, phasing through her wall and disappearing into the stormy night. She placed her hand on the window, staring off at nothing now as she fixed the hat on her head.

   "See you soon, Dorothy.” She decided it was finally time for that nap.

[killswitchwrites]

The Beginning at the End

Chapter 27: The Yoko Ono Effect

Chapter Summary: Alexis tasks Bobby with finding Agnes while she tracks down Sam.

Word Count: 2.3k

Warnings: Language

Beta’d by: @trexrambling

Cheer Squad: @pinknerdpanda

Series Masterlist

Previously on TBATE:

“Wait! I have to know, what’s inside of me?”

“Find my sisterhood, they will help you expel the one whose pain darkens your soul.”

“Who is she, Agnes?”

“Your time here is done.” Once again she places her hands on my shoulders. “You should know, she was not always evil.”

 I wake up with a gasp and a retching cough.

“I thought I was gonna have to throw this on ya,” Bobby says, handing me a glass of lukewarm tap water.

I chug it down in big gulps, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand before passing the glass back to him. “Thanks for waiting, this mascara isn’t waterproof.” Despite the water, I sound like a chainsmoker.

“Where’d ya end up?” Bobby eyes me with suspicion.

“I’m not sure where, or when I ended up, but there was a woman, Agnes. She said I needed to look for her sisterhood.”

“Sisterhood? She some sort of coven leader?”

“I dunno, maybe. What do you know about something called the Book of the Damned?”

“Nothing I’ve ever heard of. Sounds downright delightful though,” Bobby says, turning to wheel himself in the direction of his desk.

When I try to sit up on the couch, my head spins, and I take a moment to let the room settle around me. “Any news on the end of the world?”

Bobby hesitates before answering, “Cas found a possible lead in Maine. Dean went with him.”

“And Sam?”

Bobby becomes intensely focused on digging through the stacks of papers on his desk.

“Bobby,” I press, “is Sam okay?”

“I sent them to check out a case, it didn’t end well. They had a fight. Sam’s gone.”

“Gone? Gone where?”

“He decided to take a little vacation to get his head right.”

“A vacation,” I scoff, slowly getting to my feet, “in the middle of an apocalypse?”

Bobby ignores my question and hands me a musty looking leather wrapped nightmare. “I suggest you get reading.”

I see right through his plan and put the book down on his desk a little heavier than necessary. “Research isn’t really my thing.”

Bobby squints at me, and I refuse to blink. “Fine,” he barks, “he’s in Garber, Oklahoma.”

“Let me know what you find out about Agnes.”

“Well yes ma’am,” he drawls with an exaggerated eye roll.

Deciding to not engage in another battle of wills with him, I turn on my heel and head for the front door.

“You’re smart enough to know that what happened between them ain’t your fault, aren’t ya?”

I look over my shoulder and offer him a sad smile, “Yeah, sure.”

____

“Have you seen this guy?” I ask, holding up the photo for the third time in as many nights.

“What’s the matter, little lady, your beau walk out on you?”

“Yeah, something like that. Have you seen him?”

Mr. Comb Over squints a little closer before flicking his eyes back to mine. “Sorry, haven’t seen him.”

The man looks about as trustworthy as a toilet seat at a trucker stop. “The sign out front says you have vacancies, mind checking me in?” I ask, handing him a fake credit card.

“Yeah, about that, sign’s broke.” He pushes the credit card back across the counter with one stubby, yellow nailed finger. I contemplate burning the card right where it is rather than touching it again.

“Huh… what are the chances,” I muse with a scowl, collecting my card and making a mental note to wash my hands with bleach.

“Place down the road might have something,” he offers with an insincere smile.

I murmur a ‘thanks’ that sounds more like ‘fuck you’ before getting back into my car and heading to the nearest dive bar to earn a little walking around money. Not that I really need it since reclaiming my inheritance, but still, it’s fun hustling the locals.  

The nearly full parking lot of a place called “Hoyt’s” catches my eye, and I pull into a spot near the back corner. The jukebox inside is playing an old honky tonk classic and, lo and behold, there stands Sam, towering above everyone else, holding a conversation with a group of men.

Hunters, by the look of them. His name dies on my lips, and I watch quietly while Sam leads them over to a table in the corner.

They all settle in with their beers, except for Sam; his posture remains rigid. Whatever they’re saying, he’s not happy about it.

I quickly scan the place and realize I’m not the only one watching Sam. There’s a pretty blonde leaning on the bar, sipping a soda, with a puzzled expression creasing her eyebrows. She doesn’t give me fatal attraction vibes, so I turn my attention back to Sam. His companions are just getting to their feet, a sour expression on all their faces. I duck my head when they walk past me, mumbling about how Sam has lost his edge.

The peppy looking blonde bounces her way over to Sam. While he’s distracted, I sneak out to find a motel for the night. Whatever Sam has going for him now, I don’t want to get in the way of. Maybe he’ll be better off without all of us.

The motel Mr. Comb Over pointed me towards is just as rundown as every other motel I’ve been in since starting my nomadic existence. It’s enough to make me think that either all the chains are owned by the same person, or that middle American motels are all part of one of the circles of Hell. I spy a suspicious stain on the comforter and decide it’s most likely the latter.

After stripping the bed and rolling out my own sleeping bag, I settle in and try to grab a few hours of shut eye.

“Sam! No!”

I push my legs to run faster. Over and over his fist connects with Dean’s face, quickly turning it unrecognizable. I don’t understand why he’s not fighting back. “Sam!” My toe catches with a crunch on a disintegrated tombstone. I ignore the pain that shoots through my foot and up my shin and push myself harder. They’re too far away, I’ll never reach them before Sam beats his brother to death.

“Sam! Please!” I yell once more, panic turning my voice shrill. Sam finally pauses his assault on Dean, only to shoot me a sneer that looks nothing like any expression Sam could ever be capable of making. I skid to a stop a few paces away, unease twisting my stomach into knots as I raise my hands. “Sam, what are you doing?”

“Sorry, sweet cheeks, Sammy boy’s not in the driver's seat anymore. I’ll be sure to tell him you stopped by.”  Sam lifts his hand, and I feel a pop in my chest…

The harsh ring of my cellphone drags me out of my nightmare at just the right time. I quickly roll to my side and vomit over the edge of the bed.         

My phone continues to ring and I grope along the nightstand for it. “Hello?”

“Alexis?” Bobby’s gruff voice questions.

“Yeah, gimmie a second.”

I get up with a groan and drag myself to the bathroom sink. I chug down a few swallows before turning my attention to Bobby. “Hey, what’s up?”

“You sound like death, you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m good. Guess I shoulda skipped the gas station sushi.” A wet hiccup threatens to make matters worse, and I pause to hold my breath. When I’m sure it’s not a portent to more vomit I ask, “You got something for me?”

“I have a strong maybe. I found a text that mentioned a coven of witches and, if you believe the hype, they were founded by the original witch.”

“This witch have a name?”

“The book doesn’t give a name for the witch, but they go by ‘The Grand Coven’.”

“That’s not pretentious at all.”  

Bobby snorts out a laugh, “It gets better. Bet you can’t guess where they’re located.”

“Please say something more original than Salem.”

“I wish I could.”

“Looks like I’m going on a road trip.”

“In that case, you might want to stick with the usual road trip snacks and leave the sushi for the hoity toity types.”  

“I’ll take that under advisement.”

After hanging up with Bobby, I repack my duffle bag and head for the car. I leave the vomit stain as my contribution to the decor.

Trusting my gut was right about the manager, I stop in at the Grand Plains motel before leaving town. I knock on the door of the first room and wait.

Sam answers my knock, and his face twists into an almost comical look of confusion.

“Hiya, Sam.”

“Lexi... wh-what? How did you find me?”

I push past him into the room and cross my arms over my chest. “Care to tell me why you’re hanging out at a podunk bar when the world is all but ending?”

“It’s complicated.” He matches my stance.

“I’m sure I can keep up.”

“You left. Why do you care where I end up?”

“Sam,” I sigh, “I didn’t leave because I didn’t care.” I drop my arms to hang uselessly at my sides when what I really want to do is wrap them around Sam and ask him to forgive me.

“Could’ve fooled me,” he accuses, walking further into the room to sit down on the tousled bed. Sam leans forward, rests his forearms on his thighs, and hangs his head. His disheveled hair falls to cover his face. The defeat in his posture is enough to pull me towards him. I kneel on the floor in front of him and, rather than look at me, he turns his head away.

“Sam, please, look at me,” I implore him, moving to tuck a few strands of hair behind his ear so I can see his face.

He captures my hand in his before I can drop it. “I can’t,” he clears the lump from his throat, “I’m dangerous, and Dean’s better off without me.”

“I’ll take Bullshit for $500, Alex.”

Sam whips his head to meet my gaze, his eyes flashing with anger. “It’s not bullshit, I started the damn apocalypse!”

“Technically, that was Dean,” I argue back, unfazed by his outburst.

“What?”

“Dean broke the first seal when he got off the rack. But if you’re looking for someone to blame, maybe you should blame your mom for making the deal with Azazel. And hey, since we’re assigning blame, why not throw God into the mix?”

“This isn’t a joke, Alexis.”

“That’s good because I’m not joking. There are a lot of people who have had a hand in what’s going on, why should you be so special and get to carry all the blame yourself?”

Sam glares, but I refuse to back down. A few beats pass, and the fight leaves his eyes.“You may be right, but at least none of them are the true vessel for Lucifer,” he mutters.

“So? You’re the vessel for Lucifer, big friggin’ whoop. That doesn’t mean you have to say yes.”

“But he said-”

“Lucifer is a flaccid bag of wind, he can’t force you to do anything.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It is that simple, you’re just overthinking things, Sam. All you have to do is keep saying no until you find a weapon to kill him.”

“He’s the devil.”

“No, he’s an angel with daddy issues, and you’re going to gank his ass because you are Sam Fucking Winchester.” I grab his face between my hands, forcing him to look at me. “Not the boy with demon blood, not the guy who started the apocalypse, not the kid brother of the righteous man. You’re Sam, and Sam is just what this world needs to save it. So get off your ass and get back into the fight.”

“Inspiring speech, Coach. You work on that on the way over?”

“Shut up.”

“Say I decide to fight, what’s the point? If we manage to stop this apocalypse, what about the next one? Because you know as well as I do that there’s no retiring, there’s no white picket fence and 2.5 kids. We might as well let the world end now.”

“That’s it! On your feet right now,” I say, jumping to my feet.

“What? Why?”

“Because I’m gonna kick your ass!” I shove up the sleeves of my flannel and beckon him towards me.

“Lex-” My slap upside his head halts his argument. “Ow, what the hell!?”

“I’m serious, Sam. Either stand up and fight, or sit there and get bitchslapped.” I swing for his head again, and he ducks the blow.

“Enough!” Sam springs to his feet, and I jump back with a surprised squeak.

Instead of swinging for me, he grabs my wrists and pulls me toward him. I fold myself against his chest, and he wraps his arms around me. “Enough, I’ll call Dean.”

“Good,” I mumble against his warm skin, “I didn’t want to have to kick your ass.”

His chuckle rumbles through me, and I pull back with a smile.

“Will you come back with me?” Sam asks, and my smile falters.  

“I can’t right now.”

“So you get to run, but I can’t?” Sam relaxes his hold, and I step out of his embrace.

“I’m not running, exactly. I think I finally have a lead on what’s wrong with me, and I have to look into it. I need answers about who, or what, I am. Please understand.”

“Promise me that you’ll come back,” he says, and once again I curse his puppy dog eyes. Life would be so much easier if I were a cat person.

“I promise, Sam.”

OC not your thing? I have plenty of Reader Insert HERE

[waveridden]

FIC: i want so bad to feel steady

This is why he knew that Max didn’t die when he disappeared. (Neoscum/Alice Isn’t Dead AU, Tech/Dak, 1.7k)

(With all my love to Tam, who suggested an Alice Isn’t Dead AU a while ago.)

AUcember || read on ao3 || title lyric

#

“So,” Dak says, “where are you from?”

The guy in the passenger seat doesn’t really say anything, which is kind of par for the course. He’s barely said a word since Dak picked him up on the side of the road. But he does shift in his seat where he’s looking out the window, which Dak takes as a sign that he can keep going.

“Me, I’m from Chicago.” He drops his right hand and leans back to rest his elbow on the center console. “Big city! All the people, all the things happening. Thought I was gonna have a life there. Thought I was gonna do okay.”

Passenger Seat, who still hasn’t given Dak a name, curls in a little on himself. He seems like a nice guy, all considered. Sweet, round face. Nice beard. Old hoodie. Beat up sneakers, the kind that look like they’ve been worn pretty much every day since the guy bought him. He smells like… something weird, something specific, and his hair is covered in oil.

There are also tears streaked down his cheeks. Dak didn’t ask about that.

“I tried,” he continues, because hell, if he’s got someone there, he might as well talk. “I really did, you know? But you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him… settle down. That’s the thing about settling down, is it doesn’t just happen. It’s a choice you gotta make every day, to be settled in, and I got tired of making the choice. And so I went back to the road!” He lifts his hand, wiggles his fingers towards the magic emptiness of California. “Where I always belonged.”

The guy doesn’t respond, and Dak lets his hand drop to the wheel. “I got lucky, though. A lot of people never find anything or anyone they love the way I love this road. I’ve seen some great things out here. Some horrible things, but some great things.”

And then, a miracle: the guy says something. It’s muffled because his mouth is against his elbow which is against the window, but Dak can hear him answer.

“Gotta speak up, buddy,” Dak says cheerfully, adjusting the brim of his cap. “We’re all about open communication here! And by open I mean the kind of thing you can understand easily, all things considered.”

The guy props his chin on top of his elbow, still facing the window. “I said, mostly horrible things.”

Dak glances at him. He sees the bruises on the guy’s arms now, the way one of his hands is resting on his fanny pack like he’s protecting something. The reflection of his eyes in the mirror, not like he’s just staring out the window but like he’s watching.

“Oh,” Dak says quietly. “You mean the thistle men.”

  #

  People tend to assume that Dak is stupid.

Which, okay, it’s not like they’re wrong, by some ways of measuring smartness. Dak can’t do math much harder than figuring out how much gas he needs to get. He can read, but it’s not easy, because he gets letters and words backwards more than he gets them right.

