#secret diary of a fat admirer

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

Doctor Who: Empire of Death Review (Sutekh is, and I Don't Say this Lightly, a BAD DOG)

Here we are: the conclusion to an eight episode run that’s given us such memorable villains as The Slugs That Didn’t Move While On Camera and Cos-Playing Murder-Owls. Look, I said ‘memorable’ not ‘compelling’. In fairness, it also gave us Jinkx Monsoon hamming it up as the deranged deity of music, Maestro, but the more I think about The Devil’s Chord, the more annoyed I become that it got permission to use the Beatles and then only gave 50% of them speakin’ lines, so I don’t want to dwell on it. This time, the Doctor is facing Sutekh, the god of death, who looks a lot more like a jackal in this episode than he did in The Legend of Ruby Sunday (where he looked suspiciously mouse-like from some angles). And, spoiler alert, he’s the best thing in it. Within a few minutes of the episode opening, he’s turned the entire population of Earth to dust, hijacked the TARDIS to serve as his temple and revealed that he’s been following in the Doctor’s wake for countless millennia in order to plant his sleeper agents on every planet the Time Lord has ever visited. As a result, the entire universe falls to his ‘Death Wave’ and reality dies a tragic (and surprisingly sandy) death. Great! That’s a Doctor Who villain worthy of the finale. But how’s the rest of it?

Well, it’s nice that the Doctor actually gets to do things in this episode: seeking out metal in a dead universe order to create an interface that will let him look backwards in time; hunting down Ruby’s mother because Sutekh can’t see her and she might, therefore, be the key to unravelling his dominion, and finally trapping the god of death in a death-trap of his own, “bringing death to death” and therefore reversing all his little shenanigans. For quite a lot of this season (the murder-owls episode and bits of Boom being the exception) his role has been providing exposition and then crying in a corner. For the entirety of the giant slugs one he was reduced to a floating VT in a holographic box, except at the end when he showed up in person to have a good scream and a weep over how stupid and self-defeating racism is. Not so much Doctor Who as Doctor Boohoo, amiright? Oh, fuck off. I’ll write better puns when you start paying me and not a minute sooner. I also liked the Doctor’s solution to the Sutekh problem itself: dragging him through the Time Vortex on a specialised bungee like a bad dog being dragged home from the park, using his death-energy to bring life until he straight-up fucking disintegrates. It’s just the right combination of silly and bad-ass and suits the general tone of Who very well.

I’m not a fan, however, of the stupid bloody speech he gives while doing it, in which he bangs on about how he represents life and killing Sutekh is a violation of his moral code that he has been driven to only by extremis. Piss off. The Doctor kills people with frankly sociopathic frequency. The first thing this incarnation did after parting ways with Fourteen was impale a giant goblin on the spike of a church (which is murder and desecration-of-a-religious-building at once). Peter Capaldi’s Twelve once shot a fellow Time Lord in the head and acted like regeneration was just man-flu, when we know very well it’s a kind of dying and rebirth. He also might have pushed a cyborg out of a balloon to fall to his death. Eleven used post-hypnotic suggestion to convince the entire human race to slaughter the Silence on sight, planted a missile homing beacon on some dude’s ship, blew up a planet-full of Cybermen and fed a completely different god of death potential memories until he imploded. Ten once tricked Mark Gatiss into falling off a tall building (though, in fairness, he wasn’t Mark Gatiss at the time: he was a big lizard-thing). Nine engineered the deaths of the Slitheen, the Jagrofess and the Last Human without a second thought. And that’s just the ones from the modern series that I can think of off the top of my head. Give me an hour on Google and I could come up with more (though it is weird, in retrospect, to realise just how trigger-happy Eleven was). I think it speaks to a bigger problem with Who at the moment: Americanisation. See, American morality is more Kantian; more dependent on rigid, inflexible rules (which is fucking weird for a nation that still practices the barbarism of the death penalty, by the way). Whereas British morality is typically more utilitarian; more predicated on what will do the most practical good in any given situation and therefore laced with innumerable grey areas. The Doctor suddenly being uncomfortable with killing feels like Disney’s influence at work: an attempt to sand down his more alien and hostile edges to make him palatable to an American audience (who originally got into the show because it was a slice of British culture that they couldn’t get from their own country’s entertainment industry. Look, let me put it this way: As a Brit, I don’t watch anime to see British values and ideals recapitulated, I watch it because I find it refreshing to encounter the heroic ideals of a different culture that doesn’t think the way my own culture does. Same thing).

I’m also not best pleased with the plot holes. Ruby meets her mum at the end and it’s revealed that she’s just… some rando. The explanation we get for why Sutekh couldn’t see her is that her identity and absence were of such critical importance to Ruby that they somehow twisted the universe and made her important. Which would be fine, except that only makes sense if Ruby is some sort of cosmic being with reality-bending powers. But if her mum is just some rando (and her dad’s a feckless adolescent, as it turns out), how can she be a cosmic being with reality-bending powers? Was it her time in the TARDIS? No, because the Doctor’s genuinely surprised by her (apparently unrelated ability) to make it fucking snow. If that was the sign of a deeper malaise, you’d think he’d have spent enough time travelling in the TARDIS to spot the signs.

Anyhoo, I’d like to take a moment to address Ncuti Gatwa’s acting. I’ve been saying all season that he’s a good actor and that the show needs to give him more to do with his talents than get all teary-eyed and spout expository dialogue (my phrasing has not, however, been that concise). Now I get to see him being the Doctor, really for the only time aside from Rogue (Boom doesn’t count: it was amazing, but our hero was stranded on a landmine from beginning to end, which limited the scope of things he could do quite a lot). The point is that, while I’m still convinced there’s a good actor in there somewhere, there’s also something missing that each episode director has failed to request and Gatwa has failed to provide spontaneously. I’m talking about something that’s going to sound stupid until you think about it: superfluous movement. Nine, Ten and Eleven (also Fourteen) were constantly in motion; constantly reacting to their environment and interacting with the set in interesting way, whether it was Christopher Eccleston picking up and toying with the random detritus of human culture or David Tenant constantly fiddling with technology, striding off purposefully at the drop of a hat (sometimes in the wrong direction) and just general projecting physicality, or even Matt Smith bouncing around the whole set and occasionally breaking bits off it, the Doctor’s always felt like a being with a lot of energy. Twelve was stiffer and more rigid in his movements, but that was a specific part of his characterisation: he was older, grumpier, more worn-down. Gatwa’s fifteen, however, is characterised as breezy and bombastic… but he never moves more than the script calls for. It’s hard to spot at first: you just have a vague sense that something isn’t right here, but once you’ve realised what it is that’s up, you can’t unsee it. He reacts and interacts only as literally demanded by the script. There’s no superfluous tics, no kinetic flourishes, no playfulness in how he responds to each environment… and it makes both him and the worlds he visits feel flatter and less alive. I don’t want to blame him too much for it: it might be that the show costs so much to make now that he’s been told to be careful and not risk breaking anything, but it is a problem and it reaches its apotheosis in The Empire of Death. Simply put, David Tenant could make a ball-game on a roof feel like a battle for the fate of the world, but even when Gatwa is dragging Sutekh through the Time Vortex and reality is being ripped open around them, his movements are so economical and rehearsed it’s impossible to forget you’re watching a telly show. You feel nothing. Or I didn’t anyway. Maybe you’re less sensitised to this sort of thing than I am. I do watch a lot of media and know a lot about how it gets made, which means I pick up on issues other people miss. So, er, mileage may vary.

Overall, I did quite enjoy Empire of Death. It’s solid enough cosmic fiction, but is also has that ‘first draft’ quality that turned me against The Star Beast. Everything in it is good enough, but no better. I wonder, maybe, if the root of the problem is RTD himself just taking on too large a portion of the writing duties. Running a show and writing scripts for a show are two very difficult, very demanding jobs, which is why the Showrunner usually farms out a lot of the script-writing to people who have the time and energy to do it well. This also leaves the Showrunner free to focus their own writing efforts on the episodes that really matter. For example, would Empire of Death have been better, if RTD hadn’t stretched himself thin personally scribing Dot and Bubble and The Devil’s Chord? Almost certainly.

Here’s hoping he learns how to delegate in time for Gatwa’s second season. And that they start using sets the actors are allowed to actually interact with.

PS. The new sonic screwdriver is rubbish. It looks like a TV remote fucked the Starship Enterprise. I hadn't mentioned that yet, so there ya go.

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

Okay, I don't really buy into these things, cute though they are. But hey, it can't hurt and even if it does diddly-squat, I've still got a cute dog on my dashboard, so I'd only be a fool to myself not to go for it.

[secretdiaryofanfa]

I Bet You Thought You'd Seen the Last of Me!

So, with the original Secret Diary of a Fat Admirer either temporarily suspended or permanently defunct, depending on whether Tumblr can recover my account, I'm establishing this hybrid abomination as either a place-holder or a replacement. Expect, y'know, the usual: a long, harrowing look into the convulsing vortex of our dying culture, punctuated by knob jokes and plugs for my books, both extant (Small Infinities, available as a free download from Culture Matters) and upcoming (Warning: Infohazard, due out with X Press later this year). I'll be taking some time over the next few days to make this space as palatable to look at as possible, as well as splurge some as-yet-unpublished stuff at you. Hopefully, I'll find some of my old peeps or they'll find me. Hopefully I'll pick up some new freaks, too. Who knows. This could be the start of a beautiful friendship... with a bunch of lurking internet perverts who only want me for personal data. More anon. Until then, piss off.

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

Doctor Who: The Legend of Ruby Sunday (Worth the Wait).

In a season that has been decidedly hit and miss (with more of the latter than the former), The Legend of Ruby Sunday stands as a both startlingly detailed and wonderfully well-made. It might even be better than Boom! (the standout for this season so far) but I’m undecided on that one. It’s really astonishing how much of this episode just works, straight off the bat, especially given how many elements are in play at once. And there are are lot of elements. The Legend of Ruby Sunday is a dense, meaty slice of science fiction that feels worthy of the show’s spectacular, confident 2005 return. We have a woman who seems to have been multiplied and scattered across time and space but who, on present day Earth, is a tech billionaire preparing to release a new app that will change life on the planet in some mysterious and unspecified way. We have a time window that lets us see into Ruby Sunday’s equally mysterious past, developed in secret by UNIT (who have been spying on the tech billionaire). We have a dark cloud hanging over the TARDIS itself and ominous portents that He Who Waits is ‘returning’. It’s heavily implied that He Who Waits is something like the Celestial Toymaker but worse; far, far worse. And finally, at the end, we get a big, scary reveal that unveils the tech billionaire as a mere pawn in someone else’s game and the real identity of He Who Waits (and what he has to do with the dark presence lurking around the TARDIS). By golly that’s a lot of things and they all gel together nicely, creating a plot that feels kinetic and energised without feeling rushed.

Unfortunately, in order to review it properly, I’m going to have to spoil the big reveal at the end, so if you haven’t seen The Legend of Ruby Sunday yet, consider this a hearty, two-thumbed recommendation, go watch it, and then come back here for the analysis. SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT.

Done? Okay? Brilliant. So it turns out that He Who Waits is- and there’s no easy way to say it so I’m just going to come right and drop a bombshell on y’all- the no-kidding god of death (Sutekh to his friends). The tech billionaire (Susan, but it doesn’t matter) is one of his vessels, come to bring the gift of death to the noisy, babbling universe while the dark cloud around the TARDIS is Sutekh’s own body, scattered but waiting to manifest. And manifest he does, immediately causing his vessels and harbingers to turn into zombie-things whose merest touch can turn people to dust. Cue the ‘TO BE CONTINUED’ bit and roll the credits, because that, ladies and gents, is how you do a fucking cliff-hanger.

Doctor Who really does seem to be at its best when it’s doing full-on cosmic horror lately (the ridiculousness of The Giggle notwithstanding, it still leant heavily into that vibe; even moreso Wild Blue Yonder). Don’t get me wrong: I wasn’t necessarily a fan of the wishy-washy supernatural elements introduced this season (the stupid bloody fairy circle for 73 Yards can grab its cunty little goblin friends from The Church on Ruby Road and fuck right off), but I’ll forgive them since this is apparently what they were building to. The Doctor- the pinnacle of intelligent, problem-solving rationality- matching wits with a god death embodying the blackest, deepest depths of terror and superstition? Yessity-fucking-please! And the route we took to get here: the reunions and cheer of UNIT overcast and overshadowed with a palpable sense of looming dread as a storm rolls into London, presaging the terror to come. It’s great! It’s even gotten me psyched for the next episode; the final instalment of this season and this story. Well, it’s mostly got me psyched.

