#this is absolutely horrific and i cannot imagine what those parents are going through right now

[djarinova]

Keeping things simple to understand:

Some migrants that come to the UK (a big percent of them tend to be Muslim) and think they can continue to do the stuff they did in their home country, and that includes hurting vulnerable people

This ofc upsets the local British people and they start fighting back, some riots are violent but most have are starting to become more peaceful

They blocked the way to the Immigration Centre because too many migrants screw up people's lives and then leave facing no consequences, and these protesters want something to be done about that

I'm not actually from England, I'm actually Scottish, but I'm sending hugs to you and all of your friends, because this situation sucks

i cant tell if this is meant to be condescending but let me address some of the points you've made.

first, muslims make up 6.5% of the uk population, so they are by no means a majority of the country. second of all, i do not appreciate this very blatant insinuation that muslims, or migrants, are inherently violent and cause harm to people. i think you well know that non white people are more likely to be victims to violent crime than white people.

if you're referring to the horrific riots that are going on around the uk right now then the british people you are referring to are violently rioting against an attack done by a british person born in cardiff. these riots are only becoming "peaceful" as you say because of the brave people showing up for anti-racism and anti-fascist rallys all around the country, and they are helping to protect the immigration centres and the high streets and cities and shops that are being attacked by racists.

if your "local British people" are so intent on protecting this country then they shouldn't be attacking british police, british corner shops and looting (which is just stealing) from these shops.

by definition, i am certain that immigrants are people who come to live permanently in a new country. your arguement about them coming, "screwing up peoples lives" and then leaving is completely baseless and ridiculous. the people you are talking about would not be migrants, and therefore would not be an immigration issue.

these people that are causing these far right riots are not helping this country. they are causing a strain on uk based resources, like the police, and they are taking away time that these officers could be using to battle actual issues around the different counties.

i dont know what you wanted to get out of sending this message to me. but i do not need your hugs as i am not someone who is being targeted by these vicious rioters.

[beevean]

Some other thoughts, because I cannot and will not shut up.

This is Hector and Isaac's very second scene in the show. Hector ends up staring at Dracula's fireplace: he reminisces of his abusive parents, and how he set his house on fire with them inside. This immediately tells us, along with Dracula's speeches, what kind of person Hector is: despite his apparent softness that we'll see later on, he can be ruthless enough to kill, or at the very least punish, those who have wronged him.

Much later, Hector has been brought to the lowest point of his life. He's listening as the woman he has given his heart to is gleefully humiliating him in front of her sisters, describing in detail how he's going to be treated as a tool, as a dildo, as a pet, and only because he trusted the wrong person. Multiple times, in fact. He has been hurt by one too many people.

And by the time Hector's fate is sealed, the fireplace acts as the framing.

Basic cinematic symbolism indicates that Hector's backstory would be become relevant in the next season. As a child, he killed his abusers. And now he's in the clutches of two other people who abused his trust and good nature and stripped him of all freedom and dignity.

So, was Hector meant to set the entire castle on fire, and kill Carmilla and Lenore for what they did to him? And then it was changed to make the season artificially happier? Would it have been the narratively more sensible course of action?

Well, not necessarily. As fun as it is to imagine Hector taking revenge on those two pieces of shit, subversion of expectations can still be done well. And, to be fair, while Hector did kill his parents and is certainly not above murder in general, he seems to not be inherently violent in nature, even against someone who hurt him:

Carmilla has lied to him, insulted him, and coerced him into indirectly killing his master. He still speaks to her very candidly.

From what was shown until S3, Hector needs to be pushed to his absolute limit before he starts considering violence, but once he does, he has no mercy. The most obvious proof is his disastrous attempt to threaten Lenore:

Yeah, as ill thought as this was, I don't blame him for being this desperate, after the torture he was recently put through. From a certain perspective, it would have been nice to see a recreation of this scene, but with a Hector acting smarter, having learned from his mistakes.

However, to be honest, I don't think that seeing such a gentle character being brought to horrific violence would have been cathartic. It would have been tragic. It would have been actually a bad thing, a reason to be scared and to pity him. And it still wouldn't have addressed his utter apathy when it comes to keeping humans in a cage: hell, that act would have made him as bad as Isaac in S3.

With that being said, I will never, ever, accept how he was written after that scene.

I'm going to use an excellently written show to talk about the difference between taking the high road, and forgiveness.

Our good horseman here has been abused since infancy by his utter monster of a mother, who delighted in making him feel guilty for daring to be alive. Long story short, she is now old, weak, and senile to the point where she can't recognize him anymore. Bojack is planning to finally vent all of his anger for all she did to him, as soon as she's lucid enough - and who could blame him? By this point, no one would shed a tear for a woman who did her very best to ruin her son's life. Hell, some might have cheered when he more or less bullied her by "killing" her doll. No mercy for an abuser, right?

However, in a brilliant display of foreshadowing, the audience is made to suspect that Bojack won't actually get to tell his mother off. He already wasted the seasonal F-bomb here! And there are no freebies. So what's going to happen? Will Bojack simply be prevented from finally facing the woman who ruined his life, deprived by outside circumstances of the catharsis he needs?

No. He does it himself.

Right when he has Beatrice where he wants, in a terrible retirement home and finally lucid enough to recognize her son... right after she has committed her last unforgivable act and secretly poisoned Hollyhock with appetite suppressants until she overdosed... Bojack chooses to not hurt her.

He could have. She would have listened to him. The viewers would have understood. But instead, the last moment Bojack could talk with his mother is used to soothe her confusion and fear, and give her a comforting vision where she can feel loved and like everything is alright.

Bojack is not one to do selfless acts without getting anything in return, and he doesn't know anything about her terrible past that we viewers have witnessed through the episode that explain why she was so bitter towards her son: so this act of pity towards the person he hates the most in his life speaks wonders of his character and growth.

But he did not forgive her. The entirety of Free Churro is dedicated to Bojack's painful eulogy of Beatrice, where he makes clear that he still resents her, and the only reason he's sorry for her death is that now he knows that he has lost the chance to have a good relationship with the one who was supposed to care about him.

Beatrice was shown wanting to reconnect with Bojack, almost as an apology. But even if her personality didn't got in the way of a proper reconcilement, nothing she could have done would have made up for the pain she caused Bojack, and he's right in still remembering her as a cruel person. But still, we remember that one moment of kindness he gave her as one of the most powerful scenes in a powerful story, for the build-up and for the significance it has for both characters.

Bojack Horseman did a wonderful job in exploring the complicated feelings that arise from being a victim of abuse. It's not just hatred and desire for revenge: there is a deeper connection, and care despite everything, and regret, and longing, and wishful thinking, and all sorts of uncomfortable feelings that are hard to explain to someone on the outside.

Needless to say that Netflixvania only wishes it could have reached the heights of Bojack Horseman, and Hector is not conflicted about Lenore. He's not anything. He shows no tension when he talks with her as if they were friends (it's the very first scene we see with them after Hector cried over being made a slave in S3); he shows no resentment when he talks about the ring that she forced on him to make him a useful tool, as he was a mere "problem to be solved"; his one attempt to address what Lenore did to him is brushed off as a sick joke that he takes in stride; he shows no confusion in his attempts to reconcile the Lenore who talks to him like someone worthy of respect with the Lenore who sadistically took advantage of his vulnerability to trap him. And needless to say, Lenore doesn't exactly get a good justification as to why she thought to resort to rape by deception to get her way, leaving fans to scramble to find one that still leaves her sympathetic enough.

It's only when Isaac storms the castle that Hector finally shows the slightest twinge of resignation when he cages Lenore to allow him to do his thing, but also to protect the woman who apparently protected him as well. Only now there is emotion in his voice, care and regret at the same time. Once more, much like Alucard killing Dracula, it's a big emotional payoff to nothing - worse than nothing, even.

Hector leaving Lenore alive, even protecting her from Isaac, could have been him taking the high road. Instead of going on a rampage like subtly implied by the framing, he could have shown her pity, for understanding that for all her cruelty and manipulation, she too was just a pawn in Carmilla's insane scheme (admittedly the parallel intended by the narrative, but not addressed enough). It would have fit with the general idea that revenge is for children (the development that was given to Isaac), and perhaps, in a way, we can consider it the fitting punishment for Lenore: being precisely being forced to live and see what exactly she has become. If written well, the subversion of the revenge ending could have been brilliant, and poignant.

But there's nothing there, except some shallow banter wasted on Carmilla and dick jokes and some flat voice acting. There is no inner turmoil. Hector just likes Lenore for no proper reason, which, if we pretend the writing was not a rushed mess, implies that he forgave her off screen and now everything is all peachy between them. As if what Lenore did was that easy to forgive. And if it was that easy, regardless of whether it was forgivable or not, then why should I be impressed?

It doesn't speak of Hector's supposed good nature. It's not an admirable act of strength. The choice to let go was not pondered, because it was apparently never a choice. We are eventually left with a nothing narrative, one that doesn't address the events of the previous season except in the form of a joke, one that doesn't allow the characters to grow but rather to regress (because remember, Hector's big badass moment of trapping Lenore and cutting his finger is in the context of him wanting to bring back Dracula and letting himself be killed by Isaac), one that doesn't explore the complicated relationship between a kind mistress and her well-treated pet that was deceived into imprisonment, and one that offers no catharsis whatsoever when it comes to the end, where Lenore kills herself out of nowhere and Hector lets her go after at most one second of hesitation (I have my idea on how that scene should have went - oh look, another comparison with BH :P). And we're left with accidental but vile apologism, instead of the nuanced tale about abuse that we could have had. It would have been so easy, even with the time restraints.

And it wasn't even intentional. It's just sloppy writing hailed as something deeper than it actually is.

(I keep reading in the comment people who gush about Hector showing compassion to Lenore, instead of comparing Carmilla lying to her to Lenore lying to him. I get the parallel and I get the superficial sweetness. This story should not have happened after petty rape by deception: remove that, and all the bonding suddenly makes sense. I want to fix it so badly.)

[fandomn00blr]

Kieran

I’m writing this Alistair and Morrigan co-parenting situation in reverse order. Like most things I write.

Here’s a thing I just wrote today because I guess I needed a good cry...

https://archiveofourown.org/works/21300158

During Awakening, when King Alistair comes to visit Vigil’s Keep to give his “approval” of the Warden operations...he actually has another reason for visiting.

...

“You have a son,” Solona whispered, motioning for Alistair to come and see for himself as Anders pushed his way out of the little room, looking a bit miffed.

“Don’t get his hopes up...” Morrigan muttered, ignoring Alistair so she could glare suspiciously at Anders on his way out.

Alistair, on the other hand, was beaming. “We have a son?!”

Morrigan nodded slowly, trying hard to hide the relief that still flooded through her now that the effort of labor was past. She looked up at him with a hesitant fondness, and Solona smiled to herself before ducking back out of the room to give them a few moments alone and to speak with Anders.

He was waiting impatiently outside and he shook his head as soon as the door was shut behind her. "She says she doesn't need my 'Chantry magic'...I tried to explain to her that I am also an apostate, not some extension of the church, but --"

"But everything is well…?" Solona asked, unsurprised that Morrigan would refuse his attention or care. He was a stranger to her, after all. And the fewer people who knew about her and her child, the better, in her mind.

"As far as I can tell, mother and baby seem quite healthy. But the child has an odd...aura to him? He barely cried at all."

"I'm sure it's nothing to worry about!" Solona said cheerfully.

Far too cheerfully. It wasn't like her at all, and Anders raised his eyebrows in question. He knew she was hiding something.

The whole situation had been bizarre. The way she’d been hidden away below the Keep under cover of night. The way he’d been sworn to secrecy, “no matter what you see…” as though she’d been expecting something horrific to burst out of this woman’s womb. And now the newly-annointed King of Ferelden showing up for a visit, claiming to be the father. He knew Solona and her companions had been through some shit during the Blight, but he couldn’t imagine what all of the fuss could’ve been about if two of them had simply produced a child. Kings had bastards all the time. It was now public knowledge that this King was one himself.

"Morrigan is a rather old soul herself…" she added quickly as some kind of explanation, before shooing him along the tunnel that led back up to the Keep. “And a witch, so I’m sure she’s got everything from here…thank you! And remember...no blabbing about this to anyone.”

“You must think so little of me, Sol. Patient confidentiality is something I hold to be sacred.”

“I know you love to gossip.”

...

“Would you like to hold the child?” Morrigan asked as Alistair stood staring in awe at them like he’d just walked in on something he shouldn’t have. He’d been invited, he had to keep reminding himself. She’d wanted him to come.

“Can I…?” He already looked completely smitten with the son he was not to have any part in raising.

“If you can resist growing too attached to him.”

Too late, he thought, but didn’t dare to say it aloud, for fear she’d rescind the offer.

“As soon as I have recovered, I will be leaving this place. Solona has been generous in offering us this temporary sanctuary, but we cannot linger. Her healer already senses that there is something unique about him.”

"I have a Templar in my company who would happily deal with the mage for us,” Alistair laughed, only half-joking, as Morrigan passed the little bundle carefully into his arms. “Just to keep you both safe…" he cooed as the baby squirmed, sensing his apprehensions through the sarcasm.

But he fit so naturally into the crook of his elbow that Alistair’s fears and anxieties about the well-being of this child quickly gave way to something far more powerful. As he dared to look down at him, he was certain he was the most miraculous, perfect, wonderful, precious thing he’d ever seen.

“What shall we call you, little one?” he asked the baby. “Alistair, Jr.?”

Morrigan groaned. “He shall not be named after a Fereldan dog lord.”

“Of course not," Alistair chuckled. "There will be bigger and better things for you…”

“His name is Kieran.”

“Oh?”

“Do you not approve?”

“No. I mean, yes. I -- it’s a good name...I like it.” He peered at the infant and smiled. And his heart nearly broke at the thought of ever letting go of him. Stroking the knuckle of his pinky gently down his cheek, he whispered, “Kieran…”

The baby turned toward his finger, his tiny mouth searching hungrily for a nipple.

“He wishes to feed.”

Alistair sighed heavily. He knew this very well could be the last time he would ever get to see his son. Morrigan had said she would write, but visits were an unlikely possibility. Still, at least she’d allowed him to see him this once. He should be grateful for this moment. He didn’t dare to allow himself to hope...

He handed the baby reluctantly back to his mother and decided to give them some privacy as Morrigan pulled her shawl down off her shoulder and allowed the baby to find her breast. As soon as he was out the door, he felt ridiculous about it, and had half a mind to march right back into the room and crawl into bed with them, refusing to leave. But Solona was waiting for him outside, her own brows furrowed in concern.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes. I think so."

She tilted her head. She knew him better than this.

"No, of course not! But I suppose I will have to be."

“Are you happy you came?”

“Yes. He’s...perfect. I just...”

“He is pretty fucking cute,” she laughed. “Almost makes me want to have one someday…but Sweens will have to do for now.”

Alistair shook his head sadly, refusing to look up into her eyes. “I don’t know how I can go back and just pretend he doesn’t exist. I can't even hate her for this. Because she's right. Please don't ever tell her I said that...but --”

“I’m sorry, Alistair…”

“She promised she would write.”

“I’ll remind her of that.”

“And if she doesn’t...will you…? I mean, I know she’s not going to stay here with you, but I imagine she’ll keep in touch with you, if nothing else.”

Solona nodded. “I will.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you…” she started. “Without this…”

“I don’t even want to think about that. We are all somehow alive. That’s all that matters. He is healthy and he is beautiful. And Solona...”

"Hmmm?"

He finally looked up at her. “I have a son!"

It was then that the tears he'd been trying so hard to keep in check finally began to flow.

She could barely stand to see him like this. It was a brutal reminder of how young he was...how young they all were...and to have been through so much already. So much responsibility foisted upon them. And now this...

She pulled him into her arms and he buried his face in her neck. Like he used to on the really hard nights. But on those nights, at least she’d had Leliana with her to help comfort him. Or to comfort her. She somehow always knew what to say. What to do. To make everything seem less hopeless. And Wynne. And Zevran. And Shale. And even Sten.

She realized how alone all of them were, scattered across Thedas, each of them doing their part to save the world that refused to stay fixed. She actually longed for the days of the Blight, when they could at least all still be together at camp. Sobbing, and laughing, and eating and drinking, and taking turns comforting one another in the darkness.

"I love you…" he sobbed. "But I don't know if I can ever forgive you for this."

"I know. But saving you was worth it," she murmured into the top of his head, squeezing him tight as his fingers dug into her mail and clenched at desperate fistfuls of silverite. “Even if you hate me.”

"I...have to go," he sniffed, pulling away from her.

"Yes. It was good of you to check in on us here in Amaranthine, your Highness…” she winced. Even though she’d meant it as a joke, she knew it was still painful for him to hear the title that had been mostly forced upon him. Especially coming from her.

"I want to stay here.”

"I know."

"But I can't."

"She knows, too, by the way." Solona tried to assure him, though she didn’t really know if this was a comfort to him. “She doesn’t hate you, either.”

"What about Kieran?"

"He'll grow up knowing his father wanted very much to be a part of his life."

"How do you know that?"

"The same way you know…"

He wiped the rest of his tears on the sleeve of his royal furs and turned to go without another word.

Solona slumped back against the cold stone wall, wrestling her own sobs back into her throat.

She had some new recruits who had yet to undergo the Joining waiting for her now that they’d received the King’s approval of their operations here. Anders, obviously, she’d known since she was a child, and Nathaniel Howe, who had initially come seeking vengeance for the death of his despicable father, and somehow been convinced to join their cause instead. But she hadn’t even bothered to learn the others’ names. No point, really, until they’d survived the ritual. A dwarf from the Legion of the Dead, a Dalish witch, a corpse inhabited by a spirit of Justice...at least he was already dead, she supposed, with a shrug as she smoothed out her mail and steeled her expression before heading up to the Keep to prepare the Darkspawn blood she’d sent them out to retrieve with Oghren as their guide. Just as Duncan had done. Her job, she realized with a shaky sigh, now that she'd stopped a Blight, and made Alistair King, and sent Leliana to serve the Divine, and wished the others well on their own personal quests for atonement and absolution, would be to carry on where Duncan had left off.

[let-it-raines]

Second in Command (Epilogue - Part Nine)

Summary: Life as the "spare to the heir" isn't all that it's cracked up to be when you're the supposed screw-up of the family, but people don't know what really happens behind closed doors.

Rating: Mature

A/N: I don’t think I can ever truly express how sweet you all are for continuously loving this story and showing me all of that love! It’s my favorite universe to write in even when it’s difficult, and I’m glad you guys like it! Now, I feel like there’s something happening in this chapter that you’re all excited for...I wonder what that is :D

There’s a lot of fluff, and I’m sorry not sorry. 

AO3: Beginning | Current

Tumblr:  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14| 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 

Epilogue Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 

Tag list: @nikkiemms @resident-of-storybrooke @kmomof4 @wellhellotragic @ekr032-blog-blog @bmbbcs4evr @onceuponaprincessworld @jennjenn615 @a-faekindagirl @mayquita @captainsjedi @captswanis4vr @kristi555 @teamhook @skyewardolicitycloisdelena91 @branlovesouat @dreadpirateemma @alys07 @andiirivera @emmas-storybook @superchocovian

“I think…I think we need to go to the hospital.”

The words play in his mind over and over again. They were words he never wanted to hear again, not after having to take Emma to the hospital in New York. But she said the words again, almost exactly as she’d said them before, and this time it’s a good thing to hear them.

Except for the fact that he’s never been this bloody nervous in his entire life.

She’d woken him before four this morning, her face calm while he felt like his heart was going to leave his body, the pounding far too quick to be healthy. He should probably get that checked out while they’re here. He thinks it’s normal. It must be normal. How could anyone be calm walking into this? That seems…impossible.

But Emma is weirdly calm. She’s been calm this entire time. She’s obviously uncomfortable, but she’s calm. That likely won’t last when the contractions get worse.

They’ve been here for hours.

It feels like days.

“You need to stop pacing,” Emma sighs, looking over at him before looking back down at her phone, playing whatever game she downloaded while they were on the way here. “It’s freaking me out. I’m supposed to be calm. I’m not supposed to be extra stressed.”

“Darling, if I sit down I think I’ll start tapping my leg and shake the entire room.” “I think I’d like that better than the pacing. Actually,” she pats the mattress of her bed, “come sit with me.”

“Are you sure?” “Yeah, I’m going to be sitting here for awhile, and I want you to sit with me.”

He nods, stopping his pacing to sit down on the small bed, having to shuffle around until Emma’s situated in between his thighs and leaning back into his chest, her hair getting stuck in his mouth despite the braid. She has so much hair, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to how it takes on a life of its own and gets stuck in his mouth all of the time.

The other day he found a strand of her hair in one of the guest bedrooms…which she hasn’t been in for months.

“See,” Emma sooths, grabbing his palms, “this is so much better. It’s calm, relaxing. You’re not making me freak out.” “Sorry.” “It’s fine, babe. I just think if you hype yourself up anymore you’re going to pass out from exhaustion and totally miss the birth of your kid.”

“That would be disappointing.”

“Exactly,” she sighs, twisting her head and kissing his cheek. “We should probably call our parents now that it’s, like, ten in the morning. They don’t need to come right away, but I know that my mom and dad will literally drop everything and run to be here.”

“My parents won’t come until after he’s born, I think. And we have to tell my dad that you’ve delivered before anyone else too.”

“Yeah, and I don’t want everyone to stay the whole time, especially since no one is going to meet him until we’ve had some time alone. And the whole your dad thing.” “I think your mum might break down the door when she finds that out.” “And that’s why we haven’t told them yet. We haven’t given them time to figure out how to convince us otherwise.”

“Not sure if you’re evil or a genius.”

“An evil genius obviously.”

He chuckles before he leans further back into the mattress and pulls her back with him, pressing several kisses into her hair, not at all caring how much of it gets into his mouth.

They’re going to be parents soon, today most likely, and he can’t quite wrap his head around everything.

-/-

“You’re doing brilliantly, love,” he promises, squeezing her fingers. “So bloody strong.”

“Killian, I want the epidural.”

“Dr. Hudson said you need to be dilated more.”

“I disagree.”

“Emma,” he cautions, only to get the death stare from her. She’s covered in sweat, the hair around her forehead curling from the dampness while the rest of it is pulled back into her braid. She’s nowhere near ready to push yet, but this room is awfully warm, much warmer than it was this morning. “Okay, I know, love. I know you want to kill me and Dr. Hudson and likely Andrew at this point, but you’ll want it even more if the epidural happens too soon and it’s worn off by the time the actual delivery happens.”

“I’m just miserable, and I want my mom. Where did she go?”

“She and your dad went to go get something to eat.” “I thought we weren’t supposed to go to the public areas of the hospital.”

“They didn’t,” he assures her, pulling her knuckles to his lips. “Thomas helped them out, and they’re going to get something from one of the shops about a mile from here. I’m not sure which one, though.”

“Okay, okay, okay,” she says, repeating the same words that she’s been repeating as the contractions have gotten closer and closer together. “Baby, tell me a story or something. I can’t just lay here. Also, we’re never having sex again. I’ve said that before, and we’ve broken it. So when we do, I’m not going to be nine months pregnant in the summer ever again.”

“Whatever you say, darling.”

“I say to tell me a story. I don’t know what, just something happy.”

He hums, trying to think of something. He’s not sure what she’s looking for. Usually he doesn’t have to tell her stories, not anything besides how his day is, but he doubts she’d want a replay of everything that she’s been here for. She obviously doesn’t want to think about what’s happening right now.

“Okay, okay. Um,” he begins, still entirely unsure of what to say, trying to think of something, anything that will make her happy, “do you remember when we went to Switzerland? I’d finally convinced you to let me take you somewhere so we could have some time together without your parents in the next room.” “I remember, obviously. I also remember how it was basically an excuse to go to Switzerland for sex.” “Well, that’s their motto after all.” “I think it’s something about being neutral. With chocolate. And good snow.”

