#though obviously you can use stuff you've previously written

[readingloveswounds]

as you're writing your dissertation, how focused are you on publishing and how do you balance it all?

aHHH great question.

So, I'm in the helpful position where I was able to publish an article prior to starting the dissertation. It grew out of a final paper for a class I'd been taking and was published summer '23 if I remember correctly. This essentially means my advisor wasn't worried about pushing me to publish, so it's been on the backburner.

The publishing ventures so far:

published! Written for a fall '21 class, sent to the journal in spring '22, heard back very quickly, went through a million edits, published spring/summer '23

I essentially got lucky, but yay publication! This also introduced me to some people in the extremely small subfield (the reviewer revealed themself and a guest in a class talked with me about it as well). Horrid little philology paper, but I loved every moment of it.

The edits took place while I was taking classes and teaching, but not when I was writing my prospectus. There were some significant ones, but largely the revisions were minor. I was able to set aside time on certain days to work on these.

rejected! written for a spring '23 class, sent to the journal spring '24 (whoops lol, i meant to send it fall '23), very much rejected.

This was a poorly put-together paper that I was very tired of the whole time. I could and should have done better on it. I'm presenting something based on it in November, but depending on exactly what I talk about at that conference, I may try to do some massive revisions and publish the original paper. (i.e., how the conference paper is looking right now is quite different than my original focus in the article paper, so I think I may just want to try again with a different journal).

In hell!

I've been trying to adapt part of my first chapter into an article, but it's going, shall we say, very slowly. I wanted to send something to my advisor by the end of this month but lol. lmao, even. We'll see. I've still got time. I'm also entertaining this fantasy that the weird paper I wrote to try to figure out my thoughts on a passage will be publishable, but I am being realistic that my mad ramblings are probably not.

--

All this to say, that in terms of juggling, I am doing very poorly at it. My advisor didn't bring doing other things up until I was at the end of chapter 2, and he doesn't seem overly concerned about it, so I am trying to remain calm, even if I absolutely feel inexperienced and like I should be doing more. But we persist.

What I am doing right now (or attempting to) is to plan/write 3 conference papers. At least one of these events might have published proceedings, so that one needs to be very coherent from the get-go if possible.

The way I handle this is that I have designated days for working on different things. Sometimes I can change gears mid-day, but I like to have a full day dedicated to each project. The dissertation currently takes priority, so most days I'm focusing on that, but I will plan for certain days to be dedicated to work on the conference papers or other things like that.

I'm a big fan of scheduling blocks for doing particular things, whether that be days or hours - it's what helped me from having crippling anxiety during finals periods because I'd be pulled in so many directions without knowing where to go.

In really busy periods where I start to feel caught in stasis and unable to do anything except think about how much I need to do, I will go hour by hour and schedule myself. That means meals, commute, 'work on specific thing', etc. It helps me visualize AND it helps me move on if one block doesn't work out. If I said 'okay work on 17th century paper from 10-12' and I get nothing done, I don't need to wallow in that, I just need to look at my list and go 'okay, it's lunch and then I'll start fresh with the 19th century paper'

[garakcore]

BESTIE TALK ABOUT YOUR TREK OCS ON MAIN (ONLY IF YOU ARE COMFORTABLE THOUGH)

OH I am >:)) okay i took forever to answer this but. HERE WE GO. under read-more because I love to rant

My special little guy, my main OC, is Lt. Aamin Mara! I have recently created a sideblog for him which you can find at @therapy-lizard .

He's a Cardassian assistant ship's counselor! His studies are specifically about alien conceptualization of gender and Cardassian mental health.

He's a bundle of nerves and wants to make the galaxy a better place but can barely bring himself to say hello to someone in the hallway. He was also 10 years old at the end of the Dominion War, so he's, uhhh... been through stuff. But he's totally fine now of course [lying]

He had a punk thing going on in his earlier years and played the drums but now he dresses formally and worries about not being seen as professional enough because of his long hair and [not so many visible now] tattoos. When he's vacationing he dresses like an embarrassing tourist as is his right :))

He's also trans and bi! He's 35 years old and has only started Cardassian HRT a bit over a year previously.

Also, I created him for a Trek RP that fizzled out a few years ago, but I still write and draw stuff about him! If you're reading this and recognize him from the RP hugging you hugging you hugging you

I have a few Vorta OCs, but my biggest one is a guy named Koyun who defected from the Dominion around the time of season 1 of DS9!

He hid himself on the station for a while before surgically altering himself to seem more Bajoran, although he still wears a veil over his hair to hide his ears. He's very quiet and takes up odd jobs around DS9 and ends up running a lot of errands.

He's also forced to be pretty hypervigilant about any whispers of the Dominion, and things go abruptly downhill for him when Eris arrives on the station, however briefly.

Fun fact about him: he wears eyeglasses because he's fascinated by the fact that humans used to wear them. And also his eyesight is not great :')

The last of them I'll talk about here is Vrell Jad, a name you may remember if you've been following me for a VERY LONG TIME. But more likely, if you've read my oldest and more poorly written fics on AO3.

He exiled himself from Cardassia [this is how he chooses to phrase it] after being tortured by Garak on suspicion of having written an anti-state novel. Another man was killed for this offense and Vrell is beyond ashamed about this. Partially because, like... Vrell did write it, so!

He's estranged from his parents because he is gay and now is very happily loud about that. He is extremely flamboyant and has a sense of fashion that he loves but Garak despises beyond words, more on that in a sec. Let's just say he likes funky colors and patterns and gets a lot of "...isn't that... so unique...."

He lives on Bajor, which, not really a great situation for anyone and he doesn't get the nuances of that sometimes. He works at an orphanage aiding the Cardassian children left on Bajor after the occupation ended.

But... he does return to Deep Space Nine, at first just to annoy Garak and rub his 'victory' in his face [trying to ignore his guilt and the obviously not great situation Garak is in]. He also enjoys making Garak make fashion crime clothes for him. This is the focus on the fic I wrote, but I'll be honest, I'm not proud of that one and something related to it makes me uncomfortable even 3 years later. But if you do happen upon it, it's NSFW, so. yes

I have literally dozens more and can and will rant about them if asked but also this post is so long so. Another day perhaps!

[allyouveeverknownbyrustedbread]

ddlcbrainrot asked:

okay so creature knows the exit maybe it can lead us to it then

also seems like it doesn't know much about itself... i write down the names bob and barb and let it choose which it wants bc calling it creature is kinda mean :(

(btw now that i think about it it could be the crazy cult leader since he tried to merge with the heart and the creature said it is the heart... so trusting it maybe is a bad move... then again it used the :D thingy so that immediately makes it worthy of my trust ofc)

The being looks at the paper you write the names on, it takes a few seconds to blink at it before it takes up the pen, crossing out most of the names you suggested, only leaving out "James" and the previously written "living", drawing an interconnecting arrow between them, seemingly indicating that he both prefers to be called living, and James, because fairly he just didn't prefer any of the others. Living takes a few seconds before deciding to circle "living" and write "you can still use james if you want though :D" under it Living seems to take note and sit up a bit, looking outside, most of the lights are on again, his eyes widen a very much non-human amount when he realizes, being that you can barely see any white in his eyes when they're fully dilated [whilst you are still, in fact thinking about the correlation between the fact that living said that he IS the heart graphic that he's wearing, he doesn't seem to be nearly as hostile as the fanatic seemed to be, after all, judging by the condition of what can be determined as the fanatic's living place, they chose to break their bookshelves, and manually burn out every page of the hundreds of books they had, and Living really doesn't seem to be like that, in fact it just looked like he was nesting here, the clothes on the ground aren't even arranged in a bed like shape, they just look like something a dog would curl up into. So, the fanatic DID say that they was going to "merge" with the heart, leaving no process or way to tell what they were truly doing, and the cathedral did have pretty much the exact same symbol, but those seemed to be much older and worn than the symbols that were on stuff like the texts you found, and the fact that Living has a shirt specifically from those older symbols does have some merit. Also judging by what you've seen, Living is heavily similar to the cultists you found, granted, he has more human proportions, and he has eyes instead of really widened empty sockets, and he's capable of complex thought instead of just sitting there mumbling old rhythmic chants, so obviously he's not the same, but he is absolutely heavily similar.] [[It's obvious to you that Living is somehow connected to the heart, and the cultists in some way, exactly how, doesn't really come clear to you, because, at least to your current theory, he would be the fanatic merged with the heart, and he should be absolutely insane, after all, unless the heart was sentient or capable of actually interacting with the cultists, they wouldn't have been so thoroughly invested in it.]]

