#and here we are. almost a year later and I’ve watched all the five Craig movies
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Also can we talk about the fact that I got *myself* into James Bond by mentioning goldeneye in a fic I wrote.
#like. i wrote a sick Matt daredevil fic that I’ve yet to type up or do anything with#where I was like. i need à media franchise people can binge. that isn’t Star Wars or hugely nerdy#and I went. James Bond#except at that point I’d seen skyfall and spectre and remembered barely anything about them#but I was like. what’s the James Bond movie everyone knows the name of? goldeneye.#i still a year+ later haven’t actually gotten around to watching more than the Craig era stuff but tbh that’s what I set out for anyways#so I put that and then was like. hey i should get into James Bond#and here we are. almost a year later and I’ve watched all the five Craig movies#have played a small amount of goldeneye reloaded. read a bunch of fic#read three Ian Fleming Bond books (man. live and let die was tough-)#and have an entire half planned out au that I’m obsessed with#like. mmmmmmmm and it’s all bc of a daredevil fic I WROTE#like. i just think it’s funny I got myself into this#i cant blame anyone. it’s on me#XDDD#one day I’ll make a side account for my James Bond au#or I’ll just annoyingly post on here idk
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From Crossfire #2, June 1984
I have these things in my life called “markers.” You have them too, though you probably don’t know it. Markers are those things that remind us of who we are and how far we’ve come from… well, from wherever we were. Unless you stubbornly resist all change in your life, things happen to you that cause you to say, “Gee, five years ago, I couldn’t have believed I’d be doing this.” Or, “Gee, I sure have come a long way.”
Well, whatever causes you to say that… that’s a marker.
Some markers from my memory:
1959: I’m seven and a devout watcher of Soupy Sales’ TV show even though I have both of Soupy’s jokes committed to memory. As much as I love Soupy, his crew loves him more. You can always hear them laughing off-camera and it is those laughs that give me my first desires to be in the TV business… to be a part of this magic.
Now, FLASH FORWARD TO 1980: I’m Head Writer on a variety special for NBC, we’re taping at a rental studio in Hollywood and who should be taping his new syndicated series on the adjoining stage but Soupy! Whenever I’m not needed on my show, I’m over watching his, chatting with Clyde “White Fang” Adler, talking to Soupy and being one of those off-camera folks you hear laughing in the background. Clyde even lets me hurl a pie shell of Gillette Foamy into Mr. Sales’ kisser at the close of one sketch; now, that’s a marker!
1961: Now I’m nine and most of the big things in my life, TV-wise, have the Hanna-Barbera logotype on the end: Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw, Yogi Bear, et al. My favorite actor in the whole world (no contest) is the voice of the above characters, Daws Butler. FLASH FORWARD TO 1977: It is the day after I have completed my stint writing “Welcome Back, Kotter.” I get a call from my former editor at Gold Key Comics, Chase Craig, who’s editing a line of comics for H-B of Yogi Bear, The Flintstones and company. He says, “I know you’re out of comics and making a ton of money in TV but would you like to write a comic or two on the side? Dan Spiegle’s going to be drawing “Scooby Doo” and he asked for you.” I say, “Sure, if I can write everything” and I happily set to work, writing the characters I loved when I was nine, often working with the same artists who drew the comics I loved at the time. (Marker no. 1) Now, FLASH FORWARD TO 1982: Joe Barbera calls me in, which can only mean one thing — H-B has a script crisis. They never call Evanier unless there’s a script crisis. CBS has ordered a prime-time Yogi Bear Christmas Special and, to get the animation done in time, it should have been written two months ago. The problem? Every staff writer in the H-B building has done one or more outlines and CBS has bounced every last one of them. “You know these characters,” Mr. B says. “You’re always nagging me we ought to revive them. Well, here’s your chance. CBS wants to guest star Huckleberry, Quick Draw, Augie Doggie, Snagglepuss and all the rest.” Forty-eight hours after my agent closes the deal, CBS okays my outline and, before long, the script is approved. A few days later, I get home and play back the messages on my Record-a-Call. There, in the unmistakeable voice of Daws Butler is: “Hey, hey, hey, Mark. This is Yogi Bear. I just called to say that this is the first good script I’ve had in almost twenty years.” I’ve had actors like scripts before but when John Travolta liked something I wrote for him, that wasn’t even a marker. Yogi Bear liking his script, now that’s a marker.
1963: I’m eleven and my best friend is named Brian Jacobson. Brain [sic] has, secreted away in his room, a pile of Playboy magazines and it is there that I first find out what women look like under their clothes, a big moment in any boy’s life. Brian and I talk about the fold-out ladies and there is, of course, nothing more beautiful than them, especially when you’re at the age when your glands are just beginning to kick in. They are, of course, unattainable. If women like that even exist (we have our doubts), they are surely and forever out of the reach of guys like Brian and me. FLASH FORWARD TO 1976, I think, for two markers in rapid succession: One is that I meet a Miss September of my childhood and, while she is now married and a mother, that’s not the point. It’s like meeting Wonder Woman and finding out that she really exists, even though she’s hung up her tiara. Marker no. 2 is dating a then-current Playmate who turns out to be, contrary to my ’63 beliefs, a real live human being and not some glossy-paper fantasy. Intellectually, of course, I knew that all along. But while walking into a party at the Playboy Mansion with Miss February, I couldn’t help but think how far l’d come from when Brian and I would desperately hide his Playboy stash from his mother.
And I’ve had other markers: Meeting Groucho Marx, Bob Hope, Phil Silvers, George Burns. Writing for Gale Gordon, Eve Arden, Sid Caeser and others I loved when I was younger. I even, under duress, wrote a sketch once for Jerry Lewis, proving that not all markers are pleasant.
A lot of my markers have to do with comic books I loved as a kid and wound up writing as a bigger kid — and with the artists with whom I was teamed.
When Brian and I played at his house, we looked at the Playboys. When we were at mine, we looked at comic books. I had the biggest collection in town — and remember, this was years before there were any conventions or Price Guide or fanzines or mylar snugs or any of those things. Comics were ten, going up to twelve cents. And old comics were worth less, never more. The few bookstores that sold old comics priced them at a nickel each, six for a quarter.
One day, I decided to file all my comics. I had never heard of anyone doing such a thing but I did it because, I guess, they were important to me and it seemed like a gesture of respect. It took all day… The Harveys in this pile, the DCs in that stack. The biggest pile was the Dells and, when I had them all segregated by company, I broke them down into mini-stacks of licensors: The Disneys here, the Hanna-Barberas there. Dell was my favorite company. Of course, at the time, it was everyone’s favorite company. In the fifties and early sixties, they published a line of comics that made them, to this date, the best-selling comics company in the history of mankind. At one point, they were selling more comic books per week than all of today’s companies, collectively, sell in a month. Their worst-selling book was selling about double what X-Men now sells. (And I’ve got to explain this because it confuses everyone: Dell was the publisher of this line of Disney/Warner Bros./Lantz/etc. comics but the books were edited, written, drawn and printed by Western Printing and Lithography, a wholly-separate firm which owned the comic book rights to all those great characters. Dell was Publisher in that they handled the finances and distribution. In the early sixties, the two companies got a divorce and Western began publishing the same books themselves under the Gold Key colophon while Dell scrambled to assemble a new line. This, I find incredibly amusing: For at least one brief moment there, around 1962, Dell was the bestselling comic book publisher in America despite the fact that they had no characters, no titles, no editors, no writers, no artists and no printing facilities. Apart from those minor omissions, they were in great shape.)
As I pored through my newly-separated pile of Dell “adventure-type” comics, I began to recognize artists’ styles. I didn’t know how a comic book came to be but I figured that there were artists and that they didn’t draw exactly the same. There were no credits but I did manage to deduce that the guy who drew Maverick was the same guy who drew certain issues of Sea Hunt. He did a lot of the Dell (later Gold Key) books: Days later, paging through the Disney stack, I found him in The Hardy Boys and most of the adaptations of live-action Disney movies. His work was wonderful and dramatic and fascinating. No one could draw Hayley Mills like this fellow. Years later - in one of the best-selling comics of all time, Space Family Robinson — he got to sign his work and I got a name to go with the style. He was Dan Spiegle.
Still later, I learned about his background. In 1949, fresh from art school, he got his first job, drawing the “Hopalong Cassidy” newspaper strip. (True story: He got it when he answered a newspaper ad for a strip artist, only to find that the job was on Bozo the Clown. Dan was skilled at adventure, not humor and he was about to leave when the executive doing the interviewing said, “My brother-in-law is Hopalong Cassidy’s manager and he’s looking for someone to draw a strip too.” That’s how Dan wound up drawing one of the best western strips of its day.)
Westerns were big at the time and Western Printing, true to its name, produced zillions of cowboy comics for Dell to publish. They lassoed Dan and made him their “star” adventure artist. In the sixties, if you walked into Marvel and inquired about work, they told you you had to draw like Jack Kirby. At DC, you had to draw like Curt Swan. At Western, if you aspired to draw adventure material, they handed you Dan Spiegle comics and said, “This is what we’re looking for.” But this did not apply to their humor comics; there, the works of Paul Murry and Carl Barks were the ideal. Dan Spiegle could draw anything… except humor —
— which posed a problem after Western lost the rights to the Edgar Rice Burroughs characters. They’d been publishing Tarzan and Korak with Spiegle on the latter. Dan’s Korak was the better-selling of the two, making it the best selling of all the E.R.B. comic book adaptations ever, not just in this country, but everywhere. Chase Craig was the editor at Western’s L.A. office then and he found himself with no book suited for Mr. Spiegle’s art style.
Cautiously, Chase assigned him the Scooby-Doo comic based on the Hanna-Barbera hound of the same name. It was a stretch for Dan and, at first, the results were un-impressive. Spiegle tried like hell but it was like Pavarotti trying to be the lead singer in Culture Club. Chase decided that, if the art wasn’t going to be special, the scripts had better be - so he reassigned that task to this new kid he had writing (literally) a third of their line, a kid named Evanier.
Marker!
I was thrilled to be writing something that would be going to the artist whose work I’d so admired. I was even more pleased when I met Dan Spiegle and found him to be, easily, one of the three nicest people in the whole comic book business and, no, I won’t tell who the other two are. As a team, we “clicked” and I learned an awful lot about comic book writing by seeing how Dan staged my scripts. I wasn’t the only one who learned from him: A great number of comic book artists - new and old - avidly study his work and are impressed with how devoid it is of comic book drawing cliches and how solid he is in visual imagery, perspective and a dogged determination to never repeat a pose or composition.
We work together whenever possible. When foreign publishers of Tarzan and Korak comics demanded them, we did a batch of Korak comics for overseas consumption. Later, I edited a batch of comics for Japan and the first artist I called was Spiegle. When Hanna-Barbera made a deal with Marvel to publish Scooby-Doo and other H-B comics, we were again reunited. When I was off doing TV work, Dan was snatched up by DC and they had him — sans M.E. — on Jonah Hex, Nemesis, Bat Lash, Zatanna, Green Arrow and others. But when they assigned him to a revival of Blackhawk, I came out of my funnybook retirement and joined him on what came to be known around the DC offices as “The Unknown Comic.” In spite of DC’s best efforts, the book developed a small but loyal following due to Dan’s excellent artwork Recently, along with co-writer Sharman DiVono, Dan and I did a new adaptation of Tarzan of the Apes for the Burroughs folks. He was their first choice as illustrator and, also, the choice of foreign publishers who are issuing the book by the millions. I love the way he draws and I’m not alone.
I’m writing this the day after Dan sent me the artwork for Crossfire number one. It is, perhaps, the two hundredth Evanier script he’s illustrated and the two hundredth time I’ve gotten this giddy grin on my face over the way he takes what I give him and makes it look like a real comic book. He’s improved leaps and bounds since his Maverick days and, yet, I can still see that he’s the same artist whose work got me all excited over comics. back when I was eleven. You see, to you folks, Crossfire may be a comic but, to me, it’s a monthly marker.
— Mark Evanier
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[TRR x ES] Viewing Party
Book: The Royal Romance & Endless Summer
Pairings: Liam x MC (Katrina Bailey), Drake x OC (Alyssa Devereaux), Jake x MC (Laurel)
Rating/Warnings: G; mild innuendo
Author’s Note: * All main characters belong to Pixelberry, I’m just borrowing them * Katrina Bailey & Laurel are the MCs I use when writing fanfic for TRR and ES, respectively; Alyssa Devereaux belongs to birthday girl @burnsoslow * This is my submission for @wackydrabbles Prompt 80: Stop looking at me like that. *
Author’s Note 2: * This is a birthday gift for my cheesy, potato loving homegirl Burnsie, who requested her very first Endless Summer/Jake fic, despite having never read any ES fic until now 🙈 for the sole reason being that she and Jake McKenzie are almost birthday twins, and my favorite pilot turns 30 this year. If you’re unfamiliar with canon ES trivia, Jake can hold his breath for 9 minutes, and Estela can hold her breath for an astonishing 14. This isn’t entirely what I had in mind when I set out to write an ES/Jake birthday fic, but I wasn’t about to miss your day because I’ve hit a whole ass writer’s wall, Burnsie! I hope you have an AMAZING day and I’m sending you so many hugs! You’re one of the sweetest ladies here, and I am so very thankful that I can call you a friend 🥰 also my real, real gift to you is coming at a later date, as I still have to work on it 😬 * and yes, that’s DDT in the moodboard - just for Burnsie, again - since I use Barnes as Drake’s FC in my TRR fics, lol *
Word Count: 2000 on the dot!
It was nearly 10:00 PM on Friday evening, when Burns arranged things around the comfiest chair in her living room. The rest of her family already retired for the evening, after a small but wonderful birthday celebration in her honor at home. Within easy reach, she’d arranged drinks and snacks next to her laptop - a glass of water, a hot mug of tea, a slice of homemade birthday cake to take care of any sugar cravings, and a small platter of cheese and crackers for something more savory. She grinned softly at the newest addition to her mug collection, watching the steam rise from the contents within.
The lavender mug arrived in the mail earlier that day from one of her friends, emblazoned with a quote from David Rose. Burns took a sip of the warm beverage before setting it down on the small side table and situated herself in the chair. She flipped open the laptop and pulled up a browser window, smiling at a gift from another friend - there was a sticker next to the trackpad with a drawing of a wedge of Swiss, quoting another memorable line from Schitt’s Creek, reminding her to “fold in the cheese.” Burns glanced to the time on the screen and logged in to her Netflix account, clicking until she arrived at the viewing party, and began typing to join the group chat.
She was greeted with jubilant messages from Donna, Ella, Brandy, Anitah, and half a dozen other friends, wishing her a happy birthday before the show started. They’d formed an ever-growing viewing party for a new series titled Stranded in the Orchard, which was an odd amalgamation of Survivor and Gilligan’s Island. Taking a cue from reality tv competitions, there were hidden cameras all over the island to monitor everyone and reduce production crew intervention, and in a nod to Hunger Games, there was an omnipresent host that would drop messages to signal when challenges were about to take place. After four episodes, the ladies in the watching party started picking their favorites from the two teams.
Team Ruby consisted of a group that appeared to have been shipwrecked onto the island. Leo was dubbed The Rogue; his brother Liam was The CEO; Katrina was The Attorney; Alyssa was The Teacher; Drake was The Cowboy; Olivia was The Weapons Expert; Bertrand was The Grump; Madeleine was The Whiner; Maxwell was Bertrand’s brother and The Jester; Hana was The Jill of All Trades. Bertrand and Madeleine had already been voted off when Ruby lost two events.
Team Catalyst consisted of a group of mostly college students. Jake was The Pilot; Laurel was The Mystery Girl; Sean was The Coach; Michelle was The Doctor, even though she was only pre-med; Craig was The Muscle; Zahra was The Engineer; Aleister was The Slick One; Grace was The Brain; Diego was The Entertainer; Estela was The Huntress. Catalyst lost the last two events, which sent Aleister and Grace packing.
Everyone settled in to watch the opening credits as they recapped last week’s episode, where Ruby won the immunity challenge and fishing gear by building a makeshift stretcher to rescue and carry Katrina from a jungle crash site to a first aid station on the beach; Catalyst voted Grace out. Burns popped a cheese cube into her mouth as she and her friends watched the two groups deal with day-to-day chores in their respective camps on Day 14 of the show. They chatted about the team members and how much Burns wanted to see Drake take off his shirt to go in the water, despite the knowledge that there were clips of him cuddling with Alyssa; Donna, Ella, and Anitah would keysmash in the group chat any time Liam appeared on the screen, even though he and Katrina were clearly sweet on each other, while Brandy and Alyssa Lauren would ask what was happening or who someone was from the Catalyst team.
—
“Pillows and blankets are nice, but what we could really use is food,” Maxwell said, drawing an octopus in the sand with a piece of driftwood. “I don’t know how much longer I can last on coconuts and rice.”
“Liam and Drake took the raft out this morning to try fishing with the gear, maybe they’ll get lucky,” Katrina suggested, stirring the pot of rice in the fire. She set the lid on top and stood up from her kimchi squat position, dusting some errant sand off her leg. They both looked out towards the water, as dawn stretched out across the ocean, making out shadowy forms of their friends as they bobbed in the water, just before one of them went under the surface. Behind them, the rest of their friends began to stir awake from the scent of rice cooking.
Back at the Catalyst camp, Jake sat by the campfire with Estela; they were working on making their own fishing gear from bamboo and camp supplies after losing the previous challenge. Jake fed a length of twine through a handmade fishing pole while Estela sharpened tips on one end of a pile of branches she’d gathered. “Whatcha whittlin’, Katniss?”
Estela glanced at Jake sideways. “Stakes. Hand over some of that twine, I need it to bind these to make spears.” With a begrudging huff, Jake unfurled the twine and ran it against the edge of the makeshift bench he was sitting on to cut it, before tossing the rest at Estela.
“How fast can you tie those off? We’re losin’ daylight for a morning catch, if you wanna ride on the raft with me.”
“Five minutes,” she answered, already working nimbly around a branch to secure the whittled spikes.
The screen cut back to Ruby’s camp, where Liam and Drake stepped ashore, smiles brighter than the sunrise as Drake held up a fish trap with small rays flapping against one another.
—
“kjsdhfksjhfksjhfks,” Burns smashed into her keyboard. “Look at my man! With the sea bounty!”
“mevmnbvmnxb,” Ella smashed back.
“How do you know Drake did all the work? Liam’s just as wet, hahaha,” Donna chortled in response.
—
After killing their catch as humanely as possible - with Alyssa turning her face to Drake’s chest to avoid witnessing it - Leo and Olivia gutted and cleaned the rays before setting them on top of their makeshift grill to cook. Liam and Drake regaled the group with their morning under the water, as they took turns fishing.
While Team Ruby enjoyed some protein with their rice that morning, members of the Catalyst team glumly spooned rice into their mouths as they sat around the campfire while Jake and Estela dried off; their morning fishing trip had been unsuccessful.
Later that day, both teams received messages from the host to gather for a reward challenge. Each team made their way to a small lagoon, where they saw a structure floating in the water. A booming voice overhead instructed them to swim out to the structure and await further instructions. Once everyone from both teams had done so, a blue holographic image of the host appeared in the center to explain the rules. “The challenge is simple,” she narrated. “We want to see who can hold their breath the longest. There’s a bar you can use to keep yourself from floating up if you need it. Last one standing earns the prize for the whole team — an overnight trip at the Celestial Hotel, where our rotating film crew goes to rest. You’ll be treated to clean sheets and towels, hot showers, along with a decadent dinner and breakfast menu the next morning, before having to return to your camp.”
Everyone’s eyes lit up at the incentive of a night away from sleeping on the beach, away from mosquitos, rodents, and the threat of being waterlogged by passing storms. Stomachs gurgled at the thought of hot meals that didn’t consist of rice, and the possibility of cocktails or wine. “Oh, we got this,” Jake murmured quietly to Laurel. “Bet I can hold my breath longer’n any of those Ruby kids.”
“Is that so?” Leo taunted, overhearing Jake’s comment.
“Just call me Poseidon,” Jake smirked.
“We’ll see about that,” Leo replied. “You know most of us are from an island, right? We’re basically merpeople.”
—
“Bets! Bets on who wins this!” Brandy typed into the chat window.
“Sticking with Drake,” Burns typed. “Maybe Hana. She could have another random talent up her sleeve.”
“My money’s on Liam. Look how broad his chest is,” Anya replied. “He’s got to have massive lungs to match.”
“That makes no sense,” Ella typed, adding a laughing emoji. “But I’m Team Liam anyway.”
“Don’t hate me,” Donna began. “Something tells me Jake isn’t boasting right now.”
From her screen at home, Alyssa Lauren used Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe to choose Zahra. The rest of the group picked their favorites as the castaways donned goggles and got into the water.
—
“Ready? Set! Go!”
Sixteen heads dipped under the water’s surface, with contestants pinching their noses and puffing out their cheeks as an underwater camera filmed them. A handful of them - Olivia, Alyssa, Maxwell, Diego, and Michelle - tapped out under a minute. As the sand settled, thirty seconds passed before Katrina, Laurel, Sean, and Drake headed to the surface. Just after the two minute mark, Hana, Craig, and Zahra gave up, leaving Jake, Liam, Estela, and Leo under the water.
Jake looked positively peaceful, sandy brown hair swaying with ease in the water. Estela tapped her fingers lightly across the bamboo rod, counting each second as it passed. Liam glanced over to his brother, who’d begun to turn pink. Half a minute later, Leo popped up to the surface, muttering to himself out of frustration.
Three minutes in, Liam surfaced, gasping for air, leaving Jake and Estela to battle it out between themselves. Even though the hologram host blasted a horn to signal the end of the challenge, neither Catalyst member surfaced. Liam ducked down to check on them, and Jake and Estela both signaled that they were fine. Everyone continued to wait as the pair spent minute after minute under the water.
—
“Seriously? They’re on the same team!” Anitah typed. “They won already!”
“They’ve been underwater for a scary length of time,” Brandy added. “What are they, Navy SEALs or something?”
“I think Jake mentioned he was actually in the Navy before,” Alyssa Lauren replied.
—
A digital clock appeared in the corner of the screen as the two Catalyst members continued to hold their breath underwater. With each passing minute, members from both groups began to worry. After eight minutes passed, the host’s voice rang out, advising them to pull Jake and Estela up from the water to end the challenge. Laurel and Craig ducked down, eventually pulling their teammates up. “Congratulations to The Catalysts!” the host exclaimed. “A boat will be waiting at your camp to take you to the hotel.”
Laurel swatted Jake’s arm as they made their way to the shore. “What’s wrong with you!? You were underwater for nearly ten minutes! Who does that!?”
Jake looked over his shoulder to her with a grin, mischievous sparkle in his bright blue eyes. “Ten would be a new record, my best is nine.” He leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Imagine nine uninterrupted minutes of me holding my breath, Princess. My birthday is tomorrow, and I know exactly how I wanna celebrate,” he winked.
Laurel’s cheeks flushed at the suggestion. “Stop looking at me like that, Top Gun.”
—
That evening at the hotel, after a sumptuous feast of lobster, crab, and an endless supply of beer and wine, the Catalyst members eventually went to bed. Much later into the night, Jake was seen sneaking into Laurel’s room.
—
“I KNEW IT!” Burns typed. She laughed as her friends typed in responses full of lemon, fire, pepper, and eggplant emojis. She popped another cheese cube into her mouth and smiled, watching the rest of the episode play out.
#the royal romance fanfic#endless summer fanfic#choices the royal romance#choices endless summer#liam x mc#liam x trina#drake x alyssa#jake x mc#choices crossover fanfic#wacky drabbles#survivor au#happy birthday Burnsie#birthday fanfic#zaffrenotes writes#there was an attempt#this is not what I planned#lol but I am out of time and don't have it in me to scrap what I've written#🙈 I watched an entire season of Survivor for like...3 scenes to add to the fic
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Comics this week (3/17/2021)?
Justice League #59: This issue feels like the biggest testament to the word that Infinite Frontier is just the interim before the real relaunch that’s coming, because there is zero pomp or circumstance here of the kind you’d expect even if you think Bendis sucks. Young Justice of all things felt weightier than this in its debut; this is perfectly passable mind you, but if it was anything less than Justice League I’d go “ok, this is one of those Bendis books I don’t care about” and pass it by. I’m pretty sure his more substantial plans for the title are being kept for a proper new #1 waiting in the wings, but in the meantime it’s a perfectly slick team book with a couple decent bits, a bunch of my favorite characters, and pretty Marquez/Bonvillain art so I’m fine with it. Obviously the V/Xermanico Justice League Dark backup was the highlight.
Superman: Red and Blue #1: Apparently a lot of Superman fans didn’t like this, which doesn’t surprise me - a lot of it is Clark beaten down, needing help, or otherwise on the back foot one way or another, and that triggers a lot of alarm bells for a certain type of stan at this point. For my money though these were almost all great, and I was even able to get the cover by the Final Fantasy logo artist Yoshitaka Amano.
* Ridley/Henry/Bellaire/Sharp: The big advertised presentation, I’ve been really curious in the wake of Other History what Ridley would do with a Superman solo story and this absolutely didn’t disappoint. A harrowing take on Clark as truly vulnerable and how his mindset shifts or doesn’t in response I’m kind of astonished DC let the team get away with, this came together wonderfully.
* Easton/Lieber/Chan/Cowles: The weakest of the bunch, a severe but moving tale contrasting Superman’s splashy adventures with his potential impact on those around him bookended by some much weaker stock “are you sure you’re doing enough?” material, though it’s absolutely beautiful under Lieber and Chan, especially the final page.
* Craig/Bennett: A fantastic little tale of parallels on the human scale existing in Superman’s wake, and while that material’s only front-and-center for a couple panels here I would kill to see Craig draw a big cosmic epic.
* Watters/Dani/Sharpe: The big standout aside from Ridley’s story, there’s kind of no excuse for this not having been the first feature of the issue given it’s about the gimmick of the format in a way that leads directly out of its inspiration in Batman: Black and White. I do wonder what colorblind readers would make of the message of this one though, even if I read it the point of what happened as extending beyond the literal physical. In any case, I desperately hope this and Future State: Superman/Wonder Woman won’t be the extent of Watters’ work in this territory.
* Bennett/Thompson/Peteri: A simple but sweet little story of a young Clark learning a formative lesson - don’t see the gimmick that often of having both caption boxes and thought balloons around for different purposes, and it’s one I’m always happy to see.
Nightwing #78: As a Taylor fan, gotta say, this sucks. Flat, twee, totally without narrative momentum or weight except for a single completely bonkers new element in Dick’s world I’ll discuss in another ask, and of all things for some reason a bizarrely shameless Fraction/Aja Hawkeye ripoff alongside its rote regurgitation of Dixon and Snyder. This is everything people who hate the guy’s (non-Injustice, non-DCeased) work think of it as, and Redondo, Lucas, and Abbott’s next level, jaw-droppingly gorgeous work here is crushingly wasted. I’m not sure I can judge this as a ‘failure’ when it’s absolutely going to succeed at its actual goals - not as a story even if I understand even more people are pulling it than the new JL, but as contextless panels to circulate around comics Twitter/Tumblr in perpetuity - but as someone who thought a lot of Taylor’s strengths have been often overlooked and was hoping he’d pull out of some of his worst habits, it’s such a downer to watch him dive in face-first. An instant drop.
Catwoman #29: Fully out of the Brubaker shadow for me at this point and into its own oddball take on crime in Gotham, it doesn’t seem to be attracting much heat but I hope the team gets the space to see its story through and I suspect this run will be looked back on very fondly as a hidden gem in years to come.
Batman vs. Ra’s Al Ghul #5: IT’S BACK BABY, AND LESS EXPLICABLE THAN EVER. So happy.
Captain America Anniversary Tribute #1: Actually picked this up for a friend of the family who was interested and it’ll be shipped to him later, but read it while we have it and it’s exactly what it says on the tin, so if a bunch of artists doing their spins on these pages appeals it’s perfectly worth your time.
Iron Man #7: I continue to be unable to believe in the best way that this is what the ongoing Iron Man comic is about now.
S.W.O.R.D. #4: Alright, alright, alright - probably the weakest issue so far (which is to say it’s still a lot of fun by most any other books’ standard), but we’re past the King In Black of it all and ready to get into the promise of that debut.
