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kellyvela · 1 year

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GRRM ABOUT DRAGONS

A compilation.

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A Dance With Dragons spends quite a lot of time in Essos, which is kind of the analog to Asia and the Middle East in the world the story takes place in, as opposed to Westeros, which seems to owe a lot to Western Europe. When I was reading about Dany, who has become a light-skinned, foreign ruler of an exotic land, it reminded me of The Man Who Would Be King, the Sean Connery and Michael Caine movie that is based on a Rudyard Kipling story. Do you think about these parallels — colonialism, the “white man’s burden” — when you’re writing?

I’ve said many times I don’t like thinly disguised allegory, but certain scenes do resonate over time. Other people have made the argument, which is more more contemporary, that it might have resonances with our current misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. I’m aware of the parallels, but I’m not trying to slap a coat of paint on the Iraq War and call it fantasy.

When civilizations clash in your books, instead of Guns, Germs, and Steel, maybe it’s more like Dragons, Magic, and Steel (and also Germs).

There is magic in my universe, but it’s pretty low magic compared to other fantasies.

Dragons are the nuclear deterrent, and only Dany has them, which in some ways makes her the most powerful person in the world. But is that sufficient? These are the kind of issues I’m trying to explore. The United States right now has the ability to destroy the world with our nuclear arsenal, but that doesn’t mean we can achieve specific geopolitical goals.

Power is more subtle than that. You can have the power to destroy, but it doesn’t give you the power to reform, or improve, or build.

—GRRM - Vulture - 2011

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balinares

I'd agree... except DRACO. Draco Draco Draco. Nicest dragon ever. If the Cocteau ever does a dragon event, I sure hope Dragonheart will be on the list, because intelligent, friendly dragons need more recognition. Doesn't hurt when they're voiced by Sean Connery, either. (...)

volk_nn

Draco is the most friendly and charming dragon of media culture, IMHO =)

grrm

Yes, but dragons are not meant to be friendly or charming.

—Coolest Dragons Ever" (Feb. 10th, 2014)

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“I mean battles and wars interest me too - and medieval feasts interest me. And you know I’m creating a whole world here and every facet of it. As I get to it I try to approach it as realistically as I can, but ultimately as I said before, it’s it’s the human heart in conflict with itself. It’s what makes Cersei Lannister the way she is, and is she capable of learning and changing? What drives Dany? With Dany I’m particularly looking at the… what effect great power has upon a person. She’s the mother of dragons, and she controls what is in effect the only three nuclear weapons in the entire world that I’ve created. What does it do to you when you control the only three nuclear weapons in the world and you can destroy entire cities or cultures if you choose to? Should you choose to, should you not choose to? These are the issues that fascinate me. I don’t necessarily claim to have answers to these. I think exploring the questions is far more interesting than just me giving an answer and saying to the reader, here’s the answer, here’s the truth. Now think about it for yourself, look at the dilemmas, look at the contradictions, look at the problems, and the unintended consequences. That’s what fascinates me.”

—“Interview exclusive de George R R Martin, l'auteur de Game Of Thrones” de -Le Mouv’- 2014 - [Transcription]

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How do you analyze this question of power? I think I was struck by the reading of the Lord of the Rings. I find that Tolkien is a little simplistic on the subject: at the end of the book, Aragorn becomes king, and we learn that he ruled in a wise and just way for a century, for he was a good man. But I read history books, I'm contemporary news, and I'm convinced that being a good man is not enough to make you a great leader. Because governing is a delicate exercise that makes you constantly make difficult decisions, solve problems where there is no good solution, that would solve everything by magic. Those are profound questions for the human race. And then there is the war, another subject that is close to my heart, I was a conscientious objector at the time of the Vietnam War, and this question still concerns me. I look at what is happening in the Middle East, with the Islamic State, and I can not help wondering: who are these monsters, these modern orcs? Who can be sympathetic to them? And yet, fighters say thousands to join them. More seriously, what motivates them? And how should we fight them? If I were Daenerys Targaryen. I could ride on my dragons and eliminate them in the flames. But is death the only solution we have to offer? How react to another who is so radically alien to us? These questions are very difficult - and I do not pretend to have the answers. Because there is no simple answer to these questions. —Lire Magazine - April 2015

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There is one remarkable phrase in this story. The plot is about the interstellar Grand Inquisitor from the Catholic Church, which has spread to many planets. And there is the Inquisition, which hunts heretics. And there is such a phrase: “This episode was illustrated by a magnificent picture. Judas in a dark cave, with burning eyes, waves a white-hot scourge, not letting a huge golden-green dragon approach him. He has a basket under his arm, the lid is slightly moved, the heads of three dragons that have just hatched from eggs stick out of it. You've been into dragons from the very beginning! GRRM: Dragons are cool! (burst of laughter) - What makes dragons cool? GRRM: I don't know... what makes dragons cool? When I was little, I had not only aliens, but also plastic dinosaurs. And dinosaurs are cool. (audience laughter) Dragons are fire-breathing dinosaurs with wings, which just adds to the level of coolness. (audience laughter) And what's interesting is that different cultures around the world have their own legends about dragons. Of course, Chinese dragons are fundamentally different from Western dragons, but nevertheless, there are similarities between them. And so I keep wondering: what if dragons evolved from dinosaurs? Perhaps our ancestors stumbled upon the bones of dinosaurs in the fields and thought that they must have been dragons. And they came up with all these legends. - Your colleague, G. K. Chesterton, said: "The stories about dragons are more than true: not only because they tell us that dragons exist, but also because they tell us that dragons can be defeated." This, too, is reminiscent of the synopsis of A Song of Ice and Fire. GRRM: Yeah, I'm not sure Dany would agree that dragons can be defeated. (laughter in the hall). We will find out. - I'm not even going to try to scratch out of you details about the plot of future books! But in your world, dragons are some kind of superweapon. Nuclear bombs of Westeros. GRRM: It is, yes. Nuclear weapon. This book that you are holding now is this big one, “The World of Ice and Fire” - this is the history of the entire world of Westeros, written by me together with Elio Garcia and Linda Antonsson - legends, and all about the Targaryen kings. There are excellent illustrations. Among other things, it talks about dragons in the days when the Targaryens had dragons. They held them for 150 years, and the great war, A Dance with Dragons, was a civil war where dragons fought against each other. There is a lot about the power of dragons and how hard it is to kill them. But on the other hand, many dragons died then, because they are still not invincible and not immortal. They are difficult to kill, but possible. And, of course, they can kill each other. So it's all there. Does this anticipate major events in the cycle... we'll have to wait and see. —George R.R. Martin in Hamburg: "Dragons are cool!" - 2015 - [OG Source in Russian] - [Secondary Source in Russian]

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[Unclear question]

GRRM: Oh boy, who would they be? Um, I can think of some analogs to Mr. Tr*mp, but you know, it would must be a villain character, but my villains are actually smarter than him. You know, just this comment he made last week or so about, oh, it would be good. “You know, we shouldn't have to worry about North Korea having atomic weapons. We should give atomic weapons to other people in the neighborhood and like, you know, Japan and South Korea, and then they can deal with it.” That's yeah. Clear proliferation. That's great. That would be equivalent for people in, you know, my world saying, you know, everybody should have dragons, why don’t every House in westeros had dragons, that would really help. So, uh, there we're.

—BALTICON 2016

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GRRM: “People read fantasy to see the colours again,” he says. “We live our lives and I think there’s something in us that yearns for something more, more intense experiences. There are men and women out there who live their lives seeking those intense experiences, who go to the bottom of the sea and climb the highest mountains or get shot into space. Only a few people are privileged to live those experiences but I think all of us want to, somewhere in our heart of hearts we don’t want to live the lives of quiet desperation Thoreau spoke about, and fantasy allows us to do those things. Fantasy takes us to amazing places and shows us wonders, and that fulfils a need in the human heart.”

The Guardian: And the dragons?

GRRM: “Oh sure, dragons are cool too,” he chuckles. “But maybe not on our doorstep”.

—The Guardian - November 2018

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Esquire: How will Fire & Blood deepen our understanding of Daenerys and her dragons?

GRRM: This is a book that Daenerys might actually benefit from reading, but she has no access to Archermaester Gyldayn’s crumbling manuscripts. So she’s operating on her own there. Maybe if she understood a few things more about dragons and her own history in Essos, things would have gone a little differently.

—Esquire - November 2018

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Sitting down with news.com.au in New York City, Martin dropped dark hints to the suffering awaiting the war-torn world of Westeros as the battle for the Iron Throne reaches its peak.

“I have tried to make it explicit in the novels that the dragons are destructive forces, and Dany (Daenerys Targaryen) has found that out as she tried to rule the city of Meereen and be queen there.

‘THE POWER TO DESTROY’

“She has the power to destroy, she can wipe out entire cities, and we certainly see that in ‘Fire and Blood,’ we see the dragons wiping out entire armies, wiping out towns and cities, destroying them, but that doesn’t necessarily enable you to rule — it just enables you to destroy.”

—GRRM - Fox News Channel - November 2018

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John Howe: Can I ask you why Dany is a princess and not a prince?

GRRM: I made this choice a long time ago, I think I wanted to play a little with the genres and reversed things a little, and of course in my head the expression "mother of dragons" is much better than "father of dragons". There is also this link with the woman who gives life, who transmits lives, carrying a gigantic power of death, of fire, of destruction. There are very powerful metaphors in there.

—Dragons! (2/4) Dragons d'Occident, la figure du mal [2018]

Video (13:10 - French audio and subtitles but you can hear GRRM talking in English in the back)

Reddit translation (Last quote)

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They [the dragons] represent power, of course, in the books. You know, I don't believe any more than JRRT did in fantasy novels as allegory, but there are certain things you can look at. The dragons can win wars for you, that's established in the histories, but they can't necessarily produce peace or prosperity or help you rule a nation, you know, Daenerys Targaryen is finding it out in Mereen, when she, you know, she defeats the cities of Slavers Bay with her three dragons, but then in trying to rule as Queen, she can destroy Meereen any time she wants by just unleashing the dragons, could kill a lot of people, you know, wipe out the most of the population of the city, reduced the entire city to a fiery inferno, but that doesn't help her to come up with good laws, or to establish peace between the original inhabitants, and the the freedmen, and people that she's brought in, so ruling is more than just the power to destroy and that's a lesson that she's definitely learning.

—Guerra dos Tronos. A entrevista de George R.R. Martin à RTP - 2019

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The Targaryens are also an ancient house but they're not an ancient Westerosi house. They knew that destruction was coming to Valyria and went far away from the capital city and the settled on the volcanic island of Dragonstone. They were dragon lords in Valyria. Now dragons are really formidable and they can turn the tide of a battle. It flies, it's difficult to hit, it breathes fire, against which most knights and men at arms have little or no protection. So if you have dragons, that's were the nuclear option analogy comes in. You're hard to mess around with. So the dragons and fear of dragons was one of the things that made the Targaryens very secure in their power.

—Before the Dance: An Illustrated History with George R.R. Martin | House of the Dragon (HBO) - August - 2022

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Would you rather have a dragon or a direwolf?

GRRM: Well, that's an interesting question too. The dragon has certain advantages, number one it is you can fly, and I would love to be able to fly. As a kid, you know, I read superhero comics, I didn't want to be Batman, swinging on a rope, but I wanted to be Superman and flying through the skies and all of that stuff. Flying is a primal dream, so yeah, flying on a dragon and being able to burn the hell out of my enemies, that's useful too. On the other hand, the direwolves are friendlier than the dragons. And you know, they're like big shaggy dogs and there was probably more of a close and affectionate bond between them. And I would like to have a direwolf right now at my house in Santa Fe, we moved into a new house a while ago, it's beautiful house, and it has a little kind of waterfall in the back and a well, it has a couple pools, beautiful pools, and I stocked those pools with Koi, because I thought that would be cool, and the raccoons ate all of my Koi, but if I had a direwolf, those raccoons would stayed hell away. (...)

Would you rather freeze to death beyond the Wall or burn alive in dragonfire?

GRRM: That's another tough one. Can I just live forever? I can't die the way Tyrion wanted to die, that's a pity. I can't say how he wanted to die, but it's in the books. Read the books. He's asked that question by Shagga son of Dolf. I think freezing. Fire is supposed to be a really, really painful way to die. I've always heard. (...)

Do you think it's possible to have a dragon and live a benevolent life? Like, would you inherently get pulled into using that power?

GRRM: Well, that's an interesting question too. And it's a question if I may verge away from medieval history and metaphor to the current reality we live in, you know, it's often been said that the dragons are the nuclear weapons of my imaginary world. They are the most devastating weapon, and they cause great destruction, massive loss of life; but they're not necessarily, you know, I mean, this is part of Dany's storyline and the original novels. I mean, Dany . . . Dany has three dragons, and she can destroy these cities, like Meereen where she finds herself queen, but it doesn't mean she can necessarily rule them easily without destroying them, so, when do you do that? And I grew up, I'm a baby boomer born in 1948, and growing up in the fifties there was always the specter of nuclear war. I mean I lived through the Cuban missile crisis, and Khrushchev and, you know, saber rattling and, you know, all of the books about the nuclear holocaust, about Armageddon and, you know, about what was gonna happen, we were worried about that. Actually there's nuclear weapons that have only been used twice in all of History, and they've been used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Afterwards, there was a long period where only America had nuclear weapons; nobody else in the world had them, and there were people, believe it or not, like you're a science fiction fan, you know who Robert A. Heinlein was? [Yep] Heinlein, the dean of science fiction, fascinating guy, because his politics a lot of people think of him as conservative because of where he got in end of his life, but earlier when he was a young man, he was sort of a socialist, he ran there for office in California on Upton Sinclair's platform, and he actually advocated in letters that you can find, that at the end of World War II, when only America had the atomic bomb, he said America should give the atomic bomb to the newly formed United Nations, and it should be prohibited to all other countries, so we would have a world government and only the United Nations would be able to enforcing, and can you imagine if that had actually been done, what a very, very different world that we would live in. Maybe not one that we would like, but there's there. And thereafter, there was always these concerns about, well, we can win any of these wars, you know, why did . . . . I mean, MacArthur and some other people wanted to use the atomic bomb in Korea, in the Korean war, and, you know, when China invaded, well, why are we letting them do that? We could win the war. Of course, by then the Russians, I think, had it too. Or Barry Goldwater in 1964 election, why are we fighting this war in Vietnam? Let's just drop a nuke on Hanoi, or at least that was the charge. But we never did it, we always refrained, we were the dragon riders who would not use our dragons, although we would kind of use them to intimidate them, except now more and more countries have that. We've tried a nuclear non-proliferation, but, you know, Britain got them, Soviet Union got them, Britain got them, France got them, then it went to India and Pakistan and North Korea, for God's sakes, and Iran is trying to get them, and there's always the rumors that Israel has them. As more and more countries get this, I think the danger becomes greater and greater, someday someone is gonna use them, and right now the danger is very high! I mean, you can turn on the news every day: Is Putin losing the war in Ukraine? Is he gonna resort to nukes? And then the question becomes, what if he does? If Putin resorts to nukes, does America unleash its dragons? Or do we not? And let him get away from it. These are profound questions, we could debate this for hours with a panel of political scientists and things like that, and it's not an easy answer to.

—A Conversation with George R R Martin | A Celebration of the Targaryen Dynasty [October 24th, 2022]

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There are also dragons, who confer monumental power to those who dominate them. Did you incorporate them for the show, or to emphasize something broader? GRRM: I have never consciously inserted any contemporary political allegory into my works. However, some have compared dragons to nuclear weapons, and they may be holding something. I have tried to make the over-power of the dragons very explicit in the novels, they represent a destructive force, and Daenerys realized this when she ascended the throne of Meereen. Thanks to the dragons, she has the power to wipe a city off the map, to eradicate whole armies. That does not mean that this weapon allows you to reign afterwards. Here, there is a metaphor that, I believe, means the following: to reign and to destroy are two very different things. —Society Magazine Interview [https://www2.lekiosk.com/fr/publication/society/21423629█ 201812 Society Magazine.pdf]

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#grrm #asoiaf #dragons #sweet stark fanboy georgie is recreating winterfell in his new house huh?#that event from last year it was a targ celebration or something and he was fanboying over having a direwolf lol #he can't stop comparing asoiaf dragons with nuclear weapons . . . .#UPDATED

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nerdzzone · 1 year

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Eyes Open Wide

Summary: After spending their lives as ‘just friends’, Chris and Madeline decide they want to be more.