[rustedbread]

okay so creature knows the exit maybe it can lead us to it then

also seems like it doesn't know much about itself... i write down the names bob and barb and let it choose which it wants bc calling it creature is kinda mean :(

(btw now that i think about it it could be the crazy cult leader since he tried to merge with the heart and the creature said it is the heart... so trusting it maybe is a bad move... then again it used the :D thingy so that immediately makes it worthy of my trust ofc)

The being looks at the paper you write the names on, it takes a few seconds to blink at it before it takes up the pen, crossing out most of the names you suggested, only leaving out "James" and the previously written "living", drawing an interconnecting arrow between them, seemingly indicating that he both prefers to be called living, and James, because fairly he just didn't prefer any of the others. Living takes a few seconds before deciding to circle "living" and write "you can still use james if you want though :D" under it Living seems to take note and sit up a bit, looking outside, most of the lights are on again, his eyes widen a very much non-human amount when he realizes, being that you can barely see any white in his eyes when they're fully dilated [whilst you are still, in fact thinking about the correlation between the fact that living said that he IS the heart graphic that he's wearing, he doesn't seem to be nearly as hostile as the fanatic seemed to be, after all, judging by the condition of what can be determined as the fanatic's living place, they chose to break their bookshelves, and manually burn out every page of the hundreds of books they had, and Living really doesn't seem to be like that, in fact it just looked like he was nesting here, the clothes on the ground aren't even arranged in a bed like shape, they just look like something a dog would curl up into. So, the fanatic DID say that they was going to "merge" with the heart, leaving no process or way to tell what they were truly doing, and the cathedral did have pretty much the exact same symbol, but those seemed to be much older and worn than the symbols that were on stuff like the texts you found, and the fact that Living has a shirt specifically from those older symbols does have some merit. Also judging by what you've seen, Living is heavily similar to the cultists you found, granted, he has more human proportions, and he has eyes instead of really widened empty sockets, and he's capable of complex thought instead of just sitting there mumbling old rhythmic chants, so obviously he's not the same, but he is absolutely heavily similar.] [[It's obvious to you that Living is somehow connected to the heart, and the cultists in some way, exactly how, doesn't really come clear to you, because, at least to your current theory, he would be the fanatic merged with the heart, and he should be absolutely insane, after all, unless the heart was sentient or capable of actually interacting with the cultists, they wouldn't have been so thoroughly invested in it.]]

[roswelldetails]

RNM 2x13 - Mr. Jones

EPISODE SUMMARY:

SEASON FINALE — Having realized that a deadly threat has infiltrated CrashCon, the busiest event of the year, Liz (Jeanine Mason) realizes that she can’t save everyone she loves — and with Max (Nathan Dean) facing immediate danger, she and Isobel must make a heart-wrenching choice. Meanwhile, Michael (Michael Vlamis) finds himself caught up in the conflict between Jesse (Trevor St. John) and Alex (Tyler Blackburn) once again, even as Maria’s (Heather Hemmens) life hangs in the balance elsewhere, and Kyle (Michael Trevino) faces a moral dilemma when the enemy requires medical attention. Jeffrey Hunt directed the episode written by Christopher Hollier & Carina Adly MacKenzie (#213). Original airdate 6/15/2020.

DETAILS:

The episode opens with Isobel trying to hold back the fire. They don't actually show Rosa convincing Liz to go stop the explosion. But she runs up to Isobel and explains her science:

"I have to activate the ingredients first, but once I introduce my solution to the system it should kill the cellular matrix."

Liz literally squirts the console with her "solution".

Rosa is doing CPR on Max and praying. Max wakes up just as Kyle runs up.  Immediately Max directs Kyle to Flint instead of himself. It's interesting. When Max previously killed with his hand, in 1x06, he instantly knew that he killed the drifter. This time he wasn't sure (and he didn't. We eventually learn). Rosa and Kyle take Flint to the hospital.

Meanwhile Helena is saving Charlie's life.  

"Jesse Manes was the only one supposed to get hurt."

Which is...not what happened.  Jesse, Flint, Max, Maria...even Liz got hurt.  She burned her hand on the console.

Maria is being rolled into the hospital. She got there really really fast. Cam is by her side.

Liz is still squirting her solution onto the console. It turns red.  Liz asks Isobel to get people away but Isobel refuses to leave Liz alone.

Jesse, Greg, Michael, and Alex are still mid-standoff.

"Gregory, listen. You and I have had our differences in the past, but you should stand with me now."

"You're not well, Dad."

Jesse hits Gregory with the atomizer and appears to knock him out. He tries to shoot Michael, but Alex tackles him.

"Guerin, get the atomizer! Get it away from my brother!"

"Alex, I can't."

Jesse gets the upper hand in the fistfight with Alex and steals Alex's gun. Turns to shoot Michael again.

Liz makes more solution and squirts more of it on the console.  This time it starts to crack. Isobel pulls Liz to safety and the console shrivels and dies.

The dying console just doesn't work as well in still form, so @maxortecho giffed it for me! Thank you!! 😘

Max runs up to them.

"You disabled it. You saved everyone."

"Is Flint dead? Did you kill him?"

He looks at Liz with some heavy heart eyes for her being the hero. She looks at him with fear.

Back to the Maneses and Michael. Jesse has a gun on Michael. Michael has the atomizer.

"Drop it, Guerin. Drop it!"

There's a gunshot. Jesse Manes falls and Michael has blood on his face.  Gregory shot Jesse from behind.

"I should have defended you from him a long time ago."

"There are no more Manes men left."

Jesse dies.

Indeterminant time jump.  Liz is late for work.

"Sorry, Javi.  I just...I haven't really been sleeping."

"You've said that every day since CrashCon. You still having nightmares? …Did you read the papers this morning."

"Oh, I've kind of been trying to avoid the papers."

"Did you hear about that veteran who died at the carnival? They're going to have a parade, build a statue. Did you know he was disabled?"

Customers at the counter are discussing CrashCon:

"The CrashCon discourse is saying aliens invaded and killed the guy."

"That should be good for tourism."

"Newspaper said it was smoke inhalation though."

"He was making sure all the kids got out safely and the smoke overwhelmed him."

"We need more people like him."

Soooo much to unpack here.  And most of it is addressed by Helena and Rosa's exchange at the end of the episode. But the big question to me is… who is spreading the rumors and covering this up? Is it Flint? Is he even well enough to take the lead on that? Is it someone else with Project Shepherd that we haven't met? The mayor? I mean, Jesse was shot! There was a lot of blood! Plus, remember what happened in 1x11 and 1x12: it's a small town. People notice gunshots. 

Liz goes to take a table's order and, surprise! It's Diego. Who had gone back to Denver after CrashCon. He brought Dr. Margot Meyerson to Roswell to meet Liz.

Michael is visiting Maria at the hospital:

"What are you doing?"

"Oh they cut your bracelet off during surgery. How are you? You look better."

"Liz has been dropping by every day to inject me with witch serum."

"Ooh the synthetic nucleotide excision repair genomogenate? We're lucky you're only part alien, otherwise there wouldn't have been enough left of you for her to save."

"Listen, do you think you could use your telekinesis to open this box? Mimi left it when she visited. It's a family heirloom, but she forgot the key."

"Mimi hasn't exactly been leading you in the right direction lately. Her psychic visions led you toward a bomb instead of away from it. Seeing you like that -- all sick and pale and quiet -- I started praying."

Max and Isobel are at Max's house. Isobel is studying the photos of the console and alien symbols.

"I wish I understood why Louise and Nora would spend a year building an alien weapon of mass destruction."

"I don't think it was a bomb. I think it's a communication device. It's like a remote, you know, it just happens to be combustible."

"Are you mad at me, Max? Did I do something wrong? Is it that we're not related, or are you upset about the abortion? Because I…"

"Whoa, hey, God no."

"Because you're not talking to me."

"You're not the only one.  I didn't want everyone to worry, you know, 'cause I've been taking some of Liz's antidote. And things are coming back to me. Little flashes, sort of, mostly. Like vague memories."

"Michael said that you kind of zoned out when you touched that alien bomb...remote thing. Did it trigger a memory?"

"When I touched the console, I heard whispers that I could almost understand. All right, it's like the same with those symbols. I mean it's like their meaning is just beyond reach. Except for one word. I took this from Graham Green's display at CrashCon. See that? It's an aerial photo of some crop circles from Roswell in 1948. This farm belonged to a guy called Jones. Pretty sure it says savior... This is my name. Maybe that means you and Michael's parents weren't the only ones that survived the crash. Right, maybe I had a family too. You know, maybe my mom was just across town."

"Max. I really wish that you could just focus on the present. You know, I mean, as a recently deceased man, I really feel like you should be enjoying the simple pleasures in life, you know, like reading nerdy books, the smell of leather, and that feeling when you wake up before your alarm and the person you love is still asleep and they're kind of snoring a little bit. It's like the best thing that ever happened to you. Stuff like that."

"I want all those things too.  But I feel like if I only know half of myself, I'm only half living. And I know you understand that, Iz, because I've watched you this year become your entire self. And it is so beautiful. Okay, I am not at all mad at you. Are you kidding me? I am so proud of you. I am so proud that you're my sister."

Michael and Alex in the shed. For all that the shed is such a key location in this show's canon this is the first time we've seen it since 1x06.

"Maria made me bring food over.  I gave it to Gregory.  Seems to be holding up okay."

"Everything my family touches turns to crap. My dad used to talk about how my Grandpa Harlan built this she'd with his bare hands when he was, like, seventy.  For a long time it was my safest space. And the one night my dad destroyed it."

"You're right. This place sucks."

Michael and Alex start destroying the shed. In the next scene Michael breaks a floorboard revealing a skeleton. The skeleton is wearing dog tags, so Alex grabs them. In his shirt pocket Michael spots and grabs the key to Maria's box.  The tags say Eugene Manes III.  So this is Tripp's body. Which confirms for Alex that his grandfather killed Tripp.

Max and Liz are walking in the plaza.