But he can drive. He can drive faster than most truckers, and he’s done this job for a long, long time. He knows how to get shipments where they’re going.

He’s also good with people, which nobody ever seems to expect. They think he doesn’t pay attention, but really, he just knows what’s worth paying attention to. Someone’s favorite food or favorite color is nice to know, sure, but it’s nicer to know when a friendly hand on the shoulder is going to be that missing piece to helping them relax. It’s nicer to know that someone really needs one less thing to worry about, so that he can offer them leftover food or a ride home from work or things. He’s not good at social rules, but he’s good at reading people.

This is why he knew that Max didn’t die when he disappeared.

Granted, it’s not like Dak saw the kid that often. He got a job straight out of high school, saving up for his sister’s medical bills and for college and for whatever the hell else he wanted. Dak had some money set aside, too, because he always had a soft spot for those kids. Especially Max.

And then Max had vanished one day. At first people thought he ran away, but Dak knew he wouldn’t. That kid wouldn’t leave his sister for anything less than the most important thing in the world, anything less than her absolute safety. But he’d also known that Max hadn’t died.

His family ushered him to support group after support group, and after a while Dak stopped saying he knew Max was still alive. The kid was eighteen, he was young and it was tragic and whatever the hell else people wanted him to think, but sometimes people disappear and die. Sometimes people die.

The part that Dak won’t tell strangers in the passenger seat of his truck just yet is: settling down is a choice, but chasing after the ghost of your sister’s kid when you see his face on a national news segment is a choice, too. And hell, it’s hardly a choice to make.

  #

  The passenger calls himself Tech Wizard, which Dak’s not about to question because it’s hardly the weirdest name he’s ever heard. He’s also from Chicago, and he doesn’t want to talk about it. And the thistle men killed his parents when he was four years old.

(“I didn’t call them thistle men,” Tech says, after Dak explains what exactly a thistle man is. They’re men, sort of, but they’re… wrong. They eat people, for one thing. They walk kind of like marionettes with a stick up their ass and half the strings cut, for another. And they smell weird, which Dak hopes he’ll never remember again, because he never wants to be that fucking close to them.

“What did you call them?” Dak asks, curious despite himself.

Tech shrugged. “Nightmares, mostly.”)

He’s trying to get out of California. Which is a coincidence, because Dak is trying to get out of California. Specifically, he’s trying to drive his shipment to Kentucky, and if they take the right route that takes them through Colorado. Through where Tech says his parents died.

They stop for the night in northern Nevada, somewhere in the desert where nobody is going to bother them. Dak takes them to a truck stop and Tech doesn’t complain, just rubs a little more of the oil into his hair as he sets up shop in the back of Xanadu.

“What’s with the oil?” Dak asks by way of conversation, because he’s no expert but he’s pretty sure you’re supposed to keep your hair from getting oily.

“Heather oil.” Tech holds up a little bottle of it. “Keeps the thistle men away. Don’t know why, but I always carry some on me. My nana taught me to.”

“Your nana?”

“And it works.”

Dak nods. “You got enough to share?” He holds out a hand, palm up.

Tech taps a couple of drops out of the bottle into Dak’s hand. “What I’m doing is overkill,” he says, a little sheepishly. “That’s enough that if you slap them it’ll sting.”

“If I slap someone, I want it to sting.” Dak winks, and Tech inexplicably blushes. “So now you’re, what, roaming the country looking for thistle men to sting with your hair?”

“Not really,” Tech says, although he doesn’t sound upset by how grossly Dak has misestimated what his life is all about. “I just got tired of being one place. But I couldn’t do this without trying to… to… protect myself.”

He’s lying, at least a little bit. But it doesn’t sound like he’s lying about any of the important parts, so Dak lets it go. “What are you going to do if you find them?”

Tech goes still. He’s sitting on Dak’s futon, wearing a pair of Dak’s sweatpants that are too short on him, wearing the same hoodie that he was wearing when Dak found him. He doesn’t look vulnerable but he looks like he belongs, and like he doesn’t know what to do when he feels like he belongs.

“I don’t know,” Tech says at last. “But I’m gonna make it fucking hurt.”

Dak barks out a laugh at that and sinks down onto the futon next to him. “You and me both, my dude,” he says, and Tech half-smiles at that. “Let me fucking tell you, I’m ready to give those thistle men some hell when we find ‘em.”

“You’re looking for them?”

“Not them.”

“Someone?”

“My sister’s kid,” Dak says, and hell, he wasn’t expecting to bring this up, but he’ll see it through. “Max.”

“He’s missing?”

“Disappeared about five years ago.”

“And you think you’re gonna find him?”

“I think-” Dak exhales, as measured as he can make it. “I gotta try, you know?”

“It’s a choice,” Tech says softly. When Dak turns, he’s looking at him like he understands. Like he, more than any other person in Dak’s whole life, understands why Dak uprooted his life and his relationship to try and find a ghost of Max in the wind. “And you made your choice.”

Tech doesn’t look too surprised when Dak reaches a hand out and hooks it behind his neck, but he still breathes in sharply before Dak’s lips meet his. He smells like heather, so much that it’s overwhelming. He also tastes not like heather but like essential oil, and it’s kind of gross, honestly. But his mouth is slick and warm against Dak’s, and his lips part into a sigh as Dak kisses him.

“That was a choice, too,” Dak says, more or less mumbling against Tech’s mouth. “Thought we could use it.”

“You thought right,” Tech says, and then he’s kissing Dak again. Because even if the rest of the world is open and terrifying and full of thistle men and things Dak can’t understand, they can still have this. They can have heather oil and each other, a shield against the danger.

[fairymascot]

the unfathomable rachel amber

how is it possible for a teenage girl to be loved and adored by absolutely everybody?

for fans exploring rachel's character in light of season 1, and quite possibly for deck9 as well, this seemed to be one of the most pressing questions. what about rachel amber was so powerful, so magnetic, so irresistible to everyone around her? what kind of person does it take to leave the same impact on her surroundings that she did?

i've seen a lot of possible answers-- depictions of her as a time traveler herself; depictions of her as ethereal, some sort of goddess, like she was never quite human to begin with. depictions of her as a girl who poured all of herself into meeting other people's expectations, switching from one mask to another so rapidly she almost forgets her true self, and ultimately, deck9's depiction -- as the daughter of the district attorney, who's spent so much of her life acting on and off stage that it's become second nature.

all those takes are creative and engaging, and serve as foundation for compelling characters. but there's one line of thought that i haven't seen expressed before, and that's:

who says it has to be that complicated?

(cut for length.)

many interpretations, including the one that ended up being canon, depicted rachel as an onion. a matryoshka doll. like so much of her is carefully constructed and coordinated, and you have to peel away through layers of pretense and manipulation to get to the real person underneath. but i can't help but think that for someone like rachel, being as well-liked as she is would not have been particularly hard.

rachel was beautiful. max calls her photos 'mesmerizing'. and rachel knew it; she capitalized on that, focused all her efforts on paving a path to becoming a model. regardless of her personality, people would be naturally drawn to her, because the fact of the matter is that beautiful people draw attention and adoration.

her second strongest point is that she didn't care for cliques. within the blackwell bubble, neatly divided between the vortex club elite and the losers not cool enough to get in, that essentially made her a goddess. being of high social standing while refusing to restrict yourself to it is, in that highschool age where one’s image is everything, a near-unthinkable assertion of confidence.

outside of blackwell? that mattered little. when you ask the truckers in the two whales about her, they say things like 'oh, just another teen girl with a pipe dream', 'oh, i remember her-- asked me if i could give her a ride up to cali, once'. outside of blackwell, she was nobody. just another pretty face with aspirations far too big to ever fulfil. but because you play as max, a teenager herself, who is completely immersed in the blackwell bubble, rachel's influence surrounds you almost everywhere you go. it's easy to forget what that girl would've really looked like to any outsiders looking in.

on top of that: the two characters who knew rachel most intimately, who tell you about her in most detail, are chloe and frank. chloe's perception heavily colors max's (and the player's) own, because she is the single most significant character in the story, and the one who means the most to max. so if chloe's dedicated her life to finding rachel, whom she describes with nothing short of reverence, then of course you feel some sense of immense awe towards rachel as well.

then there's frank, who's remarkable in that he's the only one outside the blackwell bubble -- and a grown adult, at that -- who speaks of rachel in such depth. and he shows that exact same reverence towards her as chloe. frank's relative detachment from the rest of the cast is what lends all the more power to this view, and combining his and chloe's descriptions of her, it starts to feel like objective reality. rachel was an angel, a lioness, the most important girl in the whole world.

but let's think about this for a second. chloe and frank's relationships to rachel come from a very similar place. when she enters their lives, they're both lone wolves, jaded, isolated, miserable. and rachel swoops in with her endless beauty, providing them with warmth and kindness when nobody else would... of course she'd become the single shining beacon in their lives. of course they'd idealize her to hell and back. who else in their closed-off little world could even compare?

when you look at her relationship with frank, it's plain to see it wasn't some magical fairytale romance: the letters we find teach us they fought, seemingly often, going as far as to lash out against each other violently. Both Chloe and Nathan insist Rachel was only in it for his stash to begin with -- and though both clearly aren't free from bias, it's easy to imagine that as the common impression onlookers would get from their relationship. and maybe it was the truth; we never got the chance to ask rachel, after all. but in the end, it didn't matter, because she was willing to show frank affection when nobody but his dog would, and that was all it took to make her his savior.

when you break it down like this, there's no real reason to think rachel amber had some sort of jedi mind powers, or a master's degree in human psychology. she needed exactly three things to rise to where she did: beauty, confidence, and kindness.

and in the end, those were the things she suffered for the most.

though deck9 didn't take that route, i think that from looking at rachel's characterization in season 1 alone, it's easy to read her as someone with a compulsive need to be liked. she would literally go around handing out photos of herself to anyone who'd take them -- which you can say is ambitious, a way of getting herself out there, but isn't there also a sense of desperation to it? why would she give her photo to samuel, the school janitor? surely she didn't expect him to be able to kickstart her modeling career?

then there's the unused lines in max's nightmare in episode five, meant to be spoken by rachel. one of them is: 'now i'll never be a star, never be famous. no one will ever see my face again'. rachel hinged SO heavily on her appearance. her plan of getting ahead in life had nothing to do with her perfect 4.0 gpa; it had nothing to do with acting, which deck9 supposedly imposed on her as a means of giving her more depth, because who'd care about some vapid girl who wants to be a model? but that's the duality of rachel amber in season one, the thing that makes her so intriguing: she's a goddess, a force of nature, and yet in so many ways she's just another vain teen girl.

it doesn't take a lot of effort to read the effects of female socialization into rachel's character. girls are taught, from a young age, that their worth is rooted in two main things: their appearance, and their emotional endurance. girls are taught to be kind, to be understanding, to extend endless compassion and forgiveness towards everyone, but most specifically men. it starts as early as kindergarten, where girls bullied by boys are told not to mind it, because 'it just means that he likes you'. and those two traits are absolutely predominant in rachel amber's characterization-- her appearance is, in her eyes, her key to her future. she dreams of having fans. she needs to be admired; she needs to be liked.

and so, she feels compelled to extend sympathy and friendliness to everyone she meets because she needs everyone to like her. in most of her relationships, outside of frank and his drugs, there really doesn’t seem to be any higher motive than that. but because she's hardwired that way, she also instinctively reads too deeply into people, and is far too willing to give them the benefit of a doubt. in her journey to earn sympathy from others, she's been saddled with an overly-empathetic nature.

what her relationships with nathan, frank and jefferson all have in common is that she made the choice to see beyond their dark exterior and look for some hidden depth beneath it; convincing herself nathan was a troubled youth in need of a friend, and that frank was a decent guy whose rocky life led him down an unfortunate path. that jefferson was a tortured soul, some mystery in need of unravelling, who just needs someone to reach into his very core and open him up.

by blindly and indistinctly overextending her sympathy to everyone around her, rachel amber got tangled up with all the wrong people, and got pulled down a horrible, horrible path that she never deserved. the rachel depicted in before the storm-- some kind of all-knowing mind-reader, simply cannot be that same girl. there's nothing about the rachel amber in life is strange to indicate that kind of bottomless profoundness. she was, in many ways, naive. she was shallow, vain, fickle and quick-tempered. she was warm, loving, and kind to a fault.

at the end of the day, when you step back from that little bubble in a dead-end town's highschool she had made her domain, she was a nobody. no powers, no meticulous acting, no boundless wisdom beyond her years.

she really was just another girl.

[lovemesomesurveys]

[created by: -ily-ylm]

We meet again, what's one of the best things you did today? Well, well, well. We meet again. ha. Anyway, it’s only 4:17 and so far I’ve just  ate ramen, watched YouTube videos, and now I’m doing some surveys, which  are all things I like to do.

Does your pet ever harass you when your eating food? She’ll sit by you and just stare. 

Have you ever looked in the mirror and thought, "Oh God, Ew." I avoid looking in the mirror as much as possible for that reason. I keep it short and only when I have to. Otherwise, I avoid looking at myself. And I sometimes use reflective surfaces that don’t make the best mirror because it doesn’t give a clear reflection or I keep my light off when I can see just enough. I’ve become very self-conscious these past few years. More so than ever. 

Name a song that gets stuck in your head now and then:: Random songs get stuck in my head all the time.

Do you have a pair of those big sunglasses? Do you wear them at all? I don’t wear sunglasses.

What’s your favorite flavor or kind of cough drop? The minty ones.

Peanut butter goes best with what one: Honey, jam or chocolate? It goes really well with all 3. Do you like sour candies? What's the most sourest candy you've ever tried? No, not at all. I don’t enjoy the sour taste for one, but also it irritates my mouth.

Is there something you really want, that a friend has?

FREEZE FRAME! Your five years old again...!! - You wake up, and your hungry. What do you want for some num-num's? Probably a chicken mcnugget happy meal.

You're done eating, what toy do you go play with? Barbies.

Your mom is taking you out to go to your favorite place, where is that? Chuck-E-Cheese.

You start crying, what's the reason? What/who made you cry? Probably just from being tired.

It's your 6th birthday! What was the present that made you crazy happy? All things Barbie.