Part of the Back To You series

Note: I think this is probably one of my favourite chapters so please let me know what you think about it!

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March 2011

To say that Chris was confused would be an understatement.

He tried to focus on the rhythm of his footsteps and the sound of his feet hitting the sidewalk beneath them, but nothing could pull his attention away from the thoughts bouncing around his mind. He knew he didn’t have long - the show ended almost fifteen minutes ago and he’d promised to meet her in the lobby not long after - but the theatre had felt suffocating and he needed some fresh air if he had any hope of making sense of his thoughts.

He was in love with Madeline.

The realization had hit him as he watched her float across the stage earlier that evening. It was her first performance as one of the American Ballet Theatre’s principal dancers and he’d been bursting with pride from the moment he walked into the theatre before the show. When she came out on stage and he felt his heart swell at the sight of her, he’d thought maybe it was just that - adoration and admiration that she’d achieved what she’d been working so hard for - but when the feeling seemed to grow and the endearment he felt seemed almost overwhelming, he couldn’t shake the idea that it was more than he first thought.

At the start of that year he’d decided to take his personal life more seriously. He didn’t want any more messy flings or casual relationships, he wanted to find someone that he could share his life with and start a family with. That decision had made most of his romantic endeavours pretty unsatisyfing so - if he was being honest - his first thought was that he was just a little too sexually frustrated. Madeline was beautiful and the years of intensive dance training had left her with a very toned and tight body and even though there’d never been anything but friendship between them he was still a man and would’ve had to be blind to not notice how attractive she was. He assumed that the way she stretched and pliéd across the stage in her skin tight leotard was just too much for him in his pent up state, but by the time they reached the intermission and he had a quiet moment to catch his breath, he realized that what he was feeling was deeper than just an attraction.

He was in love.

It made perfect sense and as the idea began to take root in his mind it seemed so obvious, but he couldn’t figure out why something that had been so clearly in front of him for most of his life could be so blindsiding.

They’d always had a connection. They seemed to understand each other in a way that no one else did and he found that time with her always kept him centered. He favoured her opinion above almost anyone else’s and he knew that he’d always been a little too protective of her as the thought of anyone causing her any kind of pain got under his skin in a way that few other things could. He’d always told himself that it was just brotherly affection, but now that the thought of it being more had slipped by whatever defense mechanism his brain had created to protect the status quo of their relationship, it was undeniable.

There was nothing brotherly about the way he wanted her or the visions that were playing through his mind like a torturous slideshow. Visions of her curled up on the couch pressed against his side. Or of his arm resting around her waist, letting everyone know that she was his. Or of her stretched out in his bed, tangled up in his sheets. His imagination was running wild and he was grateful for a distraction when he reached the florist that he’d spotted on his way to the theatre earlier that day.

The feel of the door’s cool glass window under his hand as he pushed it open helped snap him out of his thoughts as he focused on the current task he faced. Putting his feelings aside, she’d nailed her performance. He knew that she could be her own harshest critic and he knew that she’d put a lot of pressure on herself as it had been her first performance in such a leading role, but even though he’d had the distraction of wrestling with his feelings, Chris knew without a doubt that she’d performed flawlessly. Flowers seemed a little overdone and far less than she deserved, but Chris made sure to pick out the best bunch of roses he could find before a quick glance at his watch had him practically running back to the theatre.

Hey! Where are you? I hope you didn’t leave without saying goodbye!

The text came in from Madeline just as he was opening the door to the lobby, but he heard her calling out for him before he had the time to answer. He turned towards her voice and felt his heartbeat stutter as he caught sight of her standing with her parents, her tights and leotard changed for a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt despite the stage make-up that still graced her features.

“I guess you guys beat me to the flowers,” Chris observed as he walked over to their group, gesturing at the bouquet already in her arms. “But you were so good, I had to get you something.”

Any progress he’d made with gathering his thoughts was shattered as soon as she’d flashed him a smile as the pure joy on her face almost knocked the breath right out of him. He stood stunned as she handed the flowers that she was already holding over to her mother and threw herself into his arms. The feel of her wrapping herself around his waist and the familiar smell of her favourite hairspray pulled him back into the moment as she spoke.

“Thank you,” she murmured against his chest, lingering in his embrace for a moment longer than he would have expected, but not nearly as long as he would have liked before she stepped away and took the gift from his hand. “Did you like the show?”

“I loved it! You were amazing!”

“You really thought so? I was so nervous, I was worried the audience would be able to see how bad my legs were shaking.”

“Nah, you looked like a total pro.”

He could see her practically melt with relief at his assurance, but as she threw a barrage of other questions at him about what he thought of various moments of the show, Chris came to another realization.

It wasn’t the time to share his feelings.

When he’d first accepted how he felt, he’d had a desperate urgency to tell her. He needed to know if she felt the same and the thought of how much time they’d wasted if she did filled him with panic. He didn’t want to waste another minute, but as he stood in front of her and soaked up her bubbling excitement, he knew it wasn’t the right time for the conversation he wanted to have.

That night was about her and her accomplishments and he didn’t want to steal even a spec of her well-earned spotlight.

There was also the chance that his confession wouldn’t be very well received and he didn’t want anything to put a damper on the triumph she was feeling or the gleeful smile on her face. So, he shelved his racing thoughts for the time being and answered all her questions - doing his best to convey just how incredible her performance had been - until a happy sigh fell from her lips.

“I’m really proud of myself…”

The words were soft - almost like she was afraid to admit it - and Chris rushed to agree.

“You should be,” he insisted as her parents echoed his sentiment. “You deserve this and we’re all really proud of you.”

“Thank you, Chris.”

Her eyes grew glassy as she spoke and as she looked up at him from under her dark, painted lashes the words ‘I love you’ were on the tip of his tongue as the feeling welled up inside him the same way that it had when he was watching her on stage. He had to practically bite his lip to stop the confession from slipping out and he was grateful when her dad’s voice pulled Madeline’s gaze away.

“What are your plans tonight, Chris?” Greg chimed in. “We’re going to get some food if you’d like to join us?”

It was a tempting offer, but while Chris was eager to spend as much time with Madeline as possible, he worried that he wouldn't be able to keep his newfound feelings under wraps if he lingered too much longer.

“I wish I could, but I’ve gotta leave early in the morning so I should probably have an early night.” It wasn’t entirely a lie, but even though he did have a flight to catch he knew that sleep wouldn't be coming easily with all the thoughts bouncing around in his head. However, he turned his attention back to Madeline as he thought about when he would next be able to see her. “We start filming The Avengers in about a month. If I’m back in town in a few weeks, could we hang out before then?”

The question caught Madeline off guard as she furrowed her eyebrows in confusion.

“Of course,” she assured him, her tone making the words sound more like she’d intended to say ‘duh’ than the polite words she’d chosen. “I’ll probably have rehearsals or training, but I’ll be here.”

“Great,” Chris smiled, pulling her into another hug. “Congratulations, Maddie. I’ll see you soon.”

He felt Madeline’s arm that wasn’t holding her flowers slide back around his waist and squeeze him tight. It took more strength than he was proud to admit, but he eventually managed to pull himself away from her and say goodnight to their little group before dragging himself towards the door, feeling like he was leaving his heart right there in Madeline’s hands.

April 2011

Something was wrong with Chris.

Madeline didn’t know what it was, but there was something strange about how he was behaving.

Even with their busy schedules, they usually checked in every couple days. It wasn’t always a full conversation, but they would regularly exchange texts even if it was just mundane things or silly comments about their day. However, since Chris had left New York Madeline had barely heard from him. He always answered her messages eventually, but sometimes it took him several days and he hardly ever initiated a conversation.

She knew it was weak evidence which was why she hadn’t brought her concerns to anyone else, but she had a feeling in the pit of her stomach that something was bothering him - something that he didn’t want to talk about - and his behaviour when he arrived at her apartment once he returned to New York did nothing to ease her worries.

“Hi,” she smiled, opening the door. “You’re early.”

“Yeah,” he nodded as he dropped his bag by the door and strode into the living room. “I was gonna check in to my hotel, but I wanted to come here first.”

The nervous energy radiating off of him had Madeline on high alert and the way he began pacing around her living room only added to her tension.

“Is everything okay?”

Her question caught Chris’ attention, but didn’t stop his movement and she snuck past him to sit on the edge of her couch.

“Yeah, I think so,” he nodded when he finally paused and shoved his hands in his pockets as if he was trying to make himself as small as possible. “Well, I hope so. I mean, everything’s fine right now, but I hope it stays that way.”

His anxiety was obvious and had Madeline’s stomach in knots as she hoped that she would be able to offer him some kind of comfort once he finally got whatever was clearly bothering him off his chest.

“You’re making me a little nervous, Chris,” she informed him gently, not wanting her concern to add to his stress levels. “Do you wanna tell me what’s going on?”

His only acknowledgement of her question was a firm nod before he returned to his task of wearing a hole in her floor with his pacing. Knowing that it was often better to give him the space to gather his thoughts than to hound him for answers, Madeline simply watched patiently for a few moments until he paused again and lifted his eyes to meet hers for the first time since he’d arrived.

“Are you seeing anyone right now?”

His blunt and seemingly out of nowhere question left Madeline even more baffled than before as she struggled to make sense of all his odd behaviour.

“Like, romantically?”

“Yeah, like a boyfriend or whatever.”

“No,” Madeline shook her head. “I’ve been spending almost all my time training since the fall when I heard that the principal dancer spot was up for grabs and then when I got it, I wanted to make sure I really proved myself. I haven’t really had time for dating.”

It was more of an in depth explanation than she thought Chris might have expected, but she was too busy trying to puzzle out what could possibly be going on with him to worry about being concise.

“Okay, great. Well, that’s good.”

His shoulders dropped in relief, but his words seemed to be said more to himself than to Madeline and she was growing desperate for some answers.

“Why? What does that have to do with anything?”

Her question had Chris stopping in his tracks as he scoffed out a laugh.

“A lot, it has everything to with this conversation we’re about to have,” Chris informed her, taking in a deep breath before finally blurting out what was really on his mind. “Because I’m in love with you.”

His words hung in the air between them as Madeline sat in stunned silence.

She’d wanted to hear those words for so long. She’d spent so many years wishing for it to happen and spent countless hours daydreaming about it, but now it was happening she was so shocked that all she could do was stare at him with her jaw hanging open. There was a flicker of excitement somewhere deep in her stomach, but she’d managed to get herself so convinced that it was an impossible reality that the doubts immediately crept in and her blood ran cold.

“Is this a prank?”

The anxious look of anticipation on Chris’ face shifted into one of shock.

“What?”

“Did Scott put you up to this?” Madeline questioned. “Because it’s not funny, Chris.”

As the potential humiliation hung above her, Madeline felt tears well up in her eyes. Chris must have noticed them too as he suddenly moved from where he’d seemed to be frozen in place and rushed to sit beside her.

“No, I promise that’s not what’s going on,” he assured her. “I haven’t told anyone about this, I didn’t wanna tell anyone until I know if you’re gonna turn me down or not.”

Suddenly unable to meet his eye, Madeline looked down at her lap as she nodded her head, needing a moment to process what he’d just told her.

It felt unbelievable. She couldn’t help but wonder if she was dreaming. Or if maybe she’d slipped on her way to the door to let him in and she was currently hallucinating due to a head injury. Because both of those theories seemed more realistic than the thought of him actually confessing his love for her.

However, as he slid his hand over to rest it on top of hers, the warmth of his touch had her unable to deny it was real. She hesitated - still uneasy and worried that she’d misunderstood - but as she thought back to the look of tortured apprehension on his face as he announced his love, she knew there was merit to what he was saying.

As she took a moment to steady herself, she flipped her hand to press her palm against his and relished the strange yet comforting feeling of their interlaced fingers before lifting her gaze to meet his.

“I’d never turn you down,” she admitted, the shake in her voice giving away her nerves. “Because I feel the same way.”

His eyes widened and she imagined that the expression of shock on his face probably mirrored her initial reaction as it looked as if he hadn’t expected her to reciprocate her feelings.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Madeline nodded, the corners of her lips lifting into a smile as the reality of the situation began to sink in. “I’ve been in love with you for a long time. A really, really long time.”

The sound that fell from Chris’ lips after hearing those words could only be described as a giggle and he hung his head for a moment before collapsing back against the cushions behind him. The anxiety he’d felt when he entered her apartment had clearly shifted into relief and his hand slipped out of Madeline’s grasp as he lifted it to rub his face before flashing her a grin.

“Oh, man,” he chuckled. “I really thought you were gonna laugh me right out of here.”

Madeline shook her head, almost offended by that assumption.

“No way. Even if I didn’t feel the same way, I would never have laughed at you or let it come between us.”

“Yeah?” Chris smirked. “So why did you never mention how you felt?”

The question earned a laugh and a shrug of Madeline’s shoulders as she knew the point he was trying to make.

“Because I was worried you would laugh at me and it would ruin our friendship,” she admitted. “But you never gave me even a hint of a sign!”

“Neither did you,” Chris pointed out. “But I really only had this epiphany a few weeks ago on your opening night. If you’ve felt like this for a while, I dunno how you’ve handled it because I felt like I was gonna explode tryin’ to keep it in.”

“Yeah, I noticed from the way you just barged into my apartment like you were about to tell me you murdered somebody or something,” Madeline teased, but as Chris chuckled and the sound caused a familiar fluttering in her heart, it also had the knots tightening back up in her stomach. “So, where do we go from here?”

“Well,” Chris shrugged. “I’d really like to take you on a date.”

The ear to ear grin that his suggestion put on her face had Madeline’s cheeks starting to ache in the best possible way and she wondered if she should pinch herself to make sure that she wasn’t dreaming.

“I’d really like that too.”

“Tonight? Do you have any rehearsals?”

“No, I don’t. I’m free tonight.”

“Perfect,” Chris nodded, as he quickly pulled himself off of the couch until he was standing in front of her. “I’ve gotta go check in and all that, but I’ll pick you up around six?”

Madeline nodded as Chris held out a hand to help her to her feet before pulling her in his arms. The energy between them was still a little uncertain as both of them tried to get their minds around the revelation that they’d had, but they took a moment to enjoy the calm they felt as they stood wrapped up in each other’s embrace. However, much sooner than Madeline would have liked, Chris dragged himself away and with the same chaotic, hurricane inspired energy that he’d entered her apartment with, he shouted a goodbye and disappeared as fast as he’d arrived.

Madeline spent the rest of the afternoon in a daze.

She’d felt almost giddy when Chris had left, but the more time that passed the more her doubts began to take over again. She couldn’t shake the thought that somehow she might have misunderstood him. That she would open the door to greet him later just to find out that she’d gotten it wrong and he hadn’t meant what he’d said. That still made more sense to her than the fact that after the years of pining away for him, she was finally getting what she’d always wanted.

It didn’t help that she was going through the turmoil alone.

She’d debated calling Scott for some kind of explanation or guidance, but if Chris was telling the truth about keeping his feelings to himself then she didn’t want to be the one to break the news. She also debated calling her mother, but she knew that there were no secrets between her and Chris’ mom and she didn’t want the news to spread before they’d had more time to figure out what was going on. So, she persevered with nothing but her own thoughts and tried not to let her anxiety ruin the moment that she’d been waiting for since she was old enough to realize the depth of her feelings for Chris.

By the time he buzzed her apartment and she was headed downstairs to meet him, she was shaking with nerves. However, the comforting familiarity of the smile on his face as she walked out of her apartment building’s lobby helped put her at ease.

“Hi,” he greeted her, pushing away from the wall he’d been leaning on as soon as he saw her. “Wow, you look amazing.”

His words filled her with relief as she’d spent more time than she wanted to admit agonizing over her outfit. She’d been tempted to message him to find out more about their plans, but her fear that he’d come to his senses and cancel completely stopped her from picking up the phone. She’d eventually settled on a short white dress paired with sneakers to keep it casual and a light coat to keep her warm in the evening spring air.

“Thanks,” she matched his smile. “I wasn’t sure where we’d be going so I was worried that I’d be overdressed.”

