#thinking back (hindsight is a great thing) i guess she was only about 30 back then

[cannoli-reader]

My Notes from Watching the Wheel of Time show

Originally posted on 12/24/2021. Possible spoilers for any or all WoT novels. Under the cut...

00:18 - So how will Amalisa’s channeling matter in this episode? Clearly it will, since it’s in the recap.

01:20 - “3000 years ago” We’re cutting to LTT now? Never mind it was a great way to kick off the series, no, we have to have it with 7/8 of the season gone, because of the inane secret-keeping.

01:30 - Oh, we’re not doing the prologue, we’re doing the Fateful Concord! And they’re speaking in Latin the Old Tongue on screen. That’s just dumb. The Old Tongue isn’t a viable language, it is there to sound cool and old-fashioned, to add significance to words and terminology. The one time this show has tried, with Nynaeve’s precisely memorized prayer, it was gibberish. I might go back and attempt to translate the dialogue for my own curiosity, but it seems too much like work that will just get me pissed off.

1:40 - Who is right in his conflict? I can’t tell! One the one hand, Latra Posae is white, and Lews Therin is black. But she's a woman and he isn't. Recall if you will (sorry about the pain), Moiraine’s commentary at the outset of the series was highly critical of Barack Hussein Lews Therin Telamon, so it’s a pretty good guess.

01:40 - And she has a baby.

02:13 - Ah, the White Girl Feminist is the one the narrative is backing. Because they have her precisely predicting the danger of Barack Therin’s strategy, when in the books, her predictions were different and further, as it says, “no one could have predicted the Dark One’s counterstroke” (emphasis mine). Also, I am getting a very much domestic dispute vibe from this argument. And that baby bearing a stronger resemblance to BTT than LPD suggests he is having a professional argument with a political rival in his child’s nursery or LPD used the One Power to conceive a child with her life-partner-of-color.

02:41 - Who even says stuff like this? The fate of the world is only being decided in a nursery, because the writers made the asinine decision to set this argument there and script it laden with hindsight!

02:58 - Ugh, we have an anachronistic super-woman-who-does-it-all depiction.

03:07 He’s the Dragon, not the Dragon Reborn! The Dragon is not the title of the guy who fights the Dark One, it was a specific title given to LTT, just like the Forsaken names. That’s a thing they did in the Age of Legends, recognize important people with names. When you have overcome resource scarcity, and govern justly and equitably through merit as any utopia would, formal recognition of your service or infamy is about the only reward that can be given out.

The point of Rand being the Dragon Reborn in not that he is the Dark One’s eternal adversary, but that he is the reincarnation of Lews Therin, specifically. The guy whose actions led to the Breaking of the World, who killed his wife and family and led his followers to death and madness! The point is all that baggage, of that particular man landing on Rand’s shoulders! Calling Barack Therin the Dragon Reborn strips the title of its damning implications and the fear that Rand is doomed to do what made LTT infamous.

03:15 - What flame is she watching? The Flame of Tar Valon, whose eponymous city has not yet been geologically formed, let alone founded, named or built? That’s clearly a Third Age title, when they would have been thinking about all they have lost and seen themselves as a group maintaining the fire of the Power, the Aes Sedai, civilization, humanity, whatever, so it does not go out. They were not separate in the AoL, they were one, so the Flame was only half the symbol.

And yes, WoT Novices would not know this, I am aware. My point is, the show writers don’t understand the meaning of stuff from the books. They’re not remotely attempting to tell a variant of the same story, just strip-mining it for names and ideas to bolt patchwork fashion onto the hideous visage of their own fantasy creation.

03:25 - Is that Dr. Strange’s ter’angreal for Traveling on several of Barak Therin’s fingers?

03:33 - Don’t you see? It’s powerfully ironic because what he’s about to do will actually cause him to kill the baby! Professional writing is a great art!

Why was that argument between Barack Therin and LPD a better piece of background than the lead-in to to a best-selling novel? And if you’re going to set your first ever Age of Legends scene in the Therin family nursery, why do you need to erase Ilyena?

05:23 - This looks more like they are going to find Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

05:52 - We are in the middle of a global pandemic, when people’s ideas of necessary measures against infection have taken a radical turn. Two idiots lurching through a thicket with their faces exposed, hair unbound and utterly failing to avoid crashing through the branches and underbrush does not remotely convey the danger of the Blight. Edit from the future: They built this set after the pandemic shut them down, so it's not like were filming this before the world became obsessed with sanitizer and N95. “Touch nothing” is something you tell people before entering the place where they should not touch things, not when you are deep enough in that you can’t see the place you came from.

Also, Moiraine makes it sound like the Blight is just some place only stupid adventurers go for kicks, rather than the terrain of an enemy with whom the Borderlands are fighting an unceasing war, where there are very good reasons for men and armies to go into the Blight. How else would Lan come to know it as other children know their mothers’ garden?

06:09 - Unnecessary negging of Rand, who is doing this because YOU told him he had to and has given no indication he is unaware that he is in over his head.

06:18 - Ever notice TV characters don’t come into a room like normal people? Normal people linger at the door, or approach the person they are there to see. TV characters stride right in, but they hang near the back, circling the foreground occupant as if getting into position of a game of catch or a duel.

06:53 - Nosewart and tear.

07:10 - Egwene is sad. Perrin thinks it’s dangerous to pursue Rand & Moiraine. Why did we need to be shown this? What was the point of that scene? Has there been too much white skin on screen to this point?

08:03 - They are sitting on mossy rocks, leaning against Blight-Trees. This Blight is lame.

08:28 - You can barely hold Lan back from the Blight under the best of circumstances. With Moiraine and the Dragon Reborn plunging into it alone, he would be after them if the whole army of Shienar was in his way. He would not be gazing wistfully from the inexplicably exposed balcony out in the general direction of the Blight.

Also, how does this room make any sense for one of the northern-most cities in the world? Balconies that are only closed off from the interior by screens? This kind of thing is seen in Ebou Dar and Tear and is the sort of thing Berelain wanted Perrin to make for her bedroom in Mayene. It is NOT what you find in the extreme north, where trees explode because their sap freezes! Edit from the future: Actually, there appears to be glass inside the screens.

09:20 - I could almost accept even one might would overlook a characteristic track made by their long-time partner, if they only ever needed their magic mindlink to find them. But if you are good at something, and do it all the time, and sometimes your life depends on it, you notice pertinent details by reflex! There is no way any real tracker would miss a tendency of his companion of 20 years to leave a particular track! Even if Lan has never had to track Moiraine, there must have been times when he was trying to cover their backtrail! That’s the point of his surprise when Nynaeve admits to tracking them to Baerlon, because he was actively taking measures to prevent that from happening! For the WHOLE group, because no one is stupid enough to cover their own trail and forget that of the person traveling with them!

And Lan does not let details like that pass, anyway. That’s why he’s so good, not because he has put so many skill points into his sword ability, but because he is diligent, observant and thorough.

The worst part of it is, I think the writers believe they are “fixing” Lan, by saying “actually, no one is good enough to track him, not even Nynaeve.”

10:00 - The context of Lan’s comments about Nynaeve’s future husband ITB was because he has already stated the reasons why it is impossible for that to be him. There is absolutely nothing established on the show why this should be the case.

BTW, Lan more or less ended the discussion with the love him/hate him bit, after she gave the line about Wisdoms and wedding and going to Tar Valon, which came after his string of compliments. They literally did the conversation backwards.

11:20 - And now Ishamael is just some goober. The actual thing they didn’t reveal for three books, even if the pieces are there for alert readers to pick up, that Ba’alzamon who comes to them in their dreams and fights Rand three times, is not the Dark One, but a mortal man, has just been tossed out the window by his very ordinary appearance and voice and getting rid of the expensive “distracting” flame effects. This guy is as menacing as an Uber driver.

12:04 - Lews Therin ITB had a Hundred Companions! That was their FUCKING NAME! If he was one of the hundred, to whom were they companions? The name comes from them being a young, rash, upstart faction that developed a strong loyalty to Lews Therin personally, rather than the office of the supreme commander. He was the respected leader with an established and illustrious career and they were his loyal following, not his partners. And also, ITB, the name was figurative, and he took more than 100 Aes Sedai to Shayol Ghul with him. WoTNovices would not know about the Hundred Companions, and readers who cared would have read “The Strike at Shayol Ghul” and know better.

12:42 - These sorts of personal details were far beneath Ba’alzamon’s awareness.

13:25 - Why would Rand wake up rubbing at his wrists, instead of the abdominal wound he just gave himself?

13:30 - We’re just supposed to take Rand’s word that the convenience store clerk from his dream is the Dark One? Why does Rand think this? Why are we supposed to trust his opinion?

14:16 - Moiraine is describing the ITB singular creation of the Eye of the World, but here applied to a sa’angreal that will merely increase Rand’s power “a hundredfold.” I’m not one of the One Power experts in the fan community, but I would have figured a sa’angreal, especially one that required thousands of male channelers (BTW, they had a name; it was Aes Sedai) to make, would have a more impressive payoff.

14:35 - A. Moiraine give no indication of how Rand is supposed to channel in the first place, let alone with the sa’angreal, and B. She’s basically demanding Rand single-handedly seal up the Dark One just like that, as if Tarmon Gaidon is not a thing. Now this is not too far off from a typical Book Moiraine plan, but I don’t think the writers (nor, to be fair to Rafe et al, many fans) are aware that she is an ignorant tool in just as far over her head as the rest of the gang, and her plans, especially where Rand and metaphysical stuff like channeling and prophecies are concerned, suck Trolloc balls.

15:09 - The writers immediately try to ameliorate the exposure of Moiraine’s error in believing Egwene was the Dragon by having Rand admit he did too, but they don’t seem to realize they are effectively saying Moiraine’s judgment is no better than a love-struck backwoods farmboy’s. There is no real suggestion that the narrative places them on the same level. The signals sent by the show so far is that she is great and awesome and brilliant and where she falls short, she is still miles ahead of the Emond’s Fielders, or at least the male ones.

15:21 - So we’re just writing out Nynaeve’s weather/conflict sense, which is a thing into the late series.

15:55 - Ah, they’re doing it in favor of playing up Egwene’s powers. It must be killing them that they realized they had to give the Dragon title to its canonical holder, Rand.

16:45 - We can’t possibly retain that horrific notion that the two halves of the Power are so different that a man can’t learn from a woman or vice versa!

No, Moiraine is refusing to teach Rand, because he has a limited number of channeling attempts before going mad. That, for the record, was never brought up in the books. Rand was the one reluctant to attempt to channel out of fear of the madness, while Aes Sedai were generally encouraging him to do so, in order to learn. As is later seen, the madness happens at random. You can go for years without being afflicted or it can strike the day you are tested. There is never once any correlation drawn between one's exposure to the Power and the onset of the madness.

16:46 - Adrenaline was first made in 1897, and the adrenal glands only became common knowledge in the 17th century. WoT, having Healing as an option for extreme medical cases, is considerably behind the real world on surgery, medical scholarship and publication or nomenclature. If Moiraine knows what the adrenaline is and what it does, Rand would certainly not.

17:07 - Those oh-so-deadly Blight trees, once again serving as a chair-back.

17:50 - ITB, no Aes Sedai would ever take this approach! They scorn the idea of channeling in distress or by instinct, as wilders do! They do everything they can to teach students to channel with a cool head and calm emotions. This is just writing for plot convenience, because they were too busy writing about Warder mourning and White Tower funeral customs to establish channeling lessons.

18:25 - That’s not a comeback! They have already asked what Min told their companions, so it’s clear their purpose “in the bar” is other than procuring alcohol! But TV shows love to have this sort of random statement come out of the mouth of a character they want to show as witty.

19:01 - Don’t think I don’t know that Loial is inexplicably sitting on furniture that is canonically too small for him, solely to hide how much bigger than a couple of women he isn’t.

19:14 - What direction are they even travelling, that they can glance off to their right and see the gap they passed through at the outset of their journey?

19:22 - Ah. We were supposed to see an army in that shot.

19:36 - Is it really easier to spot the Fades among an army of Trollocs than simply estimate their numbers using your own eyeballs and methods used to estimate the size of other armies?

19:43 - Uno still just sounds silly being the only one to use WoT curses, especially when everyone else uses real world curses.

19:56 - You know that drawbridges, especially in large fortresses holding vital strategic positions, that have been part of a militarized nation for a thousand years, generally have chains to raise and lower them? And they also have guards, 24/7 for exactly these sorts of reasons? Also, any ropes strong enough to raise and lower a drawbridge would be like cables that you’d need a team of strong men or hours of uninterrupted time, or a chainsaw, to cut.

20:21 - The higher ranking person does not salute first.

20:36 - Amalisa, he didn’t listen the first time. Also, Trollocs. Fighting them is the only option, regardless of whether or not you can win. No one needed to be told Agelmar & his men were riding out for a doomed fight ITB, they knew it, but it had to be done. The writers are either entirely ignorant of this point, or they are undermining Amalisa by having her make stupid comments.

20:57 - Eye of the World, by MC Escher.

21:56 - What does Lan looking at the Seven Towers mean to anyone who has not read the books, aside from the fact that he is, indeed, on Moiraine’s and Rand’s trail? Based on the prior seven episodes, the best way to make this scene meaningful would be to establish that Stepin the Tragic Warder came from Malkier.

22:05 - It was sufficient for the books that Agelmar was a human being riding to certain death. As far as his father is concerned, he could have sprung full-grown from Zeus’ forehead. You do not need to mention people’s fathers to make them worthy of concern, nor does mentioning them automatically make them so.

22:22 - So the point is that Amalisa thinks Agelmar should wear his ancestral armor, for some reason? Why would his own personal armor be insufficient protection? Even more absurd is that the show thus far has suggested she is the reasonable one, while he’s a blowhard who doesn’t listen to anybody.

23:00 - Why did they not ask the Tower for help? It’s kind of a self-evident solution! Trollocs are clearly not just a local problem ITB, although in the show, Fal Dara is so weak that a mere thousand Trollocs seemed like an overwhelming force certain to defeat Agelmar’s father. Despite Trollocs being so far depicted as undisciplined infantry, and it appears that there is some sort of fortification in the Gap, so a few hundred men should be able to hold off a thousand Trollocs for years.

23:35 - So what’s your point, Agelmar? Everything is futile because Tarmon Gaidon is coming?

23:55 - Um, you want to be careful about saying your messengers will “fly” with “the Light’s speed”, especially when you have an accent, so it sounds like “light speed” because that means something else to genre fiction fans. And when you’re watching fantasy, assuming literal flight is not a stupid thought.

24:49 - “Hey, since we’re such rabid Moiraine fan-boys, why don’t we have her be completely ignorant of what the Eye of the World is?” “Brilliant, Rafe!”

24:53 - Is there some reason why we, or Rand, should trust the competence of an organization that lets their libraries get purged of every record of the existence of a place where you think it’s essential the Dragon Reborn face the Dark One? I suppose no one had read those records or felt the impulse to write down again what they said, so future generations would remember? Or is the Darkfriends-purging-the-library situation a thing that keeps happening?

25:39 - I can see the point of the Aes Sedai needing gestures in this fallen Age, but why would Barack Therin need to?

25:46 - Seriously, why does Rand think that’s the Dark One? ITB, he introduces himself using a name believed to be the Dark One’s.

25:55 - I hope that’s not the literal seal on the Dark One’s prison Rand is standing on.

27:04 - This was Egwene’s test scenario ITB and only one of three in her test to merely advance in her training. In other words, even horrible cishet sexist transphobe RJ didn’t think a fantasy of a marriage and baby was all that important or tempting of a scenario, next to the high stakes conflicts in which they are involved.

27:25 - If this scene ever comes up in a BTS featurette, I know they are going to be pointing out the bridal ribbons in Egwene’s braid. Except you wear those for like, a month, and their kid is old enough to walk. Why not, instead of buying an actual kid that can’t possibly serve any purpose in the scene, spend the money on your CGI, so Ba’alzamon could have had a whole conversation in the fire-face mode? Before my nephew’s baptism, I literally walked the length of the church carrying his blanket folded in such a way that actual human beings who had borne children themselves believed there was a baby in my arms. You could have faked this. It’s probably Rafe’s sister’s kid whom he thinks will utterly enthrall the audience who will then be rooting for Rand to accept the scenario.

And that kid’s legs don’t look big enough to walk, and walking is not a trick babies only perform for certain people, it’s a thing they do because they want to move somewhere and reach things they can’t from the ground.

27:49 - I’m actually glad he bitch-slapped Moiraine, so we didn’t get her staring down Ba’alzamon “the Dark One”.

28:10 - Did he actually still her, or just shield her? If the former, why does the show do this to their fore-fronted character? I feel like her inevitable restoration will cheapen the moment when Nynaeve actually accomplishes it. And it should be noted that Siuan is in no way responsible for this, if it was Moiraine’s downfall. And how much worse could her actual downfall be, unless they are diminishing the significance of stilling? Edit from the future: Per a featurette, it’s because Moiraine is not doing much in The Great Hunt. So either they figured this would be a fun new arc for next year, or they believe it’s not plausible that a fully armed and operational Moiraine could be sidelined as she was ITB.

28:36 - Why are they charging so far from the wall, let alone before actually being on the same field as the enemy? And why is Agelmar bare-headed? If you are only going to wear one piece of armor, wear a helmet. It’s literally the most important body part and also there’s image issues and whatnot that a well-decorated helmet can help with. It’s also the only kind of armor used up until the invention of Kevlar.

28:45 - Why were they charging up to and through the wall? They should be formed up at the gates before they are opened to let them charge through en masse. Even if you don’t understand military issues (and from Rafe’s appearance and deportment in the featurettes and interviews, I am morally certain he does not), you could ask yourself, “Maybe LotR did it that way at Helm’s Deep for a reason?”

28:50 - Either the refugees are leaving the city and heading in the direction of the Blight, or that giant crossbow is pointing in the wrong direction.

Also I can’t help but notice that this is the only bridge we’ve seen in Fal Dara and it’s not remotely a drawbridge. That’s a solid, permanent, what-were-you-thinking-Turin?-type bridge.

28:57 - Juvenile-feminist pandering bullshit. Of all the lessons to take from The Two Towers, Rafe has acceded to his friendzone-girlfriends’ complaints that they armed the teen boys and sent the women into the caves. So what exactly are the women and children fighting for? The buildings? Why are those important? Why don’t they get a choice? Amalisa’s statement is framed as an order.

29:02 - Amalisa is wearing daddy’s armor, because she’s the True Leader of Fal Dara and it’s sexism and patriarchy that Agelmar is the lord. Is that also Daddy’s lipstick?

29:12 - Okay, why is it not standing policy to have torches lit to reduce Fade hiding places, as is the case ITB? Because men are dumb-dumbs and only a woman is clever enough to think up this elementary precaution?

29:21 - If channeling women are known and running around free, should not a census or register have been kept for just such emergencies?

29:33 - Min looks slightly better with her hair down (as well as slightly more masculine than Rafe Judkins). And I can’t decide if her fleeing is in keeping with her canonical common sense or against her propensity for being in way over her head but somehow finding a way to contribute anyhow.

29:58 - Don’t tell me they have some sort of Terminus Decree/self-destruct ter’angreal under the throne.

30:04 - Why do Rand and Moiraine have the only coats in the city?

30:26 - What did Nynaeve’s statement have to do with Loial’s announcement?

30:35 - If Agelmar and friends are going to be using crossbows in the fort, why were they charging dramatically on horseback to enter the fort?

30:39 - Why would the term for pulling a release lever on a crossbow be “fire”? What does “fire” have to do with crossbows? Especially if, unusually for a screen production, they are not loaded with flaming bolts?

30:51 - You don’t say burial prayers for Shadowspawn! It’s phrase to honor the dead, not a curse at your enemies!

31:18 - Every word out of Agelmar’s mouth aside, this is not the worst battle scene. The rate of “fire” is suspiciously high, though.

31:30 - That’s every woman in the city who can channel? I suppose that’s more like the response they’d get from such a call ITB, but the way they were talking it’s not an uncommon thing, and there should be more channelers in the city than were in Moiraine’s party. Also, why is Amalisa standing in a position that is off to one side of a three-woman formation, but dead center in a five-woman formation, assuming the other two approach from the right (as they do)? It’s like she read the script or something, and knew she’d be leading a group of five, assuming she isn’t bowled over by Egwene’s specialness and offer her command.

31:35 - No, you shouldn’t be surprised and from your positioning, you were expecting them.

31:36 - Oh, shut up, Nynaeve. No one cares.

31:49 - I can’t help but notice three of the five female channelers are foreigners of the sort being sent away. Assuming the show knows what a ki’sain is.

31:51 - No one’s making you sit there, Perrin.

31:56 - Bullshit is now a canonical curse. That bloody goat-kissing Uno with his flaming swears!

32:00 - Uh, since when was the Way of the Leaf anything anyone in Fal Dara but Perrin cared about? And he spent his whole time with the Tinkers mocking it or making aha! statements to its adherents. Why are we supposed to believe this is important or an actual conflict for Perrin, just because he mentioned it once to his friends, in a context suggesting the Tinkers’ diet was a more significant interest in that conversation?

32:23 - Real Loial does not cite his experience, because he’s a kid, and this conversation serves no purpose other than to make Perrin look stupid. He’s a professional craftsman and laborer, and a person who sees details others miss. He’d have already found ways to make himself useful ITB. Or maybe this is the wolf-stuff coming out, because wolves get frustrated sitting around.

33:35 - Why would they be running away from home in the direction of the Waterwood? It’s off to the east, while Rand lives to the west of the village, and the only road away from the Two Rivers runs straight north, practically from Egwene’s front door. Unless it’s the only interior geographical feature of the Two Rivers the writers could remember… Also, why is there a waterwood in the mountains where the Two Rivers are located? The context suggests a low-altitude forest on a high water table, which you don’t find in the mountains.

34:13 - In a setting where they believe in reincarnation as a known fact, the way we believe in evolution or astrophysics, a reference to “this life and the next” is really dumb. How much of your current actions or attention is based on fulfilling such promises or statements you made in your last life? None, because you don’t remember, so why would you say you would in the next? Russell Crow can say that in Gladiator because as far as he knows, he will get the chance to throttle Commodus in Hades or Elysium. But Egwene & Rand know they don’t remember previous lives, so their carved declaration is rather fatuous.

35:52 - That is Rand’s ultimate temptation? Weak. ITB it was the present prospect of his mother and friends being tormented by Ba’alzamon which was dangled before Rand.

36:17 - They are doing heavy manual labor, your buddy is a giant and you are canonically one of the strongest men in the Fal Dara garrison, Perrin. What do you think you can do to help?

36:26 - Whatever the show might be trying to say about Amalisa’s intelligence or sense, especially compared to her brother, she is a moron when it comes to military tactics. He, at least, understands the importance of committing all available forces at the decisive point. Going to the fort in the Gap now, before it’s overwhelmed, will prolong the lives of the soldiers, and increase the damage they do to the Trollocs. The faster you kill Trollocs with the Power, the less harm they can inflict on the fort and men, and the longer it will take those to fall, and thus a longer period during which Trollocs are getting shot with bolts. This principle is obvious to a novice player of Warcraft.

36:32 - “Light help you, brother” …since she apparently has no interest in doing so. It’s now dark. There has been plenty of time to ride to the Gap fort. Also, if there is absolutely nothing between Fal Dara and the Gap, why has that ground not been covered with fortifications in depth in the thousand years House Jagad has been defending it?

37:28 - Even a slit throat cannot distract from the nosewart.

37:29 - Are those married-lady earrings? Was the rosary chaplet/buzzsaw blade just for a single girl?

38:12 - Do you want a falafel while you guys wait, Moiraine? I’m sure he could accommodate…

38:26 - Guys, guys! It’s the line! He said the line. That, like maybe a handful of people know, and absolutely none of them will be impressed, given the butchery of every other bit of book material thus far.

38:29 - Oh yay, Fain. I wonder why he’s here. He’s gonna fight Perrin for what reason, exactly? Or is he Perrin’s archnemesis because he killed Perrin’s parents in the books, despite Perrin never learning of it in RJ’s lifetime?

38:31 - If you don’t know or trust the guy out there, why did you open the door? Either the code phrase means he is trustworthy or you should not open the door. But they see a black dude and they reach for weapons like a soccer mom goes for the door lock while stopped at a light on Martin Luther King Boulevard.

38:36 - Badass ladies FTW.

38:44 - So much for all that effort to light fires and keep the Fades from hiding. Looks like hiding is not a thing Fades need to do against the ladies of Fal Dara, even women judged competent to guard a high security door with password-only access.

38:51 - Are you bloody ashing me?

39:05 - “Without it, they won’t stand a chance,” sounds like they are aware who the Dragon is, where he is, and whom he is with. But they were not going to procure the object without which he will not 'stand a chance', until Fal Dara is about to fall.

39:16 - Nynaeve, how could you possibly have come to that estimate without counting Fades?

Also, are we to infer that Agelmar would still be holding them off if he was wearing his father's armor as Amalisa urged?

39:25 - The last time Egwene opened herself to someone, she got pregnant in an alternate reality test. ^rim shot^

39:29 - “Accept it. Let me in,” is what Rand said.

40:15 - That horn makes you think of the Horn of Valere, which was just mentioned a minute and a half ago. Also, these are not great CGI Trollocs.

40:25 - He was sitting there and only got up when Perrin looked at him? Why? Why either thing?

40:32 - Answer Uno, Perrin! I hate when TV characters don’t say things people would actually keep asking about, for the sole purpose of leaving the audience in suspense.

40:35 - Why do they hate Madeline Martin so much to make her stand in that pose this whole scene?

41:00 - Is he teaching Rand to use the Power, or the Dark Side of the Force?

41:21 - If men who channel go mad, then saidin and saidar and the differences between them, have to be a thing! So why is “The Dark One” telling Rand not to fight the One Power? Even if the mention of the fight/surrender contrast does give you menstrual cramps, it’s an important character issue that Rand has to fight the Power.

This is merely what TV writers often have villains say when tempting the hero, so we’re not going to think twice about our word choices.

41:42 - Kill him or don’t Moiraine. Making him bleed from the neck is just pointless, however cinematic, and from the PoV of writers who stan Badass Moiraine! all you’re doing is making her look like a weak woman who can’t control her blade.

42:13 - ITB, the chest required an Ogier to carry alone. That’s gonna be one tiny horn. More like the Kazoo of Valere.

42:16 - “Was that the sound of enemies drawing near?” “Yes. And since we are screen characters whose actions are plotted by hacks, at a dramatic moment near the climax, that can only mean one thing!” “You mean we must put down the vital object that has been the focus of our attention for a couple scenes now, and go looking for the enemy?” “Correct! Bring on the Emmys!”

43:00 - I have played flash player browser games where you use lightning on side-scrolling approaching enemies that looked better than this shot.

43:14 - Everyone without a nosewart looks sick and like they’re being drained, while Egwene looks like my sex jokes were less inappropriate than I would have thought.

43:25 - Don’t puke in the cradle, Rand (even if a real parent of a one-year-old would figure they were due some payback).

43:35 - From his reaction, a fistful of glowing light is the universal sign that a channeler does NOT intend to remake the world in his image, apparently.

43:50 - The climax of the first part of The Wheel of Time is Rand learning to be a supportive feminist husband and ally!

44:06 - It’s officially canon: good spouse and loving mother Egwene is so implausible that Rand cannot accept as possible even the most tempting alternate reality where she chooses loved ones over the Tower.

For the record, because people are complex, this very scenario, the only canon reference to Rand and Egwene having a daughter called Joyia, was, in fact, something that tempted Egwene as much as the thought of defeating Aginor tempted Nynaeve! Yes, she is ambitious, yes, she wants to be an Aes Sedai, but the point in the test was, she’s not an ambition-and-power-seeking robot, this sort of happy quiet life does hold some appeal for her. But Rand’s crowning moment of awesome so far is saying “Nope, no way. Not my Egwene.”

And considering that his epiphany during the Last Battle is that Egwene would be demanding her own chance to be a hero and have a part in the fight, that’s going to be kind of old news by the time the show gets there. Is this going to be a whole series of him learning the lesson he has just demonstrated he knows?

44:13 - Also, in a scene with a central point being a woman’s agency, why are you making the woman in question stand posed with a vapid smile on her face, as an object for the men to argue about?

44:24 - “The Dark One” is apparently just going to stand there and do nothing while Rand acts against him.

44:42 - If Moiraine cannot infer that Rand “did it” from the sight of him holding out a hand and “The Dark One” vanishing, “I did it” is not going to answer her question.

45:02 - Perrin’s improved senses have been alluded to. So why did he not know the bat was there, and why is he reacting like a ten-year-old girl?

45:07 - If not for the caption, I would never have known “Luuhh!” was supposed to be Perrin shouting “Loial!”

45:13 - Perrin thinks Fain was suspicious enough to investigate, but not to go armed. If it was not important enough to take a weapon, then helping dig up the Horn is probably a better use of his time.

45:35 - I’m getting nothing but a girl-power vibe from this whole plotline, but Amalisa is literally the worst. She just murdered one woman and might a second, given Min’s viewing of Nynaeve, because of her channeling incompetence.

45:58 - Channeling euphoria should have been established long before it kills a channeler who can’t bring herself to let go of the Power. I mean, I realize this scene would not have been as meaningful without Stepin’s tragedy, or the story of Dana the Dumpy Darkfriend, but you think they could have found some time to lay out the basics of the fantasy element in your fantasy series, that exists, because Amazon wanted the next big fantasy property.

46:11 - And in show rules, you can channel separately while in a link, but Nynaeve doesn’t try to do anything to stop Amalisa.

46:23 - This does not make the time spent on the female initiation ritual better, nor was that necessary to give weight and meaning to Nynaeve’s actions here, whose last line before coming out to join the channeling party was an assertion that she came to protect the Two Rivers kids. That’s exactly why she placed her braid in a Trolloc’s hand and rode it off into the wilderness!

46:37 - Buh-bye, Amalisa. No one will miss you. Your brother was a better character, even this pathetic version. Edit from the future: They are VERY excited about her makeup for this one shot, in a featurette.

46:58 - No, the arrival of spring is a good time for a peddler to go into a mountain community, which will need his merchandise after a long winter of being snowed in. This is not a scenario about which one says “Do you think it a coincidence,” because that’s not a coincidence, it’s a legitimate reason to show up there on purpose.

47:06 - If selling lanterns is dumb, it’s because the show changed that datum. Fain brought all sorts of necessities the Two Rivers people could not procure themselves, like books, and pins and fireworks. According to Rand’s alt-scenario a few minutes ago, you can make the lanterns by hand, anyway.

47:34 - Does anyone seriously believe Nynaeve is dead?

47:58 - Seriously, this nonsense about evil being necessary for balance is pathetic. Do they honestly think this makes the story better, that some of the characters have to turn evil to maintain some sort of mystic order? Why? What point does this serve, other than the convenience and intellectual shortcomings of the writers?

48:22 - Why is this a question at the end of the season finale, when ITB, it was the very first thing said about men who can channel? And that was after a prologue where we saw the results of that madness!

49:18 - Why would Perrin think anyone was defeated? He’s been in this room or wandering deserted corridors since Egwene and Nynaeve went out to help Amalisa.

49:47 - “Hey, what’s the most important detail to get right about the Myrddraal?” “The way they pass for human from the nose down?” “No, how about their creepy inhuman movements?” “That’s stupid. What about their horrible-sounding voices?” “Not that either.” “The way their cloaks don’t move?” “Clearly not.. Look, the answer is obvious! Their sandworm mouths!” “…what?” “I mean, it’s not in the text, but it’s pretty clear Jordan is not nearly as smart as we are. It’s how he would have described them if he had read Dune.” “I kind of think the hero becoming the prophesied messiah of an army of superb warriors from a desert community with blue eyes, fathering magic twins and having concurrent relationships with a princess trained by the female-only organization with special abilities and a desert warrior turned witch doctor with similar abilities, and being the first man in a long time to wield those same abilities, kind of means RJ did, in fact, read Dune.” “You’re high on the One Power and mélange combined, if you think half that stuff is going to make it onto the show.”

50:00 - Moiraine like pretty rock.

50:05 - It took Rand and Moiraine about 11:17 to get down into the Eye from the time they left the Seven Towers. It took Lan 28:09 to make it from the Seven Towers to the Eye. Lan’s tracking ability is another casualty of adaptation.