"I don't understand the violence, Max. Flint could have had brain damage given how long he wasn't breathing. You risked your life to hurt him and he had already thrown the weapon away, Max, so why? I can't get that image out of my head.  You trying to kill Alex's brother."

"I know. I snapped. Last year Noah told me that we were energized by killing and not by healing. Even then I knew he was right.  I… Obviously I can usually fight that, but I guess this time my better angels just didn't show up."

"We have to stop keeping secrets from each other, Max. There's a scientist in town.  She's a supervisor at Genoryx.  She has a job for me in California. She's offered to sponsor my dad's citizenship. And it could put me in a position to help Rosa too. I mean, I'd be able to do a lot of good with the grant money they're offering, and I know that all sounds too good to be true, but…"

"It sounds like someone finally realizes how valuable your mind is."

"I think that a change of scenery will be so good for us. I mean, we could get a place by the beach and you could write."

"You want me to come with you?"

"Of course I do."

"Well, I mean, I just told you I have this killer instinct, and you want me to come to California with you."

"We'll figure it out. Okay? We'll figure all of it out together. Run away with me, Max Evans?"

"Anywhere."

Max goes to see Cam at work. She picks on him for getting arrested and has his mugshot as her desktop background because friends!

Max asks about Charlie.

"Yeah she texted me from a burner phone that she was all right and then she vanished again."

Max tells her that he has a doctor's appointment and then asks her to do some undercover work for him.

Michael visiting Maria at the hospital.

"So Alex thinks Harlan found out that Tripp was an alien sympathizer all that time and he offed him."

"So Mimi must have known that you would find it. That's why she left the box. Look, I know you don't trust my mom's visions, but I was the only one who could grab that atomizer and run with it. If it had been you, you'd be dead."

Maria takes off the bracelet.

"What are you doing? Maria, that prevents brain damage."

"I'm only part alien, but it is a part of me. Even if it's dangerous I can't just turn off a piece of myself."

"So I'm supposed to sit around helpless as you fade away? Maria, I cannot watch you disappear. I love you."

"I love you too."

"So can we just let this go?"

"You have it wrong. Mimi hasn't disappeared. Yes she can be inconvenient, she can make people uncomfortable, but maybe she's supposed to be an uncomfortable inconvenience that saves lives. And now I need to be inconvenient, and I don't want to be someone that hurts you. I think that we should find out what's next, apart from each other."

"Wait, so you think that if we break up, I'm gonna be able to stop caring about you?"

"I learned so much, being with you. You sacrificed yourself without hesitation when Alex needed you."

"I would have done the same for you."

"I know. I don't doubt your capacity for love, 'cause you made me so happy this year. And I loved being someone that made you happy. I just think that we should leave it be, before I wonder if someone else could make you happier. Open the box, Guerin. Let's see what comes next.

Skip forward to the Crashdown where Michael has the box in a booth with Alex and Isobel. He opens the box and pulled out a journal, which they in turn read aloud.

I did a separate post on the journal's content and the Tripp and Nora flashbacks here:

Kyle visits Steph in the hospital

"What do you think will happen?"

"What do you mean?"

"When I die, idiot."

"You know, Socrates thought that death was a blessing, because only one of two things could happen. Either consciousness ceases, and it's like falling into a dreamless sleep. Or you go to where all who have died before you have gone. Your loved ones, people you admire. If you lived a good and just life, you will be surrounded by goodness and justice, in a place without fear. Sorry.  I thought a lot about this when my dad passed, so I…"

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry that I'm putting you through this again."

"No...I want to be here."

Liz interrupts them. She clearly wasn't expecting Kyle to be there and comments on Max's appointment.  Kyle gets up to leave.

Diego and Margot are talking in the Wild Pony:

"I was very impressed with her work when we first pursued her, but when I met her today, not so much."

"Why? 'Cause she had a little ketchup on her uniform?"

Undercover!Jenna staggers up to them and spills her drink on them, tells Margot that she's beautiful, and plants a listening device.

"Anyway I think we should move on."

"Okay, wait a sec.  Liz has been working on something recently, but she signed this NDA. Although I guess she can't be blamed if we took a peek, you know? Without permission."

The line that will haunt me for the next year. Kyle to Max while showing him what appears to be chest X-rays.

"You know what I'm saying here, right Max?"

Cameron calls:

"You were right. It is too good to be true. Diego just told some woman he can get her access to Liz's lab. He must have followed her there."

"Well, there's a security system."

"The way he's talking, it sounded like Diego's pretty certain he can get access. They just left here, Evans.  You need to tell Liz to get anything incriminating out of there - now."

Max arrives at the lab and immediately sees that the security system was manufactured by Genoryx. He uses his powers to break the system and get into the lab. He quickly searches through all of Liz's records and then pours what appears to be gas or lighter fluid or some other flammable substance all over the place and then uses his powers to set a fire.

He listens to the notes on Liz's recorder, which by the way has 22 minutes of recording on it. Some of what we hear:

This is my record of the dissection of specimen NB.

... immunoglobulin harvested from alien DNA can be transferred to a human recipient.

Commence dissection of the dorsal side of the spinal nerve.

I hypothesize that the female specimen's plasma…

Bracken's seminal cells indicate a pH level double that of a human counterpart.

I'm now extracting the grey matter to measure alien voxel signals.

Note that Max doesn't seem to have any chest pain this time when he uses his powers.

Right as Diego and Margot show up the lab explodes.

Max comes home to find Michael and Isobel waiting for him.  He's clearly exhausted and upset after the lab.

"Can whatever this is wait until tomorrow?"

"Jones? That's the guy who grew the crop circles in the shape of my name."

"Nope. We spent the day reading Tripp Manes' journal. Caffeinate, Max... Okay, so, when I asked Sanders about this photo of Nora, he said he didn't know whose hand this was. He was all, Mr. Bernhardt, Mr. Jones, Old Man Gibbons. Could've been anybody."

"Ten points to Hufflepuff."

"So in October '48, Nora decided not to finish building the ship with Louise. She decided to go to the reservation with Tripp."

"But then little Walt convinced her to go to the fall festival, where after successfully avoiding him for a year, she finally ran into the alien stowaway who had crashed the ship. He'd been masquerading as a farmer."

"Mr. Jones."

"Tripp saw Jones approach Nora, and he recognized him from the night of the crash, but he didn't have a chance to ask Nora about it before Harlan called for a raid on the farm."

"Yeah. And after the massacre, Jones was never heard from again. Crop circles were all that was left."

"If you were in hiding, why would you grow corn in the shape of an alien symbol?"

"Maybe they just grew that way.  It's the same way that this symbol just shows up everywhere, you know?"

Michael reveals his tattoo and it's the first time Max has seen it.

"Wait, when did..?"

"Oh, I got it when we weren't sure if you were coming back. It didn't feel like it was ever gonna be the same again."

"All right. There. Now can we all cowboy up and focus, please? Let's feel our feelings after we've solved the mystery of the unknown alien. After the raid on the farm, Nora was held by Project Shepherd."

Note...not actually accurate. Michael didn't get the tattoo until Max was out of surgery.

See Journal and Flashbacks post for the flashback.

Jenna and Charlie reunite. Relevant quote to remember:

Liz and Rosa find the destroyed lab.  Liz sees the fractal burn that indicates that Max is the one that destroyed it.

"I fought so hard to become who I am, and I just trade her in every time I get scared? No. I don't want to be on the run anymore."

Back to Max's house:

"Whatever happened to that thing that she and Louise were building out in the desert? I mean, did she ever tell him where it was or what it was?"

"Nope. And when Tripp asked Louise about it, she was silent."

Liz walks in and interrupts.

"Why'd you do it, Max?"

They go into the bedroom to fight.

"I'd been asking you for weeks to clear out that lab, okay? I knew it wasn't safe."

"Alex installed a military-grade security system."

"A system designed by Genoryx, okay? Diego could have hacked it. He could already know everything."

"And his nefarious plan is to what? Set us up with a condo in L.A.? Give my family a second chance?"

"Okay, I have a family to protect too."

"Yes, and you could have stopped Diego without destroying a year of my work!"

"I had to act fast."

"So your first instinct was to go with the one method that would break my heart?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking about your heart when I'm staring at jars with Noah's liver and his brain. I mean, what else did you harvest from us, Liz?"

"Those are just cells. I wasn't hurting anyone. I don't know what you thought love was gonna be like when we were 17, but it isn't just sunsets and horseback rides."

"You can't put this all on me. Okay you were sneaking around behind my back…"

"I apologized. I stopped. Max, you died this year. I was all alone because of a choice that you made, but still every single thing I did was for you and about you and with you. So when you were back, when I could finally touch you. When I could finally breathe. I needed to take just one moment to remember where I end and where you begin. To just be whole in who I am. I am a scientist. I am fighting for something that is bigger than me. I am trying to leave this world a better place. And I am in love with you. And right now, I hate it."

Liz leaves and Max takes another dose of the antidote.

Time jump. No idea how long or what has happened in between.  Liz and Rosa on the Crashdown roof saying goodbyes.

"Dad is checking your oil and making sure you have enough chile...also you left this in our room. Mom's been texting."

"Trying to come up with a better response than, go duck yourself… You should come with me. The Ortecho sisters take California."