Radiant Black #2: I was really concerned whether this would live up to the promise of the first issue or immediately begin to decline, but I’m happy to report that so far this seems like it’s leaning into its better aspects even if the superheroism remains the weaker half, and I’m still curious to see where this goes.
Abbott 1973 #3: Picked up some after the last issue was losing me, I’m back in the tank for the remaining couple.
Orphan and the Five Beasts #1: Stokoe doing kung-fu horror, madness, and righteous vengeance, an easy win.
Ultramega #1: I was skeptical about this one - I’d barely heard of James Harren even as folks were suddenly talking as if him doing work was long understood as a must-see, the preview didn’t especially grab me, and this didn’t seem to much stand out to me among the increasing surge of toku-inspired material. I was ready for the hype to betray me, but while I’ve seen a critique of this as a sausage-fest unwittingly or otherwise building a lot of its narrative on the pain and death of mothers I’d like to see femme or nonbinary critics unpack further, as a reading experience (prior to seeing said critique) this absolutely blew me away. Incredibly dense even at 60 pages - where a lot of those are splash pages no less - beautifully disgusting, gut-wrenching even aside from the pages with guts being wrenched, monumental, and mysterious, a tale of what happens when we’re let down by the men forced into the role of godling-saviors and what happens next. That Harren mentions in the afterward that this is the first comic he’s written is as remarkable as its is infuriating.
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Dead Eye
Original fiction ficlet, rated G
Written for the Morning Coffee zine, a free, original art and fiction zine on the topic of coffee. The art pieces were even painted in coffee! Thanks to @yummi-gummi-zines for modding!
It took Gayle an embarrassingly long time to realize that something was off about a certain customer at the coffee shop where she worked. It should have been rather obvious. For one, the man, Craig, spent time every day in the shop, but he didn’t drink any coffee. Craig carried a silver travel mug with him, but he never bought anything to go in it. He didn’t even use the free creamer like a lot of rude people did, bringing coffee from home just to help themselves to what extras the shop put out for free. In fact, Gayle had never actually seen him take a drink from his mug.
For another thing, Craig didn’t talk to anybody. That in itself wasn’t so strange, some people just weren’t social. But it was also the case that nobody ever talked to Craig. When people sat at the table he was occupying, no one ever said Excuse me or Mind if I sit here? And if Craig continued to sit by them instead of moving, they completely ignored him. Gayle only knew his name because she’d tried to strike up a conversation once. He’d given her a bit of a surprised look and introduced himself, but he hadn’t seemed to want to talk to her either.
And finally, Craig was dressed like someone who was employed— nice slacks, dress shirt, and a tie— but he showed up in the coffee shop at all kinds of weird hours, and he never brought any work with him, not a computer, or notebook, or even a phone. He just sat in a chair, usually the one by the window, with his mug in his hand, and watched people.
Even with all that, it still didn’t dawn on Gayle that the man was dead. It took her co-worker Maggie mentioning the coffee shop ghost for Gayle to finally put it all together.
“What ghost?” Gayle asked, as they were cleaning up after closing.
“Oh, I should have figured you hadn’t seen him,” Maggie said, with a dramatic sigh. “You don’t have a psychic bone in your body, I can tell.” She pointed to the table by the window. “I saw him, right there. Wish I hadn’t, though. He’s bad luck. Right after that I broke two china mugs. Jess saw him and she twisted her ankle on her way home. Grant dropped his phone and cracked the screen. It was a couple of days later, but it still counts.”
“What’s he look like?” Gayle asked.
“Nothing scary. Just like a customer. Brown hair, brown eyes. Handsome. Grant saw him twice, and says he carries a silver mug. Nobody ever sees him come in or leave, he’s just in here sometimes.”
“So how do you know he’s a ghost?” asked Gayle.
“Because he doesn’t order anything, doesn’t work on anything, and doesn’t talk to anybody.”
“Oh,” said Gayle. “Huh.”
Maggie went into the kitchen then to mop the floor, and a voice spoke up behind Gayle. “The ankle and the phone weren’t my fault. But I may have been responsible for the mugs. I don’t like Maggie. She always makes the half-cafs full-decafs.”
Gayle turned around to see Craig sitting on the counter she’d just cleaned, his mug beside him and his feet swinging in space.
“You, on the other hand,” he said, “I like. You only sabotage the orders of rude people.”
“Huh,” said Gayle, again.
“Want to know what happened?” Craig asked.
“Sure.”
“I had a heart attack.” Craig pointed to that table by the window. “Right there. Five years ago, before you or Maggie started here. I never saw it coming. I was an athlete, ate a good diet. Maybe I drank too much coffee.”
“You do look healthy,” Gayle said. “I’d never have guessed you were dead.”
Craig nodded. “I was wondering how long it was going to take you to figure it out.”
Maggie hollered from the kitchen. “Who are you talking to out there?” She poked her head out into the seating area. “You better not have let in a customer—” She looked around— counters included— and apparently saw no one.
“Just thinking out loud,” Gayle said, and Maggie went back into the kitchen.
“Nobody sees or hears me as well as you do,” Craig said. “Not a psychic bone in your body, my ass.”
Gayle started cleaning the glass display case. “So how come you didn’t pass on? You know—” She waved her hand. “Go upstairs? Downstairs?”
“No idea.”
“No grander purpose? Unfinished business? Didn’t commit some atrocity and get damned to stay here until you make amends?”
“Huh,” said Craig slowly. “I didn’t think of that last one.” He slid himself off the counter. “I mean, it wasn’t an atrocity.”
“What did you do?”
Craig put his hands up sort of defensively. “Well, look, nobody died. But I may have… possibly… robbed a bank.” Craig looked slightly remorseful.
“You robbed a bank,” Gayle said.
“Well, I worked at a bank. Made it easier. I just used a computer program.”
Maggie came out from the kitchen. “That’s good enough. Let the morning shift handle the rest.” She frowned at Gayle. “Are you okay? You don’t usually talk to yourself about robbing banks.”
Craig popped up again the next Saturday morning when Gayle came in by herself to start the baking. He appeared by the oven, wrinkling his nose at the orange-cinnamon scone batter. “I never liked those,” he complained. “So how does one make amends?”
Gayle gave him a surprised look. “Why are you asking me?”
“Because there’s literally no one else I can ask.”
“Well— I guess you apologize to the bank.”
“Can’t. Most people can only see me for a few minutes at a time, and nobody can hear me except you.”
“Well, then you swear not to to it again.”
“Can’t do it again, I’m dead. What would I even do with money now?” Craig scowled at a platter of blueberry muffins. “This doesn’t make any sense. If I’m supposed to make amends to the bank, why am I not haunting the bank?”
“It does seem like poor organization,” Gayle agreed.
Craig looked thoughtful for a moment, and then he said, “Well, maybe I’m supposed to help you. Since you can see and hear me so well. I mean, you don’t want to work in a coffee shop all your life, do you? You’ve got to have dreams.”
“Oh, I do,” Gayle assured him. “One of them is owning this place. I’ve always wanted to have a coffee shop. I’m going to school for my MBA right now.”
Craig stared at her a moment and then said, “Huh.” He seemed to sort of phase himself through the counter until he was sitting on it again.
“I’ve already included you in my plans,” Gayle said. She pointed out toward the seating area. “When the shop is mine, I’m going to put a sign on that chair you like— Reserved for the Ghost.”
“A haunted coffee shop?” Craig said, looking rather impressed.
“If we get TV crews in, could you give them a bit of a show?” Gayle asked.
Craig nodded. “I can do stuff like with Maggie and the mugs if I try really hard.”
“I’ll probably have themed drinks, too,” Gayle mused. “Ghost white. Phantom Frapp. Dead eye already works.”
Craig cocked his head. “That all sounds nice, but I have to say that helping you make money doesn’t really seem like a good deed on my part. Not exactly making amends.”
Gayle frowned. “Well, I was thinking of having a policy of giving all my day-old food to the needy.”
Craig snapped his fingers. “That could work.”
Gayle paused halfway through filling a muffin tin. “Do you think you’ll move on, then, when I’ve got it all set up?”
Craig shrugged. “I guess we’ll see. I’d almost hate to, though. Sounds like it would be fun. So how long do we have to wait for all that?”
“Well, I’m almost done with school. But I’m going to have to save up enough to buy the place.”
Craig looked thoughtful. “You know— I might know where you can get the funds.” When Gayle raised her eyebrows at him, he said, “The bank never caught me! I died before they could. Money’s just sitting around in an account I set up and nobody even knows about it.”
“Well,” said Gayle, “it’s certainly not doing anything sitting around in some account, is it?”
“Definitely not feeding the needy,” Craig agreed.
The door to the kitchen banged open as Maggie came in. “Sorry I’m late,” she said. “I didn’t want to be here. Are you talking to yourself again?”
“No,” said Gayle. “I’m talking to the ghost.”
Maggie gave her a confused look. “Don’t try to be funny. You aren’t.”
That day Maggie broke three mugs.
Find me at DannyeChase.com
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Top 10 Regular Show Episodes
Close Enough is Close! 2 more days and a show i’ve waited without hyperbole years for will finally land offically. While i’ve seen three episodes preelease, one because of a french film festival the other two because HBO made an oopsie, and it’s more than likely i’ll be seeing those episodes again thursday, it dosen’t make it any less special, as with an offical release comes the fandom finally becoming a thing and the ablility to watch the episodes over and over again.. on computer till HBO gets it’s shit together but still. IT’s a great time.
And my hype for the show made me revisit it’s big brother: Regular Show. Created by what would happen if you condesned california into a person, JG Quintel, Regular Show, as you all damn well know but I like doing anyway so as rigby would say, STOP TALKING, was about two slackers and best bros: Laidback hipster and hurricane when it came to talking to women, Mordecai and Rigby a high strung, idiotic, impulsive, and frequently angry racoon who worked, when they absolutley had to, at a park. Joining them at the park were their coworkers and later closest friends: Benson, their constnatly angry boss who constnatly belts out empty threats to fire them and has a rather sad personal life, Skips, a centuries old yeti whose literally seen it all and despenses advice for the duo and is voiced by everyone’s faviorite grandpa/jedi/murder clown Mark Hamill, Muscle Man, a grotesque blob of a man who likes “My mom” jokes and breaking things, Hi Five Ghost, Muscle Man’s sidekick who got like.. one episode focusing on him alone over 8 seasons moving on, and Pops, an odd but unfailingly sweet and kind vicotrian era gentleman whose also basically immortal and is Bensons’ boss in name only.
The Park Crew spend their days working, or in our main duo’s case trying to get out of work to do anything else, while dealing with every day issues that would quickly ballon into insanity. Getting pops a birthday present of Fuzzy Dice from a local pizza place ended up with the crew having to fight a bunch of anamatonic animals that were stashing diamonds in there. Trying to get concert tickets involved getting caffine from the nipples of a giant sentient coffee bean in order to stay awake long enough to do the extra work. And Mordecai trying to delete an embrarassing message off his crush Margret’s voice mail lead to him and rigby getting hauled in front of a bunch of a message guardians, one of which is a sentient smoke signal that wanted to burn them while the other replied with “we’ree not going to burn them when have we ever burned anybody”... I love and miss those guys. Oh and it’s resolved by having to playt he embarassing song he sang while said message beings groove to it then ask him to colaberate with them on their album. THis show was on all the drugs and I am all the hear for it. I could go all day obviously but this section is long enough as is, let’s move on.
Regular Show came at JUST the right time for Cartoon Netowork: Similar to how the 80s doom patrol comic started off really bland and cookie cutter and not at all doom patrol and then grant morrison came in, had hte previous writer kill almost everything, then rebuilt it from scratch with crazy, CN had few shows left and was coming off a really terrible attempt at competeing with NIck and Disney Channel’s live action dommance with a bunch of dude broy reality shows and other ill conceved ideas. The network had a few shows, Total Drama, The Clone Wars which got better and I need to watch those better seasons at some point, but they weren’t enough to make the network thrive again.
SO enter adventure time and regular show: BOth were creative, funny , a bit rough around the ages, and kind of nuts, but both were massive hits: The shows hit almost every demographics sweet spots: Kids like the bright colors, fun designs, and insanity, teens loved the edgy bits of the humor and also the insanity and 20 somethings and older both found refrences they got and loved, and well.. insanity. I mean being fucking nuts but also wonderful is kind of the watchword for most animation nowadays. While in the past in my own head i’ve played down Regular Show’s part in things, after all it came second and had a rough patch I told myself.. but I was wrong.
Both shows had a lot of the same elements; insane stuff, great voice acting and good humor especially as they evolved.. but both also evolved in largely the same way and that way helped change animation for the next decade: Both, despite being comeidies, regular show keeping to it a bit more than adventure time did as they evolved, had the characters grow, something a lot of animated comedies didn’t do as much ast the time, even the good ones. THey had season long arcs, things that are now standard features in most cartoons for good reason were MADE standard by these shows. It’s just regular show’s legacy got diluted by shows that TRIED to copy it but both failed to see that it grew past season one or that it’s being okay for kids but really based in adult life and problems meant copycats like fanboy and chum chum, sanjay and craig and breadwinners, all thankfully long dead, eventually sputtered out and died. That and Nick is REALLY shitty at maintaing shows or treating creators with anything resembling respect. Somehow Teen Titans Go is still alive despite having similar failings but you can’t win everything. It didn’t help gravity falls came along right after and proceded to be even more influentail than both of these shows. Hmmm I just realized I haven’t done any gravity falls reviews here.. I gotta get on that.
But while the show got eclipsed in quality and popularity I do still think it holds up for the most part as funny, charming and with , for the most part, good character arcs, it’s just that a bit of incosntientcy, some abrubtly done actions and a REALLY fucking terrible arc in season 6 dull the show a bit in comparison to what came after, but I do realize now it’s still worht watching, remembering and laughing at. It may of not been the greatest, but damn it was good.
So with my nostaliga for the show popping up, my faith in it restored, and it’s sucessor showing up in a few days, I decided to do a little something for the ocassion. I WAS going to do a full on review, but had troulbe finding an episode as some of my faviorites are part of a larger arc that was hurt by a later arc, and the show ping ponged between slice of life and utter insanity enought hat it was hard to peg down to jus tone or two episodes. So while I WILL review the show eventually, it has both good and bad episodes needing it, I decided instead to dig out something I hadn’t done in far too long: a top whatver lists! Now while I do get these things are clickbaity, because they are, I.. honestly just love making them. Even if i’ts not for any specific purpose I just love ranking, the stress, even if I normally hate stress given my anxiety, of trying to narrow them down, and the satisfaction of taking a ton of episodes and melting htem down into the best of them. And with a show as long and varied as regular show, If igured this was the best way to show it off before I dived into it eventually. I’ll obviously be doing more top, and bottom lists in the future, but for now this seemd like a godo place to get back to it. As
Now a few more things before we finally get started. Yes I know i’ve gone on for a few years now but i’m almost done. This list is obviously, my opinon. If you disagree fine, and feel free to comment or shoot me an ask about it but I stand by my list and what I choose. I had to boil down over 60 episodes I picked to possibly be on the list and even after it was down to 40 cuts were really difficult, .. Also just as a quick note there are no episodes from seasons 1, 6, 7 and 8, and that’s not on purpose, as the last two seasons are really good, it just fell out that way and i’m sorry about it. So with that out of the way grabs some sodas and wings, get out your maxi gloves, and bring out your best sentient earworms wearing sunglassses, after the cut I count down the top 10 Regular Show episodes. OOOOOOOOO!
10. I Like You, Hi (Season 5, Episode 26)
As you’ll be able to tell by the rest of this list Season 5 is my faviorite, and it’s where I feel the series hit it’s peak before next season lead to it’s valley. It’s got a ton of great episodes, as this list will attest, some great character development, and was still really damn funny.
But what put it over the top for me was the Mordecai and CJ arc. At the end of the last season as you probably know the show wrote out Margret, having her finally get into college like she’d wanted since she got an actual character back in “Camping Be Cool” instead of just being “that hot girl mordecai really likes but is too scared to persue”, and another fantastic episode we’ll be getting to, Mordecai was in position to move on.
Re-Enter CJ. CJ was introduced earlier in the season 3 ep “Yes Dude Yes” which itself is really good, where Mordecai thought margret was engaged and with Rigby’s encouragment, ended up meeting CJ, stands for Cloudy Jay if your curious, a sentient cloud voiced by the wonderful LInda Cardenelli, aka wendy from gravity falls and currently co star of the equally wonderful show Dead to Me. Seriously go check it out on netflix, it’s really good. It naturally went pearshaped since Margret wasn’t engaged, he tried going out with both, she turned into a thunderstorm out of rage... as you do.. it’s like the season 6 plot but less infurating and more understandable.
But the two remeet, and had a kiss on new years while not knowing it’s the other person under am ask.. and then CJ ran and both thought the other was upset: MOrdecai for him being MOrdecai, and CJ for running out on him and agreed to be friends. That didn’t last, though it did give us another classic on this list, as while exes can be friends and all, the two still had something between them.
Thus came this one. And it was a hard one as it barely inched out the finale of their relationship arc, Real Date, which had the ceo of a dating company try to break them up and be really damny funny but it’s ulitmatley this one being just as hilarious while being a great character piece that gets it the rub.
As the episode opens Mordecai and CJ have been spending a LOT of time together and i’ts clear there’s a spark there.. but Mordecai insists it’s platonic. And yes there is a bad habit of animation being unable to accept females and males who are into the oppistie sex can’t be friends without being attracted to each other. It’s being cleared up more lately, but as Star Vs showed it still happens sometimes. But it works here: The two STARTED with dating, made out on new years, and are attracted to each other it’s just clear both were in denial about it. It’s not saying “well they have chemstiry so fuck their partners’ like star vs or “if you loved someone once those feelings will return and destroy yoru current relationship” like next season.... season 6′s arc is a tirefire burn it.
But the issue is forced when, while texting about an extreme baking show together while CJ’s at her job at a sports bar, it autocrrects from Yuji, the show’s host, to you hi, sending the title message “I like you, hi”. Mordecai, being even less adept with his feelings and anxiety towards women than me and trust me that’s saying something, spirals and we do get the episodes best scene, narrowly beating out it’s climax, where Mordecai summons a war council.. aka the rest of the main cast minus benson but plus Thomas, the intern who I wish stuck around longer even after he turned out to be a russian spy because they ran out of ideas for him, voiced by Roger Craig Smith and distractingly using his future sonic voice.
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I just.. love everything about the scnee. From the term pulling a mordecai, to Rigby joining in, deservedly as he’s had front row seats for a lot of this bollocks, to everyone’s suggestions especially Muscle Man’s half assed one that somehow, but unsuprisngly, works for him and Starla.
Naturally Mordecai comes up with what Rigby HIMSELF admits is a Rigby level half assed scheme to get an actual photo with Yuji rather than just admit the truth. Yuji himself is an utter delight, having had his star not rise as fast as he’d like thanks to autocorrect and being entirely on board, and when it backfires as MOrdecai ends up autocorrected and sends the message thrice and gets sucked into the phone again, admits i’ts “pretty extreme’. I love the guy and i’m prety sure he showed up again, to my delight.
In the phone Mordecai meets some old friends, the message guardians who I mentioned in the “insane shit this show has done” bit earlier: old forms of messaging who police texting, all voiced by Rich Fulcher of the Mighty Boosh and Snuffbox Fame.
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I love Rich and wish these guys could show up in close enough. Maybe they can, I don’t know how rights issues with turner properties work when it comes to two diffrent audiences entirely. Anyways what really makes the episode, besides the great callbacks in this scene, is when confronted with everything going on, Mordecai.. tries to run into the void, with Rigby, The Message Recorder and the Smoke Signal all encouraging him to come back. “There’s nothing out there for you, literally it’s just a blank void”. With the leading tape recorder pointing out from their text history not only how great CJ is but how much he seems to like her with Mordecai finally coming back and admitting the obvious: He does like her.. he’s just scared of beefing it again. Which he does but that’s not the point. Rigby, who as part of his character development helps Mordecai quite a bit with this stuff by being a neutral party, though he also likes CJ better than Margret which is a mood even though I don’t care which one you ship mordecai with frankly, you do you, I have my prefrences. And with that Mordecai finally texts her and asks her out, with her accepting via winky face.. with an added text to clarify it for his neuotic ass.. which is also a mood as my neuortic ass could use that a lot. Overall just a wonderful , hilarious and good bit of character growth.. that season 6 throws in the oven, but that’s a long rant for another day. On it’s own, “I LIke you, hi” is a good character piece for mordecai whlie still being really damn funny.
9. Thanksgiving Special (Season 5, Episode 15)
Regular Show was really damn great at holliday specials. Their terror tales from the park every halloween were always a nice treat and a good replacement for Simpsons “Treehouse of Horror” which still exists, it’s just no one cares at this point, and their christmas and new years episodes are both really damn good, the first Christmas Episode being in contention for this list even. But to me the best of the best was easily Season 5′s thanksgiving episode.
The premise is simple: Mordecai and Rigby accidnetly destroy thanksgiving dinner, which the park crew is having for everyone and their famllies and, refusing to take Benson trying to dismiss their attempts to help fix their mistake, end up joining a songwriting contest to try and win a Turducken.. a natural one that’s born every 1000 Years because this is regular show. To do this they have to beat a parody of everyone’s least faviorite president Donald Trump, Rich Buckner. The fact that trump was basically the main villian of a holliday special a year before he became president is not lost on me and is one of the most accurate depections of the man i’ve ever seen. The fact Rich steals the prize despite our boys winning from his blimp with a grappling hook is peak trump. The fact Trump has’nt stolen more things with a grappling hook in real life is only because his hands are too small to use one.
Getting past our president for my own sanity, the episode also has really great subplots: Muscle Man and Fives go to a sports bar to get sides and end up pissing off a former football player and getting into a touchdown dance comppetition, sadly not set to the super bowl shuffle, while Benson, Pops and Skips go to get a turkey and end up fighting over it with men dressed up like a piligrim, a first thanksgiving era native american and a turkey, to which they don’t even really give an explination for.. granted most explinatoins on this show are insane but even by regular show standards, this gets none. And I love it for it.
While as you can tell the episode is really damn funny, what really sells it is the emotional core: For once while they do fear for their jobs a bit Mordecai and Rigby’s main motivation in this messup is genuine guilt and wanting to fix their mistake, and they work hard at it, even giving a genuine and awesome heartfelt song that notches itself up with other thanksgiving classics “That thankstiginv themed soul sketch on snl” and adam sandler’s turkey song also from snl. Not a high bar but it’s really good regardless
The episodes’ real strength though is it’s emotional core: For once instead of saving their own asses or understadnably wanting to get one over on the cranky and in the worse written episodes obnoxiously overbearing benson, they simply feel terrible about possibly runing the meal for their arriving parents and everyone elses parents and families and their friends and work to right the wrong. It’s not the first time they worked to do something genuinely good with no benefit to themselves, but it’s probably the best and Benson’s I forgive you, while hilarious is also really sweet. And speaking of sweet
It ends on a really sweet and touching note, as Mordecai and Rigby, after escaping a blimp via a wish on a golden wishbone because of course, make it home to find the various weirdos the park crew met have brought them thanksgiving, and their parents will be there and we get a nice touching ending as the main duo get a well earned toast from Benson. Just an out and out amazing thanksgiving special and a good reminder of what the holiday means.
8. Trucker Hall of Fame (Season 3, Episode 37)
Moving on from Season 5 for a second, Season 3 was where the show really started to hit it’s stride to me. While Season 2 was a nice increase in quality from the sometimes choppy and heavy on “everyone is an asshole” comedy season 1, Season 3 was where the increased focus on the rest of the cast outside of our main duo balloned and what seeds of character were planted in season 2 beautifully bloomed. And this episode is one of the best examples of that.
This one focuses on Muscle Man, who earlier on was basically the main duo’s rival alongside his buddy high five ghost, and kind of a dick. While “Kind of a dick” never left any discription of Mitch Sorenstein, this and previous episode muscle woman showed there was more to the goblin man than we thought. It’s also one of regular show’s few early mostly serious episodes and unlike the benson ones, again this list was tough don’t come at me with a machete, and realy showed why muscle man is the human tire fire he is.
The episode introduces, and quickly kills off, muscle dad, mitch’s dad who gave him a love of pranks and was a truck driver who died as he live: mistaking a fake bear for a real one during a prank. Muscle Man being not the most stable person on a GOOD day, spirals, as seen above, and Benson tasks mordecai and rigby, since Fives isn’t good with death ironically and isn’t holding up much better, and as a much later episode shows the two became besties in high school so he probably knew muscle dad for a good ten years so he’s probably not in a great place either, nice stuff, to go with him to put his dad’s ashes in the trucker hall of fame.
What follows is a sweet and damn sad episode. While Mitch’s frequent breakkdowns can be hilarous their also really sad and having lost my grandpa since this episode aired, I can relate to being fine one minute and a total shrieking wreck the next over the smallest thing. But it also shows that Mitch genuinely thinks of our main duo as his friends, and that beneath his testorrone positned exterior he’s a decent guy, being genuinely greatful. Of course being regular show the 3 end up squaring off with some truckers, while Mitch also grappels with the revelation his dad wasn’t one but a forklift opperator who faked being a trucker for his son’s benifit and dleft a tender note in his picture, figuring correctly his son would break it open when he found out... oh and because this show is still nuts his ghost ends up saving them at the end which is really sweet , as mitch decides trucker or no his ashes deserve to be there. Also his ghost shows up again at thanksgiving so apparently he can just come back once in a while, which is nice but dosen’t demnish the bittersweet feeling of this ep. And as I said the show has a good grasp on continuity as this ep marked a turning point for our main duo and muscle man: while the’yve bonded before after this, aside from mitch’s habit of christmas pranks and his faking his death, they really don’t nearly get as annoyed by him ever again. i’ts a sweet touching ride tha’ts uncharacristic of the show’s usual chaos but really works.
7. A Bunch of Full Grown Geese (Season 4, Episode 19)
After a few episodes that were more sentimental on this list, it’s good to get back to some good old regular show madness for this one, which was also the series 100th in production order and is a worthy milestone episode. Season 4 was really good building on the good will from Season 3 and FINALLY having payoff to the margret and mordecai thing, more on that in a bit. Not as much to say as seasons 3 or 5, but it was still spectacular.
The sequel to another ep, fittingly given it’s #100, full grown geese has our duo tasked with removing a bunch of obnoxious geese, with Benson in dick mode refusing to give the two more help, though it does lead to one of the show’s best scenes when he gives his usual your fried threat.. and fitting a milestone episode, Rigby calls him on never going through with it and the threat being as empty as my dreams. Benson responds by going nuts and angrishing them out of his office.. really funny. But yeah with the geese attacking them and , in their first attacking, poor pops, and no way to combat them, the two turn to the baby ducks, a bunch of baby ducks from the episode titled that who show up to help.. and this being the 100th episode of an already grant morrison level nuts show, it turns out the geese seek to conquer earth, voiced by david warner of course and have laser eyes.. and can combine. And the ducks do so again, mecha style, and add in our heroes and a bunch of call backs in one of the series best and most batshit sequences> The ending is also throughly satisfying as while our heroes win, Benson chews them out for tearing up the park in the process.. only for the ducks mom to call him out for not only yelling at the ducks, who are just kids, but at mordecai and rigby after they just saved the park from being a smoldering crater and not just trashed and he backs off. Just a fun episode where the crew just went nuts and the results speak for themselves.
6. This is My Jam (Season 2, Episode 13)
Now this one I couldn’t NOT include. This is one of the series best even after it’s immense growth, and a beloved classic for a reason. And like the above it’s a good classic case of regular show hyjinks while also being relatable this time: Rigby gets a brainless but catchy pop song from the 90′s stuck in his head and despite growing to hate it, and Mordecai hating it because this episode establishes him as a hipster, and seemingly exercises it.. only for it to manifest as a GIANT CASETTE WEARING SUNGLASSES THAT PLAYS THE SONG JUST BY EXISTING AND DANCES CONSTANTLY. it’s utterly glorious and used to great effect, also annoying benson because he’s constnatly annoyed. To beat it the main duo get the rest of the park’s help at Skips suggestion to form a band and craft an even BIGGER earworm to cast it out. Oh and there’s a great scene where Pops is forced to awkwardly dance with the incarnation of the 90′s “But I won’t use my best moves”.