Back To Random Reality... - When two family members are fighting, what do you usually do? Nothing.

Are you good at doing your own makeup? How about others' makeup? I was never great it. I didn’t mess with it too much, I just kept it simple. I definitely wasn’t good at doing someone else’s. 

Do you usually have to or want to drink when attending a party? I felt that way when I was younger and used to drink. My friends were doing it and I wanted to keep up with them. And I was like, I’m in my early 20s this is what you do. Bad way of thinking, but it’s true. Are you a fire-bug? What's something you've lit on fire before? No, I don’t mess around with fire. I’m a scardy cat.

What do you think would happen if you drank coke and then ate Mentos? Wasn’t that myth debunked?

What’s better, mashed potatoes or sweet potatoes? I loveeee mashed potatoes and gravy. I like sweet potato fries, but I don’t eat just sweet potatoes. 

Do you like the smell of men's perfume, such as Axe or Tag? I love the smell of a lot of colognes, but definitely not Axe or Tag. Ew. 

What's your all time FAVORITE freezer food? Do you eat that a lot? I used to love stuff like Pizza Rolls, Hot Pockets, chicken nuggets, pizza, Eggos, and those microwave meals like Healthy Choice and Smart Ones. I ate that kind of stuff all the time, but not so much anymore.

Name one reason why you wouldn’t be friends with someone: If they were arrogant and cocky.

What's your all time very least favorite cereal? I don’t like Special K or “healthy” cereals like that. 

Do you like documentaries? Have you ever watched one and found it boring? Yes to both. 

Did you ever used to make cookies, cakes or pie with your grandma? Sometimes.

Have you ever went into depression just because of one REALLY HORRIBLE day? Depression doesn’t work that way.

Are you easy to get along with? Are you a people person/social butterfly? I think so. No, I’m definitely not a people person or social butterfly. 

What is the one all time most scariest movie you've ever seen in your life? Hm. I don’t know because I’m not scared of horror movies anymore like I used to be. I used to be such a scardy cat. There’s been some I rewatched and I’m like wow, I was scared of that? There are some that are creepy for sure, but I really enjoy horror movies now. And I’m not effected by any of them, like they don’t stick with me or give me nightmares.

We're you ever a fan of macaroni & cheese? Do you like kraft dinner? Yeah. More so when I was a kid, but it’s still good.

Do you and your mom have that motherly daughterly loving relationship? We do. My mom is my best friend.

Do you always like to have a drink with your food? I don’t need to have one, but I usually happen to have something.

Are you scared of online predators, molesters and rapists? Thankfully, I haven’t encountered any of those (that I know of), but I certainly wouldn’t want to. I definitely would be scared.

You have the option to visit Canada!: What place would you like to visit? Lane, where do you recommend? 

Isn't it unfortunate when you get SO sick of a song that used to LOVE? That doesn’t happen much. And if it does, then I just don’t listen to it for a bit but then I go back to it.

What's better, Vodka or Kahlua? Why? Blech.

Do you like Chinese food? What's one of your fave Chinese dishes? I like chow mien, egg rolls, pot stickers, and crab rangoon. I used to love orange chicken, but I can’t eat spicy stuff anymore. :/

Does your tummy make stupid and weird sounds sometimes? Yes, even right after I eat, which completely defeats the purpose. <<< Ugh, same. Or it’ll growl when I’m almost finished and I’m like wtf?? Or it’ll make noises at random times when I’m not eating or feel hungry. I have stomach issues. :/

Do you and your siblings have different colored eyes? My younger brother’s are a lighter brown than mine.

Did the jingle of the ice cream truck annoy you or excite you? I always got excited about it.

Do you think some things are just unbelievably expensive nowadays? Like...? Apple products for sure. I’m such a sucker, though. 

Do you drink to get drunk, or just for the flavor? When I used to drink I drank to get drunk. 

Can you pull off short hair? Do you know someone who can't? I don’t know, but I had really short hair (a “bob” cut) for a few years. 

What's one thing you DON'T have in your purse that you wish you did? I have the things I need.

What do you think of people that talk like a trucker? (Swears profusely): Ehh. It can get to be too much.

Have you ever met a fat man that smelled like a dirty cigar? Uh...

What's your favorite kind of pepper: Green, Yellow, or Red? I can’t spicy stuff anymore. 

When driving, what does the yellow light mean to YOU personally? It means to slow down.

What's the coolest thing you made in sewing class? I’ve never taken a sewing class.

Fave chip brand & flavor: Doritos, Lays, Old Dutch, Ms.Vickies or Cheetos? Doritos Cool Ranch or Nacho Cheese. I used to like the Doritos Fiery Nacho and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, but again I can’t eat that stuff anymore.

Does your cat have a really nice coat, or really nice eyes? Why do you assume I have a cat?

Do you like to have ice in your drinks? Doesn't it dilute the drink though? No, I don’t. 

Is the smell of cigars absolutely DISGUSTING? Yes. Cigarettes and cigars make me feel really sick when around them. The smell and smoke give me a headache, make my heart race, and give me nausea. 

Do you get more bad luck, good luck, or a nice portion of both? I don’t believe in luck, but I’ve had my share of hardships and struggles.

Do you like the bands Paramore, Yellowcard and The Acadamy Is...? I DO! =] Yeah. I was really into them back in the day.

Do you like whip cream and chocolate sauce on top of your coffee sometimes? Whipped cream with like mochas and lattes. 

Do herbs, salts and spices seriously make a difference in your meal? Absolutely. Especially garlic. We add garlic to a lot of our foods in my house. It’s just so good.

[austinpanda]

One Year in Bangor

And oh shit, I just remembered: Today is the one year anniversary of Zach and I arriving in Bangor. We drove from Buffalo, New York and ended up at the Bangor Ramada Inn, where the nice woman advised me they didn’t take cats, before making an exception to allow mine. A hotel employee brought the woman a plate of chicken strips and fries, and it was like Indiana Jones looking at the little gold statue at the far end of the room: ohmygod give me that gimme gimme gimme. After Zach, Sam and I checked in, we went to their Aviator Lounge and I got chicken strips and fries for my dinner. I was not able to keep the food in my stomach, but it was enjoyable eating it, nonetheless. 

Because I’m me, I’m viewing this anniversary as an opportunity to exercise a little self-mockery, thinly veiled as introspection. I shall try not to be too hard on myself. 

So. What have I done with the past year?

We landed in Bangor with enough money to live on.

We found a home and moved in. It’s bigger than our last dwelling, came with a Maytag washer & dryer, has a spare bedroom, and is close enough to McDonald’s that we can smell their frying medium.

Because our address had been created brand new for our trailer, no one’s computer system would acknowledge that it exists. This made it take weeks and multiple, hour-long phone calls to get Spectrum to come give us cable. To this day, DoorDash central calls us after each delivery, because their tracking software shows the driver going to the wrong place, even though they didn’t.

We got snow. We wanted snow, and despite the fact it was a mild winter, we still got a jillion times more snow than Austin did. 

Zach went to some lengths to get a job, only to quit after training because they only wanted to give him two half-shifts per month. 

I went to tremendous lengths to obtain a job I really thought I might like, calling on the benevolence of several good friends who acted as references, only to quit after the first day because I hated it. 

We got a new kitty, and she’s been such a gift. So much more than just a cat. She’s another person for Sam to play with. She’s taught Sam how to play with another cat! Now that she’s free from fleas, ear mites, and butt glitter, she’s all gangly limbs and eyes and purr. We both love her so much, it borders on hilarious.

We made a new friend, Josh, and learned of his wonderful Christmas decorations, and his wonderful hubby and wonderful dog.

We made two new friends, Bryan and Andrew, who are lovely, furry people, with cats, and learned what things they care about.

Pardon the abrupt change in tone, but I also began with a retirement savings of over $70,000, and most of that is gone now. A lot of it was used to live on, and cover emergencies, and a lot of it consisted of big chunks I had to set aside for tax penalties. I can make it last past the end of this year, I think, before things get exciting.

Now might be a good time to point out that the coronavirus is a good portion of the reason Zach and I aren’t working full-time yet. Many of the jobs where I might have enjoyed in my semi-retirement (like at a movie theater, or a dispensary, or a restaurant) have evaporated with the plague, and the ones that remain threaten to expose us to lots and lots of other people who might not be as Covid cautious as we are. America! The only place where you can say, “I’d kinda like a job, but I’d like to not die, too,” and somehow it still feels like a cop-out. 

But every day, at least once a day, we look out our window, and we’re surrounded by tall trees that are changing colors beautifully. We have a couple of sexy, chubby, young neighbors, at least one of whom is gay, based on his T-shirt, and we have fun watching them do rips from a gravity bong on their front porch, and then cough uncontrollably. I’d like to introduce myself to them, but I’m not sure how. “Pardon me, y’all are cute. I like drugs too! Wanna see my light saber?” There’s also a mom unit who lives there, and a trucker dad who’s gone with his truck most of the time. 

All in all, no regrets about moving here. That may change when I run out of money, but I don’t regret leaving Progressive. I don’t regret leaving Austin, and I don’t regret leaving Texas. I only regret the small handful of carefully-chosen humans (like my sister) that I never get to see in person any longer. 

Most nights, my dreams fall into a few oddly specific categories. One thing I dream about, and it feels like this happens most nights, is that I’m someplace wonderful, but I’m only visiting, and my time there is almost up. Every time, the same. I’m in Manhattan, but I’m flying out. I’m in Paris, but I have to leave. I’m someplace covered with beautiful mountains, but it’s the last evening of my stay, and I didn’t get to do the things I wanted to do. 

This move was, in one way, an attempt to free myself from that dream, by putting me in a place that was wonderful, that I wouldn’t have to leave. I don’t think I quite achieved that, because I’m still having the dream. Old Town, Maine, is nice, but it isn’t...grandeur. It’s not Manhattan, or Paris, and it’s not got the mountains we might have enjoyed if the entire fucking state of Colorado weren’t prohibitively expensive, but the weather here is so kind. You don’t have a tiny little alarm in your head all the time saying that the air outside will kill you because it’s so hot. Living at the other extreme just doesn’t have the same psychological weight. “Oh noes, the air outside is cold enough to be life threatening...That’s awesome! Let’s go outside and take pictures of shit!” When last winter ended, we were still at the point where we shovel snow that we didn’t have to shovel, only because (a) there’s snow, and (b) we bought a snow shovel. Fun!

So...yeah. I need the Covid nightmare to end, so I can get an income and become self-sustaining again, but until then, the view out my bedroom window is like a postcard of New England in Maine. I feel like I fit in better here. I feel like I can be a confident person here. I love it here.

[easyfoodnetwork]

What If Nothing But Chain Restaurants Survive? 

Ruth just wanted to eat somewhere — anywhere — that wasn’t a chain

Their vibe had been great on the app, but for their first date, the girl suggested the Garden, and Ruth almost ghosted. It was the newest location, the one on York Boulevard that got spray-painted with anti-gentrification graffiti saying things like, “GO BACK 2 UR SUBURB” a couple weeks back; after cleaning it off, the Garden had made a big show of installing a community fridge. Honestly, Ruth wouldn’t have agreed to go if she couldn’t have walked there from her house. On a Saturday night, York was busy, the outdoor parklet tables overflowing at Torchy’s Tacos and Shake Shack and True Food Kitchen; people with laptops were still hunched in the Go Get ’Em Tiger, and tired-looking parents hauled growlers of beer from the Golden Road pub, maybe with a six-pack of Bud under their arm.

The Garden was the street’s newest addition, its glass exterior covered in long green vines, looking disconcertingly hip and inviting next to the local chain Thai Town, huddled in a former barbershop. The girl, Sierra, was waiting inside, perusing the menu projected on the wall in old-school Italian-joint cursive. She was shorter than Ruth had expected, and the ponytail peeking out from her trucker hat was bright pink. She greeted Ruth with a huge smile, and Ruth tried to act normal; meeting someone after messaging back and forth always felt so unbearable, even worse if they were actually cute. Sierra was cute. They bantered back and forth about whether the cauliflower parm would be good or a disaster, and agreed they could not not get mozzarella sticks. After ordering at the counter, they sat down and a runner immediately brought out a basket of warm breadsticks, the only reminder of the chain that had spawned the Garden.

The breadsticks were the best thing, soft and salty and comforting. Ruth’s cauliflower parm was soggy on the bottom, and Sierra’s vegan alfredo was like slurping nutritional yeast. Their messaging over the app had been playful and cheekily uninformative; now Sierra explained she was a storyboard artist on a kids cartoon about girl superheroes, airing on Prime. Ruth used to lead with her now-defunct Instagram ice cream business, or even her old restaurant in New York, the one that closed. But the endless grind of first dates had sanded down her pride, so she stuck to honesty: She was a corporate chef at Alexa’s.

“So we both work for Amazon,” Ruth said. “What are the odds?”

“Honestly, this isn’t the first time this happened on a date,” Sierra said. “Though you’re the first chef I’ve gone out with. And I brought you to a competitor!”

The Garden was not a competitor; Alexa’s did full table service, with good wines and produce pulled from the Whole Foods pipeline. Every dish was made by a person, at some point, from scratch. Ruth didn’t like how tightly she clung to this. “I appreciate Olive Garden’s way with breadsticks.”

“I was so pumped when this place opened in the neighborhood.”

“It’s not really my style?”

“Then on the next date, take me somewhere with better breadsticks.” She laughed, and Ruth decided she liked her.

Sierra came back to Ruth’s fixer-upper bungalow she’d run out of money to fixer-up, and they made out for a while. It was pleasantly awkward; neither quite knew why they liked the other yet, but what they stumbled onto was promising. Sierra said she’d be back for breakfast the next morning, a move Ruth honestly kind of appreciated because she’d worked a surprise double shift Friday and needed sleep. The next morning, Sierra let herself in with a bag of glossy chocolate Dunkin Donuts and sweet, milky coffee. Ruth asked if this was technically a second date, and Sierra slid her hands up Ruth’s loose T-shirt. The ice melted in the coffee by the time they got to it, but Ruth was glad for the doughnuts, even if they were a little stale.