“No, no. It’s definitely Switzerland, the Sexier-land.”

Emma snorts, her chest rumbling with laughter, and even if he knows that he just told an absolutely horrific joke, he doesn’t care. It made his wife laugh when she’s uncomfortable and needing to be distracted. That’s all that’s important right now.

“I see we’re still telling awful dad jokes.” “Well, I didn’t have any stipulations to my storytelling.” He brings her hand to his lips again, kissing the knuckles. He wonders how many times he’s going to do that today. “Anyways, so I finally convinced my beautiful girlfriend to go on a trip with me, disguising it as a trip for her birthday.” “Yeah, I saw right through that.”

“I know you did, but I wasn’t exactly hiding it. So I took you there, and watching your eyes light up with everything that we did became one of my favorite things. I loved the way you got excited to see such heavy snow, the way you laughed even when you busted your ass while skiing, and I loved the way you forced me into eating grilled cheese.”

“I still can’t believe you don’t like it.”

“It’s the consistency, love. It bothers me for some reason.”

“Your loss.”

“Aye, I know.”

Emma smiles at him before leaning back in the bed, adjusting herself to get as comfortable as she can. He cannot begin to imagine what she’s feeling, and he so wishes he could take at least some of the burden off of her shoulders.

“So my point is, we got to go on this wonderful trip full of absolute joy, and, you know, I don’t think I was thinking too far ahead of myself to think about how things like that, well, we could do them forever.” “I’m pretty sure you’ve told me time and time again that we have to live here.”

“Well, you know what I mean,” he chuckles, shaking his head from side to side, “that we can travel, have adventures. One day we can take Andy to Switzerland and wrap him up in one of those puffy suits with a beanie on his head. He’ll look like the Michelin man, and it’ll be the cutest thing we’ve ever seen. Or we can take him to the beach. Our boy has got to love the ocean. I just don’t think there’s a way that he can’t, not with you and me as his parents.” “I bet he’s going to hate it,” Emma teases, scrunching up her nose. “Just to spite us.”

“Eh,” he groans, shaking his head, “I doubt it. We’ll save the teenage defiance for later, not so much when he’s a young babe.”

“We’ll just have to see.” Emma’s hands bunch up into the sheets while her face contorts, all of her features falling away into thin lines while she obviously feels another contraction. They’re getting closer and closer, and the doctors assure them that things are progressing just fine, that mum and baby are both doing well. That’s all he cares about. He just wants them to both be okay. “Tell me more plans. I like this.”

“Well, obviously we’ll have to spend lots of time outside, especially when we eventually move to the new house.” “We have to build it first.”

“Hush, these are plans, darling. They’re not fully fleshed out.” “Okay, okay. So we’re going to spend a lot of time outside?”

“Yes, we’ll have to let him roll around in the dirt like I did, and maybe he’ll be smart enough to roll his suit around in the dirt to get out of wearing the suit. Maybe we won’t make him wear one at all. Or maybe he’ll like to cook or paint. Maybe he’ll enjoy reading or be far too into video games. We’ll just let him be a kid, you know? Everything I didn’t get is everything he should.”

She hums, her eyes opening back up while her breathing regulates. “You think about all of this a lot, don’t you?”

“I do,” he admits, smiling down at her. He’s thought about all of this for years but especially since they found out Emma is pregnant. All he wants is to give his son and any other children they have, his love and as many opportunities as he can give them. “I know you do too. I just have so much I want to do as a family, so much that I didn’t get to experience as a kid. I figured why not start planning? Or dreaming really.”

“Because our lives literally never go as planned?”

“Well, I think right now is going according to plan.”

“True,” she laughs, stretching her arms in the air and groaning with the movement. “I was planning to be in a hell of a lot of pain. It’s always so enjoyable.”

There’s a knock at the door, and his head immediately turns that way only to see David and Mary Margaret walk in holding small bags of what he guesses is their food. They must have had Thomas go in and get the food for them instead of eating somewhere.

“Hi,” Emma greets them, a brighter smile breaking out on her face. She’s between contractions, her pain subsiding for a few minutes, so hopefully she’s more comfortable. “I’m so glad you guys are back, though I kind of hate that you have food with you.”

“Sorry,” Mary Margaret answers, handing David her bag and stepping toward them, kissing Emma’s cheek while her fingers twine together with Emma’s. “How are you feeling, baby?”

“Like I’m having a baby.”

“That’s about how you’ll feel,” Mary Margaret laughs, looking up at all of the monitors before looking at him with a raised eyebrow. “Has the doctor been coming in to check on you? Everything is good? Safe?”

“Yes, Mom,” Emma groans, rolling her eyes a bit. Twenty-eight and having a baby yet she can still talk to her mum like she’s a teenager again. It’s a special thing. Maybe Andy will have that teenage defiance as a baby. Toddler defiance, really. “I’m fine. everything is fine. I just really want the epidural. Oh, babe?”

“Yeah, love?”

“Didn’t you have something you wanted to say to my parents?”

She winks at him, and all he can do is open and close his mouth, not knowing how he didn’t realize he would be the one who’d be delivering this news. He guesses that he’s at least delivering something today.

“Um, well, Mary Margaret and David too, I guess.” He reaches up to scratch behind his ear. They’re not going to like this. He doesn’t even really like that tradition is one of the reasons for this, even if they’re leaving that out. “While we love you guys being here and you’re welcome to stay for awhile, Emma and I have decided we just want us to be in the room when he’s born. And we’re going to let him stay with us for a little while afterward, as well. Just so that we have some time with our son without distractions.”

“Oh,” Mary Margaret gasps, her gaze flitting between he and Emma. She looks disappointed, which is what he expected, but she’ll get her time with Andy. He feels guilty, but he knows that he can’t. He has to stand up for he and Emma. Today is about them and not Emma’s parents. “If that’s what you guys want, that’s fine. Right, David?”

David walks over from his seat on the other side of the room and wraps his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “Of course. It’s not exactly something you want to experience with a dozen extra people staring at you.”

“Because you’ve given birth, Dad?”

“There’s a reason you’re so like me, kid.”

“Weird,” Emma laughs, slowly sitting up in bed and moving to the side of the bed so she can wrap her arms around her parents as much as she can. “I love you guys, and I promise you’ll get to meet the little one after he finally decides to make his appearance in the world.”

“We can’t wait, Emma.”

“I can’t either,” she agrees, her eyes closing while her lips twitch in the smallest of smiles. “I can’t either. He’ll be here soon.”

-/-

Killian sees him before Emma does, the bloody, squirming, screaming, beautiful baby boy. The doctors show him to the two of them before taking him away and checking his vitals while cleaning him up. Some of the nurses stay behind to check on Emma, making sure all is well with her for the time being. He doesn’t know what to do, where to look, but he settles on whispering words of affection to Emma, letting her know how fantastic she did, how amazing she is for literally giving life. She just nods, letting him kiss her sweaty forehead, but her gaze is trained on the other side of the room, her eyes only leaving their son for the two seconds it takes for her to say that she loves him.

It’s…breathtaking and unreal. He thinks his heart might very well beat out of his chest for more reasons than whatever would medically happen if his heart really was pumping too fast. This is…he can’t. He can’t describe it. He doesn’t have the words. He doesn’t have a way to even explain to himself how he feels or what’s going through his mind. All he knows is that he’s in love with Emma and with their child.

That’s it, that’s all, and that’s everything.

Absolutely everything.

And after what has to be the longest few minutes of his life, Emma is handed a bundled up infant, his patch of black hair that Killian got a glimpse of covered by the smallest hat he’s ever seen.

How can someone be that small?

It’s terrifying.

It’s wonderful.

“Hi baby,” Emma sighs, a giggle escaping from her lips while her finger traces Andy’s body, caressing his face. She has tears streaming down her face, her voice the slightest bit shaky, but he knows that they’re happy tears. He’s so glad to see those happy tears. “I’m so happy to meet you. You have no idea. You look like a little red alien, but you’re so handsome.”

He lets Emma have her moment with their son, smiling down at the two of them while she whispers to Andy, sweet little nothings so different than her curses before. He’s a dad. Emma’s a mum. It’s…everything. They’re everything, and he hasn’t even held his little love yet.

But this isn’t about him. Not at all. Not for this moment. It’s completely about Emma and Andy. She’s carried him for nine months. She’s been the one to go through all of the highs and the lows, and watching her become a mother is the most incredible moment of his entire life. She deserves to have this moment, to get to revel in meeting her son for the first time.

She deserves all of the love in the world.

He’s said it before, and he’ll say it a million times more: his wife is a rock star in every way possible.

And he can’t stop thinking about what this means for her.

And also what it means for them.

Emma looks up at him then, almost as if she can read his mind. Her face is still so red and stained with tears, but he’s never loved her this much. He didn’t even think that was possible until now. “You want to hold him, daddy? I’m not really sure I want to let him go, but I feel like you should hold him.”

He nods his head, trying to calm himself and to keep from sobbing in happiness. He knew that he would be emotional, that he wouldn’t simply be a neutral participant in today, but he could have never imagined feeling like this. He can’t even describe it. He just can’t.

“I do. So much.”

It takes some maneuvering, the protective part of his brain screaming at him not to do anything wrong, but then he’s got their son in his arms for the first time and it’s glorious. Andrew’s got quite the pair of lungs on him, occasionally screaming out before quieting, and he knows in that moment they’re going to have their hands full.

Well, he knew it before, but he’s now got a face to look at and blame for keeping them up at night.

“Hello, lad,” he coos, echoing his own version of Emma’s words while he sits down on the hospital bed, making sure not to disturb Emma but positioning himself so that she can see Andy’s face. “Your mum is right. You are very handsome. I can already tell that you are going to be quite the charmer.” He twists his head to look at Emma, watching her tired smile. “We did this, love. Isn’t that crazy?”

“Insane. Absolutely insane. I still…I can’t believe he’s real.”

“Do you want to…do you want to hold him again?” “Yeah, yeah,” she sighs, her eyes watering the slightest bit. As much as he wants to hold onto Andy, he can see how much Emma feels the need to cling onto him. “I think I’m supposed to try to feed him. Right, Dr. Hudson?”

He’d completely forgotten about all of the nurses and Dr. Hudson, somehow zoning them out. They must have given them a moment by themselves, but he knows that they still have so much to do to make sure that everything is okay.”

“You don’t have to, Emma, but yes, but we do suggest you let him latch in the first hour. It’ll hopefully make it easier later on. He might be hungry as well. It’s instinct.”

Emma nods her head before looking back down at Andy, cupping his head against her chest and helping to guide him, stumbling a few times until they get it right.

“How are you feeling, sweetheart?”

“Like hell. I mean, I’m fine, but two out of ten would not recommend giving birth to others.” “Why the two?”

“Well, you get a baby, so at least part of it is worth it.”

He chuckles under his breath before leaning down and brushing a quick kiss against her forehead again before pushing back all of her stray hairs behind her ears while she stares down at Andy. “That’s a good point. I like having him.”

The first hour of Andy’s life is calmer than he thought it would be. Of course, he didn’t give birth, so it’s likely not for him to say. But he thought that the nerves would start, that it’d be a bit more terrifying, but as he sits and watches Emma hold their son, staring at him like she’s trying to memorize his face and every little twitch, he’s oddly calm.

Talk to him when they get to go home and maybe it’ll be a different story.

But right now it’s good, it’s perfect. The lack of crying definitely helps.

They go through all of the necessary procedures, letting the nurses continually check on Emma and on Andy. When they’re bathing Andy and making sure Emma is recovering as needed, he leaves the room to go talk to his dad on the phone so he can let him know that Andy’s been born and that everything is fine. His father may have given them some allowances in how they handle the next few days, but he has to know that Andy was born before anyone else does. Mary Margaret and David have been sitting in a private waiting room for hours, and they still don’t know that they have their first grandchild and that their daughter is okay.

But the sooner he gets this done, the sooner he can tell them. He and Emma decided not to let them know about any of the protocol, not wanting them to feel any less important. He’s lived the entirety of his life under guidelines like this, and while he’s used to it, he doesn’t want to subject the Nolans to too much. He just wants them to enjoy this. They deserve that.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Dad,” Killian says, taking a step back into the hospital room when a few nurses walk by and look at him, “You have a new grandson.”

“Congratulations,” Brennan laughs, the smile in his speech so obvious that it makes Killian smile himself. “How does it feel to be a dad?”

“Crazy. Absolutely insane. We’re a little late in telling you, but I figured you’d want to get announcement out soon.”

“I’d like to meet the lad myself too. Your mum, who is sitting next to me absolutely bursting at the seams, can’t wait either. But we do need to get that set up so we can visit.” Brennan sighs on the other end of the line. “Here’s your mother, Killian.”

“Hi, baby,” his mum greets, “I can’t believe you have a baby on your own. Tell me all about him. When was he born? How big is he? Does he look like you or Emma? Or both? Can you tell yet?”

He chuckles to himself, looking up at the other side of the room where there’s the start of a wail from Andy until the nurse hands him back to Emma swaddled in a blanket. “He’s a little under eight pounds, which Emma said explained why she felt like a giant. The fact that he was nearly two feet probably doesn’t help either. I’ve got no bloody clue where he gets all of that from. He’s pretty much just a, well, a newborn. But he does have dark hair and blue eyes right now. God, Mum, you’ve got to see the hair on him. I don’t think I even have this much hair.”

“Oh he does take after you then. You had so much hair.”

“Yeah,” he sighs, walking over to Emma and sitting down on the side of her bed until she scoots over and silently tells him to slip into the extra space, his arm going around her shoulder while she leans into his side, “but I do think he favors Emma. His nose doesn’t have the hook to it like mine. It’s more rounded. I don’t know. I think I have to stare at him some more to truly tell.”

“Just stare at him for me until we get there, okay? And fill out that paperwork so your dad and I can leave.”

“Will do, Mum. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

“You haven’t given them the go-ahead with the announcement yet?”

He shakes his head, putting his phone down on the table next to the bed before brushing his mouth over the corner of Emma’s lips and gently getting up from the bed. “I’m going to go do it right now, love, now that dad knows. And then I’m going to get your parents, okay? Are you ready for them?”

She laughs, shaking her head. “I think the world may break down if David and Mary Margaret don’t meet this little guy soon. And you’re right, babe, he does look like you but with my features. It’s kind of weird.”

“I don’t know. It’s kind of like having the perfect human being.”

“Those are some serious dad goggles you’ve got on when we both know that I already look like perfect human being.”

“I’m glad you haven’t lost your sense of humor since giving birth.”

“Never,” Emma laughs. “I’m too funny for that.” She waves her hand toward the door. “Now go get that paper and my parents, okay?”

“You got it, boss.”

-/-

When David and Mary Margaret walk (barge) into the room ahead of him, he absolutely hates that he misses their faces. If the quiet squeals they emit are any indication, he bets they’re priceless. But he follows them inside, immediately heading back to Emma’s bedside and sitting on the edge of the bed while Emma slowly hands Andy off to Mary Margaret.

“Oh Emma,” she sighs, looking between Andy and Emma, “he’s gorgeous. You are just gorgeous,” she coos, running her finger over Andy’s face, “and so handsome. Your mummy did so good.”

“How are you feeling?” David asks Emma, leaning down to press a kiss against her cheek. He has a brief thought of David once being in his position when Emma was born, and it brings him an odd sense of comfort. And the briefest of thoughts that one day his baby could be having a baby.

Slow your roll, mate.

“Tired. And sore. It’s…a lot. But everyone has said I’m doing great, that we didn’t have any complications, so I’m feeling a lot less stressed about that. I’m just tired and hurting a bit. ”

“Good. Not that you’re hurting, but that you’re doing okay despite that.” David moves to tuck her hair behind her ears, the pieces falling no matter what he or Emma do to it. “I’m pretty sure your mom and I have walked to Russia with how much we’ve been pacing while waiting. I can’t imagine the two of you in here.”

“Killian almost drove me crazy,” she laughs, leaning back against the bed again. “He would not stop pacing. I thought I was about to have to send in for a replacement or something.”

“Hey, I was not that bad,” he protests, moving back to sit with Emma and wrapping his arm around her shoulder again. Hopefully he won’t have to get up again too soon. Every time he sits down, he feels like he has to get up again. “I was nervous.” Emma turns her head and kisses her cheek before she rests her head on his shoulder, her eyes fluttering closed. He can’t even begin to imagine how tired she must be. She’s been up for nearly an entire day now, and it’s not like she’s simply been sitting on the couch watching TV.

“Do you want to take a nap?” he whispers in her ear, rubbing his hand up and down her arm.

“Yeah,” Emma quietly admits, twisting a bit so she can wrap her arm around his stomach, “but I was going to let Mom and Dad see him awhile. And he’s got to eat soon too.”

“Okay, but after he eats, let’s try to take a nap, yeah?”

“I’ll try.”

Emma does fall asleep eventually, Andy too, and if he could fall asleep while sitting up and watching them, he would. Instead he asks Thomas where he can get a cup of coffee and is lead to the doctor’s lounge down the hall, quickly fixing himself something even though he knows it’ll likely be terrible. He should probably eat as well. It’s been since this morning, and when he checks his watch, he sees that it’s past eight in the evening.

How has this day already gone by so quickly?

Has it really even been quick? Or does it simply feel that way now?

Wandering around the lounge, knowing that Thomas must have cleared the room first, he heads toward the window, peeking through the blinds. He can see the crowd gathered out on the street, journalists and news anchors mixed in with people wearing crazy hats and wigs. They’ve likely been waiting out there ever since the announcement went up, and for a moment, he feels almost sorry for them. At least, he feels sorry for the people who came to be a part of the celebrations on their own without it being a part of their jobs. They thought it would be a nice time to come out and wait, to be part of the moment.

But there will be no baby presented to them, no big greeting by he and Emma. No part of him regrets that Emma brought it up, that they’ve made this decision, especially now that he’s met his son. It’s even more personal than he ever could have imagined, and Emma was right about them keeping things to themselves, keeping their family to themselves.

Someone should probably tell everyone that there’s no need to wait outside, though. Maybe he should, just to appease them, but he won’t do it without talking to Emma first. Sighing, he takes a sip of his coffee and begins making his way out of the lounge and back down the hall to Emma’s room. She’s still fast asleep as is Andy, so he simply puts a chair in front of the couch and props his feet up, sipping on his coffee as he thumbs through his phone.

Abigail: Look at that handsome little boy! Congratulations, you guys!

Graham: Congrats, mate!

Ruby: Look at that little munchkin! OMG!!! I need to meet him and make him love me as much as I love him!

Ruby: ALSO he looks just like you baby daddy!

Will: Congrats! I’m covering the pub’s patrons for a pint in yours and Em’s honor! I’m proud of my girl!

Mum: So good seeing you THREE today! I hope Emma is still doing well. We’ll have to see you all again after you’re settled at home.

David: Can you send us more pictures? Mary Margaret is already printing some off at home. I think she’s gone a bit crazy.

Liam: Congratulations, little brother! Can’t believe you have a little one of your own! Alex and Lizzie are chomping at the bit to meet the baby!

Liam: Seriously. Alex wouldn’t go to sleep tonight because of it.

He quickly responds to each text, thanking everyone for their kind words before sending David some more pictures he has on his phone, which ends up taking longer than he thought with the way he gets distracting thumbing through them.

They made a damn cute baby.

“What are you doing?” Emma asks, making him jump in his seat and causing his heartbeat to pick up. He had no idea that she was awake.

“Replying to texts, love. Go back to sleep.”

“What’s everyone saying?”

“Congrats, they’re happy for us, he’s handsome. Just all of the run of the mill things but all true. Will says he’s proud of you and that he’s covering the tabs at the pub tonight.”

“He’s going to go broke,” she laughs, sitting up in bed until she’s slowly sliding off of the mattress, her feet touching the ground and sliding into her slippers. “But that’s so sweet of him.

“Where are you going, love?”

“The bathroom,” she answers simply, slowly making her way into the small room. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

“Do you need help?”

She shakes her head. “Not this time. Maybe later.”

He nods his head as she disappears into the bathroom. He can feel his phone vibrate a few more times, but he ignores it, choosing to finish off his coffee before getting up from the couch. He can hear Emma moving around in the bathroom, a few muffled curses traveling through the walls, but she said she didn’t need him. If she did, she’d call.

Instead of going to check on her, he gets up and walks over to Andy’s basinet, peering down at him. He’s awake, slowly blinking as he looks around and stretches his tiny limbs.

“Hi, little love,” Killian whispers, and Andy’s eyes immediately find him. He likes to think that there’s recognition there, that his son knows him. “You want to let daddy hold you?” He carefully scoops him into his arms, hoping that he doesn’t disturb him. “Yeah, you want to sit with daddy. I’m so much better than that little cushion.”

Andy coos the slightest bit, but he’s mostly quiet. The redness of his skin has calmed, the natural color coming in, and Killian absolutely cannot get over the eyelashes on this kid. They’re insane. Just, all of the hair is insane.

“I think you’ve got my hair, buddy. You’re going to look like a bear at some point in your life, and I’m sorry.”

“I like your hair,” Emma says from the other side of the room, slowly walking away from the bathroom and coming toward the bed, settling down on the mattress after she kisses Andy’s forehead. “It suits you. But yeah, he’s already got a lot of hair, doesn’t he? I keep thinking about that too.”

“I keep thinking about the fact that we have a baby. Can you believe that?”

“I can. I was there.”

“So sassy.”

“And proud of it.” She reaches over onto the table and grabs her phone, sliding the lilies on the table over so that they’re a bit further over. “Come cuddle with me, babe. I want my boys to sit with me without us being interrupted by our families.”

“I think if you even reference them you mum sees a bat signal in the air.”

“It’s called a baby signal and yes. She’s obviously staring out her bedroom window looking for it right now.”

“I think my mum is doing the same. She didn’t like that they could only stay for a few minutes.”

“They should obviously just work together.” “Aye,” he chuckles, the laugh bubbling in his belly, before placing Andy in Emma’s arms, hoping that it doesn’t make him fuss. There has been some fussing in this room today that he knows is only going to become more persistent. But these quiet moments are everything. Settling down next to Emma for what has to be the twentieth time today, he pulls the blanket Mary Margaret brought Emma up over their legs and hopes that no one is going to disturb them for the next hour. That’s all he asks.

He’s sure that’s all Emma asks too.

“Hey, so I was wondering something,” he begins, fidgeting his fingers in the air and tapping them against his palm.

“Are you going to tell me what you’re wondering or am I supposed to guess?”

“Well, I was thinking about all of the people waiting outside earlier, and while I in no way suggest that you and Andy go out there, I was thinking that I could simply tell them thank you for coming but that you won’t be coming out.”

“You don’t have to do that, Killian.” “I know that I don’t, and I’m not completely sold on it yet. I’m not particularly interested in talking to the media, but I think it would be nice to tell the people who came to congratulate us, just thank them and let them go home.”

She hums, resting her cheek against his while her finger rubs up and down Andy’s arms, his eyes fluttering closed. God, look at that face. It’s the most precious thing he’s ever seen.

“If you want to do that, you can. I think it’s a good compromise. Might get people off of our backs, you know, further draw our line.” Andy makes some kind of noise. He’s not really sure what it is, but Emma immediately responds to the small murmur and the way that he’s moving his head back and forth. “Hey, baby, hey. Are you waking up some more? Yeah? Yeah? It’s time to eat again, isn’t it? You eat a lot for someone so little.”

“Do you need me to move, love?”

“No, babe, we’re fine. This is the most comfortable I’ve felt all day anyways.”

Emma’s a natural as she adjusts her robe and gets Andy situated, and he can do nothing but be amazed, absolutely nothing. Words still fail him, but he’s kind of hoping that maybe he won’t need them.

“I love you, Emma,” he speaks against her ear, his lips brushing over the shell. “You’re bloody wonderful.”