The climax also has one of Benson’s best moments as, after he’s irritated all episode, he comes in hot, with both the cast and audience expecting him to chew out mordecai and rigby.. only he’s mad because they forgot drums are key to an earworm and saves the day with his drumwork. It’s a great subversion and one of the first times Benson was more than just the angry but understandable, at times, dickhead boss. Just an utter standout and one of the show’s most memorable episodes for a reason. Also the line “you can’t touch music but music can touch you’ is great.
5. Meteor Moves ( Season 4, Episode 28)
This one was a long time coming and to me is a great example of writers taking their own shortcomings and making something awesome out of them. I prefer that: instead of just retconning away bad writing use it as a tool.. I try to do that myself when possible. See early in the show as you all probably know, Mordecai’s crush on Margret was just a plot device: he had a crush on the cute waitress at the coffee shop so they used it to get him to do things. A gratioutis shot of her in bike shorts got him to bet all computer rights for life that sort of thing. The show.. wasn’t great with female characters till season 3 and even as it grew, as season 6 and just.. forgetting to give CJ a proper ending as a character shows, still grappled with it. It took writer Kat Morris saying “no no stop go to jail” to them wanting ot make CJ a difficult woman type, whatever horrifying thing that is. I don’t want to know, let’s move on.
The point is it wasn’t till season 3 that Margret and her best friends, and Rigby’s future wife, Eileen got fleshed out a bit: Eileen got smarter and turned out to be good at wilderness stuff while Margret was chill, nice, if annoyed by the chaos around mordecai, and funloving, while also having a clear goal in stark contrast to her future boyfriend: going to college. Even after coming back it was botha fter finsihing college and to start a career. It wasn’t incredibly deep, but it made me not be ehhh to her mere existance like before. The show also started developing her and Mordecai’s relationship seriously with the two bonding and the previously shown Butt Dial showing for the first time, after previously having a terrible taste in men and then just not noticing his crush, that she was receptive to how mordecai felt. And the two had several moments and two dates even, it just.. never went anywhere for some reason.
And this was INFURATING to me: See back then shows had a tendency to just pop in love intrests SOLEY for plot fuel like margret with no intention of following through with things either through rejection or a relationsihp upgrade and by then I was sick of it. The whole spike and rarity thing in MLP (which to be clear I wanted her to just reject him but nope, even after I stopped watching she never did. ), Isabella and Phineas. I was fed up so I went from being “eh” about it to annoyed supremely.. but the thing is the writers realized this.. and course corrected.
The first step was picking up Margret, where Mordecai agrees to pick her up to get her to the airport for a college interview and we get a nice deconstruction of things as Margret is anticpatiing things going wrong, and wrongly blames Mordecai for it.. I mean it is his fault sometimes but half the time weird shit just follows him. However she’s won over by him working past it, getting her there in time and kisses him.
That blew me away and made me think well it’s finally here.. and it was.. ALMOST. However the creators wisely, if frustratingly to past me, took one more episode to iron it out: Metor Moves has the two growing closer, and semi-going out, but Rigby pops mordecai’s bubble pointing out he never actually made a boyfriend girlfriend move and her move could’ve gone either way. So Mordecai , after seasons of being wishy washy and awkward, finally decides to go for it as he, rigby, eileen and margret go to a metor shower.
Being Regular Show it dosen’t go as planned as his attempted kiss is blocked by the guardians of the friend zone.. which is a real, phantom zone esque place here and that’s just fantastic. And it’s also clearly mocking the hell out of the concept, which is dumb. if you want to ask someone out just do it, I learned that the hard way. And if you really are friends, if she says no then you’ll accept it and keep a friend anyway as I have. But it’s clearly parodying it and Mordecai get sreplayed all the times he ALMOST made a move but didn’t but refuses to accept this clusterfuck, realizes he was a screwup when it came to this.. and kisses her.. and this time the two enter a relationship> Granted it barely lasted but still, it was nice while it did and this ep is just great for it. While not the funniest, it’s up this high because it took somethign the show did wrong.. and turned it on it’s head and into a character flaw and had mordecai grow past it, with a genuinely romantic moment on top as well as an utterly funny and batshit concept. It also had some Rigleen, as by this point rigby stopped being a hateful wastebasket to her and warmed up to her, and I regret there’s no reigleen episodes on this list. Their the shows best couple and utterly adorable. Just wanted to mention that at least once this list.
4. Laundry Woes (Season 5, Episode 1)
From the begining to the end. While sadly Morderet didn’t last too long in canon, which blows, it did give us some great episodes while it lasted, as with the above entry and their breakup in Steak Me Amedeus. As mentioned before Margret left for college, which while abrupt feeling did pave the way for great stories: The Mordejay arc mentioned above and that will pop up again very soon, This was one of them: the ep while lacking on laughs is a good emotional rollercoaster and starts with an amazing montage that catches us up from the end of season 4: Mordecai is miserable, as you’d expect and wallowing in it with Benson, of all people, letting him. And given Benson seems to have a heart attack any time Mordecai and Rigby aren’t working, that’s huge. But eventually his friends refuse to let it go on and in a really touching montage help him through it, taking him out places, giving him good times and eventually.. the fog starts to lift and he starts to enjoy himself and by the end.. he’s himself again.
It’s one of the series best sequences, told with no dialouge and showing just how far the rest of the cast had come: Benson actually wants to comfort mordecai but is encouraged not to at first, underfstandably as it probably woudlnt’ help, and a crew that were once, aside from Pops who much like Krillin is everyone’s friend, just coworkers who barely tolerated each other, and are now close as family and help their own in need.
But Grief isn’t a straight line and just as Mordecai’s recovering he’s sent spiraling when he finds Margret’s sweater and uses ita s a flimsy excuse to go return it. It’s here I also get to talk about Rigby, who grew from an impatient idiot who hated Mordecai’s romantic endevors and actively sabtoaged them at times, to an understandting wing man who, while understandably frustrated with his best friend’s own idiocy with women, turned out to know more and be the wise council he needed, triggering both is relationships and only bailing out during the season 6 clusterfuck and even then was there to comfort him after it was all over and go to his aid to pull him out of another misery hole. And here he gives Mordecai the hard truth: He shoudln’t do this, it’s just going to tear both him and margret up again and he just put himself back together. He’s not going to let his best friend do this to himself. And while there is a supernatural elment, the sweater comes to life and tries to get Mordecai to force margret back with him and give up college, likely voicing his darkest wants that he hates himself for wanting, but it feels more like a manfiestation of Mordecai’s own issues than the usual madness. Like “Trucker hall of Fame”, a rare senntence, it’s a less funny packed more grounded episode. And in the end it’s mordecai himself, after rejecting the ghost sweater and seeing his ex truly happy , that gets him to NOT talk to her and just.. let it go. IT’s a good emotional episode and SHOULD HAVE BEEN the end of their relationship... but i’ve ranted about the cheating storyarc enough here, moving right along.
3. Portable Toilet (Season 5, Episode 16)
Back to the Mordejay arc. And yes this arc is my faviorite and while I didn’t make it clear at the time I really shipped the two, even before it became canon. I had nothing against morderet, these two simply had more chemistry and these episodes built CJ up as more of a character than Margret was at the time. It’s why that later arc sucks so much to me: it destroys a perfectly good relationship and story arc for dumb reasons and never really did enough with it to justify doing so. I’ll get to it some day, or if someone comissions it soone rthan some day, but as you can tell i’m still sore over it and great eps like this are part of the reason why. It’s the same reason i’m sore on how Tom was handled on star vs. But as you can also tell as bitter and lemon scented as I am.. these eps are still objectivley great and thus took up a third of the list basically.
Case in point Portable Toilet, which zooms back a bit to when neither would admit they were into each other but were now friends at least. Also Eileen was CJ”s friend now because plot convience. I mean they worked, and it bothers me a lot that the creators claim cj washed her hands of her even though she’s not the one who made out with margret... which come to think of it adding her to rigleen.. not a bad idea. I mean Rigby didn’t really like margret true, but they did almost go out before mordecai killed him and then reset time because Mordecai’s always kinda sucked. I’ll file that away for later. But my new OTP aside, I did like the two bonding and what not.
Anyways with their outside park friend/RIgby’s future girlfriend now friends with Mordeai’s future girlfriend the four have apparently been hanging out which, while i’ve bemoaned off screen stuff at times, works here and regular show uses it better than most shows. While Rigby can clearly see Mordecai and CJ are into each other Mordecai is as we covered in denial and while that dosen’t really progress here, it does lead to one of teh shows finest hours. When talking would you rathers, CJ semi-flirtly dares Mordecai to eat his lunch sandwitch in a portable toilet, which he agrees to and drags a reluctant rigby along for. This being regular show, it goes south fast as the two get stuck, with Rigby’s clautrophiba kicking in leading to an amazing exchange
Mordecai; Dude that makes no sense!
Rigby: You’s makes no sense!
While our dynamic duo try to get mordecai and rigby out the two are carted away and repalced with a new portable toilet, a deluxe one. Also we get another great bit when our dynamic duo find Muscle man, in a robe with choclate’s claming “Eileen, other girl, this isn’t weird” before screaming “This isn’t weird”. Turns out old portable toilets are taken to be blown up by the miltary and we get one of the shows best one off characters in the general, who not only explains it as “toilets being about the same size as the enmy” but when told he should call the president says “the preseident is not my father i’ll blow up as many toilets as I want.”. Spectacular. So now it’s a scramble for one twosome to rescue the other, Rigby lets out a cathartic “THANK YOUUU MORDECAI” over the flirty toilet dare, and the day is saved> This one is another pure comedy one, even if it ties into a plot I really like, and i’ts gold for obvious reasons and manages to take blowing up porta poties, a premise that dosen’t seem that funny, and make it utter comedic gold. Speaking of pure comic episodes that are utterly insane...
2. Cool Bikes (Season 3, Episode 7)
This one feels like regular show boiled down to it’s core: semi-relabtale hyjinks dovetalling into pure madness. And the premise sounds like a shit post i’d make: Mordecai and Rigby want benson to admit their cool and get into progressively weird outfits and tricks to their bycycles to do so, eventually becoming so cool their put on trial by the council of cool , ending up having to make a runner when Benson finally breaks down and admits it.
The premise is utterly stupid in the best way possible, with the conflict being the kind of petty bullshit we all get into from time to time with our aquantinces: not wanting to admit something and loose the argument withthings escalating. And in regular show terms it escalate sperfectly into the entire unvierse being threatned adn our heros being on trial for their lives. There’s not much to say here, it’s just pure comedic gold with a premise that just works. It also has good moments for Benson with his finally admitting they are cool and saving the duo’s lives whne he realized he just gave them a death sentence. Utter fun. And now we come to the finale, my faviorite episode...
1. Dodge This (Season 5, Episode 15)
Yup this arc again. But this one has more than my ship going for it, and it’s why it soared to the top: It takes the excellent character work of other episodes and weaves it with excellent comedy to create an utter delight and the episode I remember most fondly and most often. It’s just great.
The second part of the Mordeijay arc, not counting yes dude yes, the episode is half that and half sports movie: The Park Guys have been taking part in dodgeball as a team bulding thing and it shows how far Benson’s come as he not only praises mordecai, and launches the mordecai and benson ship in the process, but gives his team full wings and his full support, a far cry from his usual self. It’s also the first big instance of him getting hammered on wings and it’s glorious to see drunk flirty benson. Benson is also genuinely congratulatory to the team’s ace mordecai, and most of them realy for b eing valuable and hopes to win this year.
IN their way are two things: The magical elements, aka the floating baby heads that gave skips his immortality, his friend with sparkly eyes who works for them and death himself whose a recurring character and fucking great and who were their bowling rivals too. The other is CJ is back, and Benson in another good moment actually talks mordecai through it and his nerves over it assuring him. So we get a great sports piece as our heroes work through various callbacks and even beat the magical elements iwth Rigby’s hilarious and rediculous rignado manuver, which is as dumb as it sounds and winged a guy hilaroiusly before with Benson scolding him like a toddler.
Of course it ends up with Mordecai and CJ against each other, both incredibly awkard over things as mentioned before, and both ending up in a stalmate that magical dodgeball guardians have to resolve because, let’s do this one last time. IT’S REGULAR SHOW. We do get a good moment though as the two work through their awkwardness: both thinking the other is rightfully mad: Mordecai for his two timer date with her and Margret and CJ for running out without talking to mordecai after they had a moment on new years. The both work past it, the park strikers loose,benson likely gets hammered again off screen.. it’s a good one and I have no shame in putting it at number one. It’s got heart, really great jokes, and some good charcter stuff, not to the level of other episodes on this list, but it wasn’t a full episode of that like those were and still works to move the plot forward and is still a classic. Just a fun, breezy, well done epsidoe fully rooted in the cast’s characters and getting laughs out of that.. mostly benson.
And with that this giangantic list comes to a close> I hope you enjoyed it, if you liked it follow me for more. I’ll be doing close enough coverage every week, as well as amphibia and owl house among other reviews. Until we meet again, later days.
#regular show#mordecai#rigby#cj#eileen#margret#muscle man#benson dunwoody#high five ghost#pops mallerd#skips#death#yuji#rich fulcher#close enough#top 10 lists#cartoon network
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The Teleprompter Interview: Katy Wix ‘My First Screen Crush was King Kong’
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“Anchors, rigging, shackles,” lists Katy Wix down the phone, “poop deck, wheelhouse, three sheets to the wind…” The comedian and writer has had a productive year. Filming wrapped on Ghosts series two just as UK lockdown began. Since then, she’s finished one book – Delicacy: A Memoir – due out next April, is pitching another, writing a TV show, and thanks to a new-found obsession with Netflix yacht-based reality show Below Deck, has also managed to acquire an enviable grasp of nautical terminology.
Wix is an established UK comic actor, with credits across the board, starting with cult hit Time Trumpet and going mainstream as witless, lovable Daisy in BBC mega-sitcom Not Going Out. She’s currently part of Channel 4’s Stath Lets Flats, the hottest comedy around, fresh from multiple Bafta wins. She plays Fergie in royal satire The Windsors, and was among the comedian-contestants in series nine of Taskmaster. In BBC One sitcom Ghosts, Wix plays Mary, a 17th century yokel burned as a witch and now part of the motley group haunting a modern-day stately home. Mary’s distinctive west country accent “just came out”, says Wix. “It’s an insult really, because I can’t claim to do that accent well. It’s sort of a stock noise. The more I do it, the more I think it sounds like Nanny from Count Duckula. Ducky!”
Ghosts series two, which lands as a boxset on BBC iPlayer on Monday September 21st , will give fans more about Mary’s background, says Wix. “I think people will really love it, and then there’ll be another series next year, depending on the big C. Not cancer. The other big C.”
From superyachts to Alan Partridge, The Day Today to Ghostwatch, Anna from This Life to formative sexual fantasies about prehistoric apes… here’s the Katy Wix Teleprompter interview.
Your parents were quite arty, working in dance companies and the theatre. Did your childhood allow for much TV watching?
Oh my god, yes! My routine was: come home from school, watch the tail-end of Fifteen to One, and when I was really young, repeats of The Oprah Winfrey Show. Then it would be The Broom Cupboard, something like Round the Twist, then the sound of the Six O’Clock News and turning over to The Simpsons. I still do it now, if I’m at home and it’s five to six, I’m going to watch The Simpsons, it’s a tradition.
Welsh telly was slightly different to the rest of the country. We have S4C rather than Channel 4. I remember going through the TV listings and seeing what was on normal Channel 4, like The Word, then I’d look at Welsh Channel 4 and it would just be something boring in Welsh at the same time.
Was there a TV show that inspired you to start acting and comedy?
The one I remember the most is Abigail’s Party. Seeing Alison Steadman’s performance made me want to do character acting. It was just a phenomenal, convincing, detailed performance. Years later, I wrote a radio sitcom that she was in. It was one of those absurd moments where you just have to leave your body and look down on yourself to be able to handle it.
That must happen a lot, you’ve been part of a lot of great comedy casts…
What got me into comedy was Brass Eye and The Day Today. When I was about 15, that’s what changed my brain. It was the first time I’d seen adults being silly and coming up with absurd situations that were my sense of humour. Before that, comedy on TV would always feel like just something your parents would watch but this really felt like it was for us, for me and my friends. It was the same with The Office.
And then you were in This Time with Alan Partridge with Steve Coogan last year.
I was in sixth form when Knowing Me, Knowing You came out and I had it on VHS. Watching people like Rebecca Front and Doon Mackichan… anytime Alan had a guest on the sofa, the level of detail and all the reactions and the tiny little social awkward moments, that made me think I want to do that type of performing. So then, when I got to be in the last Partridge, it was mad. It was phenomenal to be that near to the character and all his tiny micro-expressions. Even the colour of his socks – this weird salmon pink – that was so perfect. Tim [Key] was there as well and we’re old pals, so that made it feel more like, well if Tim can deal with it. But I think even Tim now says he still has times where he has to go into the loo and give himself a moment.
Who or what was your first TV love?
This will sound like a joke, but I swear to God it’s true. It was a running joke in our family that my first crush when I was about four, was King Kong [laughs]. My mum used to tease me about it all the time. It was the combination of brute strength and these massive, soulful, pained eyes – which I still look for in men – that absolutely got me. It was an erotic connection for me. When I look back on it in a Freudian way, it feels like a really obvious, very heterosexual image for a little girl to have, because I wanted to be that woman in the nightie in his massive hairy hand.
Unusual, yes, but then a lot of people our age cite the fox in the Robin Hood Disney film as their first screen crush.
I do get that. I do get that. What was it about that fox?
He’s rakish. And politically, he was sound too – rob from the rich, give to the poor.
You’re right. And he was really confident too.
Growing up, which TV character did you idolise?
There are two, a younger one and a slightly later one. When I was 11 or 12, I wanted to be a fashion designer. I would draw outfits all the time in my school books and I had the Usborne Book of Fashion Design and spend hours on it. So I wanted to be Hilary Banks from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air because she just had incredible fashion. She always got boys and she was really cool and confident and wore amazing clothes. She was everything I wanted to be.
Then a little bit later, maybe sixth form or in my early 20s. I wanted to be Anna from This Life, so much and I kind of still do. Because she was tall and really cool and had dark hair and a lot of attitude and wore black a lot and smoked a lot and didn’t give a shit. That was my vibe at university.
Is there a TV character you’d like to be now?
Probably still Anna?
Which TV show gave you nightmares?
The massive one for me, when I was about 11 or 12: Ghostwatch. I went to a friend’s house to watch it and I remember being a bit like ‘yeah right’ watching it, and then when I got home that night, I just cried. I was in the bath, hysterical and my mum had to come in and calm me down. It was horrendous.
Everyone totally swallowed it at the time, because we were less TV-savvy in 1992. I remember they had a phone-in and someone called in to say ‘There’s a shape in the curtains’, which really fucked me up. The whole Pipes thing. I remember being in my bedroom and seeing a shape of an old man in the curtain all the time. I’ve got really vague memories of Craig Charles being in a park, saying that someone had killed a Labrador. I was thinking about watching it again. I actually don’t know if I dare.
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Not Going Out: the top 10 episodes
By Philip Lickley
When did you last cry watching television?
Last night. Have you ever seen the show Below Deck? I’m obsessed with it. I’m not massively into reality TV but it’s an American reality show all filmed on superyachts that rich people charter. It’s almost like a perfect sitcom family – you have a different captain every time and the deckhands and then the interior, who do the hotel stuff, and then you have the chef, who’s always a temperamental big personality and then each episode has a different group of insanely rich, usually quite horrible, sexist people with loads of money who get really drunk, that’s the premise. It’s non-stop drama. You’re just watching people fall off boats and have arguments.
How did it make you cry?
In this episode, there was a girl who’d been really quiet and grumpy and everyone was slagging her off, and then she revealed that she’d got a text that morning saying her estranged father had died, so that’s what set me off. It’s got me through lockdown, it’s so addictive.
When did you last laugh out loud watching television?
Below Deck, same episode!
All human life is there!
I think it was someone’s malapropism, that’s my favourite thing about reality TV, the way people talk in a kind of Stath-like way and get it wrong.
What was the last TV show you recommended to a friend?
Below Deck! [Laughs] I’ve just got Lolly [Adefope] onto it, and Adam Drake – he’s a comedian in a sketch show called Goose and does Capital, a podcast with Liam Williams – he’s now devoted. One of my best mates was bemoaning that her boyfriend’s not into reality TV, but boys can watch Below Deck too. It’s got loads of boat stuff in it. Chains and anchors. I’m learning all these terms, like shackles, poop deck, wheelhouse, three sheets to the wind… That’s where the expression ‘in my wheelhouse’ comes from. Three sheets to the wind means you’re sailing off course.
Which TV show would you bring back from the dead?
Changing Rooms.
Good call.
I also loved The Late Review. I really loved that.
What’s a TV show you wish more people would watch?
Do you know Iyanla Vanzant? She started off on The Oprah Winfrey Show – I love Oprah so much – and she’s a TV therapist/healer/spiritual. She’s got a show you can only get on American TV called Iyanla: Fix My Life. She just speaks so much wisdom. She spends a week with people who are really traumatised and it’s their healing journey. It’s so moving, it’s so profound. She’s doing incredible work for the human race.
She did an amazing show called, I think, ‘The Myth of the Angry Black Woman’ with a house full of women of colour who all got to talk about this trope that they were angry and how they felt unable to speak without being silenced. She did a show that was rehabilitating people that had come out of prison and women that had been sex workers all their loves, just amazing.
Which current TV show do you never miss an episode of?
In lockdown, what kept me going was I May Destroy you, obviously, Below Deck, obviously. I also became obsessed with the Japanese Big Brother Terrace House, but it just got pulled because there was a suicide. It was so, so awful. I read an article saying the producers didn’t behave well, so I feel like I can’t like it any more. I love Succession too. I started watching this show on Netflix called Intervention and got totally obsessed with it. Again, it’s maybe ethically a bit dubious. It’s American, obviously, and they’ll film an addict who’s in a really desperate state and then the family kind of trick them, or persuade them to go into a room and then the intervention therapist is there and they’re like ‘Guess what, you’re going to rehab now!’ Anything that’s got human suffering, and then a redemption story in it, I’ll watch.
Given the power, which TV show would you commission?
I think about this a lot – what if I had a channel? I’d commission the sketch group Sheeps to make tons of series. That’s Liam Williams, Al Roberts and Daran Johnson, and so far they’ve only done live shows, but I would commission them for hours of TV. Colin Hoult doing his character Anna Mann, I’d commission hours of that. Everyone involved in Stath Lets Flats, I’d just say ‘Turn up, pitch and we’ll make it’. There’s a documentary from the 70s that I adore, that I would like to show again, which is John Berger’s Ways of Seeing. It’s one of the most beautiful, gentle documentaries. I feel like that should be on TV. And just whatever Gemma Collins is doing, commission that.
Also, you know in the 90s, late at night you’d get some weird, bizarre performance art happening on BBC Two? I miss that. The sort of stuff that was on after The Word. And then finally, maybe just all of Peep Show again?
What’s the most fun you’ve had making television?
Ghosts is where I probably laugh the most because of Lolly [Adefope]. We make each other laugh all the time. When me and Anna [Crilly] did our sketch show on Channel 4, it was incredible. It was stressful but exciting. It was such a nice atmosphere to be with all these gorgeous people that you find funny.
Stath Lets Flats is like that, because we’re all genuine mates. When people take comedy so seriously I really love it. I love that attention to detail. Jamie [Demetriou] and everyone involved really cares. There’s no ‘that’ll do’ attitude, everyone wants it to be the best it can be. Why not treat comedy as a science that you have to absolutely get right?
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Ghosts series two starts on Monday the 21st of September on BBC One at 8.30pm. All six episodes will be available to stream on BBC iPlayer from then.
Delicacy: A Memoir by Katy Wix, published by Headline, is available to pre-order now.
The post The Teleprompter Interview: Katy Wix ‘My First Screen Crush was King Kong’ appeared first on Den of Geek.
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Orion
TITLE: Orion
PAIRING: Eleven/River Song
RATING: T
CHAPTER: One-shot
SUMMARY: Elise wants a pet for the TARDIS and the Doctor is more than happy to indulge her.
[A/N - This was requested on fanfiction.net on my The Littlest Timelord: Deleted Scenes.]
It was a quiet day in the TARDIS.
Amy and Rory were at home enjoying wedded bliss, so it was just Elise and the Doctor traveling alone.
The Doctor was down below the console while Elise sat on the stairs near him, sketching River.
There hadn’t been a lot of adventures lately so there was nothing to put in her diary.
“Dad?” Elise asked.
“Yes?”
“Could we get a pet for the TARDIS?” She’d been wanting a pet ever since staying at Craig’s.
The Doctor smiled and jumped out of his swing. “What are you thinking?” he asked her as he ran to the console.
“Something unique”, she told him.
He threw a lever and the TARDIS took off. When they landed, he grabbed Elise’s hand. “Close your eyes”, he told her.
Elise closed her eyes and he opened the doors.
“Open them”.
Elise opened her them and saw they were right in front of a pet shop. Elise smiled and they went inside.
“Pick out anything you want”, he told her. Instead of bringing her to a normal pet shop filled with animals like puppies, kittens, and bunnies, he had brought her to a more exotic pet shop.
It had lizards, snakes, turtles, and other more unique pets.
He watched as she looked at the turtles until she heard something rattling around in a cage.
In the back was a black owl with large orange eyes. It had white specks on its feathers, almost like a reverse Hedwig.
“Hello”, Elise said.
The owl hooted at her.
“Careful, he bites”, the owner said, “Hates everyone”.
Elise stuck her fingers into the cage and the owl gently nipped at them. Elise laughed.
The bird wasn’t mean. He was probably just misunderstood and needed some love and patience.
“You want him?” the Doctor asked her.
Elise nodded enthusiastically.
The Doctor turned to the owner. “How much?” he asked.
“For you? He’s free”.
“Really?” Elise asked.
“I’ve had that bird for almost three years and in all that time, he’s never taken to anyone like you. You’d be doing me a favor”. The owner took the owl from the cage and placed him into a carrier.
The Doctor picked up the carrier and they went back to the TARDIS.
“Don’t we need food?” Elise asked her father as he opened a door.
It was a forest.
“I’m sure he can find some mice in here”, the Doctor said. He walked over to a shed and pulled out some leather gloves. He knelt down and slipped them onto Elise’s hands. “You’ll need to wear these whenever you handle him so his talons don’t cut up your hands and arms”, he told her.
He opened the carrier and the owl flew to Elise and perched on her hand. She stroked his chest with her other hand.
“What are you going to call him?” the Doctor asked.
Elise thought for a moment before she said, “Orion”.
“After the constellation?” Elise nodded.
His name would be a reminder of her birthday trip to the planetarium. Orion nipped at her hair before he flew off.
Elise turned to her father and threw her arms around his waist. “Thank you”.
“You’re welcome, Ellie”.
“I can’t wait to tell River!”
“Hey, take your gloves off first”.
Elise slipped them off and the Doctor took them.
“Well go on”, he told her.
Elise ran out of the room heading back to the console room to call River.
The Doctor put the gloves away in the shed. When he came back into the console room, Elise was sitting on the jump seat. “Elise, what’s wrong?”
“They wouldn’t let me talk to her”.
The Doctor hugged her and said, “Maybe we can try again later. Why don’t we jump ahead and go get the Ponds?” He stood up and went to the controls, thankful his back was to her. He knew their lifestyle wasn’t always ideal, but it still broke his hearts when she was sad and he couldn’t do anything about it. But then an idea hit him. He flipped a lever and said, “Come along, Elise!”
Elise followed him out of the TARDIS. She smiled when she saw River. Elise ran up to the bars and started to tell her all about her new pet.
“Doctor Song isn’t allowed visitors right now”, a guard said.
“Five minutes. That’s all I’m asking for”, the Doctor said.
The guard looked at the little girl talking to River. “Fine. Five minutes”.
The Doctor approached them.
“What did you name him?” River asked Elise.
“Orion. Like the constellation”.
“Just couldn’t say no to her could you?”
“Almost every child has a pet while growing up”, the Doctor told her.