Both she and Sierra worked 70-hour weeks — animating an empowering kids show was a real nightmare, it turned out — so they stole time together when they could. Mostly, they spent Sundays together, since Ruth was working Saturday nights again, the exact thing selling out was supposed to fix, but Alexa’s kept expanding and taking her chefs to open in Venice and Inglewood and Glassell Park and then she was stuck expediting again. Alexa’s was technically a New American restaurant, built around exclusive deals with farmers and Whole Foods’ zero-waste pledge (if a bunch of bruised peaches went from Whole Foods to Alexa’s house jam, everybody except the cooks who had to scramble to make jam was happy). The menu was shaped by algorithms that analyzed purchases and searches, or that’s what corporate claimed; Ruth would never have put Huli Huli chicken and a brown butter pasta on the same menu, but she had dutifully developed the recipes and watched them sell out night after night.

They were all too salty, fat-laden and yet flat, so perfectly calibrated to please so that they slid into pandering.

Ruth kept putting off taking Sierra out for old-school Italian all the way across town. Instead, on Sundays they’d spend most of the day in bed, ordering in Sweetgreen if they couldn’t remember the last time they had vegetables, or Domino’s if they didn’t need to feel virtuous (mostly, they didn’t). Occasionally, they’d walk down to York or head to Figueroa for brunch. At the Houston’s in a historic former hotel, they always split the spinach artichoke dip, and at the Taco Bell Cantina that opened in one of the many former Mexican restaurants that used to line the neighborhood, they drank shitty bright blue frozen cocktails under a local graffiti artist’s mural that was preserved alongside the Taco Bell logo. Ruth hadn’t gone out this much since moving to Los Angeles, and it felt gross, sometimes, eating nothing but chain food. They were all too salty, fat-laden and yet flat, so perfectly calibrated to please so that they slid into pandering. But it’s not like there was very much else, not anymore.

Late one Sunday morning while Sierra was listing off the usual brunch and delivery options, Ruth tried to express this to her, but all that came out was, “The thing is all these places kind of suck?”

Sierra stared at her phone. “I will not let you slander Domino’s in bed.” One of the characters on her show was obsessed with greasy pizza, and she had personally designed the cheese pull.

“Don’t you miss eating at mom and pops?”

“Taco Bell and the Garden are mom and pops. They’re all franchises.”

“We should make actual memories together.”

“Sharing breadsticks at the Garden is a real memory!”

Ruth took out her phone and started scrolling through Instagram. She found the image of pork belly drenched in a glossy red sauce she’d been thinking of and showed it to Sierra, saying they should try something authentic. So they put on pants and drove to Alhambra and went to this new Hunan restaurant every food person Ruth followed on Instagram was hyping up. When they opened their menus, Sierra let out a snort and pointed to the cute illustrated map of the restaurant’s 50 locations across China.

After that, Ruth’s thrashing about chain restaurants became a thing, mostly a cute joke. Sierra regaled her friends about her obsessive chef girlfriend dragging her to an old-school burger stand literally surrounded by a luxury apartment building (Shake Shack was taking over the lease) and a 7/11 secretly serving Sri Lankan food and a backyard barbacoa set-up, all of them requiring at least an hour in traffic, maybe more. Ironically, this kind of restaurant tourism wasn’t a thing Ruth had had time for when she had her own restaurant, but now that she had gone corporate, sometimes there was such a thing as a slow week, so she could check out other people’s restaurants. Actually, Sierra would continue, the barbacoa stand they’d spent all Sunday seeking out had been glorious, but it was also so sad — the city had raided it the next week. The cooks at Alexa’s told Ruth the city was raiding street vendors all over the city, not just on commercial strips, now that the big chains were lobbying the city to clean up “unsafe” competition.

For Sierra’s birthday, Ruth surprised her with tickets to a secret pop-up supper club high up in Montecito Heights, hosted on a terraced patio overlooking the hazy towers of downtown. It was run by two white, queer chefs, an impossibly attractive tattooed couple, who were maybe 10 or 15 years younger than Ruth; in New York she would have known them, but out here she was so disconnected. There was a land acknowledgment and prompt to send money to a local mutual aid fund, and then 15 small courses of pepino melons over glass noodles, blistered purple okra with popped buckwheat, and hot-smoked salmon collars with a yuzu-miso glaze, broken up by two “palate cleanser” courses: a Spam sando and tiny Magnum ice cream bars. The food wasn’t groundbreaking, but it was seasonal and playful, and Ruth had only a few quibbles over technique: The house sourdough was overproofed, and the popped buckwheat did nothing for the okra.

“So what’d you think?” Ruth said on the ride home.

“Great view,” Sierra said. “That whole house was insane.”

“I really loved the corn pudding, but I’m not so sure about that buckwheat on okra.”

“There were a lot of really pretentious courses, and then, like, tiny ice cream? I wish there’d been more stuff like the bread and butter.”

“Oh, I thought it was overproofed,” Ruth said, but Sierra wasn’t even listening.

“Maybe you’d hate your job less if you did pop-ups like this, too,” Sierra said.

“Who says I hate my job?”

“Ruth, you work for the biggest corporation in the world and you hate chain food.”

“I hate chains because they swept in and took up everyone’s leases after COVID and now no one can open a restaurant.”

“I guess this means you don’t want to go to McDonald’s right now.”

“Why don’t we try to find a taco truck?” But even along Figueroa, which used to be lined with trucks, their bright signs scrolling BIRRIA MULITAS ASADA in the night, no one was out. The Garden was still open, though; Ruth sat in the car as Sierra ran in to get breadsticks.

That week at work, Ruth’s job was to find a use for this new buttermilk the company had sourced. It was genuinely fermented buttermilk, and good quality; it was perfect for biscuits, and if she could find a recipe that worked at scale, Alexa’s could change this dairy farmer’s life. By the end of the week, she had a biscuit she thought worked, and she gave it to the pastry cooks to test for the next night’s service. She even texted Sierra to tell her to swing by early for dinner, the first time she’d invited her to work. Ruth grifted some company time making a fresh batch of the biscuits herself to bring down for Sierra; when she got to the kitchen, she saw the cooks unwrapping a huge frozen pallet of premade biscuits to lob in the oven, next to the batch the pastry cooks had left to rise.

“What the hell is this?”

“We’re A/B testing, apparently,” Alonzo, the new chef, said with a roll of his eyes. “Kyle said these really taste homemade.”

Ruth wasn’t sure what kind of masochism inspired her to bring Sierra a basket with one of the packaged biscuits and one she’d made herself.

Kyle was the efficiency officer sent down from Seattle to oversee what he called Alexa’s “workflow.” He’d already been asking a lot of questions about why there were pastry chefs working here when most desserts could be bought frozen, as if the whole point of Alexa’s hadn’t been to offer a premium restaurant experience.

Ruth wasn’t sure what kind of masochism inspired her to bring Sierra a basket with one of the packaged biscuits and one she’d made herself. Sierra was sitting at the wine bar drinking ginger ale; Ruth tried not to watch her too intently as she munched on first the packaged biscuit, and then Ruth’s.

“Which do you like better?” Ruth said.

“Is this a test?”

“Either you can tell me or let the cameras assessing your expressions take a guess.”

“Wait, are you serious?”

“The cameras are a staff rumor.” But they all wore fitness trackers that monitored the tone of their voices as they spoke to each other and to guests, and produced a rating on “harmony” and “service” at the end of shift. No one shouted in the kitchen. But the servers had learned that only the most obsequious tone of voice got them good customer interaction ratings.

Sierra broke off a piece of both biscuits and chewed thoughtfully. “To be honest, I wish you guys had breadsticks.” She said it with a little flirty smile, trying to deploy it as an inside joke.

“Clearly biscuits aren’t worth the trouble,” Ruth said, and took the basket back.

“So this was a test.”

“One of these is a recipe I’ve spent all week on, from a batch I made myself, for you. The other came frozen out of a box. If my own girlfriend can’t tell that my version is better, then there’s probably not much hope for me here.”

“Babe, I don’t even like biscuits that much —”

“When you get your check, be sure to leave your feedback about breadsticks.”

Sierra asked her to sit down; Ruth made excuses about having to work back in the kitchen, and then hid, taking up space and messing up people’s flow. Kyle would not have approved; the step tracker was probably wondering who was standing stock still during a busy service. At one point, she tried scrolling Instagram to distract herself, and there was a message from one of the pop-up chefs, asking if Ruth could get them a job at Alexa’s until they finished rounding up all their investors, you know? They were sure they’d find a space soon.

“You’ve never cooked for me before,” Sierra said on the car ride home. “Maybe if I’d had your cooking, I would have recognized it.”

“You don’t seem to care much about food, so I don’t see the point.”

“What the fuck, Ruth. I care about you.”

“I mean, the cooking doesn’t make me who I am, right? We used to have to remind each other of that all the time. That we’re more than a job.”

“I work for this huge company and make something I care about. Why can’t you try to too?”

They had the conversation they always had, about how Ruth should start a secret pop-up, and Sierra would do all the branding and promotion, and then she’d get rich investors and live her dream again. The next week, Ruth got her pay docked for rudeness, probably from when she’d snapped at Sierra about the biscuits. On Sunday, they went out to the Garden, and Ruth ate breadsticks until her mouth tasted of nothing but salt.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/34UCH3U https://ift.tt/3bkKdpY

Ruth just wanted to eat somewhere — anywhere — that wasn’t a chain

Their vibe had been great on the app, but for their first date, the girl suggested the Garden, and Ruth almost ghosted. It was the newest location, the one on York Boulevard that got spray-painted with anti-gentrification graffiti saying things like, “GO BACK 2 UR SUBURB” a couple weeks back; after cleaning it off, the Garden had made a big show of installing a community fridge. Honestly, Ruth wouldn’t have agreed to go if she couldn’t have walked there from her house. On a Saturday night, York was busy, the outdoor parklet tables overflowing at Torchy’s Tacos and Shake Shack and True Food Kitchen; people with laptops were still hunched in the Go Get ’Em Tiger, and tired-looking parents hauled growlers of beer from the Golden Road pub, maybe with a six-pack of Bud under their arm.

The Garden was the street’s newest addition, its glass exterior covered in long green vines, looking disconcertingly hip and inviting next to the local chain Thai Town, huddled in a former barbershop. The girl, Sierra, was waiting inside, perusing the menu projected on the wall in old-school Italian-joint cursive. She was shorter than Ruth had expected, and the ponytail peeking out from her trucker hat was bright pink. She greeted Ruth with a huge smile, and Ruth tried to act normal; meeting someone after messaging back and forth always felt so unbearable, even worse if they were actually cute. Sierra was cute. They bantered back and forth about whether the cauliflower parm would be good or a disaster, and agreed they could not not get mozzarella sticks. After ordering at the counter, they sat down and a runner immediately brought out a basket of warm breadsticks, the only reminder of the chain that had spawned the Garden.

The breadsticks were the best thing, soft and salty and comforting. Ruth’s cauliflower parm was soggy on the bottom, and Sierra’s vegan alfredo was like slurping nutritional yeast. Their messaging over the app had been playful and cheekily uninformative; now Sierra explained she was a storyboard artist on a kids cartoon about girl superheroes, airing on Prime. Ruth used to lead with her now-defunct Instagram ice cream business, or even her old restaurant in New York, the one that closed. But the endless grind of first dates had sanded down her pride, so she stuck to honesty: She was a corporate chef at Alexa’s.

“So we both work for Amazon,” Ruth said. “What are the odds?”

“Honestly, this isn’t the first time this happened on a date,” Sierra said. “Though you’re the first chef I’ve gone out with. And I brought you to a competitor!”

The Garden was not a competitor; Alexa’s did full table service, with good wines and produce pulled from the Whole Foods pipeline. Every dish was made by a person, at some point, from scratch. Ruth didn’t like how tightly she clung to this. “I appreciate Olive Garden’s way with breadsticks.”

“I was so pumped when this place opened in the neighborhood.”

“It’s not really my style?”

“Then on the next date, take me somewhere with better breadsticks.” She laughed, and Ruth decided she liked her.

Sierra came back to Ruth’s fixer-upper bungalow she’d run out of money to fixer-up, and they made out for a while. It was pleasantly awkward; neither quite knew why they liked the other yet, but what they stumbled onto was promising. Sierra said she’d be back for breakfast the next morning, a move Ruth honestly kind of appreciated because she’d worked a surprise double shift Friday and needed sleep. The next morning, Sierra let herself in with a bag of glossy chocolate Dunkin Donuts and sweet, milky coffee. Ruth asked if this was technically a second date, and Sierra slid her hands up Ruth’s loose T-shirt. The ice melted in the coffee by the time they got to it, but Ruth was glad for the doughnuts, even if they were a little stale.

Both she and Sierra worked 70-hour weeks — animating an empowering kids show was a real nightmare, it turned out — so they stole time together when they could. Mostly, they spent Sundays together, since Ruth was working Saturday nights again, the exact thing selling out was supposed to fix, but Alexa’s kept expanding and taking her chefs to open in Venice and Inglewood and Glassell Park and then she was stuck expediting again. Alexa’s was technically a New American restaurant, built around exclusive deals with farmers and Whole Foods’ zero-waste pledge (if a bunch of bruised peaches went from Whole Foods to Alexa’s house jam, everybody except the cooks who had to scramble to make jam was happy). The menu was shaped by algorithms that analyzed purchases and searches, or that’s what corporate claimed; Ruth would never have put Huli Huli chicken and a brown butter pasta on the same menu, but she had dutifully developed the recipes and watched them sell out night after night.

They were all too salty, fat-laden and yet flat, so perfectly calibrated to please so that they slid into pandering.

Ruth kept putting off taking Sierra out for old-school Italian all the way across town. Instead, on Sundays they’d spend most of the day in bed, ordering in Sweetgreen if they couldn’t remember the last time they had vegetables, or Domino’s if they didn’t need to feel virtuous (mostly, they didn’t). Occasionally, they’d walk down to York or head to Figueroa for brunch. At the Houston’s in a historic former hotel, they always split the spinach artichoke dip, and at the Taco Bell Cantina that opened in one of the many former Mexican restaurants that used to line the neighborhood, they drank shitty bright blue frozen cocktails under a local graffiti artist’s mural that was preserved alongside the Taco Bell logo. Ruth hadn’t gone out this much since moving to Los Angeles, and it felt gross, sometimes, eating nothing but chain food. They were all too salty, fat-laden and yet flat, so perfectly calibrated to please so that they slid into pandering. But it’s not like there was very much else, not anymore.