“Thank you. I love you too.” She reaches her free hand up and pats his cheek, holding her hand there until he places his palm over her knuckles. “Is there any way that you can get me something good to eat? I’m kind of hungry, and this isn’t exactly the most pleasant thing in the world. I feel like some dinner would make it a million times better.”

“I can ask Thomas or Isabelle to go get something. I’m pretty sure your only options here are toast or something out of the vending machine I saw down the hall.”

“Yeah, that’s not going to fly. I need the food, babe.”

-/-

The first night is rough, worse than he thinks either of them expected it to be, but the morning does roll around eventually, the light peeking through the curtains while Emma and Andy snooze side by side in their beds. He could go home or fall asleep on the couch, but instead he takes a quick shower, changing into the clothes he brought for himself and cleaning himself up the slightest bit. He doesn’t think he can cover the bags underneath his eyes, but he doesn’t care too much at this point.

But he does want to go ahead and go outside, get this chat over with while Emma and Andy are sleeping, so he slips outside of the room, telling Thomas what he wants to do so that they can arrange security. It takes a few minutes, but then he’s walking out the front doors to the sound of camera shutters flashing and people yelling. It’s what he’s used to, but he does notice the way that everything quiets when everyone realizes that it’s not Emma and Andy coming out of the door.

He smiles and waves, going through the motions as he walks down the stairs, ignoring the cameras and making his way to the groups of people holding signs and flowers.

“Hello,” he tells a young boy who is obviously forced to be there by his parents, the look on his face absolutely miserable as Killian squats down to be at his eye level, “what’s your name, lad?”

“Paul Livingston.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Paul. How long have you been standing here?”

“For awhile. Mummy has been here longer though.” “Yeah?” he asks, looking up at the woman who has her phone’s camera trained on him.

“Yeah, we’re supposed to see a baby or something. Did you just have a baby?”

“My wife did.”

“Is she going to come out to see us?” the woman who he assumes is Paul’s mother asks him, her camera still trained on him. He guesses now is as good of a time as ever to just spit out the news.

“Actually, love,” he begins, standing up while scratching behind his ear and squinting under the sun, “Emma and the baby aren’t going to come out and see you all. She’s just been through an ordeal, and we’re choosing to keep our son to ourselves for personal reasons. But I just wanted to come out here and thank you all for being so wonderful. Truly, you are all so kind, and I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

“Does that mean we can go home now?” Paul immediately asks, and Killian has to stifle his laugh in his hand while he hears a few laughs around him in between all of the muttering, likely nasty words spoken about he and Emma. Things have gotten better on that regard, or maybe he simply ignores it more often, but he is aware that is wife rubs some people the wrong way simply for being her own person with her own opinions.

Fucking stiffs the lot of them, and he has no interest in entertaining their thoughts or opinions. They shouldn’t even have the right to have one on Emma.

But he assumes the worst of the worst aren’t here, so he walks around to a few more people, shaking hands and accepting gifts, thanking them for all of their well wishes for he and Emma. He shares a little bit about Andy, telling everyone that he’s rather big and has thick hair like you wouldn’t believe, but other than that he keeps to himself and spends most of his time being vague with his answers.

After thirty minutes, he waves goodbye, going back inside and hoping that most everyone will go home. He knows they won’t, but maybe Paul will at least get to go home. If he does, then, well, at least Killian accomplished something with that other than creating an unnecessary news story. He and Emma are about to get crucified, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t plan on checking any of it, and he’ll let Isabelle deal with everything.

It’s what’s best for his family, and that matters to him more than anything else.

So much more.

Emma and Andy are still asleep when he gets back to the room, so he busies himself answering the emails he didn’t bother looking at for the past few days. He’s not really supposed to answer them now, but he doesn’t have much else to do, all of his texts already answered. And as much as he should, he doesn’t want to read more articles about life with a newborn. He thinks it might be information overboard, especially because of how different real life is compared to the books.

The bones are the same, but nearly everything is entirely different.

But time passes rather quickly, Emma and Andy both waking up in opposite intervals. He helps where he can, changing diapers and walking Andy around, but when he wakes and wants food, there’s not much he can do for that other than hand him to Emma and help her get him situated. Emma’s nurses filter in and out of the room checking on both her and Andy, making sure that they’re both healing and staying perfectly healthy. They can go home as early as this evening, can stay a little longer if they want to, but he’s going to let Emma wake up from the nap she’s now taking and decide how she feels.

He thinks that the revolving door might finally stop moving, that the room will get a moment of peace, but then he hears his brother’s voice down the hall, three other ones following behind it.

“You have to be quiet,” Liam warns, obviously talking to his kids.

“And gentle,” Abigail adds in, “you can’t jump on Emmy, okay?”

“Yes, Mummy,” two voices promise before there’s a knock at the door.

“Come in,” Emma mumbles, waking up from sleep more quickly than usual. He sees Alex and Lizzie first, the two of them sprinting into the room before slowing down, their parents right behind them. “Hi, guys,” she coos, sitting up in bed and wiping her eyes before scooting over and patting the bed beside her. “Come sit with me. I want to hug you.” “Gentle,” Liam reminds them, and while Alex easily climbs up onto the bed, he gets up and lifts Lizzie up there, letting them both hug Emma from her spot.

“Is that the baby?” Alex asks, leaning over Emma and pointing into Andy’s bassinet. “That’s what came out of your belly?”

“Yeah, bud, that’s what came out of my belly.” “How?”

He feels the blush rise in his cheeks, his face heating, and he’s the only one in the room who manages to stifle his laugh, everyone else laughing while Emma runs her hands over Alex’s hair. “When it’s time for the baby to come out, he just does. It’s very special.”

Alex doesn’t seem to be buying it, his little face all scrunched up, but he seems to move on. “Is he coming home with us? Or with you, Emmy?”

“With me and Killian, Alex. He comes home with us.”

“Yay,” Lizzie laughs, the smallest of smiles on her face. She was looking a bit wary of Andy, so she’s obviously relieved that he’s not coming to live in her house.

“He’s beautiful, Emma,” Abigail finally says, taking step over and looking at their son. “Can I hold him?” “Of course, Abi. You’ve washed your hands, right?” “We’re all scrubbed up and down, little brother,” Liam promises, clapping him on the back.

“Younger,” he mumbles under his breath, rolling his eyes the slightest bit. “You two can hold him. Show us how experienced parents do it.”

Abigail carefully and easily picks Andy up, cradling him and talking to him as she walks around the room, making sure to show her kids the baby. They don’t let them hold him just yet, maybe when he’s a bit bigger than can sit with him, but they seem absolutely fascinated by Andy.

He doesn’t blame them. He’s absolutely fascinated with Andy too.

“He really is a handsome, lad, Killian. You guys did well.” “Thank you. It’s supposed to be this terrifying, right?” “Absolutely. I think it stops being terrifying for about a week, and that’s when you’re dumb enough to decide that you can handle another one.”

“Nice words of advice.” 

“I try.”

“Don’t listen to Liam,” Abigail insists, carefully handing Andy to her husband before she wraps her arm around Killian’s waist and rubs her hand up and down his back in soothing circles. “It is always terrifying, but they’re so dang cute that you just want another little face in your house. And you also convince yourself that labor was not all that bad. It’s pretty much the natural circle of things.”

“You guys are so encouraging.” Liam and Abigail only stay for a little under an hour, knowing how overwhelming it is to have four extra people in the room with them, and after a few more hours, he and Emma begin the process of checking out of the hospital, running through the last few tests and filling out the paperwork all while Emma showers and dresses in a pair of leggings and a sweater, not bothering to put on shoes besides her slippers. He doesn’t blame her. Actually, he supports her in this. He wishes he was wearing slippers too.

“He looks cute,” Emma says when she finishes dressing Andy in the jumper and hat they decided on for his coming home outside. “And very sleepy.” “He looks like he’s ready to come home.” He turns his head to quickly slide his lips over Emma’s, his hand staying at the small of her back. “Are you ready to go home?”

“So, so ready.”

[pyreo]

Fixing Incredibles 2: stuff I would do

Hey wanna hear some thoughts on what I’d do to tune up a movie I found slightly disappointing? There’s three main aspects I want to deal with which are

1. badly utilised new supers 2. iffy villain motivation 3. third act was a mess

So here’s a few things I’d wanna do to rework some of that

So first off, that’s a lie, there’s really 5 things that bothered me. this should not have been an immediate sequel where no time had passed. they actually had to backtrack on the character development from the first movie to have them do the same character arcs again. Helen’s back on wanting her kids to stay away from dangerous heroics. Violet’s reward for learning to assert herself, a date with Tony, is erased and she has to win him all over again. Bob, in a weird 180 from his first portrayal where he adored spending time with Violet and Dash during his training montage... suddenly struggles with caring for them, though that’s mostly the fault of Jack-Jack’s powers manifesting. 

So firstly, I’d do what I always imagined the sequel would be and push it a few years forward. Allow it room to change. Have Violet be a college student with Tony as her longterm boyfriend. Have Dash be a teen who’s still eager to save the world, but needing to learn that no danger is better than stopping danger. And make Jack-Jack a child, still in need of supervision but not a total cartoonish liability who necessitates long sequences of adjustment to discovering his powers, again, a retread we already saw last time. Every character arc was a re-do and the constant burden of dealing with Jack-Jack really slowed stuff down. (this was my 5th thing) Fix this by skipping forward. (Also, Violet’s hero moment being... learning that she has to set personal glory aside and babysit Jack-Jack while everyone else does stuff? Are you kidding me?)

We now have a different angle on Helen’s worries - she’s not just concerned about putting her kids in danger. She acts like it, she tells them not to start jumping at the chance to get into heroism. She tells them to apply themselves in school and get normal lives too, in case it doesn’t pan out. But this feels familiar, because it’s what she said in the first movie, and it’s a front. She’s worried about her kids growing up, becoming adults - Violet basically is one - and how she can’t protect them if they move out. She pretends it’s about their powers to cover this. This also refocuses the movie’s main character arc onto Helen like it’s... supposed to be, instead of putting it on Bob’s learning to parent and accept his wife’s super- importance, because despite being framed as Elastigirl’s time to shine, it’s not her story when she doesn’t embody a change of character. It’s still Bob. 

So, those things established:

1. Better villain ideology

Revenge because supers failed to save your parents? Basic. Also not that believable, because the reason the heroes failed to answer Daddy Business’s call is that they’d been outlawed and given new lives as normal people. They could not have come to the rescue; it was illegal. And a superhero enthusiast would have known that. And, hey, ‘criminals shot our dad and then our mother died afterwards of a broken heart’? Are you kidding me? Just have them both get shot, fuck it. Stop this ‘women dying because their man tragically died’ shit. It’s getting melodramatic at that point. 

No criminals, no revenge stuff. Have the Deavor’s parents die when they were in early teens. The brother and sister had to support each other as they started to navigate adulthood. This instilled in them the philosophy that’s common to the type of silicon valley startup wizards they parody - that anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and be hugely successful if they try hard, having come from orphans near poverty to multimillionaires. 

I want both of them, brother and sister, to be the villains together. You don’t really need to twist that. They both come off as helpful fans who want to put their money to use helping supers get back in the game. After all the biggest complaint keeping supers illegal is the property damage and lawsuits, and what fixes that? Money. They also both believe, as is Evelyn’s motivation for real, that superheroes are actually causing the public to develop dependency on them. 

I would set up the siblings as advocates of Randian objectivism in how they work. They think everyone can go from nothing to having everything. They think it’s a personal imperitive to be hard working, to contribute and make yourself a success, without relying on others. They think needing a safety net - superheroes, as a metaphor for social facilities - is a weakness that stops people from taking responsibility for themselves. I want to downplay the ‘tech company who makes tiny cameras’ thing, because that was far too modern day to fit in the 60s, and make it more about sheer money generation and the ability for the siblings to pay off debts and influence public opinion; essentially, that money can get you anything, glossing over the corrupt nature of that by claiming it’s doing the right thing to help the heroes. 

Winston still had a childlike adoration for supers as a kid, but it was killed when he grew up without parents who couldn’t BE saved, followed by extremely hard work in the financial sector, dealing with stress, and realising that he worked just as hard, but got no media acclaim, as people who just happen to have been born with powers. Both siblings invest in personal security solutions, aiming to eventually reveal a plan to put superheroes out of business by outpacing them with technology. To use the free market to provide ways that normal people can protect themselves, without becoming complacent, relying on dubious, flawed heroes, without becoming blind to danger because they expect to be saved. Their evil motto is basically ‘don’t expect anyone to save you’, putting the burden of responsibility on the individual to take care of themselves and be solely in charge of their success or failure. 

The superheroes, of course, represent altruism, saving people just because they can, just because they were given an ability and can use it to help anyone and anyone they wish. Making no judgements between rich or poor, personal backgrounds, social class... everyone can be saved just the same. 

The villains intend to gain the trust of the three main heroes - Mr Incredible, Elastigirl and Frozone - and push them into good public opinion by funding everything they do or break. Destruction is paid for, claims are settled. Heroes shouldn’t have to worry about it, they say. What they actually intend is for the heroes to become dependent on their company for money, just as they see the public growing dependent on supers instead of taking steps to protect themselves. They will set up a huge, climactic battle in the most expensive part of the city, after the heroes have been encouraged to ignore the financial cost to their feats. Then they’ll withdraw support, burying the trio in horrific debt to a level they cannot recover from, while also pushing a new line of tech solutions to make money off people’s protection. Technically, they want to help people, but they need to make sure the legal battle for supers will finally crush them out of work so they can get the maximum profit from their products. 

2. More cohesive new super team

It’s not that they were bad, I just felt it was jarring after the profiles Syndrome kept on his targets - all supers were completely normal people who happened to have abilities. The new guys were okay, but felt like oddball ideas and out-of-place mutants (the whole point is that supers are being pushed into normal lives and hiding their innate abilities. I dunno how you do that as an owl-man). I would make all the new guys young adults and teenagers. 

One, to point out the reality of the situation with supers. The new blood is going to be young. After what Syndrome did, nearly all adult heroes have been killed. I want to point out that, in order to bring back the idea of superheroism, we have to acknowledge that the ones who are going to do that are a generation down. Elastigirl meets them (we’re keeping Voyd obviously, but they’re all nervous youngsters like her, 15-22 ish). Elastigirl get confronted by her protective instinct - legalising supers means all of these kids going into danger. But, through talking with them, she realises how much it means to them, not having to hide who they are. They’re all like Voyd is. They were all shunned, pushed away, and ultimately hid their powers while feeling like absolute shit for being abnormal. There is a very clear real life allegory here. Helen realises that legalising supers isn’t just about throwing yourself into danger. It’s about allowing people to be who they are, and not shame them for something out of their control. They’re unpractised, they’re ashamed of showing their powers to her, and Helen mentally adopts every single one of them instantly. 

Helen gets a montage of training her super team to understand their powers better. She sees them become more at home with themselves after an early life full of restriction and even self-hatred. It’s not just about being cool, it’s about your identity, and Helen gets that and stops having reservations about legalising supers again. It’s bigger than her family. And the Deavors arrange and fund this, because they want as many heroes implicated as possible, they want both generations of supers wiped out and to never be able to return. Dependency is a crutch they would say, and humanity needs to learn to survive without it. We can keep Screenslaver as the fake villain setting up the big final battle, and we can keep his monologue about dependency on screens as a metaphor, but devolving into a diatribe against the nature of neglecting your personal success by vicariously watching someone else’s. 

3. The third act didn’t fit 

We already don’t have the dead weight of baby JJ crashing the pace of the story. He’s a young child, and we’re going to have Edna watch him (she can love it like she does in the movie, Jack-Jack can find her research enriching too). This time it’s Frozone, Elastigirl and Mr Incredible who get taken by mind control. The siblings are going to stage a fight between all three, pretending that superheroes are unstable, liable to turn on each other at the cost of civilian lives. That should turn the public against them for good, while causing massive amounts of damage. They use the Screenslaver persona to set up a showdown in the city, only to capture the three supers and turn them on each other. 

Not mind controlled? Elastigirl’s recruits. They just barely manage to escape it. They go to get help from their mentor, only to find the supers gone, and Violet and Dash seeing the carnage on TV and getting suited up to find out what’s going on. The kids get an introduction and team up together, heading off to stop their teacher and parents, new blood vs old guard. 

That results in six or seven barely trained supers going up against three extremely experienced ones, while they also have to try to minimise loss of life and property damage. While dealing with the trauma, for Violet and Dash, of being attacked by their own parents and not knowing why. Also, they get backup from Honey. Frozone’s wife. SHE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE IN THIS MOVIE. She was designed and then cut and that’s a TRAVESTY. She’s already popular, she was a breakout hit, let her be in this. She steps forward, no powers, regular civilian clothes, and helps the kids out with advice from the ground, picking them up when they fall, and huge vocal encouragement. She kicks ass because that’s what she fucking does. She helps direct the crowds to safety, she tells these kids to look at their super suits and believe in what they’re capable of. And it’s her who snags Frozone after his powers get strategically rebuffed, she grabs him and grabs his goggles off and fixes it herself. 

With another adult on their side and better confidence the new supers manage to pull Elastigirl and Mr Incredible back to reality too, which concludes Helen’s anxiety about their capability and the passing of the torch. They did it, they were responsible - there’s no casualties and with all their powers combined, they managed to avert damage better than Helen and Bob ever did. The adults realise that the kids can be trusted to handle heroism and Helen is super proud of her trainees-slash-children. 

That leaves the actual capture of the villains, which comes down to running from the combined might of all the supers who gradually cut down their ability to escape, culminating in Winston stopping Evelyn from getting away, and having a personal realisation. A resurgence of the boyish glee he once had for heroes stopping the villains. He foils his sister and turns both of them in, willingly, in a weird way fulfilling his dream of saving the day like his idols did. 

To round off, thanks to the rehabilitated (and not sabotaged) hero image, and the display of capability the young supers put on, supers are legalised again. Helen and Bob now work as teachers to the kids as part of a new government program to make sure kids with powers learn how to responsibly control them, Helen of course continuing her role as mentor to her massive new family, and Bob finally able to work without restraining himself. The government agrees that encouraging kids to train properly and learn how to avoid risk and costly situations is worth endorsing. Dash befriends some of the other teens in the supergroup and has friends he can push his abilities with, without it being unfair. 

Finally, it’s time for Violet to move out, because things must move on. Helen, Bob and Frozone (who gets an updated suit because come on) are accepting that they’ll eventually they’ll have to let others take their place. Violet’s going to move in with Tony and get a normal job, because she still yearns for a normal lifestyle underneath it all, but she won’t be far away and can always answer the call to join the family in the field. They all bid her farewell (”Finally maybe I can get some peace without Dash bursting into my room-” “I can run to your apartment in one minute 28 seconds, I checked!!”) but Helen isn’t worried any more, because she has renewed faith in how well her children have grown up and is accepting they don’t need has as much any more. And besides, she has tons more children who need her too and it’s up to her to help them find their true potential. 

Thanks for reading this way too long exercise in figuring out what I wanted from the sequel to one of my favourite films in the world... the original Incredibles was centred around heroes also just being human, who make mistakes and have to grow up and change, and the villain’s fanboy mentality was the antithesis to that. I would’ve wanted a sequel that understood the message of its predecessor in that people have to develop and grow, one aspect of which is letting go, but what we actually got seemed too static and unwilling to move away from what we had already resolved in the first one.

[hereticaloracles]

On Positivity (Or, Whatever Happened to Baby Helios?)

Hello Heretics. Let me begin with this- I love each and every one of you, and it has been my distinct honor to help you make sense of the changing tides we have navigated since I started back in 2011. I’ve been trying to write this article for months and I just…. haven’t been able to- still, I owe all of you an explanation for what has been happening and why I’ve been so silent as of late.

Here’s the Tea, sis- Last year, I started dating my absolute dream guy (Previously mentioned in the Pisces Fuckstrology- The Beach Bum with a Heart of Gold). Like… I cannot even come close to expressing how happy I was, for the first goddamn time in my life. I didn’t even realize how much love I was lacking in my life until I took the plunge and confessed how I felt to him, jumping into the terrifying abyss of emotion I had been avoiding. AND IT PAID OFF. I got the guy, and it was bliss. It felt like my soul had been holding its breath for over two decades and finally exhaled for the first time. I have been with over 1000 people (stopped counting years ago, no idea of the actual number anymore [Also its a point of embarrassment for me and not a brag. But that’s a topic for another day]) and not one of them ever made me feel the way I felt when I was with him, when it was us together.

Then came Thanksgiving. I vastly underestimated the effect of a Full Moon exactly on my natal sun. I was driving down to meet his parents after working third shift the night before and baking homemade roasted tomato basil bread FROM SCRATCH and on no sleep, after my family all used my hotel discounts to fuck off and leave me by myself. Super fun. So I’m wearing my nicest sweater and armed with homemade bread to impress his super conservative parents. 10 minutes before I get there I see I’ve missed like 5 calls from him. Apparently, they pressed him on why this guy they had never heard of was coming to their dinner and he had no choice but to tell them he was dating a dude. There was shouting, and he was disowned, and he ran out to go get drunk under a bridge. He wouldn’t tell me where he was so that I could find him and come get him, and be there for him. Hours later I finally hear from him, and I convince him to come up to me since he wouldn’t let me come and get him. This haunts me, as I should have pressed harder to get him.

I don’t hear from him for a week and I am STRESSED. When I finally hear from him I find out he had totaled his new car. His parents (the same ones who disowned him that same day) proceeded to use their money and the fact that he had no health insurance at the time to strike a devils bargain: He would break up with me, be straight, and go to rehab out in California. He had no choice but to accept, and I understand that. Even in a no-win scenario, you have to make a choice. That would be one thing on its own, but to add cosmic insult to injury I had an ex/friend who was brutally murdered two days before Thanksgiving, and had proceeded to tell him how much I needed him and that I couldn’t handle losing anyone else. Then I lost him. This brought up all the old emotions from another girlfriend I had lost.

All that together truly and utterly broke me. I went into a severe downward spiral, there was a suicide attempt, and I ended up in a mental health facility for a bit. Now, before any of you pull the “reaching out” line out of your ass, I did. To so many people. Any lifeline I thought I could grab. Quite a few of them talked about karma, cosmic destiny, and staying positive no matter what. Well, ill tell you that I was positive that I wanted to kick all of them straight in the teeth for dismissing what I was going through. From my perspective, every time I allowed myself to feel love for someone they were ripped away from me, and usually through death or tragedy. How is that the cosmic plan? How in the hell am I supposed to stay positive after losing my girlfriend and unborn children? The first girl I was able to come out to? The boy who made me feel like I was loved for the first time in my entire miserable life? Not to mention all those who I had wronged in my life in one way or another (pretty much everyone I’ve ever known, including but not limited to Artemis).

The hardest part about all of this is that I continued to (and still do) love him. Completely and utterly. My emotions never waned or wavered once. I just…. I wanted to die. So badly. I just wanted to stop hurting. I couldn’t imagine a life where I had to consciously choose to cut myself off from love because the common factor in this was me, so my love must be the toxic force. I had to be the problem.

In this community, there is a general narrative of “Love and Light”, where positivity conquers all. That mentality doesn’t hold up in the face of reality. Love and Light people tend to be middle-aged privileged white women who think slapping a Coexist sticker on their hybrid saves the world. Positivity cannot solve the world’s problems, but facing their horrific reality can, even if it shatters your soul. Love is not enough, but non-attachment just isn’t something we are built for as humans. We need to be better, myself included. We need to be brave enough to be authentic and real, not fake for likes and shares.

Anyway, that’s where I’ve been. I haven’t felt okay being a guide to the rest of you when I was so lost myself. I’ve always been driven by a strong sense of purpose and duty, and I take my responsibility to you all incredibly seriously- some days its been all that keeps me going, because I literally don’t have much else right now. I’m not throwing in the towel here, I promise to at the absolute very least finish the TNO’s and Centaurs (I have one left of each). I’m asking that you please be patient with me.

