#its just tori and michael

[skateisawesome]

the way my mental health is being held together by one british gay nerd, his rugby lad boyfriend and his depressed older sister.

[greeen-bean]

I think we want different things. I don't want him to resent me.

He'll say he's fine with it now but like in two years he'll start having regrets

She actually so me coded for that

[dreaming-in-daylight]

we all need a michael holden in our lives

[salemontrial]

So if there's something you'd like to try

If there's something you'd like to try

Ask me, I won't say no, how could I?

[sapphicgaygremlin]

i know darcy’s gender exploration wasn’t the main plot but even these small glimpses (cutting their hair, tara using they/them to refer to them when in the car with nick) mean so much god heartstopper is a gift for queers everywhere

[thatbigplanet]

i just finished reading solitaire and. i need to talk about it idc.

ok so first of i really really liked it. i like the way alice osman writes and it was very. relatable.

but i really just cant get over the ending. cus i actually thought that tori and michael wouldnt get together. i HOPED that FINALLY i would read a book where they dont fall in love and just stay friends. i dont know. i just hoped, and honestly thought, that tori was aroace. and obv that doesnt mean you still cant fall in love or whatever but its just so typical and when they kissed and all in the end i was honestly disappointed. i was so happy about their relationship being just platonic because that NEVER happens when its a guy and a girl. they always end up falling in love.

and im gonna be honest i still thought this when they kissed. i thought they would like idfk pull apart and then be like “wait that was wrong. i really like you but not more than a friend” or something. idk its probably stupid, and im sure there are books with aro rep and stuff but i just really hoped this one had that.

[job-ross-the-second]

I'm listening to the audio book of solitare and like HOLY SHIT ITS SO FUCKING GOOD LIKE IF YOU HAVENT READ/LISTENED TO IT WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR LIFE

[radios-universe]

Ok so you're an expert on anything and everything Osemanverse, I have a very important question......

...... what colors do you associate with each book? (I need to know so I can make bracelets/bookmarks for each book)

hope you have a wonderful day/night!

oh my gosh... an expert? well Thank You

it would be hard for me to say any other colour than what the books already are...!!! because they suit them so well and i now just associated them with those colours.

solitaire - pink

radio silence - blue

loveless - purple

iwbft - orange

nick and charlie - yellow

this winter - red

now, if you wanted colours for the heartstopper volumes... That's when it would get a bit complicated. especially because i'm kinda outta colours. except for green and... nope ok just green.

well i would've said yellow for volume 3 but i think green still works..!! it's the colour of the spine...!

volume 4 i would've said purple but it's a lighter purple..!! so like a lavender for vol. 4.

volume 2... light blue. radio silence is dark blue, volume 2 is light blue.

volume 1 is the hardest. i can't do it. it's solitaire pink...!!! if i were to give any of the two pink i'd give it to heartstopper. but what then for solitaire..!!!!!

i don't wanna say Black but. no i don't want to. But.

you might've not been looking for colours for the volumes anyway and if so Phew. worked my brain for that one

[i-cast-zone-of-truth]

SO. After conferring with my partner, we have decided. Our Problem With Heartstopper (a show we both like to be clear). Is NOT that it is "too fluffy." It is 2 other things:

1. The tendency towards a rather PSA tone at times rises to extreme levels re: isaac. It's ok if the aroace character is tertiary!! But if hes gonna have not a lot going on, can he please have one (1) conversation that isnt about amatonormativity?? Or one single flaw pls??

2. The white gays have the worst problems? Elle and Tara are just chillin? Charlie, who while not a gym bro is not femme either, got bullied and James didnt? ....are we saying the light tone can't handle the kinds of problems Tara and Elle and femme gays would have?

And u know what would be great? If Tao was ace! He has a whole personality, and is very friendship-centric. Think about his conflict with Charlie in that context!! And his relationship with Elle too!!

...we concluded that this would make Tao too powerful and it would be too clear that he and Elle should actually be the mains

[invisibleicewands]

Please come and see me because I’ll be dead soon’: how Michael Sheen got sucked into a forever chemicals exposé

An opera-loving member of high society turned eco-activist who was forced into police protection with a panic button round his neck. A Hollywood actor who recorded said activist’s life story as he was dying from exposure to the very chemicals he was investigating. Throw in two investigative journalists who realise not everything is as it seems, then uncover some startling truths, and you have “podcasting’s strangest team” on Buried: The Last Witness.