Late one Sunday morning while Sierra was listing off the usual brunch and delivery options, Ruth tried to express this to her, but all that came out was, “The thing is all these places kind of suck?”

Sierra stared at her phone. “I will not let you slander Domino’s in bed.” One of the characters on her show was obsessed with greasy pizza, and she had personally designed the cheese pull.

“Don’t you miss eating at mom and pops?”

“Taco Bell and the Garden are mom and pops. They’re all franchises.”

“We should make actual memories together.”

“Sharing breadsticks at the Garden is a real memory!”

Ruth took out her phone and started scrolling through Instagram. She found the image of pork belly drenched in a glossy red sauce she’d been thinking of and showed it to Sierra, saying they should try something authentic. So they put on pants and drove to Alhambra and went to this new Hunan restaurant every food person Ruth followed on Instagram was hyping up. When they opened their menus, Sierra let out a snort and pointed to the cute illustrated map of the restaurant’s 50 locations across China.

After that, Ruth’s thrashing about chain restaurants became a thing, mostly a cute joke. Sierra regaled her friends about her obsessive chef girlfriend dragging her to an old-school burger stand literally surrounded by a luxury apartment building (Shake Shack was taking over the lease) and a 7/11 secretly serving Sri Lankan food and a backyard barbacoa set-up, all of them requiring at least an hour in traffic, maybe more. Ironically, this kind of restaurant tourism wasn’t a thing Ruth had had time for when she had her own restaurant, but now that she had gone corporate, sometimes there was such a thing as a slow week, so she could check out other people’s restaurants. Actually, Sierra would continue, the barbacoa stand they’d spent all Sunday seeking out had been glorious, but it was also so sad — the city had raided it the next week. The cooks at Alexa’s told Ruth the city was raiding street vendors all over the city, not just on commercial strips, now that the big chains were lobbying the city to clean up “unsafe” competition.

For Sierra’s birthday, Ruth surprised her with tickets to a secret pop-up supper club high up in Montecito Heights, hosted on a terraced patio overlooking the hazy towers of downtown. It was run by two white, queer chefs, an impossibly attractive tattooed couple, who were maybe 10 or 15 years younger than Ruth; in New York she would have known them, but out here she was so disconnected. There was a land acknowledgment and prompt to send money to a local mutual aid fund, and then 15 small courses of pepino melons over glass noodles, blistered purple okra with popped buckwheat, and hot-smoked salmon collars with a yuzu-miso glaze, broken up by two “palate cleanser” courses: a Spam sando and tiny Magnum ice cream bars. The food wasn’t groundbreaking, but it was seasonal and playful, and Ruth had only a few quibbles over technique: The house sourdough was overproofed, and the popped buckwheat did nothing for the okra.

“So what’d you think?” Ruth said on the ride home.

“Great view,” Sierra said. “That whole house was insane.”

“I really loved the corn pudding, but I’m not so sure about that buckwheat on okra.”

“There were a lot of really pretentious courses, and then, like, tiny ice cream? I wish there’d been more stuff like the bread and butter.”

“Oh, I thought it was overproofed,” Ruth said, but Sierra wasn’t even listening.

“Maybe you’d hate your job less if you did pop-ups like this, too,” Sierra said.

“Who says I hate my job?”

“Ruth, you work for the biggest corporation in the world and you hate chain food.”

“I hate chains because they swept in and took up everyone’s leases after COVID and now no one can open a restaurant.”

“I guess this means you don’t want to go to McDonald’s right now.”

“Why don’t we try to find a taco truck?” But even along Figueroa, which used to be lined with trucks, their bright signs scrolling BIRRIA MULITAS ASADA in the night, no one was out. The Garden was still open, though; Ruth sat in the car as Sierra ran in to get breadsticks.

That week at work, Ruth’s job was to find a use for this new buttermilk the company had sourced. It was genuinely fermented buttermilk, and good quality; it was perfect for biscuits, and if she could find a recipe that worked at scale, Alexa’s could change this dairy farmer’s life. By the end of the week, she had a biscuit she thought worked, and she gave it to the pastry cooks to test for the next night’s service. She even texted Sierra to tell her to swing by early for dinner, the first time she’d invited her to work. Ruth grifted some company time making a fresh batch of the biscuits herself to bring down for Sierra; when she got to the kitchen, she saw the cooks unwrapping a huge frozen pallet of premade biscuits to lob in the oven, next to the batch the pastry cooks had left to rise.

“What the hell is this?”

“We’re A/B testing, apparently,” Alonzo, the new chef, said with a roll of his eyes. “Kyle said these really taste homemade.”

Ruth wasn’t sure what kind of masochism inspired her to bring Sierra a basket with one of the packaged biscuits and one she’d made herself.

Kyle was the efficiency officer sent down from Seattle to oversee what he called Alexa’s “workflow.” He’d already been asking a lot of questions about why there were pastry chefs working here when most desserts could be bought frozen, as if the whole point of Alexa’s hadn’t been to offer a premium restaurant experience.

Ruth wasn’t sure what kind of masochism inspired her to bring Sierra a basket with one of the packaged biscuits and one she’d made herself. Sierra was sitting at the wine bar drinking ginger ale; Ruth tried not to watch her too intently as she munched on first the packaged biscuit, and then Ruth’s.

“Which do you like better?” Ruth said.

“Is this a test?”

“Either you can tell me or let the cameras assessing your expressions take a guess.”

“Wait, are you serious?”

“The cameras are a staff rumor.” But they all wore fitness trackers that monitored the tone of their voices as they spoke to each other and to guests, and produced a rating on “harmony” and “service” at the end of shift. No one shouted in the kitchen. But the servers had learned that only the most obsequious tone of voice got them good customer interaction ratings.

Sierra broke off a piece of both biscuits and chewed thoughtfully. “To be honest, I wish you guys had breadsticks.” She said it with a little flirty smile, trying to deploy it as an inside joke.

“Clearly biscuits aren’t worth the trouble,” Ruth said, and took the basket back.

“So this was a test.”

“One of these is a recipe I’ve spent all week on, from a batch I made myself, for you. The other came frozen out of a box. If my own girlfriend can’t tell that my version is better, then there’s probably not much hope for me here.”

“Babe, I don’t even like biscuits that much —”

“When you get your check, be sure to leave your feedback about breadsticks.”

Sierra asked her to sit down; Ruth made excuses about having to work back in the kitchen, and then hid, taking up space and messing up people’s flow. Kyle would not have approved; the step tracker was probably wondering who was standing stock still during a busy service. At one point, she tried scrolling Instagram to distract herself, and there was a message from one of the pop-up chefs, asking if Ruth could get them a job at Alexa’s until they finished rounding up all their investors, you know? They were sure they’d find a space soon.

“You’ve never cooked for me before,” Sierra said on the car ride home. “Maybe if I’d had your cooking, I would have recognized it.”

“You don’t seem to care much about food, so I don’t see the point.”

“What the fuck, Ruth. I care about you.”

“I mean, the cooking doesn’t make me who I am, right? We used to have to remind each other of that all the time. That we’re more than a job.”

“I work for this huge company and make something I care about. Why can’t you try to too?”

They had the conversation they always had, about how Ruth should start a secret pop-up, and Sierra would do all the branding and promotion, and then she’d get rich investors and live her dream again. The next week, Ruth got her pay docked for rudeness, probably from when she’d snapped at Sierra about the biscuits. On Sunday, they went out to the Garden, and Ruth ate breadsticks until her mouth tasted of nothing but salt.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/34UCH3U via Blogger https://ift.tt/3gPS2os

[firekissedpiper]

— ✗ 𝔸 𝔻 ℝ 𝔼 ℕ 𝔸 𝕃 𝕀 ℕ 𝔼 '𝕊 𝔸 𝔽 𝕋 𝔼 ℝ 𝕄 𝔸 𝕋 ℍ — ✗ Time Period: Early December, 2018. — ✗ TW: Mentions of sexual assault, domestic abuse. It had all been a blur really, after she’d gotten in the car. Adrenaline had flooded her brain, making every move instinctual, easy. It had dulled the pain of her injuries, given her relief from the rush of turmoil that came with her ordeal – blessing her with a blissful numbness that left her feeling cold enough that it didn’t hurt. She could feel the pounding of her heart, the thrumming of her pulse and the tightness in her lungs. The desire to keep moving, to get away far and fast as possible. She hadn’t taken note to fear the truck driver. To her he was just a means to escape, which was the goal that drove every movement. Adrenaline. She could have used more of it. But as the immediate danger faded, so did that, and it set in. First it was like tuning a radio. With each notch turned up, the sound grew clearer. Only, as the adrenaline slowly left her system, the degrees of agony set in. Everything she’d been blocking out – the broken bones, the bruises, the rips, tears and scrapes, the shattered pieces of her broken heart and mind – it was all there, waiting, and it all rushed in like a tidal wave, threatening to drown her. The pain was awful. She didn’t know what was worse, the agony in her body or the war in her mind. Terror – because any moment, she was waiting for Tomas to find her. For her to be brought back to him to destroy once again. Terror because he had found her over and over again, and he would again. Despair – because everything she had thought she’d known, every bit of strength and will to keep moving had been crushed. Every will and every power she had thought she’d had was ripped from her. Despair because her world had been torn out from under her. Disbelief – because she’d thought she’d been stronger. Even through the beatings, through the emotional abuse and terror, through the whole nightmare, she had still thought there was something left, something there. Disbelief because she had thought she was stronger, and she wasn’t. Anger – because everything that Tomas had taken from her – her pride, her confidence, her energy, her life, her freedom – he’d taken her soul now too. Anger, because he would get away with it, as he always did. Guilt – because she should have gotten him off. Because she should have fought harder. She had known the monster he was, but she had let her own mind convince her she could be free of him. She feared somehow she let him do this, like all the beatings, she had lid there, and shut down. Guilt because he had broken her, and she had let him. Closing her eyes, Piper tried to will all those thoughts away. Years of burying any and all emotions under thick layers of soil should have given her the ability to bury these too. The past year of burying everything Tomas had done to her. The past year, he’d broken her, over and over again – in so many different ways. She had buried that too. Had bottled it and locked it away in the back of her mind. But she couldn’t bury this. She couldn’t hide her fractured spirit, she couldn’t ignore the well of emotion bubbling and brewing inside of her. The only thing she could do was try not to cry too loudly. It didn’t work. The girl whose steel will had once kept her from ever crying in front of someone was now gone, replaced by a broken woman who had lost everything all at once. The silent droplets that had slid over her face had now become rivers, accompanied by a raw, gut wrenching sob. She felt her chest tighten as she let out the hollow sob, her head hanging forward a little as she lost the strength to sit straight and quiet. The adrenaline was gone, and all that was left was pain. It didn’t take long for the trucker to notice. In fact, she was certain it took her longer to notice that he noticed. It took her a moment for his voice to register. She couldn’t think or breathe or hear. It was as if there was nothing in the world utter than the crushing weight. Finally though, his voice rang through her ringing ears. It occurred to her he’d pulled over. “Lady,” he said, his voice was gruff, confused, as if he had no idea what to do. She couldn’t bring herself to respond. The emotion was overwhelming. Not just from the events of the night. Every bottled and buried emotion was coming out now. Everything from the last year. Every slap, every punch, every kick. Every hidden bruise, covered cut or lie about her clumsiness. Every insult, every time he’d called her a “whore”, every time he’d taken away any belief that she was anything other than a failure. It was all hitting her now. She felt every blow again and the words rung in her ears. “Listen, Lady, is there anyone I can call?” More confusion in the accented tone that seemed to be grasping at straws to stop the unusual situation. Light flashed in Piper’s blurry eyes as he turned on one of the overheads. “Oh my god,” another accented drawl. She didn’t know what he saw, but she heard the sound of the truck again. Piper didn’t understand, she felt the pain in her body, there was no doubt about that. Some spots were emitting a constant radiation of agony, others ached and stung. But it was the emotions that wiped her off the board. She couldn’t deal. She had never learned how to. And now when she desperately needed it, she couldn’t. She wasn’t sure how long they drove for. She knew they’d been driving for four hours and thirty six minutes. But then the pain had set in and she stopped watching the clock, stopped counting every minute – stopped thinking about each mile further they got away from Tomas. She couldn’t think of anything. She couldn’t process anything but the constant replay of what had happened. All she could feel was Tomas, still inside her. She remembered how much her legs hurt because of the awkward angle her haphazardly pulled down pants left them at. She remembered how his body kept slamming into hers. She remembered his hands holding her down. She remembered one hand ripping the collar of the sweater dress she’d put on at one point. She remembered the sound of each grunt he released. She remembered the words, his commands. She remembered the terror in her veins and the nausea in her stomach. She remembered the smell of his sweat, the scent of his breath. She remembered the clammy nature of his skin. She felt her stomach turning as she silently begged every god she could think of to just turn it off. The truck came to a stop once more, through the windshield, she saw blurs of lights and other shapes. She couldn’t be bothered enough to try and see what it was. What it could have been. “I’ll be right back,” the voice broke through the haze a bit. But what got her more, was when she felt a hand on her arm. It was like an electric shock. She immediately hauled away, so fast it actually made her head spin. His very touch grated on her skin. At least that’s how it felt. She heard the door open then shut. Then nothing. It was quiet for a minute. There was nothing but the sound of her ragged breathing, her sniffling and the sobs she kept choking up. She just sat there, letting her head rest on the window. It was cool, it made her head hurt less. Then the door opened. “She’s right here. I don’t know what happened to her but she’s…pretty beat up,” it was the trucker’s rugged voice. Piper blinked a few times, confusion breaking through her emotion as she took in the other figures in a jade green. The blinking made the blurriness clearer. It was easier to see through the tears. Then she realized they were nurses. The lights, the other cars. It all hit her rather suddenly. A hospital. No. No. Fear flooded her and some of the adrenaline seeped back in. She scrambled for the handle of the door, grasping it and trying to pull it shut. Her wrist protested the movement. Not that it mattered. The trucker was in the way. Away – she needed to get away. She knew they’d recognize her. She knew they’d tell him. He’d find her. He’d come for her again. “Get away from me!” She screamed. “You won’t take me back, you won’t!” She pushed herself to the other side of the car, sliding across the bench seat and forcing the open the other door. Her same wrist protested, her chest bloomed with a new agony. Her body aching all over. She scrambled out of the car and tried to run. Her legs were too sore, they wouldn’t support her. Her body ached, especially between her legs. Her knees gave out and her legs folded beneath her. She collapsed to the ground. Her knees took the brunt of it. She whimper as they hit the ground. The second time they’d taken a hard fall. Despite the rough texture of where she’d collapse, she flashed back to when she’d been knocked to the ground by Tomas earlier. It only made her panic more. Half crawling, she scrambled away. She could hear them getting closer to her. She knew if they got her she’d been in his hands again. She’d be back to him. Every muscle of her body protested the awkward and panicked movement, but she didn’t stop. She couldn’t stop. In her mind, she was running from him again. Every aching muscle and every movement was away from him. It took her further, closer to freedom. If they got her, he had her. It didn’t take long for them to catch up. “Miss, please stop you’re going to hurt yourself more.” “We can help you, you just have to stop.” “Jeff, we need some help out in the parking lot, J-zone.” “Can’t you make her stop?” Piper’s gaze darted around. Her vision was blurry but she desperately sought and opening or escape, anything. She tried to stumble onto her feet to try and get a better vantage point. But she couldn’t manage it. “Get away from me!” She wailed. “Stay away.” One of the nurses approached her and she smacked her hand away rather violently. Soon, strong hands gripped her arms. She was thrown back into the memory of Tomas gripping onto her. Stopping her from moving. It was him. It had to be. How did he find her already? “Stop, let me go,” she screamed, squirming and kicking as much as she can despite her body fighting her every movement. “Please, please don’t hurt me again. I’ll go back. I’ll listen,” she begged and promised. But the hands didn’t stop. Tears flooded her face again and she saw the blurry shape colored in jade coming at her. Something sharp pricked her inner elbow. She tried to fight harder, but a deep exhaustion hit her like a wave. Suddenly her limbs were like jelly, loose, useless for holding up firm. She tried to fight through it. But the waves eventually pulled her under, and she let herself collapse into that abyss. Darkness took her in its grasp like an embrace. ~~ Piper felt herself slowly coming about. There was the distant sound of voices, but she couldn’t fully understand what they were saying. They were chatting to her. Or about her. She couldn’t tell which. Slowly, the voices got clearer. Feeling started to pour into her limbs. Flexing her arm, she felt pain, restraint at her finger tips. She tried to blink a few times. Fluorescent lights assaulted her eyes, immediately making her want to shut them again. Each time she tried to open her eyes, she shut them again. The bright offending lights were flickering in and out like an old movie on a screen. She watched the image around her distort and change, slowly coming into focus. Tiled ceiling. The long tiles, constructed from foam. She remembered them from somewhere. But the fog pressing on her brain was keeping her from fully grasping it. Everything was in a haze, like there was a curtain existing between her in the moment and the rest of her brain. All that was left was confusion, grasping for strings that she wasn’t sure were even there to hold onto. “Broken ribs.” A memory came flooding back, hitting her like she imagined a car would. She felt something hard driving into her ribs. She saw a black boot. She looked up. Tomas. He was there. She felt the impact, the pain that exploded. Then she was back there, looking up at the lights. “Broken knuckles.” Another memory. She felt her hand curling into a fist, her thumb curling over her other fingers, like someone had taught her to. Her hand was coming up, but there was fear, like she was scared to do it. Her instincts told her to. And she drove the punch home, throwing the weight of her body into it. Bone against bone. Both injured at the impact. She felt the pain radiate through it as the bones fractured. She felt a sick joy as she hoped that his bones had fractured too. “Concussion.” Another. She felt her head smacking against the concrete floor. Felt the pain start in the back of her skull and radiate. She felt her head spinning at the impact. The world was a blur, but his face was there again. Once more, she was looking back up at the lights. “Bruised cervix.” This one was the worse. Each piece came in, another thread of the curtain came away. She felt him pushing into her all over again, his appendage slamming into her, its only concern seeming to be on causing as much possible damage. She heard him bark out his commands. She heard her own voice, heard it begging desperately for him to stop. She heard mumbled promises – which she knew in the moment she would have kept just to make it stop. Then there was no more lights. There was no more women’s voices. There nothing stiff on her fingers. There was him. He was everywhere. His body on hers, taking what was left of hers with reckless abandon. She couldn’t close her eyes now. They blurred with the tears that left her eyes, but she couldn’t close them. "No-no, please st-," she was screaming, it was too much. Bubbling up inside of her, consuming her. The fear, the desperation. Out she had to get out. Away, she needed to be away. ~~ Her body stiffened, her muscles tensing and readying themselves for a fight. They were ready to fend off whatever posed a threat to her. As she slammed into consciousness and sat bolt upright, a loud scream of terror left her. Her heart pounded, her air was coming slow. She felt the sweat slicking her forehead and it only reminded her of where she’d been in her nightmare moments ago. "Help," she let it slip before she fully realized she wasn't there anymore, she wasn't with Tomas, or in the hospital. She was here, the estate. Slowly her muscles relaxed and she looked around the room carefully, uncertainly, terror in her eyes as she tried to regain the ability to remember where she was, that there was no reason to fear here. Tears streamed down her face here too. Turning on her side, she reached up with a shaking hand to wipe the tears away. They just kept coming. That was the worst part of a nightmare. Finding no safety in waking. Finding no security. Finding that it had not been construed as trick of the mind. That was the worst part of the nightmare. Finding it was still so very real in the waking world.