I sincerely love each and every one of you. Thank you so much.

-Helios

On Positivity (Or, Whatever Happened to Baby Helios?) was originally published on Heretical Oracles

On Positivity (Or, Whatever Happened to Baby Helios?) was originally published on Heretical Oracles

On Positivity (Or, Whatever Happened to Baby Helios?) was originally published on Heretical Oracles

[crystaiskiess]

Blinded with Love

AO3 Link Summary:  In order to be Phil's friend there were two essential rules 1) They must have a good dose of sarcasm And more importantly 2) they most completely and absolutely cannot treat him differently for being blind

Author’s Notes: This fic was written for the phandom big bang! It was a hard journey and I hope you guys enjoy the result

Check out the incredible art done by @cas-tellation​!!!

Artwork

Nothing sucked more than your closest - read: only - friend being away from school. Arguably he had more than one friend, mostly because Phil had a lot of acquaintances, some might call themselves his friends but he had two requirements for such a feat.

1) They must have a good dose of sarcasm

And more importantly 2) they most completely and absolutely cannot treat him differently for being blind, this was essential.

The second requirement disqualifies almost the entirety of his year level, minus PJ, which brings Phil back to his original point. PJ being away, completely and utterly sucks.

 He was sitting outside where there was always empty seats available, and because he enjoyed the way the cold air nipped at his skin. He ran his fingers over the small bumps of his book, reading about Elizabeth Bennet and her crazy family in Pride and Prejudice with a small smile. This book never failed to make him feel relaxed and amused, there was something about the way life used to work in those days that made him laugh. A crunch of gravel drew him out of his thoughts, someone huffed in what seemed to be a mixture of annoyance and exhaustion but it was impossible to tell without an expression to match.

 “Fuck I’m here half an hour early,” the voice groaned, Phil didn’t recognise it but that didn’t necessarily tell him anything, it was hard to place all the names and voices in his year level let alone the entire school. He allowed a small chuckle as the boy flopped onto the bench seat, clearly unaware of Phil sitting right there. Phil felt the bench bounce slightly as the voice, which sounded male, started in shock.

 “Oh shit sorry I didn’t see you there,” the person apologised with an awkward laugh, “I’m Dan Howell, I’m new here.” There was an awkward pause where Phil tried to guess whether or not Dan was waiting for a handshake, eventually he settled with a hope that he was indeed not doing so, and prayed that he was correct, yet another reason he needed PJ to be there.

 “I’m Phil,” he introduced himself with a smile, hoping he was looking in the correct direction, “is this your first day?”

There was a long pause and Phil internally cringed, realising Dan must have nodded, “erm yeah, I just moved here from Reading,” Dan added, confirming Phil’s suspicions that he had nodded.

 “Oh cool! Do you know anyone here?” he asked as he closed his book, sliding his hand along to where he knew his bag was so he could put the book away. He heard Dan huff a laugh of disbelief, Phil could imagine an awkward neck scratch which he executed many a time accompanying it.

“Nah, I’ve only spoken to you,” Dan’s voice betrayed a slight wobble, which Phil guessed meant he was nervous, not that he could blame him, first days must be hard.

Phil grinned at him, “Awesome! You can hang with me then, my friend’s away today so I needed someone anyway!”

 Phil could hear the smile in Dan’s voice as he responded, “Really?” Phil nodded and he felt Dan bounce with excitement, “That’s so great ah thank you so much,” he rambled, “I struggle so much on first days it’s just so difficult to make friends when you’re an awkward lanky teenager with no social skills you know?”

 Phil laughed loudly, “I totally get it,” he replied with a smirk, gesturing to his own lanky form. Dan giggled in response, Phil could hear that it was muffled behind a hand and he smiled warmly. “So first day huh?” He continued the conversation, tucking his bag beside his foot and leaning back so he could face Dan properly as he knew it made people more comfortable, “What’s that like?”

 Dan made a noise somewhere between disbelief and a groan of annoyance, “You’ve never had a first day?” He asked.

“Not since nursery,” Phil shrugged, “my whole year level moved together.” He smiled softly at the jealous whine Dan emitted, it sounded like he had buried his face in his hands.

There was a slightly muffled sigh and then Dan responded saying, “It usually sucks, no one talks to me,” Phil felt his face slip into a small frown as Dan’s tone turned dejected and slightly broken, “I’ve moved schools a lot I’m kinda used to it,” Phil could hear the self deprecating smile in his words as Dan shuffled on the bench, his shoes scuffing the gravel around.

 “Well I’m talking to you,” Phil offered with a weak smile and some cheesy jazz hands, he listened with a brighter smile as Dan laughed again.

“Yeah you are,” Phil could hear the grin in Dan’s voice, “but that’s unusual.”

Phil laughed, leaning back on his hand and winking “That’s me, unusual Phil,” he grinned as Dan laughed quietly, his feet still shuffling the gravel floor.

 “You own your originality though!” Dan complimented, Phil listened to the scuffles intently and guessed Dan was probably talking about the bright Steven Universe t-shirt he was wearing that day.

Phil shrugged with a chuckle, running a hand through his messy quiff, he was still adjusting to the new style but PJ assured him it was a definite improvement, “I guess so! Still, my originality has left me without a friend today until you,” he pointed out. Dan made a noise of agreement in the back of his throat, almost a huff.

 “Works for me, it’s nice to have someone to talk to for once,” the other boy sighed, he sounded almost nostalgic, Phil wondered how long it had been since Dan made a friend. Perhaps he was a ‘one close friend’ person like Phil was, or maybe he was more of a ‘spread yourself around’ kind of guy. Phil suspected the former, Dan didn’t seem like a social butterfly.

 “I can understand that,” he smiled warmly at the new boy, “So are you doing any of the Science subjects? I have a boring day and it would be nice to have someone in my class”

Dan responded almost immediately, “Yeah I have Psych second, with… Miss Mendie?”

Phil glowed with excitement, he had thought he would go lonely today but at least they shared one class together, “Me too!” he responded eagerly, hopefully not too eagerly.

That didn’t seem to be the case though as Dan sounded like he was bouncing as he responded, “Oh awesome! Here have a look at this and tell me if you’re in any of my other classes,” Phil listened as a bag unzipped and a piece of paper was thrust in his hands.

“O-oh I-” he started but Dan cut him off.

“Sorry it’s messy but I was in a rush when I got my timetable,” he chuckled. Phil wasn’t really sure how to respond, he looked down to his hands where he was holding the paper, how had Dan not noticed?

 He opted for changing the topic instead, “It’s weird that you don’t have to go to that principal meeting,” Phil hummed, he thought of all the other new students who had joined the school over the course of the six years he had attended there, “Every other new student did.”

 There was a long pause, a silence that stretched so long that Phil began to wonder if maybe Dan was miming something, or had just up and left, when suddenly an exclamation of, “OH SHIT” echoed through the courtyard. Dan must have been checking his phone, maybe emails? Or a text from his parents?

“I have to go to that! Fuck fuck fuck fuck thank you so much fuck fuck” Dan mumbled as he made a lot of scuffling noises, a zip of a bag made Phil realise he was getting up to leave, “Ah! My timetable! Did we have anything together aside from Psych?” Dan asked and Phil begun to stammer out an explanation when Dan interrupted again, “Nevermind sorry I have to go! I’m already late! I’ll see you in Psych?”

Phil laughed a little at the irony, calling out to the retreating footsteps, “See you then!”

 ~-~-~

 To say Dan was having the best first day of his life would be the understatement of the century, he grinned to himself as he slipped into his seat first period. Still taken aback by the fact that he had managed to make a new friend within the first few minutes, something he had never achieved before. Even the teacher forcing him to stand and deliver an awkward introduction wasn’t enough to bring down his mood. Phil was one of the nicest people Dan had ever met, with laughing blue eyes and a bright smile he was the epitome of welcoming, combined with his friendly banter there was nothing Dan could be unhappy about.

There was something that confused him, the way Phil would occasionally look in slightly the wrong direction, and didn’t respond to any nodding or other non-verbal communication, but that wasn’t enough for Dan to really have any concerns, as he said, he rarely made new friends on the first day.

 His hand twitched towards his phone, it was digging into his side through the side pocket in his jeans, “probably not the best impression to make on my new teachers,” he mumbled to himself as he opened his text book with a sigh. The urge to text Louise, his childhood friend from home, and tell her all about Phil was incredibly strong however. He opted instead to doodle horrifically drawn stick figures on the side of his page, keeping his ears listening to the teacher.

 Mr Marshall was a balding thin man who appeared to ramble often and didn’t seem to notice students listening to music and chattering at the back of the classroom. He continued to drone on, and Dan felt his eyes grow hazy as he listened, man this guy was boring. He found himself thinking more about his interaction with Phil instead. The boy was a beacon of light, he had seemed ridiculously eager to invite Dan to sit with him, which was surprising since Dan figured someone as caring and fascinating as him should have had loads of friends. Not that Dan was complaining, he was more than happy to sit with Phil that lunch period, and as many in the future as he would be allowed in all honesty. In fact, he was already watching the clock in anticipation for the next period. Maybe it was the excitement, or the longing to talk to someone but the clock seemed to tick slower than usual.

 Twenty minutes and thirty two seconds to go.

Thirty one seconds.

Thirty seconds…

 ~-~-~

 Phil stared in the direction of the door, he could have sworn this was the class Dan had said they shared. Maybe he had heard wrong, it had happened rather quickly in the end, and Dan had showed him the timetable but Phil hadn’t had time to explain before the other boy had taken off to his meeting.

 He shrugged and listened in interest as the class bustled around him, people scraping their chairs along the ground, presumably to chat with their friends before the teacher arrived. Chatter echoed around the room and Phil sat in silence, his fingers tracing shapes on the desk absentmindedly. He didn’t mind the silence, finding a familiar comfort in trying to differentiate between the voices of his peers, however with the uncomfortable voice in the back of his mind telling him that Dan was in the room but had decided sitting with the blind kid wasn’t worth it he was struggling to find his usual enjoyment.

 He sighed in disappointment as the teacher announced her presence, hoping that maybe he had misheard Dan and they actually shared an English class, not a Psychology class. Deep in his mind he knew that he hadn’t misheard but he shoved that knowledge away and focused his attention on the class. Psychology was one of Phil’s favourite classes, his teacher was an energetic and fun lady who bounded around the room and made every part of the brain seem like an adventure with the way her booming voice excitedly told them new facts. PJ had informed Phil that she was a short lady, which amused Phil because she had so much energy he didn’t see how it could fit in a small person, she achieved it nonetheless.

 “Alright you crazy kids who remembers what we learnt last lesson?” Miss Mendie asked and Phil smiled to himself, settling into his chair and trying to force his brain to forget about Dan, he still had PJ and that was enough for him.

 As he accepted that thought there was a soft knock at the door, Phil listened as the class froze in their movements, presumably looking in the direction of the door as he now was. A murmur ran through the class, too quiet for Phil to hear what they were all saying but loud enough that he could hear the confusion in their tone. He huffed in frustration as he waited to be filled in, this was why he needed more friends.

 “Alright alright you chatterboxes!” the teacher regained the attention of the class with ease, Phil could imagine her huge arm movements and bright smile as she silenced the classroom, “We have a new student joining our class! This is Daniel, or Dan?” She asked and Phil grinned as he realised his new friend had been late.

“Dan is fine,” Dan mumbled in his posh southern accent, and Phil tried to send him a reassuring smile, hoping it was in the correct direction.

He could hear the smile in Miss Mendie’s voice as she said, “Righto! Dan it is, be kind to him!” She said with a teasing lilt to her voice, Phil imagined her wagging a finger at them, “There’s an empty seat next to Mr Lester; Dan why don’t you pop there?”

 The class continued to buzz, a soft murmur like the hum of a bee’s wings, Phil listened as Dan moved through the classroom, mumbling apologies and scraping past chairs. Waiting for the tell-tale scrape of a chair being pulled back and Dan collapsing into it with a “humph.”

 Phil turned towards Dan and smiled at him reassuringly, being the new kid was hard enough Phil couldn’t imagine being late to a class on top of that, “Hi,” he whispered, taking the continued chatter of the class to mean Miss Mendie hadn’t resumed teaching.

“Hey,” Dan responded and Phil could hear the relieved smile in his voice, “seriously some of the teachers here can’t catch a hint fucking hell!”

Phil hummed in agreement as he twirled his pen in his fingers, unable to keep the relieved smile off his face that Dan was here, talking to him, “Who did you have?”

 Dan made a low groan noise that sent Phil into a fit of giggles, “Mr Marshall,” Phil snorted and he could feel Dan glaring at him, “Stop laughing he was so boring! Then he took me through everything you did this semester, as though I wasn’t at another school doing the same thing,” at this point Phil was laughing so hard he had to cover his face with his hand to hide his tongue poking through his teeth.

“Did he speak in third person?” Phil managed to get out between giggles, and Dan made a gagging noise in confirmation, Phil could imagine him pulling a face as he laughed.

There was a thump which Phil assumed was Dan’s head being smacked against the desk and a muffled, “Yes and it was so annoying, why does he do that?” Phil shrugged as Miss Mendie called the attention of the class back to her, sending Dan a smirk.

 There was something so fascinating about spending the class with Dan, listening to his sarcastic comments under his breath that Phil was certain he believed no one could hear. He also drummed his pens against his leg, a soft pitter patter that took Phil around fifteen minutes to identify. When the class came to a close Dan made an awkward coughing noise, his tone completely different to what Phil had been expecting. Instead of the loud brash, almost excited, sounding voice Phil had adjusted to, Dan sounded soft and nervous, “Hey…”

Phil looked in the direction of his voice, his eyebrows furrowed in concern, “What’s up?” He could hear Dan fidgeting, his feet scuffing the carpet floor backwards and forwards.

“Did I do something?” Dan asked eventually after a long silence, “Everytime I try to tell you something in class, you completely ignore me. I understand if you don’t like me, it’s fine, but can you just tell me?”

 Phil felt a pang of guilt as he listened to Dan, his voice was so small and insecure. He offered the boy a small smile and leaned down to his side, hand fumbling around for his cane, he could hear Dan start to walk away, clearly disappointed at his lack of response. With a click the cane flipped into its full length, revealing the long white stick that Phil used to navigate the school corridor. Phil frowned as Dan inhaled sharply and rapped the cane in the direction he heard the noise, he knew he hit his mark at the yelp Dan made in response.

“Don’t you dare feel guilty,” he stared at Dan pointedly, hoping he was glaring in the right direction.

 “Jeez I can tick that off the bucket list…” Dan murmured after a few seconds of awkward silence, Phil could hear the small smile returning to his voice.

He cocked his head to the side slightly and moved the cane to the ground, feeling around for the edges of chairs, “What?”

“Get hit by a blind person’s cane,” Dan joked and Phil grinned, shaking his head he began to walk out of the classroom. He mimed ticking the air and his grin widened even further as Dan let out a loud peal of laughter. “You still ok with me sitting with you?” He asked, Phil could hear him walking along beside him, books clunking in his arms.

“Duh,” Phil rolled his eyes with a smirk as Dan let out a small whoop.

 ~-~-~

 Dan could practically kick himself, it was so obvious! He watched as Phil’s cane glided along the hallway from side to side, informing him of potential threats and things to avoid. The way his eyes had quivered ever so slightly, always looking not quite at Dan exactly but slightly to the side, his lack of response when Dan didn’t say it verbally, he was so obviously blind that Dan felt like an absolute idiot. Admittedly Phil was the most upbeat person that Dan had ever met, his fun attitude and way he kept rapping Dan in the foot with his cane, was contagiously happy. He was clearly doing it on purpose, judging by the gleeful smile he had on his face. Dan shuffled along after Phil, his eyes scanning the unfamiliar halls as he followed the blind boy.

 “So this here,” Phil pointed at the large opening where hundreds of students were gathering outside, “is the lunch area, we all sit around and some weird people play sport,” he nodded his heads towards the group of students kicking a football around their circle.

Dan nodded, his mind running a thousand miles a minute, “What do you do at lunch?” he asked curiously.

 Students all around them were screaming and chatting, a group of boys all appeared to be working out together, winking at girls with every push up, Dan grimaced at the idea of it.

Phil shrugged, “Peej and I usually just talk, that’s my best friend by the way, he’s not here today. We sit over here, away from the football boys and the gym jerks.”

 Phil slid onto a bench, snapping his cane into a smaller, more efficient size and laying it by his feet. He then turned towards Dan, his eyes ever so slightly looking to the left, “Okay fire away,” he delivered in a practised bored tone, a small nervous quirk in the corner of his lips.

Dan felt confusion wash over him, and he very eloquently responded with, “Huh?”

Phil shrugged again, scratching the back of his neck, “This isn’t my first time,” Dan’s cheeks heated at the intimate wording, “Everyone has questions and I’d like to get them over with now so we can be normal friends,” Phil continued leaving Dan in shocked silence.

 “Oh… Were you born blind?” He finally asked, once the uncomfortable heaviness of the quiet seeped into him.

Phil shook his head, “I was in a bike accident when I was three, it destroyed my retinas and they couldn’t fix it,” Phil delivered the answer as though Dan had inquired about the weather, not his permanent vision loss, “I don’t remember a time where I wasn’t blind.”

“I’m so-” Dan begun, cutting off with a yelp as Phil kicked his leg out, striking him on the calf.

“Don’t apologise!” Phil glared at him, his striking blue eyes burning with stubbornness.

Dan shifted of the seat in discomfort, “right… Sorry,” he shuffled on the seat again as Phil chuckled at him.

 “I don’t want you to apologise, it's the person I’ve always been and I’m happy with who I am,” he shrugged, eyes downturned despite not having to deal with awkward eye contact.

“Right… sorry,” he smiled slightly, kicking his legs back and forward to stop himself from being nervous, “so what’s your best friend like?”

Phil snorted, rolling his eyes to the sky, “He’s a dick but he’s also the best. His name’s PJ, we’ve been friends since nursery.”

“Woah, so did he meet you when you… when there was… when you were-” Dan fumbled for words.

“When I was already blind?” Phil supplied, a knowing laugh in his expression, Dan scratched at his arm in embarrassment.

He nodded before remembering Phil couldn’t see that, “erm yeah?”

 Phil nodded, smirk still quirking his lips upward, “Yeah, but it never affected our friendship, that’s why we get along so well.” He seemed to say that pointedly, with the air of someone who had been disappointed by friends before, friends who treated him differently. Dan felt a surge of determination not to be like that. Phil was reeling Dan in, and he was okay with that.

“Well I don’t see why it should affect a friendship,” he said, and if his heart skipped a beat when Phil beamed at him, his whole face lighting up like a Christmas tree, he would never mention it.

 ~-~-~

 5 YEARS OLD

 Phil clung to the woman’s hand, it was sweaty and wrinkly, like the raisin his mum had found melting beside his bed because he hadn’t seen it. She had that same sickly sweet smell too, but Phil clung on anyway because he didn’t want to be left alone. He could hear the other kids shrieking with laughter and running around him, their feet making loud “boom boom” noises on the ground as they raced back and forth. He didn’t like school.

 “Come on Philip, you can let go of me, I’ll be right here,” the old lady told him again, at least Phil assumed she was old, her words whistled a bit when she said them. He could imagine a hunched over old woman like the witch his brother described to him, with her raisin skin covering her whole face. The thought made him smile a little, he wished Martyn was here now.

He shook his head sharply, clutching her hand even tighter, ignoring the ugly squelch noise it made when he did that.

Suddenly a young British accent spoke up, “Why’re you holding onto her hand?” the kid asked, Phil jumped a little in shock, turning his head to try to locate the noise, “I’m here,” the voice said again and Phil swivelled slightly to face them.

“I’m scared,” Phil explained, his voice small as he ducked his head down.

The small voice made a “hmmmm” noise which bounced up and down as though they was nodding their head furiously, “You don’t need to be scared anymore,” the voice said with purpose - Phil’s dad had used that word and Phil liked it - “because I’m your friend now!”

 There was a strange shuffle noise and then the kid said, “My name’s PJ!” there was a long pause that made Phil feel itchy and shy, before PJ spoke up again, “My mum said that when you hold your hand out people are meant to shake it, it’s how you make friends.”

Phil squeaked in fear as the old lady took her hand away from his and guided it towards a softer more squishy hand, the same size as his. PJ shook the hand and Phil smiled.

“This is Phil,” the lady said, she must’ve been telling PJ, “can I trust you to look after him?” Phil followed her voice and tried to hide the fear he was feeling, PJ let go of his hand and he felt lost. On an island in the middle of nowhere with nothing to show him where to go.

 He let out a sigh of relief when his cane was placed in his hand, the long familiar metal comforting, he placed the large rubber ball on the ground and used it to locate PJ.

“Woah,” the word stretched out like a rubber band, “what’s that?” PJ asked, he sounded excited and Phil shuffled his foot back and forth in embarrassment.

“I’m blind,” he mumbled and when PJ made a noise of confusion he added, “I can’t see anything.”

 Phil waited for the kid to run away, it had happened before, people who can’t see aren’t as much fun to play with. Instead PJ surprised him, one of the best surprises, like the bestest birthday present in the world, but not on his birthday, “That’s so cool!” PJ shrieked, making Phil jump backwards a little in shock, “You can’t see me at all?” Phil shook his head and PJ gasped in amazement, taking Phil’s hand in his, “That is actually awesome because that means I don’t have to play on the playground anymore, the playground is boring but you’re going to be my best friend.”

 Phil followed in awe, tapping his ball along the ground to warn him of any possible dangers, PJ didn’t stop talking informing him of every little thing he couldn’t see, “There’s Melanie, she has poofy red hair and it’s amazing, oh wait you don’t know colours ummmmm, well her hair is like the taste of strawberry.”

 ~-~-~

 PRESENT DAY

 Phil woke up to a loud banging on his door, he groaned and rolled over. The bangs formed a familiar pattern, PJ’s morning knock, Phil sighed heavily and smushed the pillow over his head. “Go away!” He yelled, the noise muffled by the cushion of the pillow.

He heard PJ snort, “Are you decent?” was the only response and Phil groaned again.

“I’m only wearing boxers but- and you opened the door” he sighed, pressing the pillow further into his face, “leave me be, I’m wallowing in my pain.”

 PJ laughed, leaping onto the bed and jostling his best friend, “Come on lazy pants, we’re going to be late again,” he said, very unsympathetically. Phil growled low in his throat and pulled the duvet over his head. PJ poked him in the side relentlessly, a cheeky laugh adorning his annoyance.

“Leave m’alone” he grumbled, voice scratchy and deep from sleepiness. PJ continued mashing his finger into Phil’s sensitive points, his stomach, neck, back, basically wherever could be accessed. Phil let out a loud huff, kicking his legs upward as he sat up, opening his eyes finally and mocking a loud gasp of shock, “Peej, it’s been so long since I’ve seen you!”

 Peej sighed heavily in response, making Phil smirk at his joke, “Never gets old buddy, come on get ready, we’re gonna be late.” He shoved Phil off the bed, Phil stumbled slightly, reaching instinctively for his cane before pouting at his best friend.

“No really mate, I think you’re going grey, I can definitely see some grey hairs there.” Phil smiled to himself as he finally managed to coax a laugh out of PJ. He ran his hand along the clothes, feeling for the familiar scratchy material of his uniform.

 PJ flopped back on the bed, creating a whoomph sound, “Have you looked in the mirror recently?” Phil laughed, finally pulling his uniform out of the closet.

“Alright get out of here, you dick,” he waited until PJ closed the door behind himself with a clunk before he stripped off his pajama pants.

 Almost twenty minutes later Phil slid into PJ’s car, folding his cane as he buckled the seatbelt, “We’re going to get there right on time,” PJ huffed, the car shifting into drive with a groan of pain. Phil shrugged, pretending to look out the window with an air of nonchalance.