“I’m just surprised it’s not from some other planet”.
“I can be responsible when I want to”.
“Of course you can, sweetie”.
“Elise, I need to talk to River alone. Why don’t you go clean up your room?”
Elise looked at River.
“Mind your father. I’ll see you soon, okay?” River said.
Elise tapped River’s forehead with her own. It was something Elise had started doing since the Byzantium. Every time she saw River, she would share memories from various adventures.
River kissed her cheeks and said, “Run along”.
Elise went back to the TARDIS and River stood up.
“What’s wrong?” River asked him.
The Doctor sighed. “I wish you could travel with us full time. Elise needs her mother”.
“Mother?”
“Don’t play coy River. You know Elise looks at you as a mother figure. More so than Amy”.
“What’s brought this on?”
“After she got Orion, the first thing she wanted to do was tell you but they wouldn’t let you talk to her. You should’ve seen her face, River. She was heartbroken”.
“Times up!” the guard yelled.
“I’m sorry, sweetie”, River told him.
The Doctor smiled sadly. “I know you are”. He leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “Till next time, Doctor Song”.
“Till next time, Doctor”.
The Doctor entered the TARDIS and found Elise waiting for him. “We have some Ponds to pick up, don’t we?”
Elise gave him a small smile and nodded.
The Doctor threw the lever and they took off.
#eleventh doctor fanfiction#eleventh doctor imagine#eleventh doctor#river song#river song imagine#doctor who#Doctor Who fanfiction#doctor who imagine#eleven/river#doctor/river
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The 2010s
THE 2010s
Ahh, the 2010s. The decade that I became a full fledged adult in. I experienced the highs, the lows, the mids, the joy, the pain, the riches, the squalor and everything in between. I lived in five different states, five different cities. I traveled the nation multiple times around. I jumped jobs, locations, identities like any fledgling twentysomething that possess the gravitas to explore.
Outside of my being, the world experienced a lot. We experienced two terms of Obama only to enter the Trump era during the final three years of the decade. We lost many a legend—Prince being the one that hit me hardest—and gained a few more. Activism reached a visibility not seen since the 1960s—from Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter. Mass murders became a regular occurrence as overall crime rose all across the nation. Global warming made for both Los Angeles and New York to share similar temperatures in December despite being on the opposite side of the seaboard.
And, musically …
Things shifted so much that they remained the same. Record sales reached a record low yet the record industry began to rebound with the rise of streaming. An entire century’s worth of music is only nanoseconds away for a small monthly fee. The decade saw the rise (and sometimes fall) of dubstep, “alternative R&B”, cloud rap, mumble rap, trap beats (which punctuated almost a majority of popular songs regardless of genres throughout the past ten years), etc. Adele sold the most records than anyone else despite pop getting more and more EDM-influenced by the minute, Drake was easily the most popular rapper as rap became increasingly non-rap in its sound, R&B continued to thrive outside of the mainstream, rock increasingly became a genre of the past and well, everything else remained the same.
Yet, in my headphones, these ten albums provided the aural narration for various times and places and mental explorations and live experiences throughout this past decade. While I listened to hundreds of albums—and liked just as many—these ten stood out the most to me even if my individual interest in a few has dissipated beyond the time that they spoke to me the most. These ten albums remind me that despite the roller coasters of emotions, thoughts, experiences and mindsets I’ve experienced these past ten years, the 2010s was a good decade, overall. Here are my 10 of the ‘10s:
1. D’ANGELO, Black Messiah (RCA, 2014)
Arriving on the scene when the nation was in tatters after the rash of police brutality targeting black men around the country (which was never a rare occurrence, mind you, but that’s another screed for another day ….) and the Black Lives Matter movement was in full bloom in the mainstream media, D’Angelo re-appeared some 14 years after his last album, the landmark Voodoo. This re-appearance feel right on time even if it was almost a decade and a half late in an increasingly ADHD world. That it spoke to a nation’s frustration as well as its joy despite such an extended wait was almost miraculous and made claim to it’s title claim. Even more miraculous is just how much the music resonates as much as D’s storied past. A D’Angelo album is almost as mythic as the man but like any myth, neither fails to be magical. So magical that Messiah resulted in many album-long reactions by artists that spanned various genres and commercial statuses.
2. KAYTRANADA, 99.9% (XL, 2016)
Released just months before the end of the Obama administration, 99.9%, the full length debut by Montreal maestro Kaytranada treated the pre-election tension in the air—then placing Donald Trump and Hillary Rodham Clinton as contenders to replace the nation’s first black president—like the perfect atmosphere for a party. A decidedly Pan-African dance party, at that. Kaytranda, born Louis Celestin, is an obvious student of black music that spans decades, genres and continents. The son of Haitian immigrants, Kay knows the power of rhythm like any Caribbean expat does. This rhythm powers an one hour long song cycle that never lets up despite many variations in groove and voice (Kay gives the floor to a multitude of vocalists which include everyone from Anderson .Paak and Phonte to Syd of The Internet and Little Dragon’s Yukimi Nagona to rappers Goldlink and Vic Mensa to even 2000s British pop/R&B superstar Craig David). The sheer joy here—peaking with the late-album, Gal Costa-powered “Lite Spots”—is palpable and it’s groove unstoppable. And it will surely remain so for many years to come.
3. INC., No World (4AD, 2013)
The Brothers Aged—Daniel and Andrew-- created a quixotic, otherworldly mood piece in their debut No World. The juxtaposition between D’Angelo and especially Maxwell’s largely carnal “neo soul” velvet and the post-punk atmosphere that colored many a classic on the label that released the album made for an intriguing listen. What stands out most about No World is its subtlety. This is a work that requires several listens before it entirely sinks in. And when it sinks in, it completely submerges.
4. JESSIE WARE, Devotion (PMR, 2012)
A merger of soignée “diva” vocals, distinctively British tastefulness, dance music rhythms and commitment to low-key R&B of decades past made Devotion a promising prospect even before its spring 2012 release. Jessie Ware had already built a name for herself via cameos on records by fellow forward thinking Brits SBTRKT, The Joker and Sampha but on Devotion that name became emboldened and placed in caps. A set that’s gossamer (the precise Aaliyah channeling on its opening title track; the lush and almost folksy closer “Something Inside”), earnest (the single “Wildest Moments”), funky (“Sweet Talk”, the Little Dragon-esque “110%”) and stately (the single “Running” which piqued my interest in the first place from its blatant nods to Sade’s “Cherry Pie” and so much sophisti-pop of the same era and origin). Devotion turned out to be such a masterwork that its author has yet to match its range and breadth with a couple more follow-ups that were increasingly pop-orientated and plainer in sound. Regardless of Ware’s musical trajectory, Devotion still stands as one of the best debuts that the 2010s birthed.
5. KENDRICK LAMAR, Good Kid mAAd City (Aftermath/Interscope, 2012)/ To Pimp a Butterfly (Aftermath/Interscope, 2015)
Kendrick Lamar. The rapper that almost tracked my entry into adulthood and became one of the biggest rap stars in the world by decades end. In a way, Kendrick almost seemed like a kindred spirit. He and I are both young black men from coastal city-suburbs, born the same year (almost exactly six months apart, in fact), introverted, always exploring even if we don’t like what we find. While Section .80 introduced me into me—and many, many others—into the fantastical world of Mr. Duckworth, it was his 2012 major label debut Good Kid mAAd City that showed the world his actual palate. An incredibly well-curated and extremely accessible release, Good Kid tells the story of really, Lamar’s public persona: a good kid in a mAAd city escapes the turmoil around him—narrowly—when he finds a higher power. In his case, that higher power that provided peace of mind was music. If Good Kid showed the world who mainstream rap’s next auteur was, To Pimp a Butterfly showed us all just how much he was capable of. Arguably, the rap album of the decade, Butterfly was a work of extreme vision. It’s 79 minutes packed with rage, depression, remembrance, questioning, soul and resolve all stoked by Lamar’s new found widespread adulation—sparked by his recent rap fame—and his realization of where his black skin placed him in society. Butterfly’s adventurous yet vaunted sprawl could characterize itself as a wild theater of the mind of one of the last gifted pop-rappers we’ve seen. It could also stand as the Magnus opus that is hard to follow up. Lamar’s subsequent work achieved even more commercial success than Good Kid and Butterfly—both of which debuted at the top of the US pop charts and earned platinum status in a climate where such an award had become extremely rare—as well as continued critical adoration but failed to compel as much as its predecessors. This rather swift creative peak wasn’t relegated to Lamar, however, but also applied to many others that emerged as exciting young forces in music—Drake, J. Cole, Frank Ocean, The Weeknd, Big K.R.I.T. , Miguel, Toro y Moi, etc.—at the dawn of the decades but seemed creatively tapped just a few short later despite wildly increased commercial profiles. Still, both Good Kid and Butterfly’s mark on the game is permanent.
6. TORO Y MOI, Anything in Return (Carpark, 2013)
Chazwick Bundwick began as an insanely talented hipster recording warm yet self conscious “chillwave” under the name Toro y Moi during the beginning of the decade. Then Anything in Return, his third album, was released and Bundwick was no lomger a cutesy indie poster boy but a distinct artist in his own right. A swooning, often sensual set of midtempo grooves with hooks that stick like gum, Anything in Return is millennial angst with a sweet aftertaste. Inspired by a failed relationship, While Bundwick’s melancholy is audible, the music’s sexy optimistic is what makes it so hard to shake. Toro’s following releases were all less interesting than the last even if at least a couple tried to follow Anything’s template. Yet, the bar set by Anything may have proven hard for Toro to reach even if the bar for its sheer enjoyment will likely never too high.
7. SOLANGE, A Seat at the Table (Columbia, 2016)
On the night of November 8, 2016, I stood downstairs of a LA Fitness in the San Fernando Valley, California and watched with several others on the television screens above as Donald Trump was in a landslide of a lead over Hillary Rodham Clinton as the 45th President of the United States of America. Amongst all of us that stood there, there was a multitude of emotions and reactions. Mine was one of sheer rage, if not astonishment. Prior to this night, I had been living in Glendale, a predominately Armenian-American enclave to the east of Hollywood. The lack of fellow black faces was assuaged by three aural black girl manifestos—Jamila Woods’ debut Heavn, Esperanza Spalding’s Emily D+Evolution and most strikingly, Solange’s third release A Seat the Table. Yet, on this night that the country was beginning a steep decline that it couldn’t retract for another quarter-decade, A Seat the Table acted as an elixir yet again. An album of mood—mainly rage and frustration—that was dictated by tone—delicate, airy, proudly feminine and definitely defined by its culture-Black with a capital AND bolded B, Seat played a feminine yang to the aforementioned Black Messiah (the album that undoubtedly inspired its creation) and Butterfly’s more masculine yin. It was the album that summed up a collective mood of a people even if it was markedly personal. The political has always been personal and vice versa and Solange knew this. A huge turning point for both Ms. Knowles’ career—it launched her as a must-hear artist spanning genres and scenes instead of being just you-know-who’s little sister that also sung—and really, many other artists in its wake.
8. THE INTERNET, Ego Death (Columbia, 2015)
The Internet began as a likeable but painfully tentative—and youthful-- answer to the “future soul” of LA of the past decade heralded by the likes of trailblazers like J*Davey, Sa-Ra Creative Partners and Georgia Anne Muldrow. Members of the Odd Future collective, The Internet brought a sense of sophistication to the otherwise “bratty”, then under-25 crew. On each follow-up, The Internet grew away from Odd Future’s “shock” image and into their own as a legit force in modern live band soul. By the time of Ego Death, The Internet were no longer just a legit force but now arguably one of the best bands of their generation. Ego Death is a magnus opus and easily the best album to ever come out of the Odd Future camp (only Channel Orange can match it but it can be argued if Ocean was ever an actual member of the crew). Sleek, sexy, clever, thoughtful and distinctively LA (dizzy, balmy, calm), Ego Death is the sound of a band not only finding its wings but soaring. Syd’s supple soprano is fully realized now whereas it was still in development a couple albums ever before. Now fleshed out into a five-member band, the grooves are all vivid—the bass warm and sometimes rumbling, the guitar prickly, the keys always sweet—and the songs—which were just loose groove sketches before—all fully formed. Ego Death’s peaks with the dreamy “Girl”, co-produced with Kaytranada, and proved to be a career highlight for both acts (and made for my personal favorite song of the decade). Yet, despite “Girl”’’s awestruckness, Ego Death never falters. And even if ego dies, its appeal will not.
9. THE WEEKND, House of Balloons (self released, 2011)
I still remember listening to “What You Need” on some music blog back in late 2010 in my college dorm. It’s sinewy sexed up R&B groove and lyrical promises to “knock your boot off” were nothing new but it’s approach was. There was something alien about it and sinister. Very sinister. It was almost like hearing the aural equivalent of a Jodeci video directed by David Lynch. It was sensual but dark. Little was known about the artist that recorded “Need” when I first started to listening to the song. All we were given was the name The Weeknd and a blurry gray picture of an obscured face. Soon enough, “What You Need” was given a home via release entitled House of Balloons which was self released and available for free download. And The Weeknd was given a face via an Ethiopian-Canadian singer from Toronto named Abel Tesfaye. And both House of Balloons and The Weekend were given a distinct aesthetic; an aesthetic that would inform and influence popular music for the entire decade.
Listening to House of Balloons nearly a decade later is an interesting experience. Back in the days when I downloaded Balloons on its day of release, it’s sound was incredibly fresh. The noirish, downtempo grooves, Tesfaye’s slightly off-key falsetto, naked references to Oxycontin, drugged out debauchery, empty sex and fatal heartbreak, indie rock samples and unrelenting vibe-over-song structure was all so, well, new. It didn’t take long for The Weeknd to be labeled as the vanguard of something called “Alternative R&B” alongside LA-based auteurs Frank Ocean and Miguel.
Yet, nearly a decade later, Balloons sounds almost like parody. Tesfaye’s vocals seem almost amateur-ish. The lyrics can feel almost like bad fan-fiction. Its low-slung, vibey atmospheres almost generic. Yet, this reappraisal just speaks to just how massive Balloons’ influence was on mainstream R&B and hip hop. What was new in 2011 had become commonplace a decade later. In other words, House of Balloons set the template for what followed on the charts (alongside the entire oeuvre of another fellow Toronto native who went from teen TV star to the rap superstar of the decade). Even if its follow-ups—released months apart—were stronger and more realized. Even if a sanitized and often altered version of these songs were re-released upon The Weeknd signing to a major label conglomerate within a year of his first three efforts’ self releases and packaged as Trilogy (the alterations were largely due to sample clearance issues). Even if The Weeknd became a shell of himself artistically after Balloons—and its two follow-ups Thursday and Echoes of Silence, respectively--while becoming one of the biggest male pop stars in the world by the middle of the decade. Despite whatever occurred in its aftermath, House of Balloons will always remain a document in time of when the new became the standard. And Abel Tesfaye was an exciting force in music, regardless of how brief.
10. KHRUANGBIN, Como Todo El Mundo (Dead Oceans, 2018)
By 2018, I finally caught up with the world and entered into the world of streamimg after having my umpteenth iPod Classic clash. Tired of spending $340 every 1.5 to 2 years because of glitch Apple software, I reluctantly decided to let my android become my new source of sound. I signed up for a premium membership on Spotify (no plug!) for $9.99 and pressed play. One feature on Spotify that I grew to anticipate was the Discover Weekly playlist which collected thirty songs that almogriths decided I’d like based on listening history. I was both startled and delighted by how accurate the selections were. While I was already familiar with a large percentage of the songs compiled, I made several wonderful discoveries. The one that stands out amongst the rest is a lazy but endless little funk groove called “Evan Finds the Third Room”. There was something very “exotic” about “Evan” yet familiar. It evoked a lot of things—early ‘80s Lower East Side NYC post-punk, early ‘70s garage funk, Jamaican dub—but sounded like nothing specific. And that is the magic of Como Todo El Mundo, Khruangbin’s--a Texan trio comprised of bassist Laura Lee, guitarist Mark Speer and drummer Donald Johnson—sophomore album. It is music that conjures up a slew of vibes that you’ve heard before but nothing in particular. In other words, it like nothing that you’ve heard before. For instance, the closer (and standout) “Friday Morning” sounds vaguely like what Ice Cube’s “It Was A Good Day” would sound like if it were on a hell of an acid trip. That the trio created such a wonderful psychedelic musical carpet ride that remains funky and irresistible throughout its duration with few words is even incredible. With Como, there is no need for any psychedelic substance your body when the music here already bends your mind and soothes your spirits so vividly.
10 That Almost Made the 10 of the ‘10s:
Frank Ocean, Channel Orange (Def Jam, 2012)
Jose James, Blackmagic (Brownswood, 2010)
Erykah Badu, New Amerykah: Return of the Anhk (Universal Motown, 2010)
JMSN, JMSN (White Room, 2014)
Dam-Funk, Invite the Light (Stones Thow, 2015)
Freddie Gibbs & Madlib, Pinata (Madlib Invasion, 2014)
Little Dragon, Ritual Union (Peacefrog, 2011) OR Nabuma Rubberband (Loma Vista, 2014)
Flying Lotus, Until the Quiet Comes (Warp, 2012)
Robert Glasper Experiment, Black Radio (Blue Note, 2012)
YG, My Krazy Life (Def Jam, 2014)
#2010s#d'angelo#kaytranada#inc#jessie ware#kendrick lamar#toro y moi#solange#the internet#the weeknd#khrunagbin
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Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: Saturday 11th May, 2019
I think it goes without saying that seeing today’s show was an absolute honour. James Phoon, our lovely Craig Bowker (aaand everyone’s favourite Hufflepuff), FINALLY got to go on as Scorpius Malfoy. Now we’ve been talking, hoping, and begging for this for two years. Two years! Spoiler alert: it was worth the wait. ♥︎
So, who is his Scorpius? Well I initially summed him up in three words: sweet, strong, awkward. I stand by that. We’ve always said he’d be a total sweetheart, a child of sunshine and sweets. We weren’t wrong. But what really captured my attention was his strength. He didn’t feel vulnerable the way Jonathan’s Scorpius does (to me, anyway) and even when he was, I knew he could handle himself. There was something very Malfoy about him in that sense. You could almost see Draco’s influence. It was all there, intertwined with his own Scorpius-ness. It felt like something brand new but also exactly what you’d expect from Scorpius Malfoy. Watching him stand his ground and push back on Albus, and then awkwardly play with his hands and squeal in delight over something geeky in the next breath. It was the perfect mix which made for a fascinatingly brilliant interpretation and one I’d have loved the chance to explore further. I can only imagine where James would have taken him if he was already here at show one.
ACT ONE, SCENE FOUR: THIRD YEAR
I absolutely adored his approach to the scene where he tells Albus about Astoria’s death. Instead of looking down at the ground or focusing on Albus, he angled himself our way and stared out as if he was looking out of the train window. Yet his unfocused and glistening eyes told us he wasn’t really seeing anything beyond the glass. It made me wonder if he’d have stayed like that all the way to Hogwarts if Albus hadn’t have found him because even once Albus had arrived and started talking, Scorpius barely blinked. He spoke back but he never took his eyes off the view. It broke my heart. He couldn’t write those words and now he has to say them. I don’t blame him for not wanting to see the sorry on Albus’s face. He remained in that position until he suddenly turned towards Albus as he asked him to be his good friend. The fact that it’s that line that pulls Scorpius back into the world says so much about him. His friendship with Albus is what grounds him. It’s what he needs to get through this.
Also, unrelated to James but I have to call out Ryan in the wand dance. So you know how Albus fails at the very end and his wand shoots out the powder instead? Well while the other kids mocked him, Ryan just stood at the back, looking at his own wand, and wondered aloud: “how did he do that?” The look of confusion on his face and the fact the question seemed so genuine had me laughing so hard I wheezed. I’ve been saying it ever since. (Plus I like the idea that someone out there is impressed. Even if it was an accident. Bless him.)
ACT ONE, SCENE NINETEEN: BEATING THE LIBRARY
I just have to mention Jamie B here because his version of James’s Scorpius was absolutely superb. Like, A+. 10/10. Five gold stars. We gushed at him afterwards and he said he only got to watch James for a few scenes that day before having to go on and do this scene. I’m still wildly impressed at this man’s talent.
ACT TWO, SCENE SIX: HOGWARTS THROUGH THE TREES
This scene always stands out to me. There’s a certain kind of magic to it that sets it apart from the others. We come to the theatre, or pick up the book, or watch the movies, to visit Hogwarts. Yet in this scene, it’s those at Hogwarts who turn to watch us to see this world. It gives me goosebumps every time. I never feel as part of the magic as I do when I’m watching this scene. For that reason, it’s so interesting to watch the actors reacting to that view. Of seeing that magic, of all of us on this journey with them. There’s time there where they literally don’t say anything. They just stand and look and without fail, it exposes the true extent of their Harry Potter love. It doesn’t matter how good of an actor you are, there are some emotions you cannot fake. The beauty of the Palace Theatre itself and the realisation of pretty much being ‘Harry Potter’ (but better) in this moment has caused so many of them to well up. Now James P’s love for HP is common knowledge. He’s a very proud Hufflepuff who beat his losing streak in the Friday Forty by joining the cast in the second year. (I have so much respect for that haha.) So as you can imagine, the second we all saw his eyes glistening as he stepped forward we all cried with him.
ACT TWO, SCENE SEVEN: FIRST AU
Now you know the Malfoys are my favourites (apart from Albus, he’s still my number one), so seeing how Draco and Scorpius interact is pretty high on my list of priorities. I was on the edge of my seat for this scene today! So anyway, the adults run on stage and Draco immediately zones in on his son but Scorpius stays focused on Albus. I think it was partly because Albus was very obviously in quite a lot of pain, and I’m also fairly sure he was actively trying to avoid the look on his dad’s face too. He’s in trouble and he knows it. I just hope he also knows how worried his dad has been too because that is also evident on his face.
ACT TWO, SCENE TEN: WRONG BOY IN THE WRONG CARRIAGE
So for anyone who’s not seen the show, this scene has the adults talking around McGonagall’s desk with both staircases back to back behind them. They sort of frame the scene and enclose them to give the impression they’re in a room. Now while this scene plays out, Scorpius is sat on the right staircase behind/above them. Now I’ve never been fully convinced either way as to whether it means Scorpius is eavesdropping on their conversation or whether he’s there simply as a reminder of what’s at stake. Either way, Scorpius is usually uncharacteristically still as they speak. You could easily forget he’s there. So it was super interesting to see James decide to keep moving his hands as Scorpius would. It made you more aware of the fact even if he’s not part of the conversation, he is part of this. Everything that is being said directly affects him. This boy that’s sat in the darkness alone and showing signs of uneasiness. It made Harry’s misguided anger feel even worse.
ACT TWO, SCENE TWELVE: STAIRCASE BALLET
This is a random observation and probably not the one you want but for some reason, the image of him sitting on top of the staircase with his legs hanging down is stuck in my head. I just love it? I'm so used to Scorpius sitting up there cross-legged and looking down at Albus longingly and so full of hope. To see something different was refreshing! It was almost like he missed Albus walking beneath him at first and then as he seemed to realise, he quickly jumped up and ran back to the banister to catch him as he walked up the other staircase behind him. Although thinking about it now, that’s even sadder? The fact he doesn’t spot him immediately. Did Scorpius start to give up? It would explain his frustration at Delphi a few scenes later. Being confronted with the notion that Albus needs him when in fact it’s clearly him that needs Albus. A hard truth to learn when his best friend has all but abandoned him. It’s interesting to imagine a Scorpius trying to learn how to survive school (and life) without Albus at this point. Maybe that’s what Delphi sees. That’s why she risks everything because she can’t have Scorpius being so Malfoy about this and surviving. She needs him to fight for Albus. She needs them together.
Or maybe it’s just simply because Albus is always so quick to run off or change direction to avoid Scorpius so that when he does literally past right underneath him here it’s like Scorpius doesn’t believe it. Like he can’t trust his own eyes. But then it registers and of course he’s immediately up and after him. It’s definitely a much nicer idea. But I’ll let you decide...
ACT TWO, SCENE SIXTEEN: THE ARGUMENT
Now this is a library scene! I personally always prefer a Scorpius that gets so uncontrollably angry he properly shouts in this scene. I want him to finally explode after years of imploding. James P did not let me down. There was no mistaking his frustration. His “try my life” silenced the theatre. The pain in his “can you even slightly imagine what that’s like” exposed Albus. The next lines were unnecessary. Albus already felt two foot tall. Then his “giving sympathy to the boy WHO DOESN’T EVEN GIVE ANYTHING BACK” gave me goosebumps. This is my Scorpius. He had the whole audience in his hands. Even the annoyingly loud lady behind me was captived enough to stop using her Pringles as maracas! Wayhey!!! But all jokes aside, watching this sweet boy stand up to his best friend and speak without knowing if Albus would stay at the end of this was heartwrenching. But he’s right, some things are more important. I think this hits him here finally and his voice and anger dips as he said, ”so I’m sorry if I’ve ruined your life because I tell you - you wouldn’t have a chance of ruining mine - it was already ruined.” Each pause brought more emotion until finally he exploded with anger again for ‘the most terrible friend’ line. I can still see his face so clearly in my head as he shouted that at Albus. He had, what I can only describe as his ‘angry eyebrows’ on, and he meant it. The unwavering glare he gave Albus was cold and cruel. It was glorious. I have this thing about getting glimpses of what could be the Scorpion King. I love it. Now I know our Scorpius isn’t that person and nor is he capable of the things he is, but watching him use his words to cut Albus down was like a flash of what could be. If anyone in the theatre still had any doubt this boy was a Malfoy, they wouldn’t have after this scene.
But back to the height thing. We’re used to Scorpius having some height on Albus and it being visibly noticeable. Yet this was the one time I actually felt it, despite the fact that James and Joe are roughly the same height. He just had such a big presence on stage once he’d stopped holding back. The flashes of anger, fuelled by unimaginable pain, concealed for reasons that would only hurt you further if you learned them. There’s so much more to Scorpius Malfoy than sweets, and it breaks my heart.
Of course this all led to a truly heartfelt apology from Albus. It felt softer than usual. Or maybe it just seemed that way after Scorpius’s sharpness. It was beautiful to watch them equal each other out. There’s always a balance with these two and it’s never more obvious than here.
Oh and the hug! This was the most awkward hug I’ve ever witnessed. Basically, Albus pulled him up and tried to bring him straight into a hug but Scorpius put his hands up and froze. (Think Surprised Kitten.) That didn’t deter Albus though. He tried to work around it (by which I mean he still kept his arms out and half around Scorpius trying to coax him into it) but Scorpius was not moving. Oh and FYI, it wasn’t a ‘I’m uncomfortable with this’ kind of thing. It was definitely a ‘I don’t know what to do here’ kind of thing! In the end, Albus motioned with his hands for Scorpius to come closer and gave him an encouraging head nod along with it. That finally did it and the two hugged. It was super sweet with five layers of awkwardness and I loved it. Especially given how determined Scorpius looked when he said ‘always’. It’s fascinating how Albus is a source of both confidence and the unknown to him. His range of reactions will never stop entertaining me.
ACT TWO, SCENE NINETEEN: GIRLS’ BATHROOM
So the soap didn’t inflate and I’m only mentioning this because Albus’s response was just, “nevermind”, and he carried on. NEVERMIND. It’s not like if you get this wrong then the whole plan falls through or anything, Albus! This boy. Honestly. He’s a jumbled mix of accepted failure and confident stubbornness and I’m here for that.
ACT THREE, SCENE TWO: VOLDY TIMELINE
There was a really great parallel moment here where he was in the middle of the stage, facing the audience and looking at Hogwarts. Just like he was during the ‘Hogwarts through the trees’ scene. Yet the difference between these two looks spoke volumes about how different this version of Hogwarts was. The last time he looked in awe. He was happy to be there and proud to be at that school. But now he looked back at it over his shoulder and his eyes spoke of bone deep fear.
This Scorpius played the role of Scorpion King quite impressively. He was able to rein in a lot of his Scorpius-y mannerisms for longer than Jonathan’s Scorpius manages. It was more in line with Samuel’s Scorpius, if not better. It’s exactly what I expected of this Scorpius after part one. Draco may have failed to instil leadership in him but he’s definitely picked other things up.