[petelanemoviereviews-blog1]

Alien: Covenant (2017)

“Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair.”

Can easily be summed up as just “eh”. I expected more from Scott just as I did with Prometheus.

Premise: The colony ship Covenant is bound for a far off planet. On board are 2,000 colonists in cryo-sleep. When a neutrino burst hits the ship, the crew is awakened to repair the damage. A radio transmission from a nearby planet is found and they set out to investigate. Upon entering orbit, the crew realize that this planet is even better for colonization. An expedition team is sent down and it soon becomes apparent that this planet is not the idyllic paradise it seems to be. What they find is a nightmare and the sole surviving crew member of the failed Prometheus mission, the android David.

Directed by Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator, American Gangster, The Martian), Alien: Covenant just goes to show that he is “George Lucas-ing” his masterpiece. With the original, what is still to this day so scary is the sense of the unknown, the mystery. Now Scott is beginning to take all of that away by explaining it all to us.

Scott and company tried to address many of the issues fans had with Prometheus. You wanted more gore: you got it. You wanted more aliens: here. You wanted a better script….ummmm. I’ll discuss the script first because it is easily the worst part.

While the script doesn’t have as many holes in it as Prometheus did, it’s still nowhere near where it should be. I question why Scott gave the go ahead for this script as he did with Lindelof’s Prometheus one after he revised it from Spaihts’ original script. For both he should have said; “You’re on the right track but it needs more work.” His previous film; The Martian was great, proving to me that he hasn’t completely lost his marbles and is just in need of a fine script.

The film contains some really bad lines of dialogue. “I’ll do the fingering.” This pertains to a flute and I really hope that was an intentional joke but with the context of the scene and who it’s spoken by, I’m not so sure. There are characters only referred to by name once then take a back seat until it’s time for them to be killed.

Once again the characters are complete morons. Half of the deaths in this movie could have been avoided if they crew had worn protective suits when first arriving on the planet but then you wouldn’t have had a major plot point that takes up a good 30 minutes of the movie. This is due to bad writing. As with Prometheus, just because the air is breathable does not mean it’s entirely safe. There could and probably are unknown pathogens(wink) that humans aren’t biologically accustomed to. This should be in Space Exploration 101 but apparently, that doesn’t exist in this universe. In Prometheus, Holloway took off his helmet after finding that the air was breathable. That was part of his character. In this no one even thinks about protective suits. In Alien the characters were simple space truckers. The characters in this and Prometheus are at the top of their fields, so they shouldn’t be acting like this In some cases you can say they make dumb decisions because they’re scared and not thinking clearly. But they still manage to do incredibly stupid things when they are in their right mind.

As having faith in Prometheus was looked at in a positive way, this sort of jabs at it. The character Oram strongly believes in destiny and is looked down upon. This defeats the message of its predecessor.

I was a bit worried that film would go for more gore to try to deliver scares as so many horror films have been doing for the past twenty or so years. That was my complaint when watching the trailer. Scott of all people should know that more gore does not make a better film. He used it sparingly and when it was necessary in the original. I was mostly proven right. In this, there is a lot of it. So much so, we even get a scene where characters almost comically slip in it. It’s downright gruesome at times and is easily the goriest of all of the Alien films. As you can already tell, it’s darker than Prometheus. It takes most of the mystery out and crams in more action, gore and suspense. Suspense is part of what made Alien so great. Too bad it’s extremely predictable in this.  

There are way too many “Hey remember this scene from the first two Alien films? Here it is again but slightly different” scenes. There are times when it feels like the movie is telling us just to go back and watch the first two. At times it feels like a Ridley Scott movie and at other times it doesn’t. The film doesn’t really take any risks. It’s a retread of every Alien movie to date, even the AVP films which Scott said that he absolutely hates.

All of the aliens are CGI; some of which look really good, others which look really bad as if they needed to be rendered more. There are plenty of scenes involving the creatures where a guy in suit or another practical effect would have looked fine. Also if you wanted to know more about the Engineers, you’re out of luck for this one.

I still can’t figure out why the prologue entitled Last Supper isn’t in the movie but rather on Youtube. It gives us some character development and more time with James Franco’s character who is only in the actual movie for little over a minute.  There’s also another promo called The Crossing that shows David and Shaw en route to the planet. I kept waiting for this scene to show up in the movie. I know there are scenes that have to be cut but these two in my opinion are crucial to the film.

Of all the bad parts in this movie there is still good in it. The cinematography is absolutely beautiful. Where the CG truly shines are the space scenes which evoke memories of 2001: A Space Odyssey. At times it is thrilling and there are at least a few scary scenes. I’ve read a few reviews where the third act was criticized and that there was no pay off. In my opinion there is….at least for what we’ve been sitting through for the last hour and a half. If some generic horror movie elements were taken out, it really could have been something.

Prometheus got one character right and that was David. This film ramps it up to three. Daniels despite a solid performance by Waterston, feels like another Ripley knockoff at times but isn’t necessarily bad. The next is Tennessee played by McBride who obviously provides the comic relief and despite being portrayed as a cliché good ol’ southern boy still delivers one of the best performances in the movie. But once again, Fassbender’s portrayal of both David and a new android named Walter steals the show. Walter is a bit more robotic and sounds like Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Fassbender’s acting gives us more than enough to differentiate between his two roles. David is again the most interesting part of the entire movie and I can’t wait to see the continuation of his story in the next movie.

There is a part of me that really wanted to hate this movie, but all I am is just disappointed. The final score won’t be as low as it should be because I’m still and will always be an Alien fanboy. I should say skip this if you are a hardcore Alien fan such as myself but I won’t because there really are places where this movie shines. True Alien fans will most likely come away at least a little disappointed but may find some of it enjoyable.

The end does give us hope that Alien: Awakening (due in 2019), may be good and there are so many places it could go. Then again, we were promised the same thing at the end of Prometheus and we got Alien Covenant. So I’m not expecting much, but will still be hyping it just as much as I did this one and its predecessor and I’ll be in theater for its midnight premiere. I still have hope that there will be another great Alien movie, it just may not be from Scott. Score: 5.0/10

[mrmichaelchadler]

Fade to White: "Thelma and Louise" Turns 25

This review was originally published on March 30, 2016 and is being republished for Women Writers Week.

“You be sweet to your wife. My husband wasn’t sweet to me, and look how I turned out.” —Thelma Dickerson (Geena Davis) to the cop she just locked inside the trunk of his patrol car at gun point

In 1991, a frazzled homemaker and a put-upon waitress took a road trip in a 1966 Thunderbird convertible that would transform them into a pair of gun-toting, booze-belting, convenience-store-robbing and men-terrorizing outlaws. Yes, “Thelma and Louise” was one wild ride as it boldly gave a genre dominated by male stars—the buddy film—a welcome sex change while making a statement about female fortitude and friendship. 

Director Ridley Scott, who previously proved his prowess with a strong female hero in the form of Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley in 1979’s “Alien," might have been behind the wheel, but it was Callie Khouri’s smartly provocative script and the savvy performances by Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon in the title roles that put a tiger in the tank of this action vehicle.

During its initial run, “Thelma and Louise” did fairly well at the box office, grossing a little more than $45 million domestically. It was nominated for six Oscars—Davis and Sarandon both competed in the lead actress category—with Khouri winning for Best Original Screenplay.  And it stirred up controversy over whether the film was anti-male, as it encouraged audiences to root for these lady lawbreakers after Sarandon’s Louise shoots Thelma’s would-be rapist, and they jointly give a lascivious trucker an explosive lesson in good manners.

The film still holds up and is as relevant as ever, given that the country might be on the verge of electing our first female president at the same time that other politicians are bent on closing Planned Parenthood centers and denying women access to legal and safe abortions.

But as a cinematic event, it feels more like an anomaly than a ground-breaker with lasting impact in Hollywood. While male-driven buddy pics are still as plentiful as ever, there have only been a handful of comparable female efforts. RogerEbert.com critics Christy Lemire, Sheila O’Malley and Susan Wloszczyna take a look at “Thelma & Louise”—25 years later. 

Christy Lemire: OK, so how long had it been since you'd seen “Thelma and Louise”?

Sheila O’Malley: For me, about 10 years.

Susan Wloszczyna: I saw it about five years ago since I was doing an onstage Q&A with Geena Davis at the Sarasota Film Festival. But I noticed other things this time anyway.

Christy Lemire: I saw it several times right around when it first came out, but it may have been about 20 years for me.

Susan Wloszczyna: I've probably watched it around 10 times, though.

Christy Lemire: I noticed SO much that I didn't before. I was in college in 1991. I definitely have the perspective of being a grown woman that I didn't have back then.

Susan Wloszczyna: For some reason, I thought it was funnier when I saw it when it first came out. I took it more seriously with each time I have seen it.

