#yes this movie lives rent-free in my head 24/7 and I will take any excuse to rant about it

[maxwell-grant]

PET THEORY: While others cannot see a vampire's reflection, when a vampire looks into a reflective surface they behold all their sins reflected back at them in a visibly twisted version of their own person (Very few of them enjoy the experience, since they prefer to regard themselves as something other than walking corpses rotten with stolen blood and their own Evil).

I like this one. I like ideas that go out of their way to make vampires weirder and less natural than they already are, especially when they are built around contrasting or defying the usual expectations about vampires. It's something I'm VERY much looking forward to in the next season of What We Do In The Shadows, considering the state they've left Colin Robinson in and how they've been playing up the weirdness of energy vampires by contrast with regular vampires.

Actually, what this reminds me of is something I picked up more recently in a recent rewatch of one of my top 3 favorite films, Phantom of the Paradise, a film that has no literal vampires, but pulls a lot of influences from supernatural horror fiction and, really it's the kind of film where vampires existing wouldn't even be one of the weirdest things about this world.

To give a brief overview in case you don't know about it and only recognize it through the works that referenced it which you have DEFINITELY seen even if you don’t think you have, the story of POTP is about a disgraced composer named Winslow Leach who hands over his cantata about Faust to be produced by the all-powerful mogul Swan, who ends up stealing it and having Winslow beaten and framed and sent to prison (where his teeth are all pulled out). He ends up escaping and being heavily disfigured by a record press of his own stolen music, and after he reemerges as a costumed Phantom attacking Swan's production, Swan ends up conning him into a Faustian deal where he'll give him a new voice and have his music performed the way he wants it to, by the woman he loves (Phoenix, played by Jessica Harper in her first role), as long as Winslow accepts working for him.

I should probably mention also that Winslow was extremely obsessive over his music even before he became the Phantom, which is why he agrees to work for Swan. He is okay with working for the man that destroyed him as long as his music gets performed, because from beginning to end, Phantom of the Paradise is a painstakingly clear and brutal criticism of the music industry and that informs every single aspect of the movie, even down to miniscule details like Swan employing bikers as henchmen (referencing the infamous Altamont Free Concert where the Rolling Stones employed Hell's Angels) or a gag where Swan serves "Breakfest!" to Winslow while opening a briefcase full of drugs.

This is a very brief overview and doesn't begin to convey the experience of watching this movie, but I have to get it out of the way first to talk about Swan and why it relates to this ask. This is Swan, played by Paul Williams.

The quickest way to describe Swan is that he's Dorian Gray meets Phil Spector (he’s been called a “dark parody” of Spector, but he’s not really a parody, if anything he’s nowhere near the ghoul that the real Spector was known to be even at the time). He's the film's villain and an all-powerful producer and living legend of entertainment, whose goal throughout the film is to complete construction of "The Paradise" opera house, described as "his Xanadu", in one of the film's many allusions to Orson Welles. Swan's always even-tempered and manipulative and extremely charming and persuasive, to the characters as well as the audience (I cannot overstate how great Paul Williams is and what a goddamn crime it is that he's never been asked to voice or play The Penguin outside of TAS), even when we know from his first scene that he's rotten.

Said scene is a parody of The Godfather's opening scene, where Swan's hidden off camera except for his white gloves and his main assistant Philbin's begging him to solve his problems with a rebellious star named Annette (whose only crimes, according to Philbin, are breaking contract, suing them for taking advantage of her and "giving free concerts to starving gook orphans"). When Philbin asks Swan to break her, Swan merely asks "Is that all?", to which Philbin replies "Isn't that enough?", and Swan replies that Annette, who's at the top of the charts, is "yesterday's news" for what he's looking for in his next venture, which turns out to be Winslow. A poor shmuck who just so happens to produce music that greatly appeals to Swan, so he takes the music and destroys the man, and when the man transforms into something too angry and strange to die, Swan finds a way to bleed him dry as much as he can before he comes up with a new way to put him away for good when he’s no longer got anything left to give.