See, as much as I enjoyed The Legend of Ruby Sunday, I do worry that one great episode does not equal a trend and that the titanic confrontation promised at the end of this one might not actually be paid off in the sequel. We could end up with the Doctor getting sidelined by other, more active characters, or Sutekh getting nerfed for reasons of plot-convenience. Hopefully the two-parter got written in one mammoth session on one of Russel T. Davies’ more switched-on days and the quality will remain consistent across the halves, because it would be great if this season could end on a bang instead of a whimper.

Sorry. I don’t mean to sound negative while I’m in the middle of praising something. The problem is that this season has been such a mixed bag, it’s hard not to have my opinion of even great episodes coloured by the quality of the episodes that surround them.

Anyway! Back to the positivity! What works here is as much about what the episode doesn’t do as what it does do. We’re not interrupted, for example, by any unnecessary musical numbers (look, I was fine with the Celestial Toymaker having a song-and-dance routine, because he’s that kind of over the top villain, but the number of episodes that ground to a halt for musicals this season was starting to get ridiculous). We’re also mercifully free of rushed romantic subplots (again, Doctor Who plus romance is fine, it just needs awhile to percolate, and if you’re not going to do it properly, you shouldn’t do it at all, BBC). And, most importantly of all, there’s no overt, straight-to-camera speeches about [INSERT RIPPED-FROM-THE-HEADLINES ISSUE HERE]. I’ve broadly agreed with the show’s politics this season (we’re not lost in Tory Chibnal territory here), but I don’t want to hear any point repeated ad nauseum, even a good point. All the focus here is on delivering a proper, well-constructed story and it’s really refreshing.

I have gripes, of course. I appreciate the low-key diss someone slipped past the editorial team by making the god of death look a bit like a mouse. Disney, whose money Doctor Who now depends on is, of course, the ‘House of Mouse’ and it’s fair to say it’s influence is one of the factors slowly killing interest in the show, so yeah: right on whoever came up with that monster design. Unfortunately, it does have the unexpected side-effect of making Sutekh look adorable, which probably isn’t the vibe they were going for. Also, I’ve seen Lenny Rush on Taskmaster and now I’ve seen him in this and he definitely makes a better comedian than an actor. I mean, fair play to the wee fella, I’ve just googled him and he’s only fifteen so it’s totally to be expected that he’s not quite there yet. It just seems weird he’s in a more serious-skewing episode.

Overall, however, The Legend of Ruby Sunday is a refreshing change of pace in a season that’s struggled to find its feet. Hopefully, it’s a blueprint for both the season finale and Ncuti Gatwa’s upcoming second season as the Doctor. This kind of thing is good. This kind of thing can bring fans together. This kind of thing is what the show needs now.

Please, please, Russel T. Davies. MORE OF THIS SORT OF THING.

EDIT: Yes, I'm aware that Sutekh is supposed to look like a jackal, but 'supposed to' is the operative phrase in this context. From the camera angle privileged towards the end of the episode, with the big ears and adorable little whiskers, the motherfucker looks like a mouse, and that will never not be funny to me.

[-mymadfatdiary]

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

First of all, I fancy myself a Knight of the Thimble, but that might be more a vocation than an occupation. Secondly: I have never been more proud of the country in which I was born. The sheer breadth and diversity of the piss-taking on display here is what it truly means to be British. I would also like to point out that THIS BULLSHIT is by no means an isolated incident. A few years ago, the British public were asked to vote on the name of a new polar research ship. There was to be a ceremony with members of the royal family when the name was chosen. Can anyone guess what name my glorious fucking countrymen voted for? I'll tell you: they voted, OVERWHELMINGLY for 'Boaty McBoatface'. Not only was this a wilfully stupid name, chosen purely to screw with the serious scientific researchers associated with the boat and, indeed, the entire royal family... but it was also a homage to a previous very silly name, in which the same insane British public had elected to name an adopted owl 'Hooty McOwlface'. Because, y'know, owls... boats... that whole connection? Obviously, the British public were vetoed by the humourless bastards who run the country and actually make decisions and the ship was named the Sir David Attenborough. However, they did name one of the autonomous subs deployed by the vessel Boaty McBoatface, because if they hadn't done something with the name, my fellow Britons might legitimately have flipped their shit. Which means that right now, even as I write this, there's some very important ecological research being done by a bright yellow submarine with a very, very stupid name.

None of this, however, is as funny as 'proprietor of midgest'.

Tag yourself I’m ‘sampler of drugs’

[themuseandantarctica]

* 𝒒𝒖𝒐𝒕𝒆 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒔 𝒑𝒕. 9

change however necessary.

“Diamonds are sublimely useless.  You cannot eat them or drive them home.”

“Diamonds are nothing more than chunks of coal that stuck to their jobs.”

“I never hated a man enough to give him his diamonds back.”

“Big girls need big diamonds.”

“No pressure, no diamonds.”

“It’s the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time.”

“Keep a diary and one day it’ll keep you.”

“I never travel without my diary.  One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”

“Diary, noun—a daily record of that part of one’s life, which he can relate to himself without blushing.”

“What is a diary as a rule?  A document useful to the person who keeps it, dull to the contemporary who reads it, invaluable to the student, centuries afterward, who treasures it!”

“I can’t help but think some people admire totalitarian regimes not because they want to live in one, but because they want to be in charge of one.”

“Europe is nothing but a collection of unjust dictatorships.  All of humanity must strike these troublemakers with an iron hand if it wishes to regain its tranquility.”

“He’s just a goddamn cannibal asshole.  He’d eat his own mother.  Christ!  He’d eat his own grandmother!”

“I came to carry out a struggle, not to kill people.  Even now, and you can look at me, am I a savage person?  My conscience is clear.”

“Dictators always look good until the last minutes.”

“How long does getting thin take?”

“The one way to get thin is to reestablish a purpose in life.”

“Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.”

“No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat.  Without a brain, you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office.”

“Those magazine dieting stories always have the testimonial of a woman who wore a dress that could slipcover New Jersey in one photo and thirty days later looked like a well-dressed thermometer.”

“The second day of a diet is always easier than the first.  By the second day you’re off it.”

“I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.”

“The difference between art and science is that science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer.  Art is everything else.”

“The difference between a misfortune and a calamity is this: If [name] fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune.  But if someone dragged him out again, that would be a calamity.”

“The difference between fiction and reality?  Fiction has to make sense.”

“The difference between sex and death is that with death you can do it alone and no one is going to make fun of you.”

“The difference between men and women is that, if given the choice between saving the life of an infant or catching a fly ball, a woman will automatically choose to save the infant, without even considering if there’s a man on base.”

“The only difference between suicide and martyrdom is press coverage.”

“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.”

“The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs a lot less.”

“The only difference between doctors and lawyers is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you, too.”

“The only difference between a rut and a grave is their dimensions.”

“The difference between tragedy and comedy: tragedy is something awful happening to somebody else, while comedy is something awful happening to somebody else.”

“All excellent things are as difficult as they are rare.”

“Clever people master life; the wise illuminate it and create fresh difficulties.”

“Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.”

“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.”

“I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way they handle these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.”

“The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else do it wrong without comment.”

“A difficulty is a light.  An insurmountable difficulty is a sun.”

“Out of difficulties grow miracles.”

“A fool often fails because he thinks what is difficult is easy.”

“The crisis is not out there in the world; it is in our own consciousness.”

“A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.”

“To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy.”

“Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘Nice doggie’ until you can find a rock.”

“There are few ironclad rules of diplomacy but to one there is no exception.  When an official reports that talks were useful, it can safely be concluded that nothing was accomplished.”

“Sincere diplomacy is no more possible than dry water or wooden iron.”

“The more original the discovery, the more obvious it seems afterward.”

“The most important of my discoveries have been suggested to me by my failures.”

“There’s two possible outcomes: if the result confirms the hypothesis, then you’ve made a discovery.  If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you’ve made a discovery.”

“One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.”

“Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.”

“The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery.  There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you don’t know how or why.”

“You must be satisfied with making discoveries.  Take care never to offer explanations.”

“You never really know a man until you have divorced him.”

“Ah, yes, divorce, from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man’s genitals through his wallet.”

“My divorce came to me as a complete surprise.  That’s what happens when you haven’t been home in eighteen years.”

“When two people decide to get a divorce, it isn’t a sign that they ‘don’t understand’ one another, but a sign that they have, at least, begun to.”

“The possibility of divorce renders both marriage partners stricter in their observance of the duties they owe to each other.  Divorces help to improve morals and to increase the population.”

“In Hollywood, an equitable divorce settlement means each party getting fifty percent of the publicity.”

“A divorce is like an amputation; you survive, but there’s less of you.”

“The great secret of doctors, known only to their wives, but still hidden from the public, is that most things get better by themselves; most things, in face, are better in the morning.”

“Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.”

“The witch doctor succeeds for the same reason all the rest of us succeed.  Each patient carries his own doctor inside him.  They come to us not knowing the truth.  We are best when we give the doctor who resides within each patient a chance to work.”

“The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.”

“To do the sort of things to a dog that one does to the average medical student requires a license signed in triplicate by two archbishops.”

“My doctor is wonderful.  Once, when I couldn’t afford an operation, he touched up the X-rays.”

“My doctor gave me six months to live but when I couldn’t pay the bill, he gave me six months more.”

“Doctors are men who prescribe medicine of which they know little to cure diseases of which they know less in human beings of which they know nothing.”

“A medical maxim—when you hear hoofbeats, think of horses before zebras.”

“Physicians think they do a lot for a patient when they give his disease a name.”

“First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease named after me.”

“My doctor told me that jogging could add years to my life.  I think he was right.  I feel ten years older already.”

“Specialist: A doctor who has a smaller practice, but a larger house.”

“Doctors will have more lives to answer for in the next world than even we generals.”

“From a dog’s point of view his master is an elongated and abnormally cunning dog.”

“To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.”

“I loathe people who keep dogs.  They are cowards who haven’t go the guts to bite people themselves.”

“A Canadian psychologist is selling a video that teaches you how to test your dog’s IQ.  Here’s how it works: if you spend $12.99 for the video, your dog is smarter than you.”

“Did you ever walk in a room and forget why you walked in?  I think that’s how dogs spend their lives.”

“I’ve seen a look in dogs’ eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.”

“I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult?”

“Doubt grows with knowledge.”

“The press and the public like certainty and affirmation of popular biases.  But real science thrives on the capacity for doubt.”

“Doubt is part of all religion.  All the religious thinkers were doubters.”

“If you can doubt at points where other people find no impulse to doubt, you are making progress.”

“True science teaches, above all, to doubt and to be ignorant.”

“Belief in truth begins with doubts of all truths in which one has previously believed.”

“The great civilizer on earth seems to have been doubt.  Doubt, the constantly debated and flexible inner condition of theological uncertainty, seems to have held people in thrall to ethical behavior, while the true believes of whatever stamp, religious or religious-statist, have done the murdering.”

“A doubt that doubted everything would not be a doubt.”

“You can never do too much drawing.”

[mothandpidgeon]

THE SINS OF THE FATHER - a Molly York story

(gif by @pajamasecrets)

PROLOGUE

MASTERLIST

Characters: Dave York, Molly York (Carol and Alice, too)

Words: 1400

Rating: T

Warnings: character death (canon), loss of a parent, angst, training your daughter to be an assassin?

Summary: Dave York starts training his daughters young. One day Molly might have to put her training to good use...Grappling with the sudden death of her father, Molly York grows up trying to fill the gap he left in her life. And looks for answers.

a/n: So I wrote this drabble the other morning and it got stuck in my head and so here is a Molly York revenge story. I didn't mean for this to be a series but I think I will be posting this in 3 parts so stay tuned for the rest.

Thanks @purplepascal042 for reading this over and being so kind I almost cried!

“Molly, without turning around, how many people are sitting behind you,” Dave asks at the restaurant.

Molly pulls the straw of her milkshake away from her lips, her eyes sliding to their peripheries.

“I don’t remember,” she tells him.

“Sure you do. Trust your gut.”

She sighs and thinks hard, he can see it on her face, recalling the fat couple and the table of teenagers and the bald man sitting at the bar.

“Seven?”

Dave smiles. “Just checking how observant you are. Do you know what observant means?”

“Yeah, Dad,” Molly says, rolling her eyes. She turns around to check her work and Dave can see she’s satisfied with herself when she goes back to her milkshake.

Molly knew it was bullshit even before Capra. She could just feel it.

“An accident.” That’s what Mom had said when she sat Molly and Alice down to break the news to them. Their father, David York, was dead.

“Is he in the hospital?” Alice asked, confusion pulling at her little features.

Mom tried to hold back the fresh round of tears that the question elicited.

“No, baby. I’m sorry, baby,” she said.