“You’re trying to look all cool and mysterious but you’re not turning your head enough so you’re just staring at the wall of the car,” PJ snickered, “So what happened when I was away yesterday?”

Phil sighed returning his head to the direction of his friend with a grin, “I made a friend!”

PJ made a strangled disbelieving noise, his hand flicking the indicator, “We’re pulling into the carpark,” he dictated, after thirteen years together he knew his best friend well, “no way, I don’t believe you.”

 “I did!” Phil gasped at the insinuation he couldn’t make friends, holding a hand to his heart as though he had been shot, “How dare you! I made friends with you didn’t I?” He pointed out and frowned at Peej’s snort of laughter as the car chugged to a heavy stop, “You need a new car,” he added while feeling for his seatbelt.

“First of all, how dare you Betty is the best thing in my life. Secondly, sure when we were five, and technically I adopted the sad, blind, kid.” The door slammed shut as PJ exited the vehicle, Phil pulled a face before following.

 “You didn’t adopt me, and I did make a friend, his name is Dan,” they marched into the school, the bell echoing around their heads.

PJ made an impressed noise, taking Phil by the elbow, “Come on slowpoke, if we don’t get moving we’re gonna be even later,” he pulled them forward and around the halls.

 ~-~-~

 Dan tapped his pen against his leg methodically, his palms slick with sweat, as his eyes scanned for Phil. He had seen him earlier, being tugged along by a dark haired boy with an uncanny resemblance to Dan himself, albeit more tan. They had marched past and seeing the boy, obviously PJ, Dan had frozen in fear, unable to speak up. He was semi grateful that Phil himself was blind and therefore hadn’t seen him, Dan the deer, staring into the headlights with statue like shock. What if PJ didn’t like him? Phil was, something else entirely, his own category of perfect.

 Dan stifled thoughts of soft dark hair, eyes as blue as the sky, and a blinding bright smile. It wasn’t the first time Dan had gotten a crush, definitely not the first boy either, but that didn’t mean he was going to allow it to progress. Phil was his only friend in this school, hell, in this town, he wasn’t throwing that away with a stupid crush, no matter how beautiful he was, so very very beautiful… He shook his head to regain his thoughts, returning his eyes to their mission of locating Phil. He knew if he wanted to keep sitting with his friend this lunch he would need to spot him himself.

 His eyes finally snapped on familiar dark hair and pale skin, Dan felt his heart tug towards him and he felt the urge to punch it, no feelings, he chastised.

“Hi Phil!” He called out as he jogged over, a pang of joy buzzing through him as Phil turned towards him with a bright grin, sightless eyes staring just slightly over his shoulder. PJ stared at him with an expression Dan struggled to read, it seemed to flicker between surprise, wariness, analytical and excitement.

“Dan!” Phil exclaimed, his arm grappling behind him before gripping onto PJ and tugging him forward, Dan almost laughed at the shock on PJ’s face, but didn’t want to make that his first impression on the boy, “This is PJ, the best friend I was talking about,” Phil introduced.

 PJ turned to Phil with a laugh, “We’re best friends? How’d I get stuck with you?” He teased, eyes glinting mischievously, Phil rolled his eyes, shoving PJ in the arm.

“Shut up you dick and meet our new friend,” suddenly Phil’s eyes darted over to Dan nervously, “you do want to be our friend right? I didn’t read this wrong? I do that sometimes and I-” Dan cut him off.

“Stop, yes I want to be your friend, I would… I would love it,” he tugged on his arm and stared at Phil and then PJ who was staring at him with that same expression. He stuck out his hand towards PJ, “I’m Dan.”

 PJ’s expression softened slightly, although he still looked as though he was scanning Dan, picking apart the different fidgets and quirks of his soul, from the small curl that circled his ear, to the way his teeth were toying with his lip. Finally he took Dan’s hand, a smirk quirking at his lips, “PJ,” he said simply. Phil furrowed his eyebrows in PJ’s general direction - off by a few centimetres - before turning to Dan.

“So you happy to sit with us?” Dan made a humming noise of agreement, “Awesome! I just need to duck to the bathroom, I’ll meet up with you guys in a second,” he walked away, cane gliding along the ground and smile lighting up the corridor.

 Dan only realised he was staring after him when PJ coughed, an amused smile pulling at his cheeks, “You ‘right there?” he asked, the smile turning more into a smirk as Dan’s cheeks flared up.

“Wha- yeah, yeah… I’m, I’m fine pfft I don’t know what… what, you’re talking about?” He stumbled over the words, tripping and slipping on them like a giraffe in the rainforest. PJ laughed softly, beckoning for Dan to follow him.

He had this aura around him that screamed, ‘don’t fuck with me but also dork is my middle name’, which was honestly more intimidating than a normal don’t fuck with me kind of guy.

 “Now,” PJ begun and Dan scrambled to fall in pace with him, “Phil can hold his own, he may be blind but that doesn’t stop him being the greatest guy ever. He deserves real friends, and he seems to like you,” Dan blushed further at that, PJ raised an eyebrow knowingly, “and from what I can tell you like him too. So don’t be a dick basically,” he summed up, falling down on the same bench Dan and Phil had sat at the day prior.

 Dan nodded, avoiding eye contact, “I won’t, I really like Phil,” PJ was staring at him, Dan could feel his eyes burning into the top of his head.

“Alright then, now you should know that I am basically Phil’s eyes, any faces you pull at him, any crazy bed head, I’ll let him know.”

Dan nodded in understanding, his fingers toying with a piece of string hanging off his uniform, “I’m not going to take advantage of him in any way,” he promised. PJ smiled brightly, any intimidating factor he might have had gone and replaced with a cheeky eyebrow raise, “also just because Phil’s blind doesn’t mean I can’t see you goggling,” he teased, leaning back as Phil made his way over, chatting to people politely, but Dan could see the uncomfortable wall he put forward, like a line of defence that he had never shown around Dan.

 “Erm no thanks Emily, my taste isn’t exclusively blind people you know?” Phil chuckled awkwardly, chewing on the side of his mouth visibly. The girl, Emily Dan guessed, shrugged carelessly her blonde bob bouncing around her shoulders.

“If you say so!” She chirped cheerily, “Let me know if you change your mind!” Phil nodded, his face screwed up in discomfort as he continued walking towards Dan and PJ.

 PJ sighed, rolling his eyes, “Emily at it again? Watch the rock,” He instructed as Phil’s cane swept past a rock unknowingly, Dan watched the two friends curiously. They had a natural comfort with each other, leaning into the familiarity like they had been doing it their whole life, and Dan supposed, they had. Phil sidestepped the rock with a clear trust, and shrugged, “She doesn’t seem to get that I don’t want to date her cousin,” he smiled in Dan’s general direction, “You’ll meet Emily eventually, she has a desperation to match everyone up and she’s decided her blind cousin is perfect for me. I’ve never even met the girl, not to mention she’s a girl,” he turned back to PJ at the end, clearly this was a discussion they had had many times before, judging by PJ’s knowing snort.

 “You’re not ready to start seeing all the ladies Philly?” PJ teased, Dan froze in shock, turning to watch Phil’s reaction. There was a pause, before Phil groaned, throwing his head back and allowing the groan to morph into laughter.

“Yeah I don’t know they just don’t really catch my eye,” he grinned, clearly proud of himself for the guffaw of laughter that erupted from PJ.

He nodded proudly, a smirk twisting his mouth, “Nice one mate,” Dan was aware of his mouth hanging open in surprised laughter. He knew Phil was comfortable with his blindness, but he hadn’t realised PJ and him joked about it so openly.

 Phil seemed to remember Dan was there and turned towards him, face still scrunched up with laughter and a hint of tongue poking through his teeth. A breath of air whooshed through him, swooping through his stomach and up into his chest, tingling like a soft drink had replaced his blood but warm like coffee. One thought pulsed in his mind, sending the blood in his veins pumping until it rushed in his ears.

 Shit I have a crush on Phil.

 ~-~-~

 Phil leaned over to PJ, the class chattered away around them, supposedly doing private study but for all Phil could hear it wasn’t likely. He tapped the table to get his friend’s attention, struggling to judge the gap between their two heads.

“What’s up?” Peej asked, Phil could hear his pen still scratching away at the paper, making notes for the lesson.

He wiggled his eyebrows, nudging PJ’s shoulder, “What’s he look like?” he could hear PJ snicker under his breath, this was a well rehearsed conversation they had every time Phil met someone particularly interesting.

“Who?” PJ asked with an faux innocence, Phil could practically see the laugh twisting his mouth. He groaned, nudging PJ with his side and snickering at the insulted gasp his best friend let out in response.

“Dan!” He hissed, raising his eyebrows to accentuate the point and making a big show of pretending to look around to check for eavesdroppers, “Is he as cute as he sounds?”

 PJ was still laughing under his breath but Phil hurt the pencil clatter to the table so he knew he had won, “Yes he’s got curly brown hair that perfectly shapes his face, like seriously he’s exactly your type, perfect hair for curling through your fingers,” Phil felt his cheeks warm as PJ nudged him in the side knowingly. He was trying to deny the crush that was already developing on Dan, but it was hard when he was just so funny, Phil felt his whole body relax whenever he was around him, like Dan contained a soothing presence in his voice. PJ knew him better than anyone in the world, he knew exactly what Phil liked in a person.

“He has a really sharp jawline like damn,” PJ continued, Phil could hear his knowing smile, he was aware of the way Phil’s heart skipped at that knowledge.

 “So essentially he’s perfect?” Phil sighed, slumping forward in his seat until his chin was resting on his hands. PJ huffed a laugh and Phil felt his hand pat Phil on the shoulder.

There was a pause before PJ said, “In terms of your type, yeah mate he’s perfect.”

Phil groaned in defeat, “I really like him,” he jutted out his bottom lip, “He’s so funny and easy to be around. It’s only been a day of knowing him, am I too cheesy?”

“Stop spiralling,” PJ commanded, flicking Phil on the ear to stop the thoughts, “Dan seems like a nice person,” a smirk made its way into PJ’s voice, “Why don’t you ask him to the formal?”

 Phil gaped at his best friend, or at least he let his mouth hang open in plain sight, "Ask him to formal?" He confirmed and at PJ's hum let out a guffaw of laughter, "Are you completely mad?" At PJ's lack of response he plowed onwards, "Not only does that set me up for potential and likely rejection, but I could lose the second true friend I've made in my entire life!" He realised he was shouting and lowered his voice, "I like Dan..."

PJ sighed heavily, the noise was loud and laced with an assumed slump of the shoulders, "I think he likes you too Phil, not just as a friend either. You can't see it, but you're an attractive dude and Dan looks like he is interested."

 Phil allowed this information to seep into his skin, he didn't want to get his hopes up but at the same time, that little shred of hope was tickling its way into his heart. There was just one problem, "He's probably straight," Phil groaned.

PJ laughed loudly, a proper heavy spout of laughter which caused murmurs throughout the rest of the class and forced Phil to look up from where he had slumped into his hands.

"He isn't straight buddy," Peej assured him, laughter still weaving its way through his words, "He is so definitely not straight."

 So maybe he had a chance? The idea was almost two nice to imagine.

 ~-~-~

 Dan found himself staring at Phil far more than he should be, his eyes seemed to be constantly drawn to the black haired boy. Especially his eyes, those sparkling blue eyes that couldn't see him staring, except PJ could and Dan was almost positive he was smirking at him. He drew his eyes back to his lunch with great difficulty, it was as though they were glued to Phil.

 "I'm going to go get a drink," PJ informed the two, Dan had begun to pick up on this habit of announcing his doings so Phil never had to guess. Nothing to do with Phil's blindness was ever a big thing, it was always just slipped into conversation as a joke, or little actions that Dan and PJ would complete to make things easier.

 If Dan was honest he was a little bit jealous of how at ease together PJ and Phil were, he was desperate to have that kind of ease and relaxation with another person. They just had this natural rhythm that they followed. Dan had noticed PJ describing funny situations that he was watching, Phil nodding along in amusement, it wasn't something either of them mentioned or talked about, but it happened all the same.

"So Dan..." Phil mumbled, Dan turned to him in surprise, Phil looked shy. His head was turned downwards towards the ground, as though he was trying to use it to gather courage, and his eyebrows were knitted in focus.

When Phil didn't continue his sentence Dan spoke up, "Yes?" he prompted.

 Phil's mouth opened and closed nervously and Dan realised he was probably staring at his lips a little too much, he diverted his attention to his eyes - which probably wasn't much better.Phil mumbled something so quietly Dan only heard a hum of noise, "Pardon?" He asked and smiled as his friend's cheeks turned an adorable shade of red. Could Phil be called just a friend in his mind? None of his friends made him as flustered as Phil did.

He was thrown out of this train of thought by Phil repeating his question a little louder, "Do you want to go to formal with me?"

 The world seemed to screech to a stop, "As a friend?" He asked to confirm, Phil looked even more embarrassed now, his cheeks were so red he could rival a tomato.

"It could be more than that... if you wanted I mean?"

This couldn’t be real, Dan could barely allow himself to even humour the situation, he must be dreaming, or misunderstanding. They’ve only been friends for a couple of weeks, and sure Dan had developed a crush on Phil almost instantaneously but that was irrelevant. There was no way Phil would do the same for Dan, not when Dan’s personality was so, well, lacking.

 “Uh sorry, have I read this situation wrong?” Dan snapped out of his shocked state by Phil speaking again. He was shuffling from foot to foot, unseeing eyes downturned and embarrassed.

Dan stumbled over his words hurriedly, “No ah sorry I just- I just got shocked u-um,” he hesitated, unsure whether he was understanding what Phil meant correctly [CONT’ LATER]

 ~-~-~

 Phil sat in the change room, brushing his feet backwards and forwards along the carpet, his sneakers trying to grip as he tried to relieve some awkardness.

“Okay so we want matching but not too matching?” Dan confirmed as he re-entered the change room, Phil listened as the curtain swished open and then closed again.

He nodded in confirmation, smiling softly as at least four hangers clinked onto the rack.

“Close your eyes,” Dan mumbled, and if the rustling of material was anything to go by he was taking off his shirt.

Phil let out a loud bark of laughter, “Seems unnecessary,” he smirked and relished in the sound of Dan’s bubbly laugh, despite being muffled from the inside of a shirt.

 Phil closed his eyes anyway as his… friend? Boyfriend? As Dan emerged from the depths of his shirt, “It feels weird either way,” he pointed out and Phil shrugged.

“I don’t mind,” he replied easily, pretending that if he couldn’t see the blush steadily rising up his face then Dan couldn’t either; he shouldn’t be thinking about how beautiful Dan probably looked. No, he wasn’t thinking about it, yes that should work.

 “Okay so it fits me nicely but I think it’s a weird colour?” Dan mused, his feet scuffing the carpet as he turned from side to side, “It’s like a blue-ish grey, probably would suit you more.”

Phil hummed in response, opening his eyes to more black, “What did you get as the matching one?” Dan shuffled around, clicking the hangers together as he moved the other suits out of the way.

“It’s a darker blue, with grey highlights,” he told Phil.

 Phil hummed in thought, taking the suit from Dan’s long fingers and holding it against his body, turning to show Dan the colouring, “You like?”

There was a strange hiccup noise, in between a gasp and a cough, “I like… um uh yeah I like very much,” Dan mumbled, Phil could practically hear the blush echoing through his words. He smirked and swished his hips slightly just to listen to the catch in Dan’s breath.

“Mmm okay sounds good,” he shooed Dan out of the room while he undid the buttons on the linen shirt, “I’ll try it on and show you,” he explained at Dan’s noises of protest.

 From outside the curtain he could hear Dan grumble, “Why did you get to stay in the room?”

Phil snorted as he poked his head through the collar of the shirt, rolling his unseeing eyes to himself, “Because I can’t see you,” he offered and Dan huffed, trying to sound annoyed, but Phil could hear him chuckling.

Once he had fully dressed he stepped out of the change room with a flourish of his arms, throwing his head back dramatically. His smile widened further as he listened to the surprised bark of laughter Dan made at his antics.

 “That really suits you,” Dan said softly, like he was speaking through a gasp, and then there was a pause before he snickered and mumbled, “suits you.”

Phil groaned, smacking Dan gently and rolling his eyes yet again, “That’s awful, never speak to me again.”

Just at that moment a pair of heels clacked into the room and Phil heard Dan swivel to face whoever was entering.

 “Are you boys alright in here?” Someone asked; who Phil assumed was a shop assistant, “Those suits look amazing on you, are you trying to match your dates?”

The air seemed to be electrocuted with uncomfortable energy, “Uh,” was Dan’s eloquent response. Phil scratched at his neck awkwardly, he could feel a blush spreading across his cheeks.

How could they answer that question? Dan wasn’t his boyfriend or anything, if anything this suit shopping was a first date, a trial run, but he wasn’t sure how comfortable Dan was with being gay. Whether he felt safe enough to tell strangers or not, Phil certainly preferred to keep it to himself where possible.

 Finally Dan spoke up with the most reasonable answer, “Yeah but these ones are perfect so we don’t need any help,” he sounded confident but Phil had a feeling that was an act. Was the hitch mid sentence just Phil’s imagination?

“Oh alright,” the assistant sounded almost disappointed but her shoes click clacked out of the room either way.

As soon as she rounded the corner Phil heard Dan dissolve into laughter, it escaped his mouth in loud wheezes, “That was perfect,” he snickered until Phil couldn’t help but laugh with him.

 ~-~-~

 Dan pulled at the collar of his shirt, he squinted at himself in the mirror and shuffled the jacket around until it was a semblance of smooth; or rather slightly less wrinkled than before. His curly hair was slightly tamed into a fringe across his pale forehead. He certainly didn’t look bad.

But will Phil agree? His mind supplied.

 “It doesn’t matter what I look like Phil can’t see it anyway,” he chastised his brain and fiddled with his hair a little more. Two raps on the frame of his door alerted Dan to his father’s presence before he was entering the room with a good humoured chuckle, “Stop fussing with your hair it looks great,” He instructed, pulling Dan’s wrist away so his hand was no longer mussing with the fringe.

Dan pouted at his dad and shifted on his toes nervously, “Do I look okay?”

 His dad smiled proudly at him, straightening the suit so it sat nicer across Dan’s shoulders, “You look amazing,” he replied, genuine kindness laced through his words, “Now let’s get going before you’re late.”

 The venue was incredible, how their school had managed to book a place like this was beyond Dan. Nothing was more amazing than Phil in that suit they picked though, he was standing with PJ, quiff too perfectly done to have been executed by the dark haired boy. They were laughing and Dan felt his heart skip two beats as Phil stuck his tongue between his teeth, blue eyes glinting and standing out against the grey colour of the suit.

He took a deep breath and walked towards the two boys, raising his hand to wave at them and grinning when PJ locked eye contact with him. He mumbled something to Phil and then Dan had that blinding smile facing him (almost facing him anyway).

 “Hi,” Dan mumbled as he reached them, feeling a blush seep across his face as Phil intertwined their fingers with an enchanting smile.

PJ nodded with a smirk, “Hi dude,” he offered a one handed salute of greeting, “How’re you doing?”

Dan shrugged, squeezing Phil’s hand a little tighter, “I’m good,” he replied before correcting himself, “Excited.”

 Phil tugged his hand gently to get Dan’s attention, Dan blushed heavier to find those unseeing blue eyes already looking at him, “It’s going to be okay,” Phil reassured him.

“I know,” Dan smiled back, stepping a little bit closer.

 They walked in as a group when PJ’s date arrived, the inside of the ballroom was even more lavish than the exterior. The tall ceiling decorated with cherubs and flower petals, hundreds of students from their school danced across the white polished floor.

 He found himself describing the room to Phi in all its’ glory as they walked in, it wasn’t even something he thought about anymore; only realising he was doing it when PJ smiled gratefully at him. He could almost imagine Peej handing him the final key, full trust of Dan to look after Phil, and that Phil would be there for him in return.

He smiled to himself, hoping Phil didn’t notice the slight stutter in his words as he thought about asking Phil to be his boyfriend

 ~-~-~

 The night had been going incredibly, Phil couldn’t help but feel relaxed and safe with Dan. He wasn’t usually a massive fan of social gatherings like formals, because he felt guilty for keeping PJ from socialising. Dan was different, he didn’t really want to spend time with anyone else, he seemed content laughing and dragging Phil all around the room. Describing the horrific suits and dresses some of their classmates were wearing, telling Phil about the few successful fashion choices.

 At some point they had made their way to a photo-booth, which was a total disaster but Dan had made this adorably soft gasp when he saw the photos and murmured, “We look really cute together,” so that was worth it.

After four hours they were huddled in the corner of the room, Dan was counting how many girls had taken their shoes off, cuddled into Phil’s chest and tracing circles on his knee.

 “Be my boyfriend?” Phil blurted out, he felt Dan still on his lap, muscles tensing. A wave of regret washed over him, he was too sudden, Dan wasn’t ready, he was a disaster-

His train of thought was cut off by soft, chapped lips pressing against his temple and a soft voice whispering, “Yes please.”

Phil turned his head until he was sure he was facing Dan, “Okay,” he grinned, excitement tingling in his veins and cheeks flushed with nerves.

“Can I kiss you?” Dan asked, and Phil’s cheeks burned further still, he had to hope that Dan was just as flushed as he was.

 “Yes please,” Phil replied, echoing Dan’s earlier sentiment , it felt like they were in a tiny bubble, the noise of their classmates and the music playing through the venue faded away as a gentle hand cupped Phil’s cheek. He felt those same lips press to his so gently it was like a feather brushing against them, he pushed forward, slotting them together until they were pushing and pulling together. Soft presses, harder, drawn out, sharp, the feeling left him dizzy and elated. They kissed until both of them were blinded with love. 

[itsbeenawhile7]

The absolution of Dana Scully in the aftermath of My Struggle IV: one pissed off fan’s grand manifesto

–also known as, “what in actual hell happened to Chris Carter?”

If you have not already read through this interview, courtesy of Avi Quijada and XFN, I am going to need you to start there first.

And listen: before anyone goes there, I am not analyzing the fuck out of this to excuse Chris Carter for the disastrous finale he just served up to us. Rather, it’s that there are a lot of us who are products of the Scully Effect in one way or another, and we’d like to feel good about her legacy.  We deserve to figure out a way to clean up this mess you left us with.

Some people write fanfic.  Me?  I do this.  Get some hot chocolate and pull up a comfy chair.

Rant rating: R, for language and possibly some implied violence against Chris Carter

Content warning: I mean…you saw MSIV, right? 

Did MSIV actually destroy Dana Scully for all of us forever?  Nah.  We just witnessed the apex of a once skilled writer complete his own demise.  We just witnessed a writer who got in way over his head, who was trying to articulate extremely complex, controversial ideas and concepts, and doing so in about the most tone deaf way anyone ever possibly could. Having read his interview with Avi Quijada, I now think it is absolutely fair to say that Chris Carter actually did have at least some idea about what the right motivations for his characters were.  But in a writing decision that will baffle me and the rest of the world forever, he did not heed the warnings of those around him, and convinced himself that his audience would be able to infer absolutely everything of import to his story, and that we didn’t need to see any of that stuff actually fleshed out on screen.  Sure, fine, whatever, Chris. Challenge accepted, here we go.