(Fanart by Spoonfayse)

I bring this up to show how effectively the film establishes Swan early on as this supernaturally powerful force of evil, in that the very concept of "breaking" a person, something the brutish thug Philbin considers a great deal, is passe and unremarkable to Swan, something he does daily for breakfest and with zero investment, because all he cares about is the pursuit of his own desires. He is so powerful and uncaring, he even purposefully kneecaps his own stars for being too perfect, because he says "You know how I abhor perfection in anyone other than myself". And yeah, I know I'm quoting the movie a lot, it's fucking amazing and I want to shout it from the rooftops how much I love it, but I need to get across what kind of character he is to get to the next bit.

One detail of Swan throughout the film is that he never allows himself to be photographed or taped, he's seen mainly through mirrors or logos or audio before he actually shows up on screen, and the film consistently plays up Swan's manipulation of media, how he’s got cameras all over the place watching everything and how he’s constantly surrounded by mirrors and smokescreens. We later find out that Swan is immortal, after his attempted suicide resulted in him making a deal with the devil for eternal youth, and he's gotten both Winslow and Phoenix to sign the same contract binding all their souls together, and that in order to uphold this immortality, Swan has to watch every day the tape he made of his attempted suicide/contract so that, much like Dorian Gray, the version of himself on the tape ages and decays instead of him. Later, when Winslow breaks into Swan's viewing room, he sees that the tape of Swan's deal also includes a tape recording of his own deal with Swan, as well as Phoenix's.

Early on in the movie, before the true nature of Swan's deals are revealed, we get to see one of the very few times Swan displays weakness, which is also the only scene in the movie where we get to see Swan entirely on his own without anyone around him. It's a scene where he's watching a taped recording of his deal with Winslow, but with his voice altered, sounding both older and as well as far raspier and crueler, the same voice that Winslow's going to hear later when he watches the same recordings.

This is the one time in the movie where Swan seems to not be in control of the situation, the other being the finale, where his show is ruined, the Paradise's in chaos, his face is rotting, and he's trying to strangle Phoenix while screaming "YOUR VOICE, REMEMBER! YOU PROMISED ME YOUR VOICE!" in the same voice Paul Williams used for these recordings, and it pairs up with the scene where we get to see Swan's own initial deal: He was afraid of his looks being ruined by age, so he decided to kill himself young rather than fade away. He became immortal to try and defeat the inevitable decay brought by time, and ended up decaying anyway and bringing others down with him.

This is a strangely, uniquely sympathetic moment for a character who's otherwise completely irredeemable, and it opens up the question of whether his anguish in the scene comes from merely disgust over the sight of what he ultimately is and looks like, over seeing that which he tries to pretend isn't him, or whether it's a form of regret over what he's putting Winslow through and seeing that he too isn't as different from Winslow as he'd like to be, as later when Winslow tries to stab himself to death and fails, and then tries to stab Swan, Swan plucks the knife and grimly remarks "I'm under contract too.*

It creates a correlation between Swan and Winslow as two shmucks with great talent but little wisdom, who signed deals with forces beyond their understanding and became masked monsters as a result. Swan, for all his power and mystique and cruelty, is himself a victim of the entertainment industry he rules over, even before his demise where he is killed not just by the Phantom, but by his own audience perpetuating the violence Swan’s been selling to them since the beginning of the film, dancing over both of their corpses, still hungry for more. 

To bring this back to the original point a little, Phantom of the Paradise includes a lot of references to horror fiction, not just in it’s elements taken from Phantom of the Opera and Faust and Dorian Grey but also smaller references here and there to works like Nosferatu. There’s arguments to be made that both of the titular characters of POTP could be vampires, Winslow in his monstrous persona, superhuman efforts, brutal murders after he becomes The Phantom, and his continued existence fueled by love and hatred at equal measure, and Swan, in his deceptful and predatory demeanor, his vast ability to manipulate and command even in a hypnotic fashion, and his unending consumption of all the corpses he’s built an empire on. That both of their attempts to attain immortality backfire on the two of them is certainly consistent with the prevailing idea in vampire fiction, that being a vampire is ultimately a terrible deal for all parties involved. 

But I think there’s an argument to be made that, if anything in Phantom of the Paradise constitutes a vampire in it’s most dangerous, primal form, it’s not any of it’s main characters. It’s the audience. The audience that they chase and attain and find themselves unable to live without. The audience that Swan commands and corrupts as easily as he does everything else, the audience that abandons Winslow and makes a party of his misery, the audience that Phoenix sells her soul to Swan for the minute she realizes she cannot live without, the audience that cheers the hardest for Beef when he’s a charred corpse carried away in a stretcher. The audience that consumes and spits out all of them and trods on, hungry for more, hungry for everything and without end, because it’s all just part of the show, it’s all entertainment, it’s all another way to keep us, those in the audience seats, sated.