"I wish. But I can't. I'm going back to rehab tonight. I want to see the program through. Sorry."

"Don't be. It's the best possible thing you could have said."

"You know… Max should be your road trip buddy. You love him.  You're gonna forgive him.  Besides, we both know if you try to leave town without him again, he's just gonna show up with some big, grand romantic gesture to stop you."

Open mic night at the Pony.  Alex and Kyle have a drink together.

"So how does it feel to have your father's murder officially avenged?."

"Feels like my dad's still dead. Flint should be okay. He'll live to become the new Jesse Manes."

"No he won't. I'm not gonna let it happen."

"After everything you still believe in redemption?"

"Well, I have a pretty good example of it right in front of me."

Alex sings his song. Michael, Isobel, Greg, and Forrest are all there listening.

Flash to Kyle going to Steph's hospital room.  The bed is empty...because she's up doing her makeup, her hands steady.

"Your hands are better.  Did they give you morphine?"

"I woke up this morning feeling incredible. Look at my chart. My numbers are up. It's a miracle."

"Or just really good science."

Liz is preparing to leave, her suitcase beside her in the empty Crashdown as she stands at the juke box one last time. Kyle runs in.

"What you did was reckless. And dangerous. And unethical, Liz. Thank you." 

Back at the Wild Pony, Michael watches Forrest listening to Alex sing.  He turns to leave. Isobel tries to stop him.

"It's a sad story, me and Alex. I have to walk away so we can start a new one someday. It's not our time right now."

"But it will be."

"I think so."

Rosa walks up to a bar.  She hesitates before going in, her hands shaking.

Liz buckles into her car, ready to leave.  She looks in the rearview window and waits.  She's clearly expecting Max to come.  But he's at home studying his alien symbols. She gives in and pulls away, leaving Roswell. Her season ends with her looking out over the ocean.

Alex finishes his song and Greg and Forrest are still there and are proud of him.

"Well, damn. How do you feel?"

"Like I just sang a song about a guy in front of a bunch of cowboys, and...I don't care."

"Oh, lucky guy, with a song like that."

"Yeah it was a long time ago…can I?"

Alex and Forrest kiss.

Rosa walks into the bar. Helena is there.

"If you came to tell me what I did wrong, your sister already texted."

"Did you get what you wanted, Mom? Is your score finally settled?"

"No. I wanted everyone to see Jesse Manes humiliated and weak. I wanted him to die knowing shame. But the papers say it was a tragedy. People like him - bad white men - they die heroes, no matter what they've done. People like us - we die villains."

"Yeah I know. I've done it. But I also got a second chance. So I get to leave a different legacy. The last time that I saw you, I said that I hated you. That's not true. I love you, Mom."

"I love you too, mija."

"I also told you to leave and I was right about that. Liz was free and it should have stayed that way. Manes is gone. There is no revenge to be had. No closure and no redemption. Don't come back, mom. Don't bother Liz again. I really hope you get better. Maybe you can have a second chance too."

Another possible time jump. Michael and Isobel pull up to where Max is out in the desert.

"How'd you guys find me?"

"Freaky twin thing. What's going on?"

"I took more of the antidote. Sorry, I should have called you guys."

"Save it. We are sick of being pissed at you for being so obnoxiously yourself. Why you look so scared?"

Pod Squad is investigating a cave. There's a door or opening covered by alien text with the alien symbol on it. It sorta looks like there's something behind it.

"Um, well, when I touched the alien console at the fair, something happened. I heard whispers that I couldn't understand...until now. I think when I touched it I unlocked something... Like a cage? The whispers led me here. I know it sounds crazy, but would you guys help me find a tunnel?"

"It's sealed up."

"I feel like we should learn more before we just busy that door open."

"Yeah, you're probably right."

There's a knocking sound and a voice calls out.

"Help! Is someone there?"

"If Max unlocked something at CrashCon, whoever that is has been down here for days without…"

"I need water. Please."

"There has to be three."

Note that we now know which symbol represents each of them.

The door shatters and they all react (Isobel's face is priceless).  

We flash back to the mysterious stowaway/alien hoodie dude/Jones. Louise fighting him.  Now we can see that it's Max. Nora kneeling after the crash with the hand on her shoulder. It's Max's face. He attacks/burns the military men/Hector Valenti.

The stowaway/Jones looks exactly like Max. Only with a really bad beard. 

"Howdy partner."

MUSIC:

1. Hootie & The Blowfish "Time"

2. Tyler Rich "Leave Her Wild"

3. Clay Rigdon "That Kinda Kiss"

4. Marc Danziesen "See Yourself"

5. Gloria Hart and Art Kassel "Frankie And Johnny"

6. The Score "Legend"

7. Sarah May Byrom "Rhythm Of A Memory"

8. Tyler Blackburn "Would You Come Home"

9. The Well Pennies "The Echo And The Shadow"

10. Valerie Broussard "Dark Side"

[louistomlinsoncouk]

He became a bona-fide teen pop superstar as part of One Direction, then suffered unthinkable personal loss. Louis Tomlinson talks to Guy Kelly about fame, family and what comes next.

Louis Tomlinson took part in an online video recently, in which he was tasked with answering the internet’s most-searched questions about him. It was fairly tame, as you might expect of a pop quiz thrown at a pop star. ‘How do you pronounce Louis Tomlinson?’ the first read. There’s an interesting answer to that, actually, but we’ll come to it. ‘How old is Louis Tomlinson?’ was the second. He’s 28. And then came the third. ‘How is Louis Tomlinson?’

In the video, the man himself looks a little bewildered, dismissing the query as ‘random’ before moving on. But underneath, in the YouTube comments – one of the few nooks of the internet where love and goodwill still thrives – a fan repeated it. ‘“How is Louis Tomlinson,”’ they wrote, ‘the only question that matters.’ More than 7,000 people ‘liked’ it.

Given all Tomlinson’s been through in the past four years, it seems reasonable to ask. In 2016, the band he’d been in man and boy, One Direction, went on an indefinite hiatus after six years. Since being welded together by Simon Cowell on The X Factor in 2010, ‘1D’ had enjoyed perhaps the most stratospheric rise in music (five platinum albums, four world tours) since The Beatles. It hadn’t been Tomlinson’s decision to break up the band, and he wasn’t – still isn’t – particularly happy about it.

In December of that year, his beloved mother, Johannah Deakin, died a few months after being diagnosed with leukaemia. She was 43. Tomlinson pressed on with his nascent solo career, but unimaginable tragedy struck again. In March 2019, his 18-year-old half-sister, Félicité, was found unconscious at her flat in London and couldn’t be revived. An inquest later found she had died of an accidental drug overdose. Again, he buckled down, looked after his remaining siblings, and committed himself to finishing his debut album.

Settling down with Tomlinson in the corner of a west London photo studio, then, it seems as good a place as any to start: how is he?

‘I’m good, mate, I’m feeling good,’ he says, spreading his arms across a sofa. After wearing a series of high-end outfits for our photo shoot (‘I never feel super-comfortable on shoots; I’ve got one f—king pose – moody’), he’s in a black ’90s-inspired collared jumper, black trousers and black trainers.

He pushes his fringe to one side. The Doncaster accent, which softened in his 1D days, is back to pure, unfettered South Yorks. It’s all ‘in t’band’, ‘I didn’t know owt’, and swearing like a navvy. He’s honest, funny, and if his feet were planted any more firmly on the ground he’d be unable to walk.

I tell him about the YouTube comment, which seems to reflect the genuine care his fans have for him.

‘Ah, yeah I know, they’re considerate, they are. We’ve got a special, interesting bond. They’ve grown up with me – and I’ve been through some personal stuff and they’ve always been there for me.’

Tomlinson’s album, Walls, has been a long time coming. Immediately after One Direction split, he released a couple of singles – dance-y pop collaborations – which were fine, but not what he wanted to make. Halfway through writing Walls he realised, ‘If I’m chasing radio with every song I write, I’m not going to be doing this job for very long.’

So he relaxed, and the result is a mix of strong, melody-driven pop of the kind One Direction mastered, and what Tomlinson is really into, namely guitar-driven indie and Britpop. Some songs for the fans; some nodding to the future.

‘It’s a five-album plan. There’s bits where I’ve been almost selfish, and bits where I’ve been respectful to the fan base and what they love listening to,’ he says. ‘Then the next will be a step closer to the stuff I want to make. But I’ve got to earn my stripes.’

The dominant theme, I say, appears to be resilience. On the single Don’t Let It Break Your Heart, he advises, ‘Even when it hurts like hell / Oh, whatever tears you apart / Don’t let it break your heart.’ On the rousing title track (which features a writing credit for Noel Gallagher, who gave his blessing for a chorus strikingly similar to an Oasis tune), he sings, ‘These high walls that broke my soul / I watched all come falling down.’

It could be to do with grief, professional struggles, or his relationship. He nods.

‘Yeah, I write very autobiographically and had so much going on in my head, but in the struggle I’m trying to paint the message that you’re always left with a choice: to see the glass half-full or half-empty. It’s showing there’s hope.’

Some songwriters have found grief productive, others paralysing. Tomlinson was the former. One track on Walls is the previously released Two of Us, a beautiful, simple song written about his mum (‘You’ll never know how much I miss you / The day that they took you, I wish it was me instead’).