Alice was too young to understand and Mom was too broken hearted to explain it. Molly didn’t ask any questions because she didn’t believe it. Dad didn’t have accidents. She’d never seen him trip or drop anything or even stumble over a word. A dark, slick feeling in the pit of her stomach told her something terrible had happened.

“He loved you both very much,” Mom said. And when Molly didn’t respond she asked, “Did you hear me?”

“We were going to play softball on Saturday,” Molly said.

She was lying even now that he was gone. They never played softball or went rollerblading or spent the afternoon at the air and space museum. They had their own adventures. That’s how Molly saw them. Dad sometimes called them missions. He liked to take her shooting on the weekends. Or they’d go hiking. Occasionally they would just go for a jog in the park and then Molly would practice her karate. She loved sharing these secrets with her dad. And if she kept on lying about their missions, maybe they didn’t have to be over.

Molly felt numb. She kept waiting for Dad to come back. But he never did.

“Where are you going, Daddy?” Molly asks on an afternoon together.

“On business, kiddo,” Dave tells her.

“Yeah but where?”

“I’m going to the beach.”

“Can I come?” she asks.

“No, baby, I’m going to be working,” he says and when she huffs he laughs.

Something comes over him, a bittersweet feeling. He has it often around the girls, when he remembers they won’t be so little forever. Just yesterday he was carrying Molly to the nursery in the hospital, small enough to fit in the crook of his arm. But this feels stronger than usual. He tries to memorize how she looks right now. He runs his hand over her long hair.

“Maybe next time,” he says. “Will you take care of Mommy and Alice when I’m gone?”

Molly promised she would. She made that her mission. She kept her grades up so that Mom never had to worry. She could tell when the weight of being a single mother was too much on Carol’s shoulders. If her mother’s eyes were ringed with red, the next day Molly would surprise her by doing all of the dishes before she got home from work.

She took care of Alice, too. When her sister was in the school play, Molly didn’t miss a single performance. She beat up one of the girls that bullied Alice. And, in high school, when she found out Alice’s boyfriend cheated on her, Molly filled his gas tank with sugar.

Molly went from karate to Krav Maga. She wanted to be able to take care of herself, too. She joined an archery team. She went on long runs when she felt lonely.

Years passed and Molly saw more and more of her father when she looked at herself in the mirror. She’d inherited his soft eyes and she had dimples in both of her cheeks. She’d also gotten his nose which she would have hated if it hadn’t reminded her of him.

Molly was packing for college, her 18th birthday on the horizon, when she found the note. She’d been worried about leaving home, leaving Mom and Alice on their own. But it had gotten harder here. Molly’s energy was more and more restless and some days she just wanted to disappear.

She ran her fingers nostalgically over the things she was leaving behind in her room. A music box, a medal, an ugly ceramic bowl she’d made in art class.

At the end of her bookshelf was a hardcover that hadn’t been touched in years. Dad had been reading Harriet the Spy with her. They’d never finished it and Molly had never been able to bring herself to open it again. Carefully, she lifted it off of the shelf, the dust jacket sticking slightly to the book beside it. Maybe she would take it with her and finish reading it. She flipped through the pages, admiring the little illustrations. The book fell open to the page they’d left off on, a little piece of note paper stuck in as a bookmark. Molly saw the handwriting on it and immediately recognized it.

It always shook Molly to see her father’s writing. She would turn over every scribble she found for secret meaning. This was just a phone number and the name Capra. Molly suddenly remembered her father giving it to her before he left on one of his business trips.

If anything happens and you can’t reach me, call this number.

She stared at it for a long time wondering what would’ve happened if she’d called that number all those years ago. Before she knew what she was doing, Molly was dialing it on her cell phone. It rang for a long time before someone answered.

“Yeah?”

It was a woman’s voice. For a second, Molly had an awful thought, her heart plummeting. But Dad wouldn’t have given her this woman’s phone number if something...like that was going on, right?

“Is this Capra?” Molly finally found her voice.

“Who is this?” the woman asked.

“I think you knew my dad. Dave York?” Molly said.

There was a pause and then, “You’ve got the wrong number.”

And she hung up.

“Molly Carolina, what are you doing in here?” Dave growls when he finds Molly in his study.

“I need a piece of paper,” she explains.

She’s got a file in her hand and Dave knows what’s inside of it. His whole body tenses. He keeps those things locked in a drawer, shreds them as soon as he’s finished with them. He’d just stepped out of the room for a minute.

“If you need something, ask for it,” he tells her. “What have I told you about privacy?”

Molly swallows.

“Would you like it if I went in your room and read your diary?”

Molly’s eyes flash with anxiety. “No.”

“May I have that?” Dave asks.

She hands over the file, whispers, “Sorry,” and scuttles out of the room.

It was so mysterious. Molly had dialed correctly. And she knew the woman on the other end was Capra. She felt it in her gut. Molly was about to dial again when her phone rang. Blocked.

“How did you get my number?” Capra asked.

“My, my dad gave it to me...when I was a kid,” Molly stammered.

“What do you want?” the woman asked.

Molly didn’t know. She hadn’t had a plan. Christ, had she called hoping this Capra person could turn back time?

“Did you know my dad?” Molly asked.

As the years went by, she’d realized there were pieces of him that she’d never gotten to see. Mom had filled in some blanks but Molly was never satisfied. If she’d shared missions with him, he must have had other secrets.

“I didn’t think I’d hear from you,” Capra sighed.

Capra offered a time and place to meet and quickly got off of the phone. Molly was dumbfounded but she had an old feeling creep over her– an excitement and eagerness that she felt on weekend adventures with Dad. She was going on a mission.

/ / / / / / / part 2

let me know if you'd like to be tagged!

@pascalslittlebrat @purplepascal042 @starlightmornings @mouthymandalorian @danniburgh @originallaura @tuskens-mando @221bshrlocked @wyn-dixie @goddessinwolfskin @cheekygeek05 @fangirl-316 @fairytale07 @rosiefridayrogersunday @a-skov @skulliebythesea @oceanablue @rebel-soldat @stevie75 @evyiione @buckwildbarnes @likes-good-reblogs-even-better

[im-pretending-imthere-already]

by the warm current

As kids, my sister and I spent our summers near the river, often falling on our long garments. Our knees scraped and bruised by the sharp rocks that lay beside the strong, warm stream. The hot days rushed by as we spent our hours playing under the hot, blinding sun. If my sister adored anything, it was birds. Often we spent our days searching for them in the scorching heat of the summer, looking for all the wings that have been neatly crafted, threaded into shape. Our collection of feathers of all colours were kept safe, hidden to preserve their infinite beauty, kept in a wooden rustic box under our bed. The box neatly tucked away between the sheets that were perfectly stored by mother. One grim evening, one of my older siblings had found our box hidden between the worn out blankets, that night we were forced into womanhood, our childhood was stripped away from us. Our summers were no longer warm, our knees left with scars.

What is it to truly be a woman? A question I still struggle with. Reverend Michael often referred to womanhood as preparing to serve God by serving your husband, which we spent the following years doing, leaving our ambitions and dreams of independence behind. Our personalities were to be crushed under the high expectations of becoming nothing other than slaves which men used. Our days were spent caring for our younger siblings who occupied our time dirtying the floors we just scrubbed. Our womanhood, reduced to becoming mothers and leaving our aspirations for our sons. Too tall, too confident, too short, too skinny, too immodest, too fat, too lanky, too talkative, too hairy, too loud, too aggressive, our existence is nothing more than a checklist for men to choose from. Growing up, I admired adulthood. I admired the idea of growing up to serve my husband, the idea of dressing modestly and spending my time cleaning, to become a woman. But as I grew into that woman, I began despising it.

My teenage years were regulated by the women of the church who made it their mission to crush my dreams, my life was to be sacrificed for god. Waking up to the screaming children of the church who demanded breakfast, my days were the same every single day. After the tedious mornings of cooking, cleaning and caring tirelessly, we met the citrus trees sprinkled with the soft dew on their delicate leaves in the community garden as we planned to prepare our annual lemon pie. Every year we were to prepare a feast full of food, including our lemon pie as the dessert for the mating party. This glamorous party was only a facade, a sweet glaze over a dark oppressive, controlled, and abusive future. This year was different, however, as I was becoming a woman of age, all day I had been thinking about what was to come, the life I was forced to have, pushed into a designated role my whole life. This is it, this is the dream of the church, this is what my life was to be, what my family had planned, what the reverend had envisioned.

That day I realised I couldn't do this, after seeing all the women blatantly eyed by the men of the church, scanned from bottom to up, graded as if they were a gift to be expected, a helpless little kitten to be chosen from a shelter or rescued from a basket left on the road. My older sister stood beside me, we glared at each other exchanging the same thoughts. Our life was more than this, our dreams were not to be forgotten, hidden in the blankets of our mind. I had heard about a couple of people who had escaped before, I didn't know how to but we had to get out. That night I decided to do the unthinkable, I had to make a plan, I had to take action, I had to escape this cage and fly away.

Reverend Michael was my father however he was never a typical father, more like a shepherd grazing his sheep, controlling us to become nothing more than slaves for his sick fantasies. He slept in the cabin house beside ours, but I knew he was going to arrive late today due to the ceremony, like every year before. It was the perfect time as if the universe aligned for our freedom. In my nightgown, I slid out as my sister was fast asleep. The night was dark, the air thick and foggy, the moon barely lit watching over me as I ran barefoot, in my white gown to the reverend's cabin. I knew where to look, under the vase he kept his spare key, which I used to unlock his door. I walk in knowing exactly where to find what I'm looking for, his diary, kept in the last drawer of his desk conveniently hidden in between his bibles. I flick through the delicate pages looking for something useful when I stumble across the gold mine. It wrote the name of a woman named "Angela Zachery" and her cabin number''14", suspected of breaking out "Mary Williams". I quickly close the book, return his diary precisely into its spot and leave the same way I entered, leaving no trace behind me.

The coming night my mind was occupied with one thought, cabin 14. I couldn't just leave, I had to make sure it was clear. It took a couple of nights which felt like forever but eventually, I got there. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was a Friday night, everyone had got to their cabins early after a hard day of work and the daily evening lecture was longer than usual. The pathways were empty, the road clear. I made my way, a little more professional than the night of the ceremony, in my brown dress and handwoven cardigan that wrapped its threads around my shoulders supporting me through my journey. If I was found by any person or even if "Angela" was a scam I would end up 6 feet deep into the ground before sunrise. I took the chance walking across the church to his cabin, no one was around, no one to be seen spying. I knocked on the door anticipating the worst, painting the images of my death. My life dissolving into nothing more than a forgotten story in the depths of my memories, an old story tale kept at the back of a dusty bookshelf. The door opened ever so slightly as I felt the fear shake through my body. She grabbed me inside so hard I stumbled inside falling to my knees in front of her as he shut the door aggressively. I introduced myself and explained my story and she sat there listening. Her eyes stared at me aggressively yet with a shadow of love. Her agreement brought me feelings, flushing my skin, red. Independence, freedom, individuality, expression, life. All books that she dusted alive within an instant. My dreams of independence and freedom rushed back through my bones to the crevices of my every thought. It was scheduled for Thursday night.

The night before the escape was probably one of the hardest and most important nights of my life, I was breaking the cage and finally getting the opportunity to fly, but the thought of leaving everything and everyone I knew terrified me. I wasn't to ever clean after my siblings, but I wasn't ever going to see them again. I wasn't going to have to make lemon pie for the church, but I wasn't going to celebrate with all my family ever again. Laying in my bed I couldn't get my eyes to shut as I laid there staring at the ceiling. The only support holding me together was the sheets I laid in and the light breathing of my sister beside me.

My bags packed, my thoughts collected, my breathing stable. This was it, this was my freedom. I get to leave and not look back. It was starting to get dark, the last evening to spend in this hell of a place. The trees rustling in the wind and air smelling of wood fire. I had kissed each of my younger siblings goodbye, hoping I would remain alive in their memories. My sister spent that evening reading, which we did often. An outlet we used to let our imagination roam free to live the lives we wish we had. As we put our coats on we stared at each other with fear, the sun had set and the sky was so empty reflecting the withdrawal we were to be hit with. We looked at each other and left, never to set foot in the cabin ever again.

Angela has sent some, waiting for us. He had a car organized outside the fence, we just had to make it outside. In the dark night, we threw our long dress off and climbed the fence gripping the holes with all our strength, looking back I could see Angela in the distance leaving. Climbing faster and faster, our bodies shaking with fear, our hearts anticipating our freedom. Hand over hand, foot over foot, we rose higher and higher. It felt like forever until we reached the top, then at the tip I stared into my sister's eyes when I heard a bang! My soul left my body for a moment from the fear as I saw my sister's body growing limp, her back falling into the fence becoming one with it. I stared into the sky for a moment, knowing I was targeted, I had no time. I had to leave my sister behind, running my way down the fence. I felt the wind brushing my cheeks, the heat irritating my skin. As I reached the last few steps I fell onto the floor, my vision blurring into two. There was no option but to get up, leaving my sister hanging on the fence and running into the truck.