Let’s review. In the space of a scant few ridiculous hours occurring over the course of MSIV, Scully found out all of the following:

the child she thought was conceived miraculously with her partner was not, in fact, created as a the result of that union

she was medically raped and violated in order for William to be brought forth into the world

the being that she has conceived of as their son for 18 years is barely human: he is a shape-shifting, unstable lab creation, who is far, far more dangerous than any of the many forces that have been out to destroy him

William was created specifically by that fucking bastard Carl, and for whatever purpose Per Manum previously served in this universe, Dana Scully and the rest of us ostensibly should now assume it was to obtain fertilized embryos for the CSM to screw around with and deploy when she made the biggest fucking mistake of her life going off with him in En Ami

she is somehow pregnant right now, at age 54 (because Chris is apparently fascinated by perimenopause? or some shit like that?), after having not gotten miraculously pregnant at any point before in her extensive sexual history with Mulder

William directly and repeatedly said to both of his parents of genetic origin that he does not want to be protected, and that he wants them to let him go [quick break here: sorry, Chris, but there is no way that the CSM is the literal genetic father here, because Scully had a fucking AMNIO in season 8, and therefore you will neverrrrrrrrr convince any of us that this could ever possibly be the case]

And in the midst of all of this, Skinner is killed (maybe), her now compromised friend Monica Reyes is killed (maybe), her partner witnesses the murder of their son (maybe), and her partner kills his father (maybe), after having himself killed or witnessed the killing of dozens of New Syndicate operatives (definitely, because: exploding entrails!!!).

Two things stand out to me. Number one: this level of emotional trauma and upheaval is far, far too much for anyone to even be capable of putting up a coherent verbal response to in its immediate aftermath. Number two, to reiterate points Gillian Anderson and Avi Quijada both made directly to Chris: this “grand vision” or “Big Idea” of his should have had an entire season or two’s worth of episodes behind it if it was ever going to stand a chance in hell at working.  I do not believe that the simple act of making these specific storytelling choices is in and of itself the problem, no matter how I might personally feel about it. The X-Files has been telling us a story involving horrifying genetic, physical, and reproductive assaults on its characters since 1995.  We just, y’know, occasionally used to think about the aftermath of those atrocities in scripts and on camera, in episodes like One Breath, Memento Mori, or the Emily arc.  What is abso-fucking-lutely a BIG problem, though, is if your reproductive horror show is executed as poorly as it was written in MSIV. Full stop. 

I will argue until I am blue in the face, though, that Dana Scully is not destroyed by this ending, no matter how poorly written it was. Chris Carter simply didn’t let this character actually do any of what she should have been doing with this ON SCREEN, where we could see her.  We now know for a fact that Chris was aware that he was leaving all of this off screen, so what I want to know is…why?  No, really.  I really want to know the answer, here.  Why on Earth didn’t you show us, Chris?  Hell, you could have even gotten this done with one, or two, or six additional bloated voiceover monologues, since most of what went down in MSIV wasn’t articulated *~anywhere at all~* outside of post-mortem press conversations. (Exhibit A: the entire Monica Reyes sub-plot.)

As a parent myself, I cannot even fathom what it would be like to find out that your child was capable of doing horrific, terrible, inhumane things. That’s also a pretty relevant–if extremely uncomfortable–concept right now, one that could have been grappled with in an era in which we are beginning to finally engage with mental health, gun control, and domestic terrorism in very public forums.  We are made to understand thanks to Avi, that Chris Carter apparently loves using The X-Files to ask us tough questions that don’t always have answers.  So…why the hell didn’t he do it here?  I mean, come ON!  What does it mean to be the parent, biological or otherwise, of a child capable of these horrors?  I’m not saying that any of us have to like it, but as written in MSIV, William is a sociopath.  William is not a human being.  William is not anyone’s child anymore, and William is for damn sure not something capable of being protected.  William can only destroy, because that is exactly what Fucking Carl (trademark pending) made him for. Whether in the Supersoldier sense, or in the New Syndicate global-contagion-let’s-wipe-out-humanity sense, we have been told that the CSM made him to be nothing more than a tool to help execute his own post-apocalyptic needs.

So after 18 years, Scully suddenly and very traumatically has to process that William was an experiment gone wrong (or right, I suppose, if you go talk to Carl). After 18 years, this is the William we’ve got. Can you even imagine how much worse it might have been for Scully if she had actually been there the whole time, watching this happen?  William had a good childhood, he was raised by good people, and he still turned into a sociopath, and he tells us so himself.  Was Scully ever a parent to what William ultimately turned out to be?  That’s…actually a pretty damn good question, in this context. 

And the answer to that question,  according to Chris, is that Scully was the mother of the idea of William, the mother of the idea of a child who was miraculously created out of nothing more than love.  She was the mother to the ideas and imaginings that she had about William for 18 long years.  She was that mother during her pregnancy, she was that mother during his infancy, and she was that mother when circumstances erroneously convinced her to put him up for adoption, in a move that we were told was to try to give him the best life she thought she couldn’t ever possibly give to him.  She was that mother in Ghouli, pouring her whole heart and soul into the idea of her son William in that heartbreaking morgue scene. So, no, I don’t think it means that she instantaneously stopped loving that idea of her son, when the shit hits the fan in MSIV.  But it does mean that she understands that her idea of William hasn’t ever been the right one: the “truth we both know" was actually a horrific lie.  “William…was an idea, created in a laboratory…” is true in this universe, for better or for worse.  Dissecting what that means for Scully, just this one single solitary point alone, should have been granted an entire episode, not 10 seconds on a pier. 

“Scully, he was our son! He was our son!”

He was.

He was their son. For 18 years, they both believed that he was their son. I don’t think anything Scully stutters and stumbles to explain to Mulder in this moment suggests that she doesn’t actually believe that, or grieve for that. It mostly indicates that Chris Carter has no idea how to write this magnitude of dropped psychological bomb. I think he does know his own limitations, which is why it all happens off screen.  Thanks only to Gillian Anderson’s acting, it does appear as though we are witnessing a confused, traumatized Scully here, one who has been exposed to so much death and destruction immediately proceeding this moment that she can’t even find the way forward.  Gillian Anderson, thankfully, fills in the cavernous script hole, and gives us a Scully who doesn’t know how to begin to explain what she has been forced to understand to a now very visibly fracturing Mulder. 

This is not a mother suddenly throwing away her decades of love for a child just because she is getting a “do over” baby. And the only reason we even had to consider whether or not that was the case at all, is solely because of the steaming pile of inadequate shit dialogue that was written for her.

Let’s step back now and consider Mulder, and how his presence impacts Scully’s reaction. Mulder, who shocks the hell out of all of us when he says, “if I am not a father, then what am I?” in MSIV. We have gone an exorbitant amount of time watching this man, who devoted his life to finding his lost sister, seemingly refuse to engage in the same manner with his own lost son.  So, we could take this as an example of even more what-the-actual-Carter-fuckery-are-we-doing-now, OR we could choose to listen to what Chris tells Avi, and believe him when he says this is the hidden motivation that’s been driving Mulder all these years.  You know, off screen.  Because this isn’t at all yet another concept that needed its own entire episode to explore.  Exploding entrails, bitches!

Or, how about we also revisit a much better writer’s take on all of this? Let’s pick up adoptive father James Wong’s narrative, because he actually kind of gets how this kind of thing might work.  In Ghouli, Mulder tells us that we’ve had no idea about his state of mind on any of this. Not ever.  And we can infer that that was intentional on Mulder’s part. He’s doing it because he thinks it is what he needs to do for Scully’s benefit. There is no possible way that Fox-Freaking-Mulder, you punks, didn’t have some ridiculously big feelings about all of this. He’s been presented on screen to us as having sublimated his feelings on the matter since he found out about William’s adoption in The Truth. He wasn’t there to make the choice, and whatever resentment or sadness he may feel about what Scully did, he is swallowing it for her.  He’s standing right beside her, he’s just listening.  That’s his choice.

Also courtesy of James Wong: we know that Mulder has outright lied to Scully about his feelings about William in the past.  In Founder’s Mutation, he tells Scully that he’s had to put it all behind him.  James Wong does what a writer should do to communicate a character’s motivations, by actually showing us that Mulder has lied to all of us at the end of the episode, and letting us see Mulder’s dreams about what parenting William could have been. 

So yes, I am going to take Chris at his word that these really are Mulder’s feelings in MSIV, even though he failed to articulate those motivations appropriately on screen.  Look, many of us have been complaining for years that Mulder’s seeming non-response to his lost son seemed wildly inconsistent with everything we know of his character.  I will take the bone Chris has so generously offered us here as an attempt to rectify all of that.  I think coming into peripheral contact with William in Ghouli began to dismantle Mulder’s carefully constructed walls of sublimation, and by the time he actually gets his hands on him in MSIV, the flood gates have opened and cannot be closed again.

I have no trouble at all buying the narrative that the idea of being a father has quiescently been the single thing holding Mulder together for almost two decades.  Look, I am absolutely here for that.  I think most hard core X-Files fans are absolutely here for that, too.  We know Mulder pretty damn well at this point, and we know that the loss of his sister shaped him forever.  You even made him bring it up in IWTB after years of dormancy.  So, yeah, I don’t have any trouble believing that through it all, while on the run, while locked away and adrift in the Unremarkable House for years, and when ultimately left by a very lost Scully who couldn’t bear north anymore, that this broken man from a broken family did indeed secretly cling to the idea of being a father.  That for all of his failings and losses, he wanted to believe that he had at least had a part in making this miraculous child he dreams is out there.  That he could believe that William was, in fact, living an idyllic childhood, the kind of childhood that he himself never got to have.  For so damn long, Mulder wanted to believe all of that. Yes, Chris, for fuck’s sake, I BUY that, okay? As obnoxious and stupid as that written line is, having now heard it for the 4,000th time, this concept is right on for Fox Mulder.

[Another aside: that line is the one and only moment that David Duchovny loses me in MSIV. But OMG, as an actor who has had to say this ridiculous line every which way to Sunday? I can’t say that I blame him. No one actually talks this way!  There is no actual right way to play it without making all of us want to crawl into a hole and die.] 

Okay.  So Mulder watches his son die. The ideas and dreams that he has carried beneath the surface this whole time die along with him.  Scully sees all of this happening to Mulder, and based on what the Wongverse has established, she has probably not ever seen it look like this for him.  So, what we are getting here is that for this one instance, we are seeing Scully put her own feelings about William second to Mulder’s feelings about William.  Every other moment between them thus far has been Mulder putting his own feelings second to Scully’s feelings about William, right?  I do believe that Chris Carter is daft enough to think that Scully got “her turn” in Ghouli, and so in MSIV, there’s no problem at all if we only get “Mulder’s turn.“  (And apparently, we also have time for Ford Mustang’s turn.) That all plays into the nonsensical words coming out of Scully’s mouth at the end of MSIV. Scully can’t find the words to speak to the guilt and pain she is trying to absolve Mulder of.  How could anyone?

Listen to Gillian’s work, actually giving us some damn meaning here:

“William…William was–”

William was.

Ultimately, here’s MY truth: I hate how the William narrative turned out. I have hated every single moment of the William narrative beyond the end of season 8.  Existence absolutely could have ended the series in the way in which these characters deserved to have their hero journeys end.  And you know, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if I found out that Chris Carter secretly hates that this ending got away from him, too.  I mean, look, we know Chris is a lying liar who is lying in all of the press he is doing right now, as he tries to convince the world that this has been The Grand Plan All Along.  Never mind that this plan is contradicted by his own press prior to 2018, never mind that it is contradicted by all of the other writers and producers who worked on the William story at the time it was conceived, and never mind that it is contradicted by the simple reality that every zig and zag in the X-Files universe beyond season 7 is really the result of never knowing if David or Gillian were going to participate in the story anymore going forward.  So, I’m sorry, but bull-fucking-shit that you had any of this in your head when William B. Davis wrote En Ami, Chris. Why not just admit that handling The X-Files was kind of impossible when one or both leads were maybe not going to be involved in telling the story anymore?  We would all completely understand that, Chris, no one would ever in a million years question that.  Of course you might wind up losing your narrative thread under those business circumstances. We aren’t blind to how the entertainment industry works. 

I mean, there was never any hesitation on Chris Carter’s part to explain why all things had the intimations of a sex scene, not for one minute ever, so don’t try to tell us now that he just kept a lid on the truth about what role En Ami was actually fucking serving in this story for 18 whole years. Sorry, bro, I am not buying it.  When you really think about it, how can Chris Carter possibly not know that he blew it years ago with William’s narrative?  It is precisely the impossibility of navigating the logistics of telling a story far beyond the boundaries set by the involvement of the real people making it that drive showrunners like Vince Gilligan to give themselves a finite amount of time to tell it.  Chris (or the Fox network, or whoever you want to blame) didn’t do that, and therefore he wound up giving up at least 4 other possible endings to The X-Files over to the uncertainty of actors continuing to involve themselves in this project.  I really do wonder if that’s why he went down this particular path of turning William into a monster, and I wonder if that is why he seemingly worked so hard over the course of his Struggles to try to strip Mulder and Scully’s ties to him. Because this really wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen.

And so now here we are, hitting the do over button with a new pregnancy.  I have no doubt that this guy thinks that he actually could hit the reset button just like that, and magically get back to the original poetic justice that these characters were given in their 2001 ending.  He probably thinks that the fans would see this as a gift, even! I mean, shippers were heard, amirite?  But even the idea of ending with a pregnancy, now many many many years too late, isn’t ultimately the real problem. All together, one more time for the folks in the back of the classroom: the problem is, and will always be, piss poor execution. You could hand this exact story to a Penumbra, or a syntax6, or an Aloysia Virgata, and I have no doubt it could be told in a beautiful (if utterly soul-crushingly painful) way.

So, fine. You want this to be the narrative, Chris? Fine. I will fill in the Grand Canyon of plot holes that you left us. The fandom will follow your stupid bread crumbs, and we will imbue them with the motivations and meaning you claim to have been driven by, but inexplicably chose not to write into any of your recent scripts.  William was. Fox Mulder and Dana Scully have been letting him go, piece by piece, for 18 years.  He was not meant to be.  He was, ultimately, not ever theirs, even though he was created from genetic pieces of them. (Fight me, Chris, you can have that CSM created him, but FUCK NO WE ALL DRAW THE LINE AT CARL’S SPERM!)  We can even give this bleak, wasted moodscape a soundtrack, if you want, in the form of a song you chose 10 years ago for them yourself: I will fire up UNKLE’s “Broken” right here, right now.  

And OKAY Chris, I will even follow you down the rabbit hole of this new pregnancy, and I will take it in the spirit of the way I want to believe you intended it: as a way to desperately claw our way back towards getting the ending Existence gave these characters, the ending that was supposed to be their just rewards for all the nightmares they have lived through.  Scully and Mulder are alive, they are a family, they are going to get to finally have a real human child, okay, fine, it’s fiiiiiiiiiine. I will go ahead and imagine that Scully, somewhere a few exquisite and bittersweet heartbeats down the road from the pier, is running away from the FBI and blowing up the motherfucking car (the Mustang, please).  Scully is going to row a damn boat to an island paradise on her babymoon with Mulder, her vibrator, and a blobfish.  You once wanted all of that to be the post-script for your characters, Chris. You lost the thread. I get it, I really do. 

Look, I’m not a gifted writer or a gifted storyteller. I’m a Scully Effect scientist working in medicine, and I’m an overanalyzer at heart.  My creative outlets skew in an entirely different direction.  I am a woman, though, and I am a mother, and people with life experiences just like mine might possibly have had the perspective that could have saved your story, Chris, if only you would’ve consented to hear us out.

If I had been given the chance to help figure out how to crawl out of the William mess created by all those years of renewal-or-not uncertainty, here’s what I might have suggested to you, Chris: let’s make William a savior, not a monster.  Let’s make William an empath with the power to heal others.  Let’s reference Scully’s alien DNA, her chip, Mulder’s season 7 alien artifact brain shit, and let’s say that all of that came together and allowed for the possibility of superhuman recombinant DNA magic once those two people came together.  Let’s give William the ability to read his biological parents’ minds and hearts from afar, but have it be a benevolent thing, and not a painfully torturous apocalyptic thing. Let’s have William come back to Mulder and Scully having harnessed his powers for good, after the New Syndicate killed his adoptive parents as part of a failed attempt to take him out of the picture. Let’s give some concrete evidence that William’s adoption did, for a time, keep him safe, to absolve Scully of that guilt.  Let’s have him tell Mulder that he saw all of the same dreams about building rockets, and father-son TV nights and talk.  Let’s end the New Syndicate’s plans by letting Scully have some motherfucking agency, y'know?  Remember?  Let’s let her do it all like she used to in the glory days, and go be the scientist that she is. Let’s have Scully save the world, by distilling out some saving grace compound from William’s superhuman blood, or stem cells, or whatever the fuck you want to ask Anne Simon to give you, to fight against the New Syndicate’s planned viral apocalypse.  Let’s have Mulder and William vanquish CSM together; these two sons taking out this toxic, villainous “father” that’s been hovering over this whole show, and let’s have them reclaim the narrative of fathers and sons as something that is good, and positive, and right.

Where’s the writer?  I want to speak to the writer!

In the end, Chris, you didn’t do Dana Scully any justice on screen at all.  But your inadequate words don’t get to be the last words on the subject of Dana Scully, nor do they get to define what she means to us. You can’t ruin her, Chris.  She belongs to us now.  We’ll take care of her. We’ll give her the ending she deserves.

[lupinology]

DISCLAIMER: ANTI-SNAPE POST

IT’S ALSO REALLY LONG (SORRY MY DUDES)

Severus Snape grew up in an abusive household, which is something no child should have to go through. Until he met Lily Evans, he had little to no happiness in his life. When they did meet, however, he finally felt like he had something to live for. He had a friend, at long last. He told her all about the Wizarding World, and magic, and Hogwarts… He even got to go to Hogwarts with her - but then they were Sorted into different Houses. Not just any Houses either: Gryffindor and Slytherin, known rivals. Snape immediately felt part of Lily slip away from him.

Regardless of this, they remained friends and also became friends with people from their own Houses. James Potter, from Gryffindor, took a particular interest in Lily. His feelings were completely unrequited, as she paid him no attention. James and his best friend, Sirius Black, decided to pick on Snape and taunt him about his greasy hair and hooked nose. Lily and Snape did their best to ignore the stupid Gryffindor boys, thinking it would pass soon, but it did not.

In no way is the Marauders’ behaviour towards Snape - or anyone else they bullied - excusable. There is never a time where bullying can be excused. ‘They’re just boys’ or ‘it was just a joke’ are pathetic, primary school-level excuses.

Throughout all their years at Hogwarts, James and Sirius - along with Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew - bullied Snape, the teasing becoming worse and worse each year. James relentlessly pursued Lily, but her opinion of him merely decreased even more with every insult directed at her best friend.

Snape was not completely innocent, however. He had become good friends with some of the more ‘dodgy’ Slytherins and Lily was worried that he might become a Voldemort supporter like his friends. She warned him of this but he told her not to worry. She was wary of how his behaviour towards her had changed in the more recent years.

In fifth-year, Snape made the mistake of calling Lily a Mudblood. He immediately realised what he had done and tried to fix it, but this had been the final nudge for Lily, and she cut all ties with him. He was left with the Slytherins, wanting more than anything to undo his error.

Snape called her this in the spur of the moment and instantly regretted it. It does not change the fact that it is an extremely insulting and negative term, similar to the ‘N word’ when used by non-black people in modern day. He could have possibly made up for it, had it been the first thing he had done wrong, but because it was something that proceeded a long list of instances where he had ditched Lily or said something that sounded like something a Voldemort supporter would say, Lily lost her patience and stopped having any contact with him.

Two years later, Lily finally agreed to go out with James, and they later married. Snape - whom Lily had still not spoken to - grew infuriated from this rejection and decided to join a terrorist group who aimed to wipe out Lily’s kind (Muggleborns). As you do.

I can imagine that losing your best friend/the love of your life to the person who had incessantly bullied you for years was not easy. I can sympathise with Snape and take a guess that he would have been feeling hurt and agitated. However, this does not justify that joining the Death Eaters was the right thing to do. Telling someone to move on is a lot easier than actually being able to do it, and I think it’s pretty clear that Snape found it particularly difficult. I still don’t see how joining Voldemort was the right way to deal with this rejection.

When the prophecy is made that a boy born at the end of July will bring Voldemort to his end, Snape sets out to ensure that Voldemort does not harm Lily when he goes to kill Lily and James’s son, Harry. Snape does not, however, say anything about James (unsurprisingly) or Harry himself.

I think that if Snape had really loved Lily, he would have tried to persuade Voldemort that it was another baby born at the end of July. I don’t think letting the ‘love of your life’s’ child be murdered by an evil wizard is an act of bravery or love.

Also, letting an infant be potentially murdered? Downright disgusting.

After Lily is killed by Voldemort, Snape is stricken with grief and agrees to become a double agent for Dumbledore.

Would Snape have gone back to ‘the good side’ if it hadn’t been for Lily’s death? Probably not, given his behaviour up to this point. We can never know for sure, as Lily canonically did indeed die, but if you look at Snape’s character and his traits, you don’t see him as the kind of man to suddenly go back to ‘the good side’ and start working as a double agent - which is a seriously risky business - for no reason.

I understand that losing the apparent love of your life is very sad! He didn’t get together with her after years of trying to and never gets to redeem himself or make up with her, which is really sad, and I can completely sympathise with this. Even after losing her and having to watch her marry James, it is still really sad. HOWEVER (and I hate to put this however here but it’s me so I’m going to anyway) this does not mean that he can stay hung up on her death for a further seventeen years and take it out on innocent schoolchildren who have done nothing wrong (hence, innocent).

Skip forward to when Lily’s son starts at Hogwarts. On Harry’s very first day, Snape is already abusing his position of power.

He asks Harry - a boy who has grown up in the Muggle world and only recently been made aware of the existence of the Wizarding community - very difficult questions and then mocks him when he doesn’t know the answer to them.

One might argue that Hermione was also brought up by Muggles and had only recently been enlightened on the existence of the Wizarding World, but Harry and Hermione are different people. Hermione probably went to Diagon Alley the day after she got her letter and bought every book on the magical world she saw (which was probably nearly every book in the shop).

While Snape is a teacher during Harry’s time at Hogwarts, he is significantly abusive towards numerous Gryffindor students and has a clear bias towards his own House (Slytherin), which is something the other Heads of Houses do not possess (the bias, I mean).

The other Heads of Houses are fair and just, and do not let their personal loyalties affect the number of points they give/deduct. An example of this is when Professor McGonagall takes points off of members of her own House (Gryffindor) for their inexcusable behaviour. Snape deducts points from Gryffindor purely because he has a bad past with the House, seeing as it was the place where the boys who bullied him belonged, and the place where one of said boys’ son belonged; the love of his life’s son belonged.

Snape’s bias towards Slytherin led to him revealing a very personal secret of Remus Lupin’s to the entirety of Slytherin House. Revealing information like that is threatening to Lupin’s career and also highly unprofessional for Snape himself. It could be classified as gossip. And why does he tell Lupin’s secret? Because Lupin had participated in the teasing of Snape during their years at Hogwarts. Let go of those grudges, Snape, and grow up. Granted, his discovery of Remus’s lycanthropy was probably quite mentally harrowing, but he still should not reveal such information to his students.

I can understand that Snape would have been upset after Lily died, since she had been the one to ‘save him’ before they started at Hogwarts, and also because he claimed to love Lily, but I think that, at this point (thirteen years after her death) he should have moved on. It doesn’t look like he has even tried to find closure.

Snape is horrible to Harry, mainly because Harry reminds him of James, which is a completely pathetic reason to deliberately pick on a child who has done nothing wrong. Yes, it isn’t nice to be bullied at school, but this is not a reason to take it out on your bully’s innocent child.

Snape also bullies Neville Longbottom, who was another boy born at the end of July; the Other Chosen One. Snape targets him because if Voldemort had chosen Neville instead of Harry, Lily would probably still be alive. This is a horrible reason to abuse a child. It wasn’t Neville who decided to go after the Potters; Neville couldn’t help what Voldemort chose to do. I mean, Snape once threatened to kill Neville’s toad because Neville’s potion had gone horribly wrong and would poison Trevor (the toad) it was so bad. That kind of threat is just borderline horrific.

While we’re on the subject of Neville Longbottom, let’s talk about how his parents were tortured by Bellatrix Lestrange to the point of insanity. You’d think that Bellatrix or someone using the Cruciatus Curse would be Neville’s greatest fear, but no: his Potions professor was his greatest fear, his Boggart. That’s how poorly Snape mistreated these children. He completely abused his position of power.