“No, definitely not. You look great.”

There was an air of awkwardness between them that Madeline wasn’t used to with Chris, but the edge of nervousness in his voice had her relieved that she wasn’t the only one thrown off by their new dynamic. Desperately trying to remember how she used to act around him, she slid her hands into the pockets of her jacket as she fidgeted under his gaze.

“So, where are we going?”

Her question seemed to snap Chris into action as his eyes left her outfit and lifted to meet hers.

“How does Italian sound?” He asked. “I made us a reservation, but if you’re in the mood for something else then I can think of something else.”

“Italian sounds perfect,” Madeline assured him. “Can we walk or should we get a cab?”

“We can walk,” Chris shrugged. “Shouldn’t take long, if you don’t mind.”

It was strange how - despite knowing each other their entire lives - their earlier conversation had suddenly left them with the social skills of two people meeting for the first time.

Madeline was used to Chris showing up at her apartment and demanding that she accompany him to whatever restaurant he’d been missing while he was out of town. He always made her walk regardless of how many hours she’d spent dancing that day or how sore her muscles were and she usually complained the entire time - whether it was three blocks or ten - and made fun of him for being too cheap for a cab despite his new life as a Hollywood superstar.

Now, they seemed to be walking on eggshells around each other. Madeline was determined to break the ice, but she cringed at the first question that came out of her mouth as they made their way down the sidewalk.

“It’s really warm today, isn’t it?”

They were far beyond talking about the weather, but Madeline couldn’t think of anything else to say that wasn’t a long rambled list of questions about how or why he’d suddenly decided he was in love with her.

“Is it?” Chris smiled. “After being in L.A. for the last few weeks, it feels like it’s freezing here.”

“I forgot that you’re a California boy now,” Madeline teased. “But compared to a couple of weeks ago, it’s really warm here now.”

“That’s the nice thing about coming back to the East coast,” Chris mused. “I prefer somewhere with actual seasons.”

“Me too. I couldn’t live in L.A. with its endless summer.” Madeline’s observation didn’t draw much of a response from Chris and her stomach started churning as a silence fell between them. They made it another block before Madeline couldn’t take the awkwardness any longer and blurted out another question. “Chris, this is weird, isn’t it?”

Biting her lip, she looked up at him and braced for him to breathe a sigh of relief, agree with her and take back everything he’d said, but his response was far different than she anticipated. His eyes widening in surprise, he quickly shook his head.

“No, no, it’s not!” His insistence felt forced and untrue and a sigh fell from his lips. “Okay, it’s a little weird, I’m sorry. I just really didn’t expect today to go the way that it did, I didn’t think this far ahead.”

Madeline knew that Chris wasn’t always as confident and self-assured as the persona that he tried to present to the world, but his shyness in that moment tugged at her heart. They were in it together now - both of them had said things that couldn’t easily be taken back - and they had to muddle through the mess they’d created as a team. Their walking had slowed when she’d put forth the question, but feeling a sudden rush of courage, she slipped her hand into his.

“I wasn’t expecting any of this to happen today so I’m definitely a little shocked by it all,” she admitted as they settled back into their pace. “But I think we just need to relax. We’re just hanging out, right?”

The fact that their hands were now clasped as Madeline leaned against his arm made it clear that it was a little more than that, but she felt Chris’ shoulders drop as his tension eased and he squeezed her hand as he nodded his head.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he agreed. “Sorry, I’m just tryin’ to quiet all the noise in my brain.”

“You don’t need to be sorry,” Madeline assured him. “Trust me, I get it. I spent most of the afternoon trying to convince myself that I hadn’t hallucinated our entire conversation.”

She heard a soft chuckle slip from Chris’ lips and the sound had her unable to hold back a smile.

“I don’t blame you for that one, it was a little more chaotic than I’d planned on it being.”

“Oh, really? Did you have some big romantic plan?”

“Nah, I didn’t really have any plan at all,” he admitted. “Every time I tried to think about what I would say I got so nervous that I didn't think I’d be able to do it at all, but I thought even if I was just winging it I would have been able to come up with something better than what I did.”

“To be honest, I don’t think it would have mattered how you told me. I would have been shocked either way,” Madeline admitted, hoping that a reminder of her own confession would put him at ease. “I really have felt the same way about you for almost as long as I can remember, but I never thought you’d think of me that way.”

Chris led her around a corner and onto another street as he glanced down at her, his eyes skimming over her face as if he was searching for any sign of a lie.

“I can’t wrap my head around that,” Chris mused. “It never crossed my mind that you might already feel the same, I thought I’d have to convince you to give me a chance.”

“I guess I got a little too good at hiding how I feel, but I never wanted to make you uncomfortable.”

“Well, that’s much more respectable than my strategy,” Chris commended her. “Bursting into your apartment on the edge of a panic attack and practically screaming it at you could have definitely made things uncomfortable.”

“I dunno, I’m pretty used to your dramatics by now,” Madeline teased. “And one of us had to take the plunge so I’m glad that you told me despite the slightly insane delivery.”

There was a smile on her face as she spoke, but as Chris chuckled and led her around another corner with the assurance that they were almost there, her smile faltered slightly.

“Chris, I only know one Italian restaurant on this street and it’s way out of my price range.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Chris shrugged. “I asked you out, it’s on me.”

“It does matter though,” she insisted. “Captain America isn’t out yet, it might be a total flop and I don’t want you to be in debt because you took me out to dinner.”

She tried to keep her tone light and teasing, but she couldn’t deny the twinge of guilt in her stomach. Her promotion had come with a decent pay rise, but being a ballerina hadn’t always been a particularly lucrative career and living in New York had always been expensive. Restaurants like the one they were walking towards were not somewhere she would usually even consider dining and she didn’t want Chris to waste his money just to impress her.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” His words were laced with sarcasm as he bumped his hip against hers. “But even if Captain America flops, I can afford one dinner here - especially if it means making a good impression on you.”

He shot her a wink that had her cheeks heating up and silenced her protests as he opened the door to the restaurant. She watched as he discreetly gave his name and followed him as he was led to a table near the back, choosing to sit with his back to the door to hide his identity if anyone happened to notice them. From her seat, Madeline had a good view of the place and - food aside - she could see why it was as expensive as it was. With the exquisite decor and impeccably dressed waiters, she knew it wasn’t the type of place that they usually went to and while it was unnecessary, she was touched that Chris was putting in so much effort to make it special.

Chris ordered a bottle of red wine for them to share and Madeline glanced over the menu, trying her best to ignore the prices. She didn’t want any further protests about the cost to be taken as doubt of his financial security and when the waiter returned with their wine and to take their orders, she picked a pasta dish in the middle of the price range to avoid the argument that she knew would ensue if she went for the cheaper option of a salad.

When they were finally alone once again, Chris raised his glass.

“Cheers,” he smiled, waiting for Madeline to copy his action with a smile of her own. “To new beginnings.”

Clinking their glasses together as they toasted before taking a sip, Madeline let the rich, full-bodied wine float on her tongue for a moment before letting his words segue her into the question that had been on her mind all afternoon.

“Speaking of new beginnings, we’ve established that I’ve been pining away for you for a long time,” she started. “But you said you had an epiphany just a few weeks ago so I guess I’m just wondering what sparked that?”

“I don’t really know,” Chris admitted. “It just hit me when I was watching you dance. I think I’ve been in love with you for a long time, but I was too stupid to see it.”

“You’re not stupid, it’s a complicated situation.”

“Yeah, but you’ve always been super important to me,” Chris continued. “I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting to figure it all out and things were different between us even when we were kids. I was always making sure that Ma invited you to everything we did because I just felt this need to be around you and it hasn’t ever gone away. I think about you all the time and you’re always at the top of my list of people I want to see. I can’t believe it took me so long to figure out why.”

He looked a little sheepish as he finished talking, but his words had Madeline feeling so full of love that she thought her heart might burst.

“I’ve always known we had something special,” Madeline agreed, reaching out to rest her hand on his where it rested on the table. “I think that’s why I was too scared to tell you how I felt in case it ruined our friendship. I was so worried that you’d be creeped out and I’d lose you forever and being your friend seemed better than nothing.”

“That’s not gonna happen,” he assured her. “Even if this doesn’t work out, I think we can be mature enough to stay friends.”

“I hope so,” Madeline smiled. “Because you’re, like, my safety blanket. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Chris nodded, but as he flipped his hand to intertwine their fingers again as they had earlier that day, Madeline noticed a worried look had crossed his face.

“I have to leave soon though,” he reminded her. “I’d love to stay longer, but I’m leaving at the end of the week to start filming.”

“I know, but that’s okay,” Madeline shrugged. “I’ll miss you like I always do, but maybe I can come and visit you? May and June are a little busy for me, but I could probably come for a weekend and after our June performances wrap up then I’ll be free for at least six weeks.”

She’d already thought about it as she was getting ready for their date, but a blush rose on her cheeks as she realized how eager sounded. Chris, however, didn’t seem to notice as her words softened the anxious tension in his jaw.

“Great, that sounds perfect. I’ll check my filming schedule and we can make some plans, I might be able to sneak back here for a few days too.”

It was comforting to know that Chris was as desperate to stay connected as she was, but the way his brow stayed furrowed as if he was deep in thought told Madeline there was more he wanted to say. She rubbed her thumb against his skin and waited to see if he would come clean, but after a few more moments of silence she tentatively prompted him to open up.

“You look worried.”

He seemed a little caught off guard by her observation, but after another moment of thought he let out a sigh.

“I guess I am,” he admitted. “You know how anxious I was about taking on the role of Captain America and a lot of that was because of some of the less positive ways such a big role could change my life. If we give this a shot then you’ll be dragged into it all too.”

Madeline felt a pang of relief that his concern wasn’t due to any second thoughts and shrugged her shoulders.

“I don’t care about that. I’ve already kinda been dragged into it with the fans you have now. They’re always curious about who I am or fishing for information because they assume we have some kind of history together. I can handle it.”

“But it could get a lot worse so I get it if you want to take some time to think it over.”

“I don’t,” Madeline insisted, her voice firm and leaving no room for him to argue. “I don’t need any time to think this over, I’ve been thinking it over for years. If you want this then so do I.”

“I do want it,” Chris assured her, squeezing her hand. “But if it gets too much at any point, you’ve gotta tell me.”

Madeline nodded and promised she would, but she was relieved to see their food arriving at the table and used the interruption to transition the conversation to things that made Chris look less stressed.

They talked about how excited he was to get back to work, she gushed about how thrilled she was to complete her first set of performances as a principal dancer, they chatted about their families and what everyone was up to and by the time they were done eating the awkward tension that had hung around them at the start of the date had vanished completely. Time flew by as they were wrapped up in each other as it always did when they were together and it wasn’t until they were walking with their arms linked back to Madeline’s apartment when they broached the subject of what would happen next.

“Thank you for dinner,” Madeline murmured, leaning against him for warmth in the cool evening air. “I appreciate you taking me somewhere so nice, but I hope you know me well enough to know that I don’t need fancy restaurants to impress me.”

“I know,” Chris nodded. “I just wanted to do something kinda special to mark the moment.”

“That’s really sweet,” Madeline smiled, feeling a twinge of nervousness as she forced the next words out of her mouth. “I found a really cute place the other day that’s a little more our style so maybe I can plan our next date?”

“Sure, how about tomorrow?"

His question had the breath she’d been holding - braced for the rejection that she couldn’t shake away her fear of - puffing from her lips with a laugh.

“Tomorrow?” She giggled. “Aren’t you supposed to play it cool and wait at least three days to text me again?”

“I think we’re a little past that,” Chris chuckled. “And we’ve gotta make up for lost time so I’m free tomorrow if you are.”

His eagerness was encouraging and considering he had to leave at the end of the week, Madeline was happy to make the most of the time they had.

“I have training tomorrow night,” she informed him. “But I’m free in the afternoon if you’re okay with a lunch date.”

“Absolutely,” he agreed with no hesitation. “I have no plans for most of the time I’m here so I’ll take as much time with you as you’re willing to give me.”

The sincerity in his voice had Madeline melting with relief as she felt the same way. Their new situation still felt so precarious - as if it could all be taken away any minute as fast as it had happened - and she felt the urge to stay close to him even more than she usually did.

“Perfect,” Madeline smiled as they reached her apartment building and their goodbye loomed over them. “The place is close to the dance studio, but I’ll text you the address in the morning.”

She slipped her arm away from his to reach into her purse for her keys and couldn’t help but wonder how the night would end. She was hoping desperately for a goodnight kiss, but as she lingered by the door waiting for him to make a move, she quickly began to lose hope.

“Well, thanks again,” she smiled, feeling the earlier awkwardness creeping back in. “I had a really nice time.”

Chris flashed her a smile of his own and she felt her heartbeat pick up speed as he moved closer towards her. She was sure that it was the moment she’d been waiting for, but disappointment washed over her like an icy cold wave as he murmured a soft ‘me too’ and pulled her into his arms for a hug.

By the time Madeline got to the dance studio the following evening, she was feeling disheartened.

She’d had another wonderful date with Chris and everything seemed to be going well, but he’d left her at the door of the studio with nothing but a hug once again. Other than the new addition of handholding, the shift in their relationship really wasn’t that noticeable and Madeline couldn't help but wonder why - if he was in love with her - he wouldn’t be as desperate for more as she was.

Her heart felt heavy in her chest as she went through the motions of changing from her date clothes into something more appropriate for the hours of dance ahead of her and she was relieved that she’d be able to bury herself into something that always helped clear her mind. Nothing helped her escape her problems like going through the familiar motions of ballet until her muscles were burning with exhaustion.

However, the deep sigh that fell from her lips as she pushed open the door to the studio she’d be training in that night hindered her attempts to run away from her troubles as it drew the attention of her friend.

“Hey,” Heidi called over from where she was stretching across the room. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Madeline nodded, walking over to join her in front of the mirror. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

It was a simple question, but it left Madeline feeling very conflicted. She felt like she was in desperate need of advice and keeping Chris’ confession to herself for the last twenty-fours had been a struggle, but she also didn’t want to share the news if it was all about to crumble out from underneath her. She debated her options for a brief moment before the clear concern on Heidi’s face won her over and she began to spill her tale of woe.

“I’m okay,” she assured her. “But I went on a date today, and last night.”

Heidi bit back a smile as Madeline’s vague explanation had her raising an eyebrow.

“Oh, that totally explains why you look like someone just ruined your life.” Her tone was sarcastic, but Madeline wasn’t entirely sure she was wrong. “Who was your date with?”

“My friend Chris.”

There was a moment of silence as Heidi gave Madeline a very suspicious look before posing another question.

“Your friend Chris? The one that most people know as the actor Chris Evans?”

“Yep, that’s the one.”

“Oh my god, Maddie! Good for you, he’s seriously hot!” The enthusiasm in her response had a reluctant smile sliding onto Madeline’s face despite the turmoil she was feeling. “But I still don’t understand why that news has you looking so sad…”

“It’s gonna sound so stupid when I say it out loud,” Madeline warned her. “You’ll think I'm an idiot.”

“I won’t, I promise.”

Madeline bit her lip as she leaned into the stretch she was doing, hoping to hide the rising blush in her cheeks.

“Because he hasn’t kissed me yet.” She blurted out her explanation, but quickly followed it up with a rundown of how their dates had come to be to give Heidi a little more context before she got to the root of what was bothering her. “It just feels like nothing has really changed. Our dates were nice, but nothing we didn’t do as friends other than a little extra hand holding. It seems weird.”

Taking a moment to take it all in, Heidi nodded understandingly until she lifted her shoulders in a shrug.

“Maybe he just wants to take it slow? You know, maybe he doesn’t want to make any big moves and really cross that line until he’s really sure that he’s figured out his feelings.”

“I think that’s what I’m worried about,” Madeline admitted. “He sounded so sure of himself when he told me how he was feeling, but he did say he only realized a few weeks ago so now I feel like he’s changed his mind after spending time with me.”

“I bet that’s not the problem,” Heidi insisted. “It’s not like he’s never spent time with you before, he already knows you pretty well.”

“Exactly, what else would he need to figure out?”

“I don’t know, but it’s a big step to cross that line and really become more than just friends. He could be following your lead and waiting for you to make a move.”