As fast as my life gained sweetness it got bitter again. I stayed in a home with many people, I had food and clothing. But life without my sister was hard, the image of her murder remaining drilled into my head. I saw the soul leave her body, I saw her life end. I often wonder how different things would have turned out if I never left, if I was caught, if we moved a metre to the right if we left on Friday?

My favourite place grew to become the beach, reminding me of the warm river my sister and I loved ever so dearly, connecting our dreams to every nook of the world. As I sit here today, on the warm sand, I often find myself looking beside me to find my sister's spirit constantly gifting me with feathers. Today I have the privilege of sitting on this beach, feeling the wind through my hair, the cool breeze on my shoulders and my sister's feathers can be forever stored, kept safe and loved, not to be a secret but to be a memory of resilience.

-F.A

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

Reblogging because I don’t want any of my followers to die from having their own tits turn agains them. It’s not the glorious Klingon death in battle I know y’all dream of, so stay safe and stay boob-aware.

[lit--bitch]

Current-Reads (13/04/20 - 18/04/20) 🎺🐝

(Disclosure: I know one of the writers (Annie Dobson) I’m featuring in the current-reads this week through Writing Squad. I also know Tom Bland who runs Spontaneous Poetics but I don’t personally know the two writers whose work I’ve enjoyed on the zine. And I don’t know anybody else sadly, probably because I’m a loner and a loser). 

Here’s the standard preface: every Sunday without fail I throw up the freshest literature and photography I’ve read over the week, sometimes it’s a book, sometimes it’s a piece I saw in a magazine or an online zine, sometimes it’s something I saw on social media, etc. Sometimes I add ‘RECOMMEND’ next to a few of the titles, but that’s not to say I don’t recommend all of them, I just love some pieces more than others. C’est la vie. And any titles that you see in bold are hyperlinked so if you click or tap them they’ll direct you straight to the source... or shopping basket. 

Anyway I’m just gonna get right into it. 

So this week I’ve been reading C.C. Hannett / kmwgh’s Lockdown Life and Charles Theonia’s Two Poems on Queen Mob’s Teahouse, I’ve read Haibun/Uncertainty/A Promise To Your Clothes from Jane Burns on Spontaneous Poetics and I flipped right back to September 2019 and re-read E.A.B’s have a wank because it’s fitting advice for our current predicament. I’ve returned to Patrick Süskind’s Perfume and I’ve been falling in love with Ariana Reines’s The Cow all over again, (whose new collection, A Sand Book, I’ll be reviewing in a few weeks time). Also been reading Annie Dobson’s Before The Ghost Town on the Writing Squad’s Staying Home series which boasts brilliant work. I can never get over how many amazing writers there are in the world. I’ve also discovered a new photographer with a brand new book out from Palm* Studios, Molly Matalon’s When a Man Loves a Woman. 

***

E.A.B’s have a wank, Spontaneous Poetics (21/09/2019): I keep going back to this specific piece because this poem makes you feel like you’re stood outside the John Snow in Soho, completely wasted, having a cig with a friend who’s also pissed up too. That’s the feeling I get from E.A.B’s work. She’s memorable and familiar and probably has a decent right hook. This poem is short, succinct, and means exactly what it means. I love work that is entitled quite plainly, in a way doesn’t subvert expectation—it’s tongue-in-cheek and funny. It’s also pretty good advice for when you’re in the midst of a global pandemic... or a personal crisis, I’m not sure what the difference is anymore. She also has another one up on Spontaneous Poetics, which is equally brilliant, blue balls at the end of humanity. 

Jane Burn’s Haibun/Uncertainty/A Promise To Your Clothes, Spontaneous Poetics (17/04/2020): This is a deeply sad poem eclipsed by grief and time’s relentless push and pull. It also has some absolutely beautiful personification, and it’s in the description of these vernacular objects that you really feel the subject’s hurting. ‘You’ is so empowering here, because it attempts to universalise the reader’s accessibility to the ardour of experience in this work, but is equally an attempt to sever the writer’s ‘You’ from themselves as ‘I’. This poem tells us that some pain is so painful, we can never fully accept that it has been ours to bear. 

Annie Dobson’s Before The Ghost Town, Staying Home from The Writing Squad (RECOMMEND): I’m not saying this just to be kind, all of the work on Staying Home is absolutely brilliant (discluding my own work, I promise I’m not that full of it) but Annie’s piece happened to be one of the first I read and I still think about it. Annie probably doesn’t know this but I stalk her writing. I’m her big fat secret admirer. Quintessentially British, her work smacks of kitchen-sink realism and cherry chapsticks you get in the chemist’s. I always get a noughties vibe from Annie’s writing, I always know what she’s on about. She doesn’t make the banality of life mystical, she treats the ordinary as well, just ordinary, and that’s magical enough anyway. Before The Ghost Town is a mish-mash of genres, it’s an essay but it’s a thought piece but it reads like a diary-entry and is formatted like poetry in some places. More than anything it’s a document on civilisation in Lewisham during the Covid-19 pandemic, and how full the world is still despite the reductive effects of a worldwide crisis. It’s a political critique on how fucked the UK government is, and how community is still one of the most valuable things we have in a world that is trying to make you fight over the last bag of fucking bread flour. It’s honest and sad and retrospective. It’s also filled with promise. I absolutely loved it. 

Molly Matalon, When a Man Loves a Woman: For a long time I shot pictures of men on 35mm to 120mm. I often felt strange doing it. I was used to the dogma of typical male politics; boys don’t cry, having a tough dad, penis envy, etc. It didn’t interest me anymore; the object of masculinity in its most vulnerable, in its deepest sensitivities was the impetus behind my desire to photograph men. Molly Matalon takes pictures of men I wish I had taken. But I don’t think she reverses the power dynamics, per se, although you can absolutely make the case for this, even argue her work is a case for the female gaze. But for me, she strips away these typical power dynamics, she doesn’t polarise herself as the subject, or the object. I don’t see tensions between sexes in these images. I see vulnerability, I see trust, I see relationships. I see men just as worthy of depiction as flowers, as fruits. I feel softness, I feel curves. The photographs in When a Man Loves a Woman are works of of idealisation of woman is implied by man, man as woman, woman as man, the fragile unity in these two creatures, and their reciprocations. She’s absolutely one to watch. 

Ariana Reines, The Cow (RECOMMEND): Ariana Reines is a writer so dear to me, that I can’t really contain in words just how much impact she’s had on me. I salute Elizabeth Ellen (a wonderful writer, and an editor at HOBART magazine in Los Angeles) who, one day, was moving apartments and very generously sent me a box of books all the way from the USA to my parents’ house in Manchester. In that box amongst many books lay Tiqqun’s Theory of the Young-Girl translated by Ariana Reines, and her debut collection, The Cow. So if it wasn’t for Elizabeth, I wouldn’t have read any Ariana Reines until probably much later on in life. At least, I’d like to think I’d have come across Ariana at some point anyway. 

The Cow was published in 2006 by my all-time fav magazine/publisher, Fence. The Cow isn’t poetry, isn’t prose, it’s not an essay, it’s just not any genre at all. And the fact you can’t categorise it is just really is emblematic of Ariana Reines as a writer, because she doesn’t redefine the dimensions of genres, she fucking blitzes them up in a big genre-food-processor. The Cow is the mythologisation and de-mythologisation of the woman as cow. It is the consumption and defecation of woman as cow. It is a lamentation. It is raw. It is beastly. It is thoughts and statistics and menstruation and abbattoirs. It is a dark work of art, and it’s one of the most beautiful, angry and strong texts I’ve ever read. It’s one of those books I think about often. I’d be engrossed on London tubes re-reading this over and over. It’s absolutely everything. 

Patrick Süskind, Perfume (RECOMMEND): Ah, the mothership. Patrick Süskind is... one of a kind. I borrowed the book from my best friend James and after reading it, I read it again. I still haven’t given back James’s copy (which I really need to), and I recently bought a UK first-edition of Perfume so now I can say it’s on my bookshelf. Reading Perfume is an intoxicating experience... I guess it’s because of the way Süskind writes about smell, and he writes about it so vividly that, for me at least, it can induce olfactory hallucinations. It’s not just about the story of a murderer with a superhuman power for scent, it’s about our relationship with different smells we come across throughout our life, their pungency and their ability to kind of tattoo our memory. You can recall scents in a way that you might not be able to with sounds. I don’t remember fully the way my maternal grandmother sounded, she passed when I was a little girl, but I still know her smell. It’s Youth Dew and sweets. Perfume induces sensations and memories in me. It’s a text I go back to time and time again. 

C.C. Hannett / kmwgh’s Lockdown Life, Queen Mob’s Tea House (03/04/2020): Queen Mob’s Tea House is a new fav of mine and their zine kind of reminds me of the Richmond Tea Rooms in Manchester’s Gay Village. They’re a bit Alice in Wonderland, a bit occult, a bit down-the-rabbit-hole, pink and sparkly, with black lace. If that description of the zine borders on pretension then, sorry. I have zine synaethesia. So these poems from ‘C.C. Hannett / kmwgh’ (I’m not sure I understand the name) were awesome little tidbits on living through a global pandemic. An ellision of pop culture, absurdity and tenderness. A reminder that we will never get this time back, and that if you’ve got the luxury of being with your loved ones right now, cherish it. I also really loved the last line of this guy’s bio, no social media handles or website, just: “You can find him if you want to.” Lol. 

Charles Theonia, Two Poems, Queen Mob’s Tea House (24/05/2017) (RECOMMEND): I loved both of these poems but I mostly wanted to talk about ‘shame’. I enjoyed ‘shame’ for its density—it’s a single block paragraph—the format has a weight to it, like that of feeling shame. I know this was published in 2017, basically I was just surfing the zine’s website and clicked on Queen of Pentacles (I was intrigued bc I read Tarot) and this was the  latest entry on there. I enjoy the bluntness and conversational-ism of these two pieces, but I particularly loved ‘shame’ for the way it unpacks shame as a multi-faceted, festering spawn that drags you under, and under, and under. Its resonance is powerful. 

*** Anyway that is enough from me zis week. Next Friday I’m reviewing Charlotte Geater’s poems for my fbi agent which is again from Bad Betty Press. Stay safe, eat cake. xxxxxx

[catvicddlm]

Grenetine D’Chessur

(Riku: So, yeah, as this blog deputy, it’s my job to introduce this girls to their respective fandom... Sorry for those who may find me unbearable, but this is how the blog works. Anyway, since D’Chessur here is the one who has the most complete paperwork, she’ll be first)

Name: Grenetine Dioica D'Chessur Manjary (though she mostly goes by Grenetine D’Chessur)

(Riku: Thankfully)

Name Meaning: Grenetine comes from grenetina (Gelatin). Dioica is meant to be the Pimenta dioica (Allspice).  Manjary= Mangiare (Italian)= Eat.

(Riku: What does D’Chessur stand for?)

(Grenetine: I thought it was obvious)

(Riku: Well, no)

(Grenetine: Then we’ll leave it for them to investigate!)

Nicknames: 

Greenie (family and Dahlia)

My Lady (Jolly and servants)

Strawberry Shortcake (Mudira)

Heartslabyul's Little Duchess or the Little Duchess (Reappina, Suha and several others)

(Riku: How original...)

(Grenetine: In my defense, you don’t get to chose how others nickname you)

Twisted from: The Duchess (Alice in Wonderland)

Affiliations:

D’Chessur family

Manjary family

Lilyaceae family

Night Raven Collage

Heartslabyul Dorm

Dormitory: Heartslabyul

Year: 2nd

Age: 17

Birthday: October 6th

Likes: Sweet treats, savoury foods, literature: poetry, novels, etc, puns, puzzles, getting references.

Dislikes: Bland foods, the noble court, people messing with her things, open endings, being called pig, being mocked for the curse.

Hobbies: Reading (especially mystery), writing in her diary, baking, playing the violin and the piano, gardening, anti-stalking: learning about other persons routine to avoid them (guess why)

(Riku: You need more original hobbies)

(Grenetine: And do you have better hobbies?)

(Riku: Touche)

Occupation:

Student

Competition judge (informal)

County heiress

Personality: 

Most of the time she’s a calm person that tries to be polite as much as she can. Truth be told, most of the time she comes off as rude. This is because most people only deal with her in class wich is...not the best. Grenetine is the type of person that thinks that is crucial for one to make things by themselves. So she not only rathers to work alone but also doesn’t offers a lot of help. She also is the type that takes very seriously responsabilities and duties... and she will always insist on them. She has a really strong determination. Always keeping a regal like posture.