And yes, I know we’re not watching this in real time. It’s just pretty damn clear that Lan shows up at this moment because it’s narratively convenient, not because of any real concern by the writers for distance and time lapses.

50:17 - What was so hard about that, Moiraine?

50:26 - If her bond is still masked, that should have been Lan’s first concern. If nothing else, to make sure she’s not a trick or illusion of some kind.

50:42 - ITB, Moiraine always had some doubts about “The Dark One” being what Rand claimed, for the ease of his defeat, if nothing else.

More importantly, if she can’t channel, she can lie just fine! You could have had a gasp moment for the readers by having Moiraine flat out say 'The Dark One’ blew him to smithereens,” or some other blatantly false statement.

51:22 - She found a last reserve of strength in her nosewart.

51:38 - And Egwene can Heal now, because why not. We’ve done everything else we can to gut Nynaeve’s character, lets also give her special ability to Egwene while we’re at it.

52:26 - No, Lan! Pretty rock is all she has left!

52:35 - You have to be watching for it to realize that piece of cuendillar came from the floor, which it seems, means that floor IS a seal.

53:11 - I know WoT geography better than Rafe Judkins knows the glory hole bathrooms at Dragoncon, and there is no place called “The Far Western Shore.” You could convey this is the far western shore by showing the sun setting over the water.

I guess we’re setting up the Seanchan arrival. That would even be a cool thing to show happening as night falls, so as to have that sunset I just suggested.

53:40 - How’d that kid get down those cliffs?

53:56 - By the way, seeing the ribbed sails might actually mean something if they hadn’t made absolutely everything else in the series so far, look partially transplanted from medieval Asia. Are we supposed to be impressed by the remote and exotic appearance of these sails and the discordant Asian music after spending the last two episodes in the house of Agelmar, the Mandarin of Fal Dara?

54:04 - And just as with the Children of the Light, we’re going to ignore the complexity and depth of the Seanchan and jump right into them being evil for failing to appreciate how awesome it is that the people who channel have ovaries, and for having actually rather valid concerns about how human beings with that level of power once rearranged the continents and knocked an advanced utopian civilization back to the stone age.

You can tell this is where the show is going because the Seanchan ships are covered in big crude spikes like the Orc stuff in Warcraft.

54:16 - The damane are gagged! Because feminism! Silencing women is a way better symbol of gendered oppression! Except of course, the damane are not oppressed for their gender, but because of the One Power. They are oppressed by a society that has had only women in the supreme position of power for 900 years, directly controlled by women with honored positions in society, which is run by a gender neutral aristocracy, bureaucracy and military officer corps.

So what’s Old Tongue for “gagged ones”?

54:21 - What on earth is the purpose of that spikey spiral thingy?

Also, why, if they are standing behind their charges, and out of their line of sight, do the Gag-Holders make arm motions to command their channeling?

54:36 - What is the purpose of announcing their arrival on the lands where they are hoping for, if not expecting, recognition as the heirs of Artur Hawkwing, the rightful rulers of said lands, with a giant tidal wave on a mostly-empty beach?

The thing that makes the Seanchan truly dangerous, despite their obvious undesirable qualities as rulers, is their dedication to responsible government, that they make things better when they come, so there are fewer reasons to resist and they assimilate their conquests quickly. They don’t show up causing massive destruction where no visible witnesses can be intimidated, unless you count the little girl who’s about to die, or else trashing their new lands without giving the people chance to kneel to them. They are officially, at least, hoping the Do Miere Avron remember them and will recognize the Seanchan for who they are.

But, nah. The climax of this episode and season is Rand respecting his girlfriend’s career, so it’s clear the show’s priorities are wokeness and female empowerment, so the only takeaway we have of the Seanchan is that they put collars on women so we’re just going to stick them on Orc Ships and have them announce their arrival by crushing a little girl under a tidal wave.

What a load of garbage. See you next year in Wheel of Time Season 2:Tides of Darkness.

[fazcinatingblog]

i can’t believe my year 12 biology teacher still teaches at the high school i went to

[idkthisisjustforfanfic]

too soon to tell, chapter t w o

You dropped your bag in the foyer of Harry’s house after work on a Thursday. It was quiet--he wasn’t home yet and you’d keyed in knowing that you’d have some time to yourself.

You felt a vibrating in your pocket when you shrugged off your coat, your visible reflection told you it was a FaceTime call, Alyssa’s name danced across the screen until you slid your thumb to answer.

“Hello, hello,” you greeted, walking to find a seat on the couch.

“Where are you?” She furrowed her brows as she took in your surroundings.

“At Harry’s--he’s out, though.”

She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. “I will never get sick of you lounging in his house when he’s not there.”

You rolled your eyes at your old roommate’s antics--she’d always been the number one supporter of your relationship and when you texted her earlier saying you needed advice, she promised to call on her lunch break.

“I’m not lounging,” you informed with a shake of your head. “I just got out of work, we’re having dinner tonight.”

“Mr. Popstar isn’t too busy?” She teased, aware of the tension both of your schedules had been causing.

“Apparently not.”

She forked a bite of food into her mouth, the sun was shining through the window behind her, the walls of your old apartment were redecorated now with the art of your replacement. “Is that what you wanted to talk about?”

“Sort of,” you leaned back and let out a breath. “I mean, it’s all connected--”

“What is?”

“I’m getting to it,” you made a face at her through the phone. “So--don’t freak out, okay? Cause I don’t even know if anything will come from it and Harry doesn’t know yet.”

She nodded and gestured with her hand for you to get on with it.

Knowing Alyssa, she was already jumping to conclusions in her head. You were pregnant, you were engaged, you quit your job, you had a huge fight with your sister. No, no, no.

“I interviewed for a job in LA...and I haven’t told Harry because all our friends have been so excited about us being in the same spot again but--”

Her eyes went wide at the mention of a US city, she did her best to hold back her smile until it faded when you said: “I don’t know. Something feels off between us.”

“Off between you and Harry? More than just being busy?”

“I’m probably overthinking it but,” you looked around his living room. Pictures of his mum, his sister, his cousins--even his manager--were tucked in frames and placed on shelves. There wasn’t a trace of you in his house except for the toothbrush upstairs and the key on your keyring.

“It feels like we’re not moving forward. And we’ve both been busy, like I’ve told you, but since we don’t live together sometimes we go days without seeing each other and it’s fine, I get that he’s busy, obviously, but--”

“But you want to move in with him.”

“Well, I don’t know--I did, sort of, I think--but then I heard about this job in LA and it sounds amazing but Jessie just moved here and no one will shut up about how great London is.”

Alyssa offered a sympathetic frown and repositioned the bowl in front of her to get another bite. “What’s the job?”

You almost didn’t want to tell her, sure she’d get excited and eager to have you back in the same country. You winced a little, bracing for her reaction. “S’with E! News,” you shrugged. “It’d be on-air.”

“Shut up! Are you serious?!”

“Yes m’serious,” you rolled your eyes. “But I haven’t told any of them because you know how they are.”

She nodded, “Jessie will not want you to take it.”

“God love her, but of course not. And Harry spends time out there, so it might be okay, but it’s not like I could ask him to go with me.”

“Why not? He’s famous, Y/N--he belongs there.”

“It’s too soon,” you whined. “He’s not my fiancé and we don’t live together, so--I don’t want to make it weird.”

“But you love him,” she reasoned.

“Yeah, but s’been weird lately!" You tried to drive home the point. "He’s made no mention of moving in and we’ve been dating for a year and a half, I’ve been in London for over a year now. He’s not even mentioned it, Alyssa, I swear. He’ll say things like ‘one day we can go on vacation,’ and ‘what should we do for Christmas?’ But he’s made no concrete plans to actually have a future with me.”

“Maybe he doesn’t think you’re ready.”

“Maybe he’s not ready,” you volleyed.

“Maybe,” Alyssa shrugged. “But you won’t know if you don’t ask him.”

“But if I ask him and he’s not on the same page I’ll look like an idiot and he’s busy with the album and now I’m thinking about moving to LA and--”

She watched you, waited for you to say more, but you were out of words. You changed gears.

“Maybe we’re just not meant to be long term.”

“Oh come on,” she groaned. “Not this again.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Your whole ‘we should have left it in New York’ shit.”

You lifted your eyebrows to demand further details.

“You were freaked out in the beginning that you’d move back there and it would be weird.”

“And?”

“Was it weird?”

“Not at first, I guess. But I mean, come on---don’t you think we should have taken some kind of step forward by now? Even just mentioning the idea of moving in together?”

“I don’t know,” she said truthfully. “Maybe it’s different with someone like him.”

You rolled your eyes--what if that’s what you were sick of?

People always said that: it’s different because of his job, it’s different because he’s on the road, it’s different because he’s famous.

Of course it was, and that was fine, for a while. But what if Harry’s job always got in the way of feeling normal? What if you couldn’t have a real wedding because of it? What if you could never send your children to summer camp because of it?

Were you willing to sacrifice your own future to live an unconventional life with someone just because you loved him?

“When will you hear back about the job?”

“Dunno--talked to them last week on Monday and they said this week at some point. S'been a while, so hopefully soon.”

You’d been keeping busy, trying to avoid your personal email at all costs and also making sure that Harry had limited visibility of your screen at all times.

“Do you want it?”

You thought on it for a second. Being offered a job at a company like E! would certainly be an ego boost, but the mere thought of having to explain to all of your friends that yes, you’d been back in London for 18 months and now you were packing up and moving even farther away than before wouldn’t be easy. That seemed to be the one certainty in the whole situation: no one would take it well.

“I don’t want to leave everyone here, especially Harry--but I also don’t want to be stupid and think that this relationship is going somewhere if it’s not.”

Alyssa nodded and let out a sigh. “I get that, I mean, of course you have to do what’s best for you. But I’d hate to see you not be with him just because things are hard right now.”

You leaned your head back on the couch and sighed. You didn’t want to break up with Harry. If anything, you wanted to move forward and move in with him and do what you’d always imagined: have a good job, have a few kids, try to be happy.

But what if you’d been naive enough to think you could have all of that with Harry and what if this is how you were finding out that you couldn’t?

Were you still stuck in your teenage fantasy of marrying the boy you'd long been crushing on?

She watched you for a second before she reassured: “you’ll figure it out.”

You smiled, glad you’d called Alyssa if only to have someone talk you off the edge a little bit. You missed waking up one room over and her love for basketball games and New York 99 cent pizza.

“Well it’s not like I have to make a decision right now,” you said. “I haven’t even heard back from them. For all I know they could never reach out again because I bombed my interview.”

She rolled her eyes at your self-deprecation and offered a few final words of encouragement before you hung up and promised to catch up soon.

Ever since you’d left, Alyssa had taken it upon herself to keep you up to date on the ins and outs of New York. New restaurant? She’d send you pictures and a 200 word review. Crazy subway rats making the news again? Articles and video proof would be sent your way in a matter of hours.

She’d gotten a new roommate to fill your bedroom and apparently things weren’t always peachy between them. Peyton was quiet and shy--according to Alyssa. She was up every morning at 6am and in the shower at 6:30. She did yoga in the living room and hated it when Alyssa left empty beer bottles on the coffee table.

Alyssa was starting to lose her shit, swearing up and down that she needed to either pull the trigger and move in with Owen or find a new place altogether. It was my apartment first, she’d say. She should leave, not me.

It had been hard that year to leave the city you’d grown to love but harder to leave Alyssa and Carly and the things that made New York feel like home. It was also, in hindsight, hard to leave the place where you and Harry reconnected and built the foundation of your current relationship.

You heard commotion from the front door only a few minutes later when you rummaged through Harry’s kitchen for a snack.

“Hi,” he called from the other room, a close-lipped smile when you stuck your head around the corner to greet him.

“Hi! How was the photoshoot?”

“Good,” he nodded, watching as you stuck your hand into a box of crackers. “What time are we meeting everyone?”

Right--Thursday also meant dinner somewhere downtown with everyone in tow.

“7pm--but Jessie said we should try to get there early since it’s a new place and no one’s ever been.”

He nodded in acknowledgement of your words but seemed distracted, like his mind was somewhere else and his body was the only thing tying him to the room.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, looking back up at you. “Just a busy day and a busy week.”

You nodded, unsure if he wanted to say more or if you were supposed to have more of a reply than a simple nod of your head.

You’d both been stammering out awkward sentences and trying to dance around the elephant in the room for a few weeks, but now, under his gaze, you felt more uncertain than before.

“Are you okay?” He turned the question around and watched you closely.

“Yeah,” you shrugged, moving to sit on the couch.

“You seem--off.”

You didn’t know what it was. Could he possibly sense the tension in your shoulders as you waited for an email either way? You got the job! We regret to inform you…

Or was he just aware that you felt awkward since it had been almost two weeks since you had any considerable amount of alone time and even longer since you were able to have a date night that wasn’t interrupted by Jeff or Erica or someone who needed something from him.

He took a few steps closer towards you, a look of concern etched on his features. “What’s wrong?”

The words were on the tip of your tongue when he looked at you, eyebrows lifted as he waited for you to spit it out.

“I guess I feel like we’ve been distant.”

He pushed his head forward, almost like he hadn’t expected that to be the issue. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” you shrugged, caught off guard by his pushiness. Maybe you shouldn’t have brought it up.

“You don’t know?” He pressed.

You broke eye contact with him for a minute, wondering why you had to state the obvious. “Well, you’re busy all the time, Harry.”

He let his shoulders rise and fall in defeat, looking around the room in frustration. “I told you that finishing the album would be busy.”

“Yeah, but you forgot to mention that you’d also be busy when the album is done once promo starts and then tour,” your voice was quiet, not so much angry as you were upset.

You were tired. You wanted nothing more than to spend a night on the couch with him and only him, tell him about LA and about the sudden itch you felt to see more of the world than just London.

But with Jake and Adam always around and Bryn and Jessie, too, paired with interruptions from Jeff and Erica--it felt as if there was no hope for a private or honest conversation.

He came to sit closer to you on the couch now, took your hands in his. “I know my job is a lot, okay? I know it’s annoying that I don’t necessarily get weekends off or have a typical schedule, but once the album is out and the promo is done I’ll have a bit of a break before the tour. We can go on vacation somewhere, just us.”

It sounded nice, maybe a tropical island or a cabin in the woods. But before you could nod in agreement the thought of Los Angeles popped into your head.

His album was due out in December, promo from now through the New Year, some time off in February and March for both of your birthdays and then tour. You had no clue where you’d be by then.

Would you be in LA? Would you be in London? Would you be stuck in this same spot on his couch with decision paralysis and a crushing sense of uncertainty about the future?

He knew you were over-thinking and tilted his head. “What?”

You blew out a slow breath of air, twisted a ring on your finger and then looked up at him again.

You didn’t even have a chance to be more honest, a buzz on your phone on the coffee table in front of you both broke the room in half, the name of the woman you’d spoken to was in bold next to your email icon. You reached for it quickly, Harry’s brows furrowed when you pulled it close to your chest so he wouldn’t see.

“What’s that?”

Hi Y/N, thank you so much for your patience over the last few days. We would love to offer you a position with NBC Universal - E! News as an on-air correspondent in our Los Angeles headquarters.

You looked up at him quickly, cheeks red and heart racing.

“What’s happening, are you okay?”

“I got a job offer,” you said quickly, still holding the phone close to you.

“What?” He smiled, “why didn’t you tell me you were looking? I didn’t even know--”

“It’s in Los Angeles.”

His smile faded instantly, he blinked a few times like he must have misheard you. The leather of his couch felt cool beneath your legs, a clock on the wall ticked and for a second, you wondered if he could hear your pulse as loudly as you could.

He pulled his eyes away from you but then quickly scanned over your face. “Are you taking it?”

“I don’t know,” you said honestly.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Silence, words filled your brain and crawled up the back of your throat, desperate to be said out loud, in real life, instead of just circling in your head.

Because I don’t know what we’re doing or if we’re moving forward. I don’t know where I want to live. I don’t know if I can stay in London forever. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

Only the last part made it out between your lips. “I don’t know.”

“Y/N,” he stood up, more angry now as he looked around the room and scratched at the base of his neck. “This kind of feels like a bombshell to drop on someone.”

“I was going to tell you--but we haven’t had a second alone, I just didn’t want to have to tell everyone before I knew what was happening.”

“You didn’t even tell me you interviewed,” he said.

“The last time I saw you alone we got interrupted by Erica three times in one conversation.”

“Probably for a good reason--”

“But you seriously can’t even put your phone down lately when we have dinner, even when everyone else is there!”

“I can’t help it that my work is insanely busy right now!”

“I don’t want to fight with you,” you said this quickly, voice higher than usual and a heat on your skin that he normally didn’t provoke, at least not in a bad way. You stood from the couch and put your hands on your hips. “I don’t know what I’m going to do and I don’t even know if this job is right for me and under no circumstances are you allowed to tell anyone. Especially Jessie.”

He rolled his eyes at that.

“What’s the eye roll for?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Everyone just got back and now you might leave and--”

“I said I don’t know if I’m going to take it.”

He was quiet at that, clucked his tongue in thought but then disappeared upstairs to shower and change.

The car ride over was awkward, he asked how your day had been and you told him you talked to Alyssa, he bristled when you admitted you told her about it.

It wouldn’t be the end of the conversation, you were sure of that. You’d likely end up at his for the night and he’d apologize for being busy, you’d apologize for not telling him and maybe, you hoped, he’d ask you to stay over.

When you greeted Adam with a hug, you ignored Harry’s sour mood and opened the menu in front of you.

“My first dinner as a Londoner,” Jessie smiled, shimming her shoulders in excitement when Bryn looked over the specials across the table from you.

“This is on you, right? New job, new salary?” Jake teased.

“Maybe if I hadn’t just bought a whole new bedroom set,” she rolled her eyes.

“How’s everything with you?” Adam eyed Harry, his question veiled to avoid too many details in public.

Luckily, Harry’s ability to go out in public in London was similar to that in New York. As long as a private room or a table in the back was requested, he could typically get away unscathed if dinner was less than 2 hours and if he had his back to the dining room.

“Fine,” he shrugged, eyes still down at the drink menu.

“Fine?” Jessie leaned forward, her tone insinuating that she didn’t believe him. “You’ve been working really hard all summer and now all you say is ‘fine?’”

He glanced up at her, lips in a forced smile. “S’all good, Jess--just tired.”

Bryn gave you a look, one that asked what stick is up his ass?, before she changed the topic.

“Let’s not tell our server how fit she is tonight, yeah?”

Jake let out a snort of a laugh and sipped at the water that had already been brought to your table. “Alright, you thought the one last week was just as hot as I did.”

“I did,” Bryn agreed seriously, “but I didn’t offer my number unsolicited. How do you know she’s even straight?”

“She’s got a point,” Jessie chimed in. “Remember when you asked that girl to dance in the club when her girlfriend was right there with her arm around her?”

“I thought they were just mates!” Jake defended.

“You also have the worst radar for gay women ever,” Bryn nodded.

“When was this?” Harry asked, the hint of a smile on his face when he watched Jake adjust his napkin on his lap.

The words came out of your mouth without thought. “You weren’t here--you were in LA.”

He met your eyes when you replied, nodded, and then leaned back in his chair, effectively bowing out of the conversation without saying another word.

You weren’t trying to be short with him. You looked over to Jessie, who undoubtedly sensed the tension, and offered a smile. “How’s the flat?”

“Good,” she nodded. “Glad that all my furniture got put together without any scratches,” she reached over and patted Adam on the shoulder.

“We’re not children, Jessie, we can handle some furniture.”

“You broke my dresser when I asked you guys to move it into another room,” Bryn reminded, a look of confusion on her face at Adam’s retort.

“Only because it was already half broken and a piece of shit,” Jake said. “I love you, Brynnie, but that dresser was already knocking on Heaven’s door.”

Harry let out a laugh at that, another memory that he had missed while on a trip to a studio somewhere north of London. He excused himself to the bathroom after you placed your orders, and once he was out of earshot, Jake leaned down and looked at you.

“What’s going on with him?”

You forced a cheesy grin and blinked a few times. “He’s just grumpy.”

“‘Bout what?” Bryn asked.

“Guys,” you leaned back in your chair, hoping you didn’t have to say too much. “I can’t tell you every single thing that happens in our relationship.”

“Well, when it affects us I think we have the right to know,” Jessie shrugged, playing the typical we don’t like when our parents fight card.

“It’s not affecting you,” you shook your head, eyed her seriously over your glass of Pinot Noir.

Adam shrugged, a smirk on his face let you know he was trying to rile you up. “He’s grumpy at dinner and we’re all here and we’re all aware of it. We don’t like tension between you two.”

“Alright, leave the woman alone,” Jake waved them off. “As long as everything’s alright.”

“It’s totally alright,” you nodded, wondering when you’d gotten so comfortable lying to them. “He’s just busy with the next phase of work.”

With Harry’s album yet to be announced, you couldn’t sit around in a London restaurant and divulge details--even if you were all acutely aware of the work he’d put in and the upcoming announcements and events.

Adam let it go. “How’s work for you, Smalls?”

Another shrug of your shoulders, “s’good--I told you all about my November cover story, right?”

“Yeah,” Jessie sipped a glass of Cabernet. “But you said you didn’t know who it was going to be with.”

“Well, s’cause I had to drop the bomb on him first,” you nodded in the direction of the bathroom. “I’ll be sitting down in a few days with Ms. Gigi Hadid,” you lowered your voice and leaned forward to say her name.

Bryn’s eyes went wide, Jake grimaced.

“How’d he take that?” Adam asked.

“He’s not thrilled,” you admitted. “But I’ll talk with his team about what to avoid specifically, I guess. Her team will probably have a list of off-limits items too.”

Bryn let her elbows rest on the white tablecloth. “Yeah, but, you can’t just ignore the fact that she’s dating Zayn.”

“I also can’t just barge in and stir shit up,” you said.

Harry pulled his chair out next to you and sat back down. “Who are you stirring shit up with?”

Everyone chose to be quiet now--Adam looked down at his phone and Jessie reached for her wine again.

“Just telling them about my cover story,” you admitted, watching his face for a reaction.

He nodded, a tiny smirk in your direction. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t stir shit up,” he said, reaching to put a hand on your thigh beneath the table.

Those were the moments that made you feel less panicky--the realization that he was still choosing you and even when the tension was high and the mood was low, he’d reach over and remind you that yes, he cared. Even if he was late to dinner or distracted.

Which is why, when you got back in his car that night and headed for his house, you were surprised when his mood shifted again.

“I’ll just drop you at yours?”

“Oh--yeah, sure.”

“Did you want to come to mine?” He looked over at you like he hadn’t expected any resistance to sleeping separately.

You were quiet for a second--not if he didn’t want you there. “No, it’s fine.”

“I can’t read your mind, Y/N.”

“You don’t have to,” you said quickly, a prickly tone to your words when he made an unreadable face.

He drove in silence for a few minutes, closing in on your neighborhood when the street lamps disappeared for the sake of suburbia.

Eventually he cleared his throat and that sent you over the edge.

“What do you want me to say, Harry? Do you want me to apologize for interviewing for this job?”

“No,” he said simply. “I just don’t know why you thought you didn’t need to tell me about a huge decision like that.”

“It wasn’t a decision until today when they offered it to me.”

“Just seems like something you talk to your boyfriend about.”

You looked over at him in the dark of night, the glow from the dashboard didn’t help you see his features as he turned left onto your street.

“Well, sorry that we didn’t have the opportunity to talk about it between your work schedule and Jessie moving in and group dates--”

He slowed down on your street, put his flashers on when he stopped in front of your building. “I don’t want to keep secrets from each other,” his voice was softer now. “I don’t want to not know what’s going on in your life. I did enough of that for two years when we weren't talking.”

You sighed at this, the sentiment broke whatever anger was lurking inside you and when you looked up to see him, you wondered if you should ask him.

Are we ever going to move in together? Are we ever going to get engaged?

You figured the lead up to his sophomore album wasn’t the best time for that conversation. He pressed a kiss to your forehead and you climbed the stairs to your flat alone.

**

A few days later you sat nervously in a conference room and watched as beads of sweat formed on the water glass in front of you. Tyler had brought you in, offered you a breath mint, and promised you’d be fine. When you asked him if the whole room was hot he said it was just you and your nerves--but the droplets of water that raced towards the wooden conference table begged to differ.

You’d gotten email after email this morning: one from Jeff with the rules he and Harry had come up with and eight from Gigi’s team with requests for snacks, topics to discuss, topics to avoid, lunch request, arrival and departure time, and a few extra regarding booking her photoshoot the next day.

A text lit up your screen when you tried to smooth your your hair in the reflection of your screen.

Jake Newcomb (10:42am): In case you’re wondering what to get me for my birthday, a video of Gigi Hadid saying she loves me would be perfect!

You ignored his text and felt a pang of disappointment in your gut, you thought it would have been Harry with words of encouragement.

He was fine with you doing the interview, he seemed to come around to the idea when he met with Jeff and had a chance to mark some things as off limits.

So far, his list was as follows:

Don’t publish anything too negative about anyone in the band (if she says anything negative about anyone in the band)

Harry and Jeff got to listen to the taped interview

Harry and Jeff got to read the article before you sent it off to your editor and could make suggestions to cut things if they felt it necessary.

It seemed silly, but you’d long been used to the lingo of contracts and riders and ground rules for things like these. You knew both Harry and Jeff trusted you, in fact, Jeff was now choosing to see this as a good opportunity for press before the announcement of Harry’s album.

Your biggest concern, truly, was not looking/sounding/acting like an idiot in a room alone with Gigi Hadid. Your second biggest concern was conducting a unique interview and writing a unique article.

You knew that Naomi and Tyler were nearby for support if needed, Tyler had already walked by the conference room three times to see if your subject had arrived and likely to make sure you hadn’t sweat through your blouse. You thought the commotion in the hallway was him until you saw a group of busy-looking people with cellphones and sunglasses.

“Hi,” you stood from your chair, extended a hand in her direction and offered your best professional smile. “It’s nice to meet you, Gigi, thanks for doing this interview.”

She seemed hesitant at first, smiled a little and shook your hand. “Happy to,” she said. She turned over her shoulder and locked eyes with the woman who seemed to be the most in-charge of the group. “I’m good,” she nodded.

They hustled out quickly, you stood frozen in place and watched as she took off her coat before sitting in the chair you’d pulled out for her. Once the door was shut behind her posse, she let out a sigh that bled into a frustrated laugh.

“I could never do an interview with all of them just loitering around--wouldn’t that be so weird?”

You nodded, mirrored her smile and had to remind your body how to move. Left foot, right, breathe, sit in the chair.

You weren’t really one to get star struck, but then again, you didn’t spend too much time with celebrities that weren’t Harry or his close friends. You certainly never sat down with a model like Gigi to have a conversation that could be as awkward as this one.

She checked her phone quickly but then put it face down on the table. “I am happy to do this, I know it might feel weird for us to be hanging out--but boys are stupid anyway.”

You smiled at this, immediately relaxed when she leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs.

“Did you also get a whole list of things to not talk to me about?”

She stifled a laugh and rolled her eyes. “Zayn can be a man of few words but,” she looked down at your phone on the table. “Off the record--he had quite a bit to say when I told him you were doing the interview.”

“Off the record,” you laughed, “Harry did too. But how is Zayn?”

“He’s good--thinking about getting back in the studio at some point to start working on a new album, he’s been writing a bunch. Harry’s doing the same I assume?”

“Yes, yeah, he’s been really busy.”

“I know things might not have gone great between all of them at the end, but I don’t want this to be awkward for us.”

“Me neither. You can say as much or as little about the band as you’d like.”

She nodded, you figured it was time to give your pre-interview spiel.

“So, I’ll record us in a few seconds, you can obviously say ‘off the record’ if there’s something you don’t want me to include, but I like my interviews to be like conversations, basically. I’ll send someone on your team the recording when we’re done and a typed transcript. You’ll have 48-hours to look over it and revoke any statements that you don’t want me publishing or to clarify anything. After that I’ll write the story, send a final copy to your team before it gets finalized here, again, 48-hours to look it over and request any changes but at that time we don’t have to approve the requests. This is all in a document somewhere that someone probably signed for you--I’m sure your team is used to it, they know what they’re doing.”

You reached forward and pressed a few buttons on your phone, she watched until you looked up and told her: “It’s on now, so we’re recording and today is September 10th, 2019.”

She smiled like you were old friends. “Where do we start?”

“Is there somewhere you want to start?”

She leaned her head to the side. “We can jump right to it--”

“To what?”

“Oh come on,” she laughed. “Us talking about One Direction will make headlines for weeks.”

“Yeah,” you shrugged. “It’s funny that us just sitting down together will be a big deal, right? As if we’ve got nothing better to talk about than them.”

“Sexism at it’s finest,” she admitted.

“Do you find that a lot in your industry?”

She thought on this for a second, looked out the window but nodded. “It’s unavoidable, in a lot of ways. I think there have been a lot of changes over the last few years to at least move us in the right direction, but we’ve got a long way to go.”

“How would you want to see it change for the better?”

“Well, I’d love to have more privacy about my love life, for one,�� she caught herself, looked to you quickly as if she felt bad. “Off the record, we can talk about it here, it’s fine. It’s different to talk about it with a woman, number one. And you’re you, you get it.”

“We don’t have to talk about it,” you offered.

“No, I don’t mind. Unless you plan on asking me stupid things like how amazing is it to be dating someone as handsome as him or do I find that his job overshadows mine, we’re good. We can be back on the record, too,” she looked down at the numbers on your phone, eyeing the ticking of the recording clock.

“But do you know what I mean? No one asks guys questions like that--or they’re different, at least. People just want to know everything about your relationship when you’re a woman and they view you in the context of who you’re sleeping with.”

“Yeah,” you nodded. “I get that.”

She smiled, “it’s hard to date someone famous, isn’t it? Lots of rules around it.”

You were surprised by the genuine look in her eyes, despite her own status and contracts and income, she seemed to be acknowledging that the two of you shared a unique experience and were now brought together under strange circumstances.

“It’s definitely hard for me--but, isn’t it easier seeing as you also have an assistant and a manager and people to, I don’t know, facilitate things? Not to invalidate how hard it still is.”

She laughed at that, “Yeah, in some ways, probably. He’s really private though, which is good for us. We focus on ourselves and do our own thing most of the time.”

“Right--you seem pretty private about it for the most part.”

“Yeah,” she shrugged, reflecting on your words for a second. “I think to me it feels weird that my relationship status can make so much news, you know? Modeling is my job and obviously that’s not your typical nine-to-five but--I like to focus on my work and when male journalists are continuously obsessed with my love life, I find that weird. I mean, you get that, right? I’m sure it’s no different with Harry.”

You bit your lip, embarrassed at how she’d managed to turn it around. She was right--you’d been getting more and more annoyed with how much your relationship with Harry was dictating your life--and for some reason, you admitted this to her.

“People are much more interested in me because I’m dating him--but they’d be just as interested in you even if you weren’t.”

“Would they?” She tilted her head to the side, another rise and fall of her shoulders as she looked around the room. “I get what you’re saying, but sometimes it feels like dating him gave my career a huge boost. I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, I totally get it. I feel the same way. I was building my career in New York and it was going well and I was writing fun stuff and making a name for myself and then I started hanging out with him and--”

“Everyone started to care more about you?”

“Exactly.”

You thought about the headlines, the articles, the pictures in tabloids that undoubtedly helped your name spread like wildfire through London and New York. You had to ignore it, most of the time, reassure yourself that you were a good journalist and a good employee and the good things in your career were not just a byproduct of the boy who slept in your bed.

She smiled knowingly, her lips in a thin line when she looked down to the tape recorder, almost like she felt guilty for steering the conversation in a different direction.

“Sorry,” you cleared your throat, sitting up straight. “Back to business.”

The conversation bled into more normal things: the upcoming fall fashion week, how she manages self-care when she’s busy jetting from city to city, and, try as you might, the two of you wound your way back to your commonalities a few times: sexism in your industries, life as young women dating famous men.

You thanked her profusely at the end and promised that Tyler would be in touch to confirm the date and time for her corresponding photoshoot later that week. She draped a Versace leather tote over her shoulder and seemed to float out of the office with a posse of beautiful people behind her.

You stood--still awestruck--in the hallway and watched as the elevator doors slid shut.

“She’s prettier in person,” Tyler said from beside you, a notebook in hand as he stared at the air she’d once occupied. “I didn’t know if that type of thing was possible but she’s definitely one of the prettiest humans I’ve ever seen.”

