#mainly from my fucking job that I’ll be leaving soon anyway but I digress

[shiningstarr15]

Ok brain I know we’ve been through a lot of heavy anxiety and shit lately and our energy is depleted but my motivation is NOT so I’m gonna need you to do me a favor and WORK WITH ME

[devourer--of--books]

Some time ago (and by “some time” I mean a long ass time, oops) Kate (@pumpkinpaperweight) posted an analysis of gold rush by Taylor Swift tracing parallels to Agatha, which this post is clearly inspired by. 

(Go check that one out after you finish reading this post, it’s really good.)

Ever since, I’ve had an entire tagatha x taylor playlist/unfinished post that I don’t think will ever see the light because I’m too lazy to actually finish it. But now I have some spare time and I noticed that,,,, invisible string wasn’t on it.

And that's cause, well, despite the obvious gold fingerglow motif which is very tagatha … you already read the title of the post. It’s more like my own version of of what I would have had happen post-otk (will my epilogue version ever see the light, I wonder) than anything else, but this is my account, in which I am correct all the time and accept no criticism so,,,,

Green was the color of the grass where I used to read at Centennial Park

I used to think I would meet somebody there

Basically, these first two lines are about how Sophie’s egocentrism isolated her and kept her from making genuine connections with people from very early on, until she becomes friends with Agatha and even after that.

Okay, so have you guys ever seen those tiktoks that are like ‘13-year-old me, in black jeans and sneakers, at the beach, reading a book mYstERioUsLy so that when Harry Styles showed up he’d know I’m dIfFeRenT'?

This is the energy I get here. 

Like, Sophie in the start of book one doing all those ‘good deeds’ so set herself apart in the eyes of the school master hoping that he’d bring her to the school where she would meet *drumroll* The One. 

Most of us have, at some point (I hope, otherwise it was just me and that would be so embarassing), tried and failed to channel that main-character-energy to manifest ourselves into a story much more interesting than whatever is going on in your life at the moment. I feel like at the very core, that’s sort of what Sophie was trying to do? It’s a very juvenile feeling and shows just how little Sophie knew about love overall. Love as it is in fairytale books, as opposed to as it actually is.

She thought herself as above everyone else and thought she was entitled to true, unconditional love, which ended up holding her back and isolating her from everyone in the town, save for Agatha, give or take. 

This mindset is what really keeps her from seeing Tedros (and Agatha, and everyone else) as people, rather than characters in her story, and actually connecting with them on a non-superficial level. 

Teal was the color of your shirt when you were 16 at the yogurt shop

You used to work at to make a little money

I don’t think this part needs much explaining? 

On surface level, Nicola canonically started working at her father’s pub at a very young age to help with family expenses.

If you think about it a little more and contrast it with the previous line, though, it highlights the differences between Sophie and Nicola:

Nic works to help her family, learning responsibility and duty, while Sophie barely ever did anything for her father, both out of vanity (and a superiority complex) and out of spite (which is honestly undeserved all the way up to book 3, when Stefan let Callis die and fucking tried to blame Agatha for returning without Sophie and then guilt-tripped her into going to save her, after which he was dead to me lol). Sophie grew with a princess-like mindset, despite being just slightly better off than Nic, given all the villagers save from Callis and Agatha (due to them being outcasts) seem to have a similar income (with the exception of the beggar which I don’t understand and am probably overthinking about, but honestly, it’s a impossible to leave town and people die on the mill all the time, there's no college or whatever, did none of these assholes offer the beggar a job- I’m getting carried away), while Nicola has to shoulder most of the responsibilities due to her dad being sick.

Also, given the *misogyny* I’d be surprised if Nic didn’t have to do all the housework, as the only girl in her house.  

I doubt that the uniform of the pub was teal and given the book timeline she wouldn’t have been 16 in any instances in which Sophie and her met in Gavaldon, but I digress.

Time

Curious time

Gave me no compasses

Gave me no signs

Were there clues I didn't see?

Also kinda self-explanatory in a way?

On one interpretation, it takes Sophie an awful long time to mature and grow into an okay person. She lashed out after Tedros’ rejection because her desire was, when you get down to it, to be loved, even though she didn't understand what love was or how to go about it. She was already loved both by Agatha and by her father but she couldn't see it because the idea of love (romantic, loud, grand-gesture) was so embedded into her, but the clues to it were there all along.