As the idea had Madeline’s stomach twisting in knots, her brow furrowed with displeasure.

“Why would he do that?”

“Well, he already put himself out there by sharing his feelings in the first place, right? Maybe he’s waiting for you to make the next move to show that you’re really on the same page.”

“But I’ve already told him that we’re on the same page and that I’ve been in love with him for years.”

“Yeah, but showing is different to telling,” Heidi pointed out. “When are you seeing him again?”

“Tomorrow,” Madeline sighed. “And probably on Friday too, but he leaves Friday night to start working on his next movie.”

“Okay, so when you see him tomorrow why don’t you kiss him and see what happens?”

Again, just the thought of being so bold had Madeline almost overwhelmed by anxiety.

“Because, what if I try and he just pushes me away.”

“I have a pretty good feeling that he won’t, but if he does then at least you have your answer,” Heidi shrugged. “Then he’ll leave to go back to work and by the time you see him again the dust will have settled and you can pretend it all never happened.”

Madeline swallowed hard as she blinked back the tears that were suddenly swimming in her eyes. It felt like an all too real possibility and she wasn’t sure it was something she could handle.

“That would break my heart,” she admitted. “I love him so much.”

“I know, sweetheart, and if it happens I’ll be here for you,” Heidi assured her, pulling her into a hug. “But that’s, like, the worst case scenario. I’m almost a thousand percent sure that he’ll be all over you once you give him the green light.”

Her confidence in that statement pulled a giggled from Madeline as she felt some of her tension ease. It did seem a little unlikely that Chris would have changed his mind so quickly after he seemed so sincere when he told her how he felt. Their dates had gone well - there were no major hiccups or issues that should have made him backtrack - and the fact that Heidi didn’t seem to think she should give up and run away had her feeling slightly less hopeless than she had when she’d arrived in the studio.

Once her feeling of dread had been dampened and the other dancers arrived, Madeline let herself get lost in their training. She pushed herself until there was no room in her mind to think about anything other than the task at hand and the time away from her thoughts left her with much more clarity. Heidi was right. She needed to have a little faith in Chris’ feelings, but making a move and being rejected was better than letting him leave town with everything still feeling so uncertain.

Heading back out the door of the dance studio, she felt far more centered than she had when she’d arrived and she had a fierce determination to end her date with Chris the next day with more than just a hug.

Staring at the woman across the table from him, Chris felt like a complete idiot.

He couldn’t believe how blind he’d been for so many years or how it was possible that he hadn’t realized what had been right in front of him for his entire life. Every smile, every giggle, every happy sigh that fell from her lips had his heart fluttering in his chest and it left him stunned that he hadn’t let himself fully appreciate all the warmth and joy she brought to his life. She’d been with him through the tough times when he struggled in auditions and felt like his career was going nowhere, she’d been there for his parents’ divorce when his whole idea of his perfect family was shattered, she’d always been a source of calm when his anxiety reared its ugly head. She was the person he went to when he needed to feel safe. She understood him better than almost anyone outside of his family. He really couldn’t believe that it had taken him so long to understand the depth of his feelings for her.

He was also still scratching his head about how he got lucky enough for her to feel the same way. He thought there were two options when he got to her apartment earlier that week - she would either completely reject him and want nothing to do with his newly discovered feelings or be neutral and willing to be convinced - but he didn’t even entertain the idea that his admission would be met by Madeline’s own confession of love. She was funny, kind, intelligent, feisty and absolutely gorgeous. She was passionate about her goals and dedicated enough to be achieving some of her biggest dreams before she was even thirty. He had no idea what he’d done to be worthy of her love, but he was grateful to have it and willing to do anything to show her that she wasn’t making a mistake by giving him a shot.

Because he was completely head over heels for her.

Everything about her seemed to stoke the new fire that was burning inside him and her flirtatious mood was driving him wild. Maybe it was the cocktails she was sipping on or just the comfort they’d slipped into after their first couple of dates, but she couldn’t seem to keep her hands to herself. They’d always had a very physical relationship - all their time spent together as kids had shattered some of the spatial boundaries that many adult friendships had - but there was something different about it after what they’d both shared and the way she kept rubbing her foot against his leg under the table was proving to be very distracting.

However, her tactile mood did put him at ease. He’d been dying to kiss her since the moment he’d stormed into her apartment, but he was worried about pushing her too far too fast. He knew it was quite a bomb that he’d dropped by announcing his feelings so out of the blue and he didn’t want to overwhelm her. The lingering fear of rejection was also a contributing factor because it had taken more courage than he thought he had to confess how he felt and if Madeline had just been swept up in the moment, but turned him down when he really tried to make a move then he wasn’t sure he could handle the pain that would cause him.

He knew he needed to seal the deal before he left - especially since he didn’t know exactly when he would see her again - and the affection she was showing him was giving him the confidence he needed to finally cross that line.

It wasn’t until they were walking back towards Madeline’s apartment that Chris felt the nerves begin to creep back in. He’d been so close to breaking through that last line between friendship and more when he’d dropped her off at the dance studio the day before, but he’d chickened out at the last minute. He was determined not to make the same mistake again, but he could feel the anxious thoughts creeping into his mind.

“So,” Madeline interrupted his thoughts as they turned onto her block, arms linked once again. “What time is your flight tomorrow?”

“Late afternoon, I think.” Chris sighed as the thought of leaving her now had him feeling quite morose. “But we could get breakfast if you’re not dancing?”

“No, I’ll be dancing in the afternoon so that’s perfect.”

The way she squeezed his arm a little tighter as she spoke had him looking down at her to see her gazing right back up at him.

“What?” He asked, a soft smile sliding onto his face.

“I don’t want you to go…” Her words were soft and her eyes widened as they slipped out of her mouth as if she hadn’t meant to say them out loud. “I mean, I’m so happy for you and excited that you get to work on such a big project, but I wish you’d be closer.”

“Me too,” Chris agreed. “But we’ll make it work.”

“But they film lots of movies in New York, I don’t understand why they can’t just film it all here instead.”

The pout that slid onto her face earned a chuckle from Chris as they stopped outside her building.

“I dunno either, but I don’t think I have quite enough sway yet to get them to change it for me.”

“Can’t have the Avengers without Captain America,” Madeline pointed out. “I think it’s worth a shot.”

She slipped away from him to dig through her purse for her keys and Chris immediately missed the warmth of her body against his. As their goodbye drew closer, he knew what he needed to do, but the doubts in his head were holding him back. He felt frozen where he stood with his hands in his pockets until he noticed her watching him - keys in her hand - with an expectant look on her face.

Moving closer, he slipped his arms around her as he had at the end of their previous dates and he felt her tense slightly before she lifted her arms, wrapping them around his neck to pull him close. She felt so good, she smelt good, everything about her just made him want her more and he leaned back enough to glance down at her. It seemed the expectant look on her face had shifted into disappointment and that had Chris unsure of his next move. The hug was lingering, dragging on longer than seemed reasonable and he knew he had to act quickly, but in his panic his insecurities took hold and he felt his earlier bravery slipping away.

He dipped his head, aiming to press a kiss against her cheek, but a shift of her head had him catching the corner of her lips instead. Even that was enough to have his heart racing, but as he tried to pull away, he felt Madeline’s hand on the back of his neck holding him in place.

“Please…”

It was hardly more than a whimper, but Chris knew what she was asking for and the simple word filled him with courage. He needed no further prompting to lean back in and press his lips against hers and her immediate response pushed any doubt from his mind.

Feeling a spark seemed like such a cliche, but it was really the only way Chris could think to describe the moment. The rush of love and desire he felt had his grip tightening on her waist as her hand slid up to his hair as if both of them were desperate to be as close to each other as physically possible. He felt consumed by her like he would crumble if she ever pulled herself out of his arms and when she broke the kiss to catch a much needed breath the sight of her slightly swollen lips had him unable to resist diving back in for more.

Neither of them were sure how much time had passed as they stood on the doorstep of her building completely lost in each other. The need to stay connected had them both too wound up to even think of walking away, but as Chris struggled to find the willpower to force out a ‘goodnight’, Madeline had another suggestion.

“Do you wanna stay here?” She asked as she fought to catch her breath. “If we’re meeting up in the morning anyway you may as well save yourself a cab ride.”

Her reasoning had a smirk sliding onto Chris’ face, but he was too relieved by the offer to make fun of her ulterior motives.

“I like the way you think. I’d love to stay.”

Madeline flashed him a grin before stealing another quick kiss and slipping out of his arms. She found her keys on the ground where they’d slipped from her hands in their frenzy and hurried to unlock the door, leading him through the hallways until they reached her apartment where they spent the rest of the night exploring all the things they’d missed out on in the years they’d wasted pretending to be just friends.

Tags: @maggotzombie @moonlacebeam @mizzzpink @flowery-mess @flowerjewels@hockeychick10 @partypoison00 @theladybiers @sidepieces @patzammit @sparkledfirecracker @mytbel0st @denisemarieangelina @elrw24 @findthebeautyinbreakdowns @trottae17 @annvail @rach2602 @sarahdonald87 @firephotogrl74 @ourfinest-hour @k-evans-writes

#chris evans #chris evans fic #chris evans fanfiction #chris evans fanfic #chris evans fan fiction #back to you

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annah-kitathryne · 9 months

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Go to hell anon cause I care!

Also I really want to get into Huntress and all her story but the whole comic universe in DC feels very intimidating to me. I've read a couple shorter stories of other characters but was wondering where I should start with her.

Background context on what I know or don't know about her: I don't know anything about her backstory except for vague connections w the batfam and Bruce. The only media I've consumed of her is from Justice League Unlimited (the animation series)

Now that that's out of the way. Where do you think I should start with her comics?

Hello Inkreads!

I was attempting to put together a complete reading guide for you and everyone else, seeing as there are no complete guides for Helena Bertinelli online right now, and the most comprehensive one still has things out of order, messes things up, and doesn't have the Rebirth stuff. This ask inspired me to take that information and try to put the info from the two most complete reading guides together and create something better.

It is taking me longer than I would like, and I didn't want to leave you hanging when it came to getting information on how to read Helena's comics. So I am going to give you a quick run down of some important storylines and comics you should read for the character, and I will also include the links to the incomplete reading lists if that is something more preferable to you, and other ways you can find information on her.

This list and the website I was and am using for my readthrough were given to me by my friend @gretaghostgirl. (Sorry for tagging wanted to given you credit)

So quick note on the picture. You are going to want to read Blunt Trauma before you read No Man's Land.

This is just a list of her main appearances and not her guest staring, and cameos so you might miss some stuff, but this will give you the run down on her story before New 52.

I don't have a list for you on New 52 stuff, or Rebirth, but I can show you the way I keep track of those eras of comics.

League Of Comic Geeks is where I track my comic collection and the comics I have read. It is both an app and website. It will keep track of not just DC but Marvel and other comic companies.

I will be using the app version to show how it can be done. I have purple arrows pointing to things, because purple was the color it was on, but also Huntress themed.

So in the app you have a homepage that looks like this [Here is mine]

Once you click on the search bar your going end up on a page that has this and some more info [I cut down some of the pictures to save space.]

Type in Huntress

Now that you have a search you can look at series, specific issues, and characters. For what we want to do click characters.

Now you are going to have a page with all characters that have used the name Huntress. The Huntress we want for the reading list I gave you is Prime Earth. [But the Helena from Justice Lesgue Unlimited is Earth-12 (DCAU) If that also interests you.] So click Prime Earth Huntress.

You should now be at a page that looks like this. You get some basic information, other personas the character has used, and you can go to Titles, or Timeline. For what we want click Timeline.

You should end up with a list of dates like this. On the right side of the year heading you should see a number. That indicates how many comics/trades/omnis she has been in that year. You can click the number to minimize the year. It can make searching quicker.

I minimized down to 2011 which is right before FlashPoint happened giving us New 52. From here you can scroll. However it doesn't go all the way to Huntress (1989) #1 and some other stuff may be missing because this is only the Huntress version of Helena Bertinelli stuff. IE you won't get most of No Man's Land or her N52 stuff because she uses different names.

To get rid of this problem you can type Helena Bertinelli in the search bar instead of Huntress.

Same steps apply, and you'll get more of her appearances!

Now for links to websites to help you on your reading journey!

1. This website is the huge reading list I am using that is incomplete, and still being ordered around, but is a huge help. [Link]

2. This is the Ao3 link to how to read No Man's Land. No Man's Land is hugely important for multiple characters, and Helena plays a big role in the story, so instead of nitpicking her issues I would recommend reading the whole story if you can. The first chapter is just a rundown of events, but the second chapter is the reading order. [Link]

The Ao3 user who made the rundown and list is @havendance on Tumblr. (Sorry for the tagging, giving credit)

If you have any more questions reach out, and I will help to the best of my ability. And I hope this was helpful in some ways to you.

-Annaki

#dc comics #dc #batfamily #batfam #helena bertinelli #dc huntress #huntress #the huntress #greta tag #long post

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isa-beenme · 10 months

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Moonlight

Chapter 1: Bohemian Rhapsody

When Hybern falls, all of their prior experiments are free to take the world as they want, but for months no one hears anything coming from the castle. Until the massacre. Until the whole palace explodes. Their biggest weapon is out, and she only has one objective: get back to her sisters.

Warnings: mentions of blood, mentions of child abuse, mentions of experiments with human beings, mentions of child murder (please someone tell me if I forgot something)

The reason why I chose the name of the chapter is quite simple: This is the song I listened to and repeated the whole time while I wrote the chapter. Also, Rhapsody means a collection of different beats and rhythms united in a song, and that represents this lovely group of ladies that are together now fighting for their lives. And Bohemia is the city where Fausto (a mythological German character) was born, it's said that he traded his life with a demon for knowledge, eternal life, and love, kinda reminds me of a certain Archeron sister that I created haha

When the country lost its king, we also lost our hope. Not me, exactly, but the younger girls who still thought we had a future of our own. We didn't, we were taught that our lives were never ours, but the king's, and after so many years, after Feyre Cursebreaker freed the High Lords in Prythian, after they entered the castle and left more damaged than they already were, after getting the Book of Breaths, after Prythian winning the war, and yet, no one coming here to actually free us, we were all just waiting for death.

Aemma's POV

I don't believe I ever got the chance to think about my life. I had a simple routine: get up in the early morning, eat breakfast, train my powers, eat lunch, train physically in the camps, eat dinner, study with the king, and go back to the cells to sleep. It was easy, it was enough. But then the war came, and Hybern fought there, and they lost.

We could’ve just left, it was an option, but some weeks after the war had ended, they received a new shipment of younglings to transform into faes, and we had to take care of them since the camp lords and ladies were busy trying to take care of everything that had left. It would be the perfect moment for anyone to come and save us. But they never did. And the camps started to work again, and the children were dead. Useless; they said.

Some of the girls had to take time to process the loss, they were grieving. Weird feeling this grief is. We always cry for others, no matter how hurt and broken we are, but after some time we stop caring about ourselves. We do not grieve our souls enough. Some girls were punished for feeling grief. Faes do not grieve, they said. But deep down, we were always humans. Would forever be. I told the king that once. He laughed, and I never uttered a word about my thoughts ever again.

After the grief, they went through a rough phase of pure anger. I was the same as I ever was, leading. We protected those children as our own. For months, we fed, washed, and taught them as much as we could. No one told us that the cauldron was gone. If so, I would've told Vivie to not get too attached. That was their mistake. To not prepare me for the rush of feelings that came after. The king knew how to pacify me, how to make me an obedient servant. I always knew he was bad, evil, disgusting, and sadistic. But somehow, so was I, and he offered me a place, a listener, a task, and an objective. I couldn’t help but grieve for him too.

But what did they did to the kids? Unacceptable. I killed, tortured, and fed Enchantress' soul with their despair. I enjoyed that too. I burned their houses, their camps, their ships, everything I could. Silently, I learned how to use my power and ended them with it. We took the studies they kept in the castle and saved them for the land we were going to. To sell the knowledge, use it as a job, or just give it to someone, it didn’t matter. Not when everyone in Hybern was dead and the only thing that had left was their experiments.