“She was nice,” you turned around to see Naomi behind him, also eager for more details. You headed back for your office in a trance, they scurried behind you as you thought aloud. “I mean, I didn’t think she’d be rude--but I didn’t know what to expect with the whole band history stuff.”

“Did you talk about that?”

“Less about the band and more about--” you blinked a few times and sat down at your desk, “sexism, what it’s like to be a woman dating a famous man and how that affects your career.”

Both of their eyes went wide, a smile tugged at Naomi’s lips when Tyler put a hand over his heart in shock.

“I’m sorry, so you’re telling me that you just had a heart to heart with Gigi Hadid about sexism and your boyfriends and--”

“I guess so,” you shrugged, just as surprised as they were.

**

You gave Harry fewer details that night over FaceTime as you brushed your teeth. He was somewhere in New York, disappointed that he’d miss Jake’s birthday dinner and celebration, but he promised to make it up to him when he got back.

He lifted a cup of tea to take a sip, light shone through the window behind him on your screen and he scrolled through emails on his laptop.

You spit into the sink, an ocean between you.

“Have you thought at all about the offer? You have to tell them by tomorrow, yeah?”

You nodded, wiped at your mouth with a towel and then crossed your arms. “I can stay, I mean--if you want me to.”

He made a face at that, leaned forward and furrowed his brows together. “Of course I want you to stay, Y/N, but I don’t want to be the reason you pass on something important."

You were quiet for a second, uncapped lotion before spreading some across your forehead.

"I'm sorry I didn't react well when you told me. I'm proud of you and it sounds like a phenomenal opportunity...I don't know, it's just the timing of it--"

You cut him off, “well none of this is ideal timing, Harry.”

“Do you mean with my album?”

“I mean with any of it,” you said truthfully. “The album, the job offer--”

“Well the album existed before the job offer,” he trailed off.

Only a matter of seconds and a handful of words had managed to get you elevated and angry and ready to fight. That was happening more easily, these days.

“So what am I supposed to do? Always come second? Make every decision in my life based off of your career and your music?”

“S’not what I’m saying.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that--I dunno--I thought you knew what you were getting into.”

Quiet, your hands gripped the counter in your bathroom. Your bare feet were on the floor and you wondered why you were trying so hard to make everything work if things were only getting harder.

“That came out wrong,” he shook his head, the look on his face let you know he wanted to take it back.

“No, it didn’t." You let out a sharp laugh. "I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Take the job,” he said quickly, like he saw you reaching for the button to end the FaceTime call.

“What?”

“Take it. If it’ll make you happy, take it.”

“And what about us?”

“We figure it out,” he shrugged. “We try.”

You sighed, unsure what to say.

"It's Los Angeles," he said. "Not Antarctica."

You blew air between your lips, looked up at him for a second. The curl of hair that dipped onto his forehead, the way his mouth pulled up in the corner like it always had.

“I love you, Y/N. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

His words didn’t offer any relief and you spent most of the night staring at the ceiling, tossing and turning and wondering how on earth you were supposed to make a decision.

Leaving him in London felt stupid. A few bumps in the road and you were ready to jump ship?

But staying and hoping for a ring or a shared address felt even stupider, somehow. You couldn’t pass up a dream job and hope that things would go well for your career if you weren’t going to work for it.

A few hours of rest came after 3am, your morning coffee was a tad bitter and the clouds in the sky seemed to match your mood. Maybe you should have spent more time thinking it over, talking it out, even calling your mum or Katie for advice.

But you couldn’t have told everyone about the job offer without a certain answer, and unfortunately, the person you wanted to talk to the most didn’t seem like he could be impartial.

You’d been upset, you’d been feeling disconnected from him, but that didn’t erase all of the good times and the happy memories you’d made, right?

Naomi and Tyler locked themselves in your office for lunch on Friday, they promised that they’d never tell your boss and they swore they supported you either way. Tyler used an expo marker to make a pros and cons list of staying in London and Naomi came up with a points system for each bullet on the list.

You stared at it, looked at the names of all of your friends, your family, your favorite cafes and restaurants in London. At the very bottom of what had become a long list of reasons to stay was his name.

And on the other side, Tyler’s poor drawing of an engagement ring sat beside a big question mark.

You didn’t know what the future held for you and Harry, and maybe that was okay. You didn’t know what would happen when you packed your life into a suitcase and moved to New York, but you’d survived to tell the tale.

They were quiet, eyes darting from the board back to you as they waited for you to say something.

You sighed, Tyler shifted on the couch in your office and Naomi smoothed out her blouse.

“I can’t take it,” you said.

Tyler’s eyes went wide, “really? You’re staying?”

“I can’t leave,” you shrugged. “I can’t leave him behind and leave my friends and start all over in a new city right as I’m really finding my groove here again.”

“Okay, I know we said we’d support you either way but I would have been fucking pissed if you went,” Tyler admitted, moving closer to wrap his arms around you.

You laughed, let him squeeze you before Naomi joined in.

“Me too,” she confessed, a smile on her face when she pulled away. “But I would have at least faked happy for you.”

You bit back the doubt and second-guessing, used their excitement to fuel a regretful email.

Thank you so much for the opportunity, but after careful consideration I cannot accept this position due to the geographical location.

Your thumb hovered over the small blue arrow, a wave of panic flooded through you when you hit send, like somehow, something inside of you knew that everything was about to change.

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AN: apologies in advance for the cliffhanger......except I'm not sorry lmao

[buttdawg]

Plane Ride from Hell

I watched the new episode of “Dark Side of the Ring” to see what everyone was talking about, and yeah, it’s pretty messed up.   Some stray observations:

I felt bad for Teri Runnels, because it was clear that she was going through the same kind of sexual harassment as the flight attendants, only it lasted a lot longer than a single plane ride.  She kept saying “Don’t sell it” as her response to these kinds of thing.  I get the feeling that this used to be sound advice for dealing with locker room pranks, but it mutated into this code-of-honor for excusing everything, up to and including wrestlers exposing themselves.

It occurred to me later that this might be why Curt Hennig became such a notorious prankster. The stories I’ve heard over the years suggest that lots of wrestlers would do terrible things to each other in the name of “ribbing”, and Curt Hennig took it to a whole other level.   I’m wondering if maybe that was his defense mechanism for that sort of toxic culture.   Maybe he decided there was no fighting it, so he made it his business to excel at it.   I mean, who’d want to rib Curt Hennig?  He’d just escalate it to an absurd degree.  So it sounds like your only defenses are to “play dead” or “get them before they get you.” 

But it’s kind of funny how everyone told Teri “don’t sell it”, but no one said it to Brock Lesnar that day.   It just exposes the hypocrisy of the whole thing.   If Brock exposes himself to Teri, she’s just supposed to live with it, but if Hennig messes with Brock, then Brock can just start a fight on an airplane.

I was at the grocery, and this four-year-old was just screaming “The Hokey Pokey”.   I could literally hear him from halfway across the store.   And yeah, “don’t sell it” is pretty good advice there, because it’s not that big a deal, and what are you going to do?   It’s not worth getting upset about it.   Tommy Dreamer seems to think that reasoning applies to Ric Flair strutting around nude in a charter plane.   That’s pretty messed up. 

There are people trotting out the defense that it was a “different time”.   Okay, but they were calling it the “Plane Ride from Hell” during 2002.    People got fired over it during 2002.  Everyone knew it was fucked up, even then.  There’s only a renewed sense of outrage because this Dark Side of the Ring episode is finally shedding some light on what really happened, and they’re not sugar coating it.  I mean, yeah, people are probably more sensitive about this kind of thing than they were 19 years ago, but it was a scandal at the time.   WWE did everything they could to cover it up, because they knew how bad it would be for their PR.   

I’d even go so far to suggest that this might be why they didn’t fire more people after the plane landed.   If they fired a lot of wrestlers all at once, it would attract more interest to the story, and there would be loads of ex-employees willing and able to tell their side of it.  That seems to have been the general reaction from WWE’s management.   Vince was upset about the whole incident, but only because of the embarrassment it would be for his company. 

In particular, I find myself focusing on Jim Ross.   I mean, it doesn’t sound like he did anything wrong on the PRFH, but his retelling of events sounds like he wants to have been an impartial, helpless observer, while at the same time he claims ownership of the whole fiasco.  He’d explain his job description like he’s in charge of “the boys”, but then he’d also say things like “I can’t watch everyone every minute”.   It sounds like he had a role in hiring the charter plane, but no one seemed to know how it had an open bar, or who approved the second and third cart of liquor after the first one ran out.  JR claimed that he was the one who had to fire Hennig and Scott Hall, but he’s also quick to say that he only did it because Vince McMahon told him to.   So there’s this sense that he’s just a middleman, executing orders from higher up.   “I’m responsible, but if you don’t like how I handled things, it’s someone else’s fault.”

I just don’t get how all the wrestlers act like this was totally normal behavior for a bunch of drunk wrestlers stuck on a plane for 14 hours.  Someone said that you had to wear sunglasses and a hat while you slept, so that you at least had a chance to wake up before someone tried to shave off your eyebrows.   Ric Flair’s “helicopter” bit was so well known among the talent that they had a name for it.  Ross said that if this had happened on a commercial plane, they would have had law enforcement waiting on them when they landed in the U.S.   And yet, it sounds like there was zero plan in place for how to deal with the wrestlers if they got too rowdy. 

I mean, it’s 19 years later, so maybe it’s obvious in hindsight, but it sounds like it would have been pretty obvious back then, too.   So I can’t tell if Jim Ross was too naive to do his job, or he lacked the tools to do it properly.  They asked Ross pointblank why Ric Flair wasn’t punished for cornering a flight attendant while he was naked, and Ross said he didn’t know.  He suggested that Ric was a “made man” by that point, which doesn’t pass the smell test. 

This isn’t an old vs. new issue.  Ric Flair was 53 when the Plane Ride from Hell Happened.  Brock was in his 20′s when he flashed Teri Runnels backstage.  Dustin Rhodes was 32 during the Plane Ride from Hell.   He’s 52 now, and he’s wrestling for AEW to this day.   Darby Allin is a rapist and he’s working for AEW now, and he’s 28.  Somehow, these guys get conferred an immunity from any consequences of their bad behavior.   It might have something to do with star power or favoritism, but a lot of times it seems purely arbitrary.   Tommy Dreamer was 30 during the Plane Ride From Hell, and he’s 50 now.  He was never a “made man”, but he seems to find nothing inappropriate about Ric Flair’s behavior that day, then or now.  

I don’t know what the solution to any of this is, but I do find it ironic how the episode opened with JR explaining that the charter plane was hired to be “talent friendly”.  They were having a great year financially, and they were on a lucrative European tour, and morale was high, and I guess WWE wanted to do something nice for their wrestlers.    But as the episode wore on, it became clear that WWE management seemed all-too-willing to bend over backwards for their talent.   They let their guys bring syringes on board for crying out loud.   Curt Hennig was drugging people’s drinks.  No one was imposing any rules on the talent, and no one was in any position to enforce the rules.   And when a few people actually did get fired, the guy who did it felt guilty about doing it.  

Leniency and permissiveness can be just as dangerous as strict, draconian micromanagement.   If you let your employees get away with anything, they’ll start getting away with everything, and the bad actors will start to make life miserable for the others.   Without realizing it, WWE was basically punishing Teri Runnels for just existing on this plane.  She can’t retaliate, and she can’t complain to management, so her only choice is “don’t sell it.”  

I’ve always heard what a tyrant Vince McMahon can be, on and off screen, but really, I’ve come to notice how his greatest flaw is his indecision.   Given two choices, he’ll refuse to make up his mind until the last possible moment.  He books DQ finishes and no-contests rather than pick a winner.   He hires a small army of writers to script his shows only to tear up their work right before they go on the air.   He was on the Plane Ride From Hell.   His wife was on board with him.   It’s bizarre to me how we never hear what he was doing during the whole incident.  But the answer is apparently “nothing”, and that probably explains a lot about why his employees felt so little pressure to behave themselves.

[scream-into-the-voiddd]

Or Lost?

Hi there.

since i have competently lost the plot in quarantine, I have returned to you all with some small moments that may mean nothing but have been adding up to something,....

we have this clip here....

and many people have pointed out Della’s reactions (and rightfully so)

but Frank and the crew are big fans of the misdirect.

(e.g. the buzzards being FOWL from day one, Magica actually being in the dime, the fibbing fibbing fibbing bit etc.. ) 

Ducktales like to hide important info in plain view but doesn't make that info a focus. like here in the ep. the great dime chase...This is the opening shot of the room with Della’s stuff in it, in the Mcduck library.  

Looking back it is super heavy handed.

the sear of Seline is stabbing the moon, and Della crashed on the moon, or at the very least the sear is being trusted into space. 

so this is painfully obvious now, but at the time of airing this imagery meant nothing (to those who did not know about Della’s comic history) 

 here 

[1:19]

the info was always there it was just not the main focus/ point of the scene so the whole thing flow over most peoples heads (its just good visual story telling as well) 

the misdirect was in focusing on the letter/ note (and the painting of Della kind of) and Dewey’s reaction to it. As it makes you look at only certain peace of the puzzle and not all the peaces.

Its just all around great writing.

anyway....that’s just an example of what i am talking about.

-------

What i’m getting at is the beauty of this kind of writing is that you don’t know what your looking for until its almost (or is) to late.

now back to my og point...

Donald makes a list of 

“no one getting hurt, captured or lost.”

list like this (in writing) are meant to make you focus on something you already care about, in this case, Donald’s care for the boys and their safety and Della being gone for 10 yrs. This make you (and me) mentally skim over, 

Captured  

and who reacts to that word 

Scrooge....

so my guess that Donald is referring to one or both of Scrooges sisters,

as the whole point is about the family and their relationships/pains that have come from adventuring.

so that strongly suggests  Hortense (Donald and Della’s mother) as she is actually imaged in the show/ has a character design. 

and Frank has confirmed that Della and Donald were at Scrooges on and off in their childhood. so its possible that she and her husband just didn’t come back from and adventure on day.

so its possible that Quackmore and Hortense were captured, and Scrooge is either responsible in someway or feels responsible for not ‘stopping’ his sister from going. 

oh but who, would be able to capture them you might ask?

who else...

the OG FOWL of course...

as there must have been a reason for their downfall and a Duck and Mcduck, take down seems likely.

however this can also apply to Von Drake (and maybe Matilda, Scrooge’s other sister)  

as we know family is beyond blood in this series so its possible that scrooge might be thinking about Von Drake...

perhaps he was captured by FOWL and Scrooge failed to save him, along with Matilda.  

[Edit: it also occurred to me that, the ones captured could be Webby’s parents, and by the og FOWL as well as the plot this season does seem to have at least some focus on Webby and Beakley (she is fibbing, fibbing, fibbing after all) and scrooge’s history. so thought i would throw that out her too]    

All i can confirm is that someone close to the family was taken, but why and for what reason, remains to be seen. 

----

and for good measure i’m gonna throw this in the mix...

Isabella Finch 

guess what kind of bird she is, a finch hen 

which is a type of .....FOWL *air horn noise’s*

am i reaching, absolutely.

will i continue this thought train, damn right i will...

Legacy is the theme this season, as it is literally the first word spoken in season 3. Specifically woodchuck legacy, with the family (Della and Huey) and the over all history (Finch and her map).

but there is another point i would like to bring up here to 

[30 sec’s in]

not only did FOWL know about the journal, but it is implied they knew what was in it (lost mystery’s) 

and they are “racing” the family to something which means they must be aware on some level the contents of the journal.

but HOW? 

Finch might have been a part of the og FOWL (or shush) and she knew she had to hide her journal from either FOWL or Shush for whatever reason.

all i’m saying is that she has some kind of tie to FOWL, good or bad.

----

now I must once again, piggy back on @night-rise7474​  post here 

 they speculate that, earth quakes cause by the Terrafirmans make the ground unstable.

[Edit: i have been corrected.

“Well actually what I said was that FOWL is going to use an army of Terrafirmans to CREATE earthquakes. They haven’t caused any unstable tunnels as of YET. But, believe me when I say... it’s going to happen. BELIEVE IT lol”  my bad.]  

remember what i said about some imagery being obvious in hindsight, and how misdirection is used by looking at one pace and not the whole picture... 

so i put to you all..... 

 that its not just an earth quake but, a certain mountain being unearthed 

like so....

(also you can’t tell me that JWC symbol doesn't look like a big ass coin) and the arrow (in the J) is now pointing down.

and will you look at that there is even a ‘hole’ leading up the mountain,hmmmmm...

[Didn’t think i was going to bring back that imagery point did you, classic misdirect inside an explanation of said misdirect. (I lulled you into a false sense of security) that is how effective this writing device can be, and i’m just a random on the internet. imagine what frank and crew can do. ]   

also the dialogue here is literally. 

[Webby] “it was under our nose this whole time.” so take that as you will.

also also 

this call back to my other post about looming legacies

about how treasure is UNDER THE CASTLE (manor) OF A MCDUCK!!!!

[Scrooge’s mother] “so be built, a mysterious series of tunnels under the castle to keep the family fortune, some say he summoned a demon dog to stalk the comatose.”

so they are lifting up that mountain, and digging around underneath....

[baconpal]

talkin bout fuckig manga

hey it’s me, haven’t had internet for over a week and i’ve been sick and uni and blah blah blah time for a rant about manga

this time its about  "Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru", tl;dr, good manga read it idk

lots of bullshit below the cut

Before anything I say gets too confusing or I go off on an insane tangent, just know my recommendation is that you read "Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru". It's not very easy to find online since it has an official English release (which my recommendation extends far enough to suggest I might pick up in the future, just to have it, but I am very stingy), but there's an alright torrent of all the volumes on your local anime torrenting website, and is at the very least worth the trouble of reading as such. There is also an anime that gets better as it goes, but the manga is my primary recommendation. Beyond this point I'm not gonna give much regard to what I write, so get ready for anything, read the manga and see if you agree with me, or don't and see if I care:

BOUT THE ANIME: The SoreMachi anime is one of those rare comedy anime you find where the animation and overall production is just really extra the entire time. Hopefully you know what I mean because I won't really be able to explain it any other way, it's simply one of those shows where the jokes are decent and it's a fun time for the most part. Unfortunately, the anime makes a couple of critical missteps that kept me from getting far into it when I first tried watching it about a year ago, and in retrospect seem even less reasonable.

Starting with the good, as an adaptation it does a good job with most chapters it covers, it properly sources where each chapter comes from incase you intend to read the manga and skip around to catch up, and the anime adapts some sections to have additional jokes that fit very naturally in to the story. It also covers up some of those problems only manga can have like having a concert segment without any actual music involved, until they invent mp3-paper it's just something we'll have to live with. Translation work was pretty good (I watched the [WhyNot] release for those who care), which is extra important for something as difficult to translate as jokes from another language. The set of episodes they chose to end on was very good, and was expanded to be a lot more impactful in the anime. If it wasn't for the last episode being as strong as it was I may have given up on finding the manga when I saw it wasn't super easy to read online.

As for what the anime fails in, some episodes feature some really blatant over-acting that doesn't really help make characters believable, and there's this obnoxious gag that continues the whole where through where most scenes have a few seconds long line from what is essentially a forced mascot character, which usually mean nothing and only serve to harm the pacing of many episodes (there isn't even any sort of equivalent bit in the manga so I really don't know why they did it, most of the anime original jokes are pretty good so I just really don't get it). The biggest issue the anime faces is that the source material is about 140 chapters, while the anime is only able to cover 24 chapters. This comes with a LOT of problems, the first being what I'd call the "required reading". SoreMachi is not a 1-note simple comedy where you can skip to any chapter and be completely okay; There are many small but meaningful subplots lying beneath, and characters have a fair bit of development throughout. What this means for the anime is that the first 3-4 episodes are just the first few chapters of the manga, which are a bit rough and not as good as the majority of the work, which is true of a lot of comics (god fuck I promise there will be more than a first chapter of my comic I promise it'll get better fuck). In terms of the anime by itself, I'd say episode 1 is decent, 2 is middling, and by 3/4 their still taking a while to introduce members of the cast, and I didn't immediately want to finish it. I put the show down for a long time until my internet started dying and I wanted to watch something fun. Slapping it back on at episode 5 I immediately had a great time and watched the rest of the show pretty soon after. While I understand the reasoning behind doing this, the anime does not pay off this structure, as beyond the first few episodes, the chapters start being presented out of release order and out of chronological order, kind of destroying any consistent throughline. This decision in and of itself isn't the worst, since the comic isn't always chronological, and the volume ordering is a bit different from the release ordering, but the inconsistency makes the first few episodes feel lessened without reason. The other large failure that comes with only animating about 1/7th of the entire work is that many themes and concepts that are core to the manga are not represented in the anime well at all. One of the biggest is the rare but unnerving supernatural chapters, of which only one is animated, and not a particularly good one. In order to talk about these themes I'll have to transition into talking about the manga itself, since they aren't part of the anime.

DA MANGA: So one last recommendation that you read the manga, the whole damn thing. Cus we're gettin into themes and character moments that take a long time to pay off, and obviously is all part of my interpretations, so if that stuff means anything to you don't let me ruin it for ya.

The title of the manga is, in essence, the entire manga's "punchline" in that every chapter could meaningfully end with simply the text "And yet the town still turns..." (My translation of the title, fuck "And yet, the town revolves" or "But the town moves"); by this I mean most chapters end in an anti-climax where a mystery is left unsolved, or a mystery is solved and undercut by the realization that life simply keeps on going without much change. This is used to essentially force your eyes open to all possibilities when reading, as the main character spends her time acting like a detective, and these mysteries end up as either misunderstandings, secrets, riddles, and sometimes something out of the ordinary happens that makes you unable to pin anything down firmly. Similarly, these endings aren't always read-and-forget scenarios. Several chapters come back in the form of a continued joke, a continued mystery, or contribute to some greater purpose later. Readers are properly rewarded for keeping everything they can in mind, while also tormenting such people with loose ends.

I enjoy Hotori as a protagonist due to her character being defined not in flaws and strengths, but in mindedness. Hotori seems like a simple "haha she's dumb" character to start, but consistently throughout she proves that her strengths are in memory, observation, and deduction, while lacking in some more common sense and abilities. Her brain works in strange ways that some people may or may not understand, such as her need to think through even the most trivial fictional scenarios, which I relate to deeply.

The art and paneling throughout are wonderful. Ishiguro Masakazu is one of those artists who draws very simple characters, but knows how to use details and depth to breath so much life into the artwork. He also clearly uses the occasional supernatural happenings as an excuse to draw what he loved, as all sorts of artistic depictions of the supernatural come out that simply look satisfying. These parts obviously meant a lot to him since he's been working on a primarily mystery-action manga that has a lot more of that stuff in it. (Also, as hindsight is 20/20, if you've read any of his new work you'll notice that the main character of it is eerily similar to a character who shows up very late in SoreMachi that the author obviously fell in love with, cus she just keeps coming back and even ends up with a really unsettling end to her character arc despite only being introduced as a component in a harmless mystery. Feel free to call me out for the same shit 30 years from now when I'll probably do the same shit)

I'd like to get into some of the major themes of this work, as a lot of them hit very close to my mind (which I guess is true of any theme you recognize for yourself, you wouldn't really "get it" if it didn't mean something to you...).

The simplest theme, again, comes from the title. The main character, Hotori, expresses a desire that the town she lives in continues going on, unchanged forever. This is obviously a fear of change, which ya know, same, but also an exploration of what it means to fear change. Hotori actively tries to keep businesses from closing down, keep friends from leaving, and keep relationships from changing, while simultaneously making all sorts of new relationships and solving mysteries. Hotori even comes to realize that simply learning the truth about something changes the world through your own perspective, and that such changes can't be undone. In spite of this, Hotori mostly gets her wish, any time she fears that a large change will impact the town, its resolved about the same as any other issue. Whether its a message that even time can't keep you from your loved ones and that change isn't worth fearing, or a concession that large changes to the setting would be a bad idea in terms of humor, I can't really decide. This theme reaches it's conclusion in what is one in a series of "ending" kinda chapters at the end of the series. Hotori is faced with a supernatural ethical situation, save her town from destruction at the cost of her existence, or live through the disaster, knowing her town and the people in it will forever be changed. While the actual result is that nobody disappears and nothing is lost, and the event may have simply been a strange dream, Hotori confidently decides that sparing the people in her town from a life altering event is worth giving up her memories with them. A kind of bold spit-in-the-face to the idea that change is okay, where we find that Hotori didn't fear change for herself, but rather for the people around her.

There's another major idea in this manga, which takes a very long time to pay off, and completes its arc at the very very very actual end of the series, the idea of "leading someone to be something". A character that rides that line between main and side character, Shizuka, is a writer of detective novels, who feels the best person to judge her works would be a version of herself without the bias of being the author. She tries to achieve this by leading Hotori to be interested in detective works (including her own) and generally be just like her, starting from a young age. The end result is a young girl dead set on being a detective herself (or at least another novelist), while Shizuka keeps her identity as an author secret. She then uses Hotori as a scapegoat for herself, attempting to see how she would solve various mysteries and use that as inspiration, and this is depicted as though Shizuka were some sort of villain, which she may feel like she is. The end result of it all, though, is that Hotori was likely already a detective-minded person, and that even if Shizuka pushed her down that path, it was Hotori's decision to continue down it, and the very end of the manga is a scene revealing that Hotori figured out Shizuka's secret at some point, and even still respected Shizuka and aspired to reach her, and the two accept each other for who they are. I enjoy this ending a lot, since as an artist I've worried that some of my love or aspirations for and from other artists came with an ulterior motive of wanting a better community for art to exist in, but people are people and will make their own decisions, and some day everyone may be able to become equals in a truly meaningful sense, where everyone is inspired by and guiding each other together.

So that probably didn't mean shit to nobody and I didn't even really talk about anything in the comic like most of the main characters or any of the shit goin on but ya know fuck you go read it, and thanks for reading this.

[vintage-brass-tc]

4/30/2021

On Friday, a marching band event was held at M’s new school for all the band kids. This was one of the many meetings to prepare for the busy year ahead of us, including the sessions I mentioned in the past couple of months. This one happened to be about our choreography!

I’ll get right into it. Let the highlights commence.

||||||||||||||||||||||||

I never found direct instructions on getting to the room we were set to go in, so I roamed the clearing when I entered, guided by the different people standing at certain checkpoints in the hallways. I reached a certain spot in one hall and there was a door blocking one of its directions. My gut told me to maneuver through it, but I didn’t, instead listening to the hall guy’s instructions.

Soon enough, I made it.

I walked into the auditorium, pretty confused as to why we would be placed there. I was very obviously puzzled when I then entered the room and realized. Not only were there like…only fifteen kids inside the area, but by some coincidence, W was there too. I was led to the wrong place.

W was already looking at me prior to we had made eye contact. He tilted his head to his left and furrowed his eyebrows at my arrival. I mirrored his movements, being just as baffled as he was. He then began to walk around the occupied chairs he stood behind.

He strode over to me and stopped around 8 inches away. He then leaned towards my face, making his usual serious eye contact. “Are you here for marching band?” His face was full of curiosity. “Yes, marching band.” I replied. I attempted to stay calm under his piercing gaze, which was always hard, as much as I’ve seen it before.

“I thought so,” he stated, “I’ll walk you there.” Without any wait whatsoever, he began p to move briskly up the wooden stairs of the auditorium. I speed-walked behind him. With quick strides, he glided through the backstage area. His quick footsteps reverberated throughout the room, followed by my rushed ones as I jogged to catch up with him.

I finally made it right behind him before we exited the room and we walked together in silence, which was accompanied by the taps of our shoes on the thick floor beneath us. I decided I wouldn’t leave him hanging. “Thank you for helping, W,” I said to him, genuinely. “Mmhm!” He hummed happily.

Soon we arrived at the starting destination.

“And here’s the band hall!” He exclaimed, beaming, as we entered. “Uhhh...” I felt my face flush slightly with embarrassment as I looked around. The room was empty, minus the four or five staff members present inside it. He froze for two seconds, slightly stunned. “I guess they already left.” He said.

“Haha, yeah.” I responded to him and chuckled after muttering to myself, “of COURSE they did.” Luckily, after our little moment of humiliation, we weren’t left hanging for a while. A lady went up and offered to lead me to where the marching band was. Of course, I gratefully took up that offer.

“And I’ll follow YOU (this time)!” He said in an upbeat tone of voice. “Hehe, alright!” I giggled. I shot my head back to smile at him, and he was already smiling. He moved with an adorable bouncy walk too while he trailed behind us.

We all walked for a little bit before the girl began some small talk about what instrument I played and whatnot. W parted from our little group at some point during the awkward conversation.

~~

“And through this door here...” she told me.

Funnily enough, it was the other side of the door that I had the gut urge to pass earlier. I suppose my ignorance led me to seeing W though, so it wasn’t all that bad. The lady smiled and I passed through the now un-propped open door while she held it for me.

“Thank you.” I told her in a quiet voice. She responded with a smile before softly shutting the door. I turned to look around the room, which was a gymnasium. Groups of people were either at the front or the sides of the room, chatting amongst themselves.

While I stood, a friend in my section greeted me joyfully, told me where to put my stuff down, and all that jazz. I placed my mildly translucent water bottle, hair-tie, sunglasses, and phone down on the flat, open seat-like area on the wall. In hindsight, I probably didn’t need the sunglasses or hair tie, but oh well. Bless the great indoors!

After I carefully pushed my gray sweater off of me, I noticed that all of the kids were beginning to gather on their spots at the front, so I followed suit. We soon stood in a formation of neat rows and columns after some slight controversy on who should stand where in line. After that, the rehearsal began.

~~

I didn’t see M at first when I walked in, but soon my eyes were gifted with the sight of his presence. Soon enough, he started to speak into his microphone. His voice and appearance is always better in person than it is in my head. ❤️

I believe he greeted us and thanked us for coming out to join him, but briefly due to a time crunch. He then let the choreographer introduce himself. While the guy talked and gave us a starter, M leaned on the wall.

I took this time to take in his outfit, and thank goodness I did. M looked great. All I’ll say to avoid being super specific is that he wore a hat as usual, and a long-sleeved baby blue shirt.

Fast forward during some preparation on posture and terms to remember, we began our first lesson in our dancing: A quick instruction on tendus. Soon after starting to demonstrate them, the choreographer told the front few rows to get low so the back could see what was going on.

He presented to everyone how they would shift their weight correctly and point our inner leg out in front of us while we did this. We then learned the correct way to lift that leg off the ground on each side and did some reps on those. Yada yada.

As the repetitions progressed, I noticed that M began to record the class. I figured he would use this footage for the future in case we had to learn these again in class. At 2-3 points in time, the camera was pointed right at me while I relayed the movements the class was taught. And it wasn’t even for a second. It was more like 8-15 seconds, give or take.

One of the times, I snuck a long glance at the camera, and then at him. He met my eyes while he was taping and stared into them with a pensive and interested look. His luminous dark brown eyes shone as a puppy’s would when begging for scraps.

I felt a light smile begin to tug at my lips as I looked into his eyes for a moment longer. I then focused back on the task at hand while he did his thing. He soon started panning the device to his left, and stopped taping (for now) after 6 seconds or so afterwards.

I would like to repeat that this happened at least 2-3 times, each during different reps...HDHGGHDYGS. I feel helpful. Just hoping my face wasn’t that red in the footage.

~~

After this fiasco, we were being taught how to bend one leg and glide the other across the floor in a circular motion without bending it. I’m not quite sure what the term was for this exercise (I think we called it a bend?), but it was pretty fun!

At some point during the leader’s examples and explanations, M walked near me. When I saw him in the corner of my eye, I internally flipped out. I felt his body give off some heat, which traveled smoothly from him to me. I felt my heart-rate begin to increase at the contact, and my eyes widened a little bit as well.

My head twisted somewhat to the left so I could get a better look at him. He was about 5 inches to the left and a foot behind me, and he stood still, now facing the front, while he held his phone up.

A second and a half later, he sat down quickly yet softly right where he was standing.And when I heard that? I swear I could feel my pupils dilate because HOOOH, I was beyond happy.

I shifted my body and hand’s position on the ground so I would appear more vertical and orderly. This way, he would get a better shot of the instructor without my hair or something being in the way.