We watch vampire stories for the same reason we watch stories period: because there’s an 3-pound electric flesh sponge burrowed in your head that’s piloting your every motion and thought and, to keep running, demands to be fed stimulation and nourishment at every turn, and if you don’t feed it, it starts to eat you instead. It feeds to live and it lives to feed and it’s hunger only grows, and there’s nothing you can do about it but try and find ways to make peace with it, and try to survive the whims of others who have not, before it’s too late. The person dies, but the hunger remains, consuming even those that try to weaponize it or enjoy it. The hunger of showbiz is what all comes down to.

"And though your music lingers on

"All of us are glad you're gone"

"If I could live my life half as worthlessly as you"

"I'm convinced I'd wind up burning too"

The major themes of the piece are set out in the first song, "Goodbye Eddie," about a singer who commits suicide in hopes of making his debut album a posthumous hit. As the song reaches its end, Juicy Fruit Archie Hahn pantomimes Eddie's suicide, playfully pretending to slice his wrist open with his own microphone, and then writhing in pain on the floor as his bandmates seemingly obliviously continue to perform around him.

Encapsulated in this song and in Hahn's performance are the concepts that people will do anything, even killing themselves, in exchange for the chance for success; that the public eats this up, making Eddie's "memorial" album a hit; and that the Juicy Fruits' own audience is thrilled to see a simulated suicide -- even one performed for laughs -- onstage.

As the film progresses, the onstage carnage (and the audience's reactions to it) become more and more serious, mimicking (and anticipating) the real-world one-upsmanship of performers who commit ever more outrageous acts in an effort to outdo themselves and their competitors for the public's attention, with the ultimate attention-getter being complete self-destruction. 

We make our way from Hahn's innocent goofing with the knife/microphone to the simulated spearing of mannequin audience members, to Beef's impromptu electrocution, to a premeditated "assassination live on television coast to coast," as Swan has his henchman take aim at his bride during their televised wedding, and finally to Swan's and Winslow's onstage deaths, which the crowd assumes to be just part of the show. Ultimately, Swan, Phoenix, and the Phantom are all destroyed by their own ambition, as the audience at the Paradise takes it in with glee.

Phantom's melding of "the show" and "the real", perhaps inspired by Altamont and the resulting 1970 Gimme Shelter documentary, anticipated today's "reality" shows, the success of which proves that there's a hunger that mere "fictional" tragedy no longer satisfies. As De Palma predicted with Phantom, the culture demands entertainment that is more and more visceral, with the most desensitized among us insisting upon manipulated "reality" as entertainment, and snuff films the inevitable end result; people are willing to watch video of New York's twin towers tumble hundreds of times, and entire websites have been dedicated to photographs of unfortunates jumping out of the skyscrapers to escape the heat. 

Of course, in order for "death as entertainment" to flourish, there must be a culture that is sufficiently interested to watch it, while being sufficiently apathetic to do nothing about it; and Phantom is as much an observation of that culture as it is an indictment of the media machine that happily provides that culture with what it wants.

There's nothing new about a culture of "death as entertainment" of course; it's been around at least since the Romans came up with throwing Christians to the lions. But it's something we like to think we have risen above; 

Phantom reminds us that we haven't - “It’s More Than Just Songs”, by The Swan Archives

[365days365movies]

March 7, 2021: Onward (2020) (Part One)

Finding Nemo.

That’s my favorite Pixar film. Real talk, no arguments, and today’s movie? NOT dethroning it. This movie is so hard-wired into my brain, that the second I typed the words of the title, the theme song ran through my head, where it lives rent-free. It will be a cold day when I don’t find an excuse to shout “NEMOOOO!!!! I HAVE TO FIND MY SON!!” at any opportune moment. I will never stop swimming. Whenever I catch a Chinchou or Lanturn in a Pokémon game, I name it “Goodfeeling’sgone”.

SHARK BAIT OOH HA HA

YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE DEPTHS OF MY LOVE FOR THIS MOVIE.