On their award-winning 2023 podcast Buried, the husband and wife duo Dan Ashby and Lucy Taylor dug into illegal toxic waste dumping in the UK and its links to organised crime. This time, they focus on “forever chemicals”, specifically polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and set out to discover whether one whistleblower may have been decades ahead of his time in reporting on their harmful impact.

“It’s amazing how big the scale of this story is,” says Ashby, as we sit backstage at the Crucible theatre, where they are doing a live discussion as part of Sheffield DocFest. “With this series, we don’t just want it to make your blood turn cold, we want it to make you question your own blood itself.”

It all started when Taylor and Ashby were sent a lead about the work of former farmer’s representative Douglas Gowan. In 1967, he discovered a deformed calf in a field and began to investigate strange goings on with animals close to the Brofiscin and Maendy quarries in south Wales. He linked them to the dumping of waste by companies including the nearby Monsanto chemical plant, which was producing PCBs.

PCBs were used in products such as paint and paper to act as a fire retardant, but they were discovered to be harmful and have been banned since 1981 in the UK. However, due to their inability to break down – hence the term forever chemical – Gowan predicted their legacy would be a troubling one. “I expect there to be a raft of chronic illness,” he said. He even claimed that his own exposure to PCBs (a result of years of testing polluted grounds) led his pancreas and immune system to stop working. “I’m a mess and I think it can all be attributed to PCBs,” he said.

However, Gowan wasn’t a typical environmentalist. “A blue-blood high-society Tory and a trained lawyer who could out-Mozart anyone,” is how Taylor describes him in the series. He would even borrow helicopters from friends in high places to travel to investigate farmers’ fields. Gowan died in 2018 but the pair managed to get hold of his life’s work – confidential reports, testing and years of evidence. “I’m interested in environmental heroes that aren’t cliche,” says Ashby. “So I was fascinated by him. But then we started to see his flaws and really had to weigh them up. My goodness it’s a murky world we went into.”

The reason they were able to delve even deeper into this murky world is because of the award-winning actor Michael Sheen who, in 2017, came across Gowan’s work in a story he read. He was so blown away by it, and the lack of broader coverage, that he tracked him down. “I got a message back from him saying: ‘Please come and see me because I’ll be dead soon,’” says Sheen. “I took a camera with me and spent a couple of days with him and just heard this extraordinary story.”

What Gowan had been trying to prove for years gained some traction in 2007, with pieces in the Ecologist and a Guardian article exploring how “Monsanto helped to create one of the most contaminated sites in Britain”. One was described as smelling “of sick when it rains and the small brook that flows from it gushes a vivid orange.” But then momentum stalled.

Years later, in 2023, Ashby and Taylor stumbled on a recording of Sheen giving the 2017 Raymond Williams memorial lecture, which referenced Gowan and his work. Before they knew it, they were in the actor’s kitchen drinking tea and learning he had conducted a life-spanning seven-hour interview with Gowan before his death. So they joined forces. Sheen isn’t just a token celebrity name added for clout on this podcast; he is invested. For him, it’s personal as well as political. “Once you dig into it, you realise there’s a pattern,” he says. “All the places where this seems to have happened are poor working-class areas. There’s a sense that areas like the one I come from are being exploited.”

Sheen even goes to visit some contaminated sites in the series, coming away from one feeling sick. “That made it very real,” he says. “To be looking into a field and going: ‘Well, I’m pretty sure that’s toxic waste.’” Sheen was living a double life of sorts. “I went to rehearsals for a play on Monday and people were like, ‘What did you do this weekend?’” he says. “‘Oh, I went to the most contaminated area in the UK and I think I may be poisoned.’ People thought I was joking.” Sheen ended up being OK, but did have some temporary headaches and nausea, which was a worry. “We literally had to work out if we had poisoned Michael Sheen,” says Ashby, who also ponders in the series: “Have I just killed a national treasure?”