Some girls went back to Wotawa. Some went to Vallahan. But me and the bigger group? We are in Prythian. The fae realm of Prythian. The idea is to simply find a place for ourselves and start life again – no, not again, simply start it. My objective is as simple as life: find my sisters again. But I have to secure all of the other girls somewhere I know they will be safe.

We first came to Spring Court, knowing that the High Lord wasn’t watching for the land anymore. We’ve been here for a few days now, mapping the area with Alyssa’s power, since she can see the world with different eyes than us. Oletta is making sure we don’t get caught surprised by any danger, since she can feel any kind of movement from living beings. And Naomi has been keeping us hidden from view any time someone gets too close to our little camp. That’s how we work, together and smoothly. We can be railed up at any moment if we don’t.

Or not anymore. It’s hard to leave the idea that we can be punished for our mistakes behind. Although a mistake can get us punished by nature. The real world is as complicated as the King told me. It’s dangerous and unpredictable and scary and big and-

- Aemma? Alyssa finished mapping the Night Court, the girls want to know if you will decide where we are going now or if we need to wait - Ada appears behind me, taking me out of my thoughts suddenly.

- Reunite the girls, we are deciding now - I tell her while getting up from the place where I was sitting.

Ada has the power to talk to animals, a power considered useless for Hybern, and became one of the first girls to be considered our slaves. It’s clear by the poor and ragged dress she’s wearing, different from all of the training uniforms we have dressed. Each one of us was designated a different color so that the king could differentiate us in the training from afar. Either way, I am the only one wearing blue, the cobalt blue designated for me because of my eyes that carry the same shade so everyone would know where to look when I started to train.

Once I get in the middle of the camp a good number are already reunited, waiting for the debate we know won't take long. It was always like this, I said, they followed. Easy. Alyssa is looking excited, and I simply know it’s because her power was finally used for something good. Somehow I understand the feeling.

- Where is Clover? Someone bring her here, please? - Soon I say the girls start to open a way for the dark-skinned girl to come to the middle too - Clover, show us what Alyssa is seeing.

Clover’s power is, at the same amount that is useful, is very specific. She can project the image that someone is thinking as something visible to everyone, that’s how we end up with a sort of map in the middle of us with very detailed forms and named with the principal cities and borders.

- Okay, I think all of us agree that the Autumn Court is a big no since we know who the High Lord is. Winter Court is a no too since we need to keep Olive alive and she needs heat. This makes us take Summer Court out too because, on the other side, we need to keep Livie alive and she needs the cold. We are already at the Spring Court and the High Lord is still a lost cause, although Missy, Lyanna, and Elara are making a list of the ones that want to stay here and help the Court and prevent it from falling even more apart, so anyone with plant, weather, and healing related powers are welcomed and appreciated. The three will be waiting on their sleeping spot in case someone is interested.

The map shines in front of me as the said Courts disappear from view.

- All of the Seasonal Courts are out then. Dawn Court is out because of the number of mountains, and we all know Shuri needs space - The said girl gets red as a big amount of the group laughs. Shuri is our runner but is still adapting to her power, and the last time she collided with a mountain we stayed almost three whole days cleaning the mess. That’s when the camps were moved to a more plain place - Now we are only between the Night and the Day Court. And I won’t lie, for me the choice is quite obvious.

- And why?

- Day Court is amazing, it’s true, but Night Court is the biggest of all of them, they have different races of faes and the most powerful beings in their Inner Circle. They can keep our training and give us resources.

- And why exactly do we think they are going to help us? - Vivie comes from behind, her eyes still red and puffy from the nights she hasn’t been sleeping.

- They were the only ones who tried to stop Hybern from the beginning. Feyre Cursebreaker is the High Lady, and just the fact they accepted a High Lady is already a positive point. And you know about the General trying to include Illyrian females in the training. They might not be perfect but we can help too, offering our knowledge.

- And it has nothing to do with the fact that your sisters are there? - She asks with a stoic face, making me stop in my tracks, and slowly turn.

- How do you know that Nestha and Elain are alive?

- I heard your conversation with Anika. She heard a group of peasants talking about them and told you. But were you planning to tell us that we are after your sisters too?

- We are not after my sisters. If I had to take you all to a different side of the world to make you safe I would, if I had to choose between keeping all of you secure and seeing my sisters again, Mother knows I would choose you without thinking twice, the fact that they are there too is a matter fact of coincidence - She downs her head and another one of the girls put a hand on her shoulder to half hug her - I know you are hurt, I consider the incident my fault too, but we cannot throw rocks at each other in such a delicate moment like this. I chose the Night Court uniquely because it’s the best place now. If anyone has an objection, tell me right now and I will consider it. But we will leave tomorrow morning. The ones who can winnow can already go rest, you will work less than the day we escaped but it is still a lot. The rest can go do the normal chores.

As the bigger group starts to dissipate Vivie stays in place, waiting until everyone goes back to their place.

- So? Something else you want to accuse me of?

- I’m sorry. I’m just… I don’t know. It feels weird.

- You’re sad and tired. It's okay. I shouldn’t be so hard on you either. I understand that after so much time being reprimed of feelings is weird to have so much freedom to… hm.

- Talk? Yeah, I know. Sorry once again - She glances at me with a shadow of a smile, the best she has done in all these days.

- Aemma Archeron, you dirty little liar - Enchantress decides to make her appearance after Vivie walks away, her shadowed body standing in front of me with only her face fully visible to me. Laughing. She’s laughing at me.

- It was for the greater good. Night Court is the best option - I answer in the language I took years to learn how to speak, the one only she can understand.

- It might’ve been, but your true objective is to find your dear sisters, is it not?

- Can be, but I’m taking them with me, they are my family as much as my blood sisters - I start to walk away to my own sleeping spot, seeing the shadow figure following me, knowing damn well that her shadows are curving around my shoulders as a way of telling everyone else for us to not be interrupted.

- You are indeed lovely, young Aemma. How long can you stay like this? - She asks while taking one of my hair’s strands.

- Depends on how long you will keep talking shit in my ears - I shove her away, hearing her laugh slowly dissipate into the deep parts of my brain.

- That’s why I like you so much, little Aemma.

Maybe that’s why I hate myself too. Tomorrow would be a new day, and the pull I feel in my chest could finally be released.

#azriel × reader #azriel/reader #azriel x oc #azriel #azriel shadowsinger #azriel x reader #azriel x female!reader #Spotify

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rebeccalouisaferguson · 10 months

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One unanswered question from the first season relates to the very bottom of the silo. Juliette has a crippling fear of water, and very nearly ends up in what looks like a reservoir at the base. But surely that will come into play again? Chekhov's water, if you like. To that question, Ferguson was quick to tease:

"Oh, buddy, you're gonna have to see. That is such a good question. If I tell you, I'm gonna have to kill you. So, you know, we're stuck in that. There's a big door down there. I know we haven't activated the door without wanting to explore what the door might be. I’m just gonna leave it right there."

How Long Could Silo Run?

The series is adapted from the writings of Hugh Howey. The series started in 2011 with the short story "Wool," which was later published together with four sequel novellas as a novel with the same name. Along with "Wool," the series consists of Shift, Dust, three short stories, and Wool: The Graphic Novel. This means that the series could quite easily be a straight three-season run, or could be expanded, depending on how the creative team—and of course, Apple TV+—feel about the show.

For Ferguson, she's signed her contract, and she's locked in for "two, three years" going forward. As for speculating about how many seasons it could run for, Ferguson would prefer to focus on number two and see where it takes them, with her plan being to shoot Silo for the foreseeable future—SAG-AFTRA strike pending, that is. She went to say:

"I'm a businesswoman. I go in with my head screwed on. I sign a contract and make a deal. I'm not gonna tell you what that deal is. [Laughs] I very much know what I want. It's down to my wonderful team at Apple, as well, to see what they wanna do. You know, we all save our backs. We see what works for the future. At my age and with what I've done, you don't get to a point where you go, “Let's see what happens,” you know? I'm already blocking off November for another shoot."

Ferguson continued, "I think two, three years ahead. Right now, sir, it’s one fantastic fucking show, and we’ve green-lit number two. Apple is extremely happy, and I'm happier. That's where I'm gonna leave it. We started filming Season 2 quite recently, so we are chockablock, smack back in the beginning of the shoot. I am doing this for some time in the future."

Ferguson is a Fan of Silo's Production and Apple TV+

Where Ferguson was happy to elaborate, however, was her praise of both Apple and the production of the series. Lauding their ability to combine techniques and styles, bringing in directors and seeing what works and what doesn't was an aspect of Season 1 that was widely praised. Ferguson expects that process to be further streamlined as the show evolves into its sophomore year.

"We work with different units and different directors, and it's something I really love because everyone has their style and their technique," she said. "So what we've seen in Season 1 is not a smash of what worked and what didn't work, it's an ongoing change because we have new directors dedicated to new episodes. And they will themselves see what they like or didn't like, or where they want to take it, and what feeling they want. Do they want, you know, Wes Anderson? Do they want David Lynch? Where do they want to take it?" She went on to say:

"And that's what I love. It's the creative individual, right for their episodes. And then, obviously, there is a thread going through, you can't sort of wing it in every direction, but there is a lot to be learned. But we all learn different things, and we all love different things. But what's really amazing is—and once again, I can throw it back to Apple, but I am one of their biggest fans—their trust in this process, their trust in Graham and in the directors and in us, gives us such freedom to actually feel free to create. It's not a common thing for studios to be like that as a buff. So it's a playground. It's a fantastic playground."

She continued on to say, "I feel like a sponsor for them, but I really love them. And take away the fact that we're doing Silo, the shows are so meticulously thought through of what they make, why they make it. You can see a thread of the quality that they make, so I feel so bloody honored that we are making it for Apple."

A key component of that creative process is the writing on the show, with Graham Yost playing a major part in it. During a writers' strike, the work of those behind the screenplays becomes more magnified—it always should be—but Ferguson adores the way the show sets up ideas and then pays them off. She's a fan of how it doesn't need to answer every question, but answers them enough to have you come back for more. Ferguson went on to say:

"What I feel with the writers—and I'm referring to Season 2, seeing it further on—things that I have questioned before and things that I was wondering about really ties up. If Graham is very good at something, it is tying knots together. It might not give you a complete answer to things, but enough to satisfy your urge of the huge questions. Then you have emotional feelings, or why or how did that happen? And you know, we might not want to answer all of those questions, down to character, as well, and our own little secrets we sit on as actors. But the way things are linked together, it's brilliantly written. Absolutely brilliant."

Ferguson Shares Her Biggest Challenge

One might think playing Juliette could end up being a career-defining role for Ferguson. The lead in an acclaimed series—particularly when she's already become such a star through the likes of Mission: Impossible—certainly puts you on a certain trajectory, but the chance to tell a story over a prolonged period of time gets you out there more, and it allows you to reflect on what aspects of the character require more nuance and get more of yourself into that performance.

In the case of Juliette, however, she's so closed off from everybody else that Ferguson almost had to fight to keep from putting too much of her own personality into it, which was her biggest challenge.

"I think I was having so much fun… For me, Rebecca, I am a person, I'm curious, I lean in, I'm so sure in work or interviews or promotions. I speak a lot. I'm not loud, but I'm not scared of making a fool out of myself. Privately home, I'm quite quiet and I'm very calm. I have two very separate identities. Juliette is awkward, and I am not socially awkward. I mean, I am maybe because I'm very blunt [laughs], and people might find it uncomfortable, but I'm not Juliette in the sense that she's very socially awkward and she doesn't like people. She doesn't like being close to them, she doesn't like their energy. She walks around people. And sometimes, when I was comfortable in the scene, I forgot about it, and I moved into my own character. So I had little tricks that I had to do for myself to kick myself into Juliette. The way that she holds herself and the shrug or she leans back when people lean forward, and I found that quite hard."

#rebecca ferguson #silo #silo interview #interview #wool #silo apple tv #juliette nichols #silo spoilers

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idolatrybarbie · 5 months

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not publishing anymore fic this year but thinkin' tommymaria thoughts...

maria is an absolute genius computer engineer, creates amazing builds in her spare time. she is truly just supremely smart and talented...but it's 2011 and we're recovering from a recession here, people, so she's snagged some shitty IT job at a third party phone survey company. they call, they try to ask you questions, you usually hang up. that kinda deal.

enter tommy. well not really enter. maria goes to fulfill a maintenance request on the fourteenth floor, taking the elevator allll the way up from the dingy third floor office they keep the tech employees in. enter maria to meet tommy. he's nice enough, a little flushed and worried about his work set up—they aren't supposed to create a burning smell.

turns out the computer is completely fried, someone spilled their coffee on it late one night and it's dribbled into the GPU and wrecked the motherboard. she goes to haul the computer to the elevator and he offers to carry it down for her, ever the gentleman. maria's knee jerk reaction is to tell him she's good, but he is kind of cute... so she lets him take the case into his arms, heavier than he expected, and keep her company on the trip down again.

he almost asks for her number before he leaves, she can tell, but stops himself. maria watches him walk away, ass tight in those macy's dress pants. she thinks that's the last she's ever gonna see of him until! the work holiday partyyyyy.

it blows, in short. none of her IT co-workers even bothered to show, leaving maria socially stranded. she's contemplating if anyone'll even notice or care if she ditches when someone sidles up next to her beside the gaudy-looking Christmas tree—tommy miller.

"hey there," he says, half way between a friend and a stranger.

"kentucky fried computer," maria nods at him.

"i still don't know how that happened," tommy says. maria gives him a disbelieving look. "i don't drink coffee."

"you work a nine to five but you don't drink coffee?" she asks.

tommy shakes his head. "only green tea. it's good for gut health." immediately, the despairing look on his face tells maria that he cannot believe he's uttered the words gut health in front of her.

she rolls with it. "so if i open it up, i'm not going to find a bunch of little leaves in there?"

"you won't," tommy says. "scout's honour." when she raises an eyebrow in question, he explains, "i was a boy scout for nine years."

"of course you were."

they find a soft couch to take up residence in a quiet corner of the party. maria's two flutes of champagne deep, quizzing him about the scouts with questions from her phone. he isn't lying, getting all of the answers correct. then she asks him what he does now.

"unless you're still a boy scout," she says.

"am not," tommy says. then he shrugs. "i work. go home, make dinner."

"so you cook."

"i do," he nods. "can make a mean frozen lasagna. or ajiaco, if you'd prefer."

he has an amazing way of making questions for him turn around to be about her.

"i'd have to know what that is," maria says.

"meat soup, sorta. barbecued beef, chopped onions, green chili peppers," tommy explains.

it honestly sounds delicious, but telling him that would communicate that maria's interested in trying it—in having him cook for her. and she's not...right?

"sounds nice," is all she gives him.

when the party ends, tommy walks maria to her car. she finds it a bit overkill but can't find it in herself to tell him not to. it's sweet. he is sweet. it's been a while since she's had any sugar in her life.

when he asks her out straightforwardly, she takes a moment to consider, fingers curled over the door handle of her car.

she says, "yes." tommy's face splits into an amused grin as she continues, "my place, but you're cooking. d'you like wine or beer?"

"wine. you?"

"beer," she says.

"i'll bring both," tommy nods.

#tommy miller #maria miller #tommy x maria #speaking #tlou #i built computers in highschool can you tell

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aurheatum · 9 months

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toa anniversary mun day

under cut

Name:

Nel, i mean it’s Sarah technically, but once you start getting multiple notes in the mail with Nel on them I think it counts. Nelfes works too. I respond to most anything tbh

Pronouns:

she/her or they/them

Birthday (no year):

Dec 6th Saint Nicholas Day : )

Where are you from? What is your time zone?

Chicago. CST [GMT-5].

Roleplay experience:

Over ten years, started on Neopets and other forums. Moved to Gaia Online and then Tumblr indie space some time in 2011.

Got any pets?

Baby boy

Favorite time of year:

Springtime or Autumn

Some interests and things you like:

I’ve always been super into mythology, all of them. I used to think that Carl Jung was onto something with the collective unconscious but then Anthropology and the reality of multilineal evolution ruined that for me (college will teach you things); but that’s alright because humans their ability to create and interpret their surroundings with equal parts love and fear is still pretty cool.

Some funfacts & trivia about you:

-Agnostic but i work in an occult library (it’s pretty quiet; the new age bookshop across the street has all the events)

-One time on Gaia Online I was kicked out of an Okami RP bc I didn’t make my posts aesthetic enough, and I thought it was just the most heart wrenching thing -I’m not sure what people stand to gain back in Ye Old Runescape luring new players out into the wild and PKing them but I was gullible enough to follow some other players at like 7 yrs old and this would have happened to me if i wasnt SUPER good at clicking my mouse and running out of there. Surviving such a harrowing experience made me think i was truly invincible.

-I was supposed to write my final paper for my Japanese Buddhism class on… surprise, Japanese Buddhism but I really wanted to talk about Kenji Miyazawa’s writings instead so I spun it through a lens of his Nichiren conversion and its impact on his poetry. My prof saw right through me but I still got an A.

What non-Fire Emblem games do you play?

Tales of RPG series raised me as a person so u know. I like Persona 1-2 era SMT though I’ve played Nocturne and IV as well. What else? Okami, LOZ: Twilight Princess, farm sims and visual novels. Genshin, on and off.

Favorite Pokemon type & Pokemon:

Psychic; wooper family (clogsire im so glad u joined us)

How did you get into Fire Emblem?

My neighbor would bring over Path of Radiance so I could play it on my gamecube with my own save back in the day

What Fire Emblem games have you played?

Tellius duology. Sacred Stones, FE 13-16; currently doing Blazing Blade. Archanea one day.

First Fire Emblem game:

POR

Favorite Fire Emblem game:

Tie between 3 Houses and Radiant Dawn

Any Fire Emblem crushes? 😳

It’s rhea okay. I wont lie and i wont pretend it isnt evidence of my spectacular taste either

If you’ve played the following games, who was your first S support? Who would you S support nowadays? - Awakening: Tiki (first S support was olivia bc i wanted a pink haired kid) - Fates: honestly i’d have to revisit, i know i first married niles as m!corrin - Three Houses: I married each lord on their route tho it’s much funnier if you dont i think (First route was Crimson Flower but I saved at the split so I could marry Rhea first lmao) - Engage: Saphir 🥰

Favorite Fire Emblem class:

War Cleric or Qi Adept

If you were a Fire Emblem character, what would be your class?

I’d be the mage you have to drag around and treat with baby gloves only to learn like a single good spell I think

If you were a Three Houses character, what would be your affiliation?

Leicester Alliance tbh

If you were an Engage character, which Emblem would you Engage with?

Based purely on mechanics bc i love them all prob Soren dlc, Sigurd, Celica, and Lyn.

How did you find TOA?

End of 2020/beginning of 2021 I was really trying to get back into rp but couldn’t get into the various systems on discord. One community that I was trying was affiliates with The Officer’s Academy and an active tumblr community rly caught my interest. The rest is history!

Current TOA muses:

Rhea 3H, Micaiah Radiant Dawn, and miss Hortensia engage

Who was your first TOA muse? If you don’t have them anymore, could you see yourself picking them up again?

This blog right here! I put her down for a bit and probably will again but. It’s not like she ever leaves, instead of brain there is Rhea u see (i bear this burden so u do not have to)

Have you had any other TOA muses?

I played Sephiran for a hot sec and Ingrid for around a yearish iirc. Both very fun

Do you think you have a type of character you gravitate towards?

Not really? I need to be able to connect with them on some level obviously, and I tend to prefer characters who have like a clear childhood or background for why they are That Way. Micaiah was actually p difficult for this reason but being able to really shape her based on what little we know also made me ever more fond. ♥️ I love to stare at pegasusknight and serenesforest supports pages late at night tehe

What do you believe you enjoy writing the most?

I don’t particularly plan ahead but I really love when threads reflect past character development whether in a thread with the same muse or different. TOA extended universe… I’d like to do that more I think but first I have to actually make a support page huh? Since Rhea’s back she’s made more bonds though and that makes me happy.

Favorite TOA-related memory: Definitely Unlocked 2021! It was my first event after really starting to warm to the TOA community and i was an awe of the scope of the events. The mods thought this far ahead?! We can do this?! Every event since has just been even more fun but the surprise and intrigue i felt then really stayed with him

*How do you pronounce TOA?

Toe-uh. Like Dee-En-Dee. you know.

Got any delusions that didn’t see the light of day that you’d like to share? 😉

I think I mentioned I muse Hubert before, and also that I can't really seeing myself maintaining a blog for him? So other than that, no. I do think Nimh could be quite a bit of fun though *laughs*

#ooc #|meme response

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missr3n3 · 3 months

Note

Ctda is so fun I love it.. is there any details/ hcs you have about the characters you wanna share?

sorry for taking so long to respond, but you've activated my trap card and i needed to be at my computer so i could write this essay of a response lol

im gonna do one for each character:

jonah: though he used be be more into psychedelics as a teenager, ever since the events of vol. 2 and cdta he's entirely stopped using them. there's just to much fuel for a potential bad trip. he's also stopped drinking (though he was never did it that often in the first place) and doesn't smoke weed as often bc sarah and evelin don't want him stinking up their apartment.

adam: his black hoodie (not the BPS one) has become a comfort item for him. because he didn't have it on while he was in the Nightmare Sand Pit and was at his most vulnerable, he associates not wearing it with being in danger. since he's wearing it basically all the time though, it's gotten really worse for wear and has quite a few holes in it, which jonah helpfully fixed with various patches (you'll see them when i drop the 2011 cdta designs lol)

thatcher: since he's now a certified Old Ass Man (in his early 50s), he's fully stopped trying to look profession or trendy and has gone back to his old grunge fashion sense from the 90s. luckily, most people think this is cool af, and in particular it entertains some of the kids that ride his bus route bc they think he's an old Kurt Cobain lol

evelin: i kind of alluded to this in clear the stone chapter 3, but she and jonah didn't get along at first because she's very straight edge and he's very not. since their re-introduction in clear the stone and the events of cdta, she's a bit more understanding of his drug use (though still not entirely comfortable with it). nowadays she considers jonah to be just as close a friend to her as sarah <3

sarah: mandela getting blown tf up has actually significantly helped her with regards to moving on from her brother's death. though she can't quite put her finger on why, she as a general sense that his soul is at peace now. as a result, she intends to rebrand BPS from a paranormal investigation group to more of a horror webseries thing. she even renames the youtube channel to the bythorne paranormal show!

alt!gabriel: as far as the cdta timeline goes, he created the alternates for the sole purpose of furthering his takeover plan. alternates in this story are straight-up demons as a result, and this might come into play in an interesting way in the sequel... 👀

six: so i've mentioned before that he's an entirely separate alien in the cdta timeline that started working with alt!gabriel as a means to an end since they have similar goals (also dropped in dms that this happened in the 1920s). the reason for this is that his species feeds on pain, and alternates are really good at causing a lot of mental and sometimes physical pain. though with the alternates gone and type 6s doing a shit job at killing humans, his kind are now looking into other avenues for a food supply :)

sam: if he were voiced, i imagine he'd sound like steven as he sounds in steven universe future. pretty nerdy but with a little bit of rasp to it and a hint of theater kid lol. also! he's 6'4 and is the tallest human in cdta!

delilah: before her reversion (official temporal phenomena term for the changes type 6s went through), her alternate instincts would mainly come out in her being an obnoxious know-it-all. the type to "well AKSHUALLY 🤓" everyone around her over the slightest inaccuracies. also never admitting when she was wrong and assuming the people calling her out were just too stupid to understand her genius. basically what i'm saying is she would've love rick and morty before the reversion lol

and as a special bonus:

joel: he actually started mystifying oracle to try and prove that the paranormal didn't exist, but when he realized how many views he was getting from believers, he pivoted to over-the-top shows of the effects of the ouija board. of course it also helps that he has an actual demon in his house lol.

chloe: she met joel in college! they're both studying film, and thus shared a lot of the same classes together. joel ended up dropping out once youtube started making money for him, but they'll still meet up from time to time, especially if there's a new horror movie they want to see!

#ask the skeleton #cut down the altar au #told you it was gonna b an essay lol #also couldn't say much about the demon in joel's house due to spoilers. but there's gonna b some fun stuff happening there too :)

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lokitvsource · 2 years

Video

youtube

‘Loki’ star Tom Hiddleston: ‘I was very engaged with the idea of breaking Loki open’

Tom Hiddleston first appeared as Loki in 2011’s “Thor,” but the God of Mischief made a bigger splash, burdened with glorious purpose and all, in 2012’s “The Avengers,” which marks its 10th anniversary on May 4 and has the “Loki” star feeling “very old, basically.”

“I can’t believe 10 years has gone by so fast,” Hiddleston tells Gold Derby (watch the exclusive video interview above). “Amazed, surprised, delighted that I’m still playing the character. I have loved playing this character in every iteration. Loki seems to contain so much breadth and depth, so many surprises for me, for the audience. It’s an honor to have played him for the length of time that I had. Loki’s an ancient character, been around a long time, will be around a lot longer than me. It feels great.”

There have been multiple times when it seemed like the actor was done playing Loki. The fan favorite was supposed to die in “Thor: The Dark World” (2013) until test audiences refused to believe Loki was dead, and he did die in the opening minutes of “Avengers: Infinity War” (2018) at the hands of Thanos (Josh Brolin), completing an arc from big bad to antihero. But the time heist in “Avengers: Endgame” (2019) presented another chance to bring Loki back to life after he makes off with the Tesseract during the Battle of New York, creating a branched timeline off the Sacred Timeline. The Loki of “Loki,” of course, is not the same one who sacrificed himself for Thor (Chris Hemsworth) in “Infinity War” — having made peace with himself and his anger toward his adoptive family — but the 2012 version, a charmingly narcissistic “puny god” who craved power above all else.

Revisiting the unredeemed Loki and approaching him in a new way excited the Emmy nominee. “I was very engaged with the idea of breaking Loki open,” Hiddleston says. “Any questions around identity I’ve always found interesting — how we define ourselves to ourselves, the context of the stories we tell about ourselves to other people in order to find meaning in the world. And in so many ways the series was about integrating the disparate fragments of the many selves that Loki is. I think that’s a really universal experience. I think all human beings have to constantly integrate the fragments of who we are to a whole and make sense of that. So the idea of doing that with Loki just seemed a thrilling prospect. He’s the archetypal trickster, the transgressive, the boundary-crosser, the shapeshifter, somebody so expert at changing shape. And so the question we had in our minds was, who is he really? Who is Loki? What makes Loki Loki?”

After getting captured by the Time Variance Authority, Loki is forced to confront his past, future (and future death), other Loki variants (Alligator Loki FTW), and someone who might know him better than he knows himself, Agent Mobius (Owen Wilson). “The great conceit of the TVA is that putting Loki inside this institution strips him of everything that’s familiar — Thor, Odin, Asgard, his magical power, his clothing. And by taking everything away, Loki is challenged to reveal something about what remains — or we were challenged to find what remains of Loki and what the new journey is,” Hiddleston continues, adding that director Kate Herron had “the most wonderful take” on Loki’s Season 1 arc. “When I met her for the first time, within five minutes, I think I asked her what do you think the series is about and she said, ‘I think it’s about acceptance, permission and love.’ And I thought, ‘She gets it!'”

By the end of the first season, Loki is a lot different from the entitled agent of chaos he was at the start — and is also in a different timeline after Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) killed He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors) and opened the multiverse. While we have to wait and see what Season 2 brings, another Asgardian adventure is coming first. “Thor: Love and Thunder,” the trailer for which dropped last week, opens July 8 and will be the first “Thor” film in which Hiddleston — as far as everyone knows right now — does not appear as Loki. Or does he?

“At this point, I’ve learned to live with the question,” Hiddleston teases. “Loki might pop up. Loki has range. Loki can be Matt Damon, he can be Richard E. Grant, he can be Alligator Loki. I’m not placing any bets, I’ll say that, but it does look fantastic.”

#tom hiddleston #loki tv #loki series #loki #video #interview #article

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likeadevils · 2 years

Text

Red Timeline

This is a very long post that puts all the songs on Red in order of Taylor writing them, with as much specific dates as possible. I’ve also included a few other songs she wrote while writing Red, notes about when she recorded her songs, and quotes from Taylor talking about her process.

I’ve also added a sliding scale of how sure I am of the date:

Confirmed: There is some type of official source for the date

Inferring: Nobody has officially said “This is when we wrote it,” but everything points to that date

Speculation: I’m pretty sure that this is when it was written, but I wouldn’t be shocked if I was wrong. This can also mean that the period of time I have it under is just too large to be a definite date

Stay Stay Stay (First Draft): Summer 2010 (Speculation)

The copyright for Stay Stay Stay says that it was created in 2010 (The only song on the album besides All Too Well). In January 2012, Taylor said that she had been writing songs [for Red] since before her last record [Speak Now] came out. It's possible this was written towards the end of the year, but Taylor has mentioned a period of intense writer's block around that time, so I'm inclined to place this earlier in the summer.

Late 2010: Taylor is hit with a six month long writer's block. What six months she's talking about isn't known-- the last song she writes for Speak Now is The Story Of Us, in June 2010, and the first song she writes for Red is All Too Well, in December, exactly six months. However, she stopped writing All Too Well for months at a time, so it's also possible she's talking about October 2010-March 2011, when she finishes writing All Too Well, which would line up with her relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal, and with the quote about writing songs for Red since before Speak Now came out.

Taylor: [All Too Well] came after a six-month writing drought that followed a particularly toxic relationship. "There's a kind of bad that gets so overpowering you can't even write about it [...] When you feel pain that is so far past dysfunctional, that leaves you with so many emotions that you can't filter them down to simple emotions to write about, that's when you know you really need to get out."

December 13, 2010: Taylor is photographed entering and leaving a recording studio

All Too Well (Rough Draft): December 2010 (Inferring)

Taylor: "The first song that was written was All Too Well, and it was a day when I was just like a broken human walking into rehearsal just feeling terrible about what was going on in my personal life. And I walked in and I remember we had just hired David Cook… I think it was his first day meeting me, and I think I ended up just playing four chords over and over again and the band started kicking in, like Amos Heller on bass, and people started playing along with me. I think they could tell I was really going through it. And I just started singing and riffing and sort of ad-libbing this song that basically was All Too Well. And it started with ‘I walked through the door with you, the air was cold’ – like it literally just was that song, but it had probably seven extra verses. And it included the f-word, and I remember my sound guy was like ‘Hey, I burned a CD of that thing you were doing, in case you want it.’ And I was like ‘Sure!’ Taylor: The lyric I’m most proud of on the album is from ‘All Too Well’: ‘And you call me up again just to break me like a promise / so casually cruel in the name of being honest.’ That was something I came up with while ranting during a soundcheck. I was just playing these chords over and over onstage and my band joined in and I went on a rant. Those were some of the lines I thought of. I was going through a really hard time then, and my band joined in playing, and one of the first things that I came up with, just, like, spat out, was ‘And you call me up again just to break me like a promise, so casually cruel in the name of being honest.’

All Too Well (First Draft): February 2011 (Confirmed)

I like to think she wrote this after attending the Vanity Fair Oscar party on February 27, but all we know for sure is that Taylor started trying to actually write down All Too Well sometime in February 2011.

All Too Well (Final Draft): March 1-4, 2011 (Inferring)

We know Taylor wrote this with Liz Rose in Nashville sometime in March, and Taylor left for tour on March 5 and was gone the rest of the month, meaning it had to have been written sometime in the first four days Taylor: I ended up taking [the recording from rehearsals] home and listening to it and I was like, ‘I actually really like this, but it definitely is like 10 minutes long and I need to pare it down, so I’m going to call Liz Rose. [...] And she came over, I played it for her, and she was like ‘Whoa, I love this.’ And so we kind of edited it and pared it down to what it is now, but that was a very serendipitous creation of song Liz Rose: When we wrote the song, I hadn’t heard from her in awhile. She hadn’t really been writing. I was in Nashville one day, slowly moving the last bits of junk out of my garage so I could move to Dallas. […] I was in my driveway and my phone rings, and it’s Taylor saying, ‘Man, I’ve got this thing and I really need you to help me with it. Can you write today? What are you doing today?’ [...] It was the first song she wrote for that record, I think. She had a story and she wanted to say something specific. She had a lot of information. I just let her go. She already had a melody and she started singing some words, and I started writing things down, saying, ‘Ok, let’s use this, let’s use that.’ She mentioned a plaid shirt, and I wrote that down in a corner, and when we got to the end, I said, ‘Let’s put the plaid shirt in there.’ That turned into one of the best lines.

Begin Again (First Draft): March 2011 (Confirmed)

Taylor: The first inspiration [for Begin Again] came when I was on tour in Europe [in early 2011]. I'd been alone for a while and had time to think about my past experiences. But I wrote it in pieces-I'd start and then second-guess myself. I had to sort through my own insecurities. Taylor was on tour in Europe between March 5-March 30, 2011. So this basically could've happened at anytime that month.

Better Man: March 20, 2011 (Inferring)

Taylor: I remember I was on tour, and I wrote it alone in a hotel room. And I remember standing in front of a mirror—I think the first thing I thought of was, ‘I wish it wasn’t 4am, standing in a mirror, saying to myself, ‘you know you had to do it.“ That was an actual visual from my life that ended up being the first thing I wrote, and then I expanded outward from there. And it was a song that I really thought belonged on the album and there were just too many songs I loved that I had written in that period of time, so some of them had to be left off. I think I chose All Too Well over Better Man. I think that was what happened. I was either going to put on All Too Well or Better Man, and then I left off Better Man. Taylor talking about a song she wrote in Madrid: I was in Madrid, and I was in my hotel room all day. And I was going through this crazy, emotional thing and I wrote a song about it and it'll probably be on the next record. I'm telling you that. I'll tell you the title afterwards. Taylor has a tour date on Madrid on March 19, and then her and her band stayed there an extra day.

March 24, 2011: Taylor posts "Writing a song all afternoon in my hotel room. Dublin, Ireland."

State of Grace (First Draft): Spring 2011 (Speculation)

Taylor says in this interview that State of Grace was written “In the beginning process of making this album.” She could mean the first half of the album, which was written in 2011 and produced by Nathan Chapman in Nashville, but that gets contradicted by her immediately saying Red (which was also written in 2011 and produced by Nathan Chapman in Nashville) was written "halfway through" making the album. So, I'm going to take the quote on it's face value, and say State of Grace was written towards the beginning of the writing process, sometime in Spring 2011.

The Moment I Knew: Spring 2011 (Speculation)

This could've been the song she was recording on her birthday in 2010, but I lean towards those photographs being a stunt. There's not really paparazzi in Nashville, and seeing as Jake might've told her not to write a song about them breaking up, she had solid incentive to establish she was going to be writing about him. Taylor has talked about experiencing some pretty tough writer's block around that time, only broken by All Too Well, so I'm hesitant to say she wrote another song right before that. Furthermore, The Moment I Knew is copyrighted as being created in 2011.

May 22, 2011: Taylor gives a brief interview at the Billboard Music Awards: "Um, a timeline for next album... I have no idea right now. I think that, for me, I just write whenever I'm inspired to do so-- I've been constantly writing lately."

June 11, 2011: Taylor gives an interview with The New Yorker: "She had written about ten songs so far for her next album. Asked to characterize them, she said, “They’re sad? If I’m being honest.” The most recent one, she said, “is about moving on.”" (Note: The amount of songs Taylor says she wrote for Red at different points doesn't add up, so give or take 5 songs)

I Almost Do: Early June, 2011 (Speculation)

It's possible we never heard that song about moving on that she mentions in The New Yorker (out of the roughly 25 songs she wrote for Red in 2011, we have heard 12). It's also possible she was talking about Begin Again; in an interview with People Country, Taylor mentions working on it throughout 2011. But I think she's talking about I Almost Do. This is partially because her arm lyric on June 4 was "I guess we’re all one phone call from our knees" and partially because she's confirmed to have written I Bet You Think About Me, which shares similar themes, later this month.

June 17, 2011: Taylor writes in her diary: "I’ve become blissfully happy with my life. [...] I’ve noticed this onset for a while, but it’s really hit me in the last week, and especially since I wrote those 2 new songs. I really do need to create in order to live and feel worthwhile. [...] I’m happy that tomorrow morning I get on a plane to Pittsburgh, play a stadium of 60,000 people, then fly home. I’m happy that the next day, I’m recording 2 new songs."

June 19, 2011: Per the previous diary entry, Taylor records two songs

I Bet You Think About Me: June 24-26, 2011 (Confirmed)

Over the years, Lori McKenna has given different dates for when exactly this was written. We know it was written around the time Taylor was playing Foxboro Stadium on the Speak Now Tour, but we don't know whether it was the day before, the day of her first show, or the day of her second. Lori McKenna: A couple days before she gets here, I'm eating dinner with the kids, and I get a FaceTime from a number I didn't know [...] And I answer it because we were like, 'Who's FaceTiming me?' And it's Taylor like, 'Hey, I'm coming to town. Would you have some time?'" McKenna and Swift share a mutual friend – songwriter Liz Rose. McKenna had met Swift once or twice, and McKenna said sure. [...] "It's one of those real fun co-writes where you're just the cheerleader. You're the coffee maker. You'll get a sandwich if they need to eat or something, but you're there for moral support Lori McKenna: She had this little nugget of a song which was ‘I Bet You Think About Me,’ she knew that was the hook," Swift had asked her if she should lean in the folk direction (which they did) and after that, the rest flowed blissfully as McKenna recalls, "I don’t remember anything other than sitting here watching how incredible she is. She knows what she wants to say and when she says the right thing, she remembers it. She didn’t write anything down. There was no recording of the song [...] If the line is right, she knows it’s right, and she remembers what it is. Taylor: I Bet You Think About Me’ is a song I wrote with Lori McKenna, who is one of my favorite singer-songwriters ever. I’d always wanted to work with her. And I wrote this with her at her house when I was playing Foxboro Stadium on the Speak Now Tour. We wanted this song to be like a comedic, tongue in cheek, funny, not caring what anyone thinks about you sort of break up song, because there are a lot of different types of heartbreak songs on Red. Some of them are very sincere, some of them are very stoic and heartbreaking and sad. We wanted this to be the moment where I was like, ‘I don’t care about anything.’ And we wanted to make people laugh with it, and we wanted it to be sort of a drinking song, and I think that that’s what it ended up being.

June 30, 2011: Taylor posts on Taylorconnect "Lately, I've been writing a LOT. Like, all of a sudden, everything I've wanted to say, express, or just let out for the past several months has just recently become a song. I'm really excited about that. It's a freeing feeling when all of a sudden one day, you're able to verbalize exactly how you feel in a verse, chorus, verse, bridge, chorus pattern."

Starlight (First Draft): Summer 2011 (Speculation)

Taylor: I get a lot of style inspiration from the 1960s, so I’ll go and look at black and white pictures, and look at photos from the ‘50s and '60s, and I came across this picture of these two kids dancing at a dance. It immediately made me think of like, how much fun they must have had that night. It was back in the late '40s. I ended up reading underneath that it was Ethel Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. And they were, like, 17. So I just kind of wrote that song from that place, not really knowing how they met or anything like that. And then her daughter Rory ended up coming to a show a couple weeks later and I told her about the song and she was like, 'you have to meet my mom, she would love to meet you.’ So that was kind of what that song was about. By August 2011, Taylor had finished a 900 page book about the Kennedy women, wrote a Robert Kennedy quote on her arm, and visited JFK’s grave. By this point, it’s safe to assume that Taylor would’ve known how Robert and Ethel Kennedy met, ergo Starlight needs to have been written before August.

Cannonball: August 26, 2011 (Confirmed)

On August 26, Justin Bieber tweeted "#writing". The next day, Kuk Harrell tweeted ""Wow!! Got to see @justinbieber & @taylorswift13 write a song together last night!! SMASH!!!! SMASH!!! SMASH!!! Let's do it again Yall!!!"

Red (First Draft): September 8, 2011 (Confirmed)

Taylor: Red is a song I wrote halfway through this album, and it changed what this album became [...] because, to me, this song is very different, very descriptive, and it has an edge to it that, to me, kinda expanded what I wanted to do. Taylor: It was really one of those songs that made me think like, maybe I want to be expanding what I’m trying to do with my music, sonically. On September 8, 2011, Taylor writes in her diary: It was a long flight, but I’m so happy I chose to come home. Mostly because I wrote a song on the plane on the way home called ‘Red’. [...] In the evening I went to Nathan’s studio to record. When I played Red for him, he lost it. He absolutely freaked over the lyrics. I was so happy. As we started recording it, it got more and more awesome, with banjo and this affected vocal part that runs under the chorus going “re-e-e-e-e-d”. I’d love to name next album red. Scott came over because I called him and he was still working at the office. He said this song takes it to the next level. He lost it over this song. My mom loves it too. It’s so different than anything we’ve done. I can’t even tell you how alive and worthwhile I feel when I’m writing a new song and I finish it and people like it. It’s the most fulfilling feeling, like getting an A+ on report card. Recording again tomorrow.

October 4, 2011: Taylor tweets "Leaving Little Rock, headed to New Orleans. Writing a song on a moving bus."

Sad Beautiful Tragic: October 4, 2011 (Confirmed)

Taylor: Sad Beautiful Tragic is a song that I wrote while I was on tour, and I was on a tour bus that was moving, and I just started playing this really haunting, sad chorus, and it just, kind of was very simple, like “What a sad beautiful tragic love affair” and it was just reflecting on something that was lost, y'know, and you can’t get it back. And I went home and I called Nathan Chapman and said “Hey, I wrote a song. Please please please can we record today” and, of course he said yes, and we use that original demo on the album because it just came across so pure and raw Taylor: ‘Sad Beautiful Tragic’ is really close to my heart. I remember it was after a show and I was on the bus thinking about this relationship that ended months and months before. The feeling wasn’t sadness and anger or those things anymore. It was wistful loss. And so I just got my guitar and I hit on the fact that I was thinking in terms of rhyming; I rhymed magic with tragic, changed a few things and ended it with what a sad beautiful tragic love affair. I wanted to tell the story in terms of a cloudy recollection of what went wrong. It’s kind of the murky gray, looking back on something you can’t change or get back.

October 18, 2011: In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Taylor talks about her plans for TS4: “I’ve written 25 songs so far, so it’s coming along really well. I’ve been writing a lot, and I like to take 2 years to make a record. We’re at the end of year one and I still have a year left to go to write. It’s looking really great.” (Note: The amount of songs Taylor says she wrote for Red at different points doesn't add up, so give or take 5 songs)

Ronan: October 2011 (Inferring)

On October 21, 2011, Taylor invited Maya Thompson, Ronan's mom, to meet her backstage at her show. She didn't tell Maya that she had written a song for Ronan until September 2012, so it's possible Ronan wasn't written for another year. That being said, I lean towards it being written this month-- Taylor mentions having just written two songs at the end of the month, and Halloween was coming up.

October 30, 2011: Taylor writes in her diary: "I've written two songs in the last few days. I want to record them so bad, but my voice is shot from being so run down."

November 10, 2011: Taylor wins CMA's Entertainer of the Year and says "The reason I obsess over [performing songs] so much is that I obsess over writing them so much… With this next album, I'm so excited because I've been writing so much. We're still in the first gear of making it, so as we finish songs and demo them in my producer's basement, I can picture them being played on the stage."

Safe and Sound: November 19, 2011 (Confirmed)

The Civil Wars posted these two photos on instagram, with the captions dating the writing session to November 2011. The only time Taylor was in L.A (and not spending all day at an awards show) during November 2011 was the 19th. Taylor: When asked how writing a song for the movie came about, Swift said she received a call directly from the studio and subsequently devoured the books. "I immediately read the book in, like, two days and fell in love with it [...] When I got the call, I thought, from what I'd heard about the movie, 'It's an action movie, right? We're probably going to be writing a song that's like, "We're going to win!" ' And then I read the book, and I thought, 'No, we're going to have to write sort of a death lullaby, it's so different from what I thought.'"

December 5, 2011: Taylor gives an interview with MTV and says "I can't tell you [what emotions I'm writing about on TS4], because it's a secret. It will be unveiled when it all comes out, because they all seem to have a theme to them, the records that we've put out so far, and this one is no different. It's very different in what it's about, but it's no different in the fact that it has its own name."

Red (Second Draft): December 2011 (Inferring)

Scott Borchetta said there were three drafts of Red-- the first draft, in which Taylor wrote about in her journal in September, a second draft that with a more pop sound, and then a third where they called in a new producer. Borchetta says Taylor wanted the new producer to be Max Martin, but he likely wasn't available and they ended up going with Dan Huff, who has a producer credit on the version released in 2012. Scott Borchetta: Borchetta, the president of her record label, heard a version of her song “Red” produced by her usual collaborator Nathan Chapman. Borchetta says, “The song was brilliant–great melody. But I told them that the way it was recorded, guys, the production just doesn’t match the song. It needs a pop sound.” So Chapman and Swift asked Borchetta if they could take another crack at it. They did–and it was worse, Borchetta says, than the first pass. “And Taylor basically said, ‘All right, would you call Max [Martin]?'”(Note: Scott Borchetta has a habit of taking credit for things that were likely Taylor's idea, so take everything he says with a grain of salt)

State of Grace (Final Draft): December 2011 (Speculation)

On Red, Taylor has two Nashville studios credited. Pain In The Art, Nathan Chapman’s home studio, which Taylor and Nathan largely used for demo's and first drafts. The second studio is Blackbird Studios. On Red, there are five songs credited to Blackbird Studios: State of Grace, Red, Stay Stay Stay, Starlight, and Begin Again. Looking at the musicians credited, you can further divide it into two recording blocks: State of Grace and Stay Stay Stay, and Red, Begin Again, and Starlight. Red, Begin Again, and Starlight all have solid evidence of being reworked at a later date (more on that later). State of Grace, on the other hand, is a bit more speculative. Taylor has always talked about Red (the song), as a big sonic departure, something that sounded nothing like anything she'd written before... and it doesn't sound that different to State of Grace. Like, yeah, they're two different songs, but the stuff she cites as being revelations on Red are also found on State of Grace. So, it makes sense for State of Grace's production to have been retouched after Red.

Stay Stay Stay (Final Draft): December 2011 (Speculation)

State of Grace and Stay Stay Stay have identical studio personnel that are also unique from the rest of the album; Nick Buda, Chad Carlson, Eric Darken, Leland Elliott, and Matt Rausch all only have two credits on Red, and they're for State of Grace and Stay Stay Stay, so it makes sense that they were recorded around the same time. It also makes sense for Stay Stay Stay to have been retouched, seeing as it would've been written a year and a half before, and if it was after sessions wrapped for Speak Now in July 2010, possibly not even professionally recorded.

December 13, 2011: Taylor posts "Studio/birthday/new album/red shoes" from what looks like Blackbird Studios, and "Took a break from the studio to visit the label, where they gave me this!"

Red (Final Draft): December 2011 (Inferring)

Begin Again (Final Draft): December 2011 (Inferring)

As stated above, Red, Starlight, and Begin Again all have very similar studio personnel. In fact, Red and Begin Again are identical, meaning they were likely recorded around the same time. Taylor has also talked about how she kept putting Begin Again down and picking it back up again: "I wrote it in pieces-I'd start and then second-guess myself. I had to sort through my own insecurities." In August 2012, Taylor Nation posts a photo of Taylor playing guitar in a recording studio. The photo was definitely taken after December 2, 2011, when she cuts her bangs and starts straightening her hair. It appears she's recording in Blackbird Studios, which she stops recording in after January 2012, meaning this photo had to have been taken in December or January. The most likely song she's playing is Begin Again, which was recorded in Blackbird Studios, and heavily uses Cadd9, the chord she's playing in the photo.

Starlight (Final Draft): December 2011 (Inferring)

Starlight has slightly different studio personnel from Red and Begin Again, suggesting it was done at a slightly different time. However, there are still clues this Dan Huff got called in at a later date— the biggest one is the electric guitar is credited as "Conceived by Nathan Chapman, Played by Dann Huff" (@taylor-on-your-dash came up with the theory that Red, Starlight, and Begin Again being recorded at a later date-- go check her stuff out!)

December 2012: Taylor gives an interview to Harper's Bazaar: "As an artist you have to be really self-aware. As songwriter, especially [...] You need to be aware enough to catch yourself creating similar things to what you have created before and steer away from that. You have to grow, otherwise you will lose people's attention and you will get bored with yourself." So, will her fourth album, due later this year, be a major departure? "I think so," she says cautiously. "The tone is a little different. This one is focused on an all-encompassing, heartbreaking thing that happened, about the rise and fall of a relationship [...] I really, really, really, really want to nail this next record. I'm probably going to go into that semi- crazy, mumbling-to-myself-in-public, hysterically, ridiculously rambling, lyric-editing mode that I go into in the last six months of making a record. There are about 25 songs I have written so far, and the trick is going to be paring them down to the ones that will make this something I am more proud of than anything I have done before."

Girl At Home: January 2012 (Speculation)

Girl at Home is a little blip in the timeline-- it's the only song that was produced by Nathan Chapman in 2012. There's lots of ways you could speculate bout that-- perhaps she was trying to see how producing a pop song with Nathan would turn out, perhaps its evidence for the persistent rumors that Girl at Home is a demo. Either way, I'm inclined to put it as early in the timeline as possible. Recently, Nathan Chapman posted some behind the scenes photos of the Red and Speak Now sessions on instagram. The one below was likely taken while she was recording Girl at Home-- it shows Taylor in Nathan's home studio with bangs and straight hair, and the only song recorded in his home studio after she had cut her hair is Girl At Home. (She is also bundled up, adding credence to Girl At Home being recorded in winter. But then again, Taylor is fond of being bundled up, so I wouldn't read into it too much).

January 2012: Taylor decides to move to LA and work with new producers.

Taylor: "With Red, [Scott Borchetta] came to me in January and said, 'I think the album's finished.' This time, I said, 'No, it's not -- I need to keep writing.'" Taylor: "I turned in 20 songs and I had this immediate sinking feeling, this can’t be done, this can’t be it. I think the reason I said that was because I made the record exactly the same way I made the last three. I knew I hadn’t jumped out of my comfort zone, which at the time was writing alone and working with Nathan [Chapman]."

I Knew You Were Trouble (First Draft): January 2012 (Inferring)

Taylor got the idea for a "slow, sad thing" called Trouble "almost six months before [she] was scheduled to write with Max Martin." They first wrote together in late April, meaning Trouble was possibly conceived as early as October 2011. However, it seems like she didn't know she would write with Max Martin until December 2011 at the earliest, so i'm inclined to place this in January 2012, six months before they finish writing Trouble in June.

February 13, 2012: Taylor gives an interview with MTV: "So far, I've been writing so much in the last year and the label keeps telling me, 'All right, we're finished; all right, we're satisfied; OK, this is done now.' And then I just keep writing and I keep turning it in in different versions [...] I'm going to work on it until I literally have zero time left to work on it, because I'm having so much fun working on this album [...] I'm getting to work with people that I've always wanted to work with, from all different places in music. I'm trying to be as much of a sponge as possible. You have to evolve and try new things and change and that's what I've loved to do with this album."

Holy Ground: February 2012 (Confirmed)

Unfortunately we don’t know much about when Taylor wrote Holy Ground, besides the lover diaries dating it to February 2012.

Nothing New: February 29, 2012 (Confirmed)

In the below journal, Taylor mention writing Nothing New on the plane ride from Sydeny to Perth. She arrives at the Sydney Airport on February 29, and in the following journal entry talks about being in Perth on March 1.

March 2, 2012: Taylor writes in her diary "I’ve been thinking a lot about getting older and relevancy and how all my heroes have ended up alone. I wrote a song on the plane ride from Sydney to Perth on the appalachain dulcimer I bought the day of my flight. I bought it because Joni played on most of her blue record. I taught myself to play ‘A Case of You.’ Anyway, I wrote a song on it called “Nothin New” and it’s about being scared of aging and things changing and losing what you have. It says “I’m getting older and less sure of what you like about me anyway.” And in the chorus it says “How can a person know everything at 18, and nothing at 22? And will you still want me … when I’m nothing new.” It’s a really vulnerable song, but I think it’s important to say."

The Lucky One: Early March, 2012 (Confirmed)

Taylor: The Lucky One is a song that I wrote while I was in Australia. And it kind of talks about some of my fears, through telling the story of other people that I was inspired by. But, more than there stories being told I... I'm pretty much singing about what I'm scared of. Taylor was in Australia from March 1-14, 2012.

Apr 1, 2012: Taylor gives a radio interview and mentions being in the studio in the past week, likely recording Holy Ground and The Lucky One. (credit to @1989worldtour for finding the interview!)

April 1, 2012: Taylor does an interview with the Philippine Daily Inquirer: When you meet someone that you’re attracted to, do you go, “Here’s a song”? "That can happen. I get inspired by the smallest or the biggest things. You meet someone and you wonder if you’ll ever see them again. I could write so many songs about that. I have written so many songs about that. Wait till you hear my next record, it’s all about that."

April 2, 2012: Train tweets "Last night @taylorswift13 told me DRIVE BY is her favorite song right now. Took this long to get my speech back. Big deal 4 us! Thank u, T!"

Babe was written with Pat Monahan, the lead singer of Train. To me, this implies that they hadn't yet worked together-- Train seems genuinely surprised that Taylor likes their music.

April 5, 2012: In a brief interview with Rolling Stone, Taylor says: "I have the entire summer just to finish up the record, so that will be awesome [...] There are a few songs that are completely from another person's perspective [...] I really like the feeling of making little departures musically."

April 11, 2012: Taylor posts a picture from Dan Wilson's house with the caption "Recording the next album. So happy"

Treacherous: April 11, 2012 (Inferring)

Dan Wilson: With Taylor, we had been kind of circling around, very much aware of each other’s work for a while. We figured out these two days to work together and she came to my studio super excited and said, “I had an idea in the car.” And she sang me the first three or four lines of it and said, “I want to call it ‘Treacherous’ and maybe the chorus can go like this.” And we were writing the song in 10 minutes and she was just so full of excitement.

Come Back… Be Here: April 12, 2012 (Inferring)

CBBH was also co-written and produced by Dan Wilson. I’ve found a quote that starts popping up around August 2013 where he says they had scheduled two days to write back to back, but nothing that links to the original source. Dan Wilson (probably): We squeezed in two days, before a trip I was taking, and we did a song each day, totally countryside. But it was extremely inspiring. She gets such backhand appreciation from the press, but it's a bunch of bullshit. She's so spontaneous, and she was really on fire for the sessions we did together

Message in a Bottle: April 23, 2012 (Inferring)

Taylor: [Before writing WANEGBT] I was in the studio with [Max Martin and Shellback] and we were writing a completely different song, about like, liking someone who doesn't know you like them or something.

April 23, 2012: Taylor posts "Sitting in my kitchen. Listening to music. Don't want to go to bed. Was in the studio tonight. Writing tomorrow. Should go to bed. Ok I will"

We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together: April 24, 2012 (Inferring)

Max Martin: Me and Johan [Shellback] had our first date with her at Conway Studios. I was a little nervous, you know, the good kind of nervous. Maroon 5 was recording in the studio next door. This guy shows up, a friend of theirs. We literally haven't started the session yet. The guy says, "I heard the Taylor Swift's here. I gotta say hello". I was like, "Really?" and the guy says, "I totally know her, it's fine, we're friends". He walks in and it turns out that he didn't know her. And I started sweating cause I was vouching for that guy. He started talking about some ex-boyfriend of hers. It was really messy. He leaves and I apologize, but she was super cool, no problem at all. Then I asked what that was all about and she told me the story about this guy that she was dating. I can't remember exactly what she said, but she said, "One thing's for sure, we are never ever getting back together", and I said, "That's pretty harsh". She said, "No no, we are never ever ever getting back together". And we're laughing about it, saying, "That sounds like a song title". Then we started on something else. The next day, she said, "I thought about what you said", and she played us this idea that became 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together'. I was so mad at that guy who ruined our session, but it turned into love, cause it never would've happened if he hadn't walked in. (transcript by @taylor-on-your-dash) Taylor: It’s a definitive portrait of how I felt when I finally stopped caring what my ex thought of me. He made me feel like I wasn’t as good or as relevant as these hipster bands he listened to…So I made a song that I knew would absolutely drive him crazy when he heard it on the radio. Not only would it hopefully be played a lot, so that he’d have to hear it, but it’s the opposite of the kind of music that he was trying to make me feel inferior to.

May 15, 2012: Taylor posts "Eating cheeseburgers, scribbling on guitars, writing songs with @edsheeran :)" and Ed posts "In and out burger, defacing guitars and writing music with @taylorswift13 ;)"

Run: May 15, 2012 (Confirmed)

Ed: There’s also a brand new song me and Taylor wrote the first day we met called ‘Run’ that’s out with the new version of the record Taylor: We had both reached out to each other’s camps at the same time. I showed up at his hotel in Arizona and we just wrote songs all day.

Forever Winter: May 17, 2012 (Confirmed)

Taylor and Mark Foster, her co-writer, were photographed having lunch together. Mark Foster: It’s a really cool song, you know? We kind of just went into it casually, like let’s just jam and just have fun, and something really cool came out of it. It was a lot of fun working with her. She’s super talented. We'll see what happens with it

Everything Has Changed (First Draft): May 27, 2012 (Inferring)

Taylor: The first idea that hit me was this part of the song [...] there's a part on this song that goes 'I just want to know you better, know you better', and I got that idea while I was riding in the car with my friend Claire [Winters, probably], and she's talking about, like, 'Oh my God and then my sister says to me, this this this--' and she's like, 'What are you singing?' and I'm like [muffled] 'I just want to know you better--' and then the next day, like, I had demoed up the song with Ed, and she's like 'That's what you were singing in the car!' It's possible Taylor is flubbing the timeline a little bit, and actually came up with EHC while hanging out with Claire Winters on the 23rd, but it's also possible her and Claire hung out without posting it to Instagram.

Everything Has Changed (Final Draft): May 28, 2012 (Confirmed)

Ed: When I landed in Los Angeles to record [Run], it was like the day before, she just said “come round my house, we’ll jam,” or whatever, and we jammed and wrote Everything Has Changed. So those two songs were written probably in the space of two weeks. Ed again: She has a little Taylor guitar, she got it out and she's like, 'I had this idea for this song,' ... and she pretty much had the verse, bridge and chorus done, but we argued about that one chord: “I just want to know you, better know you” -- she didn't like that, and I kind of forced it upon her. It was quite a funny situation. It's like [we were] surrounded by Grammys; she has like seven or eight, and like, Billboard Awards and Songwriting Guild, and I'm like, 'this chord,' and she's like [pointing to her awards].

May 29, 2012: Taylor is photographed entering a recording studio with Ed Sheeran

The Last Time: May 30, 2012 (Inferring)

Gary Lightbody: Her and Ed were recording the song they did on the record together in Santa Monica, about two blocks away from where I am standing right now. Ed invited me, with Taylor’s permission, to come into the studio and say, “Hi.” I’d never met Taylor. She said she was a fan. Apparently, the night before, she and Ed had been playing and singing “Set the Fire to the Third Bar” together. It was lovely to hear that she knew our music, you know. I can’t remember if I was bold enough to ask if she wanted to work with me. But it might well have been me. Or if it was her who said, “Do you want to write a song together?” I can’t remember. We wrote “The Last Time” together and that was great. The three of us collaborated on it really well. Gary Lightbody: It was so fast. She works really fast. She’s extraordinary. We actually did that song, wrote it and recorded it in a day. And that was the version of it on the record, which is very rare. Normally you write and record something with somebody and then down the line they’ll record it, if you’re lucky. With her, the whole thing was done in nine hours. I hope we can do it again sometime!

May 31, 2012: Scott Borchetta tweets "Was with miss Swift yesterday... Omg... She is writing like crazy... I know it's hard to wait but I promise it will be worth it..."

22: June 1, 2012 (Confirmed)

Taylor wrote the song on a plane and immediately brought it to Max Martin and Shellback. She originally had a fairly anxious bridge that she cut, probably because it's a bit of a bummer, but it is an interesting thing to look at with the added context of Nothing New.

I Knew You Were Trouble (Final Draft): June 2, 2012 (Confirmed)

Taylor: I actually came up with the melody on piano, and brought it to Max Martin and Shellback and said, I want to finish this, and I want to make it sound as chaotic as that emotion felt. I’ll sing the bass line. I just want it to sound like this: poom poom poom poom poom. And they’re like, maybe we can infuse a little bit of dubstep. Taylor: I remember bringing in this slow, sad thing that I had written, called ‘I Knew You Were Trouble.’ I had originally called it ‘Trouble’. I was like, ‘I don't know if we could have some kind of intense bass drop or something, like dubstep is really awesome…’ And they were just like, ‘Yes, absolutely!’ And then Shellback was like, ‘In the verse, let's do this really frantic drum beat.’ And it just was something I would never have thought of; to make the beat of the verse really up-tempo, and then make the intensity drop off the chorus, and then have it build back up, and then have a production explosion at the end of the chorus. It was so thrilling! I couldn't believe the song started where it started and then their added ideas with production. They ended up seeping into my brain and I started thinking the way that I would hope they would think. I would write a verse and Max would be like, ‘This is this many syllables, can you shorten it and make it more succinct, but convey the same message?’ And I would just go off into a corner and I felt like I had like this amazing assignment. So the challenge of it was so thrilling for me.

June 6, 2012: Taylor posts "It's been a wonderful week in the studio. I'm so excited about so much."

June 10, 2012: Taylor writes in her diary "I’ve been in the studio non stop. This week I was in with Max Martin and Johan Shellback, the guys I wrote ‘Getting Back Together’ with. The first day, I had to do this corporate performance for an arena full of managers [...] When I finished there, I got on the plane and this idea came to me “I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling 22.” I wrote the entire chorus on the plane ride to LA. When I landed, I went straight to the studio and played it for Max and Johan. They loved it. I was so excited. I wrote 22 about how much fun I’ve been having this summer and this year in general. It’s so carefree and sounds like a summer anthem. I was floating on a cloud after we wrote it. The next day I brought them a chorus called 'Trouble’ that’s about how I should’ve known what I was getting into. We came back to 'Trouble’ and it turned out to be absolutely amazing. It’s so edgy and unexpected. It’s almost dub step. My friends love that one the most. I love writing so much. It’s the only thing that makes total sense to me. If I missed a day in the studio, I’d be so mad at myself. God I’ve been having such a beautiful life lately. I can’t believe it. It’s like there’s magic in the air."

Babe: Summer 2012 (Speculation)

Pat Monahan: When he told Taylor that he wanted to collaborate with her on a song for Train's next album, she asked him to write a song with her for her album, Red. The track didn't make the album, but Pat says eventually, when Taylor puts out a deluxe re-released version of Red, "the song, I think, will be on there [...] It's a song called 'Babe,'" continues Pat. "So it's her song; I was just lucky enough to be a part of it with her, and I'm gonna ask the same of her in the future. Pat could mean two albums when he says "He wanted to collaborate with her on a song for Train's next album"; California 37, released April 13, 2012, or Bulletproof Picasso, released September 12, 2014. Either one is a bit of a stretch. California 37 would've probably been wrapped sometime in early 2012-- February, at latest. Taylor was still working in Nashville in January, but she was in LA in February, meaning it is possible for them to have worked together then. BUT we also have that Train tweet in April ("Last night @taylorswift13 told me DRIVE BY is her favorite song right now. Took this long to get my speech back. Big deal 4 us! Thank u, T!") where they seem surprised that she likes Drive By, which was released in January-- before they would've worked together. On the flip side, it would be weird to not only start writing for Bulletproof Picasso when they had just released an album a couple months before, but to be reaching out to collaborate. So like, really just pick whatever feels less weird for you.

The Very First Night: Summer 2012 (Speculation)

Espionage, the production team behind this, is based in New York, and are Train's longtime collaborators, meaning Taylor likely started working with them on Pat Monahan's recommendation.

July 9, 2012: Taylor posts on Facebook: "Oh hey! I'm writing you from Nashville, where I just sat in a big room with a lot of people and made a lot of decisions about a lot of things happening very soon. And as vague as that sentence was, I think you know what it means. Stuff is about to happen. And I love you more than ever. Taylor"

#txt*#timeline*#I’ve tried to add all my sources but if you see something and want clarification feel free to shoot me an ask!

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