...Ahem. So, yeah, I love FInding Nemo. For the record, the sequel ain’t bad. And also for the record, there’s only one Pixar movie that I consider to be bad, and it’s the one you’d think. You know, the one about ageism. The one where somebody dies by torture? The bad spy movie?

...the second one about cars?

Which means, YES. I DON’T THINK The Good Dinosaur IS THAT BAD! Not exactly good, but its gorgeous, and just kinda boring, not outright terrible. That Styracosaurus, though...that dude is great.

Anyway, off of Pixar for a sec, huh? What about fantasy? I’m a big tabletop RPG nerd, and I’m currently the GM for a Pathfinder campaign, a Pokémon RPG, and a Mutants and Masterminds game, while also playing in a Pathfinder game as well. Yeah, I’m a busy dewd. But what I’m saying is, this movie should be preaching to the choir for me. I’m a Pixar lover who plays RPGs. I’m ready for this. I’m ready for CGI Bright. Which is another way of saying, I’m ready for a version of Bright that doesn’t suck.

So, why haven’t I seen it until now? I mean...COVID-19. This film got FUCKED. But, no matter! It’s on Disney Plus, I’ve got Disney Plus, so let’s get this baby STARTED! Let’s get updated on some Pixar! SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap (1/2)

OK, immediately digging the soundtrack over the Disney logo as we jump in here! Very ethereal, very fantasy, very LotR, I LIKE it, I LIKE it! And then...long ago, the world was full of wonder!

We get a view of the world of olde, with magic and many mystical, mythical creatures living together and adventuring. However, as magic wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to use, it eventually gave way to technology, fading away in a world now very similar to ours.

Basically, it’s about the same as our world, except for a few different races, and the fact that dragons are basically dogs, and unicorns are basically raccoons, which is fuckin’ fantastic.

We enter the home of teenage elf Ian Lightfoot (Tom Holland) and introverted now-16-year-old who lives with his mother, Laurel (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and his older brother Barley (Chris Pratt). Barley’s a tabletop RPG nerd who’s also a fan of the magical past. Said obsessions cause a strain on his relationship with Ian, and with that of his mother’s boyfriend, centaur policeman Colt Bronco (Mel Rodriguez).

After a discussion about Barley’s recent attempt to protect an old magical monument from destruction, he accidentally damages the sweatshirt that Ian is wearing, which was owned by their late father, Wilder. Ian rushes out, flustered, despite Barley’s attempts to bond with him. Well, looks like we have a sense of the plot for this one.

On his way to school, Barley stops to get some food when he meets Gaxton (Wilmer Valderrama), an old college friend of his father’s. From Gaxton, he learns things about his father that he never knew, like that he was bold and standout. From there, Barely pledges to try and be more self-confident, like his father.

Whiiiiiiich, doesn’t exactly work once he gets to school. He fails to stand-up to a jerky guy at school, he fails in his driving class, and he fails to ask other high school kids to his birthday party. But to be fair, Barley helps a bit with that last one when he shows up with Guinevere, his busted-ass van with a unicorn painted on the side. Which is supposed to be uncool...but I kinda dig it, not gonna lie.

After that, Ian completely flubs the invitation bit, confusing the people he was talking to, and disappointing himself in the process. He gets a ride home with Barley, and goes home to talk to a tape recording of his dad. Which is...beautifully sad, and somehow very easy to identify with. So, yeah, it’s gonna be that kind of Pixar movie.

Ian talks to his mom about his father at his age, asking if he was ever unsure. She says yes, but couples this with a surprise: a gift from his late father, who died of a terminal illness shortly after Ian’s birth. The gift is for both Ian and Barley, and was meant to be opened when they were both over 16.

She gets it from the attic, and they unwrap it, where it’s revealed to be a wizard’s staff. Which is weird, because Wilder was an accountant. In a pocket of the wrapping cloth, there’s a letter written by Wilder with the narration from the beginning of the film (that “Long ago” bit).

Also included is a spell, written by Wilder so that he could see who his sons grew up to be. This “Visitation Spell” would appear to be a way to bring Wilder back for 24 hours. Barley, being the magic-lover that he is, tries multiple times to cast the spell with the staff, but fails to do so, much to his and Ian’s great disappointment.

However, when Ian tries to read the spell out of curiosity later, the staff begins to react, and the spell begins to work. Barley comes in as this is happening, and the spell works...halfway. It starts to fail, and Barley offers to help, but Ian pulls the staff away, and the spell stops as the Phoenix crystal inside it shatters.

Looks like another bust, but it’s not a complete failure. And if you’ve seen literally any trailer for this movie, you know what happens.

Although it’s just his legs and feet, it’s still Wilden Lightfoot (Kyle Bornheimer...technically). The boys decide to try and complete the spell, but need another Phoenix Gem to do so. According to Barley’s “historically accurate” TTRPG, Quests of Lore, they will be able to find one by accepting a quest from the place where all quests start: the Manticore’s Tavern. And so, the quest begins!

The brothers and their half-dad board Guinevere and drive to the Manticore’s Tavern. On the way, Barley convinces Ian to practice some spells from the games rulebook, but they don’t work because Ian’s not invoking his passion (or his “heart’s fire”, as Barley calls it). Meanwhile, Laurel figures out where they’re headed, but doesn’t know exactly why...yet.

After the journey, they make it to the Manticore’s Tavern, which is now essentially a themed Chuck E. Cheese’s restaurant, owned and managed by Corey (Octavia Spencer), a very overworked manticore. Which is pretty great, not gonna lie.

They try to get the actual map to the Phoenix’s Gem from her in order to conjure their Dad, but she no longer sends adventurers on dangerous quests, mostly because she doesn’t want to get sued by any injured adventurers. When Ian argues with her about this, she IMMEDIATELY DIVES INTO AN EXISTENTIAL CRISIS/MID LIFE CRISIS!

It’s, uh...it’s kind of amazing. Having completely lost it at this point, she basically tears down the entire building with her bare hands and fire-breath. Unfortunately, the map to the Phoenix Gem is burnt in the process of Corey’s literal meltdown. However, as Wilden’s about to be crushed by a couple of falling beams, Ian taps into his heart’s fire.

Nice. They get out of there, and head out for the Gem, using a child’s placemat replica of the real map to make their way to a place called Raven’s Point. However, rather than just follow the goddamn map, Barley decides to go on much more dangerous road known as the “Path of Peril”, once again following the “call of adventure” and his gut.

Which...yeah, Barley’s not really considering the reality of this whole situation, which fits his personality. He’s a dreamer, despite the rational and reasonable solution in front of him. And, in case you weren’t sure, I’m pretty sure that isn’t a good thing.

Ian points out the correct point that what actually matters is that they send enough time with their father, and they do indeed take the straightforward path. Good! Barley listened to Ian’s suggestion after all. However, they hit another snag when the car breaks down, completely out of gas. Problem.

Meanwhile, Laurel makes her way to the Manticore’s place, only to find it on fire! She meets Corey, who tells her that she’s met her boys, and told them about everything...except the curse. Also, there’s a curse. Laurel, who is the best movie Mom ever, tricks a policeman interviewing Corey to diverting his attention away from her, and smuggles her into her car to help find (and maybe rescue) her sons. 

Stuck off the freeway without gas, a desperate Ian asks Barley if there are any spells that can get them more gas. They concoct a plan involving a shrinking and growing spell, but that immediately goes wrong as Barley tries to instruct Ian, only frustrating him further, and causing him to fumble the spell and hit Barley with it, making him tiny. 

They decide to head to a gas station, where a group of pixie bikers has just arrived. This backfires when Barley, lacking basically any common sense, ends up insulting the biker leader, Dewdrop (Grey Griffin) and her ancestors. Nice one, Barley. As they escape from the pissed off pixies, the tiny Barley is unable to drive, forcing the driver’s anxiety-riddled Ian to drive, overcoming his fears from earlier by force, being chased by the pixies all the way. It’s a pretty good sequence, to be honest.

Well, they escape the Pixies...but not the cops. And I think that’ll be a good place to pick up in the next part! See you there!

[drjackandmissjo]

Roses are Red, Tattoos are Forever

Chapter 1 --- Next Chapter

Feysand Masterlist

Pigtails and Liliums

They have two shops, one next to the other. They're friends. She disappeared and now she's back. He tries his hardest. The only thing that gets a reaction from her isn't the one he planned

Florist and Tattoo Artist Au, Modern Day

“Excuse me, sir?” a little girl with missing front teeth and pigtails asked him as he was cutting the leaves off a long Lilium.