ACT THREE, SCENE THREE: DRACO’S OFFICE
He went for what I can only describe as a ‘pitifully wounded trapped animal’ approach to being held down on the table. I felt it like a stab to the heart. He just collapsed into the desk and his legs looked like they were going to buckle. He looked so small it hurt. But if that wasn’t bad enough, once he’d got free he ran backward holding the side of his face and let out the saddest little whimper. He made no attempt to hide the fact he’d been hurt. I’m glad. I think Draco needed that. Scorpius too. I don’t think he’s tempted to stay in this reality but this affirms his need to change it back. He may be struggling with his dad but he knows enough to know that he wouldn’t want this. His mother either. He’s aware of his past but he’s also aware of his present. He’ll save the world for Albus, but he’ll change it for his family.
ACT THREE, SCENE FOUR: ALL THE CRAIGS
I’m not gonna lie, I spent this entire scene being alarmed by the fact the person I’ve watched as Craig for the past two years was now suddenly interacting with Craig. I wonder if that was weird for him too…
ACT THREE, SCENE FIVE: LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS
I love how his ‘you loved his mother’ seemed to escape from him without intention. He instantly became nervous and unsure as to whether he should have mentioned it. But he presses on and he slowly regains his confidence the longer Snape is quiet. It made me think about how important this moment is for Scorpius. He’s been in this AU for (presumably) days now and I can’t imagine the horrors he’s seen. But he never gives up hope and now there’s a light. Even in this world of darkness, Scorpius is not alone, and love will win once more. I know he loves reading about it in his history books but experiencing this first hand must inspire and empower him more than just the fact he survived this world.
ACT THREE, SCENE EIGHT: DEMENTORS
He really put his all into his interactions with the Dementors which I will always love an actor for. These creatures are mentally draining, affect you physically and emotionally, and are hard to detach from. There’s no fancy CGI of the movies here and honestly, they don’t need it anyway. James portrayed all of that brilliantly. (Dementors are my favourite HP creatures of this made me very happy!)
ACT THREE, SCENE NINE: CAREFUL, YOU’RE DROWNING ME!
Having seen all the reluctance and nervousness in the previous hugs, I was a little bit unsure of what to expect with this one since it’s the first hug Scorpius instigates himself. I shouldn’t have worried. The hug was short but Scorpius threw himself into it without hesitation or any hint of uncertainty afterwards. It was lovely and a true testament to his character. He could have come back from the Voldy AU angry and damaged but instead he focuses on his relationships. It reminds me of that quote from HBP: “You're the one who is weak. You will never know love or friendship. And I feel sorry for you.” Scorpius is awkward and bullied. He’s hurting and lonely. He must appear weak to just about everyone, but they’re wrong. To be dealing with all of that and still have such a pure love for magic and life and all the people in it? It’s incredible and beyond brave to choose love time and time again. I think we could all learn a thing or two from Scorpius Malfoy. He’s the bravest person I know.
ACT THREE, SCENE FOURTEEN: THE DORM SCENE
This was so heavily influenced by Samuel’s Scorpius that I instantly broke down in a flood of tears and sobbed my way through this scene (and the next few). He woke Albus up with an ‘Al-boos’ and then he even pulled his duvet up and wrapped it around his face as he said Mouldy Voldy. It was beautifully painful in the best and worst ways. None of us were prepared. I just never expected to see those things again but it also reminded me (like I could ever forget, ha!) how well they work. I mean, I may have been crying uncontrollably but everyone else was laughing along at his ridiculousness. It was like his sugar high had just kicked in. Malfoy the Unanxious was really loving life in this moment.
One thing that stood out in particular was the way he said the pun at the end. It was full of dramatic pauses (“It’s time.. that time turning… became a thing… of the past”) and he said it so seriously. This Scorpius has skills. The pride on his face afterwards made it even better. I like that he can give as good as he can get with dry humour and Albus. He’s clearly picked up a thing or two over the years. I can only imagine what they’re like together once they’ve got started. Total Slytherins.
ACT THREE, SCENE NINETEEN: TORTURE SCENE
I have to admit, I kinda just lost myself in this scene and enjoyed it so I have very few notes. Other than that he made this painfully sad whimper when Delphi turned her wand towards him and he realises that’s how she’s going to control Albus. But then the second time she does it he remains silent. He knows what’s coming but he’ll endure (and not give her the satisfaction) if it means stopping her. Although he didn’t hide his pain afterwards. He looked and sounded like he was in agony. I’m a big fan of that. (Sorry Scorpius!)
It was also really jarring again to see James P watch Craig Bowker die in this scene. Scorpius consciously tried to avoid looking at Craig’s dead body too and that somehow made it worse?
ACT THREE, SCENE TWENTY: YOUR DAD LOVES YOU, VERY MUCH
I always watch Scorpius’s face as Albus says this line. So Jonathan’s Scorpius always looks across at Albus in panic, like he’s about to expose what’s about to happen to Cedric and ruin time. Then once he realises he’s not, he deflates and simply watches Albus with such love. He knows what those words would mean to Albus, so for him to say them to Cedric, making sure it’s the last thing that Cedric hears before he dies, it makes him look at Albus like he’s seeing him for who he truly is. A boy whose heart convinces his head to act. That may have gotten them into this mess but Scorpius likes that about him. This moment is a reminder of that. So much has happened. The arguments, their falling out, their losses, their wounds exposed. But this seems to bring him back down and closer. It’s so incredibly touching. It made me super intrigued to see what James would do with it. Unsurprisingly, I was not let down. The emotion on his face just broke me. I’m not sure if it’s because of what he knew would happen, and must happen, to Cedric. The burden of that so soon after Craig must have been awful. Or whether it was hearing those words himself and thinking of his own dad that caused those feelings to overpower him. But it was beautifully painful to watch. It’s such an emotionally powerful moment. To see him physically uncomfortable, unable to sit still as he’s flooded with these feelings, truly brought home how young they are to be dealing with all this too.
ACT FOUR, SCENE THREE: SQUEEEAK!
I’m not sure I’ve mentioned this already but his voice got really light and wispy whenever he was really happy. Like whatever was happening had taken his breath away. Usually it’s Rose’s doing but here it’s aaallll Bathilda. It started the second he realises she’ll be alive and in that house right now. It only escalated once she’d walked out and he’d seen her. His voice went so high and his squeak could have cracked glass. He was so unashamedly geeking out.
ACT FOUR, SCENE FIVE: FANBOY
Also, it’s super important you know this ubergeek kept letting out these really high pitched squeals of delight as this scene went on. It was like he never came back down from the high of seeing Bathilda. He did it once they’d figured out their plan and then again when he opened Bathilda’s door. That one was an actual shriek. He showed no shame. Good.
A little Scorpius-y quirk for you: he was continually fiddling with his clothes. Here it was the bottom of his coat. Probably the zipper? When he was in his uniform he favoured the ends of his sleeves.
ACT FOUR, SCENE EIGHT: WE CAN HUG TOO
So to anyone who’s read any of my recaps before, you may remember how I mentioned that Jonathan’s Scorpius has very noticeable anxiety issues. At times he struggles to catch his breath and how it’s something both Draco and Albus help him with throughout the show. (Although sadly he’s definitely toned this down a lot recently.) Anyway, I’m bringing this up now because after Draco and Scorpius hugged, Draco always keeps his hand on Scorpius’s shoulder. Presumably to keep him close but to also focus him on his breathing. It’s a really touching moment that tells you everything about how loving and caring this little family is. But since this is a different Scorpius I wondered what James H would do here. Interestingly, he didn’t change a thing. Now I’m thinking this shared moment isn’t just about Scorpius. It’s also about Draco. I’ve talked before about why I think Draco is constantly rubbing his fingers together. That I believe it’s a stress/anxiety thing, and how I think he uses that as a way of channeling and restraining it. It’s useful as a parent to recognise and understand something your child is going through, and it explains why James H still had Draco do the same actions today with James P’s Scorpius. Because his Scorpius didn’t need that sort of help so obviously. So the idea that his exaggerating breathing isn’t just for Scorpius to copy, but for himself too makes sense. I can’t imagine the stress of what losing Scorpius must have felt like. To finally have him back again, right in front of him, I’m sure he needs to remember to breathe again too. Or rather, the reminder he can breathe now. They’re together. That’s all that matters.
James P made this even more lovely by reaching out for Draco back. So while Draco had his hand on Scorpius’s shoulder, Scorpius cupped Draco’s other elbow and held on for a while. That was really nice!
ACT FOUR, SCENE ELEVEN: DUELLING WITH DELPHI
So after Delphi has been stopped, everyone is stood either side of her with their wands pointed right at her. The fight is over but they don’t let their guard down. Now from the angle at which my seat was at, I got this wonderful view of Albus, Ginny, Harry, Scorpius, and Draco all stood in a line. They’re all stood rigidly with their wand arms up and perfectly straight. They look determined and ready. But then in the middle of the line up is Scorpius. He stood out today because his arm was relaxed and low. His wand was still pointed at Delphi but his stance was as far from threatening as you can get. Understandably really, given that the adults are in the room and the fact she’s restrained and he’s holding her wand. He doesn’t need to fight. But then as soon as Harry says he won’t kill her, everyone lowers their wands and relaxes and takes their eyes off Delphi. Everyone except Scorpius. His wand was still at waist height but it never wavered and remained directed at her. He never even looked away from her. I was on the edge of my seat. This is a Scorpius who could have easily hidden behind his father (Jonathan’s Scorpius), or been afraid to hold Delphi’s wand (Samuel’s Scorpius). But no, he points her wand straight back at her and never falters. He’s lived in the world she wants. He’s suffered through rumours she claims as an identity with pride. He’s seen what this wand has done. Yet he pulls all that together and stares her down. Afraid, but brave.
It’s not until the real Voldemort’s voice calls out that he breaks his concentration. He reacts to the danger by finally moving towards his dad. Although I have no doubt if he hadn’t then Draco would have gone to him.
ACT FOUR, SCENE FOURTEEN: CRUSHES
He said ‘smokey eyed potions professor’ in this croaky, elderly lady voice and held up his hands as if he was holding onto a zimmer frame and it was hilarious! Easily my favourite way I’ve ever seen someone do this line. By implying that the professor is that much older he’s actually taken this teasing to a whole other level and I love him for it.
After all, a teenage boy having a crush on a middle aged female teacher isn’t unusual. But the idea that Scorpius is winding Albus up about him fancying a pensioner is just too funny. I can just imagine the joy it brings Scorpius, getting to wind Albus up about this through potions class and beyond. Albus, torn between being the kind hearted boy that he is and helping her move the heavier cauldrons, and wishing she’d just for once use her wand because the look on Scorpius’s face when she tells him he’s a ‘very good young man’ is most definitely going to be parroted back to him for the next week in jokes. So thank you James for this. I shall enjoy imagining your Scorpius teasing him endlessly in the way only best friends can.
I so wish more of you could have seen him because my words could never do him justice. I have no doubt you all would have loved him. James was fantastic, and not only that, he reminded you of how much time and effort all the cast put into this show. Whether they have three hundred lines or whether they have three. James had this beautiful, fully formed character that he knew would probably never see the light of day. Yet he took him on this new journey and fleshed him out ready. I only really got into theatre because of Cursed Child so while I knew this was the case with all understudies/swings, actually seeing it from a second cover made me realise the true extent of it. There’s an immeasurable amount of talent in this cast and we barely scratch the surface with so many of them. I’m sad we won’t get to see this Scorpius again, but I’m excited to see where James goes in the future.
(Oh and just so you know, my Jonathan and Samuel comparisons are purely to help give you a better idea of what James was like. I’m not saying one is better than the other. Each interpretation is so different and I love all three of them! I just want to give you the clearest idea I can and this way is easier if you’ve seen the show and you’re already familiar with one or both of these actors.)
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Endless Summer Book 4: Daughter of Vaanu (Chapter 37)
WOW, this chapter took way longer than I meant it to. But it’s also forty pages long, so that might explain it.
CW: Brief mention of sexual assault this chapter, not graphic.
Tagging: @mysteli ; @whatmcsaid ; @xo-endlessmayhem-xo ; @endlesshero1122 @feartheendlesssummer ; @tigerbryn11
Chapter 37 : Night of the Twelve
Craig
On Christmas night, I fall asleep spooning Zahra. I wake up later and find her gone. The digital clock on our bedside table says it's a little after three in the morning. This isn't unusual, since Zahra's an insomniac. It happens a lot less these days, but it still doesn't make me panic or anything. I think I've been in the same position since I fell asleep, because my limbs are feeling crampy. I roll over, stretching, and find Zahra sitting up at the computer with a cup of coffee beside her. She's frowning at the screen, her fingers rubbing her lips absentmindedly. She looks up when she hears me moving.
“Good. You're awake. Come look at this.”
“I'm not awake,” I mumble, yawning. “Come back to bed.”
“I found something, loser. Something important.”
“So important it can't wait until morning?”
“Yes. Get over here.”
I groan, dragging myself out of bed. I shuffle over to the computer, pulling up the second chair and plop down next to her. There's an article pulled up on the screen, with a picture of an attractive blonde woman.
“What am I looking at?”
“Cassandra Chandler's obituary. Look at this.” She points to a line on the screen. I squint at it.
“Can you zoom in?” She rolls her eyes, but she enlarges the text. “...'Matthew Chandler and his wife Cassandra (nee Sullivan) of Manhattan were victims of Wednesday's deadly plane crash.' ...So...Alodia's parents were from Manhattan? Is the what you're showing me?”
“No, Craig!” she sighs, exasperated. “Sullivan! Cassandra's maiden name was Sullivan!”
It takes a moment for that to sink in. “...Wait...like Flora Sullivan?”
“Now you're catching on.”
“But...it's not like Sullivan is a rare name, right?”
“Almost three-hundred thousand Sullivans in the United States.”
“So...you think Cassandra Sullivan-Chandler is somehow related to Flora Sullivan?”
“I think there aren't many coicidences where Vaanu is concerned.”
I yawn, rubbing my hands over my face. “...Come back to bed, Z. You can worry about this more in the morning.”
“I'm worried now,” she grumbles. I wind an arm around her waist and lower my head to nuzzle her neck. She sighs, whining a little, and tips her head so that her cheek is resting on my head. “...Fiiiine. I'll come to bed...”
Everett Rourke
Throughout this month, I have been giving interviews to the Man on Fire. Of course, he uses a psuedonym with me, and why should he imagine I have any idea who he actually is, when I have been in prison for five years? I have allowed him to suspect I have been in contact with Silas Prescott, and perhaps that has led him to have suspicions that I know more about him than I am letting on.
I feel a bit of melancholy as I gaze across the table at him today. Hope has been growing within me since I first saw Silas activate his Prism Gate, but my years in this prison have changed me. I am harder, and yet I am less confident. That was inevitable, I suppose. Prison makes a person hard, because one must be hard to survive it. And no matter what happened to result in a person being locked away, the moment when the door slams shut is the moment when failure is realized. Perhaps it is the inmate's failure, perhaps it is a failure of justice. But someone has failed, and failure shatters confidence. I wonder if I haven't lost my edge in this nightmare I have lived for the last five years. I wonder if my perception is slipping, if there is any chance I have tipped my hand a little too far to this wild card. Not that there is much time to worry about it. Alodia's child is due in four months.
“Mr. Rourke,” Caleb begins after a long stretch of thoughtful silence, “what do you think about the Prism Crystal giving people superpowers?”
“What do I think about it? I think it must be quite a boon to those fortunate individuals.”
“What I mean is...scientifically. Why those people? How does it work?”
“Ahh. That, I could not tell you. Nothing like that ever came of my own work with the crystals. My old friend Silas Prescott would know more about that than I would. He surely did a great deal of research following the event.”
“...And then he attempted to take over Northbridge.”
I chuckle. “Oh, is that what you think he tried to do?”
The young man raises an eyebrow. “Seemed like it, considering he basically said as much while he was shooting up with liquid prism.”
“You don't know the man like I do. He is not a man who naturally craves power, nor is he an idiot. Liquid Prism's effects are obviously temporary, and eventually, he would have been put down, even if he had succeeded in taking out Dragonness.”
“So what do you think he was really after?”
I shrug. “Perhaps you should ask him.”
He frowns. “Yeah. Maybe I should.”
I lean back in my chair. “I suspect we are reaching the end of our time together, Mr. Harding.”
“...Yeah...yeah we are...” Caleb gathers up his supplies. As we both stand, he obligingly reaches across the table to shake my hand.
“Happy New Year, Mr. Harding.”
“Yeah. Ditto, Mr. Rourke.”
He leaves me, and I am returned to my room. When I am left alone, I find myself standing in the middle of my quarters, casting an almost wistful eye over this...cell that has been my home for the last five years. I wonder if I will miss it. When my plans come to fruition, when I have regained what I have lost, will I ever yearn for this place that has become so familiar? It is doubtful. But one never knows for sure.
Silas Prescott
The winter solstice has passed, and the daylight hours increase incrementally each day. Still, I eat my dinner alone in the dark each night, hardly bothering to put more than a candle or a single light on at one time. I feel safer, wrapped in darkness. Lately, I have been feeling vulnerable, almost paranoid. I startle whenever my phone rings, and I can always hear the quiver in my voice when I answer. Most of the time, the voice on the other end is the same one I'm listening to tonight. Everett's contact. The man who goes between us.
“Rourke has the information he needs regarding the Trojan Project. He got it from Blaire Hall.”
“Can she truly be trusted? I remember Blaire. She is ambitious, and generally pragmatic. ...But there is an idealism in her. Unless she has grown harder and colder in recent years, I can't imagine she will have any reason to get behind this plan. ...Especially because it's likely to bring her daughter into harm's way.”
“She is already tugging at her leash,” he admits. “But if she gets off that leash, she'll have reason to regret it. Rourke knows things about her. Secrets she would not like revealed.”
“I am going to trial after the new year. How shall I handle that.”
“For now, just go along with it. Do as you are advised by your lawyers. The outcome won't be of any concern. Just be prepared.”
“I will be prepared. ...As long as I can get my Helena back, I am prepared for anything.”
Raj
“I'm scared.”
Lila's voice is soft, barely dominating the cheerful pop tunes and dance music bounce out of the rental car's speakers, even though the volume is so low they're basically background noise. We're boxed in on a California expressway, traffic currently moving at a snail's pace, so I feel pretty safe taking my eyes off the road to glance over at her. She isn't looking at me, her face turned slightly toward the window.
“...She knows you're coming. She won't hurt you. I wouldn't bring you if I had any doubt about that.”
“I know. I trust you. But...after so long...after the way things ended...”
“They ended with you on our side. On her side.”
“...I don't know if Estela actually sees it that way.”
“Even if she doesn't, she moved beyond the need for revenge a long time ago. And now that she has her mom back, I'd be willing to bet she'll be a lot more likely to let go of any lingering bad blood between you. Especially because tonight is mostly about Michelle and Alodia, and she won't want to sour anything.”
Lila turns slightly toward me and I catch a glimpse of a wry smile before I turn my eyes back on the road.
“I thought this was a New Years' Eve party. Isn't it a little early for bridal and baby showers, when the wedding and the baby are both months away?”
“Possibly, but this is the one time before the wedding that we could guarantee all the Catalysts would be together. Besides, it's also their birthdays. It's a combination party, just like Elysian Lodge.”
“...The morning after the party at Elysian Lodge didn't turn out so good,” she points out softly.
“But that's behind us now. Five years behind us. And this is Laguna Beach, not Elysian Lodge. We're not being chased by Arachnid, we're not hunting Catalyst idols, and none of us have missed our birthdays thanks to a time skip. ...We still can't have fireworks, but that's because they're illegal. But we can have a bonfire on the beach.”
“...You always did plan the best parties,” Lila concedes, smiling a little wider. I grin back.
“I am good at parties. And I've been planning this New Year's Eve/double birthday party/baby shower/wedding shower for months. Do you know how much effort goes into maintaining a few surprises when you're planning a party at someone else's beach house?” Finally, she laughs, which is what I was going for. I smile as the traffic starts to inch forward. “You got the shopping list?”
“Of course I do. You know I take every mission you give me very seriously.”
“And that's why we make such a great team.” I hold out my hand for a five, and she almost shyly slaps my palm with hers. “Ahh, finally, we're getting somewhere. Look out, Laguna Beach, it's New Year's Eve!”
* * *
We reach the beach house around one in the afternoon, laden with groceries and presents. Jake and Mike must have been watching for us because they meet us in the driveway, ready to help us carry everything inside.
“Food can go in the kitchen,” Jake informs us, gathering up all the bags he can carry, “presents in the front room under the Christmas tree. Think you brought enough food for everyone, Big Guy?”
“I hope so! With luck, there'll be leftovers, and I can keep up with any sudden cravings your wife has.”
“As long as you brought peanut butter.”
“Oh, not just any peanut butter. Five flavors of gourmet peanut butter. Plus, plenty of ingredients for virgin cocktails.”
Jake whistles. “You really do think of everything. Well, come on inside. Everyone else is in the kitchen.”
Lila
The moment I step inside the beach house, I am overwhelmed by the aura of warmth and good cheer in the air. Laughter rings from the kitchen and the chatter of familiar, friendly voices. Alodia, Diego, and the Vaanti prince. Alodia is visibly pregnant by now. She looks...amazing. Beautiful. Glowing. She looks so happy as she rushes to hug Raj and show him where he can put everything. I slink along behind him, wondering if any of them are going to comment on my presence. Jake and Mike didn't say much to me beyond 'hello,' but Alodia turns her attention on me pretty quickly, moving to embrace me. It doesn't feel...stiff exactly. Her embrace is warm, but it's also...formal in its way. A little shy. But I guess that's okay, because I feel a little shy, too.
“It's good to see you again, Lila,” she says sincerely as she pulls back. “How have you been?”
“Well...better, since I got away from Mr. Rourke. You have a beautiful home, by the way.”
“Oh, thanks. But technically, it's my aunt and uncle's house. They're just letting us live here. And turn one of the bedrooms into a nursery. So...pretty generous. ...Can I get you a drink or anything? Have you had lunch yet?”
Alodia plays an anxious hostess for awhile until Jake, Diego, and Raj practically force her to sit down at the kitchen table with a glass of orange juice and a sandwich. I settle into a role that has become familiar and comforting to me, helping Raj with whatever he needs done in the kitchen. As I dice and mix and whip, I feel myself relaxing. I start to participate in the conversation. I laugh. I joke. I tease, and they tease back. The kitchen fills with delicious smells. The stoves and ovens and the heat of our bodies makes the air swelter, and my cheeks feel fiery hot, but it doesn't bother me. I feel like I could stay blissfully ever after in this kitchen, delighting in the company of friends, sampling delicious foods.
Before I'm ready for it, the doorbell chimes. My blood sizzles with adrenaline. My heart spasms wildly, thumping so hard against my ribs that I when I look down I can see my left breast jumping. Alodia eagerly rushes to the door. I trail after her, afraid of who I'll see, but more afraid of being caught off guard. When I see who she's greeting, the relief that floods through my limbs leaves me feeling weak and shaky.
Sean, Michelle, Grace, and Aleister. Aleister has his son in his arms, and Murphy is curled over Michelle's shoulders. Like Alodia and the others, they greet me with equal parts reservation and warmth. I attempt to make friends with Reginald, but he's shy, and I suppose that's fair. Murphy is the only one who seems to be ready to welcome me back without hesitation. As soon as he shakes off his sleepiness, he leaps into my arms and licks at my face. We drift back into the kitchen, and Jake takes drink requests. Raj makes sure Alodia gets the first cup of his non-alcoholic cider while Michelle pesters her with questions about how she has been feeling and what were the results of all her latest tests. Everything is fine, Alodia assures her. She has ordinary pregnancy discomforts, but she and the baby are both healthy. I can't help but feel a twinge whenever I look at her belly, remembering Mr. Rourke's words, his musing that the baby might be useful to him somehow.
Another chime of the doorbell, and Craig and Zahra appear with a fresh supply of alcohol. I do a quick mental headcount of the Selected. The Catalysts. My old tour group. Alodia. Jake. Diego. Raj. Sean. Michelle. Grace. Aleister. Craig. Zahra. Ten accounted for. Two still to arrive. And one of them is Estela.
It isn't as if she doesn't know I'll be here. I know she was told, and she promised there wouldn't be trouble. Alodia wouldn't have been willing to let me come along with Raj if Estela wasn't willing to put aside any lingering hatred and play nice for the evening. But that doesn't mean I'm not still scared. I haven't spoken directly to Estela since...well, since I died at MASADA. I don't know how this is going to go. I knock back a couple of cocktails, feeling my nerves steady as I work up a pleasant buzz. We migrate into the main rooms, helping Raj lay the food and drinks out buffet-style in the massive dining room. In the main sitting room, Alodia turns on the gas fireplace, even though the temperature outside hasn't been below sixty-five all day. Zahra connects her phone to a speaker and starts up a playlist. Reginald seems to have adjusted to his surroundings somewhat, and plays with his toys on the living room floor, though he still protests when either of his parents move out of his sight.
Somehow, I miss it when the doorbell chimes again. Suddenly, I'm looking up and Jake is handing a drink to Estela while Quinn carefully transfers pastries from a tupperware box to a platter on the buffet. My eyes meet Estela's, and for a moment, everything surrounding us turns fuzzy, and the sounds of conversation are drowned by the blood pounding against my eardrums. Then Diego passes between us on his way somewhere, and the moment is broken. Next thing I know, Estela has plopped down beside me on the couch with a beer in her hand. As I try to avoid her eyes, I realize that everyone is watching us while clearly trying to pretend they aren't. I glance back at Estela as she gulps what has to be half her beer in one go.
“...We should talk privately,” she murmurs.
“If you want to,” I mumble back. “...Should...we just get it over with?”
She rolls her eyes, smirking just a little. “I'm not going to kill you. Promise. But yes. We should make sure the air is clear, or I think we run the risk of killing the mood.” She stands, nodding at me, and I follow her lead.
She leads us down a hall into what appears to be some kind of game room, with tables for chess, ping-pong, and pool. She closes the door behind her.
“It probably won't be too long before we're interrupted, knowing this crowd,” she remarks. She wanders over to the cue stands and pretends to examine the cues, running her finger absently over the smooth laminated wood.
“...If you hadn't already promised not to kill me, I might think you were planning to bludgeon me with one of those,” I quip. I hear a slight tremor in my voice, and try to cover it with a giggle. “...Or run me through. That would be particularly unpleasant.”
“For both of us,” she replies. “I would have to be in a very pure rage to summon the will and the strength to stab you with something blunt like a pool cue.”
“It could be done though.”
She turns toward me just slightly, her scarred eye regarding me thoughtfully. “...Have you ever done it?”
“Killed someone with a pool cue? No. I've never been angry enough. ...But...I think there was a time when you were angry enough at me that you could have done it.”
“Maybe,” she concedes.
“...Why didn't you kill me? In the end?”
She turns away again, and stays quiet for a long moment. “...You were already dying,” she says at last. “...But...more than that...I guess it just struck me that I couldn't really justify it. Killing you would accomplish nothing. It wouldn't bring my mother back. It wouldn't...teach you a lesson. You had turned on Rourke in the end, so I couldn't even pretend I was making the world safer by taking out his hired killer. ...The only reason I could honestly give for why I still wanted to kill you was...my own aggression. My own hurt and anger moving me to hurt someone else. ...I don't even remember exactly what Alodia said in that moment. But what I do remember is feeling like someone had held a mirror up to my face and showed me something ugly. ...If I had killed you in that moment, I would have been something I never wanted to be.”
“I never wanted to be what Mr. Rourke made me, either,” I say softly, unthinking. “I got sucked in, though. Or...he infected me. I'm not even sure how it happened. It was like...I was a frog in a pot of water, and he just kept turning up the heat, but I couldn't feel it until I was already boiling. By the time he was telling me to kill, I was his creature. He told me to kill my best friend, and it never occurred to me that he might be wrong.”
“But...being asked to kill us snapped you out of it?” She sounds...not quite skeptical, but unsure. “I believe you had a fondness for us, but that didn't exactly stop you from killing my mother.