The only exception is if she notices that the others are hopeless, in wich she’ll be more sweeter and helpful. Right now she has a soft spot for the “poor things” that are the Heartslabyul first years.

Those who talk to her outside academic situations see a different side: a more laidback girl who likes to have really long talks about anything. Some are even surprised of how easily she can change the topics. They also notice how she overanalyzes everything and how much she mutters. She’s a much more curious person and is willing to more things. This doesn’t mean she’ll do anything, she quickly realises when they are trying to take advantage of her.

Again, this is not easy to reach, so many consider appeal to the “duchess” as a last resort. This plus her cute looks gained her certain fame.

Alligment: Lawful Neutral

Skills:

Disappearance and appearance.

Hide presence and amplify presence.

Stunner spells.

Transformation spells.

Weapon summoning: The Pepper Grinder. This weapon has two forms: a hidden form that looks like a key and the other, the true form, a pepper grinder shaped gun. It also has three modes:

Non-lethal: the target weakens phisically but the proyectiles don’t actually harm them (they do hurt though)

Magic piercer: affects only to magical manifestations (force fields, magic levels, enchanted objects, etc). Magical beings can be harmed.

Lethal: self explanatory. Acts like a normal weapon but magical.

(Riku: I just checked a picture of this...You have a fucking machine gun?!)

(Grenetine: It is not a machine gun)

(Riku: It looks like a machine gun, it behaves like a machine gun, IT’S A FUCKING MACHINE GUN! How are you even allowed to summon this?!)

(Grenetine: A lady has her secrets)

Backstory: 

Grenetine was born as the second child from the duke D'Chessur and a noble lady from the infamous Manjary family. They have curse wich would turn them into pigs at some point of their life. Grenetine and her siblings knew from an early age what was coming for them as a lot of nobles excluded them, sometimes outright mocked, for “ruining” their family. She was the biggest target as she was the one that more resembled their mother (and also was very fat). 

Out of all her siblings, she was also the one that showed more magical potencial and more learning capacity. She was a very lonely child so she spent the time reading and developing a more analytical mind. 

One day, her grandmother, the last of the Lilyaceae line, decided to educate her to make her the heir to her county. During this time, Grenetine got fed up of the humilliations and decided to end the curse that ruined her life. 

She, along with her father, spent years finding several clues of the curse’s origins. Then, they discovered that all of them lead to Night Raven College. So when she recived an invitation from the institution, she didn’t think it twice.

Theme song: “Fairytale”- Alexander Rybak

Relationships within the dormitory:

Riddle: It’s complicated. He doesn’t like her very much due her noble status, but at the same time, he kinda wants the approval of an actual noble. He’s also annoyed by the fact that she spends zero time at the dorm yet somehow became quite popular. On the other hand, she avoids him as much as she can. She thinks he hates her guts and it reminds her too much to the court at home. Still tries to please him, she has better thing to do than to face the leader’s wrath.

Ace: Not friends but not total strangers. He likes her better when she’s sweet and willing to help, especially on school problems. She thinks he’s quite likable but doesn’t trust him too much. They usually have long conversations.

Deuce: Similar to Ace’s. They do bond a lot more due their similar interests. He’s impressed by her and is very curious about the whole curse investigation. She also prefers her on her sweeter side but understands and respects her work mood. This is why Grenetine prefers him a little more over Ace.

Trey: Just like the rest of the dorm, Grenetine trusts Trey as a deputy. Surprisingly, he seems to prefer her more serious side, as she’s one of the few that can get work done right. However, they do clash a lot, mostly due to her “stay out of the dorm troubles” policy. He’s one of the responsable to drag her back.

Cater: Also complicated. Cater likes to tease her everytime he gets the chance, wich she dislikes. Nevertheless, they actually enjoy each other company, as they surprisingly discuss more mature themes. Grenetine considers their interactions as necessary break. She allows herself to be sarcastic and intentionally rude with him. Along with Trey, Cater is the other responsable for bringing her back.

Jolly: Her cat companion, her family adopted him along with his siblings when Grenetine found the abandoned as kittens. Jolly is more than a mere pet for her, is a dear friend. She’ll constantly demand respect for him. She’s one of the few people who Jolly likes to talk to as she likes to listen him.

Relationships outside the dormitory:

Dahlia (another OC): They are bests friends. They met due to a similar interest in flowers and haven’t separated since then. Dahlia is one of the few who can influence her and usually dissuades her from her more unhealthy habits. Grenetine is one of the few who knows Dahlia’s complete backstory.

Idia: Even less than acquaintances. Since she’s friends with Dahlia, she has spent a lot of time at Ignihyde. He kinda reminds her of her older brother in personality. He thinks she talks too much but sometimes makes very interesting questions.

Chausiku (another OC): Not really friends but they get along and hang a lot together. Chausiku likes that Grenetine isn’t a princess like girl or a rich spoiled brat. Grenetine admires her determination but doesn’t share her goals. She also kinda wishes to have Chausiku’s imposing presence.

Ruggie: They have a relationship totally based on favors (Grenetine pays him to do some simple jobs for her, usually in form of either money or baked pastries). On ocasions, they have worked together to keep order. They interact mostly through Chausiku. Ruggie is actually disgusted of how insanely rich her family is, but doesn’t reject being paid. She thinks he’s competent enough and a little greedy but doesn’t blame him for that.

The Tension Quartet (again, OCs): Grenetine serves as some kind of judge for them. This often translates to keep them out of trouble. Even though they hang a lot, she mostly keeps herself professional.

(Riku: Take a shot for everytime “one of the...” appears.)

Phrase: "You can't spend a day doing nothing! There's always something to do"

[saintarchie]

Remember A Day

Me: The year is almost over, this is a good time to start playing that game. My Life: Here’s 58,000 fucking other things that need doing before Christmas. Me: Oh.

Anyway, now that’s done, let’s check out Ringabel’s future diary gimmick.

There’s actually a lot to take in: In addition to the journal itself, it seems all of the relevant information about the game’s characters and mechanics are kept in here. Probably wouldn’t hurt to familiarise myself.

[several minutes of reading later]

OK, let’s move on to the journal itself. It seems to be written from Ringabel’s perspective, but he doesn’t remember any of it and the events described mostly haven’t happened yet. Assuming they prove to be accurate, the most likely explanation would seem to be that he was either given the book by a future version of himself, or that he is the future version, but doesn’t realise it thanks to his amnesia.

As for what the book actually says, here’s a quick summary:

9/20: Ringabel admires a picture of Edea and longs for the chance to meet her. He also watches a new ship, named the Eschalot, being towed into wherever he was at the time.

9/26: Ringabel crosses the Norende Plateau, en route for the capital, uneasy due to the lack of a weapon. Upon arriving, he is unable to stay at the inn and so lets himself into the empty house next door.

9/27: While exploring Caldisla, Ringabel is “volunteered” to join a local boar hunt with Owen. It goes well enough that Owen offers to set him up with better accommodation when they return.

9/28: Following the hunt, Ringabel becomes more ingratiated with Owen, but still keeps a certain amount of distance, allowing the people at the inn to go on believing their incorrect assumptions about why he came to them.

10/03: The new routine Ringabel had settled into is upset when a bright flash and violent ground tremors occur, apparently heralding some great cataclysm back in the direction of the Norende Plateau. Ringabel can’t figure out what’s happening, but of course the audience already knows that it’s Madoka’s birthday the Elric brothers burning their house down Norende falling into a chasm.

10/04: Signs of the destruction of Norende wash downstream, and Ringabel helps the locals investigate. Turns out, it was he who found Tiz and brought him back to the inn.

10/07: While Tiz convalesces, a badly damaged ship arrives in the port. The seas are rotting and un-navigable, stranding this ship’s crew and passengers. Among the latter group is Agnès, who has a lot of questions about the events of four days earlier. Ringabel tells her about Norende.

Of course, these are all things that have now happened. The next set of entries, however, are still to come:

10/25: The Sky Knights are defeated by the Vestal et al, who comandeer their airship, apparently taking Edea captive in the process.

11/13: The writer travels to Ancheim in search of the Vestal. This is interesting because it suggests that, assuming Ringabel is still the narrator of these events, that he did not take part in the capture of the airship. Since the current Ringabel has joined the party that’s about to head off and do that, it implies that either something will happen to separate him from the group, or that he is trying to subvert the pre-ordained narrative from the journal. In any event, he is unable to find Agnès in Ancheim and is pointed towards the Yulyana Woods.

11/23: At the palace in Ancheim, Agnès appears to be fomenting a rebellion against the king for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, although they have something to do with an evil sigil she’s carrying. The narrator is unable to get close to her because of the crowd.

12/08: The narrator expresses relief that “they” haven’t come to wherever he is, as their presence would complicate matters in some way. In their absence, he begs for “her” help but the book doesn’t say what for. Later, aboard his ship, he notes that Florem is a place where women live in chaste humility, peacefully co-existing with nature and rejecting conflict. He notes that “those two” would react badly to this description.

1/31: Nyx’s avatar awakens at the summit of Tartarus, bringing about the end of the world. Wait, wrong game. The narrator receives his first contact from “them” in three weeks, a brief message simply noting that the Vestal has entered the Sacred Flower Festival. He doesn’t seem to know what this means.

3/07: The narrator returns to a fortress for the first time in four years, wondering what “they” intend to do with such a large sword. He restrains the urge to attack his guide. Despite complaining about the properties of mythril and orichalcum being common knowledge that everyone already learned at school, he still makes a note of them in the journal. The fort’s interior appears unchanged, and there’s a map of it that I assume will be useful later on. At the top of the fort, he dismisses the guide, just as somebody with a giant hand greets him.

3/17: The narrator is annoyed about having to defend some brat from being tortured. This came about as the result of a stand-off between him and an odd couple made up of a fat guy and a weakling. After “old man battleaxe” intervened, the kid ended up in the narrator’s care. The child is an eight-year-old orphan who ran away from a forced labour detail and so ended up “here”. Where that is isn’t specified, beyond the kid and the narrator having to share a room there.

3/19: The narrator reluctantly allows the child to accompany him on a journey... somewhere. Wherever it is, there’s a secret tunnel into some magma caverns. During a break they are caught by Edea, who demands that he let the boy go. Despite his exhaustion, the narrator has the boy hide and prepares to fight not just Edea, but Tiz and Agnès as well. So if it is Ringabel writing all of this, it appears that he ends up at odds with the rest of the party. In the midst of their battle it seems that the ground becomes unstable, leading to him having to pull Edea to safety. While she’s grateful for the help, neither she nor the other two are prepared to let this thing with the kid go. It’s all rendered moot however, by the narrator falling into the magma himself.

4/24: The narrator doesn’t initially know that that’s what the date is, but it’s written in the in-game menu, so I assume he added it afterwards. Anyway, he has improbably survived his magma bath and is being “fixed” by someone who doesn’t seem all that concerned about his well-being for reasons that seem to stem from an incident that’s not in the book. Oh maybe not, actually, the fixer is described as a pig, so it might be the fat guy from earlier. More painful reconstruction follows, after which, someone else tries to question the narrator about a letter he’s received. “Bring the orphan to the inn of origin.” The questioner assumes that this is a code of some sort, but I’m assuming that it is literally what the writer wants him to do with the boy. Of course, it’s been over a month since he actually had the boy, so the letter writer is working from outdated intelligence. Anyway, the questioner tries to get something out of some other letters they’ve intercepted, but the narrator’s not up to it, catching only a few key words like “earth crystal” “grandship” and “engine room”. After some more time passes, he’s released into civilian care, and within a week is fully healed.

6/16: The narrator reflects on the fact that “his” predictions are coming true. The first is a pillar of light that can be seen over the sea to the south, while the second has yet to happen, but stopping it depends on the narrator’s ability to stop Agnès et al from doing... something. He reflects upon how that trio came to be, and his feelings towards Edea, before signing off his final entry.

So yeah, a lot going on, or at least will be going to have been going on at some point in the past/future. Time travel is complicated. I’m assuming it’s time travel, anyway. Will be interesting to see how much, if at all, we end up deviating from the version in the book. The deal, as far as I can tell, is that the party is/was/will be convinced to do something, possibly under false pretences, while Ringabel is convinced to stop them. As for who’s right and who did all that convincing, I guess I’ll find out as I play through it. Airy’s absence from the diary narrative is interesting, though. Presumably that version of Ringabel didn’t see her much.

Now I look, there’s a bunch of notes that he’s written about people/things that are probably worth commenting on. Think I’ll leave that for tomorrow though.