He gave her his brightest smile and, after having put the tools down on the counter, leaned over towards her. “Yes, sweetie. What can I do for you?”

The little girl began to look nervous and turned her little head towards her mother, who motioned for her to go on with her question. The girl couldn’t have been older than seven and, after taking a big breath in, she said:"Do you have to put the drawings on every morning by yourself or does your mom help you?”.

Rhys was shocked for a couple of seconds, but promptly replied:"My mommy helps me every morning before I leave for work. But, if you want and if your mom agrees, there is a little shop next door that can give you a drawing for your skin that can last for a week or two! And your mom doesn't have to help, there are some that you can put on your own."

The little girl’s smile grew so wide and bright it might’ve outshone the Sun itself. The mother mouthed a little ‘thank you’ laughing a little at his response.

He nodded his reply and went back to his work. He gave the flowers to her after he was done as the little girl kept on asking:"Can I get one of those for one week? Pretty please."

Rhys did not hear the mother’s affirmative nor negative response as she said it while getting out of his shop, but he imagined it must’ve been affirmative, based on the girl’s reaction.

He went back to work, smiling to himself.

***

An hour later, it was time to close the shop and call it a day.

What a wonderful day it had been!

He had an appointment with the others for dinner at Amren’s house, and he knew perfectly how much she hated when he showed up late, so he turned the sign at the door and went on to finish his chores. He had exactly 20 minutes to complete his paperwork and head out, so he moved as quickly as he could. Or at least he wanted to.

When he had arrived halfway to his desk, he heard a small knock on the glass door.

“We’re closed, I’m sorry.”, he yelled without looking.

“Did you just send a freaking seven years old into my tattoo parlour?”, yelled back the person on the other side.

Rhys didn’t turn around, but simply smiled and took some steps backwards, until his back hit the glass door. “I did it one hour ago, not ‘just’, and I sent her to get a temporary one with the roses that you hand draw and that usually last a week, just as those into the Polaretti.”

“I know and I proposed one of those, but she saw my arm and choose a full sleeve. I gave her a henna one. Will wash down in a month or so.”

Now he turned around to open the locked door, letting the girl in.

Feyre wasn’t particularly remarkable: golden brown hair, piercing blue-greyish eyes that usually threw daggers and glared at everyone and threatened everyone from her 5’6 glory. A tattoo adorned her whole left arm, a full sleeve made of intricate waves and vines and thorns that went from the top of her shoulder to the tip of her fingers, leaving only her palm empty of ink. On the back of her hand, there was a little spot not covered by those thorns and those vines, but by a VFD's style eye. His idea. It came out off a bet, like many things in their friendship.

He did not like that word.

When Feyre walked past him to walk into his shop, she left a trace of vanilla and blueberries in her wake, probably from her shampoo or perfume.

He was intoxicated.

“It’s the third kid that you specifically send me to get a temporary tattoo.”

“Do you blame me for making you work a little bit more?”

She sat on his counter and pouted. “I blame me you for the looks the parents give me after the job’s done.”

“I’m sorry they’re causing you trouble. They look very convinced when they leave from here.”

She threw her hands in the air:"As they are when they come in! But, as soon as my work's finished, they whine about how the kid will get sick of it, how their classmates will react, how their other parent friends will react, etcetera etcetera etcetera.”

He nodded respectfully. They set into a comfortable silence and, while he worked, Feyre read one on the handwritten labels next to some petunias, explaining the meaning of the flower, the history, its origin and even a synopsis about Harry Potter’s aunt.

“I’m sorry again if I have to cut this lovely visit short, but I gotta be at Amren’s, and you know how she gets when someone’s not punctual.”

She nodded solemnly, fully aware of the of the little one’s wrath.

“Besides”, he continued even though the topic pained him, “don’t you have to be home soon? It’s a miracle Tamlin lets you out of the house to go to work even. Without anyone to check on you regularly even!”

She scolded, but didn’t comment, shutting the conversation down.

Shady? Maybe. True? Yes. Bitter? Totally.

He had been in love with that woman since day one, but didn’t have the guts to ask her out. They started as friends, then besties and then, when he finally found his courage, Tamlin came into the picture.

The blond-haired lawyer asked her out the same day he had planned to, just one hour earlier. Feyre then came to his place, as they had planned, to a Disney movie night and ice cream, and told him everything. Rhys couldn't believe his luck, but as long as she was happy, he wouldn’t have said anything.