He sat there for a good while as he got the footage, then stood up a little bit before we were off to begin attempting the movements. The excitement never left inside me. I was smiling that whole time.

~~

Boom, first water break!

All the kids cheered and started chatting while they went to grab their stuff.

As the others spoke, I looked over at him. He was smiling, confused and attempting to do a tendu while the instructor guy watched. He wasn’t great at it, but the sight made me feel even more relaxed than I had felt before, since it reassured me he wasn’t perfect at everything.

After some more chatting between the people in my section, we were called over to get back into practicing. When we came back, we learned what a passé was and how to do it. Again, while everyone’s eyes were fixed on the dancer in front of us, I felt some warm air hit my back as I sat on the ground. This breeze was accompanied by the sound of shoes hitting the floor.

He strolled slowly behind me once again, unknowingly teasing me with our closer proximity, along with the scent I so dearly loved that more noticeably lingered around him. The amount of time he took and how close he was when he moved near me leads me to believe his actions weren’t entirely unconscious.

After the slow trail, he came to a stop in the same place as before, to the left and just slightly behind me, only about three inches from my side. He then moved a little closer and sat down right next to me, just avoiding the touch of our knees.

We were seriously that close.

I adjusted myself just as I did last time, so I wasn’t too close to him to make him uncomfortable, although I did allow my body to lean juuuust a little bit near him. He didn’t seem to mind too much.

My mind began to spin a little as his cologne engulfed me, the mask I had on failing to block it, and I closed my eyes to take in the atmosphere.

How warm he felt compared to the room around me.

How his breathing was barely audible, yet so comforting.

How the aura he set out put me in a sense of calm, as if I was protected.

How just the mere presence of him right beside myself put me at ease.

I opened my eyes and didn’t even try to fight the smile already planted on my features when I turned my head to the left. I looked at his face, which was fixed on the instructor, but it had a twinge of softness as well. It may have been my imagination, but I believe he was smiling a little bit too.

Being here, coexisting with him felt so natural to me, and I surprisingly kept my composure the whole time.

Because my head was already rotated, I casually tuned in to the directions while watching the movements being taped on his phone. He probably noticed my attention because, again, he was grinning, and he seemed very content as well.

Interrupting our silent moment, his phone displayed the ‘10% battery remaining’ icon, which almost made me laugh. He dismissed the warning without a second thought against it and continued recording.

I looked back at the real choreographer, and not too long later we were told to stand up. This time, he remained on the ground. I stood up, leaning on my left hand at first, so for a quick moment I was moving my body towards him. Despite this, I got up as cleanly as I could just in case I would end up doing something dumb, like falling on him.....or bumping his head with my hip. 😳

He sat there for an extra two seconds before he, himself, got up, beaming. From the little view I got from gazing down at him, the way he sat was just adorable. He reminded me of a child—he looked so young. Younger than I remember at least. <3

~~

The choreographer gave us a speech about how the little things matter and stuff in band especially, just basically something meaningful, and I looked at him during part of it.

He already had his soft eyes set on me.

He nodded slowly at me with a huge grin that caused noticeable dimples, even with the little space the mask was covering. While the encouraging words were spoken, it looked like he was getting emotional. Like was growing closer and closer to crying. Aww. 💕

I allowed my body to cave in slightly and I gave him a timid smile while tilting my head to the right.

The way he looked at me with encouragement was so lovely. His acting was so....personal. So vulnerable. Unlike the tough and dominant demeanor he set out when I had him in the past.

I’m so proud of him.

When the first closer was finished, he gave out his own speech.

“You’re all probably hurting in places you’ve never felt before,” he told us, making us laugh, “and that’s okay!” He then reminded us that we’d have to teach each other these moves, and probably teach him too in the future.

He mentioned that he tried to get footage on the phone to help him as much as he could, but then his phone ran out and he was like *!!!!!* panicking. He said this very expressively, putting his hands out in front of him like he was holding two tennis balls.

Again, I found it so cute that he was being more like himself than ever before in this crowd. He’s way more open than I remember from the past. He used to be more hesitant when it came to showing his weakness.

After those thoughts were out of the way, he spoke with a clear voice, telling us all how the conductor’s statement of ‘the best bands are the best at the smallest details’ spoke to him and represented his usual motto clearly.

He was speaking with so much passion in his voice that I bet everyone could hear it.

||||||||||||||||||||||||

WOW, that was a bunch to unload! I need to stop worrying about including everything so I can get these out sooner and do better stuff with my time. Hopefully this was worth the wait, and if not, oh well! Just finding some time to ramble about stuff that happened with M. 😂❤️

If I begin posting about stuff from this week too, it’s just an excuse to talk about M and W, so you can ignore it. GJDHSJGSA — It’ll only be small things anyway!

Alright, think I’m done here! Have a great weekend everyone, and stay safe. School year’s almost over, so we better make the most of it. :)

[louistomlinsoncouk]

It’s 3:00 p.m. on a Saturday, and Louis Tomlinson is casually trying to catch cigarettes in his mouth.

Tyler Joe He’s standing on a Brooklyn sidewalk, killing time between shots of his Cosmopolitan photoshoot, in front of a friend who's about six feet away.

On Louis’ cue, Not-Louis throws a cigarette in the general direction of Louis' open mouth, the way high school boys do with Swedish Fish during lunch. He misses. Not-Louis tries again. Another miss. Then, on the third attempt, Not-Louis finally catches the cig, and he proceeds to light it and then immediately put it out when he’s called back to set.

As the oldest member of the mega-successful group formerly known as One Direction, Louis is about to embark on the solo career his bandmates Zayn Malik and Harry Styles got a two-year head-start on. His debut solo album Walls is set to come out at the end of this month. The sound is more soulful—less teen heartthrob, more grown-up man who isn't trying to get every teenage girl in the world to have a crush on him. He even looks more mature, in part because he's not trying to do the fluffy boy band hair anymore. Yeah, and he’s never felt more aware of how old he is.

“I’ve never been more conscious of my age, at 27,” he tells me a few hours later while sitting in on a couch in a now-empty photo studio, with perfect afternoon selfie light coming through the windows, still obviously nursing a hangover from the night before. “When you’re in your late 20s, you’re in a funny stage of your life—you haven’t been around for ages, but you’re also not young, you’re in this weird transitional stage," he goes on. "That’s been very apparent in my life, and I’m always trying to be as immature as I possibly fucking can now, to balance it all out. There’s only so much you can get away with for so long.”  

No one would blame Louis for trying to reclaim a little bit of his youth while he still can. In the past four years, he’s faced enough change to turn him from a fresh-faced kid in a boy band to an adult with very real obstacles in his path. In 2016, he lost his mother to cancer. Three years later, his younger sister passed away from an accidental overdose.

In that same stretch of time, he saw the breakup of One Direction—excuse me, “hiatus,” not breakup. While his former bandmates were able to go on world tours and front fragrance campaigns for Gucci, he had serious reasons for delaying the release of his first album.

His new music reflects the grief of all the above. In the track “Two Of Us,” he vulnerably sings: “I know you'll be looking down, swear I'm gonna make you proud / I'll be living one life for the two of us.” But there’s still plenty of time spent on the idea of falling in love too.

These lyrics are more personal than the ones you find in the singles he released when he first left the band, before his solo career stalled due to all those personal reasons. Those early songs admittedly slapped, but didn’t really feel like him-him.

“I was making music to try to chase radio, and not really making the right decisions by me in terms of music,” he says.

“I respect the artists that I worked with and I respect the songs, absolutely, but in hindsight, it wasn't necessarily true to me.”  

That’s part of why he’s stayed away from collaborations on Walls. He feels like he needs to create an image for himself separate from other people—there are, ahem, four very specific names that come to mind. “I've got to stand on my own two feet and say, ‘This is my identity. This is who I am as an artist,’” he says. 

That said, the whole promoting-your-album-alone thing isn't exactly easy—especially when you're very used to doing this job as part of a unit. The interviews, the photoshoots, the studio sessions, the gigs, were all situations he could rely on his bandmates for in the past.

Like, say, if he showed up hungover to something (cough, cough), he could usually depend on Harry, Liam, Niall, or Zayn to be on their game. But now, it’s just him. The one thing that doesn’t feel different, though, are the fans, who have a reputation for being absolute die-hards.

“They’re still as manic and as crazy, in the best possible way,” he says. At a meet-and-greet recently, he met a girl who told him the first time she listened to a One Direction song, she was 11. Now, she’s 19 or 20, which means Louis has been a part of her life for roughly half of it. “That's a crazy concept," he continues. "I left that meet-and-greet thinking about the fact that she was still very young girl at 11, and there she was as an adult."

The fans have grown up, so has he, and so have the other guys he used to make music with. Now that they’re all older and doing their own things, Louis isn’t shy about the fact that they don’t talk all the time. Like any group of friends that come together as 16-year-olds, that relationship is going to look a lot different by the time you’re almost 30.

But it's not like he has anything bad to say about them. There’s no shade to throw accusing one member of the band of being Ringo Starr, the man who notoriously left The Beatles first. There's no wink-wink comments made about not knowing what to say to any of the other members if they were to run into each other, because their life is shrouded in “mystery” or something. (Although, to be fair, the topic of Zayn was generally avoided.)

“I think all the boys would agree with this. There's been moments in all of our lives where naturally some of us speak to others more than others,” he says. “I wouldn't say I’m closest to any of the boys. Recently, I’ve probably spoken to Liam 10 times as much as I spoke to the other lads. Six months ago, that was Niall.”

He’s also quick to say he’s not not down for a reunion. If he had to guess, he’d be the one to send the initial, “Alright boys, let’s do this,” kind of message. When they were in the band, he felt like he was the de facto team captain because he was the oldest.

But, if it were to happen, the music would have to be different. The songs were great, but they were definitely reflective of the fact that they were being performed by teenagers, and he’s careful to say that he’d want to pick up specifically where “Made In The A.M.” left off. Take that to mean whatever you want. Cue the conspiracy theories.  

As for the timeline of when this would all go down? He’s not sure. Anything past 35 feels too late, but it’s hard to look too far forward when you’re trying to sneak in those last moments of being immature.

“Anything over 30 sounds fucking old to me right now,” he says.

[talkingismylifewrites]

I find myself wanting some OT4 quarantine parenting with Roger and John being Good Dads. Say one of the kids has chicken pox or there’s a bad flu going around and they have a houseful of children who can’t go out for a few weeks and between the schoolwork and the cancelled birthday party there are things to get frustrated about...

oh my god it would be hell on earth

let’s say it is the chicken pox

ha #1 (henry) and ha #2 (hannah) come home from preschool with a letter that says there’s been an outbreak and to look out for symptoms

“this will never happen to us,” thinks john confidently

SURPRISE

three days later HaHa are both spotted and feverish

roger had the chicken pox one terrible summer when he was seven, dom had it when she was four, and john when he was five

veronica, however, is pregnant with baby #7 (jupiter) and also never had it

“don’t you have like, five siblings?” dominique asks, squinting. 

ronnie shrugs, “we got lucky, i guess. ate a lot of soup.”

so ronnie gets her bags packed and is banished to garden lodge to spend two weeks quarantined with freddie and jim

it’s just john, roger, and dominique staring down the worst two weeks of their lives

literally

so HaHa are first quarantined to their room, which appears to work great, right? like just toss the twins-that-aren’t-twins in the same room, feed them soup and ginger ale, bring them to the bathroom for oatmeal baths when they itch

WRONG

it gets transferred to daisy

(how they honestly have no idea they thought they were SO GOOD about it)

so daisy gets like....two spots

really, like, the mildest case

half inch on her back, barely even itches, minor fever, she hides it well

BUT

she gives it to robbie, who in turn gives it to vera

this all happens in like......five days

vera is just knocked out with a fever, vomiting everywhere, she’s COVERED in spots, gets oven mitts duct taped to her to stop her from itching

robbie doesn’t have a bad fever persay? but he’s got the itchies and he’s DYING

so he and vera get thrown onto the couches in the den and they’re like covered in calamine lotion that dom has to reapply every 30 min 

she has an egg timer just for them

robbie had to be shoved into socks when they realized he was using his feet to itch at his pox

(“it’s almost impressive,” roger breathes, watching robbie hook his foot over his shoulder to itch his neck. “who knew he was that flexible?”

“he gets it from veronica,” john say sagely. )

their pediatrician HATES them 

“anOTHER kid?? another one. seriously??? how???” 

meanwhile, at casa freddie

veronica is feeling v guilty that she’s having as good of a time as she is

freddie is like oMG A BABY!! and is going haywire getting her anything she could ever want or need

veronica’s hungry? 

she gets an entire charcuterie platter just for her

(”does freddie know i can’t eat half of this?” she asks jim, nearly on the verge of hormonal pregancy tears.

“i’ll eat it, don’t worry,” says jim, pretending like he’s doing her a favor. 

jim loves charcuterie

“does baby want caviar????” freddie bellows from the pantry)

her feet hurt?? 

freddie himself is rubbing them for her with this excellent cream he bought in la, think it’s made with bulls testicles but its lovely darling

on day 6 of the nightmare, daisy wakes up with a nightmare and the only person who will soothe her is veronica

literally

no one else

john, roger, and dom are all cuddling her in bed, trying to get her to stop crying because its 2:17am and the other kids are all asleep but no

ronnie and ronnie alone will calm her down

so roger bites the bullet and calls ronnie

ronnie, who is sleeping star fished out with no one and nothing touching her for the first time in ten years, her back supported by fifteen pillows and the silk sheets/goose feather duvet, is awoken by jim shaking her awake

“who is it?” ronnie grumbles, pushing back the silk eye mask that freddie so lovingly let her borrow 

“mama?” daisy whimpers before descending into gut wrenching sobs

now, ronnie has been calling the kids every single day twice a day (breakfast and dinner) but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t miss them

she does

terribly

and she, too, starts tearing up as she shushes daisy, promising her it’s okay, no, scooby do doesn’t live in your closet, he can’t hurt you

it takes her thirty minutes to settle her down enough to go back to bed, and then another forty-five min for ronnie to stop crying herself

the next morning, she calls the other three and spends hours on the phone with each of the kids

even though kitty is only 2 years old and disinterested in anything other than playing with the chord

and that vera is still highly feverish and spends the entire phone call snoring in between furious boughs of itching

on day 8, HaHa are finally symptom free 

“it’s going to take us eight days,” dom says, dazed, slathering a fresh batch of calamine onto vera’s back. on the floor, robbie is making like a dog and wriggling on the carpet in the hopes that it will quell the itching 

“lord have mercy,” says roger, arms full of oatmeal as he rushes upstairs to where john had wrangled kitty into the tub

robbie manages to scab over, which they thought was great until they realize they shed

(roger pukes when he realizes it)

(the less said about it the better)

soon, all the healthy kids (daisy and haha) get stuck in one wing of the house while the others (robbie, vera, and kitty) get put in the other

roger, john, and dom take turns sleeping in opposite wings so that the kids are never alone

on day 10, vera’s fever breaks in time for her to experience a new round of blisters

(“can’t we just, i don’t know, knock her out?” dom asks over her crying. “might be more humane.”)

meanwhile, ronnie is depressed and missing her kids

phone calls just aren’t the same

so she escapes from garden lodge and runs away back home

knocking on the windows, she stands in the garden and waves to the kids, letting them open the windows so they can shout down to her

robbie, vaguely pink from the frankly terrifying amount of calamine lotion he’s been slathered in, hangs out the window

“mama!” he shouts. “i had thirty-seven scabs fall off today!! thirty-seven!”

“that’s wonderful, baby!” ronnie says, though she feels a little sick at the thought of it. “how are your sisters and brother?”

“mama, kitty broke my barbie and ha #1 threw up on my slippers,” daisy informs her from the other wing of the house. “daddy said shit when ha#1 threw up and then told me i wasn’t allowed to repeat it or tell you that he said shit....what does shit mean?” 

ha #1 gets a boost from roger to look out the window. ronnie waves back at him before frowning, squinting up at him

“roger, i thought henry was better? why is he covered in spots?!”

“he missed his spots so he used a marker to color them in,” roger hollers back, hiking him up high on his hip. “john thinks it’ll wash off in a few days.” 

ha#2 gets so excited at the sight of veronica that she runs right into the sliding glass door and fucking bounces off it

roger has to spend the whole visit soothing her and giving her one of the popsicles they bought for vera’s fever

meanwhile, dom is on the phone calming freddie down that “no, ronnie didn’t get kidnapped, she’s just visiting...”

john is holding kitty and having her wave down at ronnie while propping up a half-conscious vera who is immensely spotted and miserable, still wearing the oven mitts

which, in hindsight, is the kiss of death

turns out, john didn’t actually get the chicken pox at age five like he thought he did

JULIE got the chicken pox, and john spent the week at his grandma’s house getting fed ice cream and hobnobs

the next morning, the first spot appears

then another

and another

and before they know it

john is quarantined to the same wing of the house as vera, robbie, and kitty

“you’re an idiot,” dom sighs as she spoon feeds him chicken noodle soup while roger uses a cotton ball to spot calamine lotion on the worst of his blisters

“this is the worst thing thats ever happened to me,” bitches john, trying not to itch at his stomach

“papa, i don’t feel so good,” moans vera right before unleashing hell on the bedding

kitty and robbie heal up, and they advance to the healed wing of the house where roger spends his days enforcing naps (so he can nap) and playing monopoly

(he loses to robbie every round, even when he TRIES to win)

vera gets two more days in isolation before she’s deemed healthy, leaving just john to lay in quarantine alone, catching up on coronation street and his sleep

ronnie comes home after seventeen days bearing lots and lots of gifts for the kids

they all clamber all over her like puppies, each talking over the other as they talk about everything that they’ve done, what she missed, who had the most scabs (it was a tie between robbie and john), who threw up the most (vera), who had the highest fever (ha #2), and who ate the most oatmeal while in the bath (kitty). 

that night, she is the only one allowed to put the kids to bed, tucking them each into bed with a kiss and a story

by the time she’s done, robbie snoring into his pillow, she’s exhausted

after seventeen days of pampering, she’s almost annoyed at having to share a bed again

she didn’t realize how lovely silk sheets were, or how nice it was to sleep diagonal

and did roger always run this hot at night??

but then dom curls up close next to her, her hand on her bump, and roger fluffs her pillows before she goes to sleep

and john slips his leg between hers to support her legs and she realizes that she’s never slept better

(that is until ha#1 throws himself into the middle of the bed announcing that he’d peed himself and no he hasn’t changed his pajamas) 

[gallyg]

Doing the Whole 30 challenge in one post like it’s 2012 again

I like doing these in chunks and my wife is busy so this is what I will do to entertain myself.

1. Sam is so much better than Dean. Dean is a dickwad, and his character arc has never rang as true to me as Sam’s.

2. My favorite episode is hard to say, but I think it might be the season 14 finale. I don’t care what other fans say, God has always been a negligent monster in Supernatural, so I loved seeing Sam and Dean turn on him while also boldly evolving into metafiction that goes beyond comedy. Plus the Jack storyline is just heartbreaking.

3. Favorite season is probably like, 1 or 2, but atm I’m loving the Dabb era, so I’m tempted to just go ahead and say season 14 or 15. (13 was dreadful aside from Jack though)

4. Jack is the best character, SAM INCLUDED. He is the spark of heart this stale constipated shit of a show needed, and he finally forced the character dynamics to evolve somewhat for the first time in like half a decade. I love how innocent Jack is and how much trouble he has navigating the world when he’s the only creature like himself in the universe.

5. Rowena is the best female character. For a decade, it was Bela, but Rowena got the redemption arc Bela deserved. I don’t know if it’s because the fanbase has just matured past bullying every girl that gets near the Winchesters or what, but I’m glad they didn’t unceremoniously ditch Rowena like cowards.

6. All the actors do a fine enough job but Jim Beaver is clearly the one who treats it the most like a craft.

7. Are there good angels? They’ve been cannon fodder for so long, it’s hard to remember. I liked Gabriel a lot before he came back. I guess Balthazar is still a genuine treat and helps make season 6 the sloppy success that it is. I even think his death was well-earned and served the plot well, which is rare for this show. I just wish he was more of a weight on Castiel’s conscience after he’s murdered instead of being wholly forgotten until the season 13 AU.

8. Crowley ruined Supernatural for a long time. It’s hilarious that the premise of his character in season 5 was “what if a demon was genuinely helpful? why would they be?” and then they totally abandoned that idea for six years. His relationship with the Winchesters changed in a totally nonsensical way at the start of season 6, and he never really justified his place as King of Hell. It felt like he was just there to be a reason for them to fight demons for 10 years too many instead of coming up with new interesting plots.

9. Apocalypse World Michael is the only villain who I get and sympathize with. Of course he’d feel betrayed by God. Of course he’d take it out on humanity. He’s Lucifer but without the convoluted in-universe backstory that doesn’t gel with the lore you’re just supposed to assume.

10. The best Misha character is the Leviathan legion. Perfectly creates a tone of menace, sets up the conflict of the season, then explodes, which also kills Castiel and gave me a few blissful months where I thought we’d be free of the writers struggling to keep Castiel at a balanced power level without taking up too much storytelling economy (they finally got it eventually).

11. Best character intro is Castiel. Of course it is. If Supernatural ended at season 4 or 5 or even 6, we’d forever remember that intro as the moment the show fearlessly decided to become Epic.

12. Only episode of Supernatural that scared me was Hookman and just because I watched it in the dark at 3am when I was 15.

13. The best Bobby scene is, obviously, when he tearfully tells Sam that it was just the demon talking in season 5′s intro. He’s family, and he’s never cutting him out, not ever.

14. Ruby 1.0.  Katie Cassidy is a good actress who can actually make you doubt her motives and also believe she is a demon and not an actress on the set of a TV show. “You deserve hell, Dean Winchester! I wish I could be there to hear you scream!”

15. Yeah, I teared up at Swan Song.

16. Ruby is the only demon who has ever been interesting. Her appearance in the Empty kinda retconned some of her depth, but that can’t erase the great times we had, back in season 3 and 4.

17. The only ship that matters is Sam/Eileen because it’s the only couple that has genuine empathy for each other that isn’t drowning in bullshit emotional repression that got old ten years ago.

18. I love Amy Pond! This might contribute to why I don’t like Dean much, even if he was never my favorite anyway.

19. No comment.

20. Remember when Jack when to his grandma’s house looking for emotional support because he was in unprecedented distress and all he got was yelled at? Fucking christ, Jack’s whole season 14 arc fucked me up.

21. No comment. 

22. There’s some small thing I like in every season, but the whole Jeremy Carver era was dreadful and actually made me stop watching until I heard about Jack and thought he sounded like a cool character (he is)

23. 

24. I actually like the Ghostfacers webisode a lot

25. Hot take as a classic SPN fan, but season 15′s premier was astounding. You can sense the whole time as they’re dealing with the ghost apocalypse that it can’t be this easy. They’re fooling themselves if they think God will let them off with one last simple case with just one more sacrifice, because the audience wouldn’t ever be satisfied with that. We want more sacrifice, more suffering for these characters. Every issue solved before the end is promise of more nightmares. There will be peace when you are done. Not a god damn second before.

26. Nobody is as good as Jack, none of them need to come back. 

...

...

Just kidding, bring back Lisa, or Ben, preferably both, but if I must pick one, then it’s Ben. That’s Dean’s kid, even if not biologically. Dean needs to grapple with what he did, abandoning him.

27. “I used to be a psychic. I’m not anymore, at least I don’t think.” BRING BACK SAM’S POWERS HE SHOULD STILL HAVE AT LEAST SOME FROM THE DEMON BLOOD HE DRANK IN SEASON 5. 

28. “Bitch.” *eyes widen in horror as he realizes he just called a teenage girl a bitch, context be damned*

29. I do not care about Meg.

30. The best season finale is 5 or 14. It all depends on how season 15 finishes. Which finale will be sullied worse in hindsight?

[hlupdate]

It’s 3:00 p.m. on a Saturday, and Louis Tomlinson is casually trying to catch cigarettes in his mouth.

He’s standing on a Brooklyn sidewalk, killing time between shots of his Cosmopolitan photoshoot, in front of a friend who's about six feet away.

On Louis’ cue, Not-Louis throws a cigarette in the general direction of Louis' open mouth, the way high school boys do with Swedish Fish during lunch. He misses. Not-Louis tries again. Another miss. Then, on the third attempt, Not-Louis finally catches the cig, and he proceeds to light it and then immediately put it out when he’s called back to set.

As the oldest member of the mega-successful group formerly known as One Direction, Louis is about to embark on the solo career his bandmates Zayn Malik and Harry Styles got a two-year head-start on. His debut solo album Walls is set to come out at the end of this month. The sound is more soulful—less teen heartthrob, more grown-up man who isn't trying to get every teenage girl in the world to have a crush on him. He even looks more mature, in part because he's not trying to do the fluffy boy band hair anymore. Yeah, and he’s never felt more aware of how old he is.

“I’ve never been more conscious of my age, at 27,” he tells me a few hours later while sitting in on a couch in a now-empty photo studio, with perfect afternoon selfie light coming through the windows, still obviously nursing a hangover from the night before. “When you’re in your late 20s, you’re in a funny stage of your life—you haven’t been around for ages, but you’re also not young, you’re in this weird transitional stage," he goes on. "That’s been very apparent in my life, and I’m always trying to be as immature as I possibly fucking can now, to balance it all out. There’s only so much you can get away with for so long.”

No one would blame Louis for trying to reclaim a little bit of his youth while he still can. In the past four years, he’s faced enough change to turn him from a fresh-faced kid in a boy band to an adult with very real obstacles in his path. In 2016, he lost his mother to cancer. Three years later, his younger sister passed away from an accidental overdose.

In that same stretch of time, he became a father and saw the breakup of One Direction—excuse me, “hiatus,” not breakup. While his former bandmates were able to go on world tours and front fragrance campaigns for Gucci, he had serious reasons for delaying the release of his first album. 

His new music reflects the grief of all the above. In the track “Two Of Us,” he vulnerably sings: “I know you'll be looking down, swear I'm gonna make you proud / I'll be living one life for the two of us.” But there’s still plenty of time spent on the idea of falling in love too. See: “We Made It” in which he recalls spending weekends at college with his girlfriend when she was in school.

These lyrics are more personal than the ones you find in the singles he released when he first left the band, before his solo career stalled due to all those personal reasons. Those early songs admittedly slapped, but didn’t really feel like him-him.

“I was making music to try to chase radio, and not really making the right decisions by me in terms of music,” he says.

“I’ve got to stand on my own two feet and say, ’This is my identity. This is who I am as an artist,’”

“I respect the artists that I worked with and I respect the songs, absolutely, but in hindsight, it wasn't necessarily true to me.”  

That’s part of why he’s stayed away from collaborations on Walls. He feels like he needs to create an image for himself separate from other people—there are, ahem, four very specific names that come to mind. “I've got to stand on my own two feet and say, ‘This is my identity. This is who I am as an artist,’” he says.  

That said, the whole promoting-your-album-alone thing isn't exactly easy—especially when you're very used to doing this job as part of a unit. The interviews, the photoshoots, the studio sessions, the gigs, were all situations he could rely on his bandmates for in the past.

Like, say, if he showed up hungover to something (cough, cough), he could usually depend on Harry, Liam, Niall, or Zayn to be on their game. But now, it’s just him. The one thing that doesn’t feel different, though, are the fans, who have a reputation for being absolute die-hards.

“They’re still as manic and as crazy, in the best possible way,” he says. At a meet-and-greet recently, he met a girl who told him the first time she listened to a One Direction song, she was 11. Now, she’s 19 or 20, which means Louis has been a part of her life for roughly half of it. “That's a crazy concept," he continues. "I left that meet-and-greet thinking about the fact that she was still very young girl at 11, and there she was as an adult."

The fans have grown up, so has he, and so have the other guys he used to make music with. Now that they’re all older and doing their own things, Louis isn’t shy about the fact that they don’t talk all the time. Like any group of friends that come together as 16-year-olds, that relationship is going to look a lot different by the time you’re almost 30.

But it's not like he has anything bad to say about them. There’s no shade to throw accusing one member of the band of being Ringo Starr, the man who notoriously left The Beatles first. There's no wink-wink comments made about not knowing what to say to any of the other members if they were to run into each other, because their life is shrouded in “mystery” or something. (Although, to be fair, the topic of Zayn was generally avoided.)

“I think all the boys would agree with this. There's been moments in all of our lives where naturally some of us speak to others more than others,” he says. “I wouldn't say I’m closest to any of the boys. Recently, I’ve probably spoken to Liam 10 times as much as I spoke to the other lads. Six months ago, that was Niall.” 

He’s also quick to say he’s not not down for a reunion. If he had to guess, he’d be the one to send the initial, “Alright boys, let’s do this,” kind of message. When they were in the band, he felt like he was the de facto team captain because he was the oldest.

But, if it were to happen, the music would have to be different. The songs were great, but they were definitely reflective of the fact that they were being performed by teenagers, and he’s careful to say that he’d want to pick up specifically where “Made In The A.M.” left off. Take that to mean whatever you want. Cue the conspiracy theories.

As for the timeline of when this would all go down? He’s not sure. Anything past 35 feels too late, but it’s hard to look too far forward when you’re trying to sneak in those last moments of being immature.

“Anything over 30 sounds fucking old to me right now,” he says.

[ranger-kellyn]

11 Favorite Excerpts

In honor if it being the 11 year anniversary of the first fic I ever posted, Platinum Bound, I thought I’d list out 10 of my favorite excerpts from everything I’ve posted so far, 1 from something I haven’t posted yet, and then kind of just. Talk about it~

As always, feel free to talk to me about any of my fics, no matter how old or new~ I’m very vain~<3

--

1 - Come With Me - Prologue - 03/02/2015 - Completed

A day that was supposed to be filled with sorrow and mourning had turned out to be very lovely. The cold that had long persisted since November had decided to lighten its icy grip on this one day in particular. It was almost a tragedy in itself that the weather failed to match the mood by pouring a relentless downpour. Rain was fit for a funeral. Not sunshine.

The opening to Come With Me has always had a special place in my heart, and while I know my writing has gotten better since then, I always hold up this opening as like...my premium brand, I suppose.  I love the mood the prologue sets up for Siebold’s side of the story.  Mismatched weather.  His parents having the same death date.  A sense of odd relationship dynamics with them.  Clear indication that there’s going to be a lot of conflict with Jean as shown by Diantha, Siebold’d childhood friend, who has a clear disdain towards him.  CWM may not be my BEST WORK, but it’s probably one of my favorites.  ALSO....come on...the restaurant’s name is Apple of The Earth, which is a direct translation of pomme de terre, which is French for potato.  And like???? i just get a little kick out of it every time

--

2 - It Takes Two - 12/16/2014 - Oneshot

Siebold chuckled.  “A water dark type?  My, my.  You’ve already put yourself at a disadvantage. Cress shook his head.  “Don’t give away your secret ingredient just yet, Siebold.  Leave something to the imagination, please,” he teased.

If there is ONE THING I LOVE it’s writing flirty banter for these two, and this fic if full of it.  My first fic for Cress/Siebold, staking my claim on the pool noodle that is this ship.  I AM the captain of this pool noodle

--

3 - Second Chances - Chapter 7 - 06/14/2017 - Ongoing

“It was supposed to be me!” . . . Shaking, she stopped herself in the front hallway.  Looking over the large, glass-famed map, she felt as though she was leaving her own body as she slammed herself against it in a last ditch effort to feel something other than emotional pain.  In an effort to put a physical wound to her emotional one. 

There’s plenty of happier lines from this fic I could choose.  Ch 10 had a section I was considering instead, but I think this emotionally charged section has always stood out for me. I like to generally characterize Cynthia as someone who is in control of her emotions, or at the very least, is very good at compartmentalizing things, but here, she absolutely loses it.  No rationality.  No seeking help.  Just raw pain.  It was supposed to be me. Because it was!  It absolutely was!  In the previous chapter you learn that Diantha had fully intended to propose to her!  But was instead manipulated by her mother and manager into leaving Cynthia.  While Cynthia didn’t know that, we do, and that makes that line so much more painful to me.  I swear.  ONE DAY.  I’ll actually finish this fic.

--

4 - Fortune and Fame - Chapter 1 - 03/23/2016 - Completed

“The best part of that outfit would be taking it off.” Her mouth turns into a smile. “I should think so,” she tells you.

Second person POV is a HUGE pain in the ass, but I still love this silly little fic, and I love this silly little moment EVEN MORE.  What can I say.  I love flirty banter. This whole fic was an absolute experiment, and while it certainly could be better, considering 2POV is not something I regularly work with, I’ve never been too upset with it.

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5 - Stockholm - Chapter 4 - 06/20/2016 - Ongoing

“You’re my mission and my mission alone.  I don’t need outside help,” he tells me. I catch myself about to laugh.  “Figured you would welcome it seeing as whatever you think you’re doing to me clearly isn’t working.” He moves closer, enough for me to feel the warmth of his body, but it’s only when I think he’s looking at my lips do I come to my senses, pulling my legs up to my person, and pushing back up against the wall. “I would say it’s working just fine.”

i like to think of this fic as me playing in a sandbox.  i don’t REALLY know what i’m doing, but i’m having fun, and that’s all that matters. This is a fic I had been thinking about for the longest time.  I abandoned it back in 2016.  I don’t really remember why, but I posted the first update early this year, and I just.  I’ve been loving it since.  I haven’t played in first person in SUCH a long time, it’s just nice to play in the space, and explore a darker emotion I guess.  Game verse Commander Saturn/Dawn is always a weakness of mine

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6 - Shadows of My Heart - Chapter 4 - 02/22/2011 - Completed

Looking at Kellyn, I notice that he has taken his jacket off and is now offering it to me. Shaking my head, I tell him that I can't take it, even though I would love nothing more than to take him up on his offer. He walks closer, smiling as he places his jacket over me. Now, the only thing I hear is the sound of the rain bouncing off of Kellyn's jacket, and the sound my own heartbeat. I'd have to be crazy or dead to not be blushing right now, and obviously my pulse is still going…

if you’ve followed me for a few years, you might think this is a weird pick for me.  i complain about it a lot.  i experience a lot of visceral cringe whenever i reread it (Like i did just now searching for a section i liked) But that’s why I like it.  I love having this visible benchmark of where I’ve come from, and where my ideals have shifted to.  I’ve always written Kellyn as my Ideal Man™© and in this fic he is suCH A “NICE GUY” AND IT’S JUST. SO BAD. I’M SO GLAD I’M NOT WITH THE KIND OF PERSON I USED TO WISH I WAS WITH. This fic is, at best, clumsy.  Younger me was venting a LOT of stuff. Everything I put Rhythmi through in the fic, I was dealing with irl, and NOT handling them well.  I never recommend this for reading, but I list it here because it’s like looking in a time capsule.  

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7 - Washington Blues - Chapter 2 - 04/30/2012 - Abandoned Work

Looking back up at me, the afternoon sun shines on her face.  As if I needed to be reminded that she is very pretty.  “I believe that it is too soon to be giving a definite answer, but,” she pauses to brush some hair behind her ear, “I do believe I am going to like it here.” I nod, liking the answer she has provided.  I put my pink bag over my shoulder, and step down the stairs.  “That’s good to hear.  I do hope you come to love our little band,” I say, putting a little emphasis on “our”.  Hopefully she will start using that term as well.

This fic has been abandoned since 2012, but as I was rereading it just now, I...felt a weird urge to give it a second chance?  Marching band was my EVERYTHING in high school.  It was basically my personality.  It and Homestuck.  If nothing else, I think I might give this fic a redo, because it’s something my younger self would have loved.  I had so many ideas I wanted to explore and I think it would be a fun space to explore. Just reading it I got the most tactile memories of band camp, from the sounds, all the way down to the god awful smells.  One day I’ll give this fic another go, but probably in 3rd person lmao.  Also, it’s kind of funny.  I remember holding this fic up as like.  My Magnum Opus.  I considered chapter 1 to be the BEST thing I had written up to that point. Now? It’s so fucking D RY......and no real person talks like they all do l m a o I love being able to see how far I’ve come. 

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8 - Hindsight - Sometime Feb 2014?  - Oneshot for an old RP group

This question led him to placing both of his hands in his lap.  “I would never describe her as winter.  It’s the season she hates the most.  From what I’ve gathered during our travels together, understandably so,” he answered, not meeting her eyes. 

While this fic is OLD it holds a very special place in my heart.  I had stopped writing for a while.  For about 2 years nothing I wrote ever really panned out, and joining that RP group was literally the best thing I could have done for my creativity.  It was so much fun, and I met some truly incredible people thanks to it.  Literally, everything I’ve written since I attribute to that group.  <3 I may not talk to most of them anymore, but I have some of the best memories of that time, and I just.  Genuinely don’t think I would have HALF of what I have written now if it hadn’t been for their support.  <3

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9 - Ours For The Taking - Chapter 2 - 01/28/2012 - Abandoned Work

Killing is in the nature of almost every Pokémon, but we humans have inhibited that out for the most part. It doesn't take much to trigger the instinct though. A couple kills and then they thirst for blood.

Now i know this looks like a WACK ASS PICK.  It’s been abandoned since 2012.  It’s bad.  It’s gore.  It’s bad.  But that’s exactly why I picked it.  That, and I know it would chap Farla’s ass bc she told me years ago how awful this fic was. The whole reason my writing confidence took a blow.  I can look back and know that this fic wasn’t great, but I hate for my younger self that they were knocked down like that.  You can’t learn the boundaries of your writing until you try to push them.  Maybe I could have turned into a great gore/horror writer if I hadn’t been knocked down?  Who knows?  But because of that negative experience, I now approach all comments I leave on fics with “unconditional positive regard”.  I firmly believe if someone wants con-crit they’ll ask for it, and even then, I’m not someone who is going to offer up that criticism.  That’s not my jam.  I’m just here for a good time.  This fic may be bad, but that’s why I love it.  I love how over the top, 2Edgy4me the two chapters are. 

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10 - Getaway Car - Chapter 5 - 01/01/2019 - Ongoing

Pulling away just enough to make them look at one another, Cynthia looked her over.  She was getting more drunk admissions than she ever thought she would, and she was in no frame of mind to worry about pushing her luck.  “How did that make you feel?” she asked. She let her hand trail down her arm as she spoke.  “Grounded.  Like nothing else in the world mattered except us in that moment.  I wasn’t worried about filming, deadlines, what people might say or think, or– anything, really.  All that mattered was the calm you brought me, and how without meaning to you’ve made me feel like the most important person in the room.”

It’s no secret that Getaway Car is like.  MY BABY.  This is MY FIC.  MY BABY.  I CHERISH THIS FIC FOR SO MANY REASONS. I like venting through characters, and this fic is no exception.  But I loved writing this moment specifically, because it just...I think it encapsulates everything Diantha has been looking for.  She lives a charmed, chaotic life.  Up to that point in the fic, she’s with a man who can’t really be bothered to give her the time of day, but also can’t handle the idea of letting her go.  Without meaning to, without necessarily trying to, Cynthia makes her feel like the most important person in the room.  She grounds her, and someone who lives a star-studded life needs that.  This fic is my baby.  My everything.  It’s probably what I’m known for at this point, and I’m A-OK with that because these two are my everything.  (ALSO, I specifically posted this fic when I did to get Farla to leave me a review, and had a good laugh about it when she did.  My “bat shit crazy” plot device has ended up being my most popular fic~)

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11 - Namtaflu - Chapter _ - Draft from NaNoWriMo 2019

The sound of something rising to the surface of the water attracted everyone’s attention.  Turning their eyes towards the water, one by one, countless Starmie and Staryu began to surface, floating atop the water, their bright gem center’s shining in the moonlight.  “Oh, wow,” Bianca said, holding the Audino closer to herself.  "What are they doing?” Hilbert asked, turning himself so he wasn’t having to strain to look at them.  Cheren shrugged.  “They’ve always done this.” "They’re looking at the stars,” Hilda added.  “It’s what Nona would always tell me.  She said she read it in a book somewhere.  They surface at night to look at the stars, and they’ll even start blinking here soon.”  As she said it, from out in the distance, quick flashes of red began to move along the waves, reminding both her and Cheren of fireflies from further south.  Soon enough, the entire shoreline was filled with the water pokémon blinking away at the stars, almost as if they were communicating with each other, or even something else.  A few Audino continued to sit with them, everyone moved to silence by the display, afraid to make a single noise, not wanting to scare them at all and make them stop.  The display moved in waves, like a heartbeat, ebbing and flowing.  At times they were bright enough to cast a glow onto the shore, and at others it seemed like they had collectively stopped for the night. Once Broadway and Manhattan had decided to retire for the night, the group came to an agreement that it was time they retired for the night as well.  They had stayed up long past sundown, but it had been worth every second.   

I won’t be posting this fic WELL until my three current ongoing fics are completed, but this fic is pretty much everything to me.  I first got the idea for this fic back in 2013, my senior year of high school.  I wrote the first draft my first NaNoWriMo in 2014, and did a second draft of it last year.  This fic has evolved SO MUCH, but this last draft is where I’m REALLY happy with it.  I firmly believe there’s never a “right time” to write a fic, but I also believe this fic absolutely benefited from me not posting it after that first draft.  They’re almost two entirely different stories.  The original had a lot of unhealthy relationship dynamics, and this time, i decided, FUCK THAT, and now it’s a hilda/hilbert/cheren/bianca poly fic ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ I can’t wait for the day when I actually get to share this fic with the world. 

[danetobelieve]

Friday Night Frights || Ariana and Winston

Ariana found herself eager to be getting out of the house this Friday evening. It’d be nice to have a friend who wasn’t immediately moving away in a few months like most of her teammate’s were after graduation. She left her house around 6:30 PM and the everlasting night thing still seemed to be going on. Her curiosity was piqued with this whole incident, but she doubted there was much she could do to help. She was a werewolf, not a witch or whatever other species could have caused this. It was chilly with the long term lack of sunshine so she opted to wear her favorite leather jacket that Celeste had gotten her for her birthday. It was just before seven as she found herself outside the entrance to Nightshade Farmer’s Market. She scanned the crowd, but didn’t see Winston quite yet, so she grabbed a spot on a bench right beside the entrance. 

Everything was kind of wild right now, Winston hadn’t been expecting for the sun to disappear for such a long time and in that time they found themselves wishing more and more that it would return. Yet here they were despite that and life went on. Somehow, a farmers market that only took place during the night seemed like the perfect place for them, so they had decided to make the time for it that they needed. Besides this Ariana girl seemed cool. Spotting what they thought was her on a bench, Winston strode over. For the time of year it was pretty cold, colder then they had expected. Pulling their denim jacket tighter around them, Winston pulled their hoodie over their head. “Hey, Ariana right?” Winston asked with a smile, “I’m Winston, the math dude from the internet.”

As they approached, Ariana stood up and offered a warm smile and said, “Good to meet you in person, Winston, although we may need to work on a better title than math dude from the internet.” She gestured toward the entrance and said, “Shall we?” The pair walked through the entrance and Ariana found herself immediately hit with a wave of different and interesting smells. With the full moon only a few days away, all of her senses and strength were at near peak performance. There were definitely other supernatural beings here, but she shoved that curiosity aside for the time being. She was eager to make a new friend and Winston seemed like they were good people. A quick scan of the market floor left her a little surprised with the variety. Was that a blood stand she spotted off in the distance? She saved that thought for later and led them towards a produce stand that was at the front entrance. She turned and asked them, “Was there anything you were hoping to find while we’re here? I’m not too sure on what all the stands are. The website was a little vague.” 

“I’m not sure that I need a title, to be honest I kinda panicked and said the very first thing that came into my head, Math isn’t even the original love of my life so … awkward y’know.” Winston smiled in return and shrugged gently. “It’s nice to meet you too though.” They followed after her, heading through the entrance and immediately was taken aback by the variety here. They were sure that sign actually did say blood stand and not something else and Winston was starting to wonder why this market was held at night, every week, all the time. It seemed weird. But then there was also stalls selling hummus, stalls selling fresh crepes, there was a stall that only sold pickled goods and then of course stalls and stalls full of fresh fruit and vegetables. “Uh, I mean not really, I’ve always heard about this place, one of my high school friend’s little sister is now a chef at this fancy restaurant in town and she swears by the produce that they have here, but this is my first time and I guess I was just curious.” That sign definitely read blood stall and those vials of dark viscous liquid had to be … Winston was sure that they couldn’t have really got a permit for that.

Ariana found herself glancing back towards the stand with blood and noticed Winston had been eyeing it too. The sign on the stand definitely advertised as much. She wondered if it was human or not, but knew she couldn’t muse about it outloud. She laughed over their musing over the title of math dude. “No worries,” she assured, “I didn’t mind it.” She could understand and found it refreshing anyway. Genuine people were always good to have around. She scanned over the produce at the stand in front of her and didn’t see any black garlic, but there were some watermelons a few stands down that caught her eye. It’d been awhile since she made watermelon limeade and it was one of Celeste’s favorites. She turned to Winston and said, “That’s fair enough. Farmers markets tend to have the best varieties. I’ve always liked visiting them wherever we’ve lived. Plus, you get to support local vendors.” She scanned the area and saw a variety of different vendors. Her stomach rumbled a little bit at the smell of parsley and garlic floating through the air. “Aside from the fancy garlic, I wanted to shop around a bit for produce. Don’t really have a list either, but those watermelons look great. We could also grab a bite if any of the prepared food stands call to you,” she said.

As they slowly made their way through the farmer’s market, Winston spotted more and more weird things. There was a stall with birds in cages that Winston didn’t recognise, the birds not the cage. “So you’re kind of new to town then?” Winston asked curiously as they mentioned wherever they had lived, “when did you get to town?” They had to admit that they were curious as to whether all of things that they had previously taken for granted about White Crest were really things that were normal or whether they are things that were unique to White Crest. “I’m always down to try food from a food stall if there is one that is worth trying, but I get you. It’s nice to try niche little things like this and try support local business too.” They raised an eyebrow gently and nodded. “I’m sure my roommate would love it if I brought us all back some fruit from the market to share.” They eyed the watermelons and turned to Ariana. “Wanna give them a go and see if there is any good ones there?” They wished that there was someone here who actually knew anything about produce and what good produce was. 

The more they explored the market, the more Ariana became sure this wasn’t your run of the mill farmer’s market. There was definitely something off with the little birds they were passing by. Then again, she wasn’t much of a bird watcher. She saw a stand across the way that surely had to be supplies for spells. It’s shelves were lined with jars that appeared to be filled with different animal parts and rows of crystals. Everyone seemed unfazed though. Maybe that was part of White Crest’s charm. She returned her attention back to their conversation and said, “Yep, we got here just in time for me to start my senior year off.” She scanned the area, but none of the prepared food was quite calling to her yet. “If we pass anything that looks good, we’ll try it out. It’s for sure nice to help out the community. Plus, these places usually have the best prices on organic produce and some pretty cool specialty items.” She turned to them before stepping toward the watermelon stand. “These do look nice and I think your roommates and my sister will both approve. Bit of a bitch to carry around, but I came prepared,” she said while pulling out a variety of large canvas tote bags she’d gotten from previous markets. She began picking out the watermelons, looking for slightly paler spots on them that indicated they were good. They all felt heavy for their weight which was always a good sign. She turned to them and asked, “How many did you want for you and your roommates?” 

Winston followed Ariana’s gaze and spotted the stall selling what appeared to be various spell components. Winston sighed gently, it was a shame but they weren’t going to risk any odd questions by going over and looking at it. They could probably try and play it off as basic curiosity or some interest in the occult, but Winston knew that they were a terrible liar and this farmers market was around every weekend, they could come on their own another time. “Where were you before? Do you move around a lot or is this just like an occasional thing?” They looked at the rows of watermelons and then watched Ariana. They weren’t exactly sure how she was judging the watermelons, but there seemed to be some kind of method to it. Winston just wasn’t sure what it was. They weren’t about to admit that, and armed with a canvas tote bag they stepped alongside their newfound companion and attempted to mimic what she was doing. Spotting a watermelon that looked … well like a watermelon, they scooped it up and slipped it into the canvas bag. As they did so, they couldn’t help but notice the red spots alongside the green . Weird. “Uh, I don’t think we’ll even eat a whole one of these before it goes bad.” The roommate story was of course a lie, this watermelon was basically just for Winston as Ricky didn’t eat anything other then meat due to their selkie physiology. Winston wasn’t sure how they hadn’t picked up on it sooner, in hindsight after living with Ricky for several years, they’d never seen them eat anything other than meat or fish. Never. They’d just assumed they were fussy or on a keto diet. Or both. “I can’t believe I’ve never been here before.”

As Ariana picked the perfect melon and stuffed it away into her tote bag, she wondered what the best way to answer Winston’s question would be. Her childhood had been far from normal. Most people moved maybe once or twice, if that. She was sure to keep an air of nonchalance as she responded, “My sister and I moved around as a lot. Usually every few months. Most recently before White Crest we were living just outside of Dallas, Texas in a town called Flower Mound.” There were parts of her that wished it hadn’t been as much, but she found herself in White Crest now and she had to believe it was for a reason. She slung the tote bag with her watermelon over her shoulder and handed some cash to the woman selling the fruit before returning her attention to Winston. She let out a chuckle. “That’s fair, they are huge. Bigger than most I’ve seen.” The market definitely had a pretty decent crowd for taking place at night. Most others she’d been to had almost always been early weekend mornings. “Yeah, it’s pretty cool. There are definitely some stands that are very unique to White Crest though.” When they walked by a stand that had lobster rolls, she had to stop. She looked over at Winston, “How do lobster rolls sound?” 

Hefting the tote bag that Ariana had armed Winston knew that they were going to spend the whole time moving the bag from one shoulder to another. But that was just the way that it was meant to be. Swallowing, they shrugged. “How come you moved around so much?” they asked curious as to whether there was a reason that they had been required to move so much, “Is it just the two of you now?” They weren’t trying to be nosey, they were just curious. “You must be really good at making friends now if you move around so much.” Winston raised an eyebrow and laughed. “Yeah, I’m going to have to find some watermelon related recipes for this bad boy, or I’ll have to freeze a bunch of it or something.” As Ariana suggested lobster rolls, Winston’s stomach rumbled and they made their way over to the stand. “Lobster rolls sound amazing right now,” they reached into their jacket and pulled out their wallet, “can I get two large ones please?” they asked the person running the stall. Their bag shuddered in anticipation of their meal. Wait, why was their bag shuddering? Looking down, their watermelon sat calmly, red spots and all.

Shifting the tote bag on her shoulder, Ariana found herself glad the full moon was only a few days out. Two weeks ago and this bag would have been way too heavy for her to carry around the market. She looked over to Winston who was shifting their bag as well. Maybe they should have stopped back for the watermelons at the end of their shopping trip. Ariana held her bag close and said, “The moving a lot was more out of necessity, it’s a long story. My parents died when I was really young so it’s always been me and Celeste.” She doubted Winston would understand being on the run from hunters even though she’d never hurt anyone. Being born a wolf, she had pretty good control over her wolf form and Celeste had always supervised her during full moons though that was more to protect her than it was to protect others. She smiled a little bit at their comment on her being good at making friends. She definitely wasn’t shy. She responded, “You could say that. I’m good with meeting new people and chatting. It’s a little harder to maintain friendships with the moves.” Truthfully, not keeping in touch with friends she made was something Celeste insisted on. If they had been caught in one place, they couldn’t risk giving their new location away. She shook the thought of friends left behind away and turned to the older gentleman serving lobster rolls. “I’ll take two large rolls as well.” She swore she felt her bag jerk on her shoulder, but she figured she lost her grip. Once they had their sandwiches paid for and in hand, she pointed over to an area of mostly empty area filled with what was likely a different array of brightly colored plastic tables. She could pick up on the yellows, but all the other tones were muted. It looked like a nice quiet spot to chat and enjoy their lobster rolls. As they settled into their table she asked, “Did you grow up in White Crest?” 

Winston was starting to wish that they’d brought Ricky with them, if for nothing more then the fact that there friend was muscular as fuck and would’ve managed this just fine. Probably for both of them. Although Ariana didn’t seem like she was struggling as much as they felt like they were, they guessed that was because she played sports and Winston could barely climb stairs without breaking a sweat. “Oh, that’s … that’s shit I’m sorry that you and Celeste had to deal with that.” Winston couldn’t imagine what a life without parents was like and yet so many people that they knew had experienced it. “I guess it’s more difficult to maintain everything if you’re dealing with the move and can’t see people, but then again it’s not like you’re stuck writing letters like you would’ve been a hundred years ago. Technology is amazing for keeping in contact. None of my siblings live in state anymore and my parents make us all get on a call together every week or so, it’s a nice way of keeping in touch.” Honestly, Winston had been buying a lobster roll for Ariana, but as she ordered for herself, Winston just raised their eyebrows, flashed a quick smile and bit into their roll. The savoury flavour of it was truly delicious and Winston decided that they would definitely be coming back here, for both magical supplies and to pig out on lobster rolls. Following her over to the table, they settled down opposite her and began to struggle through the first lobster roll, already aware that they would have to save the second for another time. “Uh, yeah, been here my whole life, went to school here, then middle school, then high school, then undergrad and now I’m doing my postgrad, not really sure why but this place has always made me want to stick around.” 

The moment that people realized she had a past that was sadder than most was something Ariana had grown used to. Always being on the move, she had to have this very conversation at least a hundred times. “Thanks,” she said, “A part of me will always miss my parents, but I count myself lucky to have Celeste.” Biting into her lobster roll, she thought about what they had said. Of course, keeping in touch now was easier than it used to be, but disappearing was safer. A huge part of her hoped she and Celeste never had to disappear again. As nice as it was sitting here getting to know a new friend, she longed for a day where she could call her new friends old friends. She shook the thought and said, “Yeah, you’re right. There’s a lot of ways to keep in touch with friends these days.” Listening to them talk about growing up and continuing to live in this town brought a relaxed grin to Ariana’s face in between bites. “It’s because it’s home,” she said simply. It was a feeling she got upon first arriving here although her reasoning may have had more to do with being able to sense other werewolves like her. They had settled into comfortable conversation while they ate and all was going well. Ariana decided to try her chances with asking them what they thought about the supernatural stories in town. Worst case scenario, they thought it was all stories. They definitely didn’t seem like a hunter. “What do you make of all the folklore in town?” As she finished her question, she felt some at her foot. She glanced down and was immediately bewildered to see the watermelons had chewed through the tote bags and one was gnawing on her favorite pair of boots. “What the fuck?” she jumped and yelled. She quickly lifted her foot and stomped down on the one using her shoe as a chew toy which sent it scurrying a few inches away from her with a slightly cracked exterior. 

“Of course, no one can replace your parents, no matter how often they spend looking after you.” Winston chewed on their lobster roll as they listened to Ariana. For someone so young she seemed to have really lived a life, one that was different from Winston. They hoped that they hadn’t been forced to move about due to the Supernatural. The more that they met people in the world of the weird and wonderful, the more that they became aware of just how many people’s lives were affected by this world that they lived in. People moved around, people ran away, people had their life heavily impacted by the supernatural and so often it was completely out of their control. “I guess, it has always worked staying here and even though a lot of my friends and a lot of my siblings have all left the town, I don’t really feel the need yet.” Not to mention now that they knew about the supernatural there was just so much learning that they had left that was so easy to do here. There were so many spellcasters and the Scribes library and, “yeah it’s definitely home, I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere any time soon.” They considered Ariana’s question and frowned. “Uh, the folklore is really interesting, some people take it a bit too far you know, sometimes they’re like way too into it and cosplaying it and I guess ultimately who am I to judge others people's hobbies right,” Great avoid Winston, great avoid. They were about to elaborate on their opinion when they too felt the tote bag squirm and something tore a chunk out of their jeans. Winston just about managed to stop themself from squealing as they wriggled away from the bag and kicked it rolling away from them. No one seemed to notice, but their water melon had developed teeth and was currently trying to eat them. “What the fuck?” they said concerned, “What the actual fuck? THE FRUIT NOW TOO? Really?”

Of all the weird things out there in the world, Ariana never expected to see fanged watermelon trying to chomp at her. If Winston’s avoidance of the topic hadn’t given away their knowledge of the supernatural, their response to the watermelon definitely did. Fruit being practically a vampire was pretty wild and that was coming from a werewolf. A low growl came from the melon and she knew they had to smash these things quickly. Clearly, they weren’t friendly, given they were planning on eating the fruit before they knew it was going to get toothy with them. “Well, these have to be the best cosplayers I’ve ever seen,” she said with a laugh while trying to keep a careful eye on both watermelons. The one she was focused on was rolling about and she found her balance being thrown off by the other one knocking her other foot. She caught herself and raised her left foot down to give the melon a stomp with all her strength put into smashing the top half of the fruit into pieces.  

With the watermelon’s teeth still wrapped up in their jeans, Winston struggled away from it and collapsed away from the table. The watermelon rolled towards them, the entire thing basically unhinging in half with a row of teeth ringing the top and bottom of the ‘mouth’. They were in that moment perhaps the sharpest teeth that Winston had ever seen and they weren’t about to see how it felt to have them envelope their limbs or face. But the thing was snapping at them and Winston was struggling to keep it away from their face. “I don’t think this is a cosplay, and if it is then I really need to get tips on their makeup because I don’t know anyone who can so convincingly pull off a vampiric fruit.” 

Ariana looked down at the fruit in front of her and made sure to smash the other half for good measure. She wasn’t sure of the specifics on vampire fruit, but she didn’t want this thing respawning and trying to turn them into a snack again. If it weren’t for the chompy melon rolling around Winston’s feet, she would have laughed at their response. They seemed to be keeping a good distance. “Glad we’re on the same page with that then. I’ve yet to see any YouTube tutorials for how to turn yourself into a vampire melon.” With one last look, she concluded her own melon was thoroughly dead. 

As Winston felt the thing get a little bit too close for their own comfort, they felt their survival reflex take over. There was that familiar surge of energy, then the calmness and stillness that always accompanied magic. The serenity. The feeling of peace, as if everything was right with the world. “Oh definitely,” they managed to say as they felt energy surge up their arm and explode into the watermelon, causing Winston to be drenched in watermelon goop as the thing they had been trying to keep from eating them exploded. They even felt a tooth embed itself in their forearm, which they pulled out with a wince. “Fuck, that was weird as hell right? It just … exploded on its own.” 

Just as Ariana was going over to give them a hand with the remaining watermelon, it blew up without Winston even touching it. There definitely had to be some sort of spell or other energy used to make it just burst like that. Winston tried to play it off as if the watermelon just exploded on its accord. She was dumbfounded that they thought that would go over her head and looked to them with a brow raised high. “Right, I don’t know that much about vampire watermelons, but I’m pretty sure they don’t just explode on their own.” Ariana softened her features a bit to try and level with them. Head tilted with a slight smirk on her now watermelon coated face she said, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell anyone. I think it’s cool you can clearly do some sort of magic.” 

Winston’s mouth opened and closed as they reached up and wiped a huge chunk of water melon off of their face and glasses, before pulling their glasses off altogether and polishing them vigorously with the end of their also watermelon soaked t-shirt. Their mind was going into overdrive trying to think of how they could justify this one. They had nothing. “Until today I didn’t know that vampire watermelons even existed,” Winston pointed out as they did their best to lie through this situation, “so- I mean- it isn’t that unreasonable to think that they could just- they explode on their own clearly,” they signed and shrugged. “Okay, you got me, I can do ‘magic’ but I’m basically brand new so don’t expect any world ending magic from me anytime soon,” they slipped their glasses back onto their face before continuing, “and from the lack of surprise about the fact magic exists I guess you know about the weird and wonderful world that really is White Crest?” 

Ariana left out a breathy laugh as Winston tried to continue on with their story of the watermelon simply exploding. Maybe this world was fairly new to them. She’d been a wolf her whole life and vampire watermelon was still way out of league for things she thought were actually possible. A small smirk stayed on her face even as they admitted to recently taking up magic. “Man, and here I thought we were ready to take on the world,” she said with a small chuckle. “It looks like there’s much more to the weird and wonderful world of White Crest than I thought there was. But yeah, I know about the supernatural presence here.” She hesitated for a moment, wondering if she should mention her own supernatural abilities to them. They had just shared their secret with her so it wasn’t like they would think she was totally insane. She scanned the area and took a breath before saying, “I can sense the presence of certain things because of what I am, too. If I tell you, promise not to like, totally freak? I’m not dangerous and scary or anything like that.” 

Raising an eyebrow, Winston sighed. “We’re definitely not ready to take on the world,” some days Winston wondered if they should even be leaving the house at all, they knew that they couldn’t be ruled by fear but this world sucked and there was so much chance that things would really go wrong. Something that Winston wasn’t sure that they were ready to take on something that they definitely didn’t want to discover. Yet they had no choice but to get every morning and face the world. Something that they still begrudged existence of. “White Crest is like the hell mouth out of Buffy, if it is weird and if it is dangerous and might want to tear your face off indiscriminately then there is a very good chance that it’ll be here. Whether you like it or not.” They swallowed, they loved the new world that they had discovered in some ways, but they hated it in others.” They looked at her and raised an eyebrow. This was very you show me yours and I’ll show you mine but they weren’t about to complain about someone being honest for once. “Okay, so you’re not just human either, that’s cool, I can hang, as long as you’re not like a serial killer.” Their roommate was a seal after all, what could be weirder than that?

The reference to Buffy went a little over Ariana’s head. She’d heard of the show and it popped up on her suggested on Netflix every once and awhile, but she hadn’t given it a watch yet. “I haven’t actually seen Buffy, but I think the word hell mouth speaks for itself. Let’s hope no more fruit betrays us though, especially not strawberries. If I get attacked by one of my favorite foods, I may be scarred.” Winston seemed like they could handle the truth of what she was. She definitely wasn’t a serial killer, she wasn’t even a regular killer so she was sure she felt confident Winston would be open to her truth. Running a hand still somewhat nervously through her hair, she finally said, “No serial killers here. I’m a werewolf, which sounds a lot scarier than it is. It’s something I was born with so I’m pretty in tune with wolf form.” It kind of felt nice to admit what she was. Her shoulders relaxed a bit and she let go of the tension she hadn’t even realized she had been carrying. She watched Winston closely to see how they took the news. 

“Oh, sorry for your loss but you’ve still got time to watch it, but fair warning, it’s very … 90’s.” Winston smiled and nodded. “The more that I learn about this shit, the more that I realise that there is a tonne of shit that isn’t normal and actually ruins … well experiences lets say.” Winston paused for a moment longer before continuing. “Which reminds me, stay away from the back alleys of that mime cafe, I found a weird mime monster thing there and it was no good for me and I would hate for it to be no good for you either.” Winston’s jaw fell slack when this girl said that she was a werewolf. They’d known werewolves were real. After all that’s why there were hunters, to hunt that sort of thing. But they’d never actually met a werewolf. Their eyes went wide and they opened and closed their mouth several times before finally managing something. “That’s really fucking cool…” they trailed off before standing and dusting the remaining vampire watermelon fragments off of themself. “Tell me more whilst I browse this magic stand that I was too nervous to try and lie about why I was looking at earlier.” Winston might as well make the most of the opportunity whilst they still could. 

A wave of relief and joy hit Ariana as Winston openly accepted what she was. They may have been a bit shocked, but overall, they were okay with what she was. There was no doubt in her mind that they’d be great friends. She was a bit thrown off at the mention of mimes. What the hell was with this town and mimes anyway? “Trust me, I plan on staying far away from anything to do with mimes. Their makeup is creepy and a mime monster sounds way worse than a vampire watermelon.” She found herself curious about what else White Crest had to offer in terms of supernatural species as they made way toward the magic stand. “You know, normally I’d say you could have played it off by just thinking occult stuff was cool, but from our conversations so far, I can tell lying isn’t your strong point. Which is a good thing.” She gazed over the jars lining the shelves of the magic shop without really understanding what their capabilities were. Magic was something she had not looked too much into although she was sure Celeste had. Absentmindedly running her hands along a row of jars, she explained, “The whole full moon transformation thing is true. Celeste has always supervised and I have a good grip on my wolf form. It’s liberating to run free under the full moon. I do heal pretty quickly and have a good immune system. I’m colorblind which is common for wolves and the closer it is to a full moon, the stronger I am physically… which helped with smashing watermelons. How’d you figure out you could do magic?” 