[mariequitecontrarie]

All of Me: Chapter 16

The Fic: Belle French is a pudgy librarian who’s in love from afar with “town monster” and ace reporter, Mr. Gold. Little does she know, he’s head-over-heels in love with her, too. Chapter Summary: Belle and Emma go shopping in Portland to prepare for a big night out with Gold and Neal at the Storybrooke Winter Gala. Emma runs into an old high school rival and shares a secret. Rating: T A/N: Guys, it’s been 84 years! Much love to @galactic-pirates and @magnoliatattoo for putting up with me. Artwork by the talented @wizzygold @a-monthly-rumbelling: “I’m not dressed for this.”

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | 

Stay with Me (bet. Ch 9&10) | Spiked Chocolate (bet. Ch 16&17) | Pieces of Me (Q&A)

ON AO3

“The quickest way to know a woman is to go shopping with her.” - Marcelene Cox

***Three weeks after Belle has moved out of her parents’ house and into Marco’ s.***

Belle picked up the telephone to call Gold at the newspaper, her day planner spread open on the desk.

Yes, it was old-fashioned, writing things down on a calendar and lugging the thick planner around in her bag, but she liked old-fashioned. She liked books, and fountain pens, and the rustle of paper—both crisply new and faded with age. Besides, she didn’t trust iPhone calendar apps.

She’d forgotten Daddy and Edith’s anniversary one too many times thanks to those finicky electronic calendars. Whenever it happened, she rushed to write a card at the last minute but instead of being grateful, Edith seemed to enjoy shaming her for “neglecting her family.” Personally, Belle felt anniversaries were about the couple celebrating each other…but her thoughts were veering way off course. If she ventured down the dark road of worrying over Edith, she could end up in bed with a box of snowball cakes for the rest of the day.

But falling into depression was less likely now that she no longer called her father and Edith’s house home. After three weeks of living with Marco, there was no denying how much better she felt; the freedom of coming and going as she pleased was a heady sensation. Sometimes Gold joined her at Marco’s house in the evening and the three of them played Scrabble together. Once, she had insisted Marco not cook dinner after cooking at the restaurant all day long and dragged him to Emma’s house for a family dinner where Henry chattered about school and his friends and made everyone laugh until their sides ached. 

But most often, Marco would come home from the restaurant and the two of them would eat a pasta and salad dinner, and then spend the evening in the comfortable quiet of his small, cozy living room. His overstuffed couch and chairs were such a contrast to the hard, slick leather furniture Edith filled her house with, and Belle loved sinking into the corner of Marco’s huge couch and covering up with a fluffy throw blanket.

Sometimes they would make small talk about their days but on most evenings, Marco would be bent over a notebook making notes for the next day’s specials at the restaurant, and she would pull out her laptop to research books to add to the library. Usually, either the Cooking Channel or HGTV played in the background. She’d had an older television in her bedroom at her parents’ but no cable connection. Marco, however, had a new flatscreen and Belle indulged in her love of watching House Hunters International, which combined two of her favorite pastimes: seeing home interiors and a peek at exotic destinations.

Gone were the days of being chased into her bedroom, hiding her diary, and hoarding snacks. Some days, the years spent in Edith and her dad’s frosty household seemed like a bad dream. 

At least twice a week, Belle offered to pay Marco rent. It didn’t seem right to eat his food and live in his space and offer nothing in return. But he refused every time she asked. “No,” he had said this morning over breakfast, flipping eggs with a stubborn twist of his lips. “We are family, Bella. La famiglia. And when life is hard, family is a soft place to land.” Her eyes had burned with grateful tears, but she kissed his cheek and ate her breakfast and let him fuss over her until they went their separate ways—he to the restaurant and her to the library.

Besides, she thought as she punched in Gold’s number, she didn’t have time for wallowing.

She needed to talk to Gold about the annual Storybrooke Winter Gala today. On impulse, Neal had bought four tickets and insisted he and Emma and Belle and Gold make a double date of the occasion. He’d even arranged for their next-door neighbor, Ana, to watch Henry.

Every December, the Mayor’s Office hosted the gala to benefit the city schools. This year, all proceeds would go toward school Arts programs—music, theatre, writing, and art workshops. Emma and Gold usually attended every year, Gold to cover the event for the Times and Emma to capture photographs to accompany the story. Belle had never been invited to the ball before, though, and she wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Part of her didn’t want to be seen in public with so many shiny glossy people she couldn’t measure up to, but another side of her was excited to play princess for an evening.

She glanced again at the date and punched in Gold’s phone number. Today was Friday, November 16th. Thanksgiving was next week, which meant the gala was only three weeks away. There wasn’t much time to get ready. Finding a dress could be difficult and she would probably need to take it to a tailor, too. The thought of shopping for formalwear made her palms begin to sweat.

“Gold,” he answered on the first ring.

“What are you wearing?” she asked in a rush, followed by a breathless pause.

He answered with a laugh, the deep, rich sound making her spine tingle. She imagined him setting down the newspaper proof he was holding to turn in his chair to peer out the window toward the library. Since her office was in the back of the building he couldn’t actually see her, but she felt the admiring burn of his eyes all the same.

She heard a rustling sound as he set down the pages. When they talked or spent time together, he always gave her his full attention. It was certainly a refreshing change from Sean distractedly glancing at her during one of his marathon video game sessions and asking her to repeat what she’d said for the third time.

“A naughty call in the middle of the workday?” Gold drawled into the phone. “Sweetheart, men dream of these sorts of calls from their girlfriends. It’s not even my birthday.”

Belle blushed. She hadn’t stopped to think how awkward the question would sound out of context, but now that it was out, she teased him right back. “Mmmm nothing naughty to say today but just wait till it is your birthday,” she said. “Now that you mention it…”

“Yes?” He drew out the word, filling it with expectation and making her giggle.

She could almost see him leaning forward across the desk, a mischievous gleam in those caramel eyes.

“When is your birthday?”

“January 14th,” he answered promptly. “And tell Marco I prefer ice cream cake.”

“You prefer every cake,” she shot back, smiling into the phone. When it came to baked goods, Gold had an enormous sweet tooth. “But I think it can be arranged.”

“That’s excellent news. Just don’t tell Marco how many candles to put on it because the thing will be melted before we have a chance to slice it.”

Belle knew he was still self-conscious about the difference in their ages. She also knew exactly how to soothe him when he worried. “Then it’s a good thing I prefer mature men.”

“Indeed,” he said, sounding pleased.

She flipped her planner forward and marked his birthday on the calendar in bold, red ink, surrounding the date with fat, bright hearts. The birthday of the man she loved was an important day—far more worth remembering than the wedding date of her stuffy stepmother and emotionally unavailable father. At least she knew Marco wouldn’t snoop through her things and read her planner or her diary. But she was digressing again.

“Now, back to my question,” she ordered, feigning sternness. 

“You have my full attention, General French.”

She laughed and rubbed the thick holiday gala invitation between her fingers. Its embossed gold lettering and sprigs of holly in metallic ink screamed expensive. Everyone knew the Storybrooke Winter Gala was the social event of the season. From the chilled seafood towers bursting with crab claws and lobster tails to the elegant champagne cocktails, no expense would be spared.

Belle fanned her warm cheeks with the cardstock, her clammy fingers leaving damp smudges at the top of the matte stationery. “The invite says formal attire, but you’re almost always formal. Were you thinking suit or tuxedo?”

 “At the moment, I’m in my usual. I did opt for the socks with the turkeys today as a nod to next Thursday.”

Belle giggled and dragged her teeth over her lower lip. His Thanksgiving socks were adorable and he was being terribly sweet in his attempts to put her at ease. She wanted to go to the gala, but she didn’t want to look like a country bumpkin who had never been anywhere. Gold had attended fancy dinners and parties all over the world. He’d been to a State Dinner with the President, for goodness sake, while Belle had never ventured beyond the Portland city limits. “You know what I mean. It’s not like we can show up in sweatpants and be all ‘sorry, I’m not dressed for this.’” Oh, how she wished.

“Sweetheart, you can wear anything you like. You’re gorgeous no matter what you have on. That said, I’m not really the proper person to offer advice on evening gown selections. Why don’t you talk to Emma?”

She sighed. “Honey, I have talked to Emma. We’re both going shopping and we both need to know. It’s not like we can ask Neal for guidance.” Exasperated, she pushed a curl off her forehead, wondering why she had to explain this. “You know what he’s like. Emma said, ‘Neal would dust corn chips off his construction clothes, zip a hoodie sweatshirt over it, and head out the door.’ That’s a direct quote, by the way.”

Gold burst out laughing. “Sounds like my boy. I’ll make sure he’s dressed appropriately.”

“Anyway,” she continued, “there’s not much of a boutique circuit here in Storybrooke and I’m not exactly a candidate for Rent the Runway.” She sucked in the inside of her cheek as soon as those last words were out. Since they’d started dating, she’d been making a concerted effort not to say self-deprecating things about herself. At least not out loud.

Gold hadn’t seemed to notice her negativity, though.

“Which would you prefer I wear? Tux or suit?”

The image of whirling on the dance floor with Gold in a sleek black tuxedo was doing crazy things to her insides. “Tux,” she said in a breathless whisper. “Tux sounds good.”

“Tux it shall be then. And Belle?”

“Yes?” She was still picturing Gold in black tie and her stomach was doing gymnastics.

“Love,  I meant what I said: you’re gorgeous no matter what you wear. We’re going to the gala so we can dance and eat shrimp cocktail and support the Arts, not so you’ll worry over competing with silly girls and stupid women who wouldn’t know true beauty if it ran over them with a sleigh.”

“I wish you and Emma and Neal were going to be the only ones there,” she murmured, feeling silly. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t known about the gala and been given every opportunity to decide against going. The event had been on the calendar for weeks, yet the closer it came the more she fretted about fitting in. An inexplicable craving for belonging tightened her chest.

Gold hummed into the phone. “This is about more than a dress, isn’t it, sweetheart?”

She closed her eyes and took a deep, slow breath, letting the weight of his understanding settle over her like a comforting mantle. Her head lolled forward until her forehead rested upon the top of her desk. The smooth, cool grain of the wood felt good against her flushed skin and she forced out another lungful of air. Gold didn’t deserve to be at the wrong end of her short fuse. She tried to tell herself she belonged at the gala because he’d invited her, but the heart didn’t always believe the head—no matter how sensible the head was being.

“It matters to me that I at least look like I belong, even if it isn’t true,” she admitted.

Gold was quiet for a long moment. “It is true, sweetheart. For as long as I draw breath, you will always have a place to belong. If Marco, Emma, Neal, and Henry were here, I know each of them would say the same. I also know it’s going to take more than hearing the words to make you believe it. You have to know the truth deep down. I love you so much, and I only hope and pray that one day you’ll see yourself the way we see you.”

Belle pressed her lips together, muffling a sob. “Thank you for understanding,” she whispered tearfully. “I love you.”

“It’s nearly five. I’m coming over to the library.” Through the phone, she heard the distinctive click of his pocket watch as he snapped it closed. “When I get there, I’m going to kiss you till you’re breathless, then take you out for a nice, quiet dinner, just the two of us. How does that sound?”

Belle smiled and wiped her tears and her worries away with a tissue from the box on her desk. “It sounds perfect.”

“So we’re here.” Emma sucked down the dregs of her iced latte in a noisy slurp and wiped her hands on her black jeans. “Portland. Boutique Row. What do we do now?” She tossed the cup in the trash can inside the door.

Like aliens on a foreign planet, they hovered inside the doorway of Posh, the largest formal boutique in the city.

Belle eyed Emma suspiciously. “I thought you said you knew about shopping.”

“Yeah, for denim and dry fit. Where to get the best doughnuts. And the occasional piece of leather. Not evening gowns.”

“But you’ve been to this gala before?” she pressed.

“Yeah, as the photographer. No one pays attention to what you’re wearing when you’re behind the camera. I got away with black pants and a dress shirt three years running.”

Belle looked her friend up and down. Perspiration was dotting Emma’s temples. Her cheeks, ruddy from the winter air outside just moments ago, were ashen. She knew that deer-in-headlights look: Emma was on the verge of an anxiety attack.

Belle ran her teeth over her lower lip, discouragement slithering around her and squeezing the air from her lungs. “Are we in trouble?”

“It’s possible,” Emma acknowledged, then shook her head hard enough to cause her ponytail to sway. “No. No! We’re two grown women. We can handle one small town formal.”

“You make it sound like war,” Belle said wryly.

“It’s worse. Other women. Rich, polished, cold as ice.” She rolled her eyes at a chic blonde dripping in Chanel and carrying a Louis Vuitton handbag bigger than Belle’s suitcase. “Maybe we should invest in suits of armor.”

“Or maybe we should eat them for supper.”