On another, you could argue that Nicola also did not see this coming at all, specially if you consider canon!Nicola rather than fanon!Nicola (why would you, but okay, ignore my Hunter post, go on, stomp on my feelings). Nicola, whose purpose in TCY was to be the new hort-love-interest no one asked for, ending up with her *gag* love-rival? Unexpected, iconic, never done before (never actually done in canon), amazing, mind-blowin-

Bad was the blood of the song in the cab on your first trip to LA

You ate at my favorite spot for dinner

Bad Blood was a smash hit on Taylor’s career, playing on the radio  non-stop during the 1989 era, arguably her peak in terms of mainstream pop and radio plays.

The Tale of Sophie and Agatha was the equivalent in this context, as it was all the rage in Gavaldon after book 3; Sophie’s persona as the Dean Of Evil is solidified and everyone in The Woods knows who she is and read her tale, including Nicola (who already knew who she was, but now had a another version of her to compare to the version she already knew, which hm, did not favour Sophie either way).

I think it’s kind of fascinating how parasocial relationships work in the context of SGE because like, the storian is there as an omniscient narrator, but it doesn’t write everything. Like, does it just expose what the people in the tale feel and think only if it suits the plot or do the tales look just like the SGE books, in some sort of fourth wall break or is it like an actual children’s fairytale, where you just get told actions and have to sort of assume motivations? How does that affect public opinion? I don’t think most people would be too keen on stanning Sophie after reading The Tale Of Sophie and Agatha (cause damn, Sophie does a lot of questionable shit there) but canonically, they do, despite her being the villain, which is something I have opinions on (do I ever not have opinions on things?).

Like, sure there would be Nevers stanning her, but honestly, if they read the tale, wouldn't they be more likely to stan Hester or even Agatha? Cause Sophie almost got both Evers and Nevers killed, doomed everyone in The Woods for a guy, and was overall a horrible person with no regard for actual Good or Evil as balanced things? Isn’t this why The Coven sided with Agatha, like, I don’t get it- Is it stanning out of fear? Cause that’s the only sort of explanation I have, specially for people in Gavaldon, but that’s something I’ll go deeper into in another time.

Anyway, I wouldn’t be surprised if Nic’s first class at SGE was about The Tale Of Sophie and Agatha, given she was originally placed in Evil, due to Dovey and Sophie’s bet, and Evil’s school curriculum was under Sophie’s control, so if you think those classes were anything other than the Sophie-Show, you are wrong.

Now, on to headcanon territory, wouldn’t it be poetic if during her first lunch Nic sat at that tree in the middle of the clearing where Agatha and Sophie used to sit? Not only for ship reasons, but the tree is right in the center, which could relate to how Nic was supposed to be half/half?

Bold was the waitress on our three-year trip getting lunch down by the Lakes

She said I looked like an American singer

It’s a real shame that I don’t remember most of TCY. (But is it really?)

This is kinda of my own personal interpretation of what the OTK epilogue should have been like (and so, it's kind of a spoiler for my ever unfinished rewrite sksnsksn).

Imagine if, instead of that horrid school wedding (kill me now, please), they actually held the respective funerals for all the people lost in the Camelot power-struggle (I’ll take a school funeral, but don’t come at me with school weddings or I’ll lose my shit).

Tedros and Agatha, poor traumatized children, are on their way back to Camelot to try and get stuff back under control and do royal things. Sophie is pretty much on her own, with the remaining faculty of the school, as well as the new kids (yeah, Hort’s staying dead, boo hoo, I’m not sorry sbfhbsdb). Nicola will be returning home to Gavaldon soon, since the school schedule is already messed up beyond repair and everyone is taking some time off anyway. She was only staying there until christmas originally, so might as well.

Public opinion on the main trio is kinda weird at the moment:

Tagatha suffered a coup, then a while laterTedros killed the brother of his usurper, whom had been more popular than him, and well, they do tell people that Japeth killed Rhian, but it’s not like they have receipts? Like, there’s no way to fact check that. They could very well have killed Rhian, we, as bystanders, wouldn’t know? You can bet rumors like these don’t just go away.

And Sophie?

Well, I think public opinion on Sophie was already fear-based rather than coming from a place of admiration for her acts. People aren’t sure of her alliances anymore, and don’t really know how to behave around her so they mainly avoid her. Now that Dovey and Hort are dead and everyone else is resuming their quests, she’ll be pretty much on her own to deal with the aftermatch, which is not only sad, but also probably not healthy. She considers staying with Agatha, but she doesn’t want to add more scandal to the Camelot situation.