When you lived with someone who had seal skin and could slip into it at will, your best friend was a spellcaster, your other best friend could see ghosts and sometimes move kitchen equipment with their mind and you’d met fairies, well Winston was being forced to be more open minded about this world then they would’ve expected that they would’ve been otherwise. “Yeah, I would recommend that you give the mimes a miss, not worth the time or the terrifying amount of energy it takes to get away from them. They’re awful. The worst.” Winston hated mimes. “That was exactly the thought process that I had!” Winston replied, “I was looking at it and I was like definitely could try and lie my way through this one but it doesn’t ever really work out for me, I’m so bad at coming up with believable stories. Yeah. So, I was going to come back, but, not this time apparently, which is nice.” They weren’t sure that they were so much of a fan of the farmers market after they had been allowed to buy vampire watermelons. “Celeste is your sister? Is she a werewolf too? I’ve done a bit of reading into werewolves, more out of interest or anything, is it cool to ask if you were bitten or born a werewolf? Or is that like more of an offensive term?” They weren’t really sure what was supernaturally politically correct. “I was at a party that the Computer Science faculty holds at the beginning of every year, they call it poker chips not microchips or something equally dumb, anyway, some giant dog thing, I’m sure it has a real name but I don’t know what it is, it like jumped out at me and tried to brutally injure me and I guess my body freaked out and used magic. Then I kept getting put in compromising situations and I’d accidentally use magic, I eventually got together with some more experienced spellcasters and they’ve been helping me get better but it’s only been a few months and it’s all really … hit and miss.” 

Ariana found there was something incredibly freeing about being able to openly talk with a friend about all things supernatural. All over town, it seemed like a whisper no one really wanted to delve into. No one knew who knew what or who was potentially dangerous. But this, this was nice. Even explaining who Celeste was to her and what happened didn’t seem all that daunting. Picking up a couple of jade colored crystals that looked more decorative than practical she responded, “So, biologically, Celeste isn’t actually my sister. Her parents were hunters. I’d say it’s a long story, but it really isn’t. On her first hunt with her parents, they went after my family. Celeste abandoned hunting and rescued me. We’ve kind of been on the run from her parents ever since which is why we’ve moved so much.” She set the crystals down and ran a hand through her hair. Talking about what happened to her parents always gave her a little bit of anxious energy, but she wanted to share this story. “Celeste is totally family, though. I’m not even sure if that’s an offensive thing to ask, I’ve only just begun to meet others like me. I was born a werewolf though and I have no problems with what I am even if we’ve always been on the run from hunters. I know I’m a good person.” Ariana listened intently as Winston described their discovery of their magic. That had to be pretty scary. At least for her, being a wolf was all she had ever known so transformations and senses were never a surprise. She offered them a soft smile and said, “That had to be overwhelming at first. I’m glad you’re working with other spellcasters though. With time and practice, I’m sure you’ll get very comfortable with it. Plus, it’s good you have a solid way of protecting yourself. Are you enjoying learning how to use magic?” 

Raising an eyebrow at the story that Ariana had to tell, Winston couldn’t help but admit that they found it not only a little far-fetched (though they believed it, it seemed too ridiculous to make up), but they were terrified to imagine that was something that she had been through. It wasn’t really something that they had really considered but it was something that they would probably have to start getting used to. Everything in this world seemed hell bent on killing one another, whether Winston liked it or not. “Sure, I mean, honestly I’m so new to all of this that I really don’t know what is cool to say and what isn’t…” they shrugged and trailed off, “I never got how being something other than human made you not a good person, it seemed to me that it was always your actions which should decide whether you’re good or not. But if you just know, then you just know, just because you’re not the same as me doesn’t mean you’re not good you know.” They weren’t sure if maybe they were innocent and naive that had of course been a consideration throughout all of this, maybe they were just ignorant. “It was terrifying, had two weeks of denial and then couldn’t deny these clear things anymore and had to accept the truth, learning magic is really tricky but it’s a lot of fun. It’s more scary when I fuck it up though, always worried I’ll get it really wrong one day and hurt someone…”

It dawned on Ariana that coming across supernatural species and discovering a power later in life had to be tricky. Still, Winston showed an incredible amount of understanding which she was grateful for. In the world they lived in, that was a rare thing to find. “Well, you won’t offend me at least.” She shrugged and added, “Thanks, by the way, it’s nice to not be judged for the species I was born. I try to keep an open mind myself, though I’m a bit wary of hunters that aren’t Celeste. More of a self preservation thing though. I don’t actively go out trying to pick a fight with anyone. It’s kind of awesome that you’re so new to this and you’re still open-minded.” She nodded along as they spoke, doing her best to keep her features soft. It must have been hard for them being presented with the truth in such a scary way and having to come to terms with it. By the sounds of it though, they were using this to better themselves and learning to protect others too. “That’s hard,” she said, “Being introduced to this whole other world in such a crazy way. It looks like you’re really using it as a chance to learn and grow though. If you ask me, I think that’s really cool. If you keep practicing, you’ll be able to do some really great things with it one day. And if you need some wolfy backup, I got you, fam.” She said the last part with a big smile spreading across her face. 

“I certainly hope not,” Winston replied immediately perhaps a little too quickly, they’d always been a little bit too concerned of what other people thought about them. “I mean, you don’t get to choose who you’re born as, all you actually do get to choose is what you do and how you choose to live your life. It’s your actions that count I guess is what I’m trying to say.” Winston wasn’t sure whether they entirely agreed with Ariana. Perhaps they could say they were bettering themselves in someway, but the truth was that they were learning how best to survive in what was becoming an increasingly dangerous world, at least the more that they learned about it. “It’s not been easy, but I’m trying to learn what my place in this world is, its been hard, I used to think that we had a justice system that worked but then this whole world is so vibrant and in some ways so aggressive about the fact it is so unnatural and abnormal, which isn’t a problem until people start doing things that are wrong. That’s where I’m really struggling, coming to terms with the fact everything seems to hunt each other, it’s a huge blood bath in someways.” They shrugged. “But thanks, I appreciate that a lot more then you can imagine.” 

Ariana nodded along with Winston as they spoke and tried to really understand where they were coming from. She had the benefit of knowing about this kind of stuff her whole life so this was normal to her. Well, as normal as vampire watermelons could be anyway. “It’s good you’re learning to protect yourself. I know it’s gotta be crazy discovering just how crazy everything is. I for one, am not a big fan of everything trying to kill each other either. But hey, all we can do is try to be an example and defend ourselves and each other when needed.” She hoped it helped. She truly hoped to one day see a world where supernatural species could learn to get along, but she didn’t see that happening anytime soon. No need to make it seem impossible though. The world around them had clearly shown that nothing is impossible. She shook the thought off and asked, “Did you find anything useful?” 

Winston frowned gently at the thought of the fact that what they were discussing was not a metaphorical or an abstract concept. It was something that was really happening, it might even be happening somewhere now. This wasn’t something that Winston had particularly signed up for but this was no longer a choice that they got to make. “I get you 100%, this is all really surreal if I’m totally honest, I’m still trying to get to grips with this being a reality…” they gazed at the wares, having not particularl\y been looking for anything, and realised that they had been stood there for a while now. “Uh, nothing that I need now, but I guess it’s good to know that I can come back if I need anything.” There was no shortage of places that sold this sort of stuff apparently. Winston just wasn’t sure why they had never noticed this before. 

Ariana noticed the frown on their face and gave them a pat on the shoulder. “If it helps, everything gets easier with time. I know it sounds cheesy and cliche, but it’s true. And if there’s anything I can do to help, I got you.” She offered them a friendly smile as they made their way out of the little magic shop stand. Even if they had gotten attacked by vampire fruit, she counted the evening a success. They had gotten to share their experiences and she was sure she came out of this outing with a new friend. Looking at her watch she said, “We should probably head out before the vegetables start acting shifty, too. Plus, Celeste is home tonight so if I don’t make curfew I’ll definitely be hearing about it. I’m glad we got to do this though, vampire watermelons and all.” 

“Thanks, I appreciate all of the help that I can get.” Winston wasn’t exactly an expert here and anything that someone could do to make it all a bit better was not something that they were going to refuse. Especially not when it was someone who really seemed to know their stuff. Shrugging gently, they headed towards the exit of the farmer’s market. They’d parked their car a few blocks away so they’d have to split up here. “I really enjoyed this, despite the near death experience, although it was only a semi near death experience so I’m not sure that really counts. It’d be cool to do something like this again, but maybe without the monstrous fruit. 

[discotreque]

Picard 1.10: Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2

I don't really do predictions or theories when I'm watching something. Partly because I prefer to go along for the ride while it's happening and wait to judge with the benefit of hindsight, but mainly because I'm very bad at it.

Anyway, let's discuss Episode 10 of Picard, in which a bunch of things happen that I would have sworn up and down were never going to happen, and a bunch of things I thought would for sure happen did not.

Spoilers for the season finale:

I think I feel about Picard S1 the same way I feel about Discovery so far: I like every single thing about it more than the writing. The casting is great, the actors are pretty much all superb, I'm horny as hell for the production design, the VFX are the best I've ever seen on television, I absolutely love Jeff Russo's music...

...and the scripts are, you know, fine. Mostly fine. Moments of excellence, no doubt, especially at the level of individual lines and scenes, but overall? New TV Trek has yet to pull off a complete season-story that really impressed me. (I have reasons for extremely high hopes re: Disco S3, but I will save them for another post.)

With all of that said: I didn't come here for the writing. I wanted to spend time with my old friend Jean-Luc Picard at the end of the 24th century, and I got it. The rest is gravy. Not, like, the awesome gravy my sister makes at Thanksgiving; decent B+ restaurant gravy. I'm still gonna dip my fries in it.

"To say you have no choice is a failure of imagination." The first great Picard line of the episode, but not the last.

Blah blah Romulan incest siblings blah blah blah. They couldn't have mentioned sooner that Narek was the family fuck-up or whatever? He would have been like 6% less boring.

Raffi and Rios constantly, lovingly dunking on each other is one of my favourite dynamics on this show.

Okay I was just joking last week about Saga's whole brain being in her eyeball but the fact that the damage to her eye fucked up her memories...

Why are they sitting outside the ship having a campfire? Isn't the ship basically fine? Why not hang out inside?

"The Thousand Days of Pain" is the name of my metal band.

Agnes using Saga's ripped-out eye to bypass the scanner had big Minority Report energy. Thank god she didn't have to chase it down a ramp while it rolled away from her.

"The way that children learn most things: by example."

RSVP Sutra, the only interestingly-written villain in this entire season. Tamlyn Tomita is super duper watchable as Commodore Oh/General Nedar (and looking fiiiine in that black uniform), but she has no personality or motivation beyond "grr, robots bad." Sutra lives in a society that's mostly twins, but her twin sister was fucking murdered. Obviously I don't agree with her actions, but I understood and cared about her motivations, which is more than I can say for any of the Romulans.

All those exterior shots of La Sirena wobbling through space with Picard at the helm were adorable.

We literally never see Narek again after the androids take him away. I hope they just threw him in a dumpster. Bye bitch.

Seven didn't do a ton of hand-to-hand combat on VOY, and she sure didn't fight like this. Jeri Ryan moves like she's heavy, like her bones are made of metal, like she's still full of dense Borg technology. She practically lumbers around, using her limbs like clubs; Peyton List bounces off her like she's hitting a solid steel wall. It's excellent choreography and so well executed by both women (and presumably their stunt doubles).

GET FUCKED, RIZZO. You were barely interesting enough to hate, but I did hate you.

"'The Picard Maneuver.' Wait, that's actually a thing, isn't it?" Ell oh ell.

Loved the way the Romulan ships' disruptors sizzled and crackled when they were powering up.

What was wrong with Planetary Sterilization Patterns 1 through 4?

That motherfucking fanfare when the Starfleet ships came in. Awwww yeah.

ACTING CAPTAIN WILL RIKER. Still kinda wish it had been Worf on the Entrepreneur, though, because I'm greedy: we already saw Riker!

I do have my problems with the writing, but I loved the way they resolved the three-way standoff between the Romulans, Starfleet, and the ch'khalagu: not with an epic space battle, but with diplomacy and self-sacrifice and trust in the essential goodness of each other. (Plus, I guess, the threat of an epic space battle.) It was so perfectly TNG in so many ways.

All the Riker stuff was so fan-servicey. Which I'm mostly fine with: I'm a fan, after all, and I like to be serviced from time to time. But it felt a little like one slice too many of chocolate cake.

I wish the tips of the tentacles had got cut off when the portal closed. That would have been cooler, right?

What can I say about watching Jean-Luc Picard die. He's been my captain for 30 years. I physically fucking felt it. And making an android copy of him, while awesome, did not really diminish the emotional impact.

On a lighter note, I need to know what Jeri and Santiago were actually drinking in that scene, because it straight-up looked like soap. Yuck.

I also really like the dynamic between Rios and Seven. They both act a little harder than they are, and I think they see through each other's acts, but there's enough mutual respect (and self-interest) there to let each other get away with it. And no romantic tension whatsoever. Delightful.

I want to hug all of them so much :(

The blank grey surface of everything in the simulation was very creepy.

Oh Data. Oh, Data. My heart was already aching and then...

Listen. Like a fucking idiot, I went and saw Nemesis on opening night. I don't even remember what I was expecting, but I do remember walking out of the theatre with my friend and agreeing never to speak of it again. Data died, but the movie was so shitty I could barely feel anything about it. This episode gave me the emotional closure I've been waiting for since December 13, 2002.

It's also, if you think about it, a pretty hilarious "fuck you" to Nemesis in general: "You guys did such a bad job of killing Data we had to bring him back to life just so we could kill him properly."

They've been slightly aging-up Patrick Stewart all season. I stopped noticing it after a while, so seeing him without it at the end was quite a shock.

"You... you haven't made me immortal?!" "Relax, man. Everyone was paying attention." Okay, Altan can stay.

Speaking of ol’ A.I., can't he just make another golem for himself? Was there something unique about the one they put Picard in?

I thought I recognized the voice of the woman singing "Blue Skies" on my first watch, but I couldn't place her. Turns out that was Isa Briones herself, which meant I cried even harder the second time through.

"And our little life is rounded with a sleep." Goodbye, Data.

Seven and Raffi???????

SEVEN AND RAFFI?????????????

And once again, Jeff Russo ends the season with a mash-up of the old theme and the new one. Give my man another Emmy! Give him two!

God damn. What a ride. Let me climb into my clown shoes for one last shitty prediction. I think next season is going to be what I wanted from this season: Picard and his motley crew of rogues bopping around the galaxy having roguish adventures. Fingers crossed!

And thanks for reading. Star Trek is always more fun with friends.

[adhduck]

We Keep it a Secret (You Leave Me Dying to Know)

Bellamy and Clarke were going to fake a relationship for just one date, honest. But then things got...a little out of hand.

(AO3)

Bellamy doesn’t claim to be the greatest at dating. Between basically raising his sister and working two jobs since he was sixteen, he didn’t have time for it until college, so he’s always felt a little behind everyone else when it comes to romance. Plus, he can’t seem to hold onto a relationship for more than a few months, probably because he’s been quietly in love with his best friend for the past six years, but hey, at least he’s trying to get over her.

           Not, of course, that this current situation is helping.

           “Let me get this straight,” Clarke says, eyebrows furrowing cutely. “Gina invited you to a double date with her new boyfriend, you said you had a new girlfriend, and you want me to pretend to be said girlfriend?’

           Bellamy nods sheepishly. “I may have panicked.”

           “Not surprising, knowing you,” she teases, and he’s a little weirded out that she’s been so cool with this so far. He was sort of expecting her to kick his ass.

           “So, uh, you’ll do it?” he ventures after a moment of silence.

           She shrugs. “Yeah, sure. I’m always down to make your exes jealous.”

           Bellamy laughs and nods, though the point of this is far from making Gina jealous. She’s an awesome person, and was a great girlfriend for the three or four months they were together, but Bellamy doesn’t want her back in that way. He just wants to feel like he’s on top of life, like he’s getting better at this whole dating thing.

           Plus, acting like Clarke’s boyfriend is kind of his dream, even if it’s all for show. He’s going to take what he can get.

           They set up a backstory of how they got together—mutually pining for a while, Clarke getting drunk and accidentally confessing her love for Bellamy before giving him a quick kiss and running off, and Bellamy thinking it was a joke until he asked about it the next day. It’s believable, especially knowing how often they’ve each stumbled into relationships in the past, and it makes Bellamy’s stomach twist into all sorts of knots.

           “What about ground rules?” Clarke asks as she flicks through Netflix for something to watch. It’s good for their story that she’s already over a lot, but now Bellamy can’t help but feel a little awkward, as if he’s supposed to be acting like a boyfriend now instead of at the date.

           “Like for what we tell Gina, or for us together?”

           “Both I guess, but I meant the second one.” He notices she’s careful to leave her eyes on the screen, but he can’t decipher if it’s discomfort or nonchalance towards the situation.

           “Well, when it comes to Gina, I guess just stick to the script. And when we’re at the date, just…I don’t know, act like a normal couple? Sit close together, maybe hold hands. I don’t know.”

           The thought of even that has Bellamy feeling a little lightheaded, so when Clarke adds, “What about kissing?” he swears his vision goes spotty for a second.

           “Uh—” he starts, a little strangled. “If the situation calls for it, I guess that’s fine. Though I doubt anyone’s going to expect us to make out in public.”

           “But pecks, cheek kisses, that sort of thing? You’re fine with that?”

           Her eyes still haven’t left the screen, but Bellamy catches her hand twitching, an old nervous habit. “If that’s okay with you,” he says slowly.

           She nods, finally turning to look at him. “You can’t be that bad of a kisser, right?”

           He snorts, feeling the tension drain away a little. “Horrible.”

           She smirks and clicks play on The Good Place, settling against his side like she always does. “Lucky me.”

           “Yeah,” Bellamy echoes, trying to school his heartbeat into something normal, “lucky you.”

 --

Gina’s surprised and then excited when she sees who his ‘girlfriend’ is; she even goes so far as to hug her, raving about how glad she is they finally got together. Clarke gives him a look at that but doesn’t seem suspicious; they’ve always had friends think they have a thing for each other, this is nothing new.

           The boyfriend, Shawn, is tall and sort of plain looking, but seems nice enough. He shakes Bellamy’s hand and then Clarke’s, saying he’s a waiter but is working on an EP in his off time. Bellamy almost jokes about wanting his Spotify link, but thinks better of it.

           Once they’re in the restaurant, everyone orders quickly, too hungry for pickiness; Clarke gets a dish without fries and then proceeds to steal his, as always. He shoves her away, complaining, but when she does it again, he just turns the plate so the fries face her. She beams at him and he tries to suppress the overwhelming surge of affection rising in his throat, then remembers he’s not supposed to do that right now and leans down to kiss her hair instead.

           He can feel her flinch in surprise just the tiniest bit, but it must not be enough for the others to notice, because no trace of suspicion crosses their faces as he pulls away. In fact, Gina’s giving him one of those smiles she always gives Raven when she and Zeke are being cute, so he figures they’re all in the clear.

           Clarke does shimmy a little closer to him after that, though, seeming to remember her ulterior motive for being here. Not that he’s really complaining.

           Once they’ve finished eating and paid, they decide to just walk around town. It’s not particularly romantic, almost more of a hang-out, but the sudden overwhelming awareness Bellamy has of every miniscule interaction between him and Clarke makes it feel like he’s about to propose. Should he be walking extra close, or their normal distance? Are they supposed to be holding hands, or should he wrap his arm around her shoulder?

           Finally, he decides to just walk and see what Clarke does; a few seconds later, he feels her fingers slip quietly through his. Her hand is warm and soft, and when he squeezes it, she gives him a small smile.

           “So,” Gina says, glancing at their intertwined hands and making Bellamy flush, “how’d you guys start dating?”

           They’ve prepared for this much, at least. “We went to a bar one night after I had a bad day at work, just the two of us,” Clarke says. “Since I was the one wanting to drown my emotions, Bellamy volunteered to be the designated driver, which meant he got to sit there and watch me get drunker and drunker.”

           “It was very entertaining,” Bellamy adds.

           “Yeah, until I blurted out that I was in love with him.” Clarke laughs a little. “He literally froze; like, for a second I worried he’d stopped breathing. I didn’t know what to do, so I just pecked him on the mouth and ran to the bathroom.”

           Gina snorts. “That must’ve been an awkward car ride home.”

           “The most awkward I’ve ever had,” Bellamy agrees. “I assumed it was all a joke, though, except when I stopped by her apartment the next day and tried to bring it up, turns out it wasn’t. And here we are.”

           “Here we are,” Clarke echoes, squeezing his hand. He glances at her and finds her gaze unusually open, her mouth parted just barely. For a second, Bellamy thinks about kissing her for real, but he chickens out at the last second and presses his lips to her forehead instead.

           They wander around for another hour or so before Gina and Shawn have to leave. Gina says it was really nice to hang out and they should all do it again sometime; Bellamy mutters something politely noncommittal, then waits for them to be out of sight before he releases his hold on Clarke, wiping his hand on his pants awkwardly.

           “So,” he says, not sure what to say. “Should we, uh—”

           “Your place?” she asks, then adds quickly, “It’s still not that late; we could watch something on Netflix.”

           He sighs a little in relief. They’re okay then; there hasn’t been some horrible shift in their relationship because of this. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

           They watch Parks and Rec because they’re cliché and it’s a good show, and after a little bit Bellamy manages to loosen up and feel less awkward about sitting close to Clarke. He slouches a little so she can lean against his shoulder better, pinching her side so she stops hogging the blanket. It’s nice, really nice—which maybe isn’t a good thing. After spending several hours being affectionate the way he’s always wanted, it’s suddenly taking physical effort not to just turn his head and kiss her.

           He doesn’t, of course; not even when she’s walking out and says teasingly, “I had a really nice time tonight,” while leaning in with her sparkling eyes and sideways smile and shirt that’s shifted a little lower since she got here. Instead, he just gives her a hug and says goodbye, turning away before she’s even shut the door.

 --

Only one of Bellamy’s friends is a morning person, and Monty knows never to call before nine unless it’s an emergency, so when he wakes up to his phone buzzing angrily just after six, he rushes to pick it up with more than mild panic.

           “What happ—”

           “BELLAMY BLAKE WHY THE FUCK DIDN’T YOU TELL ME?”

           Okay, so not Monty, and probably not an emergency. He sits up, wiping the sleep from his eyes with a groan. “What are you talking about, Raven?”

           “You and Clarke dating, you asshole!”

           Bellamy freezes like a kid stuck with his hand in the cookie jar. “Oh.”

           “Yeah, oh. Instead of hearing it from two of my best friends, who know how long I’ve been waiting for them to get their heads out of their asses, I had to hear it from your ex at 5:30 in the morning! She gets up way too early, by the way.”

           Mind racing, Bellamy stands to pace around his room, trying to decide if he’s supposed to tell her the truth or not. He and Clarke didn’t set up much of a contingency plan for other people finding out, which was stupid in hindsight, but they’d kind of expected it to be a one and done thing. He definitely didn’t think Gina would tell Raven about it.

           “I’m waiting,” Raven prompts, her voice slowly dropping from the initial scream.

           “Well, uh—” He pauses, then decides for the truth. His ass-kicking for this will be much less painful than the ass-kicking he’d get if he led her on. “We’re not actually dating.”

           He can almost see the shock cross her face. “What?”

           “We, uh—well, Gina wanted to go on a double date, and I told her Clarke and I—I told her I had a girlfriend, and Clarke volunteered to fill in. I mean, I asked her to, and she said yes. To fake, I mean.”

           A solid ten seconds passes with nothing but silence before Raven deadpans, “Are you fucking kidding me.”

           “I wouldn’t exactly lie if Clarke was my real girlfriend,” Bellamy points out. “Yeah, it’s fake. We would’ve warned you beforehand, but we didn’t really think you’d hear about it.”

           Raven sighs. “Every time I think you two can’t shove your heads farther up your asses, you prove me wrong.” Bellamy tries to protest, but she cuts in, “I won’t tell Gina, by the way. This idiocy is for you guys to figure out on your own. And it is fucking idiotic, I hope you know that.”

           “I know,” Bellamy concedes, rubbing his forehead. “I really am sorry we didn’t tell you.”

           “You should feel sorry you didn’t ask Clarke out for real if you ask me.”

           “We’ve already been through this, I can’t just—”

           “Yeah, yeah, yeah, you don’t think she has the same feelings, you don’t want to hurt the friendship, you guys are shit at relationships. But just—think about it, okay? Especially if you guys have to keep this up. There’s only so much anyone can fake.”

           Bellamy bites his lip, but says, “I’ll think about it.”

           And he does, for several hours after they hang up, but it doesn’t really help. He’s still too terrified to confess his real feelings, but too far gone to get over her, so he’s stuck, yet again, in the middle—praying they don’t have to go on another fake date, but also really fucking hoping they do.

 --

It’s no surprise he has some mixed feelings when Harper calls a few days later inviting him to hang out, adding nervously that Gina and her boyfriend will be going, too.

           Clarke doesn’t seem miffed by the idea of acting like his girlfriend again, though she does ask if they should tell everyone besides Gina if it’s fake or not.

           “I don’t know,” Bellamy says honestly. “They’ll be pissed if we don’t tell them, but some of them also can’t keep their mouths shut.”

           “It’s okay, you can just say Jasper,” Clarke teases, then shrugs. “Trying to contact them all sounds like a hassle, to be honest; we can just fill them in later, if Raven hasn’t already, and if they even notice a difference in how we act.”

           Bellamy’s traitorous heart swoops upwards in his chest at that, even as he tells himself that doesn’t mean anything. “Sounds good to me,” he says, hoping he sounds normal.

           “Me, too,” she replies, and that’s that.

           When they get to Harper’s house, the row of cars parked outside tells Bellamy most of their friends have already arrived. Bellamy contemplates if he should walk in holding Clarke’s hand, but it ends up not mattering because Clarke steamrolls ahead the moment they’re out of the car. Bellamy’s confused for about half a second before he realizes she’s greeting Harper’s dog Jordan, a Boxer who’s mostly just a tangle of limbs and love he’ll give anyone who calls his name. He’s also a little bit of a Houdini, which is why he’s managed to escape a fully gated house with no open doors.

           “Good to know I’m loved,” Bellamy huffs, mostly joking. He still bends down to give Jordan a scratch behind the ears and is rewarded with a wet, sticky kiss to the face.

           “Well, there’s your first kiss of the night,” Clarke teases, laughing as she coaxes Jordan back to the house (which isn’t hard, that dog would go anywhere she asked). Bellamy laughs, too, but in his head it sounds more like choked-off screams of confusion.

           Monty sees them first, waving and inviting them over to where a huddle of people are talking. The part of Bellamy that would rather hide in a corner with Clarke and Jordan and take a nap – which is basically all of him – wants to protest, but he loves his friends and wants to interact with them. Plus, Clarke’s already grabbing his hand and tugging him over, so there’s not really another choice.

           Gina, Shawn, and Harper are obviously present, along with Raven, Zeke, and Jasper, who looks like he would be willing to take Jordan as a date if it meant he weren’t the odd one out again. Bellamy and Clarke stand by him, trying to start up a conversation and make it seem like they’re just three single people stuck with couples and not another couple trying to include the fifth wheel. He talks about the chemistry project he’s put genuine blood, sweat, and tears into over the past few weeks and how there’s this really cute girl in one of his classes who’s his only motivation to go right now, and all is fine—until, at least, Gina walks over.

           “Hey,” Bellamy says as casually as he can muster, but his brain has shifted instantly into overdrive and he doesn’t even hear the word leave his mouth. Is he standing too far away from Clarke? Too close? Should their hands be at least brushing? Will Jasper think they’re dating if he does anything? Will Gina figure out the lie if they don’t act affectionate enough?

           Clarke leans into his side slightly, a move most would barely recognize, but Bellamy’s so attuned to her proximity to him even without an extra glamour to worry about that it feels like she just jumped over a river to stand by him. He leans back a little, letting their shoulders brush a little, and the immediately prick of comfort the contact gives him makes his cheeks grow warm. God, he’s so gone for this girl.

           “Hey,” Gina replies, as if this is all fine and normal and casual and she hasn’t both wrecked and perfected his life. “How are you guys?” Bellamy just nods in response, and Clarke gives a similarly nonchalant answer, so she grasps for another straw. “So, I was realizing, I kind of asked you guys how you got together, but I never even thought to—”

           She doesn’t have time to finish that new thought, though, because Jasper takes that moment to scream, “WHAT?! YOU GUYS ARE DATING?!?! YOU GUYS ARE DATING AND I DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT IT?!?!”

           Clarke glances worriedly at Bellamy for a moment –she was clearly hoping like he was they’d be able to skate by this without lying to anyone else – and then starts damage control. “Jasper, breathe. Breathe, dude.”

           “You guys didn’t tell him you were together?” Gina asks, surprised and a little sheepish.

           “We were going to—ah, tell him tonight,” Clarke says awkwardly. “We didn’t tell him before because, uh….”

           “Because I was hoping to put in some earplugs before we broke the news,” Bellamy cuts in, hoping to lighten the situation. It works; Gina laughs, and Jasper’s shoulders visibly relax.

           “I’m not that loud,” he grumbles, then adds, “But I better hear about all this. You guys have broken a code of friendship by withholding this from me, I’m pretty sure. I coined your ship name, guys.”

           “You guys have a ship name?” Gina asks, delighted again.

           “Bellarke,” Jasper says proudly. “It’s perfect, right?”

           “Totally. Shawn and my names don’t work together at all. I mean, what could you do? Shina? Gawn? I’d kill for Bellarke.”

           “I’d kill for them, too,” Jasper says, and they all laugh, which Bellamy is grateful for, because he needs a second to remember what breathing is. Clarke has her chin tucked up on his shoulder and her hand curled delicately around his bicep, and it’s doing weird things to his brain.

           As they explain their ‘secret relationship’ to Jasper and the others, Monty pulls out the alcohol, which Bellamy is equally in favor of and not in favor of. The positives: Clarke’s cute when she’s drunk and he doesn’t think so much. The negatives: Clarke’s cute when she’s drunk and he doesn’t think so much.

           Nevertheless, he drinks, because why the hell not at this point, and as the night goes on Clarke gets more and more affectionate. By the second hour, despite drinking water between each drink, Clarke’s tipsy enough to be smiling at everything, especially him, and she insists on being tucked into his chest when they’re sitting on the couch. It’s great, besides the fact that she keeps nosing into his collarbone on accident and he thinks he might actually die.

           In Clarke’s defense, she’s not the only one getting tipsy; with every swig he takes, Bellamy can feel some of his self-control ebbing away. When he makes a joke and Clarke scrunches up her nose cutely at him, he barely even hesitates before dropping a kiss on it, which makes Clarke giggle a little, and he keeps one hand anchored at her waist most of the night, too. It’s nothing crazy, nothing they can’t just awkwardly laugh off later – it’s not like he’s got his hand up her shirt or his tongue in her mouth or something – and honestly, it’s nice. Still Bellamy and Clarke, just a little looser.

           At least, until Gina has to ruin things again.

           (Seriously, there’s no way one woman can cause this much simultaneous terror and bliss for someone on accident, right? Like, this is three times now. Bellamy’s starting to think she’s a witch.)

           “Guys, we should play truth or dare,” she says excitedly, setting down her glass of water on the table. (Of course the bartender is staying sober to watch over her friends. Bellamy freaking loves that girl.)

           “What are we, seventeen?” Harper asks, but she seems interested.

           “Jasper might be,” Monty points out, and is promptly shoved.

           “Why not,” Clarke says, curling a little closer against Bellamy’s chest. He really hopes she either can’t hear the shift in his heartbeat or is too tipsy to care.

           “Yeah, whatever the hell you guys want,” Bellamy agrees.

           They start with Jasper and work their way around the circle; most of it is dumb shit, as expected, like asking about the most awkward place someone had sex or daring Raven to lick Zeke’s sweaty foot. But, of course, when it gets to Clarke, Jasper has to change it up.

           “Truth or truth?” he asks, completely deadpan.

           Clarke frowns, her eyebrows furrowing cutely. Bellamy wants to kiss the spot between them, just above her nose, but resists the urge. “I’m pretty sure it’s truth or dare.”

           “Not for you. Truth or truth?”

           Clarke shrugs and says, “Fine. Truth.”

           Jasper grins. “What was your guys’ first real kiss like?”

           “We already told you about that,” Clarke says bemusedly. “I was drunk, I blabbed about how much I—”

           “No, no, no,” Jasper says, shaking his head like a professor who’s disappointed his top student has answered incorrectly on a simple answer. “Your first real kiss. Where you were sober, and knew how the other person felt.”