Emma snorted, their laughter breaking the tension. It was rare for Emma to be intimidated, and Belle patted her shoulder. Misery loved company, and somehow knowing she wasn’t alone in her insecurity gave her hope for more than the hunt for an evening gown. “We can do this, as long as we do it together.”

Emma’s reached for Belle’s hand and squeezed. “Right. Together is better.”

”Exactly.”

Emma gave a long, slow whistle and they moved into the store like two people tied together in a three-legged race. “Where should we start?” Belle stared at the array of gowns and began to shuffle through the racks, heading in the direction of the plus sizes. She’d come here expecting to have maybe two choices in style but after a few minutes of browsing, to her surprise, there were many gowns in her size—short and long, tight and flowing, beaded and glittery. And though she hadn’t tried on a solitary dress, she was still convinced there wasn’t one in all of Portland designed to flatter her physique. In one fell swoop, she’d gone from zero choices to too many. So many dresses, so little time, and so much Belle.

Even the eggnog lattes and cream-stuffed doughnuts she and Emma had feasted on in the car on the way here left her feeling hollow. She was at her worst at formal events—the last one she’d been to was her high school senior prom and not one person had asked her to dance. She’d gone stag simply so she didn’t have to sit in the house with her father and Edith. With the exception of going to the refreshment table to sneak brownies, she had sat in the corner the entire time.

But she wasn’t in high school any longer. She had a handsome escort in Gold and friends to spend the evening with. The steeply priced gala tickets had already been purchased and paid for and supporting the Arts in their schools? She couldn’t think of a more excellent cause. Besides, backing out three weeks before the event was paramount to announcing you had no interest in seeing Hamilton. It simply wasn’t done.

She squinted in the direction of the lingerie. Spanx were what she needed—something to suck her in and smooth her out—injected with industrial-strength elastic.

“Black. Black is the slimming choice,” Belle decided aloud, pushing through the rack toward a plain A-line silk sheath gown.

At least if she stuck to basic black, she and Gold would match. Like two penguins. One sleek and sophisticated, the other round and plump, carrying a lot of blubber around to make it through the hard, cold, South Pole winter.

“No black! Black is the safe choice,” Emma countered, smacking Belle’s hand when she reached for the hanger on another simple, nondescript black gown with clean lines.

“And that’s bad why?”

“Because it’s drab and washes you out. Go for color. Like gold.”

“Suddenly you’re a Pantone expert?” Belle winced. “A gold dress? Isn’t that a touch…cliché?”

“Alright. We’ll keep looking.”

Belle nudged Emma in the direction of a tall, willow-thin woman with striking black and grey hair and the pointiest red stilettos she’d ever seen. “Maybe we should ask someone. I think she works here.”

Emma squinted and slid more dresses down the rack. “The one with the scarf on?”

“It’s a poncho.” She knew that much.

“Wait! Wait! Try this emerald one! Gold will go crazy when he sees you in this!” Emma whipped a dazzling, jewel-toned gown with a daring thigh-high slit off the rack. Belle stared at the stunning gown then glanced back at the saleswoman. “Five minutes ago you didn’t know anything about dresses.” “You’re right, I don’t. But I know my father-in-law and he’s going to love that dress. Well, he’d love you in a life-sized paper bag, but this dress will make even Mr. Smart Ass Newspaper Dude speechless. God, I can picture him drooling already!” She thrust the dress into Belle’s arms and gave her a playful shove. “Go try it on. And remember, the only person who has to know how beautiful you are…”

“Is me,” Belle finished. They’d had this conversation often during their walks over the past few months, and Emma had reminded her yet again on the two-hour drive here. She fingered the rich velvet skirt with trembling fingers. Now she had to walk the walk. “I’ll try it. What color are you looking for?” she asked, backing into the fitting room.

“Black.” “Emma!” she whined.

Emma yanked the fitting room curtain closed with a laugh. The dress was crushed velvet with full-length sleeves, hard to find, even in the middle of a brutal Maine winter. She slid into the gown, the silk-lined velvet feeling decadent against her skin. Even without the back completely zipped, she liked the look. Emma was right, she realized, turning this way and that in the three-way mirror.

The scoop neck hugged her shoulder blades, emphasizing her thinnest feature—her shoulders—and the color made her blue eyes sparkle and skin creamy even under the garish fluorescent fitting room lights. It was a few inches too long for her 5-foot, 1-inch frame, but the skirt length was easily remedied at a tailor. Not hating it, she took a deep breath, lifted the skirt so she wouldn’t trip, and opened the curtain. She hoped Emma was nearby because she didn’t want to make a spectacle of herself. Those stupid little fitting room closets were designed to thrust you back out onto the floor where commission-hungry salespeople could tell you how good you looked and convince you to buy.

“Em,” she called out, “could you zip—” She swallowed the rest of her words. Emma was face-to-face with a dark-haired woman, and looking even more nervous than she had when they walked into the boutique. “Emma? Emma Nolan?” The stranger wore a smart navy pantsuit and a light blue silk blouse, and her blood-red lips spread in a wide smile. Everything about her, from her perfectly coifed hair to her buffed, nude pumps, screamed suave and important.

“Yeah, who’s asking?” “It’s me, Regina Mills. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten. We graduated together from Storybrooke High! I sat next to you in Mr. Walsh’s English class.” “Oh, hey.” Emma kicked the carpet with her boot, looking anything but thrilled to meet an old high school friend. “Good to see you. You remember Belle French, I’m sure. She graduated the year after us.” Regina frowned at Belle, making a small scar on her upper lip stand out. “Sorry, doesn’t ring a...bell.” “It’s fine. We didn’t really travel in the same social circles anyway,” Belle said.  Regina pouted, as if trying to decide if Belle’s remark was a put-down.

Well, she could interpret the comment however she wished. Belle didn’t care for the change that had come over Emma since Regina had appeared or the barely-veiled insult that she wasn’t worth remembering. Now that she’d had a good look at her, she remembered Regina well enough. Then again, it was hard to forget the most popular girl to ever come out of Storybrooke High School. Student body president, prom queen, and girlfriend of Daniel Colter, captain of the football team. Belle would have called her a high school cliché, except that Regina had carried her smooth, flawless reputation into adulthood. She was still the most beautiful woman Belle had ever seen close-up.  “I’m just in town for meetings today. I’m an attorney and planning to run for office next term.” Regina’s frozen smile was back in business. “I’m thinking start small with state Senate and work up from there. So, Emma, what have you been up to since graduation? I haven’t seen you since we walked across the stage.” “Um, well.” Emma shoved her hands in her pockets and looked toward the racks of dresses. “Emma is a gifted photographer,” Belle said, sliding to her friend’s side. If Emma wasn’t going to boast about her accomplishments, she sure as hell was going to do it for her. “How exciting!” Regina’s grin was wolfish, her dark eyes sparkling. “Are you exhibiting your portraits at any galleries?” “Uh…” Emma looked at the floor. “No time,” Belle put in. “Right, Em? You’re much too busy with your son, Henry and your husband, Neal.” “Oooh, a husband.” Regina’s eyes flashed again, reminding Belle of a shark circling its prey. “Is he a doctor?” “Nope.” “Hmmm.” She tapped a red nail against her jaw. “A lawyer then?” “He’s in construction,” Emma said, looking to Belle for help. “For your information, he runs his own construction company. He’s built most of Storybrooke’s new buildings in the last ten years.” Belle glared at Regina, daring her to make another cutting remark. “So he’s a working man,” she said, managing to make the term sound neither positive nor negative. “Yeah. Yeah. He’s great.” Emma’s laugh was feeble and she ducked her head.  Regina clapped her hands. “This has been fun, catching up. We should do this again sometime.” She flashed another gorgeous, winning smile, and moved in the direction of the lingerie. “Best of luck on the campaign trail,” Belle called after her. Waiting until Regina was out of earshot, Belle whirled on Emma. “Excuse me, but what the hell was that?”

“Never mind. We have shopping to do.” Emma cleared her throat and tried to slide past her, but Belle held her ground.

“The shopping can wait. Who died and crowned Regina Mills queen?”

Belle had zero patience for people who clambered for social standing and pronounced themselves better than others. Having been so often on the receiving end of other people’s sarcasm, Belle rarely talked down to people. But standing up to bullies didn’t count. Something about watching Emma cower in front of Regina caused an angry fire to blaze in her belly. Maybe she was lousy at defending herself, but she’d be damned if she’d let anyone walk all over her friend. Emma shrugged and studied the dresses. She was pretending not to care about the awkward encounter, but Belle knew better. “I don’t like small talk. ‘Hi. How are you?’ she parroted. ‘Oh, I’m fine, how are you?’ News flash: nobody’s fine.”

“Em…”

“No matter how she makes it sound, Regina and I weren’t friends in high school, we were competitors.” She rolled her eyes. “She reminisces about Mr. Walsh’s English class like that was the only time we saw each other. I guess she forgot about the four years we spent one-upping each other on the cheerleading squad, softball team, and the debate team. Always trying to be smarter, stronger, and skinnier than the other. We were out for blood.”

“Then why are you letting her get under your skin?”

Emma sighed and pulled on her ponytail. “You know Cora Mills?”

“Cora Mills, the mayor? Of course.” Belle suppressed a shudder.

Regina’s mother, Cora, had been mayor of Storybrooke for as long as Belle could remember. Cora was a cold, calculating woman, but what she lacked in lovable qualities, she made up for in efficiency. She ran Storybrooke like a machine and no one could argue with her methods, not even Gold, who was paid to search out everything. From the few times Belle had met her, she realized Cora wasn’t mean so much as devoid of emotion.  Beyond a perfunctory review of the library budget once a year, Belle was fortunate to rarely communicate with the Mayor’s Office and even when she did, it was strictly emails between Belle and Cora’s assistant. The library and its services were beneath Cora’s notice; so long as Belle didn’t ask for too much money, she stayed under her radar—which was exactly the way she liked it.

Emma wandered to a bench next to the row of fitting rooms and plopped down. “My mom always wanted to be like her, you know.”

“Really?” Belle would never have expected sweet, kind Mary Margaret Nolan to want to emulate Cora Mills.

Emma smirked. “Once, a long time ago, Mom even tried bidding against her for Mayor but she was too nice. She was laughed out of the first debate, and it’s a good thing because the town would have walked all over her. Since Mom couldn’t be like Cora, she decided the next best thing would be for me to be like Cora’s daughter, Regina. I spent every day of high school trying to beat Regina for one reason: because my mom couldn’t beat hers.”

“Wow,” Belle said. “I would never have known. Your mom is such a great teacher and your parents are like a fairytale marriage. Talk about relationship goals.”

“Exactly. The thing with my mom is she’s incredible just as she is,” she said. “Former prom queen, straight-A student, a born teacher. She’s smart and pretty and married to the perfect, charming husband. And she loves Storybrooke—but not for me.”

“But your parents live in Storybrooke.” Confused, Belle furrowed her brow. “That seems like a bit of a double-standard.”

“Yeah.” Emma shook her head. “’Why do you want to take pictures of engaged couples and local pet adoptions?’ she said, mimicking her mother’s innocent tone. “She would rather I was out on the front lines of some war documenting the dying.” “Like Gold used to?” Belle nodded in sympathy and claimed the empty side of the bench. She knew all too well the feeling of being expected to be someone you couldn’t be and dashing parental hopes in the process. “She feels like you shouldn’t be satisfied with a simple life.” “Bingo! And she resents the hell out of Gold for telling me what it’s really like out there. I think that’s why I’m closer to him now than I am my own parents. He understands weakness and failure in a way I don’t think they can. I’m not some conceited little bitch who’s hiding in the bathroom to throw up everything she eats to fit in anymore, but sometimes that really sucks, you know?”

“Yeah, I do.” Belle’s heart clenched in sympathy. Sometimes she still got sucked into the vortex of her own self-pity and forgot that everyone—even gorgeous, wonderful Emma—was fighting a battle. Trying to be yourself was hard work. It was so much easier to toe the line of people’s expectations, to do and say what made others feel comfortable and safe. “So there’s Regina, first conquering the state of Maine, then the world.” Emma put her head in her hands. “And here I am...not running for a spot even on the PTO. Married with a kid and pregnant again.” “You’re pregnant?” Belle slung an arm around Emma and dragged her against her side in an awkward hug. “Oh, sweetie, that’s amazing!” “Ya think? Emma sniffled but looked hopeful for the first time since they had entered the boutique. “Really? I wasn’t expecting another baby. It just happened.”

“Henry is going to be a big brother!” Belle squealed, excited enough for both of them. “Does your mom know yet?”

“Are you kidding?” “What did Neal say?”

Emma shook her head and touched her belly. “You’re the first soul I’ve told.”