And he didn’t. Things started out perfectly for them, but Tamlin rushed into it head first, arguably forcing her into moving in together at his place, which was very much better than hers. ‘Arguably forcing her’ because, even though she denied, he gave her no choice. Small comments here and there about her living situations, bigger comments about how he would’ve appreciated to have her around 24/7 and three weeks later, she had given up her apartment.

"You'll save money like this, since you don't have to pay rent anymore.", he said.

And then:"I don't see why you choose that as a living profession. It isn’t proper for a lady to work in a tattoo shop”.

Later:"You know you can stop working, right? My salary is high enough and, besides, the house could use someone to pay attention to it."

That sentence came one month earlier. Feyre didn’t show up at her little shop for almost four weeks after that, not even texting Rhys or letting anyone of their shared friends knowing if she was alive. Rhys had to even call her bigger sister, Nesta, that didn’t exactly appreciate him very much, nor his brother Cassian for the matter.

Moral of the story: nobody knew where Feyre was for three weeks and four days. Three days earlier, when Rhys went to work, the little tattoo parlour next to his florist shop was open. He rushed in, relief written all over his features, but she was with a client already, so he decided to swing by later. She was constantly with clients whenever he showed up to check up on her.

It pained him, how she looked: pale, almost invisible. Her collarbones were showing more than usual, the bags under her eyes more prominent than ever.

The worst thing was a simple one, though. A month or so, after she had started dating Tamlin, she stopped drawing.

She did her job, still perfectly. Only with less passion.

She used to draw the tattoos by hand on a piece of paper before transferring them to the skin, to make them more personal for the buyer. She made the most complicated details with her pencil and pens and the results were breathtaking.

After moving in with him, she started using her laptop, searching for the tattoos online or using pre-drawn models. She still focused and did what she was paid to, but each time with less energy. Until she stopped at all.

Now she was back, empty as a shell. And still didn’t hand draw anything.

Until now. It struck him as a lightning.

“Feyre, you gave that girl a Henna, isn’t it?”

She smiled, timid and small, but it was a smile nonetheless. “She couldn’t stop talking about how pretty was the tattoo on you and how pretty was mine and how she wanted one up her arm and I couldn’t just make a sticker one.”

“You free-handily draw that?”. Rhys was hoping so hard. He prayed every deity he knew.

Feyre looked down at the point of her shoes. She was shutting him down again.

He couldn’t let it happen. “Fey, what happened? You stopped coming to work, stopped talking and texting. And now you come back, looking like a ghost. And a little girl shows up and you gave her a free handily henna. It’s the first drawing you’ve done in months. What happened?”

“She reminded me of you.”, she said, still looking down. “She reminded me of you and I... I just wanted to. I left him. A week ago. I just couldn’t stay there any longer. He was obsessive and jealous and I felt like I was dying. We argued about how maniacally he was acting and he snapped. So I packed all my things and left in the middle of the night, as he was sleeping. He came looking for me the next day and I was scared. I told him to get the hell out of my life or else I would've gone to the police and fucked up his perfect lawyering career.”

For once in his life Rhys didn’t know what to say. He simply stared at her as she was looking at the floor.

“Who kept Lucien?” his voice said before his brain could even register.

Feyre’s head bubbled up quickly, her eyes open wider in disbelief.

“I mean, he’s like a puppy. A red furred puppy. So, usually, when two people split up, one keeps the dog.”

“Lucien is a grown man and can make his own choices.”, she replied stubbornly.

"I take that as ‘at first he chose The Tool and now he's turning around towards me'”

She smiled. “Indeed”

Rhys’ heart was about to explode. He was about to tell her everything, how he felt truly.

But he didn't. Instead, what he said was simply:"I gotta go at Amren's. There is a seat reserved for you, you know."

Feyre looked at him, truly looked at him for once and he thought she could stare at his soul.

“Smile again” he whispered. She did, broad and without restraint.

“You’re exquisite”, he breathed.

She was brilliant, broken and healing at the same time. She needed time and he would’ve given her all the time in the world.

Feyre looked at the clock on the wall. “If we leave now, we can arrive at Amren’s in time, hell even beat Az in the race there!”

That was enough for now.