‘What’s amazing about this job is that regardless of the situation, you get something positive at the end of it. That’s obviously an emotionally heavy song for me, but fans have come up to me in floods of tears and talked about how it’s helped in their own tragedy. It’s incredible. From the dark, you can give hope.’

For the first three years of his life, Tomlinson was raised alone by Johannah, who split from his father, Troy Austin, when he was a baby. They lived above a launderette in Doncaster, where his mother worked multiple jobs, principally as a midwife, before she married Mark Tomlinson, a van salesman who became Louis’s stepfather. The three moved into a two-up, two-down, which was soon filled with half-sisters: Lottie, now 21, Félicité, then twins Daisy and Phoebe, now 16.

‘It was mad. They’re manic, young girls…’ he says. ‘Mum and Mark had a decent income but they couldn’t spread it around [a family of] seven. At times things were really good, you’d get 20 quid in a birthday card, but others were really difficult. I remember the electricity meter – you’d get five quid on the house as an emergency when you couldn’t top it up. Sometimes it’d be a gamble when it’d run out…’

Tomlinson wasn’t particularly academic – ‘though I’m not daft or owt’ – but loved school. There, he joined a band at 16 and found he was OK at singing, so he applied to audition for The X Factor. He failed, twice, but succeeded on the third try, in 2010, performing a fairly terrible (he admits it) version of Plain White T’s Hey There Delilah.

A few months later, at the ‘bootcamp’ stage, Cowell had the idea of creating a band comprised of Tomlinson and four other solo boys: Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan and Liam Payne. They were to be called One Direction. Tomlinson, who’d been intimidated by the standard of other vocalists in the competition, ‘bit their hand off’ at the offer. ‘I was like, “This is my ticket.”’

The show came just after his second run at the first year of his A levels. He’d failed the first time, with UUE in psychology, PE and English, which his mum had ‘absolutely ripped [his] head off’ for. The second time he’d gone one better, UEE. So he lied, telling her he got a smattering of Ds, and came up with a plan.

‘I waited until after the X Factor final, when we were all sat around drinking champagne, and told her, “By the way, I bulls—tted you on those results. I failed again, but hopefully we’ll be all right now…”’ he laughs. ‘She was fine. I picked my moment well.’

One Direction came third in the final, losing to runner-up Rebecca Ferguson and winner Matt Cardle, a former painter-decorator who now performs in the West End. But it was always felt that the group would go furthest, not least because Cowell was such a supporter (all the other boys have now left his record label, Syco, but because ‘loyalty is the biggest thing’ for Tomlinson, he’s stayed).

Eighteen when the group started, Tomlinson was the oldest member (the others were 16 and 17), ‘just allowed to drink, just allowed to drive’, but suddenly everything in his life was controlled.

‘You’re ready to be reckless and stupid, but then I was in the band and couldn’t ever act like that, especially not publicly,’ he says. They went on their first headline concert tour in 2011, and soon had fans surrounding their hotels overnight, wherever in the world they went. Naturally, they embraced partying.

‘There was a good 18 months where I was going out all the time. The press love to write about that as if it’s this chaotic thing, and at times it was, but it’s also an escape. Once you have a couple of drinks down you in a club, you’re just someone in the club, part of everyone else, and not everyone is looking at you.’

Even when he was away, he kept in contact with his mum by phone – or in person, when she could join him – as much as possible. The two were impossibly close: she had access to his emails; he told her when he lost his virginity; she knew about his finances.

‘One thing I’ve learnt since losing her is that any decision, even if I knew the answer, I’d call her,’ he says. ‘I didn’t realise how reliant I’d become on her. That was the hardest thing for me, understanding that living life after meant making decisions on my own. I thought I’d always have a sounding board. There was a different level of credibility with my mum, because I idolised her.’

Styles has recently joked that One Direction were ‘grown in test tubes’ by Cowell, but Tomlinson insists that part of their appeal lay in the fact that they all had their own personalities and talents, which weren’t forced on them. Still, it took him years to know where he fitted. Styles was cool, a heart-throb. Malik was moody and mysterious. Horan was cute and Irish. Payne was whatever Payne was. But Tomlinson wasn’t sure.

‘You’ve got to be dead cocky in Doncaster to survive – it’s either that or be picked on. So I used to walk around with a chip on my shoulder. But I’d always been the funny guy, centre of attention, so I never struggled to make mates,’ he says. ‘It was weird suddenly being in a situation where one or two members are constantly in a better position. It took me a while to understand my strengths. I was the oldest and it wasn’t until the third album when I made it my mission to write the most.’

He succeeded: Tomlinson’s writing credit appears on 39 of the 96 songs One Direction recorded, four more than Payne and dozens more than the rest. But it was intense. There were times when he considered quitting the band, if only to allow him to escape the attention, but he likens that to children running away from home. ‘By the time you get halfway down the street you regret it and go back…’

‘Directioners’ were ‘fanatical’ about the boys, to a frequently absurd degree. And not every encounter was surreally funny. The year after the hiatus began, in 2017, Tomlinson and Calder were involved in a scuffle with paparazzi and fans at the airport in LA. Fists possibly flew, and Tomlinson was arrested, only for no further action to be taken. The fans now are still loyal, still ardent, but they’ve matured with him.

What kept him grounded, as the money rolled in (I have heard that each of the boys amassed a £40 million fortune from the band, and that collectively they still earn around £38,000 a week from royalties, merchandise and so on) and the fans bayed, was keeping friends from Doncaster around. When I arrived at today’s photo shoot, Tomlinson was busy doing his singular pose at one end of the room, while at the other, near the free pastries, a young redheaded bloke in a tracksuit lurked, scrolling through his phone.

He introduced himself as Oli, Tomlinson’s ‘mate from Donny’, who has spent the better part of a decade travelling the world with his pop-star friend, and seems to operate as a walking comfort blanket. They live together when Tomlinson’s in LA.

They also live together when he’s in London. I imagine there’s space for house guests wherever he is, though: it has been reported that he put his Hollywood Hills mansion on the market last year for $6.995 million, and the previous year valued another property in California at $13.999 million, after apparently renting it out for $40,000 per month.

‘I’m hoping to do a bit of work with Louis’s tour manager this year,’ Oli says, cheerfully. I later discover he’s so ever-present with Tomlinson that he even has his own fan accounts on social media.

‘I remember bringing a mate out for our first US tour. He called from his hotel with his mind blown by being able to pick up a phone and they’d just bring you food,’ Tomlinson says. ‘I go back to Donny and hear heavy s—t – struggles with jobs, money, family, health. That humbles me, and gives me a better emotional intelligence.’

He reckons ‘eight out of 10 people have an ulterior motive’ when they meet him. Luckily he can tell if someone’s a pre-fame friend. His name is pronounced ‘Loo-ee’, but he wasn’t keen on it as a child, so had mates, like Oli, pronounce it ‘Lewis’, which they still do. Unfortunately Cowell guessed at ‘Loo-ee’ on The X Factor, so that was that for the stage name.

By 2015, some members of One Direction felt an itch to break off – or just have a break – and try their own thing. Malik had gone in March, and while a full split seemed inevitable, Tomlinson was still caught off-guard.

‘I was f—king fuming at first. We were working really hard – people [namely, Payne] have said overworked, but we weren’t overworked, that’s just what happens when you’re a band that size, though I understand. I thought I’d mentally prepared myself for a break, but it hit me hard.’

He was finally feeling comfortable in the band, and hadn’t thought about a solo career.

‘About a week after, I sat there thinking, “Strike while the iron’s hot,” but I wasn’t ready. I was bitter and angry, I didn’t know why we couldn’t just carry on. But now, even though I don’t fully understand everyone’s individual reasons, I respect them.’

They’re ostensibly all still mates, despite going in radically different musical directions, though some are closer than others. Tomlinson seems to mention Horan with most affection, and the pair performed at the same event in Mexico in November, titillating 1D fans by sound-checking together with one of the band’s old songs.

If it was up to you, I ask, would the group still be going? He considers this for a moment.

‘It if was up to me, yeah. I’d maybe have said, “Let’s have a year off.” But yeah, probably. I’m sure there’s a better analogy out there but it’s a bit like [shutting down] Coca-Cola. You don’t say, “Right, let’s hang the boots up on that,” because it’s a massive thing.’

Afterwards he muddled around for a bit, including releasing those early singles – one of which he performed on The X Factor, rigid with grief, just days after his mum’s death. Then he returned to the show last year as a judge, alongside Cowell, Robbie Williams and Williams’s wife, Ayda Field.

Did he get on with Robbie? He smiles, arching an eyebrow. ‘Why do you ask?’ Well, he came out of a boy band, went solo…

‘Oh, yeah, he was all right. He’s a good man, we were just different from each other. Certain moments I thought, “F—king hell, Robbie, just sit down for five minutes, I’ve got something to say.” I love his missus though, Ayda, she’s sound.’

Tomlinson liked mentoring, and during our conversation it becomes clear he’s fuelled by responsibility. He was the oldest sibling in his house, and although Mark Tomlinson and Johannah’s second husband (after divorcing Mark in 2011, she married Dan Deakin in 2014; they had twins Ernest and Doris) are still around, he became a paternal figure after she died. He’s particularly involved in the lives of Daisy and Phoebe, to whom he’s ‘a kind of second parent’.