           “Uh—” Clarke glances up at Bellamy. He nods slightly, giving her permission, and she gives him a small smile before turning back to the others. “So, obviously Bellamy stopped by my house to hang out, and when he was there, he asked about what happened the previous night. He was so incredibly awkward about it, too,” she says, pushing at his chest fondly. Bellamy rolls his eyes at her, which makes her grin and his heartrate double its speed. “He was all like, ‘Uh, so, uh, I was wondering, uh, about that thing, uh, with, uh, what you said, and, uh, what you, uh, you know, uh, did, and—’”

           She’s doing a horrible impression of his voice, and Bellamy pinches her side in protest. “I did not sound like that.”

           “You absolutely did,” she says proudly. “Anyway, when he finally gets it out, I can sort of get that he wants me to say I meant it, so I just tell him.”

           Bellamy scoffs. Maybe this story is fake, but he knows how he and Clarke work with relationships, and forthright isn’t exactly a quality he’d use. “Yeah, if by ‘tell him’ you mean you dodged around the subject for like ten minutes until I forced you to just say it.”

           “Details, details,” she says, waving her hand dismissively. “Anyway, when I say it, he grins like some dumb lovestruck idiot—”

           “Which I am.”

           “And just grabs my face and kisses me.” Clarke pauses here a moment, and Bellamy wonders if she might be done, but when he looks at her, she’s looking back at him, smiling shyly and biting her lip a little, which, fuck, okay. Kill him on the spot, why don’t you, that’s fine. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget that kiss,” she says, never looking away from him. “It’s like – okay, I’m gonna be sappy, but you asked for it, so – it’s like he was giving some grand speech, trying to tell me everything he felt without saying a word. Like he was kissing with his heart instead of his mouth.”

           There’s a moment of silence, and Bellamy is unable to look away from Clarke, to even breathe; he feels paralyzed, locked in place by the softness in her eyes and the slight part of her lips. She sounds so genuine, like she’s thought about this, a lot even, and it makes him feel off-balance.

           Then Clarke leans in and presses her mouth to his, hand curling around his jaw, and his entire body short-circuits for a second, every nerve resetting to process only her. He touches her arm, trying to steady himself, and a moment or two later she pulls back, looking at him like she’s trying to memorize the moment.

           “Dayum,” Jasper crows, effectively killing the moment. “You guys really kiss like it’s your first time.”

           “Well, it is,” Clarke says, clearly without thinking; her eyes widen just barely upon realizing her mistake, but Bellamy’s already cutting in.

           “I always say kissing her is always new, like it’s the first time every time,” he says, finally breaking eye contact with Clarke to shrug nonchalantly. “It’s how I get back at her for being a giant sap.”

           “You started the sap thing, I don’t know why you pin that on me,” Clarke argues, giving him a quick look that says, Thanks for saving our asses there.

           “You literally confessed your love for me while drunk because you, quote, ‘couldn’t stand me not knowing anymore.’ I’d say that’s pretty sappy.”

           “Whatever,” Clarke says, but she’s smiling, blushing even, and she hides it in his neck. He strokes her back affectionately and after a moment of murmurs about how disgustingly cute they are, the game continues. Bellamy doesn’t pay much attention, though; he focuses more on the blonde with her face nestled into his collarbone and the ever-present lump of feelings in his throat that’s becoming harder and harder to keep out.

 --

After that, it sort of becomes a…thing. The news spreads to the rest of their close friends – Murphy collects bet money from Emori when they share the news, and Miller literally punches Bellamy for not telling him sooner – and so the act spreads to basically any social situation they attend. Bellamy starts to get better at the whole showing physical affection without nearly having a heart attack thing, and he even manages to work up the courage to kiss Clarke a couple times. (On the mouth.) It becomes normal, easy even, and Bellamy thinks they could hold it long enough to properly stage a break-up, though he kind of wants it to go on forever.

           After a couple of weeks, someone asks them why they haven’t spent the night together in almost a month (Bellamy had crashed at Clarke’s a few weeks ago; it was because he was sick and she insisted, but no one needs to know that), and they claim it’s because they’ve just been busy. It so happens, though, that the upcoming weekend is wide open for them both, so they figure Clarke needs to stay the night at Bellamy’s to keep up appearances.

           She arrives early Saturday evening in her pajamas, which makes his heart clench oddly, and greets him with a beaming smile, which makes his heart stop entirely.

           “Hey,” Bellamy says, bringing her in for a quick side hug partly because he’s missed her (they really have been busy the last week, only hanging out once) and partly because her hair is in this messy lopsided bun with loose strands falling over her cheeks and he’s only so strong.

           “Hey, you,” she replies. “You wanna eat first, or just start?”

           “I ate just an hour or two ago. But if you need food—”

           “I ate pretty recently, too. But thanks.”

           “Okay, cool.” Bellamy pauses a moment, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly. He hates how hard it is to act normal around her now, how normal being her boyfriend is starting to feel, and especially how possible it feels to just lean down and kiss her senseless.

           Thankfully, he does not do that, just follows her to the couch and turns on the TV to start the show. She curls up against him, eerily similar to how she’s been doing at social gatherings, but he dismisses it. They’ve always been affectionate; he’s just a little (okay, a lot) more aware of it.

           Halfway through the third episode, Clarke says, “Hey, can I ask you about something?”

           Her tone tells him this is not a ‘talk while the episode plays’ kind of question, so he clicks pause and shifts to look at her better. “What’s up?”

           She opens her mouth, then closes it, her cheeks growing faintly pink—not a good start. “So, the other day, I was talking to Harper, and she…mentioned something. About us.”

           Bellamy frowns, wondering if their cover’s been blown or she had to make up some huge lie like that they’re secretly married or something. “What?”

           “She asked why—well, I mean, she didn’t ask, not directly. She was just talking about her and Monty, and some of their, ah, favorite things to do, and wanted to know what I liked. I was sort of on the spot, and I didn’t want to say anything too crazy that you couldn’t easily corroborate, so I just said hickeys.”

           “Okay,” Bellamy says, managing to nod despite the word ‘hickeys’ bouncing around in his brain. “And?”

           “Well, and then she commented that I must be really good at covering them up, then, and I fumbled again and said we just hadn’t…you know, done that recently, since we’ve been busy. And so she said I should make sure you give me one while we’re together.”

           “Oh.” Bellamy has lost all other vocabulary; his tongue feels like cotton. “Oh.”

           “It’s a mess,” she says, putting her head in her hands. “Being your girlfriend should not be this hard, why do I keep fucking it up?”

           “Hey,” Bellamy says, reaching over to stroke her back. “You’re not fucking it up.”

           She lifts her head to glare at him in protest. “First you had to save my ass at Harper’s party, and now she’s going to expect you to give me a real fucking hickey because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut, or at least say something I don’t have to prove.”

           “You could just say it didn’t happen this time?”

           “Yeah, but she’s going to expect one sometime. You and I have never been super subtle with our significant others.”

           That’s true; he’s seen Clarke with signs of love bites peeking out of her collar or under her hair, and Bellamy’s gone to work with turtlenecks to hide bright purple bruises of his own.

           It hits Bellamy then that they’re in deep with this now; they can’t just pass it off with some handholding and a couple of little pecks. (Even if those pecks make his heart roll over in excitement.) If they want to keep up this façade, they’re going to have to do something real—something like Bellamy giving his best friend an honest to God hickey in his living room.

           So he is thinking a little when he blurts out, “So let’s do it then.”

           Clarke startles like a gun has gone off, almost physically scooting away from him in shock. “What?”

           He shrugs, trying to pass this off as casual. “Harper needs a hickey to prove we’re together, so you need a hickey.”

           Her lips part, which doesn’t help anything, and her eyes flutter a little, which really doesn’t help anything. “You...you’d do that?”

           “Yeah, of course. What are friends for?” He immediately winces at that word choice. “I mean—”

           “I get it,” Clarke says, touching his arm lightly. Then she swallows and sits up straighter. “Okay then. Let’s do this.”

           “Uh, now?”

           She raises her eyebrow at him. “What, you want to set a thirty minute timer to prepare first?”

           “No, that’s fine. It’s probably best just to do it now, you know, while we still...you know.” While I still have the brain cells left to physically move my mouth.

           “Yeah. Okay.” She’s getting more fidgety by the second, and Bellamy can tell she hates this waiting bit, so he decides to just get started. He swallows, wets his lips with his tongue a little, and brushes Clarke’s hair off her shoulder to expose her neck. She stiffens, but nods encouragingly, and he leans in before he can think himself out of this stupid decision.

           He doesn’t kiss her right away, though; just ghosts his lips over the junction between her shoulder and neck, trying not to go so fast it spooks her or doesn’t give her a chance to back out if she decides she’s too uncomfortable. His hands feel awkward hanging by his sides, so he sets those on her waist. She moves her own hands to his leg, probably feeling about the same as him, and tilts her head a little—permission to start whenever he’s ready.

           The first kiss Bellamy gives is soft, chaste, barely a touch, but he can feel Clarke’s muscles go rigid beneath him. He freezes, but she whispers, “It’s okay. I’m fine. Just…keep going. I’ll tell you if I need to stop.”

           “Okay,” he says, feeling his heart start to beat right out of his chest. “Okay.”

           He kisses her neck again, a little more confident this time, and starts working his way up, testing to see which spot she likes. If she has to get a hickey from someone she’s not attracted to, he at least wants her to enjoy it somewhat.

           When he reaches the spot just under her jaw, Clarke makes a tiny purring sound, and his hands spasm a little with the surge of want that courses through him. It’s maybe this, or perhaps the confidence that almost imperceptible sound of pleasure gives him, that inspires him to graze his teeth against the sensitive skin slightly.

           Clarke’s hand tightens on his knee, the other sliding up his thigh an inch. He wants to suck on that spot by her jaw until it’s nearly black, just to get her to do that again, but he wants her to be able to hide the mark easily if she wants, so he makes his way back down, open-mouth kissing the exposed skin until she’s shaking—from enjoyment or nerves, he’s not sure.

           Finally, he latches onto a spot near her throat, letting his tongue lave out to taste her, and she actually gasps, a tiny hitch of breath. It fucks with his mind a little, and he has to pause for a moment, letting his breath fan over her skin as he strokes his hands up and down her arms.

           When he starts again, one of her hands leaves his knee and finds its way into his hair, slipping into the curls and holding him against her. A jolt of pleasure shoots straight to his dick, but he tries to focus it into the hickey. He’ll probably never get to do this again, so he wants her to remember it, no matter how selfish that might be.

           Too soon, the mark has fully formed, and after a few extra moments of stalling, Bellamy knows he needs to stop or Clarke will know how he really feels about this experience. With one last, chaste kiss, he pulls back; Clarke lets her hand fall from his hair, but doesn’t move the one on his thigh.

           “Um,” Bellamy says, not sure what to say. He just gave his best friend and secret love of his life a hickey. That really just happened.

           “Thanks,” Clarke says awkwardly; after a moment of silence, she bursts into laughter, and Bellamy follows suit, laughing until his stomach aches.

           “We good?” he says when they finally get a hold of themselves again.

           She nods firmly, holding his gaze to convey her genuineness. “Definitely.”

           “Okay. Good.” Then, lest he ruin that by crushing his mouth to hers and pushing her onto her back to kiss her until he can’t hold himself up anymore, he reaches for the remote and presses play. “We need to get through as many of these as possible; I hear Chidi gets a shirtless scene around episode five.”

           “You fool,” Clarke says, tucking herself against his side like nothing’s happened. “I’ve already seen every gif of that shirtless scene, and the one where he wears a tiny t-shirt. You’re going to die.”

           “What a way to go,” Bellamy replies, but in his mind he’s thinking not of Chidi’s bare chest, but Clarke’s hand curling into his hair, holding him close.

 --

Clarke falls asleep on the couch soon after they get caught up on the show, which he’s kind of grateful for, because he was secretly worried they’d end up sharing his bed and he would actually lose his mind. He tucks a blanket around her, taking a moment to brush the hair from her face. She looks so soft in sleep, even with her mouth open awkwardly and her arms thrown out haphazardly, he can’t but lean in and kiss her forehead, just a tiny press of lips to skin.

           He looks at her for a moment longer before he stands and goes to the bathroom, washing his face vigorously and getting ready for bed.

           He hopes to fall asleep quickly, but every time he closes his eyes he sees Clarke’s open gaze when he pulled away, feels her fingers scratching a tiny bit against his scalp, hears the half-concealed breathy sighs she let out whenever he went back to that one spot on her neck.

           More than ever, he wants to march up to her and tell her everything—how long he’s wanted her, how much, how he can’t imagine ever loving someone else. But he can’t, so he just covers his face with his hands and tries to sleep.

 --

Bellamy wakes up to rapid tapping on his door and sits up groggily, trying to wipe the sleep form his eyes. “Yeah?”

           Clarke peeks her head in, looking at him for just a second or two before she says, “What can we have for breakfast?”

           “First of all, you can have anything that’s not my roommates’ or the entire fridge,” Bellamy says. “Second of all, how the fuck are you up before me?”

           She shrugs. “I kept waking up, so when the clock read 10am, I figured I’d just stay awake.”

           Frowning, Bellamy stands, puts on his glasses – he’s too lazy for contacts if he doesn’t have to go anywhere – and asks, “You okay?”

           Clarke straightens at that, like he’s poked at something deeply personal. “Uh, yeah, totally. Just that image of hot Chidi floating around my brain, I guess.” She laughs unconvincingly, but Bellamy lets it slide; she looks uncomfortable, and he doesn’t want to push it.

           Even though Clarke claims she’d be fine with cereal, Bellamy makes her waffles; they’re her favorite. She piles them obscenely high with strawberries and whipped cream, but that doesn’t stop them from being gone before he’s even finished making one for himself. He always calls her Leslie Knope for that, though he also claims she’s half Ron Swanson, which is a weird combo in theory but it works, okay? She’s dedicated and loving as hell, and when she gets on a rant you just have to wait it out, but she also hisses at the idea of healthy eating or talking to nearly anyone.

           (And okay, yes, Bellamy does consider himself a little bit of a Ben Wyatt, but that doesn’t mean anything, okay? It doesn’t.)

           “I might have to rescind my statement about you not being allowed to eat the whole fridge,” he comments as he scrapes some butter onto his waffle and pours some syrup on the side to dip into.

           “Please do, I really want your leftovers,” she says, swallowing her last bite and standing to take care of her plate. “But seriously, thanks for the waffles. They were good.”

           “I’d hope so, or else you’re so starved for real food you’ll eat anything.”

           “That, too,” she grins, gathering her hair in her hand to pull into a messy bun, and then all Bellamy can do is stare, because there it is. On the lower half of her neck, reddish-purple and impossible to miss, is the hickey. His hickey, from his mouth, which he gave.

           Clarke must notice him staring – how could she not, his jaw is practically dropped – because she says, “It look okay?”

           He kind of chokes on air for a second despite his best efforts, but manages to say, “Yeah. Yeah, it—it’ll definitely convince Harper, at least.”

           “And all my coworkers.”

           Bellamy winces, shame flooding into his system. “Sorry, I should’ve done it more discreet, I can help you cover—”

           “Bellamy, it’s fine. I can hide it at work, and when it comes to people like Harper, I kind of want them to see, right? For the proof. You know, so it has a purpose.”

           Purpose. Right. It’s all for show, just a ruse, no feelings attached. He tries to burn that into his brain, but he doesn’t think it works. “Yeah, that makes sense. You want to shower?”

           “Nah, I’ll just shower tonight. I hate walking around with wet hair,” she says, and so despite the universe’s best efforts, life continues as usual.

 --

If Bellamy were smart, he’d have expected the visit from Raven the next day, but he is the guy who started a long-term fake relationship with the woman he wants a long-term real relationship with and then gave her a hickey like bros do; he’s not exactly the epitome of intelligence when it comes to these things.

           So when there’s a rapid knocking on his door, he hardly expects it to be about Clarke at all—until, at least, he hears Raven screaming, “BELLAMY BLAKE, OPEN THIS FUCKING DOOR RIGHT NOW SO I CAN KILL YOU.”

           Despite this violent threat, Bellamy obliges, opening the door hastily for Raven to storm in, looking fucking livid.

           “Uh—” he starts, but he doesn’t know what to say to avoid getting shanked, so he just lifts his hands in defense.

           “You…fucking…idiot,” Raven wheezes, pointing her finger at him like a weapon.

           “I’m aware of that, yeah. What is this ab—oh,” he says, remembering again Clarke’s hair brushed off her shoulder and his breath on her neck and the red bruise like a beacon on her skin.

           “Yeah, oh. I have lived through weeks of you two being even bigger idiots than normal, with the handholding and the kissing and the cuddling and the sappy comments like they’re nothing, but a hickey—”

           “Harper was suspicious as to why Clarke hadn’t had one despite liking them so much,” Bellamy protests. “She’d figure it out if we didn’t.”

           “And what’s so bad about that?” Raven demands.

           “We can’t just—” Bellamy cuts off, because he knows the truth. They could cut this off whenever they wanted, but he doesn’t want to. It’s selfish of him, horribly so, but he wants this thing with Clarke to last as long as possible. She’s just following his lead because she’s a good friend, and he’s dragging her along because of his stupid fucking crush.

           Raven must see this in his eyes, because her posture relaxes a little and her brows unfurrow. “Why can’t you believe she might like you back?”

           Bellamy sighs heavily and collapses on the couch, tears starting to build up in his eyes for no reason. “It’s—she’s Clarke, Raven. We’ve known each other for seven years and been best friends for nearly that long. If something was going to happen, it would’ve by now.”

           “Okay, you know that’s not how it works,” Raven says, moving to stand in front of him and crossing her arms. “Come on, Blake, you really can’t see how she looks at you?”

           “It’s like she looks at everybody,” he protests, but his voice is weak. That little part of him that believes Clarke could love him back, it’ll listen to anything if it gives him hope. He basically breathes the stuff.

           “Bellamy, she looks at you like you hung the fucking moon. And not just that—she can’t seem to stop looking at you. Any moment you’re looking away, she’s watching you, memorizing every expression, every feature, every freckle. It’s like she’s incapable of spending five minutes without visibly expressing how much she loves you.”

           Bellamy’s heart jumps into his throat at that last phrase; he swallows it back down, hard. “Even if—no matter how you think she feels, or how she acts, I can’t…I can’t risk that, Raven. It’d be one thing to risk our friendship by telling her how I feel in a normal circumstance, but now? She’ll hate me for leading her on. She’ll never talk to me again. I can survive her not loving me back, but I can’t survive her not being here at all.”

           And it’s dramatic, but that’s truly how it feels—if he doesn’t have Clarke, he thinks a vital part of him will go with her, something he can never replace or function without. Maybe it’s unhealthy, but he needs her.

           Raven sighs, then squats in front of him, setting her hands on his knees. “I know how much you guys love each other, romantic or not. You’re stronger than any shit life has thrown at you, and if Clarke can survive you dating Echo—”

           “Please never mention that again,” Bellamy says, grimacing. “It wasn’t my fault her dad Jason was practically threatening to fire me if I didn’t date her.”

           “My point is, if your friendship can survive that, and all the other horrible fights and traumas you’ve gone through together, I think it can survive this, too. But you can’t go on like this forever, Blake. If you love her, you’ve got to tell her.”

           Bellamy sighs heavily, wiping a stray tear from his cheek. “I hate being this scared of it.”

           “Hey, that’s okay. Feelings are fucking terrifying, and I’ve been to space. But you’re brave, okay? You can do it.”

           She wraps her arm around his neck and he reciprocates, resting his head on her shoulder and letting himself cry a little more, taking the comfort before he draws away. “Thanks, Raven. For threatening to kill me, I mean.”

           She smirks. “Love you, too, Bellamy.”

           He nods, smiling a little, and she lets herself out, leaving Bellamy to his thoughts.

 --

The party at Bellamy’s apartment is not actually his idea; it’s Raven’s, probably because she has an agenda and that involves giving him every opportunity possible to tell Clarke the truth. He appreciates it, but he doesn’t know if he can tell Clarke during something public, or even right after; he wants to be prepared, organized, and alone with her, so there’s no scene.

           There’s also no alcohol present, which he appreciates; he’s so constantly about to burst with his feelings lately, he worries just one swig of alcohol will send them all pouring out.

           Clarke’s one of the last people to show up – being her late self as always – but she does arrive with a bag of chips and some salsa, so Bellamy is willing to forgive her. She also greets him by stretching on her toes to give him a kiss, so he doesn’t have the brain capacity to feel anything negative about her anyway.

           Everyone digs into the food immediately, then after a stupidly long time debating what game to play, they settle for HedBanz. Bellamy is horrible at it unless Clarke’s the one giving him the clues, so whenever it’s his turn everyone silently prays the die will land on Clarke’s.

           At the end of one of his turns, as he’s putting a new card in the headband, everyone stars murmuring conspiratorially and he frowns. “What?”

           “Nothing,” they all chorus, even though they’re grinning devilishly.

           “Does it say dildo or something?” Bellamy asks Clarke, who’s tucked against his side. “I thought this was a family-friendly game.”

           “No, Bellamy, it does not say dildo.”

           “Then what?”

           “Well, I can’t tell you, it’s against the rules. You’ll just have to guess.”

           “Hopefully I get you on the dice role then.”

           She blushes a little, which is weird. “Yeah, hopefully.”

           They go around the circle again – Bellamy spends the entire time trying to get Miller to guess helicopter and the closest he gets is ceiling fan – and when it’s Bellamy’s turn, he reaches for the die only for Raven to grab it from him.

           “Hey, it’s my—”

           “Sorry, I’m rolling for you this time,” Raven says, then just turns the die to Clarke’s color and sets it down. “Hey, look, you got Clarke, how wild. Okay, guess on.”

           Bellamy gives her a weird look, but it’s not like he minds being paired with Clarke, so he just shrugs and turns to Clarke. “Ready?”

           She nods and slips from his side. “Ready.” Then she flips over the timer and drops to one knee next to the couch, miming holding something in her hands.

           This one’s easy, of course, but Bellamy decides to draw it out a little. “Engagement ring?”

           Clarke gestures to her whole self and mimes saying some big speech.

           “Fiancé?” he guesses, smirking.

           She grunts and mimes pulling out the ring, then gestures from herself to him.

           “Okay, okay, fine. Proposal.”

           “Yes, finally,” Clarke says.

           “He said yes!” Raven cries excitedly, and everyone claps; Bellamy’s going to roll his eyes, but then Clarke smirks a little and suddenly she’s surging upwards to kiss him, hands holding his face.

           He’s too stunned to reply, just sort of puts his hand at her side; she pulls back a moment later amidst whoops and hollers. “It’s official, everyone,” she declares.

           Bellamy’s bright red by this point, but he plays along, holding up his hand to show off the nonexistent ring. “Can’t believe she beat me to it, but at least it’s pretty.”

           “Yeah, yeah, you guys are cute, whatever,” Miller says. “Your timer ran out, so sit down.”

           Clarke sticks her tongue out at him, but obediently curls back up against Bellamy’s side. He tucks his arm around her shoulder and tries his hardest not to lick his lips, or to turn her chin so he can kiss her again, even if that would probably be acceptable. If he kisses her on her own right now, he might not be able to stop himself from doing it later on, too. He’s strong, in terms of self-control, but not that strong.

           They switch games soon after that – apparently a proposal makes everything else seem less exciting – and Clarke starts getting sleepy, letting him play her turns in Clue so she can lay her head in his lap and get her hair played with instead.

           “No fair, that gives Bellamy double the knowledge the rest of us have,” Monty complains.

           Bellamy shrugs. “Tell your girlfriend to get sleepy, then.”

           Monty looks to Harper, but she shakes her head. “No way. I’m winning this thing.”

           Clarke whines a little in protest that Bellamy is no longer petting her hair, and he says something about her being obnoxiously needy, but he scratches at her scalp all the same.

           Bellamy does in fact win the game, which makes everyone annoyed, and he gives half his credit to Clarke for her ‘generous contributions to the Bellamy Blake fund.’

           “Yeah, I’m sure she’s made many generous contributions,” Jasper smirks, and Bellamy flushes. He hates when his friends make sex jokes about them. Not only does it make Clarke uncomfortable, shown by the way she tenses beside him, but it makes the whole don’t think about how much you want to have sex with Clarke and get married to her and have kids and dogs and stray cats who come by and you pretend not to love them but buy them food and toys anyway thing a lot harder to ignore.

           Clarke is a lot better at running with the punches though; she just shrugs nonchalantly and says, “All anonymous, of course,” before kissing him on the cheek, awfully close to his jaw, and starts cleaning up the board.

 --

They kiss two more times before everyone starts heading out; once because Clarke beat him in Mario Kart – by basically cheating, he might add, that stupid blue shell isn’t fair at all – and he pouted so she kissed him to make him feel better, and once because Bellamy beat her and he got a little excited and just kind of smacked her on the mouth. She laughed it off, though, so hopefully she was cool with it.

           As everyone leaves, Bellamy starts to reach for Clarke’s bag, but she shakes her head slightly. “I was gonna stay a little later, if that’s all right.”

           Harper smirks a little as she passes, and Bellamy is reminded of their position. “Course it’s all right. I was just going to move this out of the way.”

           She smiles softly, crumpling up the empty chip bag to throw away and putting the leftover salsa in the fridge while Bellamy says goodbye to everyone.

           When the door closes for the last time and he turns, feeling a little anxious now that they’re alone, she’s right there, wrapping her arms around his waist and tucking her face into his neck.

           “Uh,” he says, returning the hug on instinct. “What’s this for?”

           She lifts her head a little so he can hear her as she says, “I just like being able to hang out with you.”

           He laughs gently. “Did the last, like, four hours not count?”

           “You know what I mean. Just the two of us. You and me.”

           “Yeah, you and me,” Bellamy agrees; he kisses her hair without thinking, but she doesn’t seem to mind. “What do you want to do?”

           “Well, we’re all out of TV shows to binge unless we want to start something new, and we’ve played a lot of games, and I don’t really want to commit to a full movie right now, so maybe we can…I don’t know, just sit? Enjoy the company?”

           That actually sounds really nice right now, albeit a little terrifying considering how attuned Bellamy is to his desire to make out with Clarke and how very alone they are, so he just agrees and slowly pulls away so they can walk to the couch.

           For a while, they do just sit; they don’t talk, they don’t play anything, they barely even touch apart from Clarke’s arm against his and her head on his shoulder. It’s comforting, knowing how easily they can exist in each other’s presence without needing to be actively doing something, how just the sound of their breath going in and out is enough for them. He fucking loves this girl.

           Clarke picks up his hand after a while, tracing the lines on his palm silently. He’s gotten comfortable enough with her touch he doesn’t even flinch at the contact, but he does jump a little when she turns his hand over and then lifts it to press a tiny kiss to his ring finger.

           “Not even wearing it,” she teases, looking up at him. “What was the point of buying such a fancy ring if you won’t show it off?”

           “Maybe you got the wrong size,” Bellamy says, smirking. “Don’t hold my hand enough to know how big my finger is.”

           “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she says, rolling her eyes, and leans in to kiss him.

           Kiss him.

           On the mouth.

           While they’re alone.

           Clarke.

           KISSES HIM.

           She pulls away half a second later, looking horrified. “Shit.”

           “Uh….” Bellamy says, not sure what he can do that won’t fuck this up one way or another.

           “I’m sorry,” she says quickly. “I—uh, it was instinct. Sorry.”

           Bellamy considers her wide eyes, her slightly parted lips, and most of all her hand, which she hasn’t moved from his. She’s waiting for his reaction before she pulls away, and as stupid as it is, he doesn’t want her to. The lines have blurred between the pretend and the genuine, and he doesn’t care anymore what side he’s on. He just wants her.

           So instead of brushing away her apology and moving on, instead of pulling away, he says, “Kiss me more.”

           Clarke’s eyes go wide. “What?”

           The panic starts to return, but Bellamy fights for control. “I mean, it’s good practice, right? And kissing you is—kissing is fun, and I don’t…you know, mind, I guess. So, why not?” He scratches the back of his head awkwardly. God, why is he so bad at communication?

           Clarke stares at him for a moment longer before she says, slow and careful, “So you…you think it’d be a good idea, to kiss more?”

           The words catch in Bellamy’s throat, too true to be spoken, so he just nods, and in the next moment Clarke’s mouth is on his.

           It’s not the first time they’ve kissed, but it feels like it—there’s no one watching, no one to prove or to please; no one except Clarke, at least. When she puts her hand in his hair, carding her fingers through the curls, it feels like it’s because she just wants to, no because she’s supposed to put on a show.

           And God, Clarke’s a good kisser. Bellamy considers himself fairly experienced in this department, but the way she draws out every movement out like she can’t get enough, one moment unbearably slow and the next sloppy and rushed, leaves him shaking a little. He moves his hands a lot, trying to hide his nervousness and just how fucking wrecked she makes him just by kissing—first on her shoulders, then her neck, her waist, his fingers barely trailing over the bare skin peeking out from her shirt.

           Clarke seems to like this, if the way she arches towards him a little is any indication, so he experimentally slips a hand under the material to feel her bare skin, and she kisses him harder, surer of herself.

           The angle is starting to get a little awkward with them side-by-side on the couch, though, so hesitantly he grips her thigh and pulls a little in encouragement. Immediately, Clarke swings her leg over to sit in his lap; they take a moment to breathe while she gets comfortable, which is hard because Bellamy’s breath hitches every time she shifts the tiniest bit.

           Faintly, he wonders if this is really happening. It doesn’t seem possible, but he’s not sure he could conjure his up in a dream.

           Clarke sees him staring and smiles shyly, setting her hands on his shoulders. “Hi.”

           “Hi,” he replies, careful not to touch her yet, just in case. He knows how people can get caught up, go farther than they meant, and then regret it later. He doesn’t want that for them.

           She swallows hard, then lifts one hand to cup his cheek, looking at him with a soft but serious expression. “This is going to sound like the worst timing in the history of the world, but you’re my best friend. You know that, right?”

           Normally, hearing the phrase friend from someone Bellamy is desperately in love with when they’ve been making out would not exactly be his favorite thing, but he gets what she means. No matter what this is – because they both know this isn’t just practice – whether it’s well-timed horniness or pent-up sexual tension or something more, what matters most is who they are to each other, and that will never change. Bellamy knows he will always love Clarke like she’s part of his soul, and against all odds, he knows she feels the same.

           “I know,” he whispers. “You’re my best friend, too.”

           She smiles in that sort of way that makes Bellamy’s throat clog up with happy tears and leans down to kiss him again. She sets the pace slow, and Bellamy doesn’t mind at all; it’s the comforting kind of slow, that makes it feel like there’s no rush, no fear. He slips his hands under her shirt to stroke her back, which she definitely enjoys because she sighs into his mouth, tugging at his hair a little before soothing it with her fingertips.

           When she pulls away to breathe, Bellamy can’t help but keep kissing her, peppering his lips across her cheek and jaw before pausing at her neck, unsure if she’s okay with this when it’s not for their previous…purpose.

           “You’re good,” she whispers, rather breathily.

           He nods slightly and works his way to a spot under her jaw he remembers her being rather eager about; she sighs in pleasure and strokes his hair, so he starts sucking at the skin there, pressing his hands firmly against her back to keep her close. Clarke’s responding mewls make him shiver with want, but this is about her right now, and he loves making her this way—his Clarke, so stubborn and tough, melted like putty under his ministrations.

           When the mark is fully formed, he takes his time kissing down her neck, liking how she keeps a firm grip on his hair to keep him close, how he can feel every shiver running down her spine against his fingertips. At her throat, though, he pauses, because he sees it then—the fading red hickey, his hickey, the one he almost lost his mind giving her.

           It could expose him, but he’s too love-drunk to care, so he presses a tiny kiss to the mark and, with his lips still touching skin, whispers, “That’s mine.”

           He can not only hear but feel Clarke’s low groan against her throat, and then she’s tugging him up harshly to seal her mouth over his. The slowness is all gone now; she kisses him like there’s not enough time in the world to do as much as she wants, even if they did this forever. He feels the same – God, he could hold her the rest of his life and still die wishing he had a few moments more – and he tries to express it the best he can, this need for her, for this something. Her t-shirt bunches in his hands as he hikes it up, curling it into his fist for a moment while he slips his tongue into her mouth; she grinds down on him a little and his hands spasm, which she must find amusing, because she pulls away with a smirk.