Sheila O’Malley: A lot of the same things struck me as they did when I was a younger woman, mainly the transformations they both go through as they get deeper and deeper down the road. The shucking off of the jewelry. Thelma's drinking. The way both of them are liberated by crime in a way they would never have imagined. Those things are still some of my favorite "bits." The outlaw part of it.

Christy Lemire: Definitely—the stakes are so much clearer and more significant in retrospect. But the loyalty of their friendship and the sacrifice they're willing to make for each other rang more clearly to me this time. It resonated more.

Sheila O’Malley: I actually took it much more seriously as a young woman. Now I see it more as an epic crime-spree, mythic Americana-type thing, only with women. My favorite moment in the whole thing? "Good driving."

Christy Lemire: That's so funny! I felt the opposite.

Susan Wloszczyna: Geena is a hoot when she gets so wrapped up in finding her calling as an outlaw. But it changes a bit when she says, "I feel awake."

Christy Lemire: The jokes like that don't seem forced in a moment of tension as they so often do in action movies.

Sheila O’Malley: To take that moment to compliment your friend on her stunt-driving ... it's such a great detail.

Susan Wloszczyna: They both get something from men that they needed, though. For Thelma, sexual liberation. For Louise, knowing her boyfriend would go out of his way for her.

Christy Lemire: We don't really think of Ridley Scott as a director who does lightness well. But he finds a great balance of tones here.

Susan Wloszczyna: “Matchstick Men” sort of had some of that.

Sheila O’Malley: I so appreciated that having her first orgasm was what really made Thelma turn the corner. In the next scene, when Louise falls apart (discovering the money was gone), Thelma totally takes over. She's claimed that part of herself. I got that as a young woman and I love it even more now. Suddenly, Thelma gets all butch. It's so great.

Christy Lemire: I noticed more about the men this time—both how they're portrayed as cartoonish monsters (Darryl, Harlan, the trucker) and how they're fully-drawn, complicated characters (Madsen, Keitel). And yes! Thelma's sexual awakening. It's a joyous thing, even in the midst of such turmoil.

Sheila O’Malley: I so agree. The complaint that all the men are cartoons is silly. 1.) Because how often are women "cartoons" in movies like this? All the time. And 2.) It's just not true. There's a lot of nuance there. Christy—I totally agree. It's an important part of life and she's been denied that. It really transforms her.

Susan Wloszczyna: I love that Madsen and Keitel were so playing against type. And what to say about Brad Pitt? He wasn’t this good again for a long, long while, until about “12 Monkeys.” I love when he taunts Darryl.

Christy Lemire: Such an exciting discovery. His voice sounded higher back then—he was reedier. But so playful and sexy.

Sheila O’Malley: Brad Pitt rules. I love it when they see him again, and he's perched on that thing by the side of the road, looking like James Dean in “Giant.” Smart actor. He knew exactly what that role demanded and didn't complicate it too much.

Christy Lemire: I recall seeing “Thelma & Louise” with my mom and she was like: "Who is THAT???"

Sheila O’Malley: I felt the same way when I saw it!

Christy Lemire: Right—he's complicated, too. A con artist, but he seems to truly care about satisfying Thelma when she needs it.

Sheila O’Malley: It's an important role, considering he's not just a one-night stand. He ushers Thelma into the world of being alive ... and then of course he has to steal her money because that's who he is ... but he grooved on her and had a blast with her. You need to really get that.

Susan Wloszczyna: So what happened? This movie was so good. There are such classic lines. Like, "I know it's crazy, but I just feel like I got a knack for this shit." You would have thought it would have opened the floodgates for more you-go-girl movies. And it really didn't.

Christy Lemire: And clearly there must have been other smart, insightful scripts by women, about women.

Sheila O’Malley: One of the things I liked about it (and even more in this last viewing) was its ambiguity, something I felt was a little bit lost in the think-pieces—"Oh noes, are we condoning violence?"—at the time. Because Louise shoots the man in cold blood because he says that dirty thing to her. The event is over. I like that. That Callie Khouri put the character out on a limb like that. Men get to be ambiguous. Why not women?

Christy Lemire: I wonder if this would have to be a little indie to get made today.

Susan Wloszczyna: Callie Khouri won an Oscar for this, the first woman I believe to win solo. And then she did “Something to Talk About” and “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood,” and they were OK but not like “Thelma & Louise.”

Sheila O’Malley: If every crime had been "justified,” then we'd have just another moralistic tale about poor, victimized women. This one ... these ladies get OFF on wreaking hell, eventually. No turning back.

Christy Lemire: The movie doesn't judge these women for their actions, which is great. And while they're sexual beings, the film doesn't sexualize them in a way that's gratuitous to please men.

Sheila O’Malley: No, it was very grown-up about sex, actually.

Susan Wloszczyna: Actually it wasn't just adult sex. It was fun sex. For the WOMAN, for once.

Sheila O’Malley: And the undercurrent of lingering PTSD that Louise clearly feels from whatever happened in Texas ... it's all over her face. We never hear the story. We don't need to. It reminded me a bit of Ida Lupino's great rape-culture movie, “Outrage.” How an event like that lingers. I mean, the event was over. They were walking away. He calls her a bitch, and BOOM, she shoots him. In a way, it's indefensible. That's not a criticism. I don't need my Movie Ladies to be role models. I want them to be interesting and complex.

Susan Wloszczyna: Yes. She might not have killed the guy without that haunting her.

Christy Lemire: Before they even leave town, it reveals itself in every part of her life—the perfect tidiness of her hair, her house. She has to have control to feel safe.

Susan Wloszczyna: The way she puts her shoes in plastic bags for their trip.

Christy Lemire: And eventually she learns to let her hair down, literally.

Sheila O’Malley: Christy, Susan: great observations about the neatness of her house and her packing. That was a detail I missed in my early viewings, but it rang loud and clear this last time.

Christy Lemire: In contrast, the production design of Louise's house reflects the chaos she feels to keep up with this demanding, controlling husband.

Sheila O’Malley: Oh yes, that house was a nightmare. I loved how dark it was.

Susan Wloszczyna: I was looking at the article I wrote back in 1991 and how many men and even women felt the need to stand up for the jerk guys in the film. “Anti-male,” it was called. Why wasn't it called pro-women?

Christy Lemire: I had forgotten that Stephen Tobolowsky was in this, speaking of the jerk men.

Sheila O’Malley: And Jason Beghe as the poor weeping cop in the trunk.

Christy Lemire: And it's not anti-male. It shows all different kinds of men. But ultimately it's about women finding a way to define themselves in the midst of them. Also, I realized this time how beautifully the film is paced.

Susan Wloszczyna: By the way, what is with that Rasta guy who blows the pot smoke into the trunk? It comes out of nowhere but I kind of always dig it.

Sheila O’Malley: For me this last time: it was Louise's transformation that really struck me. "I'm going to Mexico." Hair down. It's almost as though she'd been looking for a "way out" her whole life. Like she was born to it. It's not just Thelma who’s "set free." Louise has been dying for a getaway her whole life, probably.

Christy Lemire: It's over two hours and just breezes by. It's so compelling. They're both so excellent in this, you come to care so deeply about them and their journey.

Sheila O’Malley: I agree about the pacing. Not an easy feat, switching back and forth between Thelma and Louise and the cop investigation. I thought it all worked, though. The sense of increasing isolation and desolation. The clouds of dust roaring up behind them, the only car on the road. It's epic. I want women to be in epics, too, in all their bravura and flash and tragedy.

Christy Lemire: It's epic but not overwhelming or numbing the way so many effects-laden epics tend to be today.

Sheila O’Malley: It's human-sized. It's all about these two characters.

Susan Wloszczyna: This is pretty much a perfect script. But while “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” caused a run on buddy films, as did “48 Hrs.” and countless other films, I don't think “Thelma and Louise” did the same.

Christy Lemire: And here we are 25 years later and it's still hard to find films on this scale about strong, smart, brave, funny women. They're comedies—“Bridesmaids,” “Spy,” “The Heat.” Basically anything with Melissa McCarthy.

Sheila O’Malley: It also isn't nihilistic, somehow, even though they become gun-wielding maniacs. The characters are reacting against something, that's very clear. They've had enough. I do agree with Roger Ebert's criticism that the ending— the screen going to white and then the "flashbacks" as the credits roll—was a cop-out. A betrayal.

Susan Wloszczyna: It is even harder. These YA dystopian movies are getting for the birds. Yeah, “The Hunger Games” is fine but what about more Furiosas out there, but in a real time and place?

Sheila O’Malley: It's almost like they had let something pretty powerful out of the bag and then wanted to put it back in again.

Christy Lemire: Right! “Mad Max: Fury Road” is Charlize Theron's movie. Tom Hardy is literally a passenger, even though he plays the title character.

Susan Wloszczyna: I was watching “9 to 5” and even that seems much more in tune to women and their real-life concerns than any comedy out there now.

Christy Lemire: Re: the ending, it's romantic. It's passionate. It feels earned. And the kiss on the lips seals it. Oh my god, I LOVED “9 to 5” as a girl. Saw it so many times.

Sheila O’Malley: It's heart-wrenching. And the golden light on them! “9 to 5” is amazing. Great revenge picture.

Susan Wloszczyna: Sarandon came up with that kiss and only told Davis she was going to do it.

Sheila O’Malley: Wonderful!

Christy Lemire: Such a great moment. A great, pure instinct.

Sheila O’Malley: And the whole film leads up to that moment. It's extraordinary considering how different they are by the ending from who they were at the start. And it was, what, a three-day timeline?

Susan Wloszczyna: By the way, the ending. Fade to white. I think maybe “The Sopranos” should give “Thelma & Louise” some credit. I think it is still a highly controversial conclusion.

Sheila O’Malley: Every step along the way, every role reversal, every gut-check and emotional switch-back, leads them to that moment. There's a feeling of inevitability to it. Susan—it wasn't so much the fade to white, but the happy flashbacks of them having fun as the credits rolled that I didn't care for.

Susan Wloszczyna: Yep. I don't doubt that it had to be that way. Yeah, that sort of undercuts the mystery. No one but you has ever suggested that to me, though.

Sheila O’Malley: I stole it from Roger!

Christy Lemire: I interviewed Geena Davis for this Viceland show I've been working on—“Vice Guide to Film”—for an episode about Ridley Scott. And she said when she read the script, she initially auditioned for the other role, but then they were thinking of giving it to Susan Sarandon. They both had to sign a deal saying they'd agree to be in the film, regardless of which actress got which part. Afterward, she said, she realized that they both ended up in the roles where they belonged. Susan Sarandon is the perfect Louise—she's older, she has wisdom and pain. But it's interesting to imagine them switching parts.

Sheila O’Malley: Christy, I love this casting conversation. Interesting to consider them in the opposite roles, but I agree. Susan Sarandon is seasoned, a leader, a funny and practical actress. Geena Davis is a wild card. The casting as it is works beautifully!

Christy Lemire: And then it's interesting to see Keitel and Madsen—the two good guys—a year later in “Reservoir Dogs.”

Susan Wloszczyna: I would hate for anyone to remake this but, boy, with what is being said and done by certain politicians these days, I wish a real Thelma and Louise could teach them a lesson or two. Trump told a female journalist she was "beautiful" and thought that was OK. That is his version of flicking his tongue at her like that awful trucker.

Sheila O’Malley: There's also a moment that I didn't remember at all: Thelma is robbing the gas station. Louise sits in the car, depressed. She sees two old ladies staring at her through a dusty window. The moment stretches out forever. One of the old ladies almost smiles. Louise goes to put on lipstick and then tosses it out. I am really enjoying thinking about that moment. I don't need to "pin it down" to what it means ... but I like the silent mystery in it.

Christy Lemire: That shot really adds to the mood.

Sheila O’Malley: The movie takes a breath in that moment. A pause. Ridley Scott made something gorgeous and evocative about a moment where a character is just sitting around waiting for the next scene. I loved it. Maybe Louise knows now that she won't get to be an old lady like those two in the window. Who knows?

Christy Lemire: Ah, yes! I like that interpretation.

Sheila O’Malley: That's what I saw, at least, this last time around. The woman smiles at her almost encouragingly, like: "Hello, younger woman, I've been you." And yes, Michael Madsen! Man knows how to wrinkle his forehead in a beguiling way, I can tell you that much!

Susan Wloszczyna: I also like how the waitress in the bar stands up for our heroes. Plus, something about Louise leaving her a big tip even before she takes aim outside.

Sheila O’Malley: Lucinda Jenney! She's great! Yes: Every waitress everywhere would nod knowingly at that "huge tip" line.

Susan Wloszczyna: I just about cried this time when Madsen shows up in person and calls her "Peaches."

Christy Lemire: It's so timeless, and such a great movie for women to see together and celebrate each other. When I was in college, my mom and I used to drive back and forth between school in Dallas and home in Los Angeles. We referred to these road trips as our “Thelma and Louise” adventures. The power of bonding on the road in the middle of nowhere.

Sheila O’Malley: I know, I can't tell you how many road trips I've gone on with a friend and at some point there's a “Thelma and Louise” joke.

Christy Lemire: It's got such a great sense of mood—tense, thrilling, melancholy.

Sheila O’Malley: "Good driving," says Thelma. It gets me every time.

Susan Wloszczyna: I went on a “Gilmore Girls” jag recently and they often reference “Thelma & Louise.” It is sort of like “The Godfather” for women, in a way.

Christy Lemire: It still resonates.

Susan Wloszczyna: I have to confess, my go-to car line is: "Don't drive angry." Maybe I should switch.

Christy Lemire: Well, maybe by doing this talk, we can get women to watch it or re-watch it and have it resonate with them, too.

Sheila O’Malley: It was one of THOSE movies at the time, I do remember that, the kind that get a lot of worried think-pieces, and are they "justified" in what they did, and why are the men so awful, and what's happening to wimmen these days?? It was tiresome then and it's tiresome now. I don't need women to be "strong" in the movies, but I DO need them to be complex and human and watchable. This movie is such a great example of that. I know I had a blast re-watching it. I was amazed at how much of it has "stuck," and how much of it is just part of the landscape of my brain at this point.

Christy Lemire: Anything else we didn't touch on?