When Draco Malfoy curses Hermione and causes her front teeth - which she is already self-conscious about - to grow excessively, Snape looks at her and says “I see no difference” which is an absolutely horrible and inexcusable thing to do to a fifteen-year-old girl who has never done anything that would be worthy of this kind of response. Snape calls Hermione “an insufferable know-it-all” and never chooses her in class when she quite clearly knows the answer to anything he asks.

Some people would argue that he picked on these kids so that Voldemort wouldn’t question his loyalties, but I don’t think Snape had to be quite so aggressive with them. He didn’t have to ignore a girl who obviously knew the answer when nobody else did to prove that he was a good Death Eater, did he?

In 1995/6, Snape mocks Sirius because Sirius cannot leave Grimmauld Place.

This behaviour is childish, immature and very unprofessional. I understand that Sirius was a large part of bullying Snape during their years at Hogwarts, which was inexcusable, as I have said before, but if Snape had moved on and not clung on so keenly to the past, he might have had a more pleasant adult life.

When he is dying, he asks Harry to look him in the eyes so that he could see Lily’s eyes.

This is just really creepy. It doesn’t matter if you loved someone when you were fifteen - you have to learn to find closure and move on. Especially when they marry someone else! Nothing was going to happen between him and Lily, especially when she was killed by Voldemort. I understand that it can be seen as ‘sweet’ that he held onto her for so long and never had eyes for anyone else, but for me I think it’s just him being unable to move on and being stuck in the past and obsessing over a dead woman.

Lots of Snape apologists (try to) use the argument that says “Of course Snape was mean! Just look at his childhood and schooldays! Who wouldn’t be a horrible person after all of that?”

First of all, yes, Snape did indeed suffer a terrible childhood. He was abused at home by his father and was not properly cared for by his parents; he did not receive the love and attention a child at those ages should have received. There is nothing that can justify this. I feel sorry for Snape when it comes to his childhood (before Hogwarts) because he had no friends and had no support from his family, therefore he was isolated and alone, which is a horrible fate for someone so young.

His schooldays were spent pining after his best friend and/or hanging out with some very dodgy people. I’m not going to criticise him for pining after Lily, as he was a teenage boy and such behaviour is expected. However, he knew full well that the boys he chose to be friends with were troublesome and supporters of the Dark Arts, but he did not think to stay away from them. These boys’ influence on him is one of the main reasons as to why he eventually calls Lily a Mudblood, of all things. The boys were prejudiced against Muggleborns and would go on to become Death Eaters later in their lives. He could have chosen to stop hanging out with these boys, which would have made a significant difference in who he was as a person later on in his own life.

Saying ‘who wouldn’t be a horrible person’ after growing up in an abusive household and suffering from bullies at school is invalid, and Harry Potter is a perfect example of why. He was raised by magic-hating Muggles who forced him to live in a cupboard for twelve years and sparingly fed him. He did not receive any love or the proper attention a child should, and probably didn’t hug anyone until Hagrid (and hugs are great, so). Then when he starts at Hogwarts - which he believes is somewhere he can finally be treated like a real person - he is incessantly bullied by his professor purely mainly because he looks like his father (although he didn’t learn this for a few years, and so was under the impression that his teacher hated him for no reason). Yet after seventeen years of abusive guardians and (during five of those years) a fascist Potions professor who was stuck in the past, Harry Potter is still a wonderful person.

To conclude I would like to say that I just don’t think Snape deserved the redemption JKR gave him, and in the end it doesn’t matter to me whether she intended for him to redeem himself or not, because I don’t think it was good enough. I think Snape is a brilliantly written character: very complex and extremely well thought-out, and Alan Rickman portrays him absolutely beautifully.  Having said that, I hate him with every fibre of my being and hope he is burning in hell.

TYSM for taking the time to read this and I apologise once again for the length. This is just over four pages, so well done for powering through that. Please reblog to promote awarenesss that this greasy slimeball did not deserve his “redemption”!

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

The Emoji Movie review

[NOTE: THE FOLLOWING IS AN OVEREXAGGERATION. PLEASE DO NOT WORRY OR TAKE HOW I SAY THINGS 100% SERIOUSLY. THIS MOVIE HAS NOT ACTUALLY MADE ME SUICIDAL.] 

This is it. The Emoji Movie. A film I and the rest of the world have been dreading. Today I have finally seen this film, and… it has drained me of all will to live. This is it; I can’t live in this world any longer after having seen this movie. This has to be my last review, because I can no longer live in a world where this movie exists.

 Is it because it’s so abysmally bad as all the reviews said? Is it truly the worst animated film ever made, an utterly soulless cash grab of a movie? What could drive me to my death like this?

 The fact that… I just… even after seeing it, I just can’t muster up the absolutely vitriolic hatred everyone else seems to have for it. It’s not even bad. It’s not even good. It’s just… meh. This movie is meh. And after getting so hyped up to see the worst animated film ever, this is… disappointing. Heart-breakingly, soul-crushingly disappointing.

So, what is the story here? Well, Ralph is a villain who feels out of pl- uh, sorry, Emmet is a LEGO man who wants to conform but ju- oh, um, pardon. Joy is an emotion who… okay, you get the idea. This film is nothing but a bald-faced, shameless ripoff of the plots of a dozen better films. The “Be yourself” message, the hero who wants to conform but learns to love being expressive, the journey to find oneself… it has been done to death, and done a billion times better. This movie is just every animated cliché ever. Fuck, the whole trailer revealed the entire plot and story arc in two minutes.

God… the worst thing, aside from the plot, is the main characters… But they aren’t even bad enough. They’re all so unbearably generic and trite. Gene is your average hero questioning his identity. He’s Ralph, he’s Emmet, he’s basically every goddamn animated protagonist for years and years, only with most of his personality excised and replaced with all the beats but none of the character. For an emoji with so many expressions beyond the one he’s supposed to have, he’s not very expressive. And even with all that, he’s just so inoffensively bland it’s hard to hate him. Hi-5 is an obnoxious comedy sidekick who contributes very little to the story and serves as a hindrance more often than not. But… he’s still got a few good jokes in him, and while he’s absolutely obnoxious and selfish, he’s still not as awful as he could be. Jailbreak is a ripoff of all the blue-haired action girls you can imagine, shamelessly cribbing Sombra, Chloe Price, Wyldstyle, and more, just subtracting anything that makes those characters interesting… and even then, she’s still not totally void of good moments. These three characters are who we spend time with so much, and they aren’t more than depressingly bland, generic archetypes. It hurts. Why couldn’t they just be absolutely, unlikably awful? Like, they all suck, but they just don’t suck enough!

And goddamn, is this plot filled with horrible, awful stupidity! We have Jailbreak spouting off terrible, hamfisted feminist messages by stating men take credit for things women say all the time, we have the human characters acting like words are uncool and emojis are the only worthwhile form of communication, we have the conceit that phones have firewalls and that internet trolls can just simply be deleted forever with the click of a button… oh, if only. There’s just so much that is unbelievably stupid and pathetic and poorly done, the whole story feels like nothing but a first draft that somehow got greenlit with no corrections done. And that’s not getting in to all of the blatant product placement, such as the cringeworthy portrayal of Dropbox as some sort of heavenly safehaven, Twitter ending up being a savior, outdated meme videos playing on YouTube, and the extended Candy Crush scene.

But I wouldn’t feel like dying if there wasn’t those few things of value, those things that keep me from letting loose pure unbridled hatred as so many others have, and saving myself. For instance, the animation… God, this film is an absolute treat for the eyes. The backgrounds, the visuals, the human characters, there is just so much visual stimulation in this film. It’s plain fun to look at, and it’s such a shame that so much talent and effort was used to make… this. It honestly hurts worse knowing that this gorgeous film is a subpar animated comedy.

Oh, but even more depressing is that the film has some genuinely good characters. The villain, Smiler, is so absolutely blatantly villainous due to how passive-agressively nice she constantly has to be she ends up being far more likable and entertaining than the so-called heroes. It helps too that she lives in what can only be described as a cosmic horror story, a Baby’s First Lovecraft if you will: she lives in a universe controlled by a fickle teenage boy whose first reaction to even the slightest malfunction is DELETE EVERYTHING. She has every right to be as concerned to the point of madness, as even the slightest fuckup would result in the utter annihilation of her entire universe; it’s to the point where she, despite the fact that in any other movie she would have crossed a million lines, comes across as one of the most reasonable characters in the film.

Then we have Poop, the character voiced by Patrick Stewart, and a shining example of how this film wastes brilliance. Poop has maybe ten lines in the movie and a few visual jokes, but everything he says tends to be rather funny, and he even manages to squeeze in a Star Trek joke. Why didn’t he get to go on the journey instead of Hi-5? If we’re going to listen to a bunch of jokes, even shit jokes, for 80 or so minutes, at least it’s Patrick Stewart telling them.

Next are Gene’s parents, Mary and Mel. These two are, without a doubt, the funniest characters in the entire movie, due to being in a constant state of “meh.” They react to even the most intense and stressful situations with just the most hilarious indifference, and even more baffling, they get a truly beautiful and emotional scene late in the film (!!!). Yes, you read that right: there is actually a beautiful and emotional scene in this movie. This only further compounds my sadness; why was the movie not about these two? They’re the best characters! Why is the spotlight on their boring son, instead of on these two hilariously indifferent emojis who can actually pull off a genuinely tender moment?

Finally, we have Akiko Glitter, a joyous, bouncy dancer who appears in the Just Dance app. She’s sweet, she’s fun, she’s cute, she plays Wham! She’s such a kind and bouncy character! …And at the end of her only scene she is coldly and brutally murdered by Smiler’s robots as her game is being deleted from the phone. Her death is bizarrely shocking and depressing for this film, and even worse… we see what happens to her after being deleted. She is trapped in the garbage, continuously dancing in agony as it is all she knows how to do, her eyes dead as she goes through the motions of a job that no longer exists. And despite her  kindness to Gene and friends, Gene opts to leave her to die in the trash, not even bothering to save her when he comes to save Hi-5. And yes: she dies down there. This wonderful, fun-loving lady is left to die in a hellhole filled with garbage, trolls, and spam. Fucking Christ. If I was not depressed before, I am now.

So to sum things up, this movie has four redeeming features: evil brought on by existential dread, shit, unadulterated indifference, and the horrific death of beauty and joy. That sounds eerily like every review has painted this film, and yet… and yet… It really isn’t close to being that bad. Chicken Little was way worse. Doogal was way worse. There are so many movies that are absolutely, horrendously, abysmally awful, so many films unfathomably worse than this movie, that the hatred feels overblown to the point of being hollow. And I wanted so badly to hate this movie! I wanted to join in with the crowds, and cast this down as the worst animated film ever! But, I just can’t in good conscience do that, because it truly isn’t. The hatred for this movie is just a knee-jerk reaction to the soulless cash grab feel it has. And it is that, but it’s just not bad enough even with that glaringly obvious fact permeating it. I can’t even tell you if it’s so bad it’s good… it just kind of… exists. It has highs, it has lows, and I just can’t really sum up how I feel about it accurately…

Well… I guess I can… This movie is “meh.” I cannot bring myself to feel strongly about it one way or the other. And that’s why I can’t bear to live anymore; this movie let me down in the worst possible way. It just wasn’t bad enough to warrant my vitriol, or good enough to warrant my praise. This movie promised to give me at least one extreme, and I silently prayed for the other against all odds… and it delivered nothing. It delivered a depressingly middling experience.

So farewell. This is it. The big finish. There’s only one way I can truly end my life after seeing this, and that is by calling upon the one true awful emoji film…

I did it for the lulz.

I did it for the lulz.

I did it for the lulz.

[lawchan89]

“i shouldn’t have left you.” stARCO

(I may flesh this one out into a full fic for the Monarchs series, but for now enjoy)

“Your Majesty.”

“Jacques?” Star opened her eyes, keeping her arms up so the magical barrier surrounding the exterior of the castle would remain in tact. The general who stood before her in the main hall with his head bowed looked like he’d been through hell and back. His face was sliced up by a sword in several places, his body bruised and covered in sweat, panting heavily as if he’d run a great distance to get to her.

The war raging outside could only be deciphered by distant cries and booming canons. If it wasn’t for their Lucitor allies, the Mewnian army would have fallen already. Queen Star had been ready to throw herself into the fray beside her husband Marco, together just like they always had. Until she was reminded that she was four months pregnant. Not only that, but those in Butterfly Castle would be defenseless without magic.

So, very begrudgingly, Star had agreed to stay behind and protect home base while her king led the troops to the front lines. The descendants of the Lizard army her mother had scared off years ago played dirty just as they predicted – though they’d taken their sweet time rallying together to defeat the queen who killed their general. That had been years ago, for crying out loud.

“We’ve had to retreat,” Jacques said huskily, wiping at the blood dripping down his face.

Star let out a long sigh, even though her chest had seized up at that news. “But King Lucitor sent us reinforcements, we should’ve at least held out until–”

“There was an explosion at the western lines,” the general went on, never lifting his eyes to her. “Dozens of our soldiers were lost, close to a hundred–”

“Wait, the west…” Star drew a shuddering breath. Marco had told her in a rush before he left a few days earlier that he was headed to the west to hit the enemy from behind. “Jacques, where’s the King?”

The Mewman remained still, his eyes averted. “My Lady…” he began in that same haunted tone, but didn’t go on.

“Where’s my husband?” Star repeated a bit louder. The magic radiating from her palms was beginning to pulse green in her sudden agitation, and she bit her lip to try and remain in control.

“They did not find any survivors, all of the remains were obliterated to dust–”

“Where’s Marco?!” All traces of the dignified mask she put on to lead her people as a proud queen was gone now, and she was just Star Butterfly. And she was scared beyond belief.

“I am so…so very sorry, my Queen. But…he was not recovered.”

“You didn’t find his body – that means he’s still out there!” Star was screaming now, every inch of the crackles of magic flickering like lightning. “Why aren’t you out there looking for him?!”

“He’s not–”

“Don’t tell me he’s not!” She dropped her arms completely, and the shield spell disappeared around her. “Do you have any idea what he’s survived?! Everything he’s done for us?! For me?! He can’t just be gone, Jacques, it doesn’t work like that!”

“I cannot imagine what you–”

“Stop it!” Abandoning her post, Star ran for the door behind him. “If you’re not gonna look for him, than I will! Or send for King Tom, he’ll–!”

But suddenly she ran straight into the devil himself, who had made his way from the battlefield to the castle to find her. Tom grabbed her by the shoulders as she swung her arms at him, trying to break free, his face absolutely wrought with anguish.

“Let go of me, Tom! Let go, you son of a–!”

“They’re dust, Star,” he stated calmly, taking every blow she flung at his chest. “I dunno what Rasticore’s son used on them, but…every one of them is nothing but dust. Even their souls.”

“But Marco–”

“Would’ve been here by now.” His chin quivered as hot tears steamed from his eyes. “Here…” And from his pocket, he withdrew a golden pair of dimensional scissors – splattered with what looked horrifically like blood.

Star couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t think. She clung to Tom as if he was the lone sturdy piece of wreckage after a ship had sunk, her whole body shaking as tears streamed in thick messy rivulets down her face. The tough steadfast king of the Underworld just hugged her close as he braced himself for the storm that was about to burst from her body.