           “You okay if I take this off?” she asks, reaching for her own shirt hem.

           “Jesus, you’re so polite sometimes,” he teases. “No, I don’t mind if you take your fucking shirt off, Clarke.”

           She rolls her eyes. “I’m just checking. Consent is important, Blake.” But she doesn’t seem annoyed, and it doesn’t matter anyway, because when she pulls off her shirt and tosses it aside, all Bellamy can do is stare.

           God, she’s so beautiful. Sexy, absolutely – with those perfect boobs in that dark blue bra and that soft stomach and the way she looks at him, all smirking confidence – but just…it’s like every inch of her screams again to him how much he loves this girl. How strong she is, how brave, how fierce, how kind, and how much he wants to fall asleep and wake up beside her every night he has left.

           Clarke must sense something more than just hormone-induced staring, because she starts to blush. “What?”

           “Nothing,” Bellamy says, though he can’t get his voice to sound anything less than awed. “You’re just…well.”

           “Yeah, I’ve been told,” she replies, smiling, and leans in to kiss him again.

           Eventually they get to the bedroom, and out of their clothes. Seeing Clarke like that – uncovered and open and completely vulnerable, all for him – is too much for Bellamy, and he can’t help but plant kisses on every inch of skin he can. Clarke encourages him with breathy sighs and her fingers fluttering over his shoulder blades, but when he gets to the swell of her stomach, her breathing falters, and he pauses.

           The air is still for a moment; not quite awkward, but still heavy and charged. An in-between.

           “I’ve got you,” Bellamy whispers. “If you want me to.”

           She nods, winding her fingers into his hair shakily, and closes her eyes. “I want you to.”

           When he puts his mouth on her, she moans and tightens her grip, but after that he’s so overwhelmed with the feeling of it, of them, that he barely hears the noises she makes, barely registers the sharp tug of her hands on her hair, barely even registers she’s come until she’s pulling him back up to slot her mouth over his.

           “Good?” he manages to ask between kisses, worried again.

           She laughs, pulling back to raise an eyebrow at him. “I think the orgasm should’ve told you that.”

           He blushes a little despite himself. “Okay, okay. I’m just checking.”

           “You’re cute,” she teases, brushing his heating cheeks with the backs of her fingers, and he hides the deepening color in her neck.

           They stay like that for a moment, Bellamy hovering over her with his nose in her hair, until his arms start to tremble a little with the effort. Clarke presses down on his back to get him to lay flat, but he resists, mumbling, “I’ll crush you.”

           “Oh, shut up, you’ll fallen asleep on top of me before. Remember when I had to crash at your place and you rolled over me in your sleep?”

           “That was a slightly different context, Clarke,” he points out, but he obediently lets his weight drop onto her entirely.

           For a few seconds it’s relaxing, Clarke stroking light circles into his back and their breaths nearly in sync, but the press of skin on skin everywhere quickly makes Bellamy dizzy, and he can’t help but press tiny kisses to her neck up to the curve of her jaw. She purrs at the attention, but soon it’s not enough for her, either, and then she’s drawing his mouth back to hers; one hand cups his cheek gently while the other strokes meaningless patterns into the small of his back.

           Somehow, this wrecks Bellamy even more than the sex part, just them kissing lazily in bed like a couple. It almost makes him want to cry, but he doesn’t want to break the moment, and he’s not ready to explain how kissing her could make him sad, so instead he kisses her a little harder, rising onto his elbows again for a better angle.

           Clarke’s hands slide feverishly up and down his back and ass, fingernails digging into his skin when he rolls her bottom lip between his teeth, and she breathes, “I—I need—”

           Just those two words make Bellamy’s vision go black for a second, but he manages to reply hoarsely, “I’ve got you. What do you need?”

           “You,” she whispers, and she must feel the shiver that runs down his back. “All of you.”

           He pulls back to see her face and this, he thinks, may be what kills him—Clarke staring up at him, open and nervous but still sure, hands still pressing into his back and skin flushed. Needing him.

           It’s too much to process, so he just stares; he stares so long Clarke frowns and pinches him a little. “Bellamy? You with me?”

           He shakes his head a little. “Sorry. I was just trying to process this is….” Real, he thinks, but that word feels too charged, too close, so he says, “happening,” instead.

           She grunts. “Well, it’s not right now, unless you get a move on.”

           Bellamy rolls his eyes, muttering about how bossy she is, and it earns him a swat on the ass as he reaches for the package of condoms in the nightstand.

           The mood shifts again when they get going; the rhythm is slow but a little messy with both of them shaking, and Clarke presses their foreheads together so they share every breath. A tear rolls down Bellamy’s cheek at one point, but Clarke doesn’t say anything, just wipes it away and holds him a little closer.

           They stay that way until the very end—hearts beating too fast, bodies shaking, looking at each other like the moment will crumble to dust if they look away. Together.

 --

Bellamy wakes up with hair in his face, which confuses him for a second, since his hair is nowhere near long enough to be getting in his mouth. Then he realizes who the hair’s attached to, sees whose body is splayed across the bed next to him, and his soul disconnects from his body for, like, half a second.

           God, last night actually happened. He had sex with Clarke Griffin, kind of platonically, who he also wants to have sex with all the time, kind of not platonically. It was new, and overwhelming, and wonderful.

           And she’s still here.

           Slowly, she pushes her hair over her shoulder so he can get a better look at her face, which is half hidden by the pillow. This moment feels vastly different than the last time she slept here, and yet vastly the same—there’s no difference in the soft way his heart turns over looking at her.

           Though there is a slight difference, he’ll admit, in the images that rise in his mind when he catches sight of the bruises under her jaw and peeking out from her collarbone, because now they’re real. Possible, even.

           After a moment, he shakes her shoulder softly, and she stirs, blinking in confusion for a moment before her eyes meet his. Her expression melts into a shy but genuine smile, and Bellamy’s heart turns instantly to putty.

           “Hey,” she says, soft as a feather touching the ground.

           “Hey,” he says back. He really wants to kiss her, but he’s still so worried about boundaries—now that the night of ‘practice’ is over, are they back to just friends? How much affection can he risk without her knowing the truth before he’s ready to tell her?

           She saves him the trouble by leaning over to kiss his cheek, then slumps back into the pillow and says, “I want pancakes.”

           He scoffs. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I ran a bed and breakfast.”

           She shrugs without lifting her head, her muffled voice making out something like you bang ‘em, you feed ‘em, which makes Bellamy laugh even if it also makes his face hot with embarrassment.

           They don’t have any pancake batter, and he doesn’t love Clarke enough to make some from scratch at this hour (kidding, but also, he really doesn’t want to) so he makes eggs and toast instead.

           It’s all going fine, too, until Clarke walks in halfway through the ordeal wearing just one of his shirts, at which point he slips and burns himself on the pan.

           “Shit,” he hisses, dropping the spatula to put his hand under some cold water.

           Clarke comes up behind him, tutting, “Clumsy, clumsy Bellamy.”

           He glares at her. “It’s not my fault.”

           She shrugs innocently, but it makes the shirt hike up higher and he really doesn’t have time for the urge to make out with her, so he starts to turn back to the food, but Clarke stops him with a gentle hand on his arm. He hesitates a moment, but he’s never known how to say no to this woman; sighing, he turns back around and meets her gaze.

           “We good?” she asks; her tone is casual, but her eyebrows are too furrowed, and the muscles in her jaw are tight.

           Feeling a little guilty, he nods. “Yeah. Course we are.”

           “Okay,” she says, but she still sounds a little unsure, so impulsively Bellamy leans down to peck her on the mouth.

           “Stop worrying, Clarke. We’re good.”

           She smiles a little and reaches to kiss his cheek, surer this time. “Okay.”

 --

One day, when it’s cold enough for Bellamy’s hands to go numb if he’s outside longer than fifteen minutes, Clarke shows up to his apartment looking oddly excited.

           “Bellamy,” she says, holding up her phone, “they have ice skating opening this week.”

           “Okay,” he says. He never did any ice skating when he was little, and even now he’s gone maybe twice, but he knows Clarke took lessons a while back and is pretty good at it. “You want to go?”

           “We have to, Bellamy. They’re going to put the lights up for Christmas the same week. It’s going to be beautiful.”

           “Like you,” he says reflexively, and she mimes gagging at his weak compliment. “Hey, don’t be mean.”

           “It’s like sixty percent of my personality, so no.”

           Bellamy just rolls his eyes, because this is the least true thing in the world—Clarke may be stubborn and overly honest sometimes, but she is rarely mean. In fact, she picked him up when his car broke down last week, and a few days later helped Harper out with an issue with her thesis paper for two hours (Bellamy’s only gripe on that one was she had been paying him a lot of attention before the call, but she gave him extra afterwards to apologize, so it was worth it). Hell, she got him through the few years where his little sister hated him and his whole world started to fall apart, and without ever asking for anything back.

           She’s the best person he knows, and he doesn’t believe he’ll ever find someone better. He doesn’t want to, either—every flaw she has just makes her more Clarke, more perfectly aligned with all his own dark parts, and so even when they yell at each other or she does something that makes him grind his teeth in frustration, he never wants to take any of it back.

           Anyway, sappiness aside, they plan for Thursday evening to get dinner and go ice skating. The day in question isn’t too cold despite being early December, so they decide to just walk to the restaurant, a laid-back local burger joint Clarke would probably cut off a finger for. She orders a bacon cheeseburger with fries and a milkshake, because she’s like that, and convinces Bellamy to get a panini instead of a salad because “for the love of all that’s holy, Bellamy, we get it, you’re hot and fit, now eat some fucking carbs.”

           Bellamy thinks she really just wanted more fries on the table, because as soon as she’s plowed through hers – at a startlingly fast rate for someone who’s not that big, he might add – she starts reaching for his.

           “Hey, quit it,” he says, slapping her hand away for the third time. “You have your own.”

           “Had,” she corrects. “And I’m still hungry.”

           “You have half the burger left!”

           “I want fries though.”

           “Well, it’s not my fault you didn’t plan accordingly,” he says, but it’s not like he’s actually going to stop her, so he just lets his eyes wander away whenever she reaches for his plate.

           Just to make it even, he takes random sips of her milkshake – he can have a sweet tooth sometimes, too, all right? Just because he wants to eat healthy doesn’t mean he eats nothing but greens, no matter what Clarke says – and she similarly grumbles but doesn’t stop him.

           When it comes to pay for it, they fight a little about who should take the check – Clarke wants to take it because her meal was more expensive and she voted they have this night out, while Bellamy votes he should take it since he wanted to eat out – but finally decide to take separate checks and pay for the other’s as a compromise.

           They sit outside the restaurant before they walk to the rink so their food babies will dwindle a little, Clarke resting her hand near his, and when they get up she intertwines their fingers like they’ve done it a million times—which they sort of have, but never so clearly away from the prying eyes of their friends.

           At this point, Bellamy realizes they’re sort of on a date—like a real, planned, found-it-on-Pinterest date. It throws him a little, which is maybe weird considering they’ve literally had sex (another fact that throws him), but it just feels so…normal. So not part of practice for a fake relationship, or part of a normal platonic relationship. So close to what he wants them to be all the time.

           (There’s this small part of Bellamy that knows this isn’t just some fake thing to convince Gina anymore, and it hasn’t been for a long time, but if he stops calling it that, he has to call it something else, and he doesn’t know what it is yet. He’s scared to know what they’ll be without this protective coating to everything they do, if they’ll be anything at all.)

           Despite the undertone of anxiety that accompanies such easy affection between them, Bellamy can’t help but smile as they walk with their arms swinging a little, Clarke leaning into him only half for warmth, them both testing the coldness of the air with their breath. No matter what they are, he knows it’s good.

           The moment Bellamy puts on his skates and gets onto the rink, he remembers how bad he is at this. He slips immediately, having to grab onto the edge for purchase so he doesn’t fall onto his face; meanwhile, Clarke slides past him smugly.

           “We should’ve done football or something,” Bellamy grumbles as she circles around the rink and back to him without faltering at all. “Then I could’ve tackled you for being such a jerk.”

           “Excuse me, I have done nothing wrong,” she says, coming to a stop to raise an eyebrow at him. “It’s not my fault you have the skating skills of a four-year-old without a box to hold onto.”

           “Yeah, but you could help.”

           “Yeah, yeah, all right,” she says. “If it makes you happy.”

           She maneuvers to his side and hooks his arm over her shoulder, wrapping her arm around his waist. “Okay, just focus on your balance. Don’t try to be fancy.”

           He really does try, but it’s hard to balance on someone who’s a head shorter than you, and he’s so bad at skating. They have to stay by the edge of the rink and just circle around slowly, so whenever Bellamy starts to slip he can grab the edge instead of pulling Clarke down with him.

           There aren’t a lot of people there since it’s a Thursday night, which Bellamy appreciates. They can circle the rink with the twinkling lights in trees all around them in relative quiet, slowly building up his confidence until he can go to the middle—as long as he’s still hanging onto Clarke, at least.

           By now, though, it’s been like a solid forty-five minutes without annoying Clarke, which is absolutely unacceptable, so Bellamy starts to purposefully lean into her as if he’s falling even though he’s stable. She threatens to let him fall when he does it a fourth time, but it’s not needed, because on the fifth time he leans harder than he intended and neither of them are able to regain their balance; they fall onto the ice in a tangle of limbs and annoyed grunts, Bellamy on top of Clarke.

           “I fucking hate you,” she mutters. Her nose is crinkled up in annoyance, but it just makes her look cuter, paired with the hat pulled down low over her face and her red cheeks and the little bits of white shining in her hair.

           “Nah, you don’t,” Bellamy says; he intends it to be teasing, but he’s sort of distracted by how pretty Clarke looks. Without thinking much of it, he leans down and kisses her softly, cold lips warming upon contact. She kisses him back, gloved hand coming up to touch his cheek briefly, before he pulls back and helps her up (or, really, her helping him up, but whatever).

           Her cheeks are definitely redder now, and he can’t help but grin at the sight. “See? You don’t hate me.”

           A tiny smile tugs at Clarke’s mouth, but there’s something in her eyes; something far-away and yet nearly close enough to touch. Something almost sad. “I guess not.”

           Bellamy swallows down the confession he’s been so close to sharing for ages now, fear getting the best of him again. Instead, he holds out his hand and says, “Shall we?”

           She takes it, squeezing tightly. “We shall.”

 --

When they get back to Bellamy’s apartment, they change into dry clothes (Clarke steals another one of his shirts to wear with her pajama pants because she knows he’s weak) and curl up on the couch with a blanket to warm up.

           Bellamy wants to kiss her, like always, but she feels just a little distant, and he doesn’t want to push anything, so he just strokes her arm and touches his chin to her hair until she lifts her head to initiate the kiss herself.

           It’s soft, almost unbearably so; she holds his cheeks in her hands delicately, moving her lips slowly against his as he holds her waist and matches the softness. She moves to his lap, but it feels more for comfort than sexual prowess; there’s no grinding, no moans, no kissing anywhere but their mouths. Nothing but this slow, deeply intense trade-off between them, back and forth.

           A few minutes in, Bellamy tastes salt on Clarke’s lips, and he pulls back, immediately worried; sure enough, a couple of tears are slowly sliding down Clarke’s cheeks.

           “Clarke?” he whispers, not sure what to say. Panic builds in his chest, that he’s done this, that something’s happened, that she’s hurting and he hasn’t noticed. “Clarke, what is it?”

           She wipes the tears with the back of her hand, a little wonderingly, and says, “It’s not about you, Bellamy.”

           But she doesn’t sound sure, and the anxiety builds in Bellamy’s throat. “Clarke, if something’s wrong, if I did something, please—”

           “You didn’t do anything,” she says, voice stronger now, and sets her hands on his shoulders. “I promise, it’s not you. I just….” She falters, then just lets the sentence hang there, unfinished.

           “Do you…do you want to talk about it?”

           Clarke considers this for a few moments, scanning his face, then slowly shakes her head. “Not yet. Not tonight.”

           He thinks of all the things he wants to say to Clarke, how it never feels like the right time. He understands her worry, but even if he didn’t, he would never push her to share something that makes her so uneasy. That’s the last thing he wants, to hurt her.

           “Okay,” he whispers. “Okay.”

           She smiles uncertainly at him, so he leans in to kiss her cheek, lingering. She rubs his shoulders, signaling she’s okay, so he kisses the other cheek, then her forehead, her nose, her jaw, her eyelids, everywhere on her face until she’s smiling again. Then she captures his lips with hers again, more confident than before, sliding her fingers into his hair like she always loves to.

           Bellamy strokes up and down her back and thighs, trying to express everything he doesn’t know how to say—trying to let her know it’s going to be okay, because they have each other.

           He feels something in the way she kisses him, too, like she’s promising him something; he doesn’t know what, but he feels his heart soften all the same.

           Clarke doesn’t have work until the afternoon, and Bellamy’s heart tugs at the thought of her leaving, so she stays the night. They don’t have sex, but Bellamy doesn’t mind in the slightest; he curls around Clarke’s body, arm thrown across her waist, and she tangles her fingers with his.

           “Good night,” she whispers, almost like a confession.

           “Good night,” he replies, kissing her hair, and it feels like a confession of his own.

 --

There are still moments in the next few weeks where Clarke gets a little sad or distant, but for the most part she’s as loving and eager and Clarke as ever. They fall into a perfect rhythm, alternating whose apartment they go to and planning with roommates to try to be alone when they can and doing stuff whenever they’re both off work (yes, like dates).

           It’s awesome, and natural, and fucking overwhelming. They’ve been doing everything he’s ever wanted except expressing his love for her, and that should make it easier to tell her, but somehow it makes it so much harder. If he tells her and she doesn’t feel the same, if this is just practice to her or she doesn’t want to be committed or whatever, he could lose everything. Not just the sex or the kissing or the dates, but Clarke, and now he knows more than ever how much of his heart is dedicated to her.

           Still, he always enjoys their time together, whether they’re staying in or going on a walk or splurging to try a good dessert shop Clarke heard about. One time, when he goes over to her apartment, she had even bought salad for them to eat. He nearly cries, but also low-key worries she’s been replaced by a robot until he sees she also bought a giant bag of his favorite dark chocolate for “whenever the craving hits.” Which is apparently often, because she’s already eaten like ten.

           Another time, Bellamy is laying on the couch after work when Clarke gets there, and instead of waiting him for sit up, she just sighs dramatically and flops directly on top of him. He thinks she’ll get up after a second, but she doesn’t, and within fifteen minutes she’s fallen asleep. He just chuckles at her ridiculousness and keeps his arm around her so she doesn’t fall off, laying there until she wakes up a few hours later, complaining that she’s hungry and he’s an uncomfortable bed.

           And at New Year’s Eve, Clarke shows up to the party with her hair cut in this little bob with the ends dyed pink, and Bellamy can’t stop playing with it the whole time. He also very much appreciates how it exposes her neck more, and they end up finding an empty room so he can give it the proper attention it deserves, almost missing the drop in the process.

           When they come back in the main room with thirty seconds of the year left and Clarke looking extra flushed, everyone rolls their eyes while Raven shakes her head slowly, looking torn between laughing and wringing their necks. She’s given up trying to talk Bellamy into telling Clarke, at least on her time, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t spend every moment she’s around them annoyed at their stupidity.

           Which is fair, he gets that, but if she wanted a relationship that made any sense, she shouldn’t have voted for him and Clarke. They are the fucking worst at feelings, or making sense in general.

 --

Nearly six months after the day Bellamy asked Clarke to fill in as his fake girlfriend, she sends him a text saying, come over now if u can pls. i really have to talk to u about something.

           Doing his best not to panic, Bellamy hurries over to Clarke’s apartment, and lets himself in (she’s expecting him, and he has a key anyways, from one too many times of Clarke needing him to grab her something she forgot). Clarke’s waiting for him in the doorway, looking nervous.

           “Okay, I’m here,” he says carefully. “What did you need to talk to me about?”

           “Well, to settle your rampant worry-wart tendencies, no one has died or gotten sick, I’m not moving, I don’t suddenly hate you or think you did something horrible, and I still have my job.”

           Damn, she reads him like a book sometimes. “That’s good. But…still bad news?”

           She shrugs. “I don’t think so? I hope not. I don’t know, it’s just news.”

           Clarke fidgets a lot when she’s nervous, and right now she’s practically vibrating, so Bellamy has them sit down to try to alleviate a little bit of that. Also, he wants to be ready for whatever she has to tell him, even if it’s apparently not life or death.

           “So,” she starts. “The cat’s out of the bag.”

           Maybe this is the worst or stupidest thing Bellamy’s done yet, but it takes him a full ten seconds to realize what she’s talking about; to remember they’ve been kind of lying to their friends for six months. “Gina,” he says finally.

           Clarke nods. “I guess Raven was drunk and ranted about the whole thing to Gina while she was on the clock. She called me on her break to ask if it was true.”

           “I’m assuming you told her the truth.”

           “Yeah. I don’t know if that was right, to tell her without your permission, but I was just tired of lying.”

           Bellamy tries not to let that comment sit uncomfortably in his chest. “How angry was she?”

           “Honestly? Not really. She was more just…confused. Both that we did it in the first place and also that we kept it up so long. She said….” She drifts off, then says instead, “But, uh, I guess that wraps that all up. We can, you know…stop faking now.”

           She glances at him and suddenly, for no reason at all except for the softness in her eyes and the nervous hope in her gaze, telling her is the easiest thing in the world. “I already did,” he says softly. “Long before we even started this thing.”

           Clarke’s eyes widen, and a dopey grin follows soon after. “Oh, thank God. I was going to strangle you if you were really that good of an actor. Or ask you to try out for Broadway.” She hesitates, then adds, “You really liked me that long?”

           “Clarke, I’ve liked you for six years.”

           “Jesus,” she says. “Only you would hold onto a crush that long. And I thought I was stupid for just having a crush on you for one year.”

           “Don’t worry, you’re still stupid,” Bellamy says, a stupid grin of his own quickly taking over his whole face.

           She rolls her eyes, then takes his hand and says softer, “When you asked me to fake being your girlfriend, a big part of me said not to do it, that it was the stupidest thing in the world to fake date the guy I wanted to real date. But I thought maybe my feelings would…I don’t know, dilute if I went on a date with you, knowing it was fake. Convince myself it was whatever and move on.”

           “Okay, yeah, you’re definitely still stupid, because that’s the worst plan I’ve ever heard of.”

           “Hey, you’re the one who picked me despite an apparent six year crush!” she protests. “And anyway, I knew in my heart it was all just a ruse. I wanted to be yours, even if it was all pretend.”

           “Yeah, me too.”

           She snorts. “You know, sometimes you and I are just a little too similar. If we weren’t such fucking idiots, we could’ve been actually dating six months ago.”

           “Who says we weren’t?” Bellamy says, shrugging. “I’m counting it, at least.”

           “Makes it easier on all our friends, at least. No need to expose the scandal if it resolves itself.”

           Bantering with Clarke is fun and all, but Bellamy is also literally about to burst with the desire to kiss her – his girlfriend – so instead of replying, he pulls her towards him and seals his mouth over hers. It’s messy to say the least, what with their dumb grins and general excitement making their accuracy absolute shit, but Bellamy has probably never loved a kiss more.

           “You kiss like it’s your first time,” he teases when their teeth clack for the third time.

           “It’s always the first time with you,” she replies easily. “That’s why I love you.”

           Bellamy’s heart kicks in his chest a little, but honestly, he already knew. Maybe he always has. “I love you, too.”

           “Good,” she says, stroking his cheek gently even as she hauls herself into his lap, eager as always. “That’s good.”

 --

They do eventually tell their friends about the whole thing, half because they feel guilty and half because looking back, it is the funniest and stupidest fucking thing ever. Their friends all agree about the stupid part at least—especially Raven, who literally cries when they tell her they’re officially dating because “I was this fucking close to breaking every friendship rule in the book and swapping your diaries so you’d know the truth. God, I fucking hate you guys sometimes. Come here.”

           Clarke also moves into his apartment a few months later, which isn’t a particularly huge gesture considering she practically lived there even before their whole debacle. She still steals his clothes all the time, and he still tuts whenever she tries to claim eating a family-sized bag of chips counts as a meal, and they still fight over little things and big things and nothing at all. Nothing has changed, really, and he doesn’t particularly want them to; after all, everything is as it should be.

           At least, until he’s saved enough for a ring.

[amphtaminedreams]

To All the Characters I’ve Overly Identified with Before: Borderline Personality Disorder and Attachment to Fictional Characters

It’s been a month, and I’m still not over how Game of Thrones ended. I’m still not over the way that a character who, throughout the previous seventy something episodes of the show, was only ever ruthless towards people who were deserving of her wrath (within the context of westerosi justice because let’s not forget everyone’s favourite man of honour Ned Stark decapitated a young man for running for his life in the first episode), suddenly massacred a whole city in the penultimate episode. I’m not over the way that writers who spent the previous seasons showing that they were capable of translating the moral ambiguity of George R.R Martin’s characters from page to screen, got lazy and left us with a character whose actions became impossible to defend right as the show was ending. I’m not over the way that such a beautifully complex character who endured so much hurt and trauma was reduced to nothing more than a “crazy woman” by a couple of male writers in her final moments. I’m not over the fact that Emilia Clarke put her heart and soul into the character and did everything she could to bring Daenerys Targaryen to life for David Benioff and Dan Weiss to both literally and figuratively assassinate her.

I think those feels have been felt by a lot of Game of Thrones fans since the show ended. God knows I’ve watched enough youtube video essays and read enough articles and liked enough tweets reiterating the sentiment. Daenerys Targaryen was, in my opinion, the best character on Game of Thrones. I wasn’t angry because she didn’t end up sitting on the throne (though my boy Drogon made sure nobody else ever would either and I guess I can get behind that), I was angry because all the balance that made her character so great was thrown out the window in order to progress the story of her male counterpart and bring a show that probably could’ve done with another 2 seasons to an end. Dany has always had a dark side, she is the “fire” that the title of the book series refers to, but throughout the show, we’ve never seen her indulge that side to the point of no return. We’ve seen her wrestle with it and use it to exact punishment on those who deserve it when needs be, and that was part of what I liked about her. Not to go all feminist essay on anyone’s ass but we don’t usually get to see women in TV who are celebrated for their powers of intimidation, and I liked how prior to season 8, the narrative never made female characters like Dany or Arya or Brienne out to be monsters for killing people the same way that basically every single man on the show did at one point or another. I liked that sometimes she was a little excessive because it made sense, she did have “dragon” in her, and she still had lines she wouldn’t cross, clear values and principles; she fought for the innocent, for women and for children, and for freedom. On a personal level, I loved her because we watched her go from a lonely, scared and vulnerable girl to a strong, ambitious and self-assured woman and that was a trajectory I wanted to relate to.

And then all of a sudden, without any justification or build up at all, she’s a mass murderer of the same “downtrodden” people she always claimed to fight for. Fuck, I’m thinking. I literally watched that episode through my hands because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. When I say I cried on and off for about 3 days after I watched the final episode, I’m not exaggerating; I only need to see a screen cap now a month later or an interview with Emilia Clarke and I’m off again. It literally felt as if I was mourning the loss of a real person. But this isn’t the first time I’ve had this kind of attachment to a character. Daenerys Targaryen was probably just the last in a long list of women I overly identified with.

I’m not much like her at all really, I’ve burnt myself from taking the film off my microwaved lasagne and not moving my thumb away from the hot air in time (lmao), however, I think I saw parts of myself in her journey and traits that I wanted to have, thus, I latched on. Before Daenerys Targaryen there was Spencer Hastings and before her there was Cassie Ainsworth and then if we’re gonna throw it all the way back, there was Hermione Granger (and some other characters I was more mildly obsessed with along the way, Katniss Everdeen, Bree Van de Kamp and Cosima Niehaus, I’m looking at you). I still love all those characters now but when their respective shows or films were actually current, I was completely obsessed. I spent my 16th birthday at the Harry Potter studios on the outskirts of London with my family, forget birthday parties or meals out with my friends. I wished more than anything that I had 2 best friends that loved me unconditionally and I did my best to emulate that drive and intelligence and work ethic everyone associates with Hermione. I told myself I was just like her even though I lacked the confidence to put my hand up in all but one of my classes and last time I checked, was just trying to conquer GCSEs not fight an evil wizard snaked hybrid man or whatever Voldemort is.  I identified with the loneliness and the need for control that I saw in Cassie, and was like “oH eM GeE, tHat’s sO mE!” at Spencer’s perfectionism. When I was speeding for my exams (and then, unfortunately, for long after), I felt spiritually connected to that whole Pretty Little Liars arc where Spencer started popping adderall on the daily even though I could really only wish for someone to care about me enough to stalk me like A did and the worst possible outcome of my all nighter was not taking in enough content to bullshit my way through a 30 marker.

They would understand me, they would be my friend. They represent me. That was the baseline sentiment of my obsession. And I think that’s the borderline part of me jumping out. See, such a huge part of BPD is feeling unwanted and misunderstood and forgettable and really, deeply lonely.  Like it’s a kind of loneliness I think you feel like an actual person can never really fulfil because the (faulty and not necessarily reflective of reality) thought pattern is that they’ll lose interest and leave you sooner or later. Fictional characters are always there, until the show gets cancelled or the character gets killed off, at least, and then comes the completely disproportionate tidal wave of grief. They exist in a different world too, a one that feels a lot less dangerous (even if it’s actually way more dangerous, I mean I really wouldn’t last five fucking minutes in Westeros) and detached from the often chronically muted reality of BPD.

Then there’s the trouble with the sense of self, part and package of BPD for most, which facilitates, you know, thinking that a genius witch or, like, any character in skins (because in hindsight as great as that show was, WHY DO NONE OF THEM HAVE JOBS YET SEEMINGLY AN ENDLESS SUPPLY OF DRUGS AND PARENTS THAT NEVER SEEM TO CARE WHERE THE HELL THEY ARE!?) resembles you as a person in any way. Though I suppose I’m learning recently as I begin to reflect more on what I enjoy and value, I’ve never had much more than a vague idea of what my positive qualities are, so when I saw them fully realised in a character it was a treasure trove of mannerisms and traits and ways of carrying oneself to adopt. It becomes a mould into which you can squeeze the ball of meh-ness and uncertainty you feel you resemble. Now I’m realising that although it might take me a little more time and a lot more effort, it’s much more rewarding to become the very best version of myself, but back then, I suppose I didn’t recognise why I was doing what I was doing. 

I only got diagnosed with BPD and started learning about it when it was 19, so all the years before that were pretty much spent unaware of the reasons why I had these quirks. As I “recover” (I suppose that’s the right word) and I get back into hobbies and spend more time with friends, I feel like I’m beginning to discover more and more of who I am. I’m starting to accept that there are positive things about me and plenty of things for people to like, right here in this world, not some fictional one.

I still love characters way too much and get overly attached and invested in TV shows but even that doesn’t necessarily have to be something to be ashamed of. When I’ve got into *ahem* discussions with people online about characters before, I’ve occasionally gotten the “why do you care so much, it’s not real life!” in response, and I mean, there’s definitely a point to be made if your passion for something is causing you to lash out at real life people with real life feelings. But when you’re not, when it can give you hours of discussion and entertainment and can drive you to make real positive changes in the world too, what’s wrong with passion? There’s nothing I love more than having a conversation with someone who I can tell really loves what they’re talking about, so why should I be ashamed of having the capacity to become deeply invested in things too? I think as long as it’s not taking over my life as I have allowed it to do so in the past, there’s nothing wrong with having passion for fictional things or for anything, for that matter. As long as it’s not something fucked up, like idk, white supremacy or Rick and Morty (JOKING). 

I don’t regret loving all the things I loved because being a huge Harry Potter fan for so many years did give me an escape when I absolutely hated myself and couldn’t find much enjoyment in real life. I hope that if I do have children one day, they’ll love it too, maybe not quite as much as I did but enough for it to give them all the joy it gave me, all the same. So in summary, yeah, fuck David Benioff and Dan Weiss (lmao, I’m joking, they’re just shitty original screenplay writers who could probably do with a class or two on how to write female characters), but also, understand before you make fun of someone for being overly invested in something that there’s probably a good reason for it and that, at the end of the day, they’re usually not hurting anyone. I’ll probably still be stanning Daenerys Targaryen and pretending season 8 episode 5 didn’t happen until the day I die. Let me live, okay?

Lauren x