“It may have been a combination of triggers,” I concede. “I had been told to protect you with my life up until then. Mr. Rourke had promised Aleister he wouldn't harm you. Then he ordered me to kill you. It was enough to throw me off balance. And then when he said that he had technically told the truth because he wasn't going to hurt you, and that's what I was for... Then I saw you on your knees in front of me, and...I woke up. You look so much like your mom, Estela. And...she was so much like a mom to me when I knew her...” My voice breaks. I'm starting to realize that there are tears slipping down my cheeks. “I'm sorry...I'm so sorry, Estela...I don't know if you can ever forgive me...”
Estela turns to look at me. Her expression is heavy with sorrow. “...I don't know either, Lila. I don't know if letting go of the need for revenge is the same thing as forgiveness...but I can at least offer you that much.”
“...Really?”
She smiles wryly. “It's hard to hold onto that vendetta when the person I was supposed to be avenging is alive. ...But even if she didn't come back...even if she didn't come back and you did...after five years of living with everything that happened on that island...” She trails off, sighing. “I just...I have too much going for me now to let the past drag me down. ...My mother wouldn't rest in peace knowing I was spending the rest of my life in prison for murder.”
My lips feel a little dry. I try to wet them with my tongue and find a chapped spot to worry with my teeth for a moment. I knew Olivia was alive, ressurected the way I was. Raj had broken that news to me gently, though I honestly wasn't surprised.
“...Do you think...is there any way I could...talk to Olivia?”
Estela winces. “I...don't think that's in the cards right now.”
“Oh...okay. I understand.”
“For now...why don't you and I work on getting comfortable with each other again? Make that our New Year's resolution?”
I nod eagerly. “Of course. Of course, Estela. I've been given more chances than anyone should have. I don't want to waste this one.”
She puts out her hand, and I shake it. After a moment, we seem to silently agree that it's time to head back to the party. As she opens the door to the game room, Raj, Craig, and Zahra all stumble back from it.
“Were you eavesdropping?” Estela asks, eyes narrow. Raj and Craig blush, looking away guiltily.
“Uh...Diego told us there was a pool table in here,” Raj stammers. “But the door was closed, and...uh...”
Zahra rolls her eyes. “And we saw you two go in here, and we were eavesdropping to make sure no one ruined the party. Now if you two have cleared out the bad air, do you mind letting us in? We actually want to play pool.”
Michelle
Whatever Lila and Estela said to each other, it seems to have cleared the air. The party continues without any hint of the tension that crackled in the air not too long ago. All that's left now is a feeling that all is right with the world. Twelve Catalysts—plus a few cherished friends—are all together. Just as we should be. For the most part, the party seems to be sticking together. When Craig and Zahra head into the game room to play pool, the rest of us migrate in after them. We don't all take our turn playing, but we watch the action and hold conversations above the clacking of pool balls knocking against each other. When pool loses its appeal, we migrate back out to the main sitting room. Raj figures it's time for the combination wedding/baby shower portion of the evening, and forces me and Alodia in a pair of chairs in the middle of the room so we can open presents. Sean and Jake are enlisted to take turns carrying the gifts over to us and read the cards that accompany them. Alodia and I take turns unwrapping gifts at an unhurried pace, giving everyone enough time to “ohh” and “ahh” and “aww” over every onsie, decorative towel set, baby blanket, and embroidered throw pillow. Of course, every time I break a ribbon, someone remarks that I'm destined to have another baby. Grace and Quinn, giddy on Raj's signature cocktails, decide to take it a step further, predicting the sex based on who gave the present the ribbon came from, and assigning names to my hypothetical children. Apparently, courtesy of Raj, Estela, Grace, and Diego, I am destined to have four children named Victor, Susanne, Vera, and Phillip.
“Wow, Michelle, four kids,” Alodia teases. “I can barely believe I'm going to have one.”
“Yeah, that feeling will last awhile,” Grace chuckles. “But at some point, the reality will sink in. And then you'll start thinking about whether you want more.”
“Personally,” Aleister says from where he is sitting on the floor with Reggie and a pile of building blocks, “I would love for Reggie to have a sibling, but I am hoping we wait at least another year before actively trying for a second child.”
“Well, that is the plan,” Grace assures him, but then she grins mischeivously. “But sometimes things happen.”
“I was just realizing,” Quinn says suddenly, “that Grace and Aleister are the first Catalysts to be both married, and to have a baby. I mean, technically, Alodia, Jake, and Diego were the first Catalysts to get married, but Grace and Aleister were the first to get married after the island...”
“It's true,” Alodia concedes. “And you're still the first of all of us to have kids. But given my five year absence from my own marriage, I think Diego and Varyyn definitely hold the title of the oldest Catalyst marriage.”
“Congratulations, darling,” Varyyn quips, winding his arms around Diego from behind and kissing his cheek. Diego laughs, leaning into the embrace.
“It's been an amazing five years.”
“Do you guys ever think about bringing kids into the equation?” Sean asks.
“It is something we had imagined,” Varyyn admits. “But the pair of us raising a child in your world seemed much less likely than it would have been if we had chosen to live in Elyys'tel. Since we obviously cannot conceive one of our own together...”
“Our options were either to get a surrogate or adopt. And both of those seemed dauntingly complicated when we thought about explaining Varyyn's appearance. But...” Diego reaches back to stroke the back of Varyyn's head, “now that you have that disguise, the subject might be worth revisiting.”
“If you guys want a surrogate, I'd be willing,” Alodia declares. “I mean, once I'm recovered from this pregancy, of course. And if Jake were okay with it.”
“I dunno, Princess. I gotta admit that sounds a little weird on the face of it. I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand, though, if it were important to Diego and Varyyn.”
“Well, if we went that route, I think I'd have to provide the...genetic material,” Diego muses. “I'd be paranoid about an outside volunteer giving birth to a blue or green baby. And if Allie were the surrogate, I'd worry about mixing Vaanti DNA with half-human, half-Prism alien.”
“When you put it like that, I can see where it might get weird pretty quick,” Alodia admits. “Being the aunt/bio-mom to a kid whose bio-dad I think of as my brother...”
“Adoption would help you sidestep all that weirdness,” I point out. “It's what Sean and I want to do whenever we're ready for kids.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Well, it's really more like Michelle wants to adopt and I don't have a preference,” Sean clarifies. “Whenever we decide we want kids, it doesn't matter to me how we get them, whether we have our own or adopt.”
“But Michelle, you definitely want to adopt?”
I nod. It's a discussion Sean and I have had more than once. In any other company, I might consider it too personal to share. I don't even plan on telling my mother until after the wedding, when I know she'll ask about the possibility of grandchildren. But I don't think twice about telling the Catalysts. I don't think there's much I would want to keep from them unless it was something I hadn't dealt with myself.
“Either adopt or get a surrogate if we decide we really want our own kids. The long and short of it is that I don't want to be pregnant. I'd love to be a mom some day, but I also still plan on being a neurosurgeon. And I don't want to be worried about pregnancy complicating my progress if my body doesn't react well to it or there are complications.”
“That makes sense,” Alodia concedes. “I might have suggested adoption myself a few years down the line if this one hadn't crept up on me.”
“So, guys...” Diego says suddenly, “I have a very important question. How long has this been going on?”
He points towards Quinn, waving his index finger in a circle, a conspiratorial grin on his lips. I look at Quinn, raising an eyebrow when I realize that she has cozied up to Estela, who seems quite content to have the other woman in her arms. Estela blushes, but she's smiling as she averts her eyes.
“Only about a week.”
Zahra snorts. “Officially maybe.”
“Huh?” Craig frowns. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, please,” Zahra rolls her eyes. “Those two have been giving off 'vibes' around each other for months. I can't be the only one who noticed.”
The somewhat embarassed silence that ensues seems to confirm that she was in fact the only one to notice. Alodia raises one finger.
“In my defense, I'm on the other side of the country most of the time.”
“Me too,” Diego agrees. “And Jake and Varyyn and Mike.”
“And I spent a lot of time outside the country,” Raj points out. “But whether or not we noticed, it's awesome! You two'll be great together, I'm sure.”
“Well, we certainly hope so.”
Quinn suddenly sits up. “Oh! Raj! The cake! Should we do that now?”
“Right! Cake!” Raj claps his hands. “Michelle, Alodia, the part of the evening where we pamper you two isn't over yet, because Quinn baked birthday cake. Everybody into the kitchen!”
Alodia
I expected Raj to outdo himself with the cooking for this party. I expected Quinn to provide enough cupcakes to feed an army. I knew that Raj intended to make me and Michelle the focus of much of the evening, considering that we're both celebrating birthdays at the same time that she's planning her wedding and I'm twenty-seven weeks pregnant. But somehow, when I see the elegant layer cake that Quinn has prepared, smooth vanilla frosting topped with beautiful sugar roses, I feel tears clogging my throat. I manage to make it through the song and the cutting of the cake without breaking down. But in the chaos of serving that follows, I have to slip outside. I open the sliding door, hoping the chatter in the kitchen covers the soft rushing noise it makes as it glides on its runners, and slip out onto the deck.
The sun has been down for awhile, and the temperature has dropped with it. It's still nothing like the ice age side of La Huerta, or even Hartfeld this time of year. Plus, my current condition has me running hot most of the time, so the cool, salty breeze trailing over my face and tugging at my hair feels quite soothing. I wander down toward the pool. The timed lights under the water have flickered on, as have the lamps that line the pathways. My breath is hitching as I walk the perimeter of the swimming pool, heading toward the flagstone staircase that leads down to the cove. I grip the railing as I navigate the steps carefully.
I know I was already in the picture when my aunt and uncle bought the beach house, because Aunt Molly often joked about how the beach house and I were the same age because it was built the year I was born. Having a second home on the waterfront for entertaining and retreats had always been in their plans, though. They had spared no expense, choosing a brand new house that opened onto the sands of a private cove, with only a handful of neighbors sharing the shore with them.
Several of my neighbors appear to be having parties tonight. Music and laughter drift over the beach from back decks. As it gets closer to midnight, I expect the beach will fill with my neighbors and their guests and their bonfires, but for now, they're sticking inside. As I reach the bottom of the stairs, the party sounds are overpowered by the whisper of the waves breaking on the shore. I sit down to take off my shoes and socks and make my way across the soft, cold sand toward the water. Before I quite realize it, I've stepped onto wet sand, and the cool waves are washing over the tops of my feet. I gasp slightly at the chill, and that dissolves the knot of tears that has crystalized in my throat. I sob, quietly but thoroughly, the spasms coming from deep in my core. It feels almost unbearably wonderful, exciting and terrifying, to cry like this while memories flood my mind like a film montage. They're not memories of my childhood, of time spent in this house or on this beach. I was rarely allowed here, especially before I became a teenager. No, the memories flooding my head are all of my Catalysts. Of all of us together, happy and hopeful. The party at Elysian Lodge. My resolution to hold onto what mattered, to protect the people I loved, to prevent what I thought were their terrible futures that I was seeing every time we touched another amber idol together. Kissing Jake on the roof while the Lights of Vaanu shimmered in the frozen sky overhead. The desperation in his kiss was subtle, but I could taste it as clearly as my own, our fears for ourselves and each other flavoring our passion.
I remember the first party we had together, the first night we were on the island, not yet friends. I remember Raj bringing us together with a feast just a few nights later, and I remember kissing Quinn in the hours before, tasting vanilla frosting on both our mouths.
I remember my wedding day, the warmth of Jake's calloused palm against mine and the softness and pressure of the silk ribbon Seraxa wound around our hands. The way we had gazed at the cliffside from The Dorado while Jake painted pictures in my mind of a quiet little cottage just for the two of us, and the slow realization that I had nothing waiting for me on the other side of the island. That I could not even remember the faces of my family. And just hours later, the truth that Vaanu revealed to me...the way my heart had screamed in rebellion, desperately seeking a way to get back what was lost, the temptation to either give the world to Rourke or let it burn...the sinking resignation as I realized what I had to do...
“Alodia!” I turn to see Jake jogging across the sand to reach me. He stops in front of me, frowning, his brow knitting with concern. One hand cups my cheek, flushed hot with the effort of crying, while the other rests on my shoulder. “Hey...you okay?”
I cover his hand with mine, nodding. His thumb trails over the bony ridge beneath my eye, dabbing gently at my tears. I lean forward, letting my arms encircle him as I bury my face in his chest. He embraces me, stroking my hair and kissing the top of my head.
“Is it hormones again?”
“Probably,” I sniff. “...Do you think we'll ever have a normal marriage?”
“What do you mean a 'normal' marriage?”
“You know...like Diego and Varyyn have. Or Grace and Aleister.”
“...Varyyn is a hyper-evolved human with blue skin, and until a week ago, he and Diego couldn't consider things like adoption or anything that would put them under any real scrutiny for fear of what would happen if they started questioning Varyyn's appearance.”
“...Like Grace and Aleister, then.”
“I'd argue that they don't exactly have a 'normal' marriage, either. But then...I'm still not sure what you're thinking of when you say 'normal'.”
I sigh. “...I don't know.” I turn in his embrace so that I am looking at the sea as I lean against his chest. “We got married at Niala'rei. On that day, we committed to each other for a year and a day, and eternity if we were still in love after that. ...But I was gone by the next day.”
His arms tighten around my shoulders. “You're here now.”
“Yeah, but...what would the Vaanti say about our situation? Do we have to spend another year and a day living together before our souls are officially joined? Does it count that we're still in love after five years if we haven't spent all that time in each other's presence?”
“Does it matter what the Vaanti would say?”
I'm not sure why, but his question catches me off-guard. “Well...I...” I trail off, frowning. There's only one honest answer I can give. “...Yes. ...Sort of...”
“Why?” His tone is gentle, curious without being accusing or judgmental. I am quiet for a long moment, considering. Why exactly does it matter to me whether the Vaanti believe my soul is tied to Jake's already or if they would tell me that I needed to pass a year and a day by his side first?
“...I guess...maybe a part of me still believes in their power. In the power of their gods and guardians...in the power of a creature called the Endless who isn't me...” I close my eyes, pressing close to my husband. Feeling secure in his arms, I let the words flow out of me. “...A part of me is still scared. Still looking for guidance. ...When I came face-to-face with Vaanu and I learned the truth about what I was...that was the scariest thing I'd ever gone through. When I had to make that choice...it wasn't just that there wasn't a perfect option. It wasn't just that there wasn't a future where I saved the world and lived in it, too. ...The really scary part was that it was all down to me. It's like...when people say that everyone dies alone. You can die surrounded by your loved ones, but in the end, you have to take that last step alone. I was born from all of your need, your hopes, your fears. We had gone through that nightmare together, but in the end, I was the only one who could decide how it all ended. Even with all the guidance and encouragement and love that surrounded me, I was the only one who could take that final step.
“All that time, I had counted on all of you. I had trusted in the island's power, the Endless, the Vaanti, Vaanu to guide me on the right path. Even Rourke guided me sometimes, if only by showing me where I shouldn't lead us. But in the end, the power was mine. It was all in my hands. ...And I ended up losing you.”
His arms are tight around my shoulders. He presses a kiss to my cheek. “I'm right here, Princess. We're together now.”
“I know...it's just...I'm scared, you know? I'm always scared that we'll lose each other again.”
“So am I,” he admits. “...I don't know if there's a way to stop being scared of that.”
“...Maybe a part of me believes that if we can fulfil our handfasting vow...if we can be together for a year and a day and by Vaanti tradition, have our souls bound together forever... If we had faced Project Janus after being together for a year and a day, a part of me wants to believe that Vaanu couldn't have ever taken me back. That he couldn't have taken me back because our bond wouldn't have allowed me to rejoin him.”
It's Jake's turn to be silent and thoughtful. His hands trail down my arms to wrap gently around my swollen belly.
“...I don't know if that would have been true,” he says at last. “We're not immortal, Alodia. Someday, I'll die. Someday, you'll die, too. And someday, a long time after that, our baby—this little baby girl that ain't born yet? She'll die, too. ...Even the Vaanti die eventually. Even fasted Vaanti who have lived with their partners for a year and a day have to give up the ghost some day. A lot of them end up leaving their partners alone for awhile. ...Even if there is any magic to the 'year and a day' tradition, it won't stop nature taking its course. Not sure if it could have stopped you from giving yourself back to Vaanu, either. And I ain't sure I would have wanted it too. ...It tore me apart to give you up, Alodia. But the choice was yours to make. I'm your partner, not your master. I don't ever want to be a chain that keeps you from doing what you believe is right.”
“...I love you, Jake.” There's not much else I can say to that.
“I love you, too, Alodia. I don't need to wait a year and a day to know that I'm bound to you forever. I knew it long before that ribbon was wrapped around our hands.”
“...So did I,” I confess. “...I fell in love with you over two-thousand times, Jake McKenzie. I carried all those memories somewhere in my mind all through that last timeline. ...I'm yours. Now and forever.”
“Sometimes I wonder if you really know how adored you are. How much every person in that house up there loves you.”
“...If it's half as much as I love them, then I am the luckiest person on earth.”
I exhale slowly, my breath shaking as the last of my tears dry up, leaving something still and quiet at my center. The steady rolling and breaking of the waves over the shore is almost hypnotic. Since the dawn of humanity, how many have stood on this very shore under the moonlight and watched the waves roll in and out? What ancient creatures' bones lie fossilized millions of miles under my feet? Who were the first human beings to reach this cove?
In the back of my mind, I hold an image of a woman my own age, also with child, standing on this shore and watching the waves with her lover at her back. Perhaps an American settler from the east, whose husband planted eucalyptus trees. ...Or a Mexican woman in the last days of the war. ...Was she aware of the war? Did she worry about it? Did her husband fight? Did it matter to her whether her child was born in a territory that belonged to Mexico or to America?
...Her ancestors are varied. Somewhere in her DNA is a Spanish woman who found love with an indigenous man. Further back was a woman who had secretly loved a Spanish soldier. But before her was one who had been called a savage by the Spanish soldier who marched into her village with the others and laid his hands on her as if he owned her. I can see his face, a face that might be handsome if it were not twisted with perverse pleasure...I can feel his hands...grabbing...tearing...
“...No...”
“No?”
Jake's voice makes me gasp as an electric spasm shoots down my spine. I pull myself from the arms encircling me, whipping around to face my husband. He pulls his hands back, holding them up and open as if to demostrate that he's unarmed. I feel a hot flush creep up my neck as I realize that he is looking at me with a mix of concern and confusion. I put a hand to my chest, trying to take slow breaths so that my rapid pulse will steady. He'll worry if I don't attempt to explain my sudden anxiety. I briefly consider making something up, but I did promise not to hide things from him like I did on the island.
“...I'm...I'm all right,” I assure him. “Just...something kind of weird happened just now...”
“Yeah?” He cautiously reaches out to stroke my shoulder, giving me time and room to retreat if I want to. I don't. I step closer to him.
“I was just daydreaming. Imagining all the people who might have stood on this beach throughout human history...and...I don't know if I just imagined too deeply or what, but...I started to feel like I was actually...seeing them. Feeling them...”
“...What did you see? Or feel?”
“...A Native American woman. Spanish soldiers came to her village...they...”
Jake winces, drawing me gently into his arms and cradling my head on his shoulder. “I can guess,” he says grimly. “Fucking bastards...”
I sigh. “History is full of conquests, and all of those conquests come with bastards drunk on their own power claiming the conquered women as spoils.”
“Yeah, I know. I saw bastards like that on both sides when I was in the Navy. But...shit, Alodia...were you...experiencing that just now?”
“Not...fully.”
“Even a little is too much for my liking.” He gently cups my face in his hands and kisses my forehead.
“I'm okay,” I assure him again. He pulls back slightly, examining my face in the light from the moon and the houses that line the cove.
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I mean, it was scary in the moment. But now, I'm more wondering why it happened like that. I mean, why I saw and felt it.” I feel my brow knitting. “...When we encountered the Endless in the cave on La Huerta, and I asked for proof that we could trust her, she listed facts about us all. And she said that wherever I am, if I stand still long enough I start to imagine all the people who have stood on that ground before me. ...That's been true for as long as I can remember. For as many timelines as I can remember. I never felt...taken in like this before.”
“You think it might have something to do with the prism half of your DNA?”
Something in either his question or the way he asks it calms me considerably. I meet his eyes, and in the depths of our shared soul, I know that he not only accepts the non-human half of me, but he embraces it. He loves it as a part of me, even knowing that it may yet reveal new ways to complicate my existence and his.
“Most likely,” I concede. “The Endless did say that I probably have powers that haven't manifested yet.”
“Well...hopefully it's something you can learn to control so you aren't just experiencing horrible things whenever your power feels like it.”
“Hopefully,” I echo. “...I think I'm ready to go back to the party now.”
“Glad to hear it.” Jake brushes my mouth with his. “You are one of the guests of honor, after all. Let's get you back to your adoring fans.”
Zahra
I guess Alodia had an attack of hormones or something because she disappeared for awhile after the cake was cut. She came back tucked under Jake's arm, her eyes tellingly puffy, but no one pressed her on it. I lost track of her for awhile after that, wandering back into the game room with Craig and Raj. Murphy follows us, jumping up to perch on the edge of the pool table and swat at the balls as they roll past him.
I get the fucking pants thrashed off me first couple games we shoot.
“Too many cocktails,” I mutter, even though my last drink was an hour ago. “Can't shoot straight.”
“Only thing to do is have a couple more!” Craig declares. “Wanna head back out to the party?”
“I'm game for it,” Raj agrees, and Murphy yips, which sounds like he's game, too. I shrug.
“Yeah, sure.”
Of course, Craig notices right away that something's up. And of course he figures out right away what it is.
“Hey, Z...are you planning on giving Alodia the...you know, the thing tonight?”
“What thing?” Raj asks.
I sigh. “Well, you might as well know. Grace's mom found some stuff out on Alodia's mom. I've been doing some digging, and I brought it along to show her.”
Raj frowns. “Is it bad?”
“No. I mean, not obviously. She worked for Mansingh Transglobal as a researcher and developer. She was a computer science major, and worked on some pretty cutting edge programming. Most prominently, some of the most advanced digital drawing/rendering programs of the early nineties. There's just some stuff that's...weird. Like the fact that her maiden name was Sullivan. Or the fact that with that advanced digital rendering, she managed to draw a chillingly realistic picture of the woman her daughter would grow up into, in spite of the fact that it was painted while Alodia was still a fetus.”
“That does sound kinda weird,” Raj agrees. “But her husband was Vaanu, remember. And if she was a descendant of La Huerta's Sullivans, she may have been exposed to the Island's Heart—or inherited exposure from her ancestors. It does make sense that Vaanu might choose a proto-Vaanti to be Alodia's mother.”
“Yeah, that's what I'm thinking, too. But then there's also the matter of the Trojan Project.”
“What's that?”
“Something Cassandra Chandler was working on before she died. I've been looking into it. It's not easy to find information on it. At all. But I've been able to uncover enough to make me think it wasn't related to computers.”
“So...what was it related to?”
I meet his eyes. “Something that would make a lot of sense for the mother of the Endless to be looking into. ...Time travel.”
Estela
I help Grace and Aleister put Reggie down around eight o'clock. He's set to spend the night in the room that will be River McKenzie's in a matter of months. It is a room in progress, to be sure. A wallpaper mural of jungle flora and fauna is spread over the walls, and soft green carpet covers the floor, but most of the furniture hasn't arrived yet, so Grace and Aleister have brought along a travel crib. An air mattress has been set up and made up on the floor as well, so that Grace and Aleister can sleep in the same room. This beach house was built for entertaining and has a number of guest rooms, but there is still going to be doubling by necessity, and a few will have to camp out on the convertible sofas.
In the bathroom attached to the nursery, Aleister fills the tub with a few inches of warm water while Grace and I carefully undress him. Reggie clearly knows what's coming and does his best to help us undress him, straining eagerly toward his father and the bathtub. I laugh.
“You like bathtime, mi conejito? That's good. Makes things easier for Mommy and Daddy, doesn't it?”
“Unless we're trying to get his clothes off,” Grace chuckles as she finally tugs off the last sock.
“All right, my clever boy,” Aleister says, scooping up his son and lifting him into the tub. “Let's get you into the nice warm water.”
Reggie happily plops down in the water and immediately begins slapping the surface with his chubby little hands, and kicking his feet to feel the current swirl around his legs. While Aleister bathes him gently, Grace and I ask him questions. He can't say more than a handful of words right now, but he can point to people, objects, and parts of his own body.
“Where is your foot, Reggie?” we ask him. “Where is Daddy? Where is Tia Estela?”
Grace suddenly smiles, looking up past me and Aleister. “Who is that coming into the bathroom?” We turn to look, and find Alodia hovering shyly in the doorway, Jake standing beside her with his hands on her shoulders.
“...Sorry, are we intruding? The door was open...”
“Not at all,” Aleister assures them. “It's your home.”
“Still, I'm guessing you don't want everyone crowding around your son during his bath,” Jake remarks, even as he and Alodia slip into the bathroom. “Don't want to freak the kid out.”
“Reggie,” Aleister begins, and Reggie quickly turns to look up at his father. “Your Auntie Alodia and Uncle Jake are going to talk to Mummy and Daddy while you have your bath. Is that all right?”
I don't know if Reggie actually understood any part of that question, but he smiles at Aleister and cooes as he holds up a toy boat, so we take it to mean he isn't distressed.
“ 'Auntie and Uncle',” Alodia echoes. “Is that what we are?”
“It seems fitting,” Aleister says. “And it is hardly an uncommon term of respectful endearment to a close friend of one's parents.”
“When I was growing up, all close friends of my folks were Auntie and Uncle,” Jake says. “It was just considered respectful where I'm from.”
“It was the same for me with friends of my dad,” Grace agrees. “Mom's friends and associates were whatever they preferred to be called. Sometimes that was 'Ms. Jones ' or 'Mr. Smith,' but some let me use their first names.”
“That's how it was with any friends of my aunt and uncle,” Alodia remarks. “When it came to Diego's family and neighbors, I just used the words he used. There were plenty of tios and tias, and his parents were Mama and Papa, and I was mija to everyone...”
She lowers the lid of the toilet and sits down carefully. Jake leans against the sink.
“How's the room?” he asks. “Adequate for the night?”
“Oh, it's just fine, thank you.”
“I love the wallpaper,” Grace adds. “And the carpet is so soft.”
“I had kinda hoped the crib would be here in time for tonight, but the one we really wanted ended up being backordered. Hopefully it gets here in time for River.”
“You've still got plenty of time,” I say, absently trailing my fingers through the bath water.
“The time will pass more quickly than you think it will,” Aleister warns. “I remember when Reggie was born, it felt like no time at all between that moment and Grace telling me that she was pregnant.”
I snort. “Says the one who didn't have to carry the child for nine months.”
Grace laughs. “You might be surprised to hear that it passed quickly for me, too. At least, there were moments when I looked at the calendar and could hardly believe how close I was to my due date.”
“I'm not sure how things are going to look in hindsight once she's born,” Alodia muses, caressing her stomach. “Right now, there's a lot that sucks about being pregnant, and a lot that's wonderful. But I'm mostly eager to meet River. To hold her and rock her and give her baths...”
Aleister sighs wistfully. “Once she is born, the time will start to pass even faster.”
“That, I can definitely agree with,” Grace says, a bittersweet smile on her lips. “I can hardly believe this boy is almost a year old...”
A silence descends over us, heavy with shared sentiment. It's not hard to guess what we're all thinking about. There is joy in the anticipation of Reginald's first birthday and Alodia and Jake's first child. There is joy in seeing Reginald grow and sweet sadness in saying goodbye to his baby days. And of course, the twelve of us—plus Lila and Varyyn, I imagine—can't help but remember the last time we were all together on New Year's Eve.
It seems to me that we were all so young then. The thought makes me feel ridiculous, given that I'm not even thirty yet, but the change between who I was then and who I am now—who all of us were then and now—is almost startling to think of. I think of myself, and of my brother, how we were both bitter, angry, and lonely; motherless children abandoned and betrayed by the father we didn't even know we shared. Really, all of us were misfits, somehow out of place in the world we had come from. Even Alodia, even before the timelines repaired themselves to give her a past and a home. She was the Mystery, the one who seemed linked to the island in ways the rest of us couldn't fathom. Even before the discovery of the Island's Heart, she was the one who could understand the Vaanti. The one who the Guardians were drawn to—and the only one who could get through to Quinn when Vaanu took her over. None of us fit with the world. But we fit with each other.