So she decides to go back to Gavaldon. Not permanently tho. Just to visit her father and take some time off to decide who could balance her well enough to be appointed as Dean Of Good. 

She'd choose Agatha, but you know, Agatha is kinda busy. Plus, it'd be good to see her father. Watching most of your parental figures drop like flies really puts things into perspective and maybe (just maybe) there's still something to salvage there.

Not many people know she's at Gavaldon, and that's on purpose. For once, Sophie just wants to be left the fuck alone, so she just tries to lay low and not bring unnecessary attention to heself. It's so unlike her to do so that when she walks in to have lunch at Nicola's pub, no one but Nicola even recognizes her.

And if Nicola keeps her company and accompany her on walks, well, it’s no one’s business. Bonding time? Bonding time.

Time

Mystical time

Cutting me open, then healing me fine

Were there clues I didn't see?

You know what these kids need after this Camelot shitstorm? Therapy, that’s what.

There’s no therapy in The Woods, so friendship will simply have to do. Please sir, let these kids heal.

Nicola was dragged to SGE while her father was sick and knew no one there personally, then got dragged again, now into a power struggle where she almost died multiple times, dated a guy, broke up with a guy and I can’t even remember what else but that sounds like a stressful time considering how close together the events from TCY are compared to TSY. What does she want to do now? Will she become a knight? Will she remain in Gavaldon? Does she have to finish school? How have Hunter and her dad been? Whatever went down with her brothers? Why was she important in the first place? Lots to reflect and self-search.

And Sophie. Oh Sophie.

Sophie fell once again for a ‘get-love-’quick’ scheme, not once, but twice! That is not something easy to look in the face and forgive yourself for.

With Rhian, it backfired by hurting everyone she loved, and after the shit Rafal pulled on her, she should have known better. But can you blame her? It’s not like the Rafal thing left her unscratched: you try being in an abusive relationship with a predator, see if you don’t get some trauma. And instead of doing the hard thing and keeping up the work she had been doing on herself she threw her progress out the window the moment Rhian said what she wanted to hear!

After that went belly-up, she at least managed to help her friends, but then later that backfired and she got brain-washed (are we gonna talk about this? disturbing much?). Then, she got fragile enough for her to attempt to find purpose in her life within Hort’s feelings for her, even if she didn’t actually reciprocate those feelings, simply because she was sure of them and they were familiar.

And later, even Hort was taken away from her. 

(Probably for the best, given their attachment had been… precarious, to say the least.)

Therapy, I’m telling you.

A string that pulled me

Out of all the wrong arms right into that dive bar

Something wrapped all of my past mistakes in barbed wire

Chains around my demons

Wool to brave the seasons

One single thread of gold tied me to you

These two would be so good for one another.

I think that being alone when you’re going through something is literally the worst you can do, but when you have someone who just…. gets it, you know? They were there too. They understand. It forms a connection.

After OTK, both of them (Sophie mostly) have enough on their plates for them to go down a dark path to a horrible place. But they don’t. Cause they are here for each other and have their support system to help them.

Does that translate into late nights drinking together after the pub shuts down? Maybe.  Keeping tabs on each other to make sure they’re sleeping and eating right? Yes. Keeping secrets and confessions? You got it.

And then my friends, begins the pining.

Cause, you know, they’re just gals being pals, gals being gay- wait what.

Nicola probably comes to terms with it first, but thinks Sophie is not interested in her like that (she also suspects that Sophie only sees her as Agatha’s stand-in and will drop her eventually once Agatha is no longer in such high demand.) Sophie is, in classic Sophie-fashion, neck-deep in denial, she’s not a lesbian right? she’s boy crazy, she’s not a lesbian-

Except she never felt like this with any of those boys. The only comparison she has is what she feels for Agatha, this feeling of being heard and seen and understood, but-

But Sophie doesn’t want to kiss Agatha.

And in retrospect, she never wanted to kiss anyone like this either.  Tedros who, Rafal who, Rhian who, Hort who, these bitches could never.

Eventually they attend the official tagatha wedding, HELD AT THE CASTLE, as each other’s plus-ones, and well, maybe consider checking my eventual OTK-epilogue for more on this, once it eventually comes out.

Cold was the steel of my axe to grind for the boys who broke my heart

Now I send their babies presents

Very self-explanatory, Tedros may be Sophie’s favorite ex, but he’s still an ex and they will be killing each other if left unchecked for two long unsupervised.

Nicphie as the tagatha baby godparents. Please, YES.

I’m not gonna go into detail because children make me uncomfortable,  I wish this was a joke, haha, but yes, Sophie and Nic pic the presents together and they attend the baby shower together. Are they dating, are they just married but don’t know it yet? I wonder. They're just together and no one really knows what's going on.

Gold was the color of the leaves when I showed you around Centennial Park

Hell was the journey but it brought me heaven

You know what’s funny? I didn’t tell you anything between the wedding and the baby shower. Remember how there was an opening for Dean of Good?

Yeah, too late to send in your resumes, position is already filled.

Sophie shows Nic the ropes of being Dean, or at least that’s how she’ll present it, but they’re still sort of figuring it out together. And that's okay.

They spend summers traveling around, christmas in Gavaldon, new years in Camelot and all is well. Their fingerglow colors now match. But it’s, unfortunately not gold.

Time

Wondrous time

Gave me the blues and then purple pink skies

And it's cool

Baby, with me

Yeah, it’s fucking purple.

I can’t remember if Nic has a canon fingerglow color, but I don’t really care much for canon, do I? I just really like the imagery of it, so it’s blue and pink mixed together. Because, you know I’m a symbolic bitch.

And isn't it just so pretty to think

All along there was some

Invisible string

Tying you to me?

Anyway, I am correct, this is the post.

[seattleboundwritergrl]

Greatest Expectations (Processing this whole motherhood thing...) Part I

As of my writing this (as in this very sentence), my baby, Apollo Marcel, is ten and a half weeks old. Who knows how old he will be when I finish. I expected to be able to write this weeks ago--well, I did and I didn’t. But I will get to that, this whole post is going to be about expectations. I will start by saying, though that I don’t know how long to expect it will take me to write this. I’m typing in the dark as he is asleep but sort of stirring in the bassinet next to the bed. It was a rough night, an overtired night for everyone, and of course I should be sleeping too, but I can’t because my mind is whirring. I am typing slowly because it’s actually been awhile since I’ve used a computer rather than my phone and I’ve even been using voice to text on that more often than not. It feels like I’m actually conversing then, with the people I am messaging most which is mainly my friends with children, especially those in the thick of this newborn phase as well. Also it means I am talking around Apollo which is important. I suppose it is good for him even when I am fretting or venting to these friends. But anyway, I digress...

Expectations. Well, my expectations were fucked from the beginning. When I started trying to get pregnant, even though I was... shit, math, dates... 35? 36? and had been on the pill since a month before my 18th birthday (that I remember clearly), I thought I would get pregnant quickly. In fact I had something like a six month window where I felt like things would work out for my life--so I could teach the class I needed to teach to make maternity leave money and allotting enough time before I expected to have a book out (ha, that’s a whole other set of expectations that got skewed.) I didn’t get pregnant in those six months. In fact, it would take a year beyond those six months and I would get pregnant right before we planned to start fertility treatments in earnest (and I mean besides the acupuncture, the diets, the herbs, the ATMAT massage, etc etc). It was a whole lot of a heartache--a still unwritten essay’s worth of heartache--not to mention really triggering as a sexual abuse survivor. Cue a whole lot of feelings about my body being broken. But the month I got pregnant, I feel like despite month after month of false hope, I knew, I really knew. I knew I was pregnant. I knew the time was perfect. I also knew I was having a boy, even though I’d always wanted a girl. All the bullshit I’d found really hard to swallow on my darkest days over that year and a half of trying--that it will happen when it is meant to, turned out to be true. I’d changed jobs at work and a had a really supportive boss. I’d accrued a lot more PTO. Most important of all, I’d been in therapy for a good stretch of time.

Therapy helped me immensely with my perfectionism, my need to control things, my self-doubt. I worked through the things that caused that, the things I knew would hinder me as a parent. Not all the things, I’m sure. As someone who has been in therapy since she was a teenager, it seems there are always More Things. I thought, because of this, I had some fairly reasonable expectations about how all of this would go and how I would react. I thought, in fact, that I’d done a pretty good job of not having expectations, of being ready to go with the flow. And I do want to give myself credit and say that I did a pretty good job--a way better job than I would have a year or a year-and-a-half earlier--but of course it is impossible (at least for me) to have zero expectations and be totally zen especially about something as huge about bringing a child into the world. So I did my best, but I still had expectations, hopes that weren’t met and I’m still processing them.