‘Without being too soppy, I like looking after people, it’s cool. At the moment I’m stressing trying to convince Daisy and Phoebe to go to sixth form. They’ve been to private school near Donny, and it’s proper expensive. I’m paying for it thinking they’re staying on, but now they don’t want to go. I told them education is important. I’m like, “You’re 16, you haven’t got a f—king idea what the real world is,”’ he says.

‘What’s difficult about those two is they’ve only known the 1D craziness. They’ve grown up in this elitist way, which is very different from my upbringing and Lottie’s, and the values my mum taught us.’

He gives a ‘kids, eh?’ sigh. ‘Consistency is the big thing. I’m trying to get better at being in their heads enough so they think, “I wonder if Louis thinks this is a good idea?”’

Lottie lives in Hackney, east London. When she was a teenager, Tomlinson got her a job assisting One Direction’s make-up artist, and within a few years she’d become a ridiculously popular Instagrammer (currently with 3.4 million followers, still 10 million shy of Louis). Her big brother told her Instagram’s fine, but she must ‘become a proper businesswoman’ in case the bubble bursts. In 2018 she launched Tanologist, a successful fake-tan brand.

‘I’m so proud of her. She’s just been in Australia, where she’s stocked in Melbourne’s version of Boots!’ Tomlinson says, beaming.

Félicité, known to the family as Fizz, was also a budding Instagrammer. After her death last March, a post-mortem revealed ‘toxic’ levels of anti-anxiety and pain medications, as well as cocaine, in her blood. Six months later, an inquest heard that she had visited her GP in August 2018 and ‘gave a history of recreational drug use… on a consistent basis since the death of her mother’. She had taken overdoses and been admitted to a rehabilitation clinic.

Tomlinson hesitates to say anything was ‘easier’, comparing the deaths of Félicité and his mum, as ‘both felt very individual, and hit me with a big impact… but I think dealing with the family, how I can be there for them, that was a lot easier the second time because the first time I was grieving and didn’t know what to say. As time went on I grew to understand what to say to my sisters.’

Prioritising the feelings of your sisters in the immediate aftermath is understandable, I say, but I wonder if anyone took care of you. He looks surprised.

‘No, but friends and family, my best mate… I feel their support but I get most out of doing stuff for other people. I don’t say that to sound like a good guy, it’s genuinely what gives me strength.’

Did you ever consider grief therapy?

‘Nah, a lot of people recommended it but I’m a little bit old-fashioned when it comes to therapy. I’m sure it’s incredible, but I thought I’d be all right, and I have been till now.’ One of his many tattoos consists of the words ‘It Is What It Is’ across his chest. ‘I know the things I’ve been upset about in my life are s—t, but I can’t change them, so you have to make the best of what you’ve got.’

Tomlinson gives his own big smile. Our time’s nearly up, and he’d like a cigarette. After all you’ve been through, I tell him, people would have understood if you’d called it a day. You could have lived off royalties, enjoyed a quiet life.

‘Definitely, definitely. But do you know what? It didn’t cross my mind once. I somehow have an inability to worry, and just get on with things,’ he says, shrugging. ‘It’s definitely made me stronger. I’ve gone through every emotion, and I’m just f—king excited now.’

I think we have an answer. How is Louis Tomlinson? Hopefully, he’ll be just fine.

Walls is released on 31 January

[elceeu2morrow]

By Guy Kelly 17 JANUARY 2020 • 8:00PM

He became a bona-fide teen pop superstar as part of One Direction, then suffered unthinkable personal loss. Louis Tomlinson talks to Guy Kelly about fame, family and what comes next.

Louis Tomlinson took part in an online video recently, in which he was tasked with answering the internet’s most-searched questions about him. It was fairly tame, as you might expect of a pop quiz thrown at a pop star. ‘How do you pronounce Louis Tomlinson?’ the first read. There’s an interesting answer to that, actually, but we’ll come to it. ‘How old is Louis Tomlinson?’ was the second. He’s 28. And then came the third. ‘How is Louis Tomlinson?’

In the video, the man himself looks a little bewildered, dismissing the query as ‘random’ before moving on. But underneath, in the YouTube comments – one of the few nooks of the internet where love and goodwill still thrives – a fan repeated it. ‘“How is Louis Tomlinson,”’ they wrote, ‘the only question that matters.’ More than 7,000 people ‘liked’ it.

Given all Tomlinson’s been through in the past four years, it seems reasonable to ask. In 2016, the band he’d been in man and boy, One Direction, went on an indefinite hiatus after six years. Since being welded together by Simon Cowell on The X Factor in 2010, ‘1D’ had enjoyed perhaps the most stratospheric rise in music (five platinum albums, four world tours) since The Beatles. It hadn’t been Tomlinson’s decision to break up the band, and he wasn’t – still isn’t – particularly happy about it.

[complete article below the cut]

In December of that year, his beloved mother, Johannah Deakin, died a few months after being diagnosed with leukaemia. She was 43. Tomlinson pressed on with his nascent solo career, but unimaginable tragedy struck again. In March 2019, his 18-year-old half-sister, Félicité, was found unconscious at her flat in London and couldn’t be revived. An inquest later found she had died of an accidental drug overdose. Again, he buckled down, looked after his remaining siblings, and committed himself to finishing his debut album.

Settling down with Tomlinson in the corner of a west London photo studio, then, it seems as good a place as any to start: how is he?

‘I’m good, mate, I’m feeling good,’ he says, spreading his arms across a sofa. After wearing a series of high-end outfits for our photo shoot (‘I never feel super-comfortable on shoots; I’ve got one f—king pose – moody’), he’s in a black ’90s-inspired collared jumper, black trousers and black trainers.

He pushes his fringe to one side. The Doncaster accent, which softened in his 1D days, is back to pure, unfettered South Yorks. It’s all ‘in t’band’, ‘I didn’t know owt’, and swearing like a navvy. He’s honest, funny, and if his feet were planted any more firmly on the ground he’d be unable to walk.

I tell him about the YouTube comment, which seems to reflect the genuine care his fans have for him.

‘Ah, yeah I know, they’re considerate, they are. We’ve got a special, interesting bond. They’ve grown up with me – and I’ve been through some personal stuff and they’ve always been there for me.’

Tomlinson’s album, Walls, has been a long time coming. Immediately after One Direction split, he released a couple of singles – dance-y pop collaborations – which were fine, but not what he wanted to make. Halfway through writing Walls he realised, ‘If I’m chasing radio with every song I write, I’m not going to be doing this job for very long.’

So he relaxed, and the result is a mix of strong, melody-driven pop of the kind One Direction mastered, and what Tomlinson is really into, namely guitar-driven indie and Britpop. Some songs for the fans; some nodding to the future.

‘It’s a five-album plan. There’s bits where I’ve been almost selfish, and bits where I’ve been respectful to the fan base and what they love listening to,’ he says. ‘Then the next will be a step closer to the stuff I want to make. But I’ve got to earn my stripes.’

The dominant theme, I say, appears to be resilience. On the single Don’t Let It Break Your Heart, he advises, ‘Even when it hurts like hell / Oh, whatever tears you apart / Don’t let it break your heart.’ On the rousing title track (which features a writing credit for Noel Gallagher, who gave his blessing for a chorus strikingly similar to an Oasis tune), he sings, ‘These high walls that broke my soul / I watched all come falling down.’

It could be to do with grief, professional struggles, or his relationship – he’s happily with his girlfriend, 27-year-old fashion blogger Eleanor Calder, but they’ve been on and off over the years. He nods.

‘Yeah, I write very autobiographically and had so much going on in my head, but in the struggle I’m trying to paint the message that you’re always left with a choice: to see the glass half-full or half-empty. It’s showing there’s hope.’

Some songwriters have found grief productive, others paralysing. Tomlinson was the former. One track on Walls is the previously released Two of Us, a beautiful, simple song written about his mum (‘You’ll never know how much I miss you / The day that they took you, I wish it was me instead’).

‘What’s amazing about this job is that regardless of the situation, you get something positive at the end of it. That’s obviously an emotionally heavy song for me, but fans have come up to me in floods of tears and talked about how it’s helped in their own tragedy. It’s incredible. From the dark, you can give hope.’

For the first three years of his life, Tomlinson was raised alone by Johannah, who split from his father, Troy Austin, when he was a baby. They lived above a launderette in Doncaster, where his mother worked multiple jobs, principally as a midwife, before she married Mark Tomlinson, a van salesman who became Louis’s stepfather. The three moved into a two-up, two-down, which was soon filled with half-sisters: Lottie, now 21, Félicité, then twins Daisy and Phoebe, now 16.

‘It was mad. They’re manic, young girls…’ he says. ‘Mum and Mark had a decent income but they couldn’t spread it around [a family of] seven. At times things were really good, you’d get 20 quid in a birthday card, but others were really difficult. I remember the electricity meter – you’d get five quid on the house as an emergency when you couldn’t top it up. Sometimes it’d be a gamble when it’d run out…’

Tomlinson wasn’t particularly academic – ‘though I’m not daft or owt’ – but loved school. There, he joined a band at 16 and found he was OK at singing, so he applied to audition for The X Factor. He failed, twice, but succeeded on the third try, in 2010, performing a fairly terrible (he admits it) version of Plain White T’s Hey There Delilah.

A few months later, at the ‘bootcamp’ stage, Cowell had the idea of creating a band comprised of Tomlinson and four other solo boys: Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan and Liam Payne. They were to be called One Direction. Tomlinson, who’d been intimidated by the standard of other vocalists in the competition, ‘bit their hand off’ at the offer. ‘I was like, “This is my ticket.”’

The show came just after his second run at the first year of his A levels. He’d failed the first time, with UUE in psychology, PE and English, which his mum had ‘absolutely ripped [his] head off’ for. The second time he’d gone one better, UEE. So he lied, telling her he got a smattering of Ds, and came up with a plan.

‘I waited until after the X Factor final, when we were all sat around drinking champagne, and told her, “By the way, I bulls—tted you on those results. I failed again, but hopefully we’ll be all right now…”’ he laughs. ‘She was fine. I picked my moment well.’

One Direction came third in the final, losing to runner-up Rebecca Ferguson and winner Matt Cardle, a former painter-decorator who now performs in the West End. But it was always felt that the group would go furthest, not least because Cowell was such a supporter (all the other boys have now left his record label, Syco, but because ‘loyalty is the biggest thing’ for Tomlinson, he’s stayed).

Eighteen when the group started, Tomlinson was the oldest member (the others were 16 and 17), ‘just allowed to drink, just allowed to drive’, but suddenly everything in his life was controlled.

‘You’re ready to be reckless and stupid, but then I was in the band and couldn’t ever act like that, especially not publicly,’ he says. They went on their first headline concert tour in 2011, and soon had fans surrounding their hotels overnight, wherever in the world they went. Naturally, they embraced partying.

‘There was a good 18 months where I was going out all the time. The press love to write about that as if it’s this chaotic thing, and at times it was, but it’s also an escape. Once you have a couple of drinks down you in a club, you’re just someone in the club, part of everyone else, and not everyone is looking at you.’

Even when he was away, he kept in contact with his mum by phone – or in person, when she could join him – as much as possible. The two were impossibly close: she had access to his emails; he told her when he lost his virginity; she knew about his finances.

‘One thing I’ve learnt since losing her is that any decision, even if I knew the answer, I’d call her,’ he says. ‘I didn’t realise how reliant I’d become on her. That was the hardest thing for me, understanding that living life after meant making decisions on my own. I thought I’d always have a sounding board. There was a different level of credibility with my mum, because I idolised her.’

Styles has recently joked that One Direction were ‘grown in test tubes’ by Cowell, but Tomlinson insists that part of their appeal lay in the fact that they all had their own personalities and talents, which weren’t forced on them. Still, it took him years to know where he fitted. Styles was cool, a heart-throb. Malik was moody and mysterious. Horan was cute and Irish. Payne was whatever Payne was. But Tomlinson wasn’t sure.

‘You’ve got to be dead cocky in Doncaster to survive – it’s either that or be picked on. So I used to walk around with a chip on my shoulder. But I’d always been the funny guy, centre of attention, so I never struggled to make mates,’ he says. ‘It was weird suddenly being in a situation where one or two members are constantly in a better position. It took me a while to understand my strengths. I was the oldest and it wasn’t until the third album when I made it my mission to write the most.’

He succeeded: Tomlinson’s writing credit appears on 39 of the 96 songs One Direction recorded, four more than Payne and dozens more than the rest. But it was intense. There were times when he considered quitting the band, if only to allow him to escape the attention, but he likens that to children running away from home. ‘By the time you get halfway down the street you regret it and go back…’

‘Directioners’ were ‘fanatical’ about the boys, to a frequently absurd degree. And not every encounter was surreally funny. The year after the hiatus began, in 2017, Tomlinson and Calder were involved in a scuffle with paparazzi and fans at the airport in LA. Fists possibly flew, and Tomlinson was arrested, only for no further action to be taken. The fans now are still loyal, still ardent, but they’ve matured with him.

What kept him grounded, as the money rolled in (I have heard that each of the boys amassed a £40 million fortune from the band, and that collectively they still earn around £38,000 a week from royalties, merchandise and so on) and the fans bayed, was keeping friends from Doncaster around. When I arrived at today’s photo shoot, Tomlinson was busy doing his singular pose at one end of the room, while at the other, near the free pastries, a young redheaded bloke in a tracksuit lurked, scrolling through his phone.

He introduced himself as Oli, Tomlinson’s ‘mate from Donny’, who has spent the better part of a decade travelling the world with his pop-star friend, and seems to operate as a walking comfort blanket. They live together when Tomlinson’s in LA, where he has a three-year-old son, Freddie, from a short relationship with stylist Briana Jungwirth.

They also live together when he’s in London, along with Calder, to whom it was recently reported that Tomlinson is engaged (his representatives denied the rumour). I imagine there’s space for house guests wherever he is, though: it has been reported that he put his Hollywood Hills mansion on the market last year for $6.995 million, and the previous year valued another property in California at $13.999 million, after apparently renting it out for $40,000 per month.

‘I’m hoping to do a bit of work with Louis’s tour manager this year,’ Oli says, cheerfully. I later discover he’s so ever-present with Tomlinson that he even has his own fan accounts on social media.

‘I remember bringing a mate out for our first US tour. He called from his hotel with his mind blown by being able to pick up a phone and they’d just bring you food,’ Tomlinson says. ‘I go back to Donny and hear heavy s—t – struggles with jobs, money, family, health. That humbles me, and gives me a better emotional intelligence.’

He reckons ‘eight out of 10 people have an ulterior motive’ when they meet him. Luckily he can tell if someone’s a pre-fame friend. His name is pronounced ‘Loo-ee’, but he wasn’t keen on it as a child, so had mates, like Oli, pronounce it ‘Lewis’, which they still do. Unfortunately Cowell guessed at ‘Loo-ee’ on The X Factor, so that was that for the stage name.

By 2015, some members of One Direction felt an itch to break off – or just have a break – and try their own thing. Malik had gone in March, and while a full split seemed inevitable, Tomlinson was still caught off-guard.

‘I was f—king fuming at first. We were working really hard – people [namely, Payne] have said overworked, but we weren’t overworked, that’s just what happens when you’re a band that size, though I understand. I thought I’d mentally prepared myself for a break, but it hit me hard.’

He was finally feeling comfortable in the band, and hadn’t thought about a solo career.

‘About a week after, I sat there thinking, “Strike while the iron’s hot,” but I wasn’t ready. I was bitter and angry, I didn’t know why we couldn’t just carry on. But now, even though I don’t fully understand everyone’s individual reasons, I respect them.’

They’re ostensibly all still mates, despite going in radically different musical directions, though some are closer than others. Tomlinson seems to mention Horan with most affection, and the pair performed at the same event in Mexico in November, titillating 1D fans by sound-checking together with one of the band’s old songs.

If it was up to you, I ask, would the group still be going? He considers this for a moment.

‘It if was up to me, yeah. I’d maybe have said, “Let’s have a year off.” But yeah, probably. I’m sure there’s a better analogy out there but it’s a bit like [shutting down] Coca-Cola. You don’t say, “Right, let’s hang the boots up on that,” because it’s a massive thing.’

Afterwards he muddled around for a bit, including releasing those early singles – one of which he performed on The X Factor, rigid with grief, just days after his mum’s death. Then he returned to the show last year as a judge, alongside Cowell, Robbie Williams and Williams’s wife, Ayda Field.

Did he get on with Robbie? He smiles, arching an eyebrow. ‘Why do you ask?’ Well, he came out of a boy band, went solo…

‘Oh, yeah, he was all right. He’s a good man, we were just different from each other. Certain moments I thought, “F—king hell, Robbie, just sit down for five minutes, I’ve got something to say.” I love his missus though, Ayda, she’s sound.’

Tomlinson liked mentoring, and during our conversation it becomes clear he’s fuelled by responsibility. He was the oldest sibling in his house, and although Mark Tomlinson and Johannah’s second husband (after divorcing Mark in 2011, she married Dan Deakin in 2014; they had twins Ernest and Doris) are still around, he became a paternal figure after she died. He’s particularly involved in the lives of Daisy and Phoebe, to whom he’s ‘a kind of second parent’.

‘Without being too soppy, I like looking after people, it’s cool. At the moment I’m stressing trying to convince Daisy and Phoebe to go to sixth form. They’ve been to private school near Donny, and it’s proper expensive. I’m paying for it thinking they’re staying on, but now they don’t want to go. I told them education is important. I’m like, “You’re 16, you haven’t got a f—king idea what the real world is,”’ he says.

‘What’s difficult about those two is they’ve only known the 1D craziness. They’ve grown up in this elitist way, which is very different from my upbringing and Lottie’s, and the values my mum taught us.’

He gives a ‘kids, eh?’ sigh. ‘Consistency is the big thing. I’m trying to get better at being in their heads enough so they think, “I wonder if Louis thinks this is a good idea?”’

Lottie lives in Hackney, east London. When she was a teenager, Tomlinson got her a job assisting One Direction’s make-up artist, and within a few years she’d become a ridiculously popular Instagrammer (currently with 3.4 million followers, still 10 million shy of Louis). Her big brother told her Instagram’s fine, but she must ‘become a proper businesswoman’ in case the bubble bursts. In 2018 she launched Tanologist, a successful fake-tan brand.