“Me?” Belle crowded closer to Emma and drew her head down on her shoulder. She smoothed Emma’s hair back from her temples, soothing her the way her mother used to when she was little while she tried to process the news. To think she was the first to know about the new addition coming to the Cassidy household. She hummed thoughtfully. “I don’t think I’ve ever been first in someone else’s confidence. At least not...well there’s Gold, of course.” She felt Emma nod against her shoulder. “I know what you mean. I’ve had friends. Acquaintances. Then when I met Neal he satisfied any need I had for friends. He’s a great husband and I love him to pieces, but it’s not like this. Like us. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, Belle.”

“Me too,” she said, tears scalding her eyes. She’d known it was true—had felt the stirrings of their bond deep in her spirit ever since their first real conversation at Henry’s birthday clambake. Between family dinners, walks, and girls nights out, the invisible force between them only grown stronger. Somehow acknowledging their friendship out loud made it seem more solid. Precious. As important to her as her love for Gold, but in a different way.

“Now stand up,” Emma said, fishing into her pocket for a crumpled tissue. “I wanna see this dress!”

Belle shot to her feet and smoothed the skirt, her fingers fluttering around the waist and hips while Emma zipped up the back.

“I love it,” she said, motioning for Belle to twirl around.

“Really? You don’t think it makes me look like a medieval strumpet?”

“Hell no!” Emma whistled as Belle turned around again. “You’re stunning. All we need now are Spanx and shoes. And maybe some lingerie for the after-party?” She wiggled her eyebrows.

“Maybe.” Belle’s face flamed at the thought of wearing a negligee for Gold. “What about you?”

“We’ll get to me after lunch.” She patted her still-flat tummy. “There’s a place down the street serving yummy cheese-covered waffle fries and this kid wants some now.”

Belle’s stomach growled in answer. “Lead the way.”

Their waiter was clearing the lunch plates at the café when Belle heard a knock on the window. She did a double-take as her father waved through the glass with a sheepish smile. Her turkey club sandwich, which had tasted so delicious a few minutes ago, now lodged in her stomach. What was he doing here in the city?

“I’ll grab the check, Belle. You go talk to him,” Emma urged. “If I see things are getting bad I’ll come outside and rescue you.”

Nodding, she gathered her coat and made her way outside, wondering what would bring her father looking for her in Portland of all places, when she hadn’t seen him once on the streets of Storybrooke in the three weeks since she’d moved out.

The air was frigid even in the sunshine, and she seemed to grow colder with every step she took toward her father.

“Daddy?” She wrapped her arms around herself to keep from reaching for a hug. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s the Portland flower show.” He brushed a bit of pollen off the sleeve of his coat. “I was in the neighborhood and saw you having lunch in the window.” “Ah.” Her dad attended the vendor-focused flower exhibition every year. She should have prepared for the possibility of running into him in town, but she’d completely forgotten it was this weekend.

“We haven’t heard from you in weeks, darling. Edith was devastated when you collected your things and left us.”

Belle gave a noncommittal grunt and thrust her cold hands in her pockets. Edith was devastated? Perish the thought her own father actually missed her.

“Marco treating you well?”  he asked gruffly.

“Like family,” she retorted, her voice carrying a sharpness she hadn’t intended.

Her father’s face paled and she instantly regretted her tone. There was no call to be so mean-spirited, especially when it somehow succeeded in making her feel worse instead of better.

He sniffed. “Will we see you for Thanksgiving?“

Belle looked into the clear blue sky, distancing herself from his hopeful gaze. "Marco’s cooking a huge feast, so I’ll be eating with him and Gold and the Cassidys.“

“Christmas?“

She blew out an exasperated breath and hugged herself again. “Let’s push through one nightmare holiday at a time, okay?“

He huffed. “I didn’t realize things had gotten so bad.”

“Are we still talking about holidays, or are you referring to other bad situations?” She thought back to the horrible family dinner she’d put Gold through when she’d tossed a roll at Edith’s head and stormed out. “I can’t live like that anymore. I won’t.”

“You’ve changed, Belle. Is this…is this Gold’s influence on you, then?” He seemed to deflate before her eyes, this giant of a man shriveling down to a pathetic shell. “When did you become this way? So stubborn. So willful.” His lips shook as he spoke. “If your mother were alive, she…”

“But she’s not, Daddy,” Belle interrupted. “Mother hasn’t been with us for years. She’s not here to tell you what to do and what to say, and for that matter neither is Edith. You’re the one who changed. It’s as Erskine said, you don’t even see me. Maybe you never did.”

“Belle!” Emma jogged over to the rescue, her breath a white cloud in the cold afternoon air. “Hey, Mister French. We really gotta get going if we’re going to finish shopping and I promised Henry I’d be home in time to tuck him in.”

“Great. I’m freezing anyway.” She looped her arm through Emma’s and mustered a sad, parting smile for her father. After years of trying to gain his attention and approval, she wasn’t sure when she would see him again and at the moment, she didn’t care. “Take care of yourself, Dad.”

###

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

I felt impelled to reblog because I'm a sci-fi and fantasy writer at the start of my career. I've had a collection of short stories out with Culture Matters and I've got a proper novel coming out with X Press later this year. I'm reading at a literary festival in Birmingham later this year. I'm flashing my credentials here so you know that I know what I'm talking about. Ahem. MODERN WRITING ADVICE IS ABSOLUTE BOLLOCKS. People love beautiful language. They love well-crafted, fully-realised lore. They love worlds that feel distinct and alien compared to our own. Nobody minds an info-dump if the info you're dumping is interesting. Nobody minds a character with five different names if it makes sense in context and adds to the texture of your world. Nobody gives a shit if you want to spend three pages describing a mountain range if your prose fucking sings. Want to add little extras at the end of your book so people can dive deeper into the parts of the world that aren't directly touched by the plot? Freakin' go for it, bro (and/or broette). The readers who don't care will skip it and not mind that it's there and the ones who do care will be overjoyed to have bonus material. Look, a lot of modern writing advice is about making stories as marketable as possible; about making them as aggressively readable and unchallenging as possible for a mass audience. But that's not how great literature gets written. At some point, as a writer, you need to make a decision: do you want to be read and forgotten by as many people as possible, or do you want to be read and remembered by a small, loyal readership who actually connect to what you're saying. There's nothing wrong with disposable entertainment, but it's not all that there is, regardless of what the logics of late-stage capitalism might claim to the contrary.

Modern Writing Advice: don't load your readers down with a bunch of different names! Keep things simple so they can remember what you're talking about.

JR²T Himself: And here are these three mountains. Now listen to Gimli wax poetic about them and their names and histories in three different languages, then refer to the Extra Educational Material at the end of your volume to see what he's talking about.

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

Doctor Who: Rogue Review (Doctor Hoot. I Swear That'll be Funny the End of this Review)

You know, I never thought I’d be this grateful to see a murderous owl-person kill someone with lightning and then steal their face, but here we fucking are! Six episodes into an eight-episode run and I’ve never been happier to see Regency ponces get fried with space-electrics. Y’see, Rogue is yer basic bread-and-butter Who episode: a confined environment with a colourful cast of characters who serve as cannon-fodder for a quirky monster-of-the-week with a batshit crazy motive. The Doctor and Insert-Companion-Here show up for a good time then realise there’s a monster-of-the-week at work (because the Doctor is a man who can’t go five minutes without running into something that wants to eat human bones or enslave a planet or whatever) and then they Do A Thing that solves the problem. Along the way, there’s some romance, some cheap shots about how shit and unequal the past was (yeah, ‘cause the 21st Century’s a fucking rose garden- people in glass houses should probably learn to jack off in the basement, etc.) It’s all very funny and energetic and entertaining but at the end the status-quometer has moved maybe one quarter of a degree. In any series of Doctor Who from 2005 to 2015, Rogue would have come and gone largely unnoticed: an enjoyable bit of filler rounding out a twelve-to-thirteen episode run because it can’t all be Daleks and Weeping Angels and meditations on man’s inhumanity to man. Here, in the year 2024, it arrives like a cool, refreshing glass of water in a desert, brought to you, the viewer, by a sexy little butler in very formal hot-pants.

See, aside from Boom! (which had a very good point to make and made it very well), this series of Who has been… well, it hasn’t been bad. Russel T. Davies can write a diverting 45 minutes of television and nobody can take that away from him. But it hasn’t reached the stellar heights of certain the original Who come-back either. Between the Space Babies being creepier than that episode’s monster-that-wasn’t-really-a-monster (NEWS! NEWS! NEWS! unsurprising twist is unsurprising!), Jinkx Monsoon not getting the acting direction she needed to make Maestro properly terrifying, the giant slugs that literally didn’t move the entire time they were on screen and a woman in black whose power was making people run off in a surprisingly camp way, this series has felt very short on effective antagonists. I mean, I get that the vibe we’re going for is ‘the real monster was mankind all along’ chic, but that’s The Twilight Zone and Black Mirror, not Doctor Who. It’d be like if Red Dwarf suddenly came back as a serious drama (aside to whoever’s making the upcoming three eps of Red Dwarf: PLEASE DON’T DO THAT, THERE ARE SO FEW THINGS LEFT THAT I LOVE THAT HAVEN’T BEEN RUINED). So, when, within the first few minutes of Rogue, one Regency Ponce grabbed another by the lapels and fried him with lightning before assuming his form (and then we got a shot of something with a beak), I was like “Oh thank fuck for that! I thought the death-ambulances from Boom! were going to be the only interesting villains this season!”

So, you probably already know (because why would you be reading about Doctor Who if you’re not also watching Doctor Who? It’s not like its a monolith of cultural relevance any more), there are two plots going on in Rogue. The A-plot is that shapeshifting Murder-Owls (the episode calls them ‘Childer’, but they’re fucking Murder-Owls and I will fight anyone who says otherwise) are killing people to assume their form and ‘cosplay’ as human beings. They’re bored: it’s how they pass the time. The B-Plot, meanwhile, involves the Doctor having a whirlwind romance with the titular Rogue, who is a bounty-hunter from the future sent to capture or kill the Murder-Owls. Ultimately, the two plots tie together in a way that gives the episode its emotional heart. Without spoiling anything, the Doctor must sacrifice his budding relationship with Rogue in order to save the day from the monsters-of-the-week, while Rogue, whose been playing the heartless vagabond all episode, must knowingly sacrifice the same in order to save the Doctor’s companion, Ruby, knowing that that friendship and her wellbeing is more important than his own, thereby proving that he was worthy of the Doctor after all, even though proving it means they can’t be together. On paper, it makes perfect sense. In practice… it has some flaws. See, there’s a lot going on in Rogue and the generally fast pacing of Fifteen’s adventures is much in evidence here, but a compelling romance- even a compelling flirtation- takes time to execute properly. It kinda feels like the two don’t really have enough breathing room: they fall for each other in record time because the plot demands it and then get irrevocably separated at the end, also because the plot demands. There’s no sense of slowly building attraction and mutual chemistry, which is a shame, because Rogue himself is an interesting character who, in an ideal universe (one where, for example, season lengths didn’t keep shrinking and squeezing out grace notes) he might have come back and developed properly. Now, even if he does come back, they rushed through so much of his relationship with the Doctor, I’m not sure how they’d salvage it.

I suppose I should mention the fact that it’s the Doctor’s first gay fling. Oh, would you look at that, I just did and now we can move on. Joking aside, I do have some thoughts on the Doctor’s signwaving sexuality, but since none of them are dementedly homophobic or, conversely, overtly Pride-y, they’re not really relevant to this specific episode: they’re more general notes on characterisation and how to do it well from the perspective of a budding professional writer WHO IS GOING TO BE READING AT A PROPER LITERARY FESTIVAL LATER THIS YEAR LIKE A FUCKING BOSS, BY THE WAY! Really, I think the pacing issues here would kill the flair regardless of the gender of the other person involved and that’s kinda all I can add for now. I feel, however, that I can’t really blame writers Kate Herron and Briony Redman. They’re working within the constraints of a shortened season part-funded by an American corporation that doesn’t understand it and produced under the aegis of a showrunner who, while perfectly competent, seems to have lost the magic he had when he brought the series back in 2005.

If all this sounds a bit negative… well, it is and it isn’t. Yes, my opinion of this season of Doctor Who isn’t high compared the show’s heyday, but I am enjoying it enough that I want to see it improve. I don’t critique out of hate, but out of love; out of a desire to see something I cherish learn and improve. We know Doctor Who can be better, so why isn’t it?

But this episode, specifically? Yes, it’s good. The problem is that in most previous seasons it would have been below-average good, whereas in this season it’s above-average good. On the one hand, that’s a bit sad. On the other hand, it’s proof that there are still people around the BBC who know how to write an episode of Doctor Who in the classic mould, and that seems like a good foundation to build on.