Expectation number 1: That my baby would be born into a world where we’d elected the first female president of the United States not one where the piece of garbage running at the helm is a completely unqualified old white man who is a sexual assault criminal and somehow cannot seem to utter the words NAZIS ARE BAD. The election took place the day before we saw our baby’s heart beating for the first time. It was equal parts hopeful and terrifying, especially for someone who put off having kids for so long because she was afraid of bringing one into a dystopian hellscape. Because of the Trump presidency, the weird pregnancy dreams that I was looking forward to (because I am a weirdo who loves having weird dreams) were all nightmares. Like constantly. And I am a white woman living in Seattle. I can’t imagine how pregnant people of color felt during this time. I also expected that I would be able to do more to resist during my pregnancy and maternity leave than I have. I have to remember that this is a long fight and I will be a more active part of it when I have the physical and mental capacity and right now I am focused on growing a white male who will not be a garbage human.

The birth itself also did not go as I’d hoped. I have a NICU nurse for a mother and a Labor and Delivery nurse cousin, so I felt I had a pretty real grasp on how things could go. I would aim for a natural childbirth, but accept that I would have the baby however I needed to in order to assure that he and I were healthy. That’s all that mattered at the end of the day. So I practiced breathing and meditation. I went to childbirth classes and Scott and I practiced the techniques we learned there and through the hypnobirthing resources I’d gathered. I saw the nurse midwives at my practice and went to Centering Pregnancy for my prenatal care. I got a doula, a woman with the best energy I’d ever felt, who I knew would provide the calm support we needed. I spoke honestly with her about my abuse history. I worked on those fears with my therapist. I will say that the one thing I am so proud of, and my doula, Jessica, emphasized how proud I should be, is that I chose to get the epidural when I knew I needed it. Was I as dilated as I thought I would be? No. Did I use the tub as much as I thought? Also no. Did I get to eat the food I’d ordered. Quite unfortunately no. But there came a point where I recognized very quickly that the pain was triggering. That I was screaming NO at my contractions, and my No, obviously was not going to be respected. That soon I would freeze. I would check out and disassociate. That was the one thing I did not want--to disassociate during my son’s birth. So I said, “Platypus Pancakes,” which was my epidural safe word(s). And I felt good about it and my midwife, who had run my Centering group and also knew my history and worked so carefully with me, laughed and told me that that fact that was my code made him love me even more.

However, despite this moment of pride, despite the amazing support of my team and my partner, my birth was still traumatic. Apollo was fine--he was chill throughout the whole thing (well, after breaking the amniotic sac before I had contractions and kickstarting the whole process). There was not a blip on the monitor and for that of course I am grateful, but he was in a slightly bad position (which I suspected because of the pelvic pain I’d had through much of pregnancy) and he was a much bigger baby than anyone expected. Seven or seven and a half pounds, the midwives kept guessing, which seemed right. But ultimately he was 8 pounds 9 ounces. For these reasons, I could not get him out after 5 hours of pushing and was told I needed a cesarean. That 5 hours of pushing had done a number on me. I had horrible back pain, like so bad I was scared I would never be okay and scared I wouldn’t be able to be still on the operating table. It was not helpful that suddenly we were in medical mode. I couldn’t process anything. I couldn’t have another ice chip even though I was dehydrated as fuck. I was told by the emotionally tone deaf anesthesiologist that if my back pain wasn’t managed by the additional epidural or whatever it was they were doing, that they would just put me out. The idea that I would be unconscious for my son’s birth was beyond scary. Unsurprisingly, my blood pressure on the table was extraordinarily high. I wasn’t aware of it--dissociation was happening at that point for sure--but my doula would tell me later that it scared her. That’s why she was trying to get me to breathe. 

 The thing that brought me back in the OR was the doctor’s pronouncement that my son had a big head. I may have even laughed. Of course he did. The size of the male Kuehnert noggin is pretty legendary. But I was still out of sorts--able to watch my baby from across the room as the rubbed him down, able to hear his cries, able to yearn to have him on me right that second as I’d hoped for all along--but definitely not physically or mentally where I expected to be, where I wanted to be. And that has continued to plague me through these past ten weeks.

I think I’ll continue this in another post though because it has gotten long. He allowed me to write most of it in one sitting and is now down for another nap, but this seems a natural stopping point, so... To Be Continued When I Am Able