The story gets even knottier. Gowan’s findings turn out to be accurate and prescient, but the narrative around his journey gets muddy. As a character with a flair for drama, he turned his investigation into a juicy, riveting story filled with action, which could not always be corroborated. “If he hadn’t done that, and if he’d been a nerdy, analytical, detail-oriented person who just presented the scientific reports and kept them neatly filed, would we have made this podcast?” asks Taylor, which is a fascinating question that runs through this excellent and gripping series.

Ashby feels that Gowan understood how vital storytelling is when it comes to cutting through the noise. “We have so much science proving the scale of these problems we face and yet we don’t seem to have the stories,” he says. “I think Douglas got that. Fundamentally, he understood that stories motivate human beings to act. But then he went too far.”

However, this is not purely about Gowan’s story – it’s about evidence. The Last Witness doubles up as a groundbreaking investigation into the long-lasting impact of PCBs. “We threw the kitchen sink at this,” says Ashby. “The breakthrough for us is that the Royal Society of Chemistry came on board and funded incredibly expensive testing. So we have this commitment to go after the truth in a way that is hardly ever done.”

From shop-bought fish so toxic that it breaches official health advice to off-the-scale levels of banned chemicals found in British soil, the results are staggering. “The scientist almost fell off his chair,” says Ashby. “That reading is the highest he has ever recorded in soil – in the world. That was the moment we knew Douglas was right and we are now realising the scale of this problem. The public doesn’t realise that even a chemical that has been banned for 40 years is still really present in our environment.”

To go even deeper into just how far PCBs have got into our environment and food chain, Ashby and Taylor had their own blood tested. When Taylor found 80 different types of toxic PCB chemicals in her blood it was a sobering moment. “I was genuinely emotional because it’s so personal,” she says. “It was the thought of this thing being in me that was banned before I was even born and the thought of passing that on to my children.” Ashby adds: “We’ve managed physical risk in our life as journalists in Tanzania and with organised crime, but more scary than a gangster is this invisible threat to our health.”

In order to gauge the magnitude of what overexposure to PCBs can do, they headed to Anniston, Alabama, once home to a Monsanto factory. “As a journalist, you have an inbuilt scepticism and think it can’t be that bad,” says Ashby. “But when I got there I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I hate to use words like dystopian, but it was. There is a whole massive school that can’t be used. There’s illnesses in children and cancers. It truly was the most powerful vignette of the worst-case example of these chemicals.”

It’s bleak stuff but instilling fear and panic is not the intention. “Obviously, we’re really concerned about it,” says Ashby. “And although the environmental crises we face do feel overwhelming, it is incredible how a movement has formed and how individuals are taking action in communities. The lesson to take from Douglas is that the response doesn’t have to be resignation. It can be agency.”

[skateisawesome]

does anyone else just wanna eat solitaire. like not eat. but that book is scrumptious so excuuse me for taking a bite.

[bored-boring-and-tired]

THIS. he literally does not give a fuck about what other people think. he just wants tori and michael to be happy and he essentially said “screw labels and screw other people, what makes you happy?” and i feel like this is so important.

not only does this have so much power in its immediate meaning (aka what i wrote above this), but it also shows how far charlie has come. he’s so much more confident now, and he’s not scared to say what he thinks. he has opinions. he will share those opinions. he is not afraid to. he does not give a fuck. and also the look on his face when he says it?? help?? he says it so calmly?? like even that shows how comfortable he is with being confident. he’s come so far i swear

[stuffforme2]

Don't write off negative emotiona as being a teenager. Don't say it's hormones and shrug it off. Pay attention!

Before it's to late.

Most of the time adults rationalize themselves not helping teenagers during their depression as them 'being hormonal'or 'jsut being a teenager' and it's jsut accepted. It shouldn't. It's a shitty fuckign excuse that makes no sense. If you see your teen is struggling help even if you think it's them jsut being a teen or hormonal they still need help. You helping them in these small moments stops most of thenhig moments like depression and suicide.

A big thing about solitare and even heartstopper is how the people around us IGNORE issues for the dumbest reasons and then blame the people who are mentally well for not getting help immediately. How could we get help when you just say it's hormones or us being teenagers.

Tori's father saying she needs to try. SHE NEEDS HELP.

Toris friend acknowledging and telling her she's getting worse. Then also not helping and distancing themselves from her.