‘I’m so proud of her. She’s just been in Australia, where she’s stocked in Melbourne’s version of Boots!’ Tomlinson says, beaming.

Félicité, known to the family as Fizz, was also a budding Instagrammer. After her death last March, a post-mortem revealed ‘toxic’ levels of anti-anxiety and pain medications, as well as cocaine, in her blood. Six months later, an inquest heard that she had visited her GP in August 2018 and ‘gave a history of recreational drug use… on a consistent basis since the death of her mother’. She had taken overdoses and been admitted to a rehabilitation clinic.

Tomlinson hesitates to say anything was ‘easier’, comparing the deaths of Félicité and his mum, as ‘both felt very individual, and hit me with a big impact… but I think dealing with the family, how I can be there for them, that was a lot easier the second time because the first time I was grieving and didn’t know what to say. As time went on I grew to understand what to say to my sisters.’

Prioritising the feelings of your sisters in the immediate aftermath is understandable, I say, but I wonder if anyone took care of you. He looks surprised.

‘No, but friends and family, my best mate, my girlfriend, my son… I feel their support but I get most out of doing stuff for other people. I don’t say that to sound like a good guy, it’s genuinely what gives me strength.’

Did you ever consider grief therapy?

‘Nah, a lot of people recommended it but I’m a little bit old-fashioned when it comes to therapy. I’m sure it’s incredible, but I thought I’d be all right, and I have been till now.’ One of his many tattoos consists of the words ‘It Is What It Is’ across his chest. ‘I know the things I’ve been upset about in my life are s—t, but I can’t change them, so you have to make the best of what you’ve got.’

What he’s got is an album to launch, a world tour to prep for and, immediately, a flight to catch. He and Oli are off to see Freddie. ‘When I’m working I definitely don’t see him enough,’ Tomlinson says, ‘but he looks just like me, which is cool. I’m excited to see his big smile.’

Tomlinson gives his own big smile. Our time’s nearly up, and he’d like a cigarette. After all you’ve been through, I tell him, people would have understood if you’d called it a day. You could have lived off royalties, enjoyed a quiet life with Calder, Freddie, your sisters.

‘Definitely, definitely. But do you know what? It didn’t cross my mind once. I somehow have an inability to worry, and just get on with things,’ he says, shrugging. ‘It’s definitely made me stronger. I’ve gone through every emotion, and I’m just f—king excited now.’

I think we have an answer. How is Louis Tomlinson? Hopefully, he’ll be just fine.

Walls is released on 31 January

[psiioniicarts]

You know that Ace Attorney AU you thought no one cared about? I wanted to ask, what about the people before Dual Destines(sorry for bad spelling)? If you've gotten that far, that is. If you haven't, that's fine!

oh OH shit shitt WOW OKAY, I’m sorry I don’t know how late this ask is, I’ve just been all over the place these past few months-

I don’t have any sketches to give you, since I haven’t had time to think about this AU but I DO. HAVE SOME THOUGHTS ON PRE-DUAL DESTINIES CHARACTERS. If any you’s haven’t seen my other posts about my Mythical Creature AU for Ace Attorney, there’s my first one with Phoenix and generals of the other characters, deeper details on Apollo and Athena (and Phoenix), and deeper details on Klavier and Blackquill and Edgeworth. I’ll uuuhhh see if sketches can happen later but I’ll share the stuff I have written down for some characters:

Gumshoe is a golem, an “animated anthropomorphic being that is magically created entirely from inanimate matter (specifically clay or mud)”

Class HL (Human-Like), subclass AH (Artificial “Human”), like Athena

Under his clothes, you can see the seams of his different parts, like where his arms meet his torso, and also can see his “magic seals”, the seals that keep him from falling apart/going berserk

He doesn’t have a particular master, he mostly just serves the police department in general, but he has an affinity to serving Edgeworth

His skin has the texture of stone, and he is prone to chipping, but is incredibly tough

Pretty quiet for a big stone guy, but people like Apollo and Simon can hear him by the slight stone grinding noise he makes when he moves

Maya (and by extension, Mia and Pearl) are spirit puppets, of a sort

I couldn’t find an exact name for the thing I’m thinking of (if you have a name please lmk), but basically spirit mediums in this universe essentially can be of any monster origin, but undergo a process that essentially turns them in “living husks with no spirit”

They’re technically “dead”, but still have their own free will and being when not “hosting” a spirit

The process just make their spirit disappear or “vanish”, so that their body is “empty” and capable of embodying other spirits

I’m still figuring out this sub plot, but here’s what I got so far: Maya and Mia are kitsunes; Maya had four tails, Mia had seven, and Pearl had three

Most of the Kurain family are kitsunes

When kitsunes reach nine tails, they fully “mature” and become powerful beings

Few Kurain members are allowed to reach that potential anymore, as they become harder to control, so many are put under spirit training early, as once they become a spirit puppet, they are incapable of gaining the rest of their tails and reaching that potential

Mia thought that was a load of BS and that’s why she left, so she wouldn’t be restricted by that rule. Unfortunately, she died at only seven (due to…unrelated reasons)

Maya ended up being the one to undergo the training instead, and technically finished by the events of the first game (she still had to refine the art, but at four tails she finished the main ritual and thus was stopped at four tails)

Morgan, her aunt, is one of the only nine tailed foxes in Kurain, and she forced Pearl into training early, sensing her immense potential, and wanting to stunt her early so Morgan could keep power

Which is why Pearl is only at three tails

There is a way to continue getting tails after the ritual, but those tails are not as long and seem short and are a different duller color than the others

That being said, older Maya has continue spirit training but also training on gaining all her tails, since “That’s what Sis would’ve wanted”

Currently, she has the four tails plus three paler, shorter ones, and has been helping Pearl too, who now has three plus a fourth

Maya, Mia and Pearl are classified as HL (Human-Like/”Previously Human”)

(side note: not ALL spirit mediums are kitsunes, and Ray’fa isn’t a kitsune)

Franziska (and by extension, Von Karma) are vampires

Class HL, they have to wear the the same restricting bracelet as Edgeworth

Vampires in the modern society technically only need to drink blood once a month at bare minimum, but receive three packs of “Monthly Supplied Blood” (MSB) from the city hall to keep them satiated, human blood that is donated by donors every month

The “craving” of blood is more of a myth, and vampires don’t crave it unless they are starving

Other than that, they are entirely capable of eating regular food (except garlic, which I’ve researched and I’ve found has perfectly acceptable reasons as to why it repels vampires)

The normal aversions remain, though modern vampires find ways around said things (sunblock/clothes or umbrella for sunlight, careful avoidance of crosses/silver)

As a side note, modern mirrors aren’t backed by silver anymore, so the Von Karmas can see their reflections

Another side note, in this universe, vampires can be made OR born, but vampires can only breed with other vampires, thus the Von Karmas are what you’d consider “purebred

Ema and Lana Skye are Khajiits

I uuuhh, dunno if those are creatures outside of DnD but I don’t care

Basically, humanoid feline creatures

Class H2 (Half Human), subclass PLM (”Predatory Land Mammal”), like Blackquill

Unlike were creatures, is permanently a humanoid cat creatue

Just, look up Khajiit and that’s pretty much what they look like

Prone to cat-like behaviors, but don’t bring them up or tease them about it or you’ll probably end up with a massive scratch to the face

Wears the same collar as Blackquill and Phoenix

“Shut up, you glimmerous fop, I’ll take a bite out of your sushi smelling ass”

Ema resembles a tri-color cat, and Lana a striped tabby

Mostly humanoid with similar leg build to Blackquill or Apollo, and fully formed human-like hands but with claws and pads

..Dahlia and Iris are succubi

Class H2, subclass DC (Demonic Creatures)

Wear the same collars as Kris and Klav to keep their “seducing voice” under control, though Dahlia found ways to work around her collar and used her voice uncontrolled until she was caught by Mia

Have a “true form”, with isn’t anything above just them but with wings, tail and horns and some other…details

I haven’t gone into deep thought about them yet

I thought about Investigations characters too, but I only have one so far due the obviousness of it

Lang is a werewolf (I’d be a fool to make this local furry anything else)

Similar to Blackquill in creature detail department, might as well read that post before continuing here

Unlike Simon, spends most of the time in the most human form a werewolf can take, human looking with only the ears and tail showing

When he can riled up, he can start shifting into a form that looks more like Blackquill, but keeps himself under control most of the time

Where Blackquill has thicker fur with a big rounded snout and paws, Lang is skinnier, with sharper features and sleeker, shinier fur

Has longer teeth and claws, but isn’t as powerful as Blackquill

That’s all I got for now, I’m still trying to think of creatures and details for other major characters like Godot/Diego, Kay, maayyyybbbe Maggey if you consider her a main character, Ray and Sebastian. If you have ideas, I’m always open to hear them, just leave a reply or send me an ask (admittedly, I’m having a harder time with charactes like Ray and Sebastian since I didn’t play the second Investigations game, and I didn’t finish Trials and Tribulations so Godot/Diego is giving me grief too). 

(I DO have idea for post-Dual Destinies characters like Nahyuta and his family, Ga’ran and Ray’fa, etc., so I only need suggestions for the main characters listed above, and any other main characters pre-Dual Destinies I haven’t listed)