We've grown since then. We've changed. We've moved on with our lives. But we haven't forgotten each other. Distance has not weakened this family. If anything, our bonds are stronger than ever. They stayed strong enough over five years to bring Alodia back to us. I hope and pray that twelve will remain as one until the last of us is laid in a grave.
“...Estela?” Aleister's voice brings me back to reality.
“Sorry, what?”
He nods over my shoulder. “Could you pass me the towel?”
I turn and find the soft yellow terrycloth hanging behind my head, draped on the rack on the wall. I tug it down and pass it to Aleister.
“Right. Sorry. Lost myself in thought for a moment.”
“What were you thinking?” Alodia asks as Aleister wraps his son in the towel and lifts him from the bath. I lean back against the wall, feeling a smile playing around my mouth.
“That it's fitting we should all be here together for New Year's Eve. And that I plan to toast to many more to come.”
* * *
When Reggie has drifted off and Grace has set up the baby monitor, we rejoin the party. At some point, Alodia dozes off on the couch, cuddled up with Jake, but she comes awake again close to eleven, when we start migrating toward the beach. With many of Alodia's neighbors having the same idea, Varyyn opts to put on his holographic disguise. Though we were all told of Dax's gift, this is the first time I've seen it demonstrated. It's more than a little strange to see Diego cozying up to someone who looks so different from the Varyyn we know, and even stranger to hear Varyyn's voice and speech patterns coming from this stranger's lips. But I suppose it's something we'll get used to.
On the beach, we build a bonfire in a portable fire pit. We might have just assembled one from scratch like we would have on the island, but I don't think we could get the materials to do so without risking stealing someone else's plantlife. It's turned cool since the sun has set, so we pull our lawn chairs into as tight a circle as we can make around the firepit and wrap ourselves up in blankets. Quinn and I lie side-by-side on a chair, a blanket draped over our legs.
“So what are everyone's resolutions this year?” Quinn asks.
“Oh, yeah!” Raj's face lights up. “We should go around the circle and say what our resolutions are!”
Diego mock-groans. “Oh, come on, do we have to be so orderly about it?”
“Yes!” Raj replies firmly. “That way everyone is sure to get their turn.”
“Come on, Raj! That's like those lame families at Thanksgiving who go around their tables announcing what they're thankful for!” Zahra whines.
“Hey, you did exactly that with my family a couple months ago,” Craig points out.
“And it was lame. I just didn't say anything out of politeness.”
“Well, you can follow your own example tonight, too,” Raj retorts cheerfully. “Quinn, why don't you start us off, since you asked the question?”
“Well, okay.” Quinn sits up a little in my arms. “I resolve...to start learning a new skill. Like a musical instrument or knitting or something. Estela?”
“Hmm. I suppose...I resolve to cherish my circumstances. I was once prepared to throw away my freedom for something that I know now would have only left me hollow. So I am resolving to be grateful for my freedom and any opportunity to make real change.”
“Which, as a CEO of Rourke International, you have plenty of opportunity to do,” Aleister points out. “And with that in mind, I think I will resolve focus more of our resources on clean energy. Silas Prescott's 'clean energy' cover story for the Prism Gate may have been tripe, but it has gotten me thinking lately.”
“I'll resolve to make more of an effort to stay in contact with my dad,” Grace says. “He deserves to see more of his grandson.”
“I resolve to get more sleep,” Michelle announces, and is met with approving chuckles.
“And to help you with that resolution,” Sean adds, “I resolve to help you out more, especially with the wedding plans. Any task you need done, throw it my way and I will complete it to the best of my ability.”
“Welp, I'm gonna be completely predictable and resolve to get some more exercise,” Craig says, grinning. “Not saying I'm gonna in the kinda shape I was at Hartfeld, but Cheese Friday has gotten me a little mushy.”
“I like you mushy,” Zahra says firmly. “But I guess I like you healthy, too. So, I resolve to help you with your resolution by being your personal trainer and driving you mercilessly.”
Craig groans. “I think I'm regretting this already.”
By now we've circled around to Raj. “Okay, well. I'm resolving to be a little bit more organized. Take a little more responsibility for not just planning my shows, but paying a little more attention to logistics.”
He nods at Lila, who turns her gaze on the flames. “I resolve to let go of who I was before. To let go of Mr. Rourke and what I was to him. That isn't me anymore.”
Raj puts a hand on her shoulder. “Here, here.”
Lila smiles somewhat timidly before turning to the person beside her. “Jake? Your turn.”
“Me? Jesus, I dunno. Few more months, I'm gonna be someone's dad. Hard to think about anything beyond that. But I guess I resolve to get the nursery finished by then.”
“Which should be easy since Molly and Rob insist on letting professionals do most of it,” Diego snickers.
“Hey, if that crew is willing to come back after the way Jake was bossing them around over the wall and floors, I'll be impressed,” Alodia quips. Jake slings an arm over her shoulders, kissing her temple.
“That was my brilliant plan all along, Princess. So what's your resolution?”
“...Basically the same one I made last New Year's I experienced. I'm going to hold onto what matters. Stay in the moment and not worry about the past. Protect what I love. And...maybe look into finishing my degree, if motherhood permits me the time.”
Diego sighs. “So, am I seriously the one who's going to have the responsibility of throwing out the joke resolution? You guys are gonna make me be the one who resolves to eat more ice cream or something like that?”
“Hey!” Zahra yelps. “I'm the one who resolved to be Craig's personal trainer!”
“How is that a joke resolution?”
“Uh, because he played football, and if you haven't noticed, I have skinny T-rex arms?”
“Legs and ass, though,” Craig drawls, waggling his eyebrows. “Mmm-mm.”
“Craig, we all know your girlfriend's a snack. You can stop bragging about it.”
“Says my very gay best friend,” Alodia quips.
“Yeah, I'm gay, not blind. I'm just saying that if I had to pick a woman--”
“Thank you, Diego,” Zahra interrupts, smirking. “I'm flattered. I wouldn't kick you out of bed, either.”
“As...confusingly sweet as this little flirtation is, both of your men are sitting right here, and you should probably knock it off.”
“Yes, please do. Or I shall have to remind you who your fasted partner is.”
The dark-skinned man beside Diego pulls him playfully onto his lap. For a moment, I'm alarmed, thinking that a stranger has crept into our circle, until I remember Varyyn's disguise. Varyyn holds Diego against him, planting kisses on the back of his neck.
“Does this help improve your memory?” he asks between kisses.
“Mmm...it's getting there. I can almost remember now...”
“Okay, you two, save some of that for midnight. Varyyn, do you have a resolution for us?”
“Well...I suppose now that I can walk through the world a bit more openly, I suppose I would like to experience new things. Things I have hesitated to try for fear that I would be seen and questioned.”
“I can probably help you with some of that,” Mike remarks. “I'm planning on getting myself a little more settled in the area. Get a permanent job, possibly an apartment...try to put myself a little bit back in the world, more than I have been since I got back to the States.”
Jake reaches over to put a hand on Mike's shoulder. “...You know you're welcome here indefinitely. You're a big help, and every extra set of hands is gonna be a blessing once River's born.”
“I know. And I'm happy to help out however I can. ...But I also wanna get my own two feet back under me. ...Metaphorically speaking,” he adds ruefully, flexing one bionic foot.
“I can't say I don't get that,” Jake concedes. “And I'll fully support you. ...But you are welcome to stay with us as long as it takes.”
“Agreed,” Alodia adds. “It's a big place. It's your home until you're ready to move out.”
“Thanks. ...I feel like I should toast to that.”
“Oh! Good thinking, Mike!” Raj opens the cooler beside him, pulling out a bottle of champagne and a bag of plastic champagne flutes. “It's getting near enough to midnight to break out the bubbly. And don't worry, Alodia, I've got sparkling grape juice for you.”
“I wasn't worried. You've kept me well-stocked on mocktails this whole evening.”
“I live to serve!” Raj pops the cork and fills the glasses, passing them around the circle. When everyone has a glass, he raises his. “Here's to a New Year. Here's to Michelle and Alodia as they celebrate their twenty-eighth birthdays. Here's to Michelle and Sean as they prepare for their wedding, and here's to Alodia and Jake as they prepare to welcome the newest addition to our family. Here's to Reggie, who is almost a year old. We love you, little dude. ...Anyone have anything to add?”
“Here's to having Allie back with us,” Diego says.
“Here's to this family,” Alodia adds. “All of you mean everything to me, and I can't believe how lucky I am to have you.”
Beside me, Quinn raises her glass. “Here's to love. Eros, storge, philia, and agape.”
We raise our glasses, tapping them against the ones beside us before taking a sip. Around the other bonfires on the beach, the neighbors have begun to shift, gathering together in anticipation of the countdown.
“Two minutes until midnight, everyone!”
Couples begin pairing off, ready to ring in the new year with a kiss. I stand, carefully pulling Quinn up with me. She stumbles a little, leaning heavily on me. She grins sheepishly up at me.
“Maybe I've had one too many cocktails...”
I grin back. Jesus, she's adorable. “We'll have time enough for you to sleep it off.”
“Mm...but I hope I don't fall asleep too quickly.” She winds her arms around my neck, standing on her toes to whisper in my ear, “I've got a few ideas on how to properly ring in the new year.”
“You remember we're sharing a guest room with Craig and Zahra, right?”
“It's a big house. We can find a place to disappear.”
“Thirty seconds until midnight!” Craig calls before I can answer.
In twenty seconds, the whole cove rings out with the sound of the massive gathering counting the last ten seconds until midnight. I join in, finding myself swept up in the festive mood. As the last count dissolves into cheers and applause, I bend toward the woman in my arms and press my mouth to hers. She parts her lips to receive me, tasting me hungrily. I feel my cheeks growing warm as my belly flutters with anticipation. It isn't enough to feel her in my arms, or to trace the inside of her mouth with my tongue. I reluctantly withdraw my tongue from her mouth, though I keep my lips close.
“...Where did you have in mind for us to disappear to?”
* * *
Locked in one of the beach house's luxurious bathrooms, Quinn and I lie naked and spent in the empty whirlpool bath, our sweat-slick bodies leaving impressions on the acrylic. I'm still trembling with the exertion of my last climax, feeling heady and languid as I sink into the afterglow with Quinn panting in my arms. I can still distantly hear voices elsewhere in the house, traveling through the vents to reach the bathroom. Gradually, Quinn's breathing slows and she lays her head on my chest.
“That was...incredible,” she murmurs around a yawn.
“Very,” I agree, stroking her copper hair, damp and tangled with sweat. “You are very...skilled.”
“So are you.”
“That is generous of you, but I know I am not. I was a virgin until about three years ago. I hadn't even had my first kiss until then. ...Before you, I'd had only two partners, both of them men.”
“Then you have good instincts. Or...perhaps you have experience enough with your own body to guess what might feel good on mine?”
“I suppose that could be it,” I concede. “The first man I slept with was very experienced. Very generous, too. A considerate lover. I learned a great deal about my body from him, and I suppose it's fair to say he awakened my appetites. Even after we were no longer seeing each other, I found I had learned to enjoy exploring my own body.”
“Sounds like a good way to lose your virginity.”
“It was. I'm grateful that my first time was with an attentive partner, even if the relationship didn't last.”
“My first time was probably much less pleasant. It was all consensual, but we were both virgins, and neither of us knew what we were doing.”
“What sort of...equipment was your partner sporting?”
“Outdoor plumbing,” she giggles. “A man. Well...I use the term loosely. It was freshman year at Hartfeld, and we were both barely legal previously sheltered kids drunk on the freedom of college. ...I spent a lot of nights in other people's beds that semester. Hooking up with every attractive person who was willing. But, that meant I learned a lot about sex, too.”
I chuckle. “You know, anyone who didn't know you better would never guess you were the type to have a series of one-night stands. They would think you were too sweet and innocent for that type of behavior.”
“But you know better?”
“I and all the other Catalysts certainly. We know that a sweet disposition doesn't preclude a sexual appetite. ...And it seems natural to me that in your circumstances, you would have had a lot of wild oats to sow, as the saying goes.”
“And you're a natural warrior. But that doesn't preclude a lack of sexual experience. It makes sense to me that you would have focused everything on your mission to the point of ignoring romance or even just sex because it wasn't a priority.”
“But lately, I find myself craving it. Especially with you.” I kiss the top of her head. “...Quinn? What would you like us to be to each other?”
“Well...girlfriends, for now. …That is what we are, right?”
“Well, I hope so. But...I was thinking of in the future. We've known each other for a long time. We've been friends for a long time. I've always loved you as my friend and fellow Catalyst. I always will. But...as my girlfriend, that's...”
“...It's a new dynamic. One that might take some getting used to. ...We'll see where this goes, Estela. I love you, too. I always have. ...I think I could love you as my girlfriend, too. And...maybe someday, as my wife? As a mother to my children?”
I nod, a smile on my lips. “Yes. Yes, that's what I'm hoping for, too. ...I am hoping that this is the relationship that lasts the rest of my life. ...I want to marry. I want to have a family. ...I hope that further down the line, you and I decide we want to have that together.”
“I agree that would be the ideal outcome.” Quinn sighs happily, yawning again. “...Mmm...I think I could just sleep here.”
I laugh. “We'll wake up freezing an hour from now if we don't at least put some clothes on. Besides, I really think a bed would be more comfortable.”
“We smell like sex. Craig and Zahra will know what we've been up to.”
“Do you think they haven't been up to it themselves? Even if they haven't, I'm not ashamed of having sex with my girlfriend.”
“Me neither. But maybe it's not polite to make our friends smell it.”
“Hmm, perhaps not. ...But I have an answer to that, I think. After all...we are in a bathtub.”
When we can finally summon the energy, we stop up the tub and turn on the water, filling it up to our chests. We turn on the jets and let the water massage our tired muscles as we tenderly bathe each other. The hot water saps the last of my energy, and clearly Quinn feels the same. We lean heavily on each other as we stumble to the guest room, wrapped in soft towels, water dripping off the ends of our hair. We'll clean up our mess in the bathroom in the morning, I decide.
Craig and Zahra haven't come to bed yet, so we turn on the light as we paw through our overnight bags for sleep clothes and toothbrushes. We throw on our pajamas, hastily brush our teeth, and stumble into one of the two double beds in the guest room. I just barely manage to kiss Quinn goodnight and draw her into my arms before I've fallen into a deep, exhausted sleep.
* * *
We're having an earthquake. That's the next thought I am aware of as I am forced out back to wakefulness by a vigorous vibration. As my roaming consciousness is unceremoniously dumped back into my brain, my waking body struggles to make sense of my surroundings. My hand fumbles for Quinn and finds her still curled against my body. I realize there is a hand on my shoulder. That's where the shaking is coming from. And there is a person speaking.
“Estela!” My brother's voice is a whisper, but there's an urgency in it that turns the sound harsh. “Estela, wake up!”
“...Aleister?” I roll over, rubbing my eyes. Quinn stirs beside me, and past Aleister, I can see Zahra tucked in the other bed, lifting her head off the pillow. I can faintly hear Craig snoring beside her. I try to look at the digital clock on the nightstand between the beds, but the room is still dark, and my eyes seem disinclined to focus. “...What time is it?”
“It's a little after five in the morning. But I'm afraid this can't wait.”
There's something in his voice that makes my stomach go hot and then cold before settling into a hard lump. In an instant, I am awake. I meet his eyes in the dim light of the moon that comes through the window, and nod toward the door that leads to the hall. As he gets off the bed, Quinn sleepily mumbles my name.
“Shhh. Go back to sleep, mi sirenita. I'll be right back.”
“Mmmokay...” Quinn yawns and rolls over again, her breathing deep and even within seconds. I'm not sure she was ever fully awake. I follow Aleister out into the hall.
“...What's wrong?”
“Estela, I just got a call from the mental institution in Northbridge. ...They said that...they found Father dead in his room this morning.”
#pixelberry choices#playchoices#choices stories you play#Endless Summer#hero#Jake McKenzie#sean gayle#Diego Ricardo Ortiz Soto#Craig Hsiao#aleister rourke#raj bhandarkar#michelle nguyen#zahra namazi#quinn kelly#estela montoya#grace hall#grayson prescott#kenji katsaros#eva minuet#dax darcisse#poppy patel
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- Catch Up -
It was grim Friday afternoon when I rushed into the restaurant where I used to work, shaking my umbrella dry by the front door and beaming up to Craig as soon as I saw him.
“EY, IT’S BELLONA BROWN!” He cheered. “Long time no bloody see!”
“It’s because you call me Bellona, so I avoid you.” I tittered, smiling wide as I moved towards him.
I certainly didn’t miss the job, but I missed the people. Never before had I been surrounded by so many wonderful people on a daily basis. No matter how long or tedious a shift was, it was hard to leave that building without feeling like I’d enjoyed myself, despite dick-head customers and piss-poor management.
I leant over the counter and planted a big smooch on Craig’s cheek, before he quickly went back to preparing behind the bar for what was bound to be a hectic Friday evening.
“You come to bother Harry on his lunch?” He questioned, moving around and wiping down surfaces.
“He asked me to!” I cried.
“Miss you like mad round here. How long have you been gone now?”
“Almost a year!”
“Fuck off.” His eyes widened. “That’s gone so quick!”
“Glad I’m still missed.”
“All day every day.”
It was early afternoon, so they were just preparing for the busy evening, setting tables and making sure everything looked acceptable for when the nine to five lot finished their days and headed over for some cheap but decent food, people celebrating the start of the weekend.
“Right, I’ll go get Harry for ya.”
“Cheers.”
“Watch the bar for me.” He called over his shoulder, setting off to the kitchen.
“There’s literally no one bloody here!” I laughed.
He shrugged, pushing through the swinging door and going to find Harry for me.
I eyed up the place, wondering how the year had gone so quickly but at the same time, it felt like a lifetime since I’d worked there with them all.
Harry appeared a few moments later, clutching rather desperately at a single lettuce leaf, looking absolutely exhausted. I knew he’d been out the night before, and he always thought he could hack it, but Harry was absolutely useless on a hangover.
“You look… bad.” I gawked.
He shoved the pathetic excuse for food into his mouth before dragging his feet over to one of the semi-circle booths, and I followed, sitting myself down on the fake, red leather seat that curved around the table and smiling across to him as he dramatically threw himself down, clearly feeling very sorry for himself.
“I usually love prep shifts.” He groaned, laying himself down, facing towards the ceiling. “Don’t have to deal with any bloody customers. Just get everything ready and go bloody home as soon as it starts getting busy.”
“You need to learn that you’re bad on a hangover.” I instructed, aware he would never learn. “You can only go out the night before work when you’re at work in the evening.”
“Mm.” He grumbled.
“And also, you need to eat more than a single fucking lettuce leaf.”
“Mm.” He didn’t sound too convinced.
I was expecting him to be a tad more entertaining when I’d arranged to go around and share my lunch break with him, and I was definitely expecting some free grub at the very least.
He could barely keep his bloody eyes open.
I decided to grab his attention.
“I reckon they’re gunna fire me.”
That did the trick.
He shot his eyes open, the lights that were embedded into the low roof above us clearing aching his irises, his brows lowering and squinting in the light.
“What?”
“Mm. They got rid of two people today, and said they won’t be the only ones. I don’t reckon the work I do is important enough for them to keep me when they’re literally… burning money at the minute. So… Yeah.”
“Shit.” He sat upright, rubbing over his eyes a few times. “That’s fucked.”
“Yeah.”
“You been looking for something else?”
“No, because I feel like that’s jinxing it.” I could see he was about to argue with me. “And I know that’s stupid, and I should be looking, otherwise I’ll be fucked if and when it does happen, but… I’m clutching at straws.”
Harry liked to be safe within his life. It was one of the reasons he’d been working in the same place for so long. He knew his routine, he knew his outgoings and he liked the feeling of being secure and safe. I knew the very idea of me not applying for new jobs even though I could practically feel my current one slipping through my fingers would set his mind off into an absolute frenzy.
“Right… well… you know they’d take you back here in a heartbeat, so at least you’ve got that.” He groaned.
“I don’t wanna come back here.” I huffed.
“Why?”
“There’s a reason I left in the first place.”
“Don’t be a dick.” He seemed disgruntled, almost rolling his eyes. “It’s a decent job.”
“I know it’s a decent bloody job, Harry!” I wailed. “I’m not being one of those dickheads who… shuns customer service jobs! You know I’m not one of those people. I hate those people! I just mean… it’s not for me.”
He nodded, untensing his shoulders.
I’d been the one who turned Harry into this person who became very protective and defensive about his job in the first place. The number of idiots I’d stumbled across who felt like poorly paid jobs in that sort of area meant someone wasn’t smart or wasn’t hard working was extortionate, and I’d seen Harry sit idly by in conversations he was clearly hating. I’d told him he needed to stand up for himself a bit more, make a point and not take shit from people.
“Thought you’d turned into a proper nine to fiver then.” He smirked, using the term we’d used a million times.
“Not all nine to fivers are like that. This is something I’ve learnt… being one of them.”
He smiled across to me, easing even more when I stuck my tongue out at him, then practically falling back against the chair, returning to his painfully hungover state.
“Well, still… You’ll be welcome back here, if it comes to that. I hope it doesn’t, but still.” He shrugged.
“Thanks.”
He closed his eyes, and he honestly looked like he was going to fall asleep, which he probably needed.
I kicked him under the table but earnt barely any reaction from him.
I kicked harder.
“You’re weak as fuck, Lona.” He smiled, eyes still shut. “Bet you’re shit at footy.”
“You better make it tonight!”
It was officially the evening of our double date, just under a week after I’d first met Lewis.
According to Sara, Lewis had bounded over to her desk first thing on Monday morning and asked about me and where I’d disappeared to. She’d done her job wonderfully and suggested a double date to him without making it seem like I’d already planned it all out. She made it all seem like it was her idea, and I planned on giving her a very big, appreciative kiss on the cheek as soon as I saw her.
I didn’t know what the hell to expect, but it had been a long time since I’d been on a date, and Lewis seemed nice. I was looking forward to it. But it definitely needed to be double date, so I needed Harry to stay awake.
“Urgh. Do I have to?” He mewled.
“Yes! You’re the one who made me… bloody dependant on the double date thing.”
“I’m rough.” He drawled.
“Harry, I need you.” I stuck my bottom lip out. “Pretty please?”
He opened one eye at me, grinning like an idiot when he saw my pouty little face, shaking his head before cracking his neck.
I kicked him again.
“OI!”
“The amount of times I’ve accompanied you on painful dates, Harry.”
“I’ll be there! You know I’ll be there.”
“Thank you!” I cooed.
I kicked him one final time, much more affectionately that time around, and he seemed to appreciate it, sweetly returning the gesture.
“I’m going on a date with a nice Liverpudlian boy, and he sounds like Paul McCartney, and I’m very excited.” I beamed down the phone to my mother.
“Do you know him at all? Or are you only excited because he sounds like Paul?”
“Um… We spoke briefly.” I tried to button up my coat with one hand, fiddling with the buttons and trying to get them through their designated slots. “It is… largely based around his accent, thus far. But he seems nice!”
I’d usually have a weekly catch up with my parents over the phone. I only really went back down south over Christmas, so this was the best we had. It was nice though. I liked the little routine we had, where I’d call them on a Friday night before my mum started watching her soaps and when my dad had come back from working away all week.
“I don’t know how I feel about you going on dates with random men you don’t know based entirely on their accents.”
“S’alright. Harry’s gunna be there, so I’m safe.”
“Oh good. That’s good news. How is he?”
My parents still hadn’t met Harry, despite the fact we’d been so close for four years. Harry would always go home to his mum at Christmas time, and I would go back to my parents. We’d made a few plans whilst drunk, that we’d go down to London to see them, but they’d never amounted to anything. It was easier with his mum, because she lived so close, but he had yet to be blessed with meeting Sharon and Richard Brown.
“He’s good, yeah!” I answered. “As cheerful as ever. He’s good.”
“Well send him our love!”
“I shall do! I’m outside now, so wish me luck!”
“Good luck! Don’t rush into anything!”
“I never bloody do. Goodnight, mum. GOODNIGHT DAD!” I yelled, despite the fact there was no way he’d be able to hear me.
“Rich, your daughter says goodnight!” I just about heard him yell his goodbyes in the background. “Have a lovely time.”
“Thank you! Bye-bye!”
“Bye!”
I shoved my phone into my pocket and walked into the restaurant that Sara had booked us into, hoping they would all be there already because I was purposefully running late in the hope of avoiding being the first one there.
I spotted Harry and Sara rather quickly, seeing her bright blonde hair and his short locks which were trying desperately to curl, their hands intertwined on top of the table and a huge smile on his face.
It didn’t take me too long to realise they didn’t have company.
Harry took his eyes to the door, spotting me and then waving me over, still smiling brightly, but I couldn’t return it.
I’d been good at taming my nerves all day, and after so many experiences of dating alongside Harry Styles, I was used to the setup. It was almost mundane.
But seeing that he wasn’t there, I felt otherwise.
“Has he stood me up?” I blurted before I could even officially greet them, shuffling my coat off and hanging it on the back of the chair. “If he’s not coming, I’m giving up on men completely.”
“He’s coming.” Sara chuckled. “Just text me saying he’s stuck in traffic.”
“Bloody hell.” I exhaled, plonking myself down, flimsy as hell. “I thought I’d hit a new dating low, which would be a miracle, considering my track record.”
I shot Harry a look, just to remind him that my poor track record was almost entirely his fault, and he just shrugged rather innocently.
“Hopefully tonight will be better.” Sara encouraged.
“Fingers crossed.” I took my eyes to Harry. “You’re looking better than you did this afternoon.”
“You saw each other this afternoon?”
“She came round to see me on her lunch,” Harry answered. “And I was not in a good way.”
The two of them started discussing the night they’d both been on the night before, where Harry had finally introduced her to some of his uni lads, the ones that were still in Liverpool, and from what Harry had told me earlier, they’d all liked her, which I knew would mean a lot to him.
I glanced back over my shoulder, watching the doorway, biting nervously at my lip.
It felt like a damn lifetime before he turned up.
I was in extremely high spirits, which was basically foreign ground given the circumstances. I was used to everything going incredibly wrong rather quickly.
This time around, it took some time for things to turn sour. We were looking at the dessert menu by the time Lewis ruined bloody everything.
He ended up arriving not much later than I had, looking amazing and being charming and I finally felt like I was in for something good. Harry had been shooting me looks all evenings, kicking me under the table and raising his brows at me, and basically making the whole thing very obvious. He wasn’t too good at being inconspicuous.
I was debating between the selection of sorbets and the chocolate cake when things changed.
“Am I the only one getting dessert?” I sulked, seeing that everyone else had left their menus on the table. “I hate it when I’m the only one getting dessert. I mean like, it’s definitely not going to stop me, I just… don’t like it.”
I looked around the table, my eyes finally landing on Harry who was sat directly across from me, batting my eyelashes at him.
He merely picked up his menu, and started searching over his options.
“So what’s with you two?” Lewis asked after silently watching the interaction.
“Huh?” I bolted my head to him.
“Your weird… little friendship.” He gestured between myself and Harry. “How did that come about?”
“What’s weird about it?” Harry got defensive almost immediately.
“I dunno. I guess I just don’t understand how you can be such good mates with a girl.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” I scowled.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t the first time myself and Harry had met an idiot who was completely baffled by the concept of a guy and a girl being friends and nothing more.
I think it helped the two of us, working in that restaurant for so long and being in that environment. We were constantly meeting people our age, who were gorgeous both inside and out, and the initial instinct would always be to make friends.
There were far too many men in the world who limited themselves to male friendships and only saw women as a walking vagina and not much else. I’d just been really hoping that Lewis wasn’t one of them.
“Nothing.” Lewis backed down pretty quickly. “I can see I’ve hit a nerve, so I’ll shut up.”
“You not got any female mates?”
Harry asked that question with a completely dead tone. He had been compelling all evening, as he usually was, but that had changed.
Sara picked up the menu, probably just as a way of avoiding the current conversation.
“Well… y’know,” Lewis shrugged, taking a sip of his drink to clear his blatantly dry throat. “There are girls I work with and stuff. But… no, I guess I don’t have any girl mates I’m close with.”