Michael holden being seen as a freak in school yet no one inquiries why he is like this way the teacher scolding him for not getting good grades instead of trying to help and understand!

Aled and tori are examples of WHAT CAN HAPPEN WHEN YOU DOTN HELP. HELP FOR FUCK SAKE. IT IS NEVER JSUT BEING A TEENAGER. ITS NEVER JSUT HORMONES. WE ARE FULL OF EMOTIONS AND WE NEED HELP LEARNING HOW TO SAFELY RESIDE IN THEM.

Toris attempt could've been stopped. Aled could've gotten better quicker. Michael could have made friends sooner. So many peoples struggles could have been helped. Could have been saved.

Patience kills. Ignorance kills.

Paying attention is love.

[theokusgallery]

YES !!!!! YES THAT IS THE POINT THE DISTORTION IS NOT MEANT TO BE MICHAEL AND HAVING A NAME IS COMPLETELY ANTITHETICAL TO ITS VERY EXISTENCE AS AN ENTITY!!!

It's supposed to be unknown because that's where all the horror comes from ! It's just Creepy Doors That Make You (Feel) Insane !!!! If you know what it is, if you know it's Michael, it loses most if not all of its horror, because now not only do you have a (nice, reassuring, grounding) name to call it, you're aware of what it is and of its danger which means you're never going to open the damn door !!! That's why Helen doesn't survive it -- because she doesn't know that Michael isn't human, and doesn't know what to look for!!

Calling The Distortion "Michael" in the same way people give names to their appliances. Michael The Distortion = Basil The Microwave. That's not really its name and if you call it that it doesn't really fit

[pessimisticgh0st]

Tori is definitely a 'look at the moon' kind of person

Michael seems like a 'look at the sunset' kind of person

Charlie would definitely say 'look at the sea' when him and Nick go the beach

Nick seems like a 'look at the sunrise' kind of person because I bet he's they type who wakes up at 5am and would just try and get a picture of the sunrise on his camera

Aled would 100% always look for the stars and get sad when he can't see them

Frances would absolutely say how every cloud looks like a shape

Tara would say 'look at the trees' when she is driving and they seem to be making a tunnel over her head

Darcy would definitely point out every animal they see because in my mind they seem like a massive animal lover

Elle would point out all the flowers and parts of nature that look pretty

Tao would over analyse every film he watches and goes in massive rants about how 'the door isn't just green' and 'how everything in film has a meaning, even if its not important'

EDIT:

Georgia would definitely have watched every single romcom ever in existance and stay up to 3am reading fanfics

Pip would be a regular at the theatre and the people there would know her by name

Rooney would set up regular meet ups with the Shakespeare society to go and see plays in the theatre

Jason would watch every single scooby doo related thing ever and own tons of merch from it

Angelwould regularly go to concerts and love to get to know people there who loved the same music she did

Lister would definitely organise the best surprise birthday parties for all of his friends

Rowan seems like the kind of guy who you could just come to for anything and would give the best advice

And I think Jimmy would be the type of person who would always notice the things that no one else would

[pickledsprite]

could we pleaseee see some of your sprolden or anyone for that matter head canons

yyeeeessss

• Michael is rlly into brat summer and Tori atp is soooo over it

• michael dislikes tori’s bed since he’s so tall and can’t rlly fit on it

• tori actually doesn’t mind his Michael is touchy with her

• michael winning gold medal at the Olympics (cause he’s just that bitch) and immediately going to see tori

• tori holding michael as he sobs abt said gold medal cause he literally can’t believe it

• tori crying too

• “hey tori have you seen *insert thing here* ?" “Umm its prob up ur butt”

• they religiously watch Young Sheldon

• michael has folders of edits on tiktok

• michael gets lowkey famous bc he’s an amazing athlete (kinda like Simone biles) and he gets edits of himself

• tori kinda finds it creepy (she favourites them)

• their idea of a date for them is going to the movies and then getting fast food to eat in the car

• michael is the passenger princess

• Michael laying on Tori’s boobs as if they’re pillows

• tori playing with michaels hair

• they share a playlist and it can just go from like “hot n cold” by Katy Perry to “miracle” by paramore

I have a bunch more but I’m too lazy to right them anndddd I don’t want this to be too long