Susan Wloszczyna: Guns for one. I have to say that the gun use in this is not like that in a “Dirty Harry” film. It is always justified in some sense and not gratuitous. A girl's got to do what she has to do.

Christy Lemire: And again, the film doesn't shame them for using the gun in any circumstance—the parking lot, the convenience store, blowing up the fuel truck.

Sheila O’Malley: Well, I don't know. By the time they shoot out that trucker's tires, they're pretty much beyond the pale. They just shot that truck up because it felt good. Which I like. I love the moment after they put the cop in the trunk, when they're both loading up the guns, slapping in the clips, as they drive off. It's so bad-ass and poker-faced.

Christy Lemire: But they're abidingly polite about it—toying with the idea of what it means to be "ladylike."

Sheila O’Malley: They're outlaws. And yes, schooling him on his bad manners, which was a beautiful touch. I love how when he approaches them, they perch on the edge of their Thunderbird, and their silhouettes are just like the mud-flap silhouettes.

Susan Wloszczyna: True, but they didn't know it would explode. OK, they do get off on being in charge. But they don't kill the trucker or the cop. They leave breathing holes.

Christy Lemire: Ooh, Sheila, good observation!

Susan Wloszczyna: I noticed that mud flap echo, too.

Christy Lemire: Ooh, Susan, good observation!

Susan Wloszczyna: Thanks, Mom!

Sheila O’Malley: I like them getting off on being outlaws and finding themselves through crime. But yes, they aren't “Natural Born Killers” or anything. They don't want the cop to die, and they don't kill the trucker. But one of the revelations for me was the freedom found in wreaking some hell and not caring anymore. This has been a Male Tradition in films, and I'm happy to see women get a little gun-crazy too.

Christy Lemire: OK, should we wrap up soon?

Susan Wloszczyna: Yes, let's fade to white.

Sheila O’Malley: I think I've said what I need to say ... for now. HA!!!

Christy Lemire: Perfect—sending you both a kiss.

from All Content https://ift.tt/2EqjlEE

[wellmeaningshutin]

Short Story #42: Trauma.

Written: 2/12/2017

Age wasn’t enough to take away her beauty, a couple wrinkles weren’t enough to completely blotch out her elegance that many desperate men had compared to classical art or symphonies. The cancer, though, was enough to make her unappealing to look at. This didn’t matter much to Margret, because she was in too much pain to even care about what people thought about her, and she hardly even cared before her hair started falling out, her appetite disappeared, and living just became painful in itself. There was only one person in her life whose opinion she cared about, and that girl was sitting at her bedside, clutching her hand, trying to calm her and pretend like she didn’t look like a Halloween decoration.

This girl, aged 20, wasn’t Margret’s daughter, even though many people seemed to make that mistake. It was an easy assumption, though, because Margret was 51 and her companion was 20, and they both shared a lot of similarities to each other, so a mother daughter relationship was the easiest one to assume. Naturally, it would surprise people to discover that they were not only unrelated, but also dating each other, so those people who would think it was sweet that a mother and daughter would be so close with each other, would eventually get disgusted, either because of the age gap, because they were lesbians, or sometimes both. Surprisingly, only a few people thought it was strange that they would be dating even though they looked so similar to each other.

Among all of those questions, there was another that the girl would just love to hear, and it was usually along the lines of, “Oh, its so nice you were able to find somebody even with you..” And then they would try to nonverbally and politely hint at her prosthetic arm, like missing an arm would somehow take her out of the dating market. This was very uncommon, but it was still amusing whenever it would come up, especially when some people would make this comment, and then ignore everything else about the relationship.

Margret looked at the girl, straight into her hazelnut eyes, and repeated the demand that she had made every day for the past four days: “Pull the fuckin’ plug already.”

The girl would always smile at her, because it was so funny to hear her swear, which was something she never did until she was ready to die. Then, the girl would stroke Margaret’s hand and tell her, “No.” And they would usually sit there in silence for quite some time, the request forming a wall between them.

However, on this day, the fifth day, she made a second demand after her initial one was shot down. “Tell me a story then.” Not knowing what she wanted, the girl asked her to clarify, and the dying woman responded, sounding like a heavy smoker, saying, “I don’t know, talk about anything. Anything is fucking better than waiting to die.”

“Isn’t all of life just one big wait until death?”

“Don’t be clever girl, I don’t have time for clever.” This comment made the girl giggle. Brushing her lengthy, honey colored bangs out of her face, the girl probed her mind for a story to tell, and finally decided on one that Margaret would probably enjoy.

“Okay, here’s the story of-”

“Wait, shit, don’t start yet.” She had to pause to cough, the girl looked a little confused. “Give me your other hand, the cold one. Then talk.” Putting her prosthetic hand into the withered hand, the girl, once again, began her story.

Her Story:

This is how we met, and I know you already know all of this, since you were there, but you don’t know it the way that I know it. Mystery has always been a part of what attracted you to me, so now that your looks are damaged by your disease, I’ll allow you to see my personality damaged by mine.

Okay, so first off, you’re probably wondering how I really did lose my arm right? Well, that doesn’t really tie into the story of us meeting, so forget about that. I don’t care if you die not knowing about that, because its not really important, and its not as interesting as you think it may be, so don’t ask. I’m giving up some mystery, not all, since my secrets are worse than what’s happening to you right now. Oh, don’t give me that look. I don’t have to tell you a story, you know, I could just walk out of here right now, so be happy with the little things that I’m going to tell you.

Now, you know we both met on that cruise ship when we ended up sitting on those reclining chairs by the pool, both right by each other, soaking in the sun, but what you didn’t know was I knew that you planted yourself there intentionally. Shush now, if you keep interrupting you’ll die without hearing what I have to say. You weren’t as sneaky as you thought you were, and I’m going to be honest: the only reason you probably thought you were was because people give you a lot of leniency because of your looks, but that’s a whole nother can of worms. I knew that you had seen me sit in the same spot for three days in a row, and I knew you planted yourself in the spot next to me, and waited so that we could end up next to each other. Let me ask you a question: what was I doing on that cruise?

Sorry that its a little difficult to get to the point, but you didn’t give me any time to prepare. Okay, lets take this back two weeks before we met, before the cruise ship had even set sail. How old was I back then, like 17? Now, through some misadventures that will take way too long to explain, I ended up hitchhiking through the mountains. I knew it would be a little dangerous, but I always kept a knife on the inside of my jacket, just in case somebody would decide to try anything. And they did try, a lot, because I only had one arm to fight them off with, but a couple of them backed off and let me out of the car when I’d get them to bleed enough. Don’t act so surprised. Not all of the people who picked me up were bad, but when you go across the country you’re going to need a lot of rides, so the chances of running into assholes just gets higher. Anyways, there was one guy who didn’t back off, and I guess that’s the story I’m trying to get at.

So, I was stuck in some town that only existed because of the lumber industry, it was small and incredibly boring, like some part of old America that time had decided to forget about, just like the rest of the country. Nobody really drove through that shit hole, so I had no rides out, and the only reason I was there was because some old guy, seemed really sweet at first, had decided to try to get handsy. So I’m bored, stuck, and almost out of money, so it starts to seem like I’m going to have to pick up a job or something to get enough money to survive, and I get worried that it would lead to me having to settle down in that boring little place, and I could possibly die there. It really freaked me out. One night, however, this trucker is coming through and stops at the unremarkable diner that I ate at every morning at night, and although the guy was the definition of sketchy, like having-a-barbed-wire-tattoo-around-his-neck sketchy, I decided to hitch a ride from him anyway. Die in that town in a while from now, or die in a truck a couple hours later, it didn’t really matter, both were equally awful, so truck it was.

When I was on the road with that guy, I figured the easiest thing to do would be to keep the knife in my pocket, keep my hand in my pocket, never sleep, and get out at the first city we stopped at. This was my plan for about, an hour or so, until he pulled the truck over and made his move for me, telling me I had to pay my fare or something like that. Some lazy excuse for him to justify being a scumbag. I’ve never met a scumbag that was aware he was a scumbag. Anyways, I was ready for him to pull that shit so I went to stab him, the same treatment I used for every other guy who tried the same, but I was only able to knick his side, and in response he knocked me out with one clean blow. Honestly, when I came to I was surprised that I wasn’t dead.

However, after a little while I would wish I was dead.

Now, it took me a while to realize where the fuck I was when I woke up. You don’t mind me swearing right? Alright, cool. So when I first saw the area, it was this dark, cold, metal box basically. The whole room was shaking, and was only like five feet tall so I had like no room to stand up, and it was just kind of uncomfortable in there. After a little while I started to wonder if I was dead, and was just wrong about the afterlife, maybe I had to pay for something bad I did in my past, but I feel like every “bad” thing I’ve done was pretty gray. This box turned out to be in a compartment hidden away in the back of his semi, and after about… a long time of waiting in there (did I mention that I was naked, and even without my prosthetic) it finally stopped vibrating and junk, then there’s some noises outside, and the top starts to open, there’s some blinding light, and I see the trucker and some other guy looking down at me.

Not to long later, and I’m in some abandoned motel somewhere, in a room with a bunch of other girls who are also naked, afraid, and very confused about what was going on. The best bet was that we were all going to end up in the sex trade, and nobody really had any better idea of what was going on. After a while of waiting, we all started to feel stupid for ending up in that situation, started blaming ourselves, even though we shouldn’t of. But whatever, we did what we did. Anyways, we eventually learned what was going on, and it wasn’t even remotely related to the sex trade.

Every day, one girl would be taken from the room, and after a minute or two we would start to hear her screaming, which would go on for a little while, and it was just awful. Like, they were screams I still have nightmares about to this day, so if you ever wondered why I sweat so much in my sleep, its like a 15% chance that it could’ve been because of those screams, but there’s so much other shit that happened… well, I’m getting off track here. Anyways, when there was only like six girls left, we were all crying messes, and kept begging to know what was happening. Somebody came up with the idea that knowing what was going to happen would make the situation easier to accept, than if we were just blindly afraid of what our paranoid imaginations came up with. It was a dumb idea, though, because the next three days were even worse since we knew what was going to happen to us.

Can you guess? Huh? You have any idea? No, I wish it was that. Nope, not rape. Okay, no, no, stop guessing. It looks like its so much effort for you to even talk, I’ll spare the theatrics and just tell you.

They were eating us.

No, I’m not bullshitting you, and I remember when I was told that I thought they were fucking with us too. What they were doing, was they would the girls into some kitchen they had setup, I think it was in the main office or something, and they would just start flaying the girls, slowly, and started cooking them right there were the poor girls could see. Apparently, the first screams would be when they saw what the room looked like, it was awful, there were heads lying around because they didn’t bother to cook these, they just used them as sex toys, by-

It took a little effort, but Margaret put her hand over the girl’s mouth. This wasn’t the type of story she wanted to hear at all. She shook her head slowly, “I’d rather you keep that all to yourself. I guess its better that you have some secrets, some mystery is better than knowing the truth.”

Dismayed, the girl wanted to smack the withered hand off of her face, but she had enough willpower to move it gently. “I thought you wanted a story? I thought you always wanted to know more about me? What happened to the old you, who would lie there in bed and beg to know where I came from, or where some of my scars came from, but now that you start to know and you want out all the sudden? Now, that its clear that I’m damaged goods you-”

“Please, lets not fight. I’m not well, I don’t have long, I don’t want the last thing I remember to be you being upset with me. Lets keep things pleasant, I-”

“Pleasant? Pleasant? Fuck you!” The girl stood up very suddenly, knocking her chair to the ground, but nobody was able to hear the clunk it made over her yelling. “You’re saying you don’t want me to be upset with you, but how am I not supposed to be upset when you’re basically saying you don’t even want to know who I am! I thought this is what you wanted!” Nurses cautiously watched, trying to figure out if they should call for help or let her vent.

“I didn’t know-”

“You didn’t know what? That I’m damaged goods?”

“Please, no, lets be civil.” Margaret’s eyes tried to connect with those of the nurses, but they kept looking away, she needed somebody to agree with her. “I was just saying-”

“What?”

“I was just trying to say, well, calm down, please. Tell me a different story, I don’t need to know-”

“The real me? Is that what you’re trying to say? That you’d rather die with some idea you had of me, but the real hard truth isn’t something you want to deal with? The real me isn’t what you want?”

“Well, I just-”

Slowly and coldly, the girl looked down at the confused and dying woman, whose eyes were  full of tears, and said “I’m leaving, I hope its a long while before you die.” Then she grabbed her purse and stormed out, ignoring the pleas for her to come bag, ignoring the nurses questions, doing all of this stone faced, and it wasn’t until she walked into the vacant elevator, and those doors closed, that she started to break down in tears. She didn’t even select a destination, she just stood in the corner and got everything out.

It didn’t matter if she seemed like the bad guy, like some bitch who left her girlfriend to die alone in the hospital, not willing to bite her tongue and let the old broad die peacefully. Why should she give a shit about what any of those people thought about her? What mattered was that she never talked, and hardly even thought about, her past, and that moment, when she was finally able to muster up the strength to tell that story, have somebody that she loved more than anything understand her, it seemed like she was going to have a weight lifted off of her. She never felt happier than she did when she was finally able to talk about those things, and was finally able to let it go, but she should’ve known better.

Later, when she would get home to her apartment, she would look herself right in the mirror, her makeup looking like an abstract water color painting due to the tears and the screaming she had done into her pillow when she got home. Making eye contact with herself, she said, “Look you sad, dumb bitch. This is why you’ve always been alone, and just because you found somebody for a couple of years doesn’t mean shit, because you had to be somebody other than yourself to get her. This is just further proof about what you already knew: nobody will ever love you, the real you. Fuck you, did you think you were really capable of having any sort of actual relationship, did you think that any amount of affection you gave her would be enough to cushion the colossal—fucking-train-wreck that is your past? Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you-” and it just kind of went on like that for a while, until she broke down again, fell onto the floor, weeping and yelling at herself until she fell asleep.

When she was asleep, she had one of her reoccurring nightmares, which involved her running for a long time trying to get away from something that was chasing her. She never looked back in these dreams because she knew it would probably catch up to her if she took the time to turn her head, a rational response to the irrationality of dream logic. And, like every other time she had this dream, she would eventually reach a dead end, and would cower, waiting for the awful thing that was about to be done to her.