“That’s the only weird thing here, mate.” Harry grumbled, not dropping his eye contact for even a second, but I appreciated the fact that Lewis managed to hold it. Harry could be quite intimidating when he wanted to be, and he was definitely showing that then.
“Y’know what, you’re probably right. It’s just… not something I’ve seen much of before. I didn’t mean anything bad by it.”
I was rather quickly willing to forgive and forget the whole thing, to be honest. I could tell he hadn’t meant anything by it, and he definitely wasn’t ready to argue his point, so I was hoping he’d just made an off comment and I could just ignore it.
But things were only going to get worse.
“I’ve seen it happen to lads I know, especially at uni and stuff.” Harry elaborated. “You’ve gotta have girl mates that you’re close with, it changes shit. Changes how you view things. I know lads who just see girls as like… a sexual thing, and it’s fucked up.”
“I’m not like that.” Lewis shook his head, but I could see Harry wasn’t convinced. “But… yeah, I know what you mean. I guess I’ve never really thought about it.”
Harry’s mum had brought him up all her own, and clearly done a brilliant job. I guess he’d always had a positive relationship with the females in his life, and I think for Harry it was pretty much always on a friend’s basis before it was anything else. I felt like that might have been one of the reasons he was so terrible with girls romantically.
I’d seen it shock Harry time and time again, the way some guys were with girls, and how they saw them. I’d also seen Harry change boys; sit them down and really talk with them about it, and helped those lads flourish, and I felt positive for a few brief moments that he was doing the same with Lewis. Usually it helped when the lads were drunk, but he seemed to be really accepting what Harry was saying, truly considering it all.
“Maybe you’re reading into it a bit much.” Sara finally spoke up, directing her words to Harry. “I think… it's rarer than you think, the friendship you two have. It’s easy to… misconstrue things.”
“He didn’t misconstrue it though.” Harry answered. “He’s seeing it exactly how it is, he’s just questioning it.”
Even though he’d never told me directly, I knew that Sara had questioned our friendship when her and Harry first started talking. Ash had been the same with me. It was a topic that usually died pretty quickly, but over our four years of friendship, we’d had plenty of people question us.
“I actually do volunteer work with a local party, and I get to meet new people all the time.” Lewis smiled. “So… I think it’s good I have the opportunity, y’know? The older you get, the less chances there are to form friendships and stuff, so… I know what you mean. Maybe it is weird, I dunno.”
“You do work for a local party?” I questioned brightly, smiling alongside the query because at first I thought that was brilliant.
“I do yeah! Just volunteer stuff, nothing too serious.”
“Which party?”
“Conservative.”
I swear, I thought Harry was going to smack his head against the table on my behalf.
That was all I needed to know. I wish I’d just got up and left rather than fallen into a political argument, but I couldn’t help myself.
“Are you serious?” I cringed.
“It’s a powerful party.”
“Yeah, because they have the money to manipulate the media and they belittle working class people.”
“That’s just not true. We-”
“You’re burning the NHS to the ground and spending the taxpayer’s money on all the wrong things. Our emergency services are fucked because of you lot.”
“You shouldn’t believe everything you read.” He huffed.
“It isn’t stuff I’ve read, this is what people who work for the services that hold our country together are saying. This is what everyone with half a brain is aware of! You’re all… steal from the poor and give to the rich, and it’s just fucking wrong.”
He started droning on and on about Tory policies and how they were the better party and how they got too much stick for no reason, and I found my eyes going to Harry, who was slyly trying to cut his hand across his throat, clearly agreeing with me that Lewis was a definite no-go, what with the inability to be friends with girls without being lectured about it, and on top of that being a fucking Tory. It meant, really, that I’d reached the end of yet another unsuccessful date, and this time I couldn’t even blame Harry for it.
We let him go on and on about it, rolling our eyes and both knowing we were completely set in our ways, so his ramblings were falling on deaf ears, but we let him have his moment. He must have dragged on for a good five minutes of solid speaking, to which Harry just replied ‘okay’ and didn’t rise to him any further, which I think riled Lewis up even more.
We all eventually decided against getting dessert.
Lewis and Sara both had work in the morning, so he’d offered her a lift back to her flat, and she’d taken it, leaving myself and Harry to walk home together.
We were all very aware that nothing was going to come of the date. After the whole politics argument, barely any words had been shared between any of us. Someone with political opinions so far from my own was never going to work, and I imagined it was exactly the same for him, there was no point even pretending we were going to see each other again.
Once we’d reached my building, I invited Harry up for a brew and a bitch.
My place wasn’t much special. The building itself was an absolute eye sore; I’d once been letting myself into a building and heard a drunken bloke behind me question if it was brothel, so it definitely wasn’t easy on the eye, but that meant cheaper rent. However, my flat had everything I needed, really, three doors leading down a thin corridor on the right-hand side, the first being my tiny living room and kitchen that they’d just about squeezed in, my second a stick thin bathroom, and the third and final door leading to my bedroom. I’d done everything I could with it, making the place colourful and littered with posters and cushions and throws and basically an abundance of things that didn’t match in the slightest, but it made it feel homely.
Harry immediately threw himself down onto the sofa as I went towards the kettle, checking it was sufficiently full before flicking it on.
“Imagine being our age, in two-thousand and bloody eighteen, and being a Tory.” I huffed, still baffled by it.
“It literally doesn’t make sense.” Harry groaned. “Also, what the fuck was that with him not having girl mates? Like… I think I got it more, when I was at uni, but a grown man not having any female friends is fucking weird.”
“Agreed.”
I prepared the brews for us as Harry got back to his feet momentarily to approach my LP system, flicking through my box of vinyl’s before settling on Dire Straits, and by the time he was sat back down, I was sitting myself next to him, passing over his tea.
“Sara hates confrontation.” He huffed after thanking me for the drink. “I can tell she felt so awkward during that. I found it hard to… keep quiet though.”
I lay my head back too, then turning it to the side and gazed at his profile, the way his eyes were closed, his jaw sharp, resting his mug on the arm of the chair and tapping his fingers against it to the beat of So Far Away.
“Is Sara okay with how close we are?”
“To be honest,” He swallowed. “I think… at first, she didn’t really get it, but I’ve spoke to her about it loads. And obviously, now she’s spent more time with you, and you two get on, so she’s chilled out about it. I don’t think she’d wanna spend time with you if she had a problem, and she’s always keen on seeing ya.”
“That’s good.” I smiled. “Better than bloody Jess, eh?”
“Shit. That was a nightmare.” He sniggered.
A couple of years back, he’d met a girl who practically leapt on him. It was when he’d first cut his hair, and he’d been so worried about it and so uncomfortable with his new look, but then we went on a night out and he received as much, if not more, female attention than he’d ever had before. One of those girls was Jess, and she was so adamant on getting to know him and so infatuated him, even how awkward he was didn’t stop her from pinning him down.
It only lasted around a month though, because she hated the two of us. She basically ended up giving him an ultimatum, me or her, and he’d thankfully chosen me. She just didn’t trust how much time we spent together.
I could tell Sara wasn’t on that level, not even close, but I knew at the beginning of their relationship it would have been something she fretted over. Six months down the line, I was glad to hear those worries had passed.
“I like it in a way, y’know?” He smiled, his eyes fluttering open. “That we have a friendship that… it’s so tight, that people don’t even… understand it. I’m not even sure it’s about gender, really. You’re my rock. Wouldn’t… trade what we have for anything. Sometimes… it makes sense to me that people don’t fully get it. I dunno if I know anyone else who has a friendship quite like ours.”
“I guess not.”
“We’re special, aren’t we, kid?” He turned to face me before saying that, the left-hand side of his lips lifting, winking sweetly.
“If you say so.” I chuckled, rolling my eyes and turning away from him.
We fell into a comfortable silence, and I could feel my eyes closing, genuinely exhausted by the evening.
I didn’t want to let on how disappointed I was by the way the date had played out, but I knew that was useless, because Harry was bound to bring it up, and even if he didn’t, he could read me so well and look right through me. He knew it had bothered me.
“Sorry tonight didn’t go well.”
“Should be used to it by now,” I grumbled. “But it’s still shit.”
“Mm.”
“I just didn’t think it would be this fucking difficult. There’s fucking billions of people on this planet and I can’t find even one of them to love me.”
I hadn’t ever been in love. I’d thought I loved Ash when we were together, but it was one of those relationships where I looked back on it and knew that wasn’t the case. Before that, I’d been in a two-year relationship that spanned from college and into my university days, but even that didn’t feel like real love in hindsight, and I’m sure he felt the same way. On top of that, I knew for a damn fact that Ash had never loved me. He’d never even managed to fake it to save my feelings.
“Oi!” Harry scowled. “I bloody love you!”
“You know what I mean.”
“You have a lot of people who love you!” He argued. “You’re surrounded by people who think… you’re the best thing in the world. People feel lucky to have you around, and that’s fucking important. You might not have found… that kind of love, but you’ve got plenty of people who love you.”
“Stop trying to think of things sensibly and just let me complain!” I tittered, lolling my head back and groaning. “You know I love a good whine, Harry.”
He took a sip of his drink before placing his mug down on the floor, twisting his body so he could look directly at me, leaning my way.
“M'being serious, Lona. I think you’re the fucking best, because you are the fucking best. When you meet the right person, you’ll know it. And I can tell you now, the right person for you is not a fucking Tory!” He gawped, and I giggled. “You cannot twist this into being disappointment. You don’t wanna get on with a lad like him anyway. Fuck it!”
“That’s true.”
“You should feel glad things didn’t go well. Better that, than be someone who… doesn’t know what they want, or settles for some dickhead. Be picky as fuck, it’s the best way!”
I reached out and pinched his cheek, shooting him a sweet smile in an attempt to portray how grateful I was that he’d managed to change how I was feeling about the evening.
“You always know the right thing to say, don’t you?” I muttered.
“I’m very smooth.” He lifted his brows.
“No you’re fucking not.” I chortled.
He stuck his tongue out at me and then reached back from his tea before resting once again, and there was just something about him being there; almost as though he was in his own home. It didn’t feel like he had to leave. There wasn’t a single inch of his exterior or that suggested he was a guest.
“How’re things with Sara?” I asked after a short while of no words being shared between us. “You were feeling pretty… weird, last week.”
He finished his tea, cracking his neck before her answered me.
“M'feeling alright, y’know.” He explained. “I know I’m just being stupid. I think I just… need to get over my own insecurities.”
“I hope she smothers you with compliments.”
“She does.” He smiled, wide and real and perfectly endearing. “It’s just me, and I know it is, and that’s what I find frustrating.”
I’d spoken with Harry about it all before, and he’d explained why he felt he was the way he was.
His father had left before he was even born, and he’d had to experience a few men falling in and out of his and his mother’s life since he was small. He’d seen his mother be heartbroken too many times.
He placed women on a pedestal and had so many examples of how not to treat women, he cowered from them in the hope of not completely fucking up, in the hope of not being one of those men he’d seen too many of.
Harry was intelligent enough to be aware that no matter how hard he tried, he would be a negative part of some people’s lives. Relationships fall apart, and things often get messy, and Harry was conscious of the fact that he would become a bitter or infuriating or painful memory for some people, and he hated that. He never wanted to hurt anyone, so he backed away from situations where he felt he had the power to do so.
He'd barely ever given himself the chance to gain confidence in romantic situations, because it was always something he took steps back from.
It was only around a year earlier when Harry declared this to me, drunk and vulnerable and sat with his back against the statue of The Beatles at the Pier Head, his spine resting against John Lennon’s legs, his head balanced against the bronze jacket slung over John’s arm. He’d had his eyes closed for most of the conversation, hiccupping sporadically, but he knew exactly what he was saying, making it clear that he had thought about this aspect of himself often, but maybe never voiced it.
He'd gotten much better than he had been when he was younger, and I believed a lot of that was down to the dating, and simply allowing himself to open up to the idea of being with someone. Even so, there were still some things he was getting used to and wrapping his head around.
“M'proud of you, y’know?” I smiled. “I know it’s still a bit weird for you, but you’re so much better with this stuff than you were when we first met.”
“I’m just a growing boy.” He fluttered his lashes, his dimples digging into his cheeks, his attempts at innocence false but endearing.
“Growing into a… wanker.”
He merely scowled and shook his head as I placed my empty mug down on the floor and lay myself down across my miniature sofa, resting my feet upon his lap.
I closed my eyes, trying my best not to drop off, but with Dire Straits still playing in the background and Harry gently smoothing his hand up and down my shin, it wasn’t an easy task.
My eyes opened for a split second, seeing his slouched posture, his head back and his eyes closed.
“I should probably go home.” He just about said.
He never made it.
The two of us fell asleep in that position, and even when I stirred in the middle of the night, Harry gently snoring with his hand still resting on my leg, I didn’t move, I just fell back to sleep, a minor smile sitting upon my lips.
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Strawberry Pancakes Part 4
TONY STARK X READER, TONY STARK X PREGNANT!READER
Plot: You and Tony are best-friends and partners in crime, but when you find out you’re pregnant Tony steps up in more than one way… An ongoing series.
Warnings: Slightest mention of a past abusive relationship.
Word Count: 1500
Part One, Part Two, Part Three, -------, Part Five, Part Six
(Y/N) = your name, (Y/F/N) = your full name
Masterlist
“(Y/F/N)…Will you marry me?”
“No.” The word flies out your mouth, as if instinctual. You take your hand back and pinch the bridge of your nose with it. “I mean….not now, not like this…” You explain.
Tony stands up, trying to hide the hurt look on his face. “What do you mean? Is it because I don’t have a ring? I’ll get one. I can—“
He looks so eager and you hate doing it but you have to shut him down. “No, Tony, I don’t care about a ring. It’s why you’re proposing that I object to.”
Tony runs his hand through his hair, confused. “I’m proposing because I love you.”
You sigh and shake your head, looking down at baby Maria for a moment before meeting Tony’s expectant gaze. “No, you’re proposing because you’re scared.” You sit down on the couch and let out a soft sigh. “You’re scared that all this nastiness with Craig and the press will ruin what we have.”
Tony sits down on the couch next to you and stares down at his feet. “That’s not true.” He argues, half-heartedly. You can tell you’ve absolutely crushed the man.
“It is, but that’s okay…I’m not mad… I just, I want you asking me to marry you to be something pure and 100% in the sake of love. Not…” You take one of Tony’s hands. “…Not as a solution to a problem.”
Tony doesn’t speak for a moment. Instead he pulls his hand away from yours and stands up. “You know…I don’t think I’m the only one with mixed intentions here.” He finally says.
“What?”
“Are you sure you’re not just saying no because you’re scared? You were stuck in a relationship with that abusive asshole for years. He’s the only guy besides me you’ve ever dated. Are you sure you’re not just getting cold feet now things are getting serious.”
In that moment you want to throw something at Tony. You want to scream or curse, anything…but you can’t. You have to remain calm because your daughter is now asleep in your arms.
“Tony…I’m going to speak very softly so listen very carefully. I am very grateful for you helping me end things with Craig, but you know absolutely nothing about what our relationship was like, or how I’m feeling after it. So take your god complex and your saviour complex and stick it up your ass, Stark.” You say in a sweet, almost sing-song voice, before standing up and storming out the room.
After that, things went from rocky to downright turbulent. You and Tony weren’t even sleeping in the same room. Any time you talked it came back to the argument about the proposal. The perfect rhythm the two of you had been in since your first kiss was suddenly completely gone.
After 2 weeks of walking on egg shells, and awkwardly bumping into each other as you both tried to care for Maria, you’d had enough.
You knocked on the door of your co-worker and best friend, Natasha, hoping she would answer.
“Come in!” A call came from inside.
You entered the room and immediately got to the point. “I need you to watch Maria for me today.”
Nat gave you an odd look. “What about Stark?”
“It’s my half of the afternoon, he’s doing work.” You explained, awkwardly. In reality you just didn’t want to ask Tony because you didn’t want him asking why you wouldn’t be here.
“Okay, I can swing it.” The redhead replied, a worried look on her face. “Should I ask where you’re going in such a rush?”
“No.” You replied, and left the room quickly.
You grabbed your handbag and jacket and got in the elevator, heading down to the garage. Tony had given you access to all his cars in case you ever needed one, and now it so happened you did.
You chose the least extravagant car and drove the very familiar route back to a certain apartment that you hadn’t seen in almost a year.
You worked up the nerve to knock on the door and after one of the seemingly longest waits of your life, the door swings open.
“Craig.” You say, in greeting.
“(Y/N)?”
“Can I come in?”
……
An hour or so later you returned to the tower, tired and ready to see your daughter again. You hated leaving her. Even the three steps up to enter the building were exhausting to you. All the stress as of late was taking its toll on your body.
You took the elevator up to the common room, only to be immediately greeted by Tony pacing in the attached kitchen.
“(Y/N)!” He began, anxiety coming off the man in waves. “You’re back.”
“Yeah…I’m back…” You agreed, awkwardly. You didn’t think he would notice you were gone.
“JARVIS told me when you left…” Tony began, swallowing hard. “And um…where you went. Tracker in the car.” He added, with an apologetic shrug.
“Oh…” You bit your lip. “Yeah I um…”
“Before you start, please just let me say—I am so sorry for how I’ve been acting. You were right about everything.” The man admitted, words falling out at a hundred miles an hour. “I was afraid of losing you, so I proposed. But then I did something even stupider and I pushed you away, doing exactly what I was afraid would happen. But I can’t lose you and I don’t want to. I want to make this right. Look, I even made Strawberry Pancakes!”
You let out a soft sigh, walking over to where the man stood. “You haven’t lost me Tony.”
“I haven’t?” He questioned, a glimmer of hope in his eyes. You shook your head. “But…you went to him…Why?”
“I hated that he got in-between us. He took so much from me for so long, I couldn’t let him get this too.” You took Tony’s hands in yours. “So…I went over there and I stood up to him. I made him go to that reporter and tell them the truth, and I didn’t leave until I was sure they were printing a correction in tomorrow’s paper.” You smiled up at the man. “It was about time he owed me something instead.”
Tony looked at you in awe, a wide grin appearing on his lips. “I love you so much.” You said, leaning down to kiss you. You stopped him with a finger to his lips.
“Wait—I’m not finished.” You laughed. “I also need to apologize. Because you were right too… I did get cold feet when things got serious. But I got closure with Craig, and I love you more than anything—well, except for Maria.”
“Of course.” Tony agreed.
“So…if you want to ask again…” You smile. “I’m sure you’d get a really good answer.”
Tony smirked, and leaned down to give you a soft kiss on the lips. “(Y/F/N)…will you do me the honour of…eating these strawberry pancakes?” He asked.
“What!?”
“Oh, sorry, you didn’t think I was going to propose now? No no no…The moment is completely wrong. It’s going to be fabulous for little miss picky. So you’re just going to have to wait.” He teased.
“But…I…” You stuttered, shocked and amused.
“Eat your pancakes, sweet cheeks.” Tony said, putting a plate down in front of you and kissing your cheek.
You shook your head, unable to contain a grin as you took a bite of the delicious food. You adored Tony’s strawberry pancakes….usually.
Today was the first time you had them since the fight and they tasted…wrong. You very unceremoniously spat the pancake out into a napkin, making a disgusted face. “Oh my god Tony, what did you do differently, these make me want to throw up!” You exclaimed.
Tony gave you an offended look. “I did nothing! These are exquisite!” He retorted, taking a bite to prove it. “Maybe yours is weird, here have a taste of mine.” He suggested, holding out a bite to you.
The scent of the pancake that close to your face suddenly brought about a wave of nausea.
“Oh my god…” You breathed, a sudden realization coming over you.
“What? What’s wrong?” Tony questioned, now growing more and more concerned.
“I’ve felt like this before… Your pancakes made me nauseous before as well…”
“Yeah, but that was when you were….” Tony trailed off, looking at you with wide eyes. “No.” He breathed.
“Yep.” You replied, chuckling in disbelief. “I’m pregnant Tony.”
A/N - sorry if this chapter sucks, -J.E
#tony stark x reader#tony stark x pregnant!reader#tony x reader#tony stark#tony stark imagine#marvel imagine#marvel#x reader#avengers#natasha romanoff#black widow#iron man#iron man x reader#iron man imagine#strawberry pancakes#dad!tony#dad!tony x reader#dad!tony x pregnant!reader
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Shedding Light (Minicat)
The trailer for the new Shadow of the Tomb Raider game hit today and I couldn't help myself. So have some archaeologist Craig and expedition captain Tyler.
It had been a quiet day of traveling, the sea was calm and the boat barely rocked with the small waves that sloshed at its side. Tyler was in his quarters checking the plotted course for the sixth time that day when Craig walked in.
He didn't even turn around as the man hovered behind him until finally. "Captain?" he said sarcastically, Tyler could almost hear the eye roll, and he sighed. "Yes, Craig." He turned around to face the archaeologist and folded his arms over his chest. Just glorified grave robbers, he thought to himself as he stared down at the shorter man.
Craig looked around him and saw the map and hummed in approval. "So you are faithful to the cause," he smirked, it was Tyler's turn to roll his eyes. "I am, that being said, it doesn't mean I'm going anywhere near this Tomb of yours, and that’s on the off chance this island you claim to exists is even there, to begin with. Either way, once we’re there my team is going to split off and do some real work charting the place for the maps."
Craig's eyebrows pinched together and his jaw ticked. "Excuse you?!" Craig all but gasped at his statement, "I'll have you know that if what I have gathered from five years of research, that this discovery could bring humanity one step closer to rediscovering some of the lost arts from the bloody dark ages!" he seethed, poking his finger at Tylers chest and the man scoffed.
"It's the dark ages, Mr. Thompson, what could they have known that has any use in modern day society?" he asked blankly and Craig only seemed to get madder at that.
"It’s not about what they knew Mister Wilde! It’s the history behind it; the when, where and w--" Craig was cut off when the ship shook unexpectedly, making Craig stumble forward and Tyler backward until the back of his knees hit the desk and he bit his tongue upon landing as Craig fell onto him, straddling him.
They stared at each other, wide-eyed until the door opened. "Hey Tyler you might wanna-- Oh..." Anthony trailed off when he saw them, "Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt. Just wanted to say that we entered some rough waters so you might wanna hunker down somewhere until we're out."
Anthony closed the door and Craig quickly jumped off of him before promptly walking out of the room. Tyler could only stare, what the fuck just happened, he thought, standing back up and fixing the now crumpled up map before rechecking the plotted course for the seventh time that day.
- - - -
Thirty minutes later, Tyler found himself following the savory aroma of shrimp and alfredo sauce to the kitchen where David and Brian were cooking. The pair of Irishman looked at each other and smiled smugly, Tyler sighed dreadfully.
"So," David started, still stirring the pot of sauce and shrimp, "Does our resident Archaeologist still have feeling in his legs--" Tyler groaned loudly "--Or do we have to anchor down for a day or two?"
Tyler let his head fall onto the table and shot up when pain spread throughout his forehead. "Fuck!" he yelled, and David turned down the oven temperature and turned to look at him with a brow raised. "Well?"
"We didn't do anything!"
"Who didn't do what?" Craig asked as he walked into the kitchen and David and Brian laughed as Tyler slowly dragged a hand down his face.
Once the food was done everyone was called down and they ate.
"I'm just saying," Jonathan held his hands up defensively, "I've looked at the satellite images a dozen times and I've seen nothing but rocks jutting up from the ocean like jagged teeth.” Jonathan turned his laptop around to show the others.
"Technology is unreliable!" Craig grumbled indignantly. "Says the guy who had to use the GPS on his phone to find the shopping mall that was only a block away for his loft," Evan said without looking up from his book and Jonathan kissed his temple with a smug smile.
"Touche," Craig glared and shook his head, "Look, I never said that my research was one-hundred percent positive about the exact location, no one actually knows where this supposed holy land is. Every text I've found or book I've read has always been vague but that's because this place had already been lost for decades before they were written."
Brian set his food down with a sigh and took a long look at the computer screen. “As long as it’s wet I can sail on it.”
“You can’t seriously be considering this!” Jonathan shouted.
“Enough!” Tyler shouted making everyone pause.”I’m the captain of this expedition and I say that if Brian says he can sail those waters then we’re going, there’s no point in turning around when we’re already so far out.”
Craig watched the group argue back and forth until eventually they were too tired to do it anymore and as soon as Craig's head hit the pillow he was asleep.
- - - -
Craig was ripped from his sleep by the sound of objects clattering to the floor of his quarters and as soon as he sat up the ship jolted violently, throwing him from his bed and to the floor. He winced when he hit his head on the locker across from where he was thrown from and as he was getting up the ship jolted again making him slide across the floor and into the hall.
He yelped in pain when his shoulder collided with the wall and he quickly picked himself up off the ground and started his way down the hall. But as soon as he turned the corner a wall of ocean water crashed into him, instantly sweeping him away and dragging him along until it hit a dead-ended hallway that he realized was close to Tyler's room.
Before he could even think he began swimming towards to the man’s room, fighting against the current pushing him back and filling the hallway until he had to dive down to reach the handel and open the door.
As soon as he did the water started rushing in and filled the room before Craig could get a second to breathe. He immediately spotted Tyler who was floating unconsciously in the water so Craig grabbed his arm and began swimming through the hallways to the hull.
Once he passed through the kitchen there was a break in the water and he burst through the surface with a coughing gasp as he dragged Tyler up as well. Once he caught his breath he realized that Tyler wasn't breathing and he began to panic.
"No no no, don't you dare fucking die of me you bastard!" he panted as he began CPR. He was just about to give him mouth to mouth when Tyler sprung forward with a cough, spewing water and bile and gasping for air.
"Fuck that burns!" Tyler heaved out and Craig laughed before hugging him on impulse. "Thank god!" he laughed as he wrapped his arms around Tyler's shoulders and then the man went stiff in his embrace.
Craig was about to pull away when an arm was laid across the small of his back and Tyler rested his forehead in the crook of his neck. "You saved my life," he said after a moment.
"Don't thank me yet," Craig huffed and pulled away, holding him by his shoulders, "Are you hurt?" he asked and Tyler shrugged.
"My head feels like I got pistol-wiped from behind but other than that I'm fine... You?"
Craig shrugged but winced because of his shoulder and he laughed when Tyler gave him a worried look. "I'm fine, really, I just banged into a wall after getting thrown out of bed," he then suddenly became very aware of the throbbing welt on the side of his skull from when he hit the locker the first time.
Tyler nodded and looked around. "We should probably get out of here," he said, and Craig nodded. It took some finesse to get out of the crooked room and they had to swim through most of the ship, but when they were able to manage to get to the hull Craig gasped at the sight.
"Holy shit," Tyler whispered.
The ship had been torn in half and in front of them the clear blue sky lit up a pearl-white sandy shore that blends off into a dense jungle, and from every other angle all Tyler could see was the ocean. He was about to say something else until Craig dashed past him and gracefully dived over the side of the ship.
"Craig!!" Tyler shouted running over and stopping at the railing and his knees buckled in relief when he saw Craig quickly paddling himself to the shoreline. Once the Brit wadded his way onto the beach he waved for Tyler and shouted for him to join him.
Tyler closed his eyes and took a deep breath before hefting himself over the railing. "Holy. Fucking. Shit!" He flailed wildly on the way down and hit the water with a painful sounding smack.
When he broke the surface and looked to the beach, Craig was gone.
Tyler furrowed his brows and swam onto the beach, looking around and was confused to not see the Archaeologist anywhere. He looked around at his feet for footprints and his stomach sank with dread when he saw the drag marks in the sand.
He noticed a shadow on the ground behind him and he wiped around with his fists extended, but the person ducked under his punch and drove their shoulder into his stomach, effectively knocking the wind from his lungs and bringing him down to his knees before a foot collided with his face and his vision went black.
-----------------------
Wanna read the next Chapter? Check out my book which this mini-series is included “H2OVanoss & Bitches: Volume Two!” on my wattpad which is also HEllmersy2001, and check in soon for the next chapter!
#Minicat#BBS#mini ladd#I AM WILDCAT#Survivor AU#shipwreck#tomb raider parody#major character injury#major character death#bigjigglypanda#vanossgaming#H2ODelirious#daithi de nogla#blood and gore#ritual sacrifice#BAMF Mini Ladd#BAMF Wildcat#Mini Ladd is Lara Croft
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