And just a few minutes later, in a long wail that shook the very heart of Mewni to its core, the storm of the queen’s agony touched down.

~~~

Star wouldn’t see anyone, she wouldn’t speak or eat. She put Tom in as her alternate commander in chief when the remaining generals wanted to call for a strategy meeting. Thankfully, they understood why their queen was not joining them.

All she did was stay in her bed chambers, lying on her back on the window seat and cradling the little bulge in her stomach. The night looked beautiful outside her window, and she hated it. Nothing deserved to be beautiful tonight, or ever again. 

Marco was dead. Marco Diaz is dead. No matter how many times she said it to herself, it didn’t seem real. She said it playfully when they were kids (”You’re dead, Diaz!”), and Tom used to say it threateningly back when they weren’t on good terms, but the weight was never there. Now here it was, crushing her into the plush cushion of the seat, leaving her unable to move or stand. Only her hands gently rubbed over her belly, only tears flowed out the corners of her eyes down into her unkempt golden hair, only her breath hitched from the deep racking sobs she’d exerted for hours.

She didn’t care. She refused to sport a brave emotionless front – no, not this time. Marco deserved all the tears in the world, and she would shed every single one of them if it meant he would come back to her.

“I’m sorry, baby,” Star rasped out from the snot trapped back in her throat, gulping as she fisted the fabric of her nightgown. “I’m sorry you’ll never meet your daddy. He…he was gonna be the best dad…” Her face crumbled once more as she rolled onto her side. “And h-he was just the greatest person in the universe. He was…everything to me.”

Her eyes landed on the scissors resting on the table, purple and gold and engraved with his name – the only remnant of him she had left. A fusion of rage and grief bubbled up in her chest, and Star lurched herself over to grab them. With a loud shriek, she flung them across the room, where the sharp blades lodged themselves into the wall.

Why did I do that…why… Her whole body began to shudder uncontrollably, draping her arms around her pregnant stomach again as she sunk to the floor on her knees. Marco…oh gods, Marco…why? Why?

It was all Star could repeat to herself over and over as another violent sobbing fit overtook her. She could hear commotion from outside her door, shouts and the distinct sounds of feet rushing around. Maybe the monster army had regrouped and actually invaded the castle this time. Marco would want her to care, to do something, but she didn’t. All of her fight was gone, all of her drive to be better than herself, to be the queen she never dreamed she could be…it had all died along with him.

Footsteps pounded towards the door – they were coming to capture her, kill her, hold her hostage for questioning. And the only one Star wept for was her unborn child, who would die as well. 

The door burst open, and she braced herself.

“Star! You gotta get out here!”

Star raised her head, coming face to face with a frazzled, out of breath Janna who was sporting several deep cuts and bruises from battle. Her expression was wide-eyed and unreadable, like she’d been hit by a truck. Star understood the feeling.

“What is it?” she croaked, “Does Tom need my help?”

“No no, he doesn’t need to lead the troops anymore.”

“Wh– Janna, it can’t be me right now. I just c– I’ve lost– I j-just need to be alone!”

“Get up.” The Underworld queen strode across the room and hoisted Star up from the floor almost impatiently. “C’mon, there’s someone out here to see you.”

Please don’t let it be my parents, Star begged silently – she was not in the mood to talk about her feelings. As Janna half-dragged her to her feet, the Mewnian queen stumbled out the door into the lamplit corridor.

She almost fell over in a dead faint. It was most definitely not her parents.

The flecks of gold in his russet eyes, the thick tufts of dark brown hair, the dimples in his little smirk, the mole under his right eye – it was all there. Amidst scabbed gashes and half-bandaged wounds, tunic and pants torn to shreds, everything that made him alive was here. 

Marco was here.

“I knew it…” She breathed it out in a whisper, continuing to stumble forward as he limped to meet her halfway. “I knew it, I knew it I knew it I knew it!” Over and over, her whispers became sounds and finally strangled screams as Marco wordlessly grabbed her and crushed her close, Star’s sobs of grief morphing into those of relief as she clawed at his shoulders and neck, bunching up his hair in her hands, inhaling him, surrounding herself with the man she could never live without, who only moments ago had no longer existed and her world had stopped.

“I shouldn’t have left you,” Marco breathed in her ear, kissing her hair repeatedly. “They told you I was gone…I’m sorry, Star. I’m so sorry I did this to you–”

“Shut up,” Star cut him off with her lips, salty and slimy but passionate nonetheless. Neither of them saw Janna take off back down the stairs with a smile, dashing at her cheeks where silent tears decided to trail down. No one was allowed to see her get sappy.

“How – how are you here?”

“I was– making my way north – just before the attack,” Marco gasped out in between her lips pecking his. “I was out of range, but I still got blown into a rock slide. It took me two days to climb out ‘cause I lost my scissors in the explosion.”

“They’re stuck in the wall in our room.”

“They’re what?”

“Marco,” Star continued to murmur, drawing him into her embrace again. “Don’t do that. J-just don’t ever do that again. Do you have any idea what’s it’s like to be told that–?”

“The love of your life is dead?” Marco finished for her. “Like your entire world just stopped, the ground opened up to swallow you into this black hole, ripping you apart piece by piece? Yeah, I think I have an idea…remember?”

Star blinked, releasing more quiet tears as it dawned on her: The fight with Toffee… “But we were, like, fourteen. And you were dating Jackie–”

“Shut up,” Marco whispered this time, cupping her head in his hands to kiss her heart emblems before melding his lips into hers again. His hands traveled down to hold the bulge in her stomach, and they broke apart slowly so he could kneel before her.

“She’s happy her daddy’s home,” Star whispered, holding his head as he pressed his lips to the glow radiating from her middle.

“Yeah…I’m home,” Marco choked out, resting his wet cheek against where his daughter’s light pulsed happily. “I’m home…for good.”

[debussyanddarcy]

untitled

part of this verse (tumblr fics found here); but if you haven’t read it: an au in which viktor acquires legal guardianship of yuri p who is a distant cousin

for @kixboxer, @sonatine, @kevystel, and @cutthroatpixie for keeping me laughing even in these frankly very trying times

[takes place shortly after viktor and yuuri begin dating]

“WE HAVE NO CHEESE,” Viktor seethes as he stalks across the living room. Makkachin follows his path, back and forth, back and forth, as loyal as ever.

Yuri watches him from beneath his lashes, typing surreptitiously on his phone.

YOU: viktor is fucking wasted

OTABEK ALTIN: What is Viktor like drunk?

YOU: do you know those weird dramatic divas that sing at the opera

OTABEK ALTIN: Yes?

YOU: imagine if they all had a mutant child and that is drunk viktor

“We can go get some right now if it really means that much to you,” Yuuri says, patiently. “The store is only 5 minutes away.”

Viktor lets out a noise of utter dismay, clapping a hand to his sternum. “Yura,” he says. “I cannot—cannot—go to the grocery store now! Grocery store lighting is absolutely horrific after ten p.m. I cannot—je refuse!”

YOU: oh god he’s starting to speak french

OTABEK ALTIN: But why would he speak French instead of Russian?

YOU: viktor speaks french for drama

YOU: he speaks russian if he wants to scare people

YOU: annoyingly proper english if he wants to be an asshole

OTABEK ALTIN: His Russian is pretty frightening. Are you sure he has no ties to the mob?

YOU: what

YOU: WHAT

YOU: beka has he been fucking with you again I TOLD YOU TO TELL ME

YOU: BEKA

YOU: WHAT DID HE SAY TO YOU

YOU: BEKA!!!!!

Yuri tears his eyes away from his phone as Makkachin barks loudly in agreement with Viktor’s histrionics.

Yuuri slants his eyes at Yuri, who pastes Long-Suffering-Look-Number-Two on his face. Yuuri makes a subtle gesture when Viktor’s back is turned—the motion of throwing a shot of liquor back, then tilting his head questionably towards Viktor, who has since sunken to his knees and thrown his arms around their dog.

Yuri snorts. Yuuri sighs.

“Vitya,” Yuuri says. “Are you drunk?”

A pause.

“I,” Viktor says, grandly, “am Russian.”

Yuuri says, very delicately, “Vitya, you say that a lot. I don’t think you entirely know what it means.”

Viktor makes a wounded noise. “Yura,” he says, and it takes a split second for Yuri to realize that he isn’t talking to him after all. “Yura, Yura, the cheese.”

Yuuri graciously allows Viktor to clamber onto his lap and lay his head on his shoulder. Yuuri combs his fingers through Viktor’s hair.

“You smell awful,” Yuuri murmurs. It’s true; Yuri can smell him all the way from the other end of the couch. “You are so drunk.”

“Am not,” Viktor says petulantly.

“Are too,” Yuuri counters. “You’re being weirder than usual.”

“Weirder?”

“Dumber,” Yuuri says affectionately, and Viktor huffs out a laugh against his neck.

“I’m always dumb for you,” Viktor murmurs.

“Gross,” Yuri announces, and Yuuri jerks back in surprise, though Viktor holds him in place. “This. You. All. Gross.”

“Is Yurochka displeased that his fathers are neglecting him?” Viktor asks solemnly. “We apologize, most sincerely. This will not do! Come, we shall indulge in Family Game Night! I will retrieve the Monopoly board—”

Yuri jabs a finger in his direction. “I am not playing Monopoly with you, you are such a fucking cheater—”

“Game Night! Game Night! Game Night!” Viktor chants, dancing across the living room to find that goddamned board game, Makkachin right on his heels.

Beside him, Yuuri lets out a quiet laugh. Yuri rolls his eyes, but slips his phone back into his pocket.

“Bring it, old man,” he goads when Viktor returns, box of Monopoly resting on an elbow. “I’ll kick your ass!”

*

OTABEK ALTIN: It’s fine, Yura

OTABEK ALTIN: He just asked me for my full name, birth date, and social security number

OTABEK ALTIN: Wearing his finest suit and sunglasses while twirling a gun in his hand

OTABEK ALTIN: ….Yura?

YOU: Seen 10:05p.m.

*

“Stop picking on Beka!” Yuri hisses, brandishing his phone at Viktor, who is pleasantly pink-faced and juggling the dice in his hands.

“I do not pick on Beka,” Viktor sniffs. “I only want to get to know your friends better. That is what the parenting handbooks say. We should make a—a concerted effort to know our children and their friends and monitor every move they make while still allowing them to retain an illusion of independence.”

“An illusion of independence!” Yuri sputters.

“Vitya, you’ve been reading the Asian parenting handbooks, haven’t you,” Yuuri says flatly.

“Yuuri’s Mama kindly lent me a few of her favorites when I confided to her that Yurochka was entering his rebellious stage—”

“Rebellious!” Yuri chokes out.

“Rebellious?” Yuuri echoes. “Yuri’s been rebellious since the day he was born. How did you know he was entering a new stage?”

“I know my Yurochka,” Viktor says haughtily. “When he purchased four tiger print jackets despite me telling him he was only allowed to purchase one, I knew that we had reached a new stage—”

“They were on sale!” Yuri protests, though Viktor continues to ramble on and on and on in front of him. Beside him, Yuuri subtly nudges him with his elbow. Yuri sneers at him, but his sneer falters when Yuuri gives him a wide-eyed, beseeching look.

“Wh—” Yuri cuts himself off as Yuuri widens his gaze, looking from the board, to Yuri, to the board, to Yuri, and back again.

The board, on which Viktor has built several admittedly expensive hotels. To Viktor’s ankle, beneath which he has tucked a growing pile of colorful Monopoly cash. To the game, where Viktor is undeniably kicking their asses.

A slow smirk slithers across his face. “You want rebellious?” he says. “I’ll give you rebellious.” And with a roar, Yuri flips the board off the coffee table, sending plastic houses and game pieces flying across the floor.

Viktor gapes at him.

“I just—I just bought Park Place!”

“Park Place is nearly always a waste of fucking cash!” Yuri screams.

Viktor stares at him. At the carnage on the floor. At him again.

Yuri has precisely enough time to send Otabek one last snap before the chaos begins.

R.I.P. ME, he sends along with the video of Viktor leaping over the coffee table to throttle Yuri with his bare hands. Behind him, he can see Yuuri taking a delicate sip of matcha from his favorite mug.

That sneaky bastard, Yuri thinks admiringly. He’s not half-bad.

[wilbers-journey]

PTSD

PTSD and what it means to me

If you are offended by swearing please do not read, i find it therapeutic and necessary at times when writing to express myself, how I'm feeling or how important something is to me.

PTSD is nothing but a C**T in the short of it!!!

I am no expert, i am a sufferer, so these words are from my side of things. Everyone is effected differently, copes differently and will experience it in different ways.

I was diagnosed with ptsd on 3rd December 2018 by my new psychologist Jo.

I was referred to Jo from the perinatal mental health team.

My counselor had referred me to perinatal as she suspected i had ptsd, i was pregnant again so soon after Wilber had died and thought i would need the extra support. I saw perinatal they suspected ptsd to so referred me to Jo.

My first appointment with Jo is very vague as is a lot of my life the last couple of years. Jo was aware of what i had been through and that i was pregnant again and she was very keen on supporting me to be able to live a more fulfilled life.

On my first appointment we done an - Impact of events scale - I scored 66.

PTSD is diagnosed by symptoms and this scale. A score of over 33-88 signifies a likely presence of ptsd and me scoring 66 was quite up there.

At the time of this appointment yes i was pregnant but to be honest it didn't feel real as did nothing else in my life.

I was being consumed of a feeling like i was actually going crazy. That i was imagining things to be worse than what they were and my sense of reality was just not there.

You see, although my pregnancy with Wilber was horrific from 20 weeks and i new one day he would die just not when, i was coping with it all very very well. Maybe to well some would say. I was the mother to a son and felt like it was me and Wilber against the world. Looking back i shut down at that 20 week scan and something inside me changed. I shut a lot of people out pulled up my big girl pants and just got on with it.

There were times i had wobbles I'd not be human if i had not and the same on nicu my wobbles were few and far between but when i did have them they were pretty epic and ugly to watch. All in all though I had my shit together.

I wasn't only Wilber's mummy i was his voice, his advocate and carer. He was my world and know one knew him better than me!!

(If your reading this and you have children never ever doubt your motherly/fatherly instincts ever)

Wilber had many ups and downs on nicu but after he had been for his muscle biopsy at Addenbrookes Hospital and was back in Norwich at around 7 weeks old he kinda sorted it out a bit and was doing really well.

At this time we now had his full diagnosis. His Arthrogryposis that was diagnosed in the womb was caused by having a spontaneous mutation of the RYR1 Gene that was Central Core Disease. A very rare form of Muscular Dystrophy. Now although there are other RYR1 sufferers out there there are not reported cases like Wilber's anywhere in the world. This made things extremely difficult for the professionals that was working with Wilber to know where his journey would go while he was here and doing so well.

Wilber wasn't expected to survive birth but he was giving the biggun and keeping everyone on there toes.

Wilber had personality in abundance and had the hearts of all those that worked with him. He was certainly a heart stealer and made all the rules.

He was alert, cheeky, you could engage with him and story times were one of his favorites. He would watch the book as you told the story and look at you. He loved his music, bum pats and cuddles.

Any thing he could fit in his chubby chops he wanted. His tube, dummy a finger he didn't care but that boy loved sucking them and got comfort from it. He used to suck his tube so ferociously he could be heard around room 2 and it'd be like oh Wilber's sucking his tube. I loved that sound as much as he loved doing it.

Wilber was nosey!!! Just like his mother. He would follow me while i was around and break his neck trying to see what was going on outside of his cot.

So reading all of that i hope you can get a feel for where i was at with Wilber on his journey. Wilber had had a couple of attempts off of the ventilator and really gave it his all but would always end up back on.

He could not breath unsupported and needed ventilation. So that meant if he was to ever come home he would need full time ventilation and the only way that would happen was through a tracheotomy.

Wilber had a big multi disciplinary meeting arranged for 14th August 2018. It was with a specialist from Addenbrookes.

Now this meeting was going to be the decider on whether Wilber lived or died. Sounds blunt doesn't it? but that was how it was.

He was still doing well and as the time come closer everyone's nerves grew stronger. Not just mine and Marks but everyone involved with him.

I remember a conversation with one of the nicu senior workers and she had read Wilber a story when I wasn't there and it had brought her to tears because of how he was as in responding to her etc. That how could we be told we couldn't keep him if he was the way he was. Everyone's views were the same.

Yes Wilber was severely disabled physically but his brain, hearing and eyesight were fine. There are thousands of disabled people in this world and the fact my son was one of them did not scare me at all. He was my son and i loved him for who and what he was. The absolute love of my life. The thing that did scare me was the prospect of facing the knowledge that one day i would live my life without my son. That's just not the natural cycle of life's way but here i was facing it and had been since February 2018.

So, this is where it all is about to change and my world fell from feet very quickly and unexpectedly.

Early hours on 7th August 2018 i got a call telling me i needed to get to nicu and that Wilber was in cardiac arrest and they were struggling to keep him here.

I remember just saying Fuck!! Got out of bed and headed out my parent accommodation door in pjs and walked as fast as could to nicu.

One of the things I remember thinking is, how?

We was watching pepa pig on the iPad last night and he was absolutely fine this cant be real?

Another thing I remember thinking is what is he gonna look like?

I remember trying to remember what staff was on?

Wishing i could move quicker than i was!!

I remember turning the corner to the nicu corridor and a nurse was waiting for me with the door open and i said to her "is he gone" what a fucking question to have to ask? But i needed to know before i walked in so i had time for my brain to register my baby could be dead.

As i got to the door i felt my weight buckle and she she grabbed hold of me and walked me to Wilber.

I started to cry and we walked into room 2.

I remember all the lights being on and a big over head one shining on Wilber. He was blue and still. A senior nurse was giving him chest compressions.

I screamed and begged him not to die and leave me telling him i love him and that i was not ready and that i needed him here with me.

There was 2 nurses on the left of his bed 2 nurses on the right. The nurse doing the chest compressions and 2 doctors standing there giving instructions.

I asked was they stopping and they said not yet.

Now i am no fucking doctor or nurse but i was a mother who had sat by her sons bed day and night for 12 weeks. I came home twice in that time to sleep at home and a few days for just a few hours. I could not bare being away from him. I knew him more than any of those now trying to save his life.

When i first saw Wilber the first thought in my head was get that fucking tube out of his mouth. I couldn't understand why they had not cleared his airway completely but the words just didn't come out because i was begging him not to die instead.

The room felt panicked and there was a feeling of loss of control within the staff. I came away and sat in there parent and child room just outside room 2 with a nurse who had seen Wilber have all his big unstable events. As i went in there the consultant arrived and minutes later Wilber was back with us but he would not be the Wilber i knew, the staff knew and everyone else knew.

The hours that followed were consumed by tests, lots of taking, observations and me being in total shock and felt like i was on another planet.

I was encouraged to go back to my room to rest as Wilber was stable but I couldn't not just yet.

Wilber was having lots of tests done and i needed to be there.

I did eventually go back and still to this day i cannot remember that walk back or my time in my room or the walk back to Wilber. I Was in my room an hour and just couldn't be there i had to be with him near by so i pulled a couple chairs together in the parent room and tried to sleep in there.

The nicu day went ahead as it does every day but there was one thing that would not leave me. Why did they not take is tube out? It was playing on my mind i was asking staff and was expressing my feelings that i was not happy with how things had been managed. I called a meeting with a consultant who was one of my favorites.

When i went in that room the first thing i was told was, sorry. Then i was told they had expected that i would want a meeting and that i wanted answers.

With this meeting complete and my concerns of the management of the event an outside investigation was to take place and that was the start in the decline in my mental health and ptsd symptoms.

Wilber was no longer Wilber, the little boy I'd got to know so intensely over the last 12 weeks was not there. He could no longer fix and follow with his eyes, he lost his sucking reflex, he could not tolerate feeds, everything that once comforted him no longer did. It was like he had no idea what he was doing?

The little boy who i said i would never have suffer for my own selfish reasons of wanting him now was. It was absolutely fucking gut wrenching and heart breaking to watch. He cried a lot. Wilber was not a crying baby. He looked sad and i knew then it was coming for the time to let him go. I was ready because he was and this was now not fair on him.

I told the doctors that i was ready and i called my counselor from each to come so we could make plans. I also wanted a DNR in place as i did not want my baby going through anything like that again and if it was to happen while arrangements were being made and there was no DNR they would have to try and save his life.

My counselor came to nicu and we had a meeting with consultants. I expressed my wishes and that i wanted to let Wilber go and him no longer be suffering.

We was advised to not be hasty and to give him a chance. The big meeting was 1 week away and Wilber might improve.

Now i as his mummy knew that this was not going to be the case but those words spoken did give me a glimpse of hope. If you have no hope you have nothing so again i pulled my big girl pants up and started to get to know my new Wilber. It was hard so so fucking hard. He was my priority and seeing him how he was was soul destroying.

I felt like everything i had fought for, for months and been ripped away from me and i felt absolutely robbed. I still do and think i always will because there are so many what if's. Now I'm not delusional at the fact i had Wilber forever. How could i be when I'd been told for months he would die but one thing i am certain of is his last days did not have to be how they were, end of!!

That event was investigated and it took 7 months to complete.

In that 7 months I honestly felt like i was crazy, literally. I knew what I had witnessed and i knew in my heart that big fuck ups happened at my sons expense. But then i questioned myself constantly, was i making it up? Was it really that bad? Was Wilber how he really was? I cant explain to you fully what it was and is like but hopefully one day i will find the words. But let me tell you, watching something out of your control knowing its not being dealt with correctly and the impact is life changing is what has caused me to have ptsd.

My symptoms have varied but a few are, flashbacks, avoidance, suicidal, I'm hyper vigilant, nightmares of the event, severe anxiety, irrational thoughts. I could go into them but honestly i have not got the energy or do i want to focus on the real impact its had on my life.

The report came back that yes Wilber's tube should of come out a lot sooner.

Wilber's tube was not removed until 21 mins and 25 secs

Wilber's heart rate come back at 22 mins and 43 secs with a heart rate of 133

The report states that there was hesitation in removing his tube because he had a difficult airway to re intubate him!!

His tube should of been removed around the 7-8 minute mark

He was starved without oxygen for a very long time

The impact on him being huge and life changing

If they had of taken his tube out sooner i would not of witnessed any of the event that took place there for being totally less traumatic for me

Am i angry YES but not for myself for Wilber. I'm angry that my little boy suffered when he did not need to too and the last days of his life on earth were miserable and he suffered because of it.

Working through the trauma of this event has been nothing but absolute hell but i had to, to try and get into a head space where it was not consuming and ruining my life. It has taken so much away from me. My space to grieve, who i am as a person, how i see the world and deal with difficult things. PTSD will not have me forever its now part of my story and will never fully go away but where i am now is a totally different place to when i started seeing my psychologist.

I had my last psychologist appointment last week which i called time on. I explained that i feel i am ready to navigate on my own. I am aware ptsd will always rear its ugly head when I least expect it but i now have the tools and coping strategies to get me through hard days that are to come. I felt like her time could be better spent with someone who is on the beginning of there trauma work journey and on a waiting list to see her.

Jo agreed with me and we could finish and we re done the - Impact Of Events Scale - my score has come down from 66 to 39.

[giveuselife-blog]

11 Ways to Market Your iPhone and iPod Touch App And Service

New Post has been published on https://giveuselife.org/11-ways-to-market-your-iphone-and-ipod-touch-app-and-service/

11 Ways to Market Your iPhone and iPod Touch App And Service

At the same time as there may be no magic system or unmarried advertising motion which could do the trick for you, those techniques can provide you with a framework to help you growth corporation exposure, sales, and profit. marketing your iPhone/Touch app is surely a technique that can take time.

I will-will let you recognize that we’ve no longer determined rate reductions to be the excellent method. We initially thought this might be very powerful because the App save structure is set up to rank packages by using the variety of total downloads. Better overall income and overall downloads via charge class aren’t presently identified with Apple’s gadget.

Maintain in mind as an example that in case your app become $five and you decided to lower it to $0.99, you would have to tell sell five times as many simply to interrupt even. Now you might briefly boom exposure this way, but at the rate of maximizing your income margins whilst you are most apt to do nicely at the start of your product life cycle. Customer service issues may growth through a thing of 5 as nicely.

That being said, there’s nothing incorrect with adjusting your app’s charge in the starting to discover its nice Market price (which might change over the years).

There are 24,455 apps and counting, so allow’s soar in and get commenced!

1. The sector (iTunes App keep) Is Flat

Remember your capability worldwide Marketplace proper from the moment of conceptualization. There are people everywhere in the planet keen to apply and advantage from pleasant programs. initially, we meant to encompass the metric gadget and local currency in our app but determined to push it back until version 1.1. We were so keen to begin the submission procedure with Apple and this ended up negatively affected our sales without question. I suggest taking that more time to make your app beneficial to the international network, or maybe some key marworld market kets (China, Russia, Critical and South America, Japan, and Germany come to mind).

What does this suggest? If currencies are used, automobile-discover the person’s local currency below their tool’s standard settings; and if relevant take care of currency conversions. Make your internet site, commands, and sales pages clean to apprehend and use pics to guide your text. Remember that for plenty people, English may be their 2d or 0.33 language. Make your software program greater intuitive through deciding on symbols over textual content anyplace feasible. Attain out to bloggers for your niche world market in Europe and Asia. consist of a complimentary promo code for your correspondence. It can not harm.

Remember this: we received almost $1,000 in income from Italy because of a single online post was written in Italian! Now you may move similarly with this and have your income web page and help commands translated into primary languages like Spanish or Chinese language. Costs for nice work range and you’ll want to get a person fluent within the language to double check their paintings.

Don’t forget there are sixty-five one-of-a-kind variations of iTunes around The arena and counting. unmarried apps may be advanced to be used on the iPhone and the iPod Contact. How big is the Market for both? Apple does not break down sales of man or woman product strains. A conservative estimate with four.four million iPhone sales and 22.7 million iPod sales for an ultimate zone might be about 7 million in three months. That is a mean of seventy-eight,000 new devices coming online every day. Excellent and almost horrifying. It can not be remaining for all time, but wow!

2. Create a Lite or Demo model

Apple we could developers offer both a loose and paid version of the equal app, and a unfastened pattern is probably the maximum successful marketing method ever. humans need to try things. There are plenty of Crapps (crappy apps) accessible, so why should people hazard money on an app they know not anything approximately from an organization they recognize even less approximately? If you could give people a flavor this is just enough, they will buy the complete meal from you! This manner you dispose of a lot of the hazard.

There are numerous strategies for this, but make sure the lite model sales web page is apparent in its obstacles vs. The paid or full model. If you truncate the app an excessive amount of, people might imagine it’s an entire dud and spot no fee in paying you anything for the top class release. provide human beings a clean idea of what they’re moving into and this strategy could make you wealthy. Developer Ethan Nicholas gives the motivation to go this course in a latest Wired piece:

Whilst iShoot released in October, the commercial enterprise was slow for some time. And then Nicholas located a few spare time to code a unfastened model of the app – iShoot Lite, which he released January. Here’s how that helped: Inside iShoot Lite he marketed the $three, a full model of iShoot. Users downloaded the unfastened model 2.4 million instances. And that led 320,000 happy iShoot Lite gamers to pay for iShoot.

three. cross free

Now that is something that can be considered for distinct reasons. proper now “in-app” advertising lacks sophistication. When I say that, I suggest we do not have Google AdSense yet. I am sure it is coming, but embedded advertising and marketing that doesn’t relate to the content material in any way is sincerely intrusive in my private opinion. I nonetheless study about sure builders making tons of cash with embedded app advertising and marketing, however, it is tough sufficient to get humans to click on ads if they’re applicable. While they are not, the press-thru price is quite low. if your app is something that humans use, again and again, advertising can nevertheless work. We individually did now not find it successful because it’s plenty easier to make about 70 cents off of a ninety-nine cent app than to earn the same amount with ads. you could also upload a PayPal donation button as AppCubby did, but this possibly won’t be just right for you until you have a large pre-current customer or fan base.

you could also introduce your app at no cost. Get humans using it, speak about it, and receive tremendous comments. Then begin charging human beings. Flawlessly acceptable with Apple.

Looking at it from an extended-time period perspective, you might completely deliver away the primary app to get human beings speaking, create a base and construct your brand. In spite of everything, not anything spreads like free (in particular excellent unfastened). you could use this to gather touch info and feedback from your preliminary Customers and turn them into clients to your next app or product. Be sure to encompass a “proportion” characteristic Inner your loose app (Inner all of your apps!). Make sharing as easy as possible.

four. Ship Out a Press launch

PRMac, a loose (or almost loose) press launch distribution service, and the MacNN (Macintosh News Network) syndicate (unfastened to publish) are genuinely worth the rate of submission. Competing services can price over $six hundred for distribution in the America alone, so those are treasured and much less costly alternatives. They are saying the clicking launch is dead, but those offerings without delay centered your potential customers. You in no way understand who you might Attain, and it is vital to provide a press release While soliciting all styles of media.

5. touch the Pinnacle a hundred Blogs

Technorati can offer you with the present day list. Use a conversational style, get proper to the point and encompass a promo code. Parent out what may want to sell them for your business enterprise. If there’s an exciting perspective or story around your app, this will boom your chances. Ask them if you could do a visitor submit. Who knows? If you have websites like Gizmodo that get 3 million page views in line with a day, this may actually turbocharge income!

6. Constantly Improve Your income web page

This one is pretty fundamental but often left out. Observe the income pages of different Pinnacle apps. What are they doing? Emulate what works and Maintain researching to spark thoughts. you could show up to 5 photos as of this writing, so use them! Use the pics that promote your product first-rate. Ask different humans what grabs their attention. Use charges from reviewers; proportion blessings first and major. customers aren’t constantly logical, so don’t bore them with facts. How will your application make their lives higher?

7. Use customer remarks to build a better Product

that is two parts. First, well-timed reply to client emails and comprehend that each interplay with clients, whether or not exact or horrific, is an advertising opportunity. when you get comments thru electronic mail or thru your purchaser reviews, Don’t forget and contain these enhancements. You cannot please absolutely everyone all of the time, and you can have limited assets, so you may not be capable of add the entirety. a few awesome thoughts are sure to come back your way. First-time Users also can assist you to see how your software is getting used from a beginner’s perspective.

The second manner to receive purchaser feedback is to embed analytics code for your software. Flurry Analytics and Pinch Media each provide tracking software a good way to offer insight into how customers are interacting along with your application, such as real-time download statistics, all totally free. this may be mainly useful if 90% of your clients aren’t the usage of a specific function. Perhaps they do not know it is even there!

8. Constantly Replace Your utility

Here is a brilliant function of the App keep. New versions pass again to the Pinnacle of what is new for your class. Incorporating functions your clients want, thereby making your product higher, coupled with preserving visibility, can help boom or at least preserve regular sales. don’t abuse this through converting a few words for your help segment And then resubmitting or you could wreck this for absolutely everyone. In case you are working hard to make your product better, the distribution channel can reward you with elevated exposure because you are renewing.

9. Market it

Google AdWords and AdMob are feasible alternatives. I consider we’re no longer there but, but we are pretty near. AdWords does offer the ability to Put it on the market on cell devices with a complete net browser service app, however that doesn’t simply encompass the iPhone and Touch. You may get Androids and greater depending on which territory you Market it. proper now they haven’t advanced conversion tracking for apps both, and without this, you could just burn thru coins with little consequences to expose on your efforts. You won’t realize which keywords are working or aren’t working. there is one way to tune sales the usage of this technique: become an iTunes affiliate by way of joining LinkShare. you may create a hyperlink to your sales web page inside the App shop and receive a five% fee on qualifying purchases.

AdMob has app marketing down better than Google thus far. you are capable of track your conversions and target applicable Apple gadgets. you may even target the ones which can be either on or off the WiFi Community, that’s quite cool. The disadvantage to this is that you are paying at the least 10 cents a click on to Ship a person to your App keeps income page. No assure of sales Here and relying on the charge of your application, this leaves a very little margin to spend on marketing. It could take a hundred clicks just to get a real sale, so Keep that in thoughts. additionally, considering AdMob does not goal your commercials very well, the humans clicking are not absolutely in search of what you’re presenting as they would on a Google seek.

Right here are a few examples of Google AdWords advertisements below from agencies with money to burn; this luxurious is not something all and sundry can manage to pay for and it may now not be profitable besides.