#loved and have a long lasting relationship which ellie has taken it in internalized it and really and truly fucking believes that now? >__<
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❛ ♡ ❜ ˚ 。 · closed starter for @killforyou .
love is cruel . that much she knows — that much does not require any surmise . patriarch determining he is not ready for the responsibilities that a family , a wife who possessed an adoration to the point of willing to deconstruct terra firma itself for him & a saccharine baby girl with rotund apples of cheeks , is cruel ( finding out he has made a new life for himself on first born's fifteenth birthday is , as well . she is not known for hating other corporeal animas , but there is a girl out there who has the felicitous family noelle craves & she cannot help the way she wishes it was her who had been left behind ) cruel is matriarch taking out the leftover ire from husband's abandonment on adolescent who returns home late one night , gripping tow – headed blonde tresses , once delicate ( had mother ever been delicate with daughter ? had noelle always received this treatment ? she could not tell , proceedings blurring into convoluted chaos ) palm striking countenance so harsh , vats of concealer is applied when aurora breaks . cruel is this moment , football stadium fluorescents & waxing crescent moon blending as one , fabricating dyad even when they do not wish to be , articulation transitioning from somber to vehemence rather instantaneously . cruel is individual herself — had been declared inadequate since the day she exited her primordial pool , but that does not quell the eroded cardiomyctye , nor does it intercept an already calloused zephyr becoming suspended within pulmonary cavity , the need to singe milky epidermis , a tradition individual had adopted when the melancholy was too much for lithe framework too carry on shoulders . doleful hues broadening in bewilderment , congenitally roseate petals are parted , encephalon racing with varying notions — what did i do ? what could i have done differently ? what would make him stay ? what did i do ? ❛ you — i wouldn't even be that upset if you had waited ! why did you have to tell me this now ? ❜ it's a prevarication , she knows that it is — but when words do not descend from other's brims , saline droplets begin to accumulate within waterline . cranium bobbing from left to right , metacarpus ascending to halt any further damage . ❛ good luck on your game . ❜ timbre is monotone , appendages opting to maneuver around sports field , despondency cutting through bones as linoleum aperture displays a wash room that is void of any essence , save for femme & meilleur ami . phalanges gripping at porcelain , a whimper giving way to a sob .
#❛ ♡ ❜ ˚ ｡ ・ ❪ 𝐧𝐨𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐞 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐤. ❫ ░ 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐪𝐮𝐲 .#tw / abuse#tw / self harm mention#so i love the way i wrote this first of all!#like i think it was established that they're both cheerleaders and have been since they were little babies! it's something they share with#one another so that is why they're CO CAPTAINS! 🫶🏽#and i think this takes place moments before a super important game with scouts in the crowd so this could not have come at the worst time?#and i have so much i want to say about noelle because i've thought of her so much? >__< i think she will find out she is a lesbian but until#then she puts so much weight on her relationships because she is cassie howard down? she has this desire and need to be loved and the sad#part is she really only feels unconditional love when she's around aubrey and her pas boyfriends who worship the ground she walks on because#she's the sweetest girl ever really? her and zoë are so tied for best girls like she really and truly is season one cassie howard.#but then for reasons beyond her control they all break up with her and seemed so frightened by her and really and truly upset with her but#she doesn't understand why at all and it comes so fucking randomly too which is why she feels so unloved as you can tell by this starter#and her mom being abusive doesn't help at all like noelle was told she wasn't enough since the day she was born and her mom takes all her#anger out on noelle and says the most horrible things so she's probably been told that she'll never be enough or keep anyone or really be#loved and have a long lasting relationship which ellie has taken it in internalized it and really and truly fucking believes that now? >__<#when in all actuality she has someone who loves her so much and nearly kills anyone who stands in her way about her noelle which when you#really think about it noelle coming up to her on her why doesn't anyone love me it's so SAD because aubrey does and she always has!#and i feel like this is by far the worst she's kind of been over this like she was tore up about each guy *yes* but this has been happening#so much it's kind of her breaking point? and he was one of the sweetest most understanding guys she ever really dated so like listen listen.#in some ways you could say that noelle *loved* him and when she experiencing those feelings of love she doesn't shy away from it because she#knows what it is like to feel unloved and like no one on planet earth cares so when she feels that love she shows it off screams it to every#single person she knows even gets the shit tatted! so this npc boyfriend probably has the worst injuries aubrey has *ever* inflicted?#eee i'm already invested! 🤍🤍🤍 so excited for my aubelle we love you aubelle! 🥹🥹🥹
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Internal Suffering
Vicar Max x Fem! Captain
Warnings: Language.
Word Count: 2,756
“Captain. You’re better than this.”
“Is she okay?”
“Should we get SAM to break open the door?”
“Damn. No amount of alcohol in the world could drown out what she probably saw.”
“ERROR. Status of Captain’s door...LOCKED.”
Max finally held up a hand to silence the rest babbling crew that was expressing their concern for their Captain from where they sat around the kitchen table. They had known something was wrong the moment that Ellie, Max, and the Captain returned to the ship after they had been out for almost two days. She didn’t say much at all, only offering a brief hello before snatching a drink from the fridge and taking a shower before keeping herself buried away in her quarters.
She was bruised and had minor injuries in various places. Not to mention that she hadn’t slept in almost 48 hours. But it was clear that was the least of things on her mind.
Max had managed to convince her to open the door long enough for him to check on her, which didn’t amount to much considering that she practically yelled at him to get out and leave her alone for a while. Max usually wouldn’t give up so easily, but he could tell that (despite her angry tone) she wasn’t mad.
She was hurt.
She was completely rattled by what they had seen today. An ugly painting of horrific images and gruesome smells that not even the hottest of showers could wash away. It would haunt her for weeks to come, and on top of that, she was worried about how this was affecting her crew.
Thankfully, she had taken Max and Ellie along today, which made her feel a bit better considering they were two of the more thicker skinned of the group. Still, she felt guilty for exposing them to that.
Max and Ellie gave the crew a brief rundown of what had happened. While they were sickened by it, they were more worried about the Captain.
“Come on. We just want to know if she’s okay.” Felix pleaded.
“She’s just seen probably the worst that the colony has to offer,” Ellie huffed; “I’d be worried if she was okay.”
Max sighed heavily. He was beyond concerned. It wasn’t like you at all to shut out the crew like this. It wasn’t like you to shut him out. He was afraid that this had pushed you over the edge.
“She wishes to be by herself,” Max announced; “We should all give her some space and let her work it out.”
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea, Mr. Vicar.” Parvati replied.
“Yeah, I don’t think she ought to be alone after seeing something as traumatic as you’re saying it was.” Nyoka detested.
Max shook his head.
“I know. But she doesn’t want to talk to us. We don’t need to push her.” Max pointed out.
Felix looked stunned at that, his eyes widening.
“She must be really shaken up if she won’t even talk to Max.” He said, clearly alarmed.
While Felix’s statement had innocent intentions, it caused a sting in Max’s chest. It was true that the Captain always seemed to flock to Max when she needed to talk. It was a mixture of things really. He was a professional when it came to listening to confessions, but he was even more comforting being as he was her boyfriend. She never felt like she couldn’t go to him when she needed him until now.
It was killing him that she was closing herself off to him.
“She’ll be alright. Give her a couple days...or weeks. She’ll feel better when we get this job done.” Ellie stated.
Max sure hoped that Ellie was right. He wasn’t going to be able to stand it if the Captain never got over this. For now, all he could do was keep his arms open to her for when she was ready. Or for when he knew she couldn’t take it anymore.
The crew dispersed reluctantly to finish out their chores to close out the day, the Captain weighing heavily on their minds. Max went to take a shower to wash off the blood (some his and some not his), dirt, and sweat from his body. He took a moment to reflect on what he had seen earlier, realizing that he hadn’t given himself a moment to process everything. He wasn’t quite like Ellie Fenhill who preferred to drink herself into oblivion until her mind was too foggy to remember much of it. He’d rather come to terms with it on his own time.
Max had killed more people that day than he had the entire time he had been traveling with you. The strung out marauders and the doped up test subjects were probably the most terrifying people he had ever encountered. They were basically soul ridden beings with no sense of purpose or morale. They were just blood thirsty, violent animals that were once loving people.
That was the scariest thing imaginable.
Max stood under the stream of water until it threatened to turn cold, prompting his exit. He changed into a pair of clean clothes before leaving the bathroom, debating on what he should do next. By the time he had freshened up, everyone else had turned in for the night. The only sounds were the humming and singing around the ship, as well as Felix’s beloved Tuesday night adventure serial coming from his cabin.
Max eyed his own cabin, the only one with the door open and the lights turned on. Max chuckled to himself as he entered. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had actually spent an extended amount of time in his cabin. Ever since establishing a serious relationship with the Captain, he found himself staying in her room pretty much always. Her cabin was much larger than his, and despite the fact that her bed was exactly the same as his, he was convinced that it was comfier.
Maybe because he always had someone he loved snuggled up to him at the end of every day.
He ran a hand through his damp hair to somewhat even it out. It always seemed to have a mind of its own when water dripped from his graying hair. She had always told him that she liked seeing his hair somewhat out of order, which was why she was likely the only person who had ever seen his hair unkempt.
He wasn’t too keen on the idea of sleeping alone, considering he had gotten so used to having her with him. But if she didn’t want him, then he would respect her desires. He bit the inside of his cheek in disapproval when he tried to stretch out onto his bunk. He sank into the mattress that hadn’t been used in quite some time, but it didn’t feel the same.
His entire cabin just didn’t have the same comfort that hers did. Although, it wasn’t her cabin that he found comfort in.
It was her.
Every other thought was occupied by his Captain. He wondered what she was doing as he lay there awake, worrying himself beyond measure. He was beginning to go against his own word, tempted to go to her even if she had pushed him away. She was struggling right now. She was suffering.
He couldn’t just let the woman he loved be in pain like that.
He got up from his bed, quietly going down the stairs to the Captain’s door. The red light above her door indicated that it was still locked, and he couldn’t get in unless she opened it from inside or ADA unlocked it for him. It was awfully quiet from inside the Captain’s quarters, and he hoped that she was just asleep.
He traveled down to the ship’s computer asking ADA nicely to unlock the Captain’s bedroom. ADA, however, almost always gave Max a run for his money.
“I cannot take orders from anyone other than Captain Hawthorne.” ADA informed the vicar.
He groaned.
“I know, ADA, but I’m worried about her. I just need to get into her room.” Max explained.
He always felt so stupid arguing with a machine. Although, ADA was likely light years smarter than he was.
“I can only take orders from Captain Hawthorne. You are not Captain Hawthorne.” ADA replied.
Max grumbled to himself. He’d have to take a different approach.
“Well...can you at least tell her I want to speak with her?” Max questioned.
“The Captain gave me direct instructions not to converse with her unless there was an emergency. Is this an emergency?” ADA acquired.
“No...” Max responded gruffly. He was a little surprised that the Captain had taken so many steps to avoid anyone from seeing her; “How would I go about unlocking her door myself?”
“Hypothetically, her door would automatically unlock if I entered a rest cycle. But that requires my restart button to be push-”
Suddenly, ADA’s screen went dark as Max put her into a manual rest cycle. The Captain usually ordered ADA to take a rest cycle overnight anyway unless something with the ship went wrong, so Max didn’t feel bad for shutting the computer up for a bit.
He commuted back to the Captain’s door, the doors whirring open to reveal what appeared to be an empty room. The Captain wasn’t sitting at her desk or laying in her bed, and she appeared to be nowhere to be found. Just as Max went to panic, he heard a sound.
It was a soft noise that he would’ve missed if the room hadn’t been as quiet as it was. He followed the sound of sniffling over to the far corner of the room behind her bunk.
The Captain was backed into the corner, knees huddled up to her chest with her head buried behind them. Her towel from her earlier shower was still wrapped around her naked body, indicating that she hadn’t even gotten dressed afterwards. Her skin was dry now, and her hair was just barely wet as if she had been there the entire time. She raised her head from her knees when she felt his presence, revealing her reddened, watery eyes and blotchy cheeks from her hours of crying.
Max’s heart broke at the sight of his Captain falling to pieces like this. She was hands down the strongest, most confident person that he knew. He always reminded her how proud of her he was for always being the bigger person and doing what was right. Maybe that was his mistake. Perhaps he had made her feel like she had to be at her best all the time.
She looked at him through bleary eyes, a fresh set of tears falling down her cheeks. Her voice cracked as she spoke, her tone thick with sobbing.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you.” She apologized, almost choking on her cries.
Immediately, Max was sitting at her side, her head falling onto his chest as she wailed. He eventually brought her into his lap to hold her close, rubbing her back up and down and kissing her temple. He hushed her, hating the feeling in his gut every time she sobbed out again. Her face was buried into the soft material of his shirt, her tears staining it. Her arms and legs were freezing from being exposed to the cold air of her quarters for so long without clothes, Max’s hands rubbing up and down to provide her some warmth.
“It’s alright, love. I’m here.” He hummed, holding the back of her neck in his hand.
“It was horrible. I’ve never seen anything like that,” She cried; “I don’t know how Spacer’s Choice could ever be capable of something like that.”
“Spacer’s Choice is arguably the most powerful corporation in the colony,” Max spoke; “The stronger the company, the more room there is for catastrophic events.”
The Captain sat up from his chest, leaning against Max’s leg that he had hiked up for her to lean on.
“I fucking hate the Board,” She hissed; “If I have to personally put a bullet in the skull of every single person involved then I swear to Law I’ll do it.”
Max was alarmed by her harsh words, his hands coming to her face to wipe away her tears.
“Captain. You’re better than this,” He remarked; “What’s the number one rule you always tell us? Try to talk it out before pulling the trigger.”
The Captain shook her head. Her tears had dried, but the anger coursing through her was giving her more energy than she had in days.
“It’s becoming obvious that doesn’t always work. I don’t care if I have to wipe out every soul in Byzantium if it means overthrowing the Board.” She growled.
The last thing that Max ever wanted was for the Captain’s heart of gold to be hardened by all the things she had seen. In the beginning, the Captain had the most hope for the colony’s revival. Now though, her hope was diminishing with each new discovery she made.
He didn’t want her to become a lost soul the way that he had been for so long.
“What happened to my darling Captain? This isn’t you.” Max stated.
“I want the Board out of the system. Halcyon’s never going to make it with them around.” She replied in fury, ignoring his question.
“Captain, I-”
“I personally want to throw Sophia Akande out of an airlock.” She went on.
“Listen to me, this isn’t-”
“I’d like to throw her in a cell and pump her full of drugs just like-”
“Stop,” Max cut her off; “This isn’t how you do things. I know this isn’t how you want to do things.”
She finally let her tense shoulders relax for a second. Her eyes falling downward, her hands fiddling with the edge of her towel.
“I know,” She whispered out; “I’m just tired of seeing so many people get hurt. Earth was never like this...not really.”
Max felt relief. Now she was beginning to sound like herself again. He pushed her hair behind her ear to reveal her pretty, but tired face. He caressed her face with his hand, her cheek resting in his palm.
“If you keep doing things the way you have been, taking things day by day...then we’re going to be fine,” Max said; “I believe in you. I believe in us.”
She nodded, his hand falling to her waist and rubbing through her towel.
“What do I do now?” She asked.
Max smiled softly.
“For now, let’s get you in bed. We can figure everything else out in the morning.” Max said, kissing the Captain’s knuckles in a gentle manner.
“Okay.” She replied.
She had to admit, it felt nice to have someone else giving orders for once.
Sleeping the rest of the night away was sounding really good to the Captain right about now. Without really giving it a second thought, the Captain let her towel fall so she could get dressed. She caught the way his eyes lit up at her naked frame, a blush evident on his face as he looked over her. She smirked a little, the first real positive emotion she’d had all day.
“You’re blushing, Vicar.” She teased,
His grin was blinding, as he pulled his leg in more to bring you in closer.
“It’s hard not to,” He purred; “Beautiful...”
She kissed him like she meant it. His hands were warm on her exposed skin as he touched her the way he had dozens of times before. She ran her fingers through his hair, his smirk showing on her lips.
“I’m here for you. I love you.” He rumbled deeply.
“I love you.” She returned.
Max guided her up from the floor, wincing at the way her joints cracked from being uncomfortable for so long. He got her into a shirt to sleep in, bringing her over to her bed and getting her comfortable up against him. It didn’t take her long to fall asleep. The feel of Max next to her and the softness of the mattress under her was enough to send her straight to sleep. Max was tired too, but he wanted to make sure she was okay before he got any sleep.
He knew she wasn’t totally back to normal. It’d be a while before she felt like herself fully again. But he didn’t care how long he had to wait.
He’d always be there for her.
#vicar max x reader#Vicar Max#vicar max fanfiction#vicar max x female captain#vicar max x you#vicar max x female reader#maximillian desoto#the outer worlds#the outer worlds fanfiction#the outer worlds vicar max#vicarfelix
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An Analysis of Ellie
In honor of The Last Of Us Day, I’m finally gonna drag out this headcanon I’ve had in my drafts forever. If you choose to read this, good luck because it’s a long time.
Of course, SPOILERS AHEAD.
So, this all started with me thinking about how Ellie has suffered from survivor’s guilt ever since she discovered her immunity, when she was meant to die with her girlfriend/best friend Riley.
In that moment, Ellie had already embraced death and wanted to share it with her loved one, but that was robbed from her. She continued to live while forced to watch who might have been the first person she ever loved turn from infection. Ellie had no explanation for why that gift of immunity had been given to her. She had that gift thrust upon her by forces outside of her control. Ellie had to contend with her new existence as someone immune to the infection that had torn apart Earth’s reality, trapped in a paradox as a young teenage girl in a post apocalyptic world, until Marlene relieved her of that pressure by giving her life meaning, by giving purpose to her immunity and bestowing an important identity upon her: the savior of the human race.
Before all that, Ellie had always been just a number. She was just an orphan kid in a sea of other faceless, nameless kids in a military boarding school, without a future or special kind of destiny in a bleak world without any real meaning. Suddenly, she was a savior for all humanity and tasked with the tremendous responsibility of staying alive. She had to contend with her life having more value than others, seeing people sacrificing themselves over and over again, for her, when she had lived as a nobody for all her life until that point when everything changed.
I can imagine that that was a lot for Ellie to deal with as a teenager, a key developmental time in her life when she is just learning who she is as a person. A lot of her identity was based on not having an identity. Being trained and destined to be a nameless soldier. So when that identity was called into question, when she was smacked in the face with immunity to a virus that killed her best friend and numerous people on the planet, she needed the absurdity of her existence to be reigned in by her new title of savior of the human race.
During her journey with Joel, while the player mostly experienced the story and struggle of Joel, Ellie was struggling with her own internal issues as the secondary character. She mainly dealt with the loss of her innocence but she also still carried within her a crippling survivor’s guilt. This is very apparent after the death of Tess. In that pivotal scene in Part 1, Tess made it abundantly clear that the only reason why she was sacrificing herself was because of Ellie’s immunity, to the point of physically grabbing Ellie by the arm and pointing to the point of infection, relegating Ellie to just her immunity. Of course it wasn’t Tess’s intention to do that, but one can only wonder how Ellie absorbed that moment, another moment that helped her in defining herself. Tess wasn’t risking her life to save Ellie the person. She sacrificed herself for the immunity, the potential cure Ellie carried within her.
This assisted Ellie in defining herself by her immunity. Instead of thinking about herself and how she related to the world around her with all the contradictions of her childhood, and the relationships she formed with Joel and Sam, the people in that world, it was easier to just soldier through life with the sole goal of fulfilling her destiny. Saving the human race.
Then came the turning point in her life, when her identity was stripped from her by the very person she had come to trust and love the most.
In a way, Ellie had her autonomy taken from her by Joel and had to come to grips with that, the fact that Joel loved her and yet, hurt her deeply as a result of that love, without truly acknowledging it. In making this ultimate decision about her life for her, Joel triggered her survivor’s guilt and Ellie had no way of expressing it, 1. Because Joel lied to her about the situation and forced the conversation to be buried in that lie, and 2. Because even if she gathered the courage to confront him about the lie, she didn’t really have the cognitive ability at the time to express herself fully, to tell him exactly what was wrong with it. And maybe on some level, she didn’t really want to have the conversation and finally clarify the unspoken truth. If she did initiate the conversation, how could she be angry at him when his defense is that he did what he did out of love? What defense would an average teenager have against a parent making that statement in one of many common situations that could occur in normal settings?
Because of the decision that Joel made, he was able to be content with his surrogate daughter, living his best life in a way, while Ellie was devastated in the aftermath. And if he did notice her inner turmoil, he never addressed it. She was probably subtly carrying around that guilt with her for years. It might have even bothered her or made her hesitant to indulge in the many positive aspects of being alive: developing friendships, romantic relationships, normal childhood things. It wasn’t until Ellie was allowed to stew on it, contemplate everything and allow the guilt to fester within her that she was able to finally muster up the courage to have that difficult conversation with Joel.
In yet another pivotal scene, this time in Part 2, she gave him another chance to confess to what she suspected was a lie for multiple years when she was met with another trigger of her survivor’s guilt, during the reluctant excursion she embarked upon with Joel in search of strings for the guitar he made for her. In that scene, she questions him, counters his excuses and challenges him. Ellie gave Joel the chance to be honest with her. And his choice was to dig his heels in deeper, lying to her face once again. When watching Ellie’s expressions after Joel silenced her protests, so much can be seen in the way she looks at him for a moment.
She looks at him and thinks of how many things he has done to make her happy, out of love for her, and the immense contradiction she feels with those acts of love when compared to the greatest pain he inadvertently inflicted on her as well as the continuation of that pain through him perpetuating the lie. She gave him another chance and he betrayed her trust again. When Ellie looks away from Joel, her expression then reveals her innermost thoughts. Her eyes search the void between them to see that Joel will never admit to the lie and the only way for her to reinforce what she believes is the real truth is for her to seek out the answers herself. So she does.
When he did finally confess to everything, it broke her with not only how indifferent he was to it, but how he had destroyed any chance she could have of fulfilling her purpose. It possibly even reaffirmed the suspicions in the back of her mind that questioned his love for her due to how much he had hurt her without apologizing even once for it and how much he had taken from her in the process. The validity of all their past interactions were suddenly called into question as well, because although Joel did those things to make Ellie happy, every happy moment was always undercut by the tremendous amount of guilt she carried that outweighed the happier moments for her as her entire life was worthless to her, from the moment Joel removed her from that hospital.
After that revelation, her sense of self was thrown into limbo. Ellie severed her relationship with Joel and went back to Jackson with no idea of how to truly carry on with her life and live with herself after that. In order to appease herself in some way, she regained some type of control in navigating their relationship from that point on. Before, their relationship hinged entirely on how Joel wanted to interact with her, with him approaching her to progress their father-daughter relationship after he removed her agency by making choices for her. Post their argument at St. Mary’s, it’s important to note that Ellie assumed control and eliminated that progression entirely. A consolation prize, a reclamation of her agency in life. But it was never enough.
Regardless, things continued on like that for some time, but then something happened that shifted the trajectory of Joel and Ellie’s relationship. On a night when Ellie attended a party, she happened to find herself possibly feeling grateful for being alive when her longtime best friend expressed interest in her and made an advance toward her.
After Joel intervened in a conflict between her and a dumbass bigot, she angrily went to confront him. She continued to exercise her control in their relationship by coming down hard on him. Her anger about everything was very apparent during their confrontation later that night and one can see that she still felt like her life was technically meaningless without her death for the sake of a cure for the salvation of the human race. During that scene she finally expresses exactly how she feels, what she hadn’t been able to articulate for years.
It’s important to note that before she says any of that, Joel disarms her. Joel asked her about the simplest of things, if Dina was her girlfriend. Then he placed an importance on her existence, by saying that Dina would be lucky to have her, which I believe Ellie thought about for a split second. She ruminated on her feelings, on how a potential romantic relationship with Dina made her feel happy to be alive, as it wouldn’t have been possible if she had died in the hospital. And this thought, that Joel could have been right to save her, that she could possibly agree with him, caused her survivor’s guilt to spiral and she lashed out at him with all the emotions she felt since he first agreed to smuggle her across the country years ago.
Then, in a turning point in their dynamic, Joel is finally forthright with her when he responds to her frustration by stating that he would do it all over again. As a result, for the first time ever, Ellie feels as though she can finally understand his motivations and the validity of his love for her. In his honesty, he tells her that her life does have value to him, even if she can’t see that herself. And although she will never forgive him for his transgression or fully understand it because she doesn’t see her own value as a person aside from the potential cure she carries within herself along with her immunity, she realizes that she can’t stop herself from wanting... From wanting to live, from wanting to experience the joys of life, wanting to just be human. Joel introduces a new purpose to her life, to simply exist without purpose and be herself and find value in her life as just a person living it. She can’t erase the past and change Joel’s choices that directly affected her in the end, but she can choose to try his suggestion. To live life, despite her guilt and despite how afraid she feels to do it. This late night moment of vulnerability between a father and daughter opens the door to them possibly repairing what was broken 4 years ago.
Her entire world is then shattered when Abby slams that door shut by killing Joel. Just when Ellie was setting down the path of finding the strength to move on and repair their relationship. Her survivor’s guilt was triggered and sent into overdrive by this event, because once she discovered that the people who killed Joel were ex-Fireflies, she came to the conclusion that Abby killed Joel in retaliation to him removing Ellie from the hospital and killing any hopes of a cure, along with all the Fireflies in the hospital. This essentially caused Ellie to believe that Joel was killed because of her in a roundabout way, as he would have still been alive if he hadn’t saved her, further enforcing her belief that her ultimate destiny in life was to die in that hospital. In Ellie’s mind, Joel died for a pointless reason, because she viewed herself as worthless.
Since she and Joel were the only ones who carried the secret of what really happened at St. Mary’s, there was no one else who could blame her or punish her for his death. Abby punished someone who didn’t deserve the blame and let Ellie go, leaving her to deal with the aftermath and that survivor’s guilt. In Ellie’s mind, it should have been her, but there was no way for her to have swapped herself in Joel’s place. So she punished herself in a different way. This sends her down her path of addiction to self-destruction.
Ellie had no way of punishing herself for her immunity for all those years, for surviving while others died for her. Abby provided an outlet for this desire. Ellie pursued Abby under the guise of getting justice for Joel but more can be ascertained from her constant push to find Abby, in her constantly doing things that go against her better nature, committing horrible acts and torturing people, debasing herself and pushing away those who love her or even putting them in danger while simultaneously traumatizing herself all at once. With every murder she committed, with every wound she sustained, she was punishing herself for being alive.
Each wound she suffered during that pursuit was like a high for her, an adrenaline rush. Each time she damaged her mental state even further with a new murder of one of Abby’s friends, she reinforced the belief that she deserved all of this for surviving. She deserved all the pain for being the cure, for being immune and benefiting from it while the world and everyone in it suffered. This is why Ellie can’t let go, even after her first encounter with Abby.
It was easy for Ellie to spiral in that self-destructive cycle. She punished herself for Joel’s death by pursuing Abby, which caused her closest friends to suffer because they were connected to her hunt for justice. Even when it all seemed to be over and Ellie tried to change. Tommy nearly died and wound up crippled and separated from his wife because of her and even JJ wound up without a father due to Jesse dying while helping her in her pursuit of Abby. This all contributed to her revisiting the same destructive path when Tommy accused her of not following through after all he had lost for her. Tommy started her self-punishment with that accusation. And once Ellie had the chance to think it all over, it was easy for her to return to the same bad habits. This is why she leaves and continues to pursue Abby, steeling herself against a near-fatal abdominal injury, doing whatever it takes to get to her, lying to herself this time, by telling herself all the while that it is in service of Joel. To repay his life that was taken from him. To even out the injustice.
Ellie realizes this lie when she is mere seconds away from exacting her revenge by drowning Abby in the ocean. Joel’s face flashes across her mind, of him during that night when he told her that her life had value. She realizes in that moment that killing Abby will not bring her peace, because the motivation behind the act is a lie. It will not give her life value or meaning, or purpose. Because her life already has value. Outside of a cure, outside of her immunity, outside of her saving humankind. Her life has value because of who she is, not what she can give to the world. And Ellie finally realizes that she must accept this to be whole. Killing Abby won’t help her do this...so she lets her go. She watches the boat leave as she sits in the ocean tides ebbing and flowing around her, thinking of how broken she is, how much she has lost and if she can bring herself back from the brink to find value in the meaningless existence she believed her life was for so long.
When she revisits the farm and contemplates all this while holding a guitar that she’ll never be able to play again, she recalls that memory, when Joel reminded her of her value. In that final scene, she realized that Joel was the first person in her life who didn’t see her for her immunity. Joel saw Ellie for who she was and saw value in her as a person. To such a degree that he was willing to risk all of humanity to keep her alive. She was then able to forgive him and know that he truly did love her for her, something no one else had ever done before him. And if he could love her for her, maybe she could learn to do the same.
#the last of us day#the last of us#tlou#the last of us part 2#tlou2#ellie tlou#joel tlou#riley tlou#dina tlou#headcanon
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Thoughts on The Last Of Us Part II
WRITING (creative process)
the game’s storyline is straight to the point, you can see from the trailer that it’s going to be a timeline about revenge. the whole game happens around joel’s death in the beginning and I guess that’s the whole reason why people are upset. but guess what? neil druckmann’s goal was to make you upset, angry and nostalgic. he accomplished his goal and that’s why you’re feeling the way you are.
you not liking the the way things went down does not mean the game’s writing is awful, it just means you were expecting something and got another. not liking something isn’t a crime and it’s totally ok as long as you respect the creators and don’t use your hate to put others down, it’s a valid opinion and that’s it.
what makes a story good is the writing and the thought put into it to make the player/reader/viewer feel a certain way, and the developers did an incredible job to do that. we feel frustrated, anxious and weird the entire gameplay and that’s exactly what they wanted from us, which means they won. I’ll talk more about my opinion on the storyline far ahead.
the graphic visuals of this game are RIDICULOUS, they’re perfect. every detail is insane to look at, they worked so hard to get it right and it was so worth it. every time I entered a new scenario I would just go into photo mode and appreciate the art because that’s what makes the game unforgettable and groundbreaking. the red lighting scenes were so perfectly made and so badass, the sky when ellie goes outside the farm with JJ is breathtaking just like every other view in the game. by far the most beautiful game I’ve ever had the honor to play.
STORYLINE (joel’s death)
the first game gave us a story about love and hope, making us guide joel into taking ellie to the fireflies looking for a cure based on ellie’s immunity. we spend the whole game thinking we’d get to the fireflies, make a cure and live happily ever after but that never happened in those terms. the gameplay made us slowly fall in love with joel and ellie as characters, joel for his tough personality that would fade under the influence of a little girl and ellie for her nativity and innocence as a young teenager who really wants to help other people by making a cure. that’s the whole situation of it, joel getting attached to ellie while she developed a paternal affection for him but in the end joel ends up doing an unforgivable thing, basically destroying the hope for a cure and ruining all hope for the world to heal from the outbreak, so he decides to lie to ellie blaming the fireflies for everything so he doesn’t lose her trust and love.
I do understand liking and loving joel as a character, myself included, because they made the game thinking about it and they knew the audience would develop a major caring for him and ellie as daughter and father, that’s how it was supposed to go and it worked it.
now let’s talk about joel’s death. I think we were all surprised to watch him die so early in the game but considering the game time and storyline, it would have never happened differently. his death was brutal, violent, merciless and inhuman, abby and her crew tortured him until he couldn’t take it anymore and he obviously suffered with ellie being held to the ground begging them to stop. I agree that it was a horrible death but we can’t just pretend joel was a sweet innocent hero because he wasn’t, the audience portrays him as a hero when he literally stopped the human race from being saved, killing the fireflies and acting out of pure selfishness. joel isn’t the angel some people paint him as, he’s not a good person and if ellie herself could never forgive him for what he did, who are we to do so? she said she would try but she never got the chance to and it took her years to even come to terms with it.
most importantly, it’s obvious that people forget these characters are human beings, not real people but they’re real in that universe and technically speaking, they run and feel the same way we would feel if we were in their shoes. they’re people, every character in the game is a person, with feelings, a background, a past, a personality and thoughts. they’re no different than us except for them living in a post apocalyptic world were morality and ethics aren’t taken into consideration since there is no law or living lifestyle.
for us to understand this storyline, we need to step away from our society’s view of morality and wrong or right, because that does not apply to them, everyone in the game has killed people and/or have done something morally questionable in their life since it’s the apocalypse and there is no wrong or right, there’s only how the characters feel about certain situations and how they act on them, which is basically what guides the entire game to happening the way it did: human feelings.
joel obviously changed after the first game, since he starts living in jackson and having to raise ellie as a daughter in a relatively normal town with other people, he’s not the same person as he was in part I, now he turned into a father and a friend, not a merciless mercenary who doesn’t care about others. we see that when he and tommy decide to help abby, a complete stranger who was about to die in the hands of infected, and maybe that’s what led people into hating abby with their heart. but ending this topic, joel’s death was bound to happen, you can’t just expect someone to destroy the world’s hope for a cure and leave with no people being angry at him and wanting revenge, that cure could’ve saved many people’s loved ones but he chose to save his loved one. if joel is indeed a terrible person or not, that’s up to you to decide, that’s more of an internal turmoil within yourself that is different for everyone depending on their experience from part I and how they view joel in the end. it’s kind of messed up if you think about it, would you let the only person you care about die for a not confirmed chance of a cure in a world that is already doomed? that’s a question for yourself.
joel’s death happened so you could see things from multiple perspectives, which is the whole fucking point of the game. there are multiple sides to every story, it’s the same world we live in except in different circumstances. your actions affect others, people have feelings and if you hurt them they might act a certain way, those characters are no different than us because they were based on genuine human thoughts and actions.
ELLIE (growth and development)
ellie is one of the most well written characters I’ve ever seen in my life. she’s the symbol of badass but fragile woman and that’s so amazing to me. as the game goes by we start seeing many sides of ellie, she slowly starts to turn into a completely different person after joel’s death and her urge for revenge. killing abby becomes her main priority the second she leaves jackson and that’s clear in the way she acts and treats others. I’ll have to play the game again to pay more attention to ellie and abby’s behavior throughout the timeline. ellie is the reflection of how the excessive amount of effort you put into a negative thought, the more it will bring you and your loved ones down. watching ellie during the story is such a nice experience, there are times where you love her to death, others you get annoyed with her or don’t agree with how she acts, and that’s exactly how the creators wanted you to feel. revenge takes ellie’s soul from the inside out, from her not being able to forgive herself for letting joel die to her going after abby for nothing but hate for herself in the end.
ellie’s journey is exciting to play and to witness as her relationship with other people (specially dina) starts to fade away and being consumed by hate and regret. we were manipulated into loving ellie since part I and I don’t think she’s a bad person, she lost everything in the hands of other people and went through a lot, losing joel was a deal breaker for her but she just didn’t realize soon enough that killing abby wasn’t going to make things better. ellie’s gameplay was meant to make you reflect on losing a loved one, grief, mourning and revenge, she’s not the lost kid from part I anymore, she’s a grown woman who just lost her dad and she doesn’t even know exactly why. the funny thing for me, which is what makes the story realistic, is that ellie didn’t fully forgive joel yet she still suffered from losing him and went after abby for revenge, when not even herself could forgive him, that’s pretty realistic in my opinion. it’s the human uncontrollable instinct of still missing someone you’re mad at and not being able to say goodbye.
for me, ellie is the perfect and most detailed reflection of revenge and what it can do to you. the game is much more than “revenge is bad don’t do it”, we all obviously know it’s bad but we still have an urge to fight back against it and make the person who hurt us suffer too because it’s not fair for us and it wasn’t fair for ellie until the very last moment.
ABBY (point of view and perspective)
by far the most controversial character of the game. I’ll star off saying I actually like abby and I think the people who hate her so deeply just didn’t understand how things go. hating abby is no different than hating ellie, they’re in the same situation for almost the entire game. abby lost her father in joel’s hands, she was still a teenager and seeing her own dad die for trying to save humanity isn’t easy, just like ellie watching joel being tortured and killed wasn’t easy. being fully honest ellie would’ve done the same thing abby did if joel was the doctor and we can’t deny that.
on the other hand, I do think the ellie and abby gameplays could’ve been distributed better, maybe switching from ellie to abby and back and forth so it wouldn’t get too tiring or confusing since we don’t know the exact timeline when we first play it. that’s the only slightly negative thing I have to say about the game.
I do think abby is a great character, they built her perfectly to make the audience hate her in the begging, painting her as a sadistic monster only to show her side of the story later on in the game and make you realize that you have been wrong all this time, making you see the bigger picture and understand that ellie isn’t the only person in the world, she isn’t loved by everyone, she’s just a girl in the world and so is abby. they both have fucked up pasts and they both lost a lot, and in terms of personality, they’re actually quite similar. we love ellie because we got to see her grow up and WE know that deep down she’s not a bad person, the first impression we had of abby was of her recklessly killing joel with a golf club when ellie was begging her to stop, since that we tend to think abby is a horrible person and that ellie is an angel, but it’s not like that at all. obviously ellie didn’t do anything wrong up to that moment to justify that happening to her, but ellie isn’t the best person in the world either.
the duality in this game was created on purpose and with a deeper meaning, ellie is ellie, abby is abby and the cycle of revenge goes on until both parts understand that it’s useless to keep going. abby let go before ellie could and let her and dina live because of lev, killing joel didn’t change abby to the better, lev changed her. tommy couldn’t change ellie, jesse couldn’t change ellie and not even dina could do it, ellie had to change and forgive herself alone. the point I’m trying to make is that abby is no better than ellie and ellie is no better than abby, they’re both emotionally drained women who are not wrong or right in the end of things.
DINA (support and reflection)
dina is the only character I will 100% defend because she’s flawless and did absolutely nothing wrong during the whole game. in my head she represents ellie’s good side, dina is the constant reminder that ellie hasn’t lost her humanity and hasn’t completely changed into someone else because of revenge, even when she has her downs (example: calling her a burden when dina says she’s pregnant). dina is the most forgiving and loyal character, she loves ellie more than anything and it shows. the sad part of it is that even with dina’s huge amount of love and affection, that doesn’t stop ellie from going in the wrong direction, which brings us to another life lesson: loving someone is a choice you make everyday and nobody can control your choices when you’re determined to do something.
ellie decided to go after abby, dina followed and supported her the whole way through, then she took that for granted and left dina and JJ behind to go after abby again (after abby let her and dina live) officially breaking dina’s heart. that was a choice, dina obviously cared so much about ellie, loved her so much but she couldn’t change ellie’s mind. but the point here is that dina is a reflection of ellie’s bright side, she keeps ellie sane until the very last moment, saving her life multiple times, going with her in a revenge journey, “you go, I go, end of story”, telling the wolves to fuck off and staying by ellie’s side, constantly putting her life at risk while being pregnant, she has loves ellie for such a long time even before getting with jesse (you can read ellie’s journal where she says cat told her dina is jealous of their relationship) and she probably took ellie back when she came back from santa barbara (a theory that I believe in because it makes sense).
dina is one of the few positive ends in the universe of the last of us, highly optimistic, funny, beautiful and an amazing support system for ellie. if it weren’t for dina, ellie would’ve become a monster.
LGBTQ+ REPRESENTATION (ellie x dina and lev)
it’s 2020 and people are still talking shit about the game just because of queer characters. that’s why I say people who hate the game are people who either didn’t capture the story or just didn’t even try to pay attention because of a closed mindset bigot sandwiches. representation is the best path to general acceptance, making people see different stories and realize that someone’s gender or sexuality does not influence on the quality of art.
ellie is a lesbian, that’s clear in the game when she says she’s “not into jessie’s type” (such a nice dialogue by the way), she talks about her ex girlfriend and clearly has had a crush on dina for the longest time (probably the reason why she broke up with cat).
dina is bisexual, in my opinion she always had a crush on ellie but maybe she lost motivation to to after her when she started to get close to cat and started talking to jessie because of that and it ended up working.
now dina and ellie’s relationship is probably the only thing that keeps us sane throughout the game, when we sit down to think “thank god ellie has dina, that means she’s not alone”, which is basically the whole concept of it, ellie not being alone because dina is there to hold her to the ground and stop her from becoming someone she doesn’t want to be.
lev being trans is something I can‘t have an opinion on, I have seen both sides: people saying it was a good approach and others saying it wasn’t an accurate representation. I’m not trans so my opinion isn’t valid and I can definitely see why many people think it was a bad reach but I also can see the other side, so I won’t comment on that.
the nice thing about representation in this game is that they brought it up as a normal thing, the only moment the focus is sexuality is when seth was being a dick and called dina the d-word, ellie got defensive but dina stopped her from getting into a fight. even then the main focus of that situation was how ellie dealt with joel saying she didn’t need his help. the point was never ellie’s sexuality, never, not even in a single moment, because it was never an issue. in a post apocalyptic society people don’t pay much attention to being homophobes (unless they’re in a fanatic religious cult or just assholes like seth).
the game approached the subject very bluntly but in a normal way, not making it that huge of a deal but it is a big deal for those who seek comfort and/or are dealing with their sexuality in a way. if a character they admire ends up being part of a minority group, they can relate to that and feel more comfortable in their own skin. we’re here, we’re real and we exist even in a fucked up infected world.
ENDING + THOUGHTS (moving on)
the last of us part II is a story about revenge, being completely different than part I which is a story about love and surviving. what happens in the second game are the consequences of the first, the choices joel made reflected upon himself, saving ellie costed everything; the cure, people’s lives and maybe a brighter future. people who are bashing the game for it’s storyline and how things went down need to understand that it’s not because we love joel that his actions didn’t matter to others. joel is a human being, so is abby and those who got harmed by joel’s choice to save ellie. joel killed abby’s dad, abby went after him for revenge, a predictable and reasonable thing to do if you just try to see it from her point of view, keep in mind that ellie would do the same exact thing.
if you can’t get yourself to see things from other people’s point of view, you missed the whole point of the game. the storyline isn’t summed up in “revenge is bad don’t do it kids”, it’s just based on the fact that death can never and will never bring you any sort of relief.
the game is the reflection of the cycle of revenge. abby going after joel for killing her dad, ellie going after abby and killing all of her friends in the process, abby finally breaks the cycle letting ellie and dina live but ellie couldn’t get over the guilt and went after abby again, yet she ended up letting her ago and officially breaking the chain for good.
the whole concept of the game is how seeking someone else’s suffering can lead to full destruction of someone’s character and values.
if ellie had killed abby she would’ve turned into the monster she was fighting against and she would lose literally everything she hadn’t already lost: her humanity. I don’t actually know the exact reason that compelled ellie to let abby go, maybe it was losing her fingers and realizing that she’ll never be able to play guitar again, which was her very last memory of joel and what he taught her. it could also be thinking of lev and how he’s the only thing abby has and vice versa, which is what she had with joel and what was taken from her, therefore she didn’t want to turn into the person who put someone through the same pain she was going through. technically if she killed abby she would have to kill lev to avoid him coming after her and continuing the cycle and doing that would kill ellie even more.
to make this shorter, abby moved on earlier than ellie. mostly because abby actually got her revenge killing joel but you gotta look through things before you put all the blame on her. ellie lost everyone in her life, her parents, riley, tess, sam and then joel, going after abby was a defense mechanism since she couldn’t have done anything to save those she lost before, but losing the one who took care and raised her was something she couldn’t bare, specially when she thought joel was the only person she had even though they weren’t in good terms and she and dina weren’t a thing yet.
ellie needed to revenge joel at all costs because that’s what she thought he would want, but in the end she realizes he would want her to move on and be happy, because that’s what he always tried to give her: the best shot in life that he couldn’t give sarah. ellie thought that by killing abby she would be able to let go, when in reality she would just feel more guilty for leaving lev alone like she was having no emotional relief concerning her PTSD. ellie got to that beach fully aware that killing abby wasn’t going to solve any of her problems, but a single memory of joel made her make the decision that she wasn’t going to let her go without a fight. their final fight was silent, in the middle of nowhere, they had absolutely nothing to say to each other because they were both fighting for nothing but excessive mental emptiness. they both knew that nothing would bring their loved ones back and they were ready to move on.
what the game wants to teach you is that nothing good comes from searching revenge and other’s suffering. ellie gets consumed by her own view of justice and ends up losing herself both inside and outside, when she comes to terms with the fact that killing abby won’t bring joel back from the dead, it’s already too late. she lost jessie, her friendship with tommy, her good memories with joel, her fingers which results in her not being able to play guitar anymore, the love of her life and her son.
in the last of us part one ellie says that her biggest fear is to end up alone, and the saddest part of all is that her actions led her to making that fear come true. the ending is ambiguous, it can mean something different to different people depending on what you choose to interpret things and how you view the characters. for some, ellie could just end up alone looking for a life purpose that doesn’t involve anyone from her past. to others, ellie returned to jackson and proved dina that she loved her and that now she’s ready to fully commit because she let go of her anger and is at peace with herself and her inner struggles. but that’s all up to you to decide what you want to believe in.
at the end of the day, this storyline is beautiful, heartbreaking, breathtaking and emotionally draining. it makes you think and open your mind to new perspectives, which is honestly one of the best things art is able to do, create a new universe for you to deep your thoughts in and take your own conclusions. the last of us didn’t have a bad or good ending, it had a realistic ending. just because they didn’t make this the way you wanted it doesn’t mean the writing is bad, it means you’re probably disappointed and that’s fine, but hating on it isn’t the way to make a point.
I can only thank everyone involved for creating this world and making me so invested in it, connecting me with these amazing characters and emotions that I never experienced playing a game before. there is nothing more to say except: endure and survive.
#the last of us#the last of us part 2#the last of us part II#ellie#dina#ellie x dina#dina x ellie#lgbt#ending#video game#gay#TLOU2#TLOU#game#joel miller#joel#last of us#queer#ellie williams#dina williams#tommy miller#opinion#text
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So This is Love - Merhayes/ Merlex
About 2 weeks ago, @herrera-n-hayes gave me a prompt in which Merhayes went to visit Alex in Kansas, and there, Alex tells Meredith that she’s smitten and in love with Hayes. The one shot is about 2900 words long because I am someone who has a very hard time sparring details, even the smallest most insignificant ones. Anyways, enjoy some pure fluffy Merhayes and Merlex friendship because I’ve been posting a lot of angst lately and we all deserve some feel-good content every once and awhile. I’m going to insert a ‘keep reading’ line just cause of how long it is. Anyways, enjoy!
It’d been a very long time since Meredith Grey last saw Alex Karev. She’d talked to him on the phone multiple times since he’d left, but most of their time talking consisted of her ratting him out for leaving her, Jo, her kids, Bailey and Richard, and up until she became friends with Cormac Hayes, his department. So, when Meredith Grey received a text in the middle of summer from her best friend saying, “Izzie’s out of town next weekend, would you want to come visit me and the kids? You could bring your kids.” She knew she had no reason to say no. Part of her wanted to, so bad. But she was admittedly missing her person – she had just made some major life changes and she wanted so badly to tell Alex and get his approval. So, she said yes, and went to find the one person she knew she wanted to bring along.
“Hey,” Meredith said softly, coming up behind her boyfriend and placing her hand on his back. He turned to look at her and smiled. “Hey. How’s it going?” He asked her as she grabbed his hand. “How would you feel about taking a trip next weekend to Kansas? With the kids and I, to visit Alex?” He looked at her, surprised. “Really? Are you sure you want me to go with you? You haven’t seen Karev in a while, are you sure you don’t want to catch up alone?” Meredith appreciated that he wanted to let her have time alone with Alex, but she knew that Alex was opinionated and wasn’t afraid to tell her when she was making a mistake – and she wanted him to confirm that she was doing the right thing. She knew in her heart that this was who she was meant to be with and that nothing he said would change how she felt, but his approval would be nice.
“Yeah – I’m sure I want you there. It’s important to me. We can give the boys the option of whether or not they want to stay home or come with us.” Austin and Liam Hayes were now 16 and 18 respectively, and while they were very quickly bonding with Meredith’s trio, she didn’t know if they’d really want to hang out with a 9-year-old, a 7-year-old, 2 6-year-old’s and a 5-year-old while their parents were all hanging out. “Okay.” He finally said after a minute of contemplating the offer. Meredith’s face lit up. “Really?!” She smiled brightly. “Yeah, really. We can talk to the kids tonight after work.” Meredith squealed ever so slightly as she hugged Cormac. “You’re the best.” She said confidently, kissing him quickly afterwards. “I’m gonna go talk to Bailey, make sure we’ll have next weekend off.” Cormac’s pager went off. “I was going to offer to go with you, but it never ends. We can talk more later.” They gave each other one last quick kiss and went their separate ways.
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Later that night, after finishing their shifts and getting approval from Bailey to get time off for the following weekend, Meredith and Cormac headed back to Meredith’s new house. She’d decided to sell her old house to Amelia and Link, who’d recently gotten married and were expecting their second child in a few months. It had felt a lot like deja-vu from when she sold Alex the house to move into the dream-house with Derek and Zola, while she was expecting Bailey. Meredith’s only request when picking out her new place was that it had to be close to Amelia and Link – she didn’t want to have to drive very far in the middle of the night if they were having troubles with Scout and eventually their daughter.
The Grey-Shepherd children quickly ran up to their mother when she got inside. “Hey guys!” She said, kneeling down to hug them. Little Ellis gave Cormac a quick hug too. She’d quickly taken a liking to Cormac, and she took after her mom in how she always called him ‘Hayes’. Cormac had made it very clear to the kids when he and Meredith began dating that he could not and would never replace their dad, and he’d never overstepped with their trust. Meredith did the same with Austin and Liam, but it took them a bit longer to warm up to her since they were, well, teenage boys, and they were old enough to remember losing their mom. Eventually they got there though, and Meredith and Cormac were ecstatic when they did.
Cormac headed downstairs to say hello to his sons, get them away from their video games long enough to talk to them about the trip, and then get them back home. It was convenient for Meredith that her boyfriend’s children were old enough to watch her three. It gave the boys opportunities to bond with the kids and gave Meredith some peace of mind that her babies were in relatively good hands. Meredith entered her living room and gathered her kids around her. “So, guys, I got a text from Uncle Alex this morning.” The children’s eyes lit up – Zola’s especially. “And he invited us all over to his house to meet your cousins and hang out with him for the weekend.” That sentence was followed by jumping and squealing from all 3 of the children. “So, how does a plane ride sound next week?” More squealing and excitement followed. Meredith knew that this news would have her kids bouncing off the walls and pestering her about whether It was time to go yet or not, for the next week.
Meredith was spot on in her guess about the kids pestering her every day until the night before they left. The night before leaving was hectic – Cormac, Austin, and Liam were staying at Meredith’s overnight, which meant packing for 5 kids and 2 adults all in the same house. The couple was grateful to have Amelia so close to help Ellis pick out what things she wanted to take, while Meredith packed for herself and Zola, and Cormac helped Bailey in his decisions between superhero shirts. Austin and Liam were just trying to figure out how many portable games they could feasibly bring along without getting in trouble. Early Friday morning, the gang packed their suitcases in the back of Meredith’s car and made their way to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Maggie and Amelia followed along in Amelia’s car, so that Maggie could drive the car back to the house after they made it into the airport and onto the plane.
5 hours later, the plane had safely landed, the car was rented, and everyone was on their way to their hotel. Austin and Liam had successfully convinced their dad to let them stay in a separate room from the one where he and Meredith and her kids would be sleeping. About an hour after arriving at the hotel, everyone was sufficiently unpacked. Zola, Bailey, and Ellis were antsy to go visit Alex. Austin and Liam decided to stay back, so Cormac and Meredith loaded the Grey-Shepherd children into their rental car and headed for Alex’s place.
--
Ellis, Bailey, and Zola were giggly as Meredith pulled into the driveway of Alex’s farmhouse. Cormac only found himself feeling increasingly nervous. He’d already met all of the people Meredith considered family at the hospital, except for Alex. He didn’t even know if Meredith had told Alex that he was joining them. He knew that Alex was, aside from Cristina, Meredith’s best friend and that making a good first impression was key, far different from the first impression he’d made on Meredith. She parked the car and the two adults got out to let the kids out of their car seats. The kids immediately ran to the door and started pounding on it. Alex opened the door and the kids jumped on him almost immediately. Meredith laughed as she watched while she grabbed her purse and walked around the car to grab Cormac’s hand before heading into the house. “Hey guys!” Alex hugged the kids who were more than excited to see him. Meredith smiled at her friend. Alexis and Eli came by and the kids immediately hit it off. As Meredith and Cormac approached the door, Alex’s twins were showing off their toys to Mer’s kids. Meredith let go of her boyfriend’s hand to hug Alex. “I’ve missed you so much.” She said as she stepped back from Alex. “Me too, Mer. I’m glad you were able to come visit. Now are you going to introduce me to your boyfriend?” Meredith laughed. Alex knew that Meredith was in a relationship and that he would be coming, she just refrained from telling any details to him other than that. “Alex, meet Cormac Hayes. Hayes, this is Alex.” Cormac extended his hand and Alex shook it. “It’s nice to meet you, Grey and Yang have told me a lot about you.” Alex looked confused. “Wait, you know Yang?” “Yeah, I worked at her hospital in Switzerland for 2 years after my wife died. She talked a lot about some guy she called ‘Evil Spawn’. When Grey and I first became friends, she explained it a bit further.” Alex laughed and the adults moved inside the house further and sat down on the couch, with plenty of conversation to go around.
After hours of talking and being intermittently interrupted by the young children showing them various toys around the house, the sun began to set. Cormac liked Alex, the two pediatric surgeons found they had a lot in common, and it was easy to keep conversation flowing between the three of them. However, he knew that it was wind-down time for all of the children, and he wanted Meredith and Alex to have some time alone to catch up. Meredith was just about to check the time on her phone, but Cormac pushed her hand down. “It’s getting late, I know the kids have to wind down and go to bed soon. You stay here and spend as much time as you want with Alex, I’ll take the kids back to the hotel and take care of them for the night.” Meredith looked up and half-smiled at her boyfriend. “Are you sure?” She laced their fingers together. “Yeah, you two have fun.” The two smiled at each other, and Hayes kissed Meredith’s cheek. “Alex, it was nice meeting you.” “You too.” Alex responded enthusiastically. The men shook hands and Cormac rounded up the kids, getting them ready to head back to the hotel.
Meredith helped put Eli and Alexis to bed after she said goodnight to her kids and boyfriend, then she and Alex made their way to his kitchen. “Please tell me you have tequila.” Meredith said with a laugh. Alex smiled at his friend and pulled a bottle of tequila from his liquor cabinet for Meredith, and a bottle of whiskey for himself. “You and Hayes really have a lot in common, he loves whiskey.” Alex smirked at his best friend. “Your boyfriend has been gone for maybe 10 minutes and you’re already talking about him again.” Meredith smiled at Alex’s acknowledgement. “What can I say? He’s pretty great.” She exclaimed with a massive smile as she took a drink from the tequila bottle. “So?” Meredith continued. “What did you think of him?” She could tell that the two got along but she was more interested in what he had to think about the relationship. “Well, what matters is how you feel about him.” Alex told Meredith, encouraging her to talk about her feelings rather than his own. The best friends made their way back to the couch and Alex tossed Meredith a blanket. “Now, tell me what made you fall for him.” Alex was genuinely interested in Meredith’s response to this. It wasn’t like he hadn’t already made up his mind about Cormac, but he wanted to hear the truth from Meredith before telling her what he thought.
“He’s just the best. He loves the kids, they love him, and he always makes sure to talk to the kids about Derek – he loves seeing how they light up when they get to talk about their dad. He just instantly knows when I need to deal with something by myself or if he needs to help me out, he never oversteps, and he never gets jealous when I talk about Derek. I’m telling you Alex, Cristina really knew what she was doing when she sent him to Seattle. I’m really glad she did.” For the next five minutes, Meredith continued to list off all the things he did that made her smile, laugh, and just feel genuinely happy. Alex chuckled to himself listening to his best friend ramble about Cormac. “What?” Meredith’s heart began pounding when she realized he was laughing. “Dude, you’re in love.” He smirked and laughed at her a little more. “Like, in love, in love. You’re infatuated. I hope you’ve told him by now because it’s plastered all over your lovesick face every time you look at him. Have you told him you’re in love with him yet?” He asked her. “We’ve almost said I love you a couple of times. But no.” Alex’s eyes widened. “Trust your heart, Mer. He’s not Derek, but he knows that. And it really seems like he respects that. You’re lucky to have found him.” Meredith smiled at Alex. She knew he was right. She did love Cormac Hayes. Her heart was full – she’d just gotten her best friend’s seal of approval, she accepted the fact that she was in love because of it, and she was sitting with Alex, on his couch, drinking tequila with him just like old times. They moved on from the topic of love fairly quickly, and instead they sat together, laughing and reminiscing about their past.
--
Meredith arrived back at the hotel about 2 hours later. Her children were fast asleep, but Cormac was still wide awake, laying in their bed. “Hey.” Meredith whispered as she quietly put her purse down. Cormac looked up from his phone and smiled at his girlfriend. “Hey, did you have fun?” Meredith smiled back at him. “Yeah, I did. Thanks for taking the kids back to the hotel. I think all the playing with Alexis and Eli wore them out.” She laughed quietly, as did he. “Yeah, I don’t think we’ll have to worry about them till later tomorrow morning.” Meredith finished getting out of her daytime clothes, put on her shorts and bralette, and climbed into bed. “I was waiting for you to get back before going to sleep.” He whispered in her ear. She kissed him tenderly as she remembered what Alex had told her. “You know, talking with Alex tonight made me realize something.” Meredith said as she rested her head on his shoulder. “Oh yeah, what?” He asked, lacing their fingers together. “I don’t want you to freak out.” She said, looking up at him. His face changed to be incredibly confused very quickly. “What would I freak out about?” He asked her, worried.
“While I was talking with him tonight, I realized that, uh, I love you. More than that - I’m in love with you. With us, with the idea of our families coming together. And, uh, it’s totally okay if you don’t say it back, or are a little spooked. I know the first I love you can take time to come to terms with.” Cormac’s face became more and more surprised with every word Meredith whispered. She turned on her side, fully expecting Cormac to turn away from her while he processed everything that she’d just told him. But, like it was an everyday occurrence, Cormac immediately shifted and turned on his side as well, facing her back, and he wrapped his arm around her waist. During 2 minutes of complete silence, Cormac Hayes kept thinking about how Abigail told him before dying that she wanted to see him fall in love again. He thought about how happy he was with Meredith, how deeply she respected Abby and how much she loved hearing the stories he’d tell her about her.
So, even though it scared him, he pulled Meredith closer to him in the bed, to which she tangled their legs together and laced their fingers together, and he whispered in her ear, “I’m in love with you too.” He could feel her once racing heartbeat begin to stabilize, and her breathing became more normal as well. Though he couldn’t see her face, he could feel her smiling as their faces nuzzled together. He placed one last kiss on her neck and cheek before closing his eyes and falling asleep, happily holding the woman he loved. He knew for a fact that Abigail was rooting for them in heaven, and that she was happy to see them so happy, to see her sons so loved, and to see Cormac finally fulfilling her final wish for him.
#merhayes#cormac hayes#merwidow#meredith x hayes#hayes x grey#meredith x cormac#cormac x meredith#grayes#hayes x meredith#mcwidows
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ONESHOTS
PAIRINGS
*** = smut
Dean
Scarred: after a hunt gone wrong, the reader has to undergo surgery leaving her with a permanent memory of what happened that night.***
Meet the Family: meeting your boyfriend’s family for the first time at Thanksgiving is already a nightmare, but sprinkle in a little suppressed family drama and you get a recipe for disaster. (AU where Sam and Dean were never hunters)***
Hold On: the life of a hunter becomes too much for the reader to handle.
The Waiting Room: Dean and the reader’s world collide when they meet in a hospital waiting room.
Hit Me With Your Best Shot: sparring practice with Dean turns into something much more.
Back in Black: it’s all fun and games until Dean Winchester catches you dancing in your room with his clothes on.
Twenty Years too Late: the reader has to come clean about the horrible things that happened to her in the past.
Friends: in times like these, it’s not safe to love who you love (based off of the song Friends by Ed Sheeran). *male!reader
Exorcist?: the reader uncovers something that leads Dean to have to reveal the truth about the Family Business. | Part 2
Hopeless: when Sam finds out about how the reader self harms, he urges her to tell Dean.
Not to Blame: reader has a history of self harm and is finally forced to open up about it.
Devil’s Backbone: the crucifix around your neck seemed to burn the moment you laid eyes on Dean Winchester, but you couldn’t find it in you to care (based off of the song Devil’s Backbone by the Civil Wars).
Wings: when the reader falls into a coma and is met with an unlikely circumstance, will she try to fix her rocky relationship with Dean or fall for someone new?
Just a Number: the reader and Dean are in an established relationship but there’s one aspect of it that Dean can’t get past.
Happier: even though Dean knows you’re happier now, he can’t help but miss you (based off of the song Happier by Ed Sheeran).
Sam
Death Wish: after Sam dies, Y/N knows what she has to do in order to bring him back.
O’ Death: a hunt gone wrong leads to the reader finding herself facing Death one last time.
Help Me Help You: after Sam finds out the reader has a prescription pill problem, he knows he has to confront her about it.
Underworld: Sam, Dean, and the reader run into one of the toughest demons they’ve come across in a long time. But she needs their help. male!reader
Here For You(Always): the reader struggles with anorexia, and when there’s an incident during a hunt, she has to come clean.
The Day: the reader is head over heels for Sam but doesn’t know how to act around him so Dean tries to help.
Chuck
More Than a Secret: when the reader finds out Chuck is God, she battles with how to deal with it.
NON-PAIRINGS
Sam & Dean & Reader
Multilingual: the reader has more skills than the Winchesters seem to know about.
Team Free Will & Reader
The Vessel: unaware that Lucifer is pulling the strings, Sam, Dean, and the reader have Castiel send Dean back in time to a doomed WWll submarine to retrieve the Hand of God. episode rewrite
It’s a Midwest Thing: TFW visits the reader’s hometown.
Sam & Dean
Barnum & Bailey: Sam and Dean meet a group of hunters who disguise themselves as a traveling circus.
Stanford: Dean finds Sam’s Stanford application.
FAMILY FICS
Daughter!Reader
Fifteen Going on Thirty: finding a box of condoms in your daughter’s room never goes over well.
It’s a Two Way Street: Sam’s seven year old daughter becomes possessed.
Runaway: when the reader tries to go on their first hunt alone, Sam is reminded of a time when he almost lost them. gender neutral!reader
Top Secret: Sam’s daughter is planning his birthday present until it all goes terribly wrong.
I Loved Her First: Dean reminisces on his life with his daughter on her wedding day. (based off of the song I Loved Her First by Heartland)
Winchester Sister
Dream On: after being captured by a demon, the Winchesters are faced with a decision to make. (OC Ellie)
Rescuer: when celebrating a hunt gone right, the reader receives some very unwanted attention from a man in a bar.
Fade to Black: after being injured during a hunt, Sam and Dean aren’t sure their sister will make it out alive.
A Very Supernatural Thanksgiving: what’s Thanksgiving without coming out to your family and then getting the sex talk.
#thinman: when a teenage girl is killed, the final selfie she took before the attack shows a shadowy figure in the background. Can Sam, Dean, and the reader find the ghost? episode rewrite
Burden: drinking and driving never mix.
Side Effects: the reader has been abusing her medication, and it’s only a matter of time before her brother’s find out.
Forbidden Love: the reader’s relationship with Lucifer is hidden for nearly a year until her brothers find out about it.
Torture Makes the Dead Man Talk: Sam and the reader are taken by Toni Bevell, a British Men of Letters who tortures them for information. | Part 2
Show and Don’t Tell: the reader has been with Charlie for almost six months, now comes the part of breaking the news to her brothers.
The Main Event: being a deaf hunter is just as hard as you’d expect.
Baby Blue: the reader gets caught doing something her brothers are less than thrilled about.
Mystery Spot: while Sam, Dean, and the reader are investigating a mystery spot, the reader is sent into a time loop where everyday is Tuesday. episode rewrite
Goodnight, Moon: when the reader runs away in order to get out of the Family Business, she finds herself ten years later in front of the two people she thought she’d never see again.
Home is Where I’m With You: the reader goes away to college, but leaving home is going to be harder than she thinks.
The Cure: watching after a demon is much harder when A) that demon is your brother, and B) when that demon escapes. | Part 2
She’s a Winchester: when Sam and Dean suspect that their sister is dating, they find something in the far corner of her bedside table that confirms their suspicions.
4 AM: the reader comes home drunk, but her brothers are up waiting for her.
Yellow Fever: the reader is infected with an illness that starts as anxiety, but moves to full-blown terror and stops the heart. episode rewrite
Dancing Queen: the reader gets an invitation to a school father-daughter dance, but John hasn’t been home in a few days.
The Babysitter: the Winchester brothers need a babysitter for their younger sister.
RPFs
Jared & Jensen & Misha & Reader
Captain America?: the reader has a secret boyfriend, and Jared, Jensen and Misha want to know who he is
Jensen & Jared & Reader
Lean On Me: all of the times the reader, Jared, and Jensen had to lean on each other when it seemed like they were all they had. (based off of the song Lean On Me by Bill Withers)
Jensen
(There’s No Place Like) Home for the Holidays: the reader’s first Christmas with her new family. (daughter!reader)
Midnight Dreamer: the reader hears something from Jensen’s side of the bed in the middle of the night.***
OTHER
Partner in Crime: Gabrielle meets the angel she’s been dying to meet.
Rock Never Dies: the reader intends to find and kill Lucifer except he’s now he’s international rockstar Vince Vincente.
With a Little Help From My Friends: a church sermon offends Lucifer, the angels and the reader defend him.
What Do You Expect?: Crowley is dragged to Comic Con. | Part 2
I Guess Angels Are Real: when Charlie is in a desperate situation, the reader agrees to help out, which leads to major flirting with the reader from Dean.
#supernatural#supernatural fanfiction#supernatural fanfictions#supernatural oneshot#supernatural imagine#supernatural oneshots#supernatural imagines#supernatural masterlist#spn#supernatural fandom#supernatural family#spn fanfiction#spn fanfictions#spn imagines#spn imagine#spn oneshot#spn oneshots#spn family#spn fandom#spn masterlist#fanfiction#fanfictions#imagine#imagines#oneshot#oneshots#masterlist#dean#sam#winchester
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XVI.
"You will manage to keep a woman in love with you, only for as long as you can keep her in love with the person she becomes when she is with you." C. JoyBell
Rockin' around the Christmas tree, let the Christmas spirit ring. Later we'll have some pumpkin pie, and we'll do some caroling…
Naturally, my own vocals lightly meshed in with those of Brenda Lee while my head bopped back and forth to the infectious Christmas tune as it blared from the Beats Pill, I gifted to my mother a couple of months ago. To take advantage of the majority of my weight being pressed against the kitchen island, I slowly flexed my toes and extended my aches in an effort to minimize the throbbing in my feet. Short hisses turned into a deep sigh of bliss but unfortunately it was short lived once I grasped a knife in my hand again.
“Pass me two stalks of celery out of that bag, please.” My precise instructions were pointless. With her eyes intently focused on the phone in front of her, Celeste aloofly tossed the plastic bag in my direction as if I were a nuisance interrupting the ridiculous number of hours she spends interacting on Facebook. If anything, I avoid it, because once you reach a certain age, Facebook is nothing more than a scroll fest filled with engagement and pregnancy announcements, weddings and post-birth pictures, garbage hot takes from people about the most trivial of topics, and finally older relatives who have nothing better to do other than to be in everyone’s business, including yours.
“Shouldn’t you be doing something?” If she’s not going to be in the kitchen either helping me or doing something of her own, then the better choice would be for her to exit. She hasn’t been much company because we’re barely spoken since she arrived and I’d rather not be distracted by her sitting there in a trance with a phone in her hand like a mindless teen.
“Not really. You always do Christmas Eve, I do Christmas breakfast, and mommy does Christmas dinner. Don’t act brand new now.”
“I’m not acting brand new. I just see no point in you being in here.” Celeste does Christmas breakfast because it’s the easiest task to handle and I don’t have much of a problem pushing her dry ass pancakes around on a plate in anticipation for dinner later on the evening.
“For someone who claims to be so demure in the manner that you carry yourself, I’m super confused about why you have streams of diamonds glistening and circling around your neck.”
“What?” Thoughtlessly, I stretched my unoccupied hand up to the exposed skin and lightly brushed my fingers over nearly sixty carats of brilliant round cut diamonds that do not belong to me.
The manner in which O layers his many necklaces always grabs my attention and it’s something about the showiness in the midst of the simplicity of them that I continue to compliment whenever I see him donning them. This morning, for whatever reason, he randomly placed two of them around my neck as I stood in the mirror attempting to figure out just how festive my attire would be for today. Once I’d gotten past three unwarranted outfit changes, I found myself admiring the jewelry as it glimmered in the natural lighting cascading into his master bedroom beyond the curtains. I’d forgotten to remove them.
“They’re not real. It’s just costume jewelry.”
“They look pretty damn real to me.”
“Well, they’re not. There’s this new spot that opened up over on West 47th Street. I grabbed them in there. I just thought they looked cute and they reminded me of something Lil’ Kim wore one time. You know Kimberly Denise Jones is one of my spirit animals. They’re not something you wear everyday but it’s the holidays and I’m on vacation until after the New Year, so why not? I’m glad they look real though. That just means they were well made.”
“You seem to have a million alter egos. One minute you’re Florence Joyner, the next minute you’re Lil’ Kim, on another day you’re Angela Bassett, and then you’re Michelle Obama. We can’t forget you being the Oprah of sports journalism, oh and there’s Rihanna and Beyonce, who else?”
“Phylicia Rashard, Eartha Kitt, Regina King, Janet Jackson, Cari Champion, Lisa Salters, Pam Oliver, Jemele Hill. And I’ve never considered any of those women to be my alter egos. They’re women that I admire due to their drive, success, and character. I’ve taken bits and pieces from all of their careers and used them as lessons for my own. What you’ve mistaken is me saying that Lil Kim, Rihanna, and Tracee Ellis Ross are my style icons. Oh, and Mary J. Blige is my boot icon.” I think all women have a mood board of aspirations and inspirations. It doesn’t always have to be specific people. A portion of mine just so happens to contains who I believe are some of the greatest black women of the past and current generation. They’re not alter egos who I attempt to mimic but rather stories of triumph that keep me driven.
“What’s up with you and Kyle? Why are you interested?” I nearly cut into the flesh of my finger while dicing the stalks of celery. Briefly, I paused to gather myself, and immediately moved on to the three cloves of garlic.
“Nothing at all. I’m not interested so please stop pressing me about that. I’m not going to date your husband’s brother. I don’t do that all in the family stuff.”
“He’s really into you.”
“Or maybe you’re just exaggerating things. We’re just cool. We always have great conversations whenever we’re around one another and that’s good enough for me. I’ve already spoken to you multiple times about my disdain for your matchmaking bullshit. How many times do I have to tell you that I’m not a fan of it?”
“You continue to hold Shamel against me. Things didn’t work out. Okay. Shit happens. That doesn’t mean that every guy that I attempt to introduce you to won’t be compatible with you.”
“Compatibility? It’s deeper than that.” Parsley and cilantro were next for the wrath of the knife in my hand. I’m going to have to med onions next. I should have just bought all of this stuff chopped already.
“What’s deeper?”
“Celeste, you don’t know shit about what I went through with Shamel. You know the shortened version of years’ worth of bullshit. You think we just had a couple of typical couple disagreements to the point of us coming to terms with the reality that we could no longer be together? I wish it were that fucking simple, so don’t sit in here on your high horse with that matchmaker shit. Focus on your man and your marriage. I’m fine.”
I internalized so much of what I went through with the man. I was never the one to take my household troubles and spread all of it in places that it didn’t need to be. Anyone with the vision could see the tension between the two of us whenever we were out and about together and if you couldn’t see it, then it was thick enough to be felt. As my career began to take off, I chose to move as a single woman, often leaving him behind whenever I was out and about at industry events whether they were sports related or not. Shamel had a tendency to spend way too much time at the open bar, tossing back shots of tequila while slyly entertaining any woman that fawned over his deep mocha presence. He’d then cause a scene if he caught any men paying even the slightest attention to mine.
Beyond the decision to mask our toxicity as best as I could, I yearned to make my mother proud by being the quintessential woman; brains, beauty, a reputable career, and a good man standing alongside me. The pride she wore on her face at Celeste’s wedding stood out beyond any and everything that went on that summer night in Brooklyn. Since my father’s death, that wedding and all of the events leading up to it sparked a liveliness in her that I hadn’t experienced in quite some time although it had absolutely nothing to do with me. I’m not sure if she was vicariously living through my sister or she was simply just thrilled to see her began her own family, but in observing her response to it all, I wanted to give that to her.
After a short lived around of sex that left tears of mental exhaustion pouring down the sides of my face as I lie under him, he whispered in my ear that he intended to make me his wife. I’ll never forget the wave of nausea that rushed over my body and sent me dashing into the bathroom to empty out of the contents within my stomach. I thought of marriage as something beautiful until then. Just the thought of spending the rest of my life in misery with him left my mind in an emotional frenzy as I attempt to figure out when and how I’d end our relationship. Less than three weeks later, I finally mustered up the courage to get it done.
“You want to be alone forever?”
“Whether I do or I don’t, it’s my decision. You may be older, but we’re not kids anymore. We’re no longer in Brooklyn, under mommy’s roof, trying to figure out what we’re going to do with ourselves. You have your life and I have mine. I have time to figure that relationship shit out. I’m not stressed about it. Being single doesn’t bother me at all. For whatever reason, it bothers you.”
“It doesn’t bother me that you’re single. I just think you deserve happiness.”
“And you think that I don’t have it without a man? You give them way too much credit.”
And she always has. Celeste has been a serial monogamist for as long as I can remember her dating history. As soon as one relationship of hers would end, she’d be in another one within a week or two. I can recall a couple of overlaps, but that’s none of my business.
“Don’t put the whole bonnet pepper in there.”
“I know that. I’m only doing half.” The last thing I want is to give our mother heartburn on Christmas Eve.
In the midst of me pouring olive oil into the deep red pot I already had on the stove, I reached into my back pocket for my vibrating phone.
Mrs. Claus, I’m missing you. When are you coming home?
Home? To mask my budding smile, I slowly pulled my lip in-between my teeth.
Home?
This man knows how to put a smile on my face by saying the simplest things.
Anywhere I lay my head is just as much yours as it is mine.
I should have known that when he gave me keys and the security codes last night. I’m still in disbelief about that.
I should be finished here really soon and I’ll be right back at the North Pole to keep your lap warm, Santa.
It’ll be the first time I’m spending Christmas Eve anywhere other than here and to say I’m nervous would be an understatement. Usually around this time of the year, O would be in the midst of the season so his family would make the effort to come to New Jersey to be with him. Even though he’s currently not playing, they still decided to come up and enjoy the chilled weather. For the past couple of days, he’s convinced me to rid myself of my reluctance and to be with him and a few people I’ve yet to meet like his grandmother Mille, his uncle Mike, his aunt Pat, and his step-father Derek.
Naked right?
And don’t even get me started on the lie that I had to tell everyone in this house so that I’d be able to get out of our Christmas Eve tradition of my cooking and us sitting around watching our favorite Christmas classics while bundled up under quilts that we’ve had since Celeste and I were toddlers. That lie involved Taylor, who’s actually in Atlanta right now, and Scott who actually did invite me to his Christmas Eve game night over at his place.
I can make that happen. Not while the elves are awake though. That’s a bit inappropriate, Santa.
My snicker wasn’t soundless. It was loud enough to alert Celeste and her eyes slowly panned in my direction and raised in curiosity at what tickled me.
“It’s Taylor.” I said it before she could ask.
Baby, don’t be mad at me but I already cut the red velvet cake. It was just sitting there and I couldn’t help myself.
I knew he’d do it. The fume enticed him by itself, so his response to the finished product was of no surprise. I didn’t even make him promise me that he wouldn’t touch it because I knew he wouldn’t be able to help himself just as he said. It’s why I made two of them.
I knew you would. Enjoy it. That’s why I made it.
I spent the morning baking as a part of his Christmas request. Renee’s handling everything else, but all of the sweets are my task. When I return, I’m going to make my mini eggnog cheesecakes and cookies.
Try and make it back before the snow starts. I don’t want you driving in that.
It’s not supposed to be enough snow to keep the east coast hiding inside of their homes, but it will be enough to leave traffic dragging and the roads hazardous. I’ve never been much of a fan of driving in the snow, so I do want to be out of here before those flurries began to fall.
Will do. I’ll see you in a bit love.
“I can’t believe you’re about to go and spend Christmas Eve hanging out with your co-workers. Don’t you get enough of seeing them at work?” This is her second time making commentary about this since I’ve been here and I’m not even sure why. Celeste and I barely say much of anything to one another whenever I’m around, unless she’s scolding me about some area of my life that she assumes that I need to improve. It’ll be no different tonight as they’re all curled up in the living room watching classic holiday films while enjoying the dinner that I’m preparing and a shit ton of junk food we bought at Walmart the other day. Besides, her husband is here and when he’s with her, nearly all of her attention is on him.
“What’s the big deal? We’re not kids waiting around on Santa anymore. There are no babies here in the house that we need to be extra festive for. I’ll be back in the morning for breakfast and then we’ll all open up the presents together like we usually do. You won’t even notice that I’m gone.” Maybe my mother will, but she certainly won’t. Whenever her husband’s around, her attention remains solely focused on him. She parades herself on being a so-called traditionalist as a wife; whatever that means. Either way, her head is up his ass and luckily for her, his is just as far up hers.
“What time are you getting here in the morning? I figure I’ll at least be considerate enough to start making breakfast around them so by the time you’re here, you won’t have to eat cold food.”
“Most likely around nine or a half hour after it. It won’t be much later than that.”
“That’s if you’re not hungover, huh?”
“I won’t be. I have no plans to drink, unless it’s like a half glass of some spiked egg nog. Can’t go to a Christmas function and not have some egg nog. I’m driving, so it won’t be much.” I’m not irresponsible with my life and in addition to that, if O smells the alcohol on my breath, he’ll be scolding me all night long for having the audacity to drink and drive.
“Okay.”
I never thought she’d leave the kitchen. She’s been in here since my arrival and comfortably settled at a spot in front of the island, while watching my every move. Initially, I thought she was doing it simply to be a critic of whatever I intended to prepare in the kitchen, but now I know she sat there as a mean to try and find her way into my business as she always seems to do. I’ve never been interested in what she has going on with Preston since she met the man. Even when we all went out to dinner a few years back and she first introduced him to both my mother and I, I didn’t have much of anything to say. All I could make of their connection was that she was obsessed with everything about him and luckily for her, he was smitten enough to feel the same way about her. She needed a man who could and world be a bit of a pushover for her and he is exactly that.
My father’s beloved stewed chicken or as he called it, poulet creole, was a breeze to prepare because I’m the only one in our home who learned every single aspect of that recipe directly from him. On a random summer day, while my mom and Celeste were out at the hair salon getting curls put into their hair for Sunday service, he interrupted me from watching ESPN, and called me into the kitchen for yet another one of his many lessons. The manner in which he taught me wasn’t by me looking on at his every task but instead me doing all of the work while he closely directed so I’d my hands would familiarize themselves with the process as he claimed. It was the same method that his grandmother taught him to cook with.
I preferred learning to cook under his guidance far more than my mother’s because she’s like a drill sergeant in the kitchen; barking down on her subject for any mistake or mishap with her directions. He and I laughed, danced to whatever he chose to play in the radio, and compared and contrasted our opinions on any topic we could think of. I will always hold him in the highest regard for allowing my self-expression to flourish. As a West Indian father of two girls, he could have easily chosen the overprotective and absurdly sexist route in raising us, but he didn’t. Rather than doing his best attempt to blind me from life beyond the doors of our home, he chose to listen to my perspective and then teach me about what life has to offer whether good or bad; easy, moderate, or difficult.
I miss him. Actually, that’s an understatement. During the holiday season, that pain that lies dormant within my soul flares up into an intensity that I have to stoically mask for the sake of getting through. As much as he emphasized the need to prepare both Celeste and I for the day that he was no longer with us, none of us ever expected it to be as soon as it was. I want to be the strong and independent woman that he raised me to be, but in some ways, I still need him. My mother needs him because she hasn’t been quite right ever since. Celeste needs him just as much, because there’s a part of her that has always sought him out in the men that she chose to allow into her life since his death.
“Celeste, I’m heading out.”
“Nice coat and hat.”
The caramel wool cashmere single-breasted silhouette was an unexpected gift from Kobe before we went on break for the holiday. Everything about the hand-embroidered embellishments and the manner in which it loosely accentuated my frame instantly made me fall in love with it with the Burberry piece. He encouraged me to open it up while we were standing there in my dressing room so I’d be able to see if I liked it, but I voiced that it wouldn’t be right to open it before Christmas. My curiosity nipped at me all morning long until I fed into its urge by opening it up and like a kid whenever they’re given anything new, I had to wear it immediately. The matching beanie hat is the cherry on top. Before I’m off to bed tonight, I intend to thank him again.
“Thanks. It’s my Christmas gift from Bean.”
“Who?”
“Kobe.”
“So, you’re going to be here around nine, right? You better not be late because I’m not defending you when mommy snaps.”
“Yes. I’ll be here. When she gets in from church, tell her to call me if she needs me.” I still can’t believe she went to Christmas Eve service. Actually, I’m quite surprised that she didn’t pressure Celeste and I into attending.
“Will do. Enjoy yourself.”
“Thank you. Merry Christmas Eve.” Unexpectedly for her, I leaned in and planted a soft peck on her cheek. We’ve never been the type of sisters who shower one another with a lot of love whether it be physical or verbal, but on there are those random occasions when I do show or tell her how much I love her. I’d like to think in all the ways I help her or come running when she needs me, it’s a reflection of what I feel just as much.
“Merry Christmas Eve. Have fun.”
“Will do. You too. Since mom isn’t here, maybe you and Preston can get a little practice in on that baby that you want.” With a slight scoff, her eyebrows raised.
“Since when are you on the wild side?”
“I’m reserved, not virginal. See you in the morning.”
A gust a wind slithered through the open space as soon as I opened the door to step outside and very faint sprinkles of snow filled the air as they lightly cascaded down to meet my frame. I thought I would have been out of here before it all started but the beauty of it ceased any complaints that I usually would have if it weren’t Christmas Eve. If anything, the snow makes the spirit of tonight even more fulfilling. I don’t have to dream of a white Christmas because it seems like the city is being gifted with one this year.
“Happy Holidays stranger.”
I didn’t see his car parked across the street nor had I noticed him jogging across the street after locking the doors behind himself and yet here he is, stepping up onto the sidewalk and inching closer to the steps of my mother’s porch to trigger a slight downward spiral of my mood with his presence alone. I don’t know what it is with Quinton and his purposeful choice to remain all in the family despite my resistance towards whatever he and my mother thought they had planned for my love life. Initially, I believed he genuinely viewed us as an extension of his own family and supporters in the neighborhood who he knew he could count on, but now, I’m not sure what the fuck this is or where he’s going with it.
“Happy Holidays.”
“How have you been?”
“Well. You?” I was better just a minute ago.
“I’m well enough.”
“What brings you around? The holiday? You seem to always show up around here whenever there’s one.” In his hand, he held a gift bag that I’m going to assume is for my mother. It’s not that I mind that he buys her gifts, because deep down, I don’t. I’m mostly concerned with what they mean.
“I don’t just show up here on holidays. I come over and check on your mom from time to time. You know I love Mrs. Nazaire.” My scoff was loud and clear. Any time we speak now, he sounds like nothing more than a fame hungry politician, who uses manipulation tactics to garner allies and supporters. I’m sure his antics are no different with my mother. It’s why she holds him in such high regard no matter how much I don’t give a fuck.
“Yeah? It’s starting to feel like you’re screwing my mother. I’m not looking for any step-dads within our age range. Sniff around women your own age Quinton.” The sarcasm flowed from my mouth and into his ears; leaving a flustered expression on his face that quickly transitioned into one of annoyance.
“I’m not. I’ve only been to bed with one Nazaire woman.”
“I’m glad you used the past tense. I barely remember that one and done situation; but I’m glad that you do. She’s not here, but Celeste and her husband are. You’re more than welcome to wait for her and I’m sure that you will.”
“I don’t know what it is that Shamel did to you, but you’re so bitter now. Not all men are hood gym owners who fucked you over repeatedly while dipping into women who bought memberships to be trained in doggystyle position rather than on treadmills. All I wanted to do was be a good man to you, but you’re coming at my head as if I’m your enemy.” He said all of that and yet I’m the bitter one? If anyone asked me anything about this man’s personal life, I wouldn’t be able to tell you anything aside from what I know from the days when we’d actually hangout with one another. I haven’t kept up with much about his life story since then and I’d prefer not to know now. That’s the difference between he and I; he remains invested in what doesn’t concern him while I can’t seem to find a reason or the time to concern myself with what he wishes I would concern myself with.
“I’m growing a bit confused about who has the pussy between the two of us. Only bored and lonely women concern themselves with what was or wasn’t going on in another woman’s relationship. Damn, you were more invested in what Shamel was doing with his time than I was. I’m bitter because I don’t want to play your political trophy wife or are you bitter because despite my firm no, you’re still sniffing around here and chasing me? Find your dignity Quinton. Don’t go out like a wack bitch, aight?”
“I hope you don’t go out like one either. Make sure you keep it classy by not fucking with all of those athletes that you’re constantly around. How many have you been with thus far?”
“All of them.” I’m usually not the type to laugh at my own jokes but I couldn’t help but to chuckle at his facial expression. I’ve been slut shammed more times than I can count. It happens every day when random people hiding behind social media accounts on apps decide to accuse me of using my body in order to keep my job, so Quinton doing it isn’t offending me any more than it does when strangers are doing it. Initially, I used to be extremely irritated by it but I’ve come to terms with the reality that people are going to say and assume whatever they want no matter what I do or feel about it. No matter who I do or don’t have in my bed, my bills are paid.
“Excuse me. I have some place to be.”
Stepping around him wasn’t the problem; it was the oddness of him standing there and watching me slip into my car. Like a lost puppy, he trudged up the stairs to the house door and continued to burn a hole into my foggy windows with a scowl on his face that I couldn’t see but I’m sure is there. Maybe one day he’ll get it or maybe he won’t, either way, I’m not responsible for what he feels. I’ve been clear with all intentions and lack their off.
No matter how much snowfall happens in the northeast year after year, as soon as flakes of any size begins to fall out of the sky, the snail-paced traffic is an immediate effect and it drives me insane. It’s one of the primary reasons why I was in no rush to get a new car and am currently wishing I had a driver taking me to my destination. Not even the holiday tunes that I love so much are distracting me from wanting to roll my window down and shout at the drivers in front of me who are missing green lights and evoking slight amounts of fear within me with their skidding. What would usually be a forty-five-minute commute turned into nearly an hour and a half.
The relief that washed over me at the sight of the double entry driveway was well received as I slowly inched my way in and focused in on the three bodies standing in the driveway. I reached out to him just a few minutes ago to notify him that I’d need help getting bags out of the backseat of the car, so we wouldn’t have to make multiple trips in the brisk weather. Unlike the other males standing alongside him, the handsome one who belongs to me was hilariously covered in an oversized Santa coat with a black hood covering his blonde mane.
“The traffic was so stupid as I was on my way to the Lincoln Tunnel. I will never understand how people who have been living on the East Coast since forever still fear the damn snow. It’s not even snowing that hard.” My right hand latched onto his and he carefully pulled me out of the driver’s seat and into his awaiting arms. My complaint went into one ear and right out of the other as he endearingly snuggled my frame as close to his as possible while nuzzling his chilled face into the nape of my neck. Admittedly, I needed to feel him in this exact manner for the restoration of the joy that this night is supposed to be and bring.
“And don’t even get me started on this ass wipe in this big ass Navigator who kept slightly skidding. I was caught in between being worried for my damn life and wanting to kick his ass for driving so stupidly. Oh and…” His peck was sweet; subtle and yet enough to leave me yearning for so much more.
“Give me your keys.” To oblige his request, I dropped them into his hand and turned to both Kordell and Derek who were looking on and most likely extremely bored with my rant.
“Hi guys.”
“You finally made it. This guy was about five minutes away from hopping into his Rolls Royce and driving all the way to Brooklyn for you.” I’ve only met his step-father Derek once and in my quick assessment of him I understood that he was more of a reserve man who somehow had a humorous side to him that couldn’t be ignored. He can crack a joke and it usually comes at the right time.
“I told him I was coming. I would have been here if it weren’t for the traffic.”
“And he wanted me to get in the car and go with his lame ass.” After a shared hug with Derek, I threw my arms around Kordell and pecked his forehead despite his maneuvers to avoid it. He’s not exactly the most physically affectionate person so I purposefully shower him with some of my own to worsen whatever annoyance his oldest brother sent his way.
“You weren’t going to come looking for me with your brother? I thought you and I are good friends now?”
“We’re family or whatever, but you and bro are old. I have a lot more life to live. I wasn’t about to catch hypothermia messing with the two of you.”
“It’s not even that bad out here. You haven’t seen a real blizzard yet Louisiana boy.” His dramatics earned a light mush to his head. I’d love to see how he reacts to a couple of feet of snow covering the ground and maybe even a power outage to go with it. Now that’s hell.
“Sarai, what is all of this?” The bewildered expression on his face and him using my first name evoked me to widen my eyes in a confusion about what I could possibly be in trouble about. I don’t believe there’s anything incriminating in my trunk and if there is, I didn’t place it there.
“Gifts.”
“All of this?” Like a nagging elderly man who borders between obnoxiously cheap and being frugal with his money, he extended his arm towards the overflowing trunk and placed his idly hand on his hip to await an explanation that he’s not going to receive.
“What? I told you that I was coming with gifts. Don’t be ridiculous. Just grab them. Oh, and don’t forget the ones in the backseat. I’m going inside. It’s cold.”
“This is crazy. You went overboard.”
“I know you’re not talking about overboard. There’s a Rolls Royce parked right over there. I can start there and keep on going for hours. You really want to do this right now?” If there’s anything I’m ever ready for; it’s to prove somebody wrong. Debating is an essential part of my profession as an analyst and I haven’t lost a debate yet if you let me tell it, so I can and will give him an extensive five minutes of dialog about his spending habits and how he is by far one of the biggest spenders that I know. This man doesn’t even use his washer and dryer. He dry cleans every damn thing and never wears the same underwear, socks, or t-shirts twice.
“Nah, baby, you got it.” Without any further questions or concerns, he extended his arms into the trunk and began to retrieve a few of the many bags that they all needed to bring inside.
“Wow. You know how things go in arguments. Good job, man.”
While on my way to the warmth, my laughter at Derek’s commentary was loud enough for me to hear it but low enough so that the man of my affection couldn’t make it out. Sometimes it’s just best to keep quiet about the reality that your man is willing to put himself aside to please you and, in this case, it was his mouth.
“Sarai!”
Sometimes I’m stunned by my sincere acceptance into his family dynamic. We’re anything but traditional and we’re navigating in a manner that I’m sure they don’t understand because we certainly don’t. Aside from my overwhelming emotional affection towards the man who belongs to them more than he does to me, they’ve been unknowingly responsible for making me feel like I deserve the joy that I feel when I’m with him and around them. In my transition from hugs with Heather, Jazzy, and those who I’ve been led around the first level of the house to meet, I haven’t been able to ease away the smile gracing my face.
“Your outfit and pajamas are upstairs in the room.” I know pasta when I smell it. The fumes coming from the kitchen appealed to my senses quickly and left my stomach turning in knots for nourishment.
“Outfit?”
“Wait until you see what your guy bought for you.” Her amusement was my fear. I tend to like to make him the butt of a couple of my jokes, but I don’t want to be the one on the other end of his tonight.
“Is it a onesie?”
“No.” Suddenly I wish this glass of egg nog were spiked.
“I’m going to head up and see it. If it’s a disaster I’m pulling the feminist card and blaming the both of you because we’re supposed to be united against these men.” I waggled my finger back and forth to point out the mother and daughter duo who found my apprehension to be amusing and began slowly inch my way up the spiraling staircase that leads to the upper level of the house. Though I could hear his voice loud and clear from the foyer, O hadn’t brought my personal belongings upstairs and I’m already up here so that’s out. With that in mind, it seems even more logical to take him up on his offer of my own closet space so that I no longer need to keep trekking overnight backs to and from here.
A blend of the Italian bergamot and clay sage from his beloved cologne meshed in blissfully with the gingerbread scent that I know he purposefully misted into the room just for me. Since December came in, he frequently made note of how my home smelled like cookies whenever he came over and accused me of trying to toy with his already slightly ridiculous appetite for junk food, especially candy. Despite my love for Bath and Body Works and Yankee Candle’s holiday scents, he deemed them to be exceedingly sweet and overdone. Now look at him.
Flutters filled my core at the sight of his master suite’s fireplace being utilized for the first time ever. Unlike my obsession with them, it’s a feature within the house that he hasn’t concerned himself with since moving in. There’s something about the way the flames are curling and oscillating, flickering like gleaming lights, and cascading hues of scarlet onto the wall that naturally warms the space.
“Your stuff is on the bed.” I knew he was in the doorway. The chills trickling onto the back of my neck spoke before he did.
“You put the fireplace on.”
“I figured you’d like it. Thank God it’s electric. I’m no fireplace expert.” As his feet trudged against the wooden flooring, he dropped my monogram Louis Vuitton Keepall Bandoulière duffle bag near the entry way of his closet.
“It’s beautiful.” If it were just us, I’d curl up on the floor in front of it with a good playlist going.
As soon as my Ugg boots were kicked aside, I inched closer to the bed and alongside three bags, was a Snoopy and Woodstock perfectly wrapped present that I certainly wasn’t expecting to see. My curiously instantly peaked but in a swift second, I checked myself for discarding the waiting rule I’ve grown up with. Celeste and I weren’t even able to open one gift at midnight on Christmas Eve.
“You forgot to put that under the tree?” Instead, I reached for the crimson red gift bag and snickered as soon as my hand silky velvet material that is identical to the kind covering his frame. My Mrs. Claus coat was that of something I’d be waiting for Santa in the bedroom in rather than keeping an eye on the elves. It’s lace-up front called for a good cleavage while the pure white faux fur trimming and flared skirted bottom were more along the lines of tradition until anyone notices the split open front. What exactly is supposed to go under this?
“No, that’s for you to open now. You probably thought I was playing when I mentioned it before but I really am impatient on Christmas Eve. I like to open presents the night before and just sleep on Christmas morning. Since it’s our first one together, I figured I’d be fair to your traditions and my own. So, we can open some tonight and then open the first in the morning. Fair?” Like an eager child hoping to get his way, his narrowed eyes slightly widened with hopes that I’d agree to what he calls fair. I don’t see what the big deal is. It all has to be opened either way.
“Fair.”
“So open that.”
Lazily, my body flopped down onto the plushness of the bed and I grabbed the box with a bit of shaking to increase his growing anticipation. The contents inside only slighting moved, throwing off just about all of my potential guesses for what it may be. My first donned a smirk as I commenced with tearing through the wrapping paper to uncover the infamous Christian Louboutin box under it. Shoes? Infinite brownie points already. Much like himself, I adore footwear. I stand by the law that a shoe can make or break a look more than any other article of clothing.
“You didn’t.” Instantaneously, thoughts of a random conversation I was having with Taylor came to mind. Christian Louboutin collaborated with Indian Couture Designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee on an extremely limited-edition collection featuring hand-embroidered sari fabrics and jaw dropping embellishments that left me in awe upon the sight of it online. Every piece of material used to craft the shoes were taken from Sabyasachi’s private archive, leaving only a few pairs of each design to be created.
“Didn’t what?” His confusion was intentional. The grin called his bluff.
The lid to the box went flying behind me in an instant and in dramatic fashion, I dropped back onto the bed in astonishment and bliss at the sight of the exquisite thigh high boots that I fell in love with. Their golden delicate leather straps were specially designed harness and highlight the leg. On top of it, they’re made to measure.
“Is this real life?”
“I feel pretty alive, what about you?”
“How the hell did you get these? I called everywhere. No, literally. I e-mailed fucking Hong Kong for them. Supposedly only like six pairs were made.”
“Those have been in my closet since October.” The nonchalance in his tone evoked a moisture lightly seep into the seat of the lace under my jeans. I don’t know whether to jump on the bed in joy or discard everything covering my frame allow him to twist and flip me into any position of his liking. Maybe both? Both can certainly be done.
“Come and give me a hug please.” With the box now resting alongside me, I opened my arms and awaited his presence. Like a weighted blanket, a wave of tranquility washed over me at the mass of his body now being closely hard-pressed against mine. My fingers found their way into the platinum blonde curls and few loose dreads dangling from his scalp and our lips met for a kiss that I’d been yearning for since I opened my eyes this morning. The sweetness of his supple lips intoxicated me far more than anything alcoholic ever could and the way his length fingers dug into the skin of my hips nearly blurred the actuality that we’re not home alone.
“I love them so much. Thank you, handsome.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Get up so that I can get one of yours from downstairs.”
“I can wait until after you’re dressed.”
“No, I insist. Let me get it.”
“Another kiss first?”
Without hesitation, I once again pressed my lips into his own for a deep peck and moved in a fluidity with his body as we eased off of the bed. I made it downstairs and back up, with a promise that I’d hurry up and change so the festivities could really begin. I need a quick shower first before I do anything else.
“I hope that you like it. I saw it and you instantly came to mind.”
“Can I just warn you that I didn’t wrap all of your gifts. The only reason why your boots were wrapped is because the boutique did it for me.”
“It’s fine. I don’t care about all of that.” The last thing I expected him to do is be frustrating himself with wrapping paper. His patience would never be able to handle it. For some odd reason, I enjoy doing it. I’ve been the designated gift wrapper in my family for years.
Though it may seem childish to some, I wrapped everything I bought him in Dr. Seuss’ “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” wrapping paper that I randomly spotted and happily picked up from a Hallmark store in Rutherford, New Jersey. Since he deemed it to be his favorite holiday classic, I imagined it would be festive to bring an element of it into the fun.
With my phone in hand, I snapped a photo of him as he tore through it to reveal the Louis Vuitton box, I knew it to be. Within seconds, its lid was on the floor and he drew away the protective paper to reveal the tan cowhide and calf leather “Christopher Backpack” backpack I bought for him. Unlike his ridiculously vibrant Supreme bags, I fell in love with the timeless style of the backpack and the classic solidness of its color. It’s a perfect choice for those game days when he’s more dressed up than down and needs something that’s subtle while still somehow being a statement piece.
“Damn, this is clean. This is perfect for when we’re traveling because they usually want us a little more dressed up.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“Yeah, I love this baby. I don’t know about waiting until next season to wear it though. I’ll have this on within a couple of days. Watch.”
Knowing him, he will. If it’s new, he’s in it shortly after receiving it. I don’t know him to be that person who saves things for later. Why should he when he’s constantly either buying or receiving things?
“I’m going to take a short shower. It’ll be quick.”
“You already smell good. What you need a shower for?”
“I was cooking. I can smell it on me. It’ll be quick. Ten minutes.”
“Your showers are never ten minutes.”
“This one will be. I assure you.”
The fib didn’t go without being grumbled about when that ten-minute duration I assured him up turned into an additional ten simply because of the feel of the warm water cascading over my skin left me in damn near a state of slumber as I stood there. My lotion lathering came with assistance and so did pulling up the opaque plaid patterned tights over my thighs. By the way of their fit, they were clearly sewn together to cater to an extremely slender woman’s shape but by the grace of God and my man’s hands they were up and over my ass without a snag or hole in sight.
“I really can’t believe you bought all of this.” We look like we work in the middle of a mall. Instead of having crying babies sitting up on his lap for photographs, he’d have lusty women beating one another to a bloody pulp for daring to cut the line to ruin their chances of sitting upon his lap and asking for his genitalia while I’d be called Santa’s Slore.
“Let’s go outside.”
Intricate patterns of the weightless ice floated downward from the darkened sky. Each flake whirled and twirled as a faint wind blustered them in our direction. Much like the silly man alongside myself randomly dancing for his personal media guy’s camera, I joyfully tracked footsteps into the barely there bed of snow covering the grounds of his driveway and took satisfaction in the sound of it squishing under my boots. I’m no longer camera shy, but being on one with him has awoken what used to be a part of me. I already knew that George would be documenting all of this just as he does for a lot of milestones and random moments of his life, but what happens if I’m no longer what he wants and he randomly comes across this Christmas video and the pictures to go with it one day? How awkward would that be?
“Hey, look.”
“Huh?” Though he only spoke two words, the thick cloud of breath still lingered as I faced him. In following his eyes as they slowly panned up, mine met the mistletoe idly hanging on the door with the red bows that were already there.
“That was not there when I got here.” I saw the bows, but the mistletoe? No. Laughter spilled from our lips at what I knew to be true. I’m slightly fatigued, but I can remember what I did and did not see.
“It was.”
“It was not.”
“Come and kiss me so that we can go inside, open up more stuff, and play cards with grandma.”
“That tone. I like it.” I’m alright with a man taking charge every now and then.
“Come here.”
The frost of the winter air was of no match to the warmth radiating from our bodies and serving as a shield around our affection. I’d often fantasize about moments like this; having a companion to comfortably, and most of all safely, bare my all to without any guards or painful baggage weighing me down. I believed the advice of allowing it to come to me was standard and cliché, but I undoubtedly understand it now. It’s when you least expect it that the unexpected happens in the best way possible. I ruled him out of my life as soon as we had that initial conversation and yet the universe continued to cross our paths, naturally coercing me to allow him in. In the midst of all of my fears from the past and present, I want only him.
“Okay, let’s go. I want to see everything that you got me.”
“You can’t open everything tonight. That’s breaking our deal.”
“Huh?” I trailed behind him as he dashed back into the house and towards the living room.
“You heard me!”
I chose the kitchen counter top as my designated seat for what turned into the most chaotic gift giving presentation. Like a hood Santa Claus, all I could pay attention to was my man and his slightly sagging plaid pants zipping through his home pulling out gifts from seemingly everywhere. They jokingly talked about how much of a grinch he was last Christmas but he’s certainly redeeming himself this year.
I can’t remember the last time I thoughtlessly splurged on luxury designer goods but I don’t need to do so any time soon because he covered that and then some. Being overwhelmed was an understatement. Chanel, Versace, Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, Saint Laurent, Fendi. I lost track of the rest and the process of just how I’m going to be able to organize all of it in my closet.
In watching him, it’s so easy to understand human purpose. In the midst of being here to seek fulfillment within our own purpose, we’re just as much here to look after our loved ones and even those who aren’t. Fortunately, he’s been blessed to have more and because of it, he spreads not only his love but also the benefits of his wealth among them. There’s a pride within it that has been radiating from him for over an hour now. I too, can relate. I’ve been given just as many hugs and kisses of thanks that he’s been given and I expect that it’ll continue when I am with my own family in the morning.
“Draw 4, blondie.” What he thought was going to be a swift Uno out moment turned into him having fifteen cards in his hand and a scowl on his face that is hysterical. He’d beaten me to the point of embarrassment at Spades because I’ve never been that great at it despite the many times my dad taught me how to play, so I had to somehow coerce him into playing something that I could play by pretending that I didn’t know how to.
“You know what, I’m going downstairs to whoop Kordell in some hoops because you’re cheating.” A snicker slipped past my lips at the playfully aggravated scowl on his face as he used his body’s strength to push his chair away from the round table. In a manner to taunt him, I held out my hands before me and wiggled my fingers to signify my lack of cards and the reality that I’d just won yet another game of UNO. My man being a sore loser isn’t something that he’s modest about. I and many others have known that about him for quite some time.
“Don’t be mad.”
“You’re cheating. You keep making up imaginary rules that don’t exist.”
“Seriously? The directions are in the box. Look at them or look them up on Google. It’s not my fault that you don’t know them all. You just suck.”
“I suck?” The amused expression on Mille’s face tickled all of us as she glanced back and forth, to take in every shit talking word as they left the both of our mouths. She’d been quietly observing the two of us since we joined both she and Jasmyne at the table for a round of card games.
Initially, I thought I’d been intruding on her time with her grandchildren, but the sly smirks and eventual huge smiles gracing her angelic face swarmed me with a warmness that I needed to further soothe me into a comfort zone around those who I do not know well just yet. Every couple of minutes or so, she’d give me either a gracious caress to the hand as a sign of her welcoming or a pat of encouragement to continue beating her oldest grandchild at Uno. I’m going to accredit that to the feminism within her.
“If the shoe fits, babe.”
“I’m going to remember that baby. The mental note is made.” He used his index finger to tap his forehead as I wordlessly ogled over his exterior.
If anyone looked at his attire, it wouldn’t be deemed as anything impressive; a black Supreme sweatshirt and a pair of black loose shorts to keep him much cooler than all of that velvet he had on. Simple. Why my eyes are continuing to embarrassingly bulge out of their sockets every time they land on him is beyond my comprehension. I’ve never seen anyone’s facial structure be as chiseled to perfection as his is. The silhouette of his jawbone is completely shielded by the blackness of his thick beard and yet just the hint of it sends unwavering shivers down my spine.
The glimmer in his faintly slanted and ever so narrowed eyes illuminates any room when that priceless smile arises on his face and every aspect of myself begins to figuratively melt into liquid form; between my thighs is the worst of it. In the midst of his sleep, I love to plant soft pecks down the finely lined bridge of his nose until my lips are gently pressed into the suppleness of his own. I’m addicted. I lose all sense of who I am whenever his warm tongue meets mine.
Handsome is an understatement; it isn’t enough to compare. He is beauty personified. I don’t believe there is another man in sports entertainment who has left me gasping for just a slight breath of air upon my every sight of him. It never gets old. I don’t believe it ever will.
Sometimes I have to wonder if he’s truly mine or if the universe is playing some type of sick joke on me.
“I don’t mind you remembering that.” Whatever payback he has for that may come with pleasure that I am more than willing to accept.
“Alright.” The sly smirk tugging on his lips was enough to leave me on the borderline of tickled and embarrassed as soon as he leaned over to plant a knowing and warning kiss on my lips. Despite the presence of his younger siblings and the elders within his family, he didn’t harbor not even an ounce of regard or bashfulness when it came to his need to have his hands touching some part of my body or any other display of affection, he bestowed upon me at random moments. His actions remained consistent with all that he does when we’re alone; barely any discretion involved.
“I’m not sure if my stomach is churning because of you two or because I want some cake, but I’m going to get some cake anyway. Y’all want anything?”
“You just mad.” And just like that, her brother’s large palms were lightly meshing into the side of her head for a playful mush and she instantly pushed him out of her way.
“I’m just fine with my egg nog.” Mille opted to keep hers virgin along with the other underage beings around. The rest of us had just a teaser of rum to give it a subtle kick.
“Me too. I’m fine.” I stepped on the scale a couple of days ago and I’ve gained five pounds. Between the man in my life constantly feeding me and the holidays, I’ve been overindulging on just about everything that’s offered to me. I need to get my life together.
With yet another shove to her brother’s side, Jasmyne darted away from the table with him hot on her trail with jokes about the size of her head which is no different from his own, but I’ll leave him be. They left the matriarch of their family and I at the table with decks of cards and a “Snow Place Like Home” five-hundred-piece jigsaw puzzle that she’s beginning to open so that we can attempt to put it all together before we’re off to bed. The peacefulness on her face evoked a solace within me that I’ve been seeking since this day began. My internal mourning subsided for the meantime as I observed her joy in being surrounded by family and most of all, because they’re all doing quite well in all aspects.
“My daughter went from telling me that you have my grandson’s nose wide open to telling me that he’s completely lost into your world and I couldn’t believe it. Odell would always laugh me off when I asked him about girls or women and he’d tell me that myself, Heather, and Jasmyne are the only ladies of value and importance in his life. From the way he’s been floating around here since your arrival and the way he looks at you, there’s officially a fourth.” My mouth moved to speak but the words remained stuck in the pit of my throat as her ash white eyebrows arose in a satisfaction at the believed accuracy of her all too knowing spirit.
“You don’t have to be modest. He’s not sitting next to you anymore.” Immediately, giggles spilled from her rosy lips prompting my shoulders to sink in a relief that I’m not sure why I needed.
“I’m not being modest. I just don’t know what to say. It feels like a lot of this is unfamiliar territory for me but at the same time, it evokes the shy and bashful side of me.” She’s been making little comments since we were introduced. I guess they were all leading up to this moment.
“That’s a good thing dear; a great thing. I’ve been wanting to meet you ever since his momma showed me a video of him working out with his physical therapists and trainers. You’ve built him back up. She gives you most of the credit for that.”
“I wouldn’t give myself any credit. His determination did it. You can’t keep someone with his determination down and he certainly wasn’t going to do it to himself.”
“Determination goes a long way, but often time, there has to be something or someone to ignite the fire behind that determination and that has been you. You cared for him, physically and most of all mentally, during what he calls one of the most disappointing and darkest times of his life thus far. So, don’t sell yourself cheaply because he talks about you like you’re priceless.”
“I believe in everyone having a person; that person that they can go to for laughter and good times or to lean on for a cry session. Whether it’s a close relative or a friend, you just need that person. I wanted to be that person for him because I know what it’s like to not have that person. He didn’t need pity. He needed encouragement that the injury is just a small part of his journey and most of all, he just needed someone to simply be there. That’s what you do for someone you lo-“
My tongue pressed against the backs of my top front teeth as I halted an admission that I’ve been withholding for a short while and coming to grips with on my own. I’ve been overly analyzing what that means for myself and how to navigate it going forward because it’s never felt quite like this before. As with all that I’ve been sharing with him, it’s new and I’ve jumped off of a cliff and into a pit of fear that I’m doing my best not to drown in.
Acceptance needed to come first and now that it has, I’ve been in a wonderment of whether or not those feelings are reciprocated on his end and how I’m going to handle my ever-going emotions if they are not. I cannot berate him for what he may not feel nor can I resent him for not sparing my feelings with lies if he does admit that I am in this alone.
I want to do nothing more than protect him. It’s almost odd because I’ve felt compelled to do that prior to even knowing him. Every attack and biased commentary that came his way felt like a personal attack on the character of a man who the world refused to understand. Now that I’ve experienced him in ways that are far beyond what were in my imagination at that time, I stand firm in what I knew all along. He’s not perfect and yet his imperfections are too what I love about him. He’s the embodiment of a security in his personhood and masculinity that I am irrevocably attached to.
“You could have finished that. Words are powerful but so are body language and actions. Yours have said it all. You know, I used to call you the young lady on TV that he likes so much, but now I call you the young lady on TV that he loves so much.”
Faint tingling nipped at the nape of my neck and the lined crevice of my back as certain aspects of her statement entered my ear like a vibrating echo; hypothetically repeating themselves for an emphasis to my thoughts. The last man I remember genuinely loving me laid down with my mom to create me. Shamel did not love me; I was something to do.
He rarely ever used the word and when he did, it was to emphasize something that he loved for me to do for him. In poor judgement and a lack of character, I accepted that because I was too emotionally exhausted to be combative with him or myself about it. Eventually, I didn’t even want him to love me. There didn’t need to be anything that kept us attached beyond an ignorant familiarity that I clung to for far too long.
“You really think so?”
“I know so dear.”
In an effort to help her, I reached my arms out and used my hands to spread out the many pieces all over the table so that we could begin a strategy to get it done. It’s been quite some time since I’ve done one of these and I’m not even sure my tired body can concentrate enough but I’m willing to try.
“Merry Christmas.” Yet again, the scent of his Sean Jean cologne slithered up my nose as the heat radiating from his body left me leaning back against my seat, relishing in it. His long arms extended over and he placed a navy-blue box down on the table directly in front of me. Upon my eyes landing on it, the all too famous Harry Winston initials were engraved in a bold gold on its surface.
“What’s this?” Along with him, Mille, and myself being in the room, there was also George who was continuing to document every aspect of this holiday celebration.
“Just a little something for my Brooklyn girl to rock with her Timbs.”
“Shut up!” Our regional teasing never ends. He tends edge me out with the Brooklyn jokes because I don’t know how many other ways, I can talk about how country he is. Technically speaking, he’s not even as country as some of the other athletes that I’ve spoken with over the last couple of years. Even his accent, that nearly melted me out of my heels the night we first conversed with one another, isn’t heavily ingrained with that Louisiana flare.
“Open it.” Without any bickering or hesitation, I slowly pulled up the lid on the box to reveal a pair of hoop earrings that instantly left me in a state of breathlessness. The emerald and round cut stones circled their platinum setting with a glimmer that one could not ignore. Every aspect of their make oozed a meticulousness to his taste and Mr. Winston’s talent. Any figure of price that came to mind could not match up with what sat before me and I know better than to ask him for specifics. I can admit to being a gold hoop wearing girl while I was back in high school, but I never imagined myself having a pair quite like this.
“Oh my God.” Circling my fingers over their surfaces solidified the reality of them now being within my possession and his supple lips pressing against my forehead widened the smile I was already donning.
“You like them? They seemed like they were very you when I saw them. Hoops for when you rock those buns in your hair.” Whether it’s a well done or sloppy bun, he always compliments how “cute” it is on me and he takes it a step further by enjoying the open access to my neck while my hair is out of the way.
“I love them. Thank you, babe. Thank you so much, they’re beautiful.” Just as I’ve done with every gift he’s given me thus far, I leapt out of the chair and threw my arms around his body in a physical showering of the love that I have for him. It’s beyond the gifts but rather the reality of him thinking of me and being so intuitive with what I desire and need that has taken his endless gift giving over the edge tonight.
“George did you get that? Now that’s a picture-perfect moment.” Mille’s face glowed in pleasure at the sight of us. I wonder if we’re reminiscent of those old black and white films that I secretly love so much. I hope so, but just in color. Everything about us is vibrant.
“I have it all Mama Millz.”
“I’ll be back.” I couldn’t take another moment of being in that unbearably warm coat or the tights.
I did change. The crimson red fair isle long john was a perfect touch for tonight. Much like earlier, the fireplace distracted me and I found myself sliding down onto the floor to marvel in its heat and beauty. If there were a pillow down here with me, I’d be asleep within minutes. Though he moved into this house not that long ago, for some reason it feels more lived in than my own. Maybe it’s because it’s filled with family right now or it may be the dogs, but I enjoy the way I feel here. There’s an eerie loneliness in my home that can be difficult to ignore sometimes.
“What are you doing?”
“Enjoying the fireplace.”
“Why are you acting like you don’t have one?” Once inside, he closed the door enough just to leave a crack in it.
“I don’t have one in my bedroom.”
“We can fix that.” Yet again, the nonchalance tone and now shrug awoken parts of me that I’ve been mentally taming since my arrival. He talks like he’s more than willing to give me the world in a silver platter if I were to request it.
“I have something for you.”
“I want something for you too.”
“Me first.” Rather than hanging it to him, I nudged the velvet gift bag towards his feet and he flopped down onto the floor to meet it. He dropped his gift for me, Cartier from what I observed, into his lap.
“Patek Philippe? Oh wow.” With no response, I allowed him to have the moment to himself as he pulled the chocolate toned leather box out of the bag. Our eye contact was brief as he pulled open the lid and his silence intrigued me instead of rattling my already racing nerves. Just as I’d done to the hoop earrings, his fingers ran over its surface while his lips parted to leave his mouth agape. It may not be on his arm now, but I’ve envisioned just how incredible it’s going to look on him over and over again.
“The blue isn’t only representative of the team but it also takes me back to the night we both spoke for the first time. You were wearing blue and black. In New Orleans, when we made things official, you were wearing blue. Blue makes me think of you. I know most associate that color with sorrow, but you give it life and joy. You give it character.”
Only the sound of the fire crackling against the wood served as a tune dancing in the air of stillness between the two of us. His reaction to so many of the other things I gifted to him were boisterous and comedic, but this stole his words and left him to wallow in speechlessness.
“Sarai, I love you.”
The wholeness of his words filled voids that I neglected and accepted as everlasting destruction. His patience has sealed my gaping wounds and rid me of the leftover scarring. The acceptor of my deficiencies and the protector of my delicate soul, in his eyes, for the first time in such a long time, I recognize myself. The duality of being able to love myself and him is as synchronized as my breathing.
“I love you too, Odell.”
Undoubtedly. Irrevocably.
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Thoughts on Grey’s Anatomy: 15X17
I liked this episode, thought I understand why a lot of people didn’t. Meredith was drastically under used in this episode. She only had a few scenes and outside of standalone episodes, which this one was not, that rarely happens.
Meredith has an interesting monologue this week. It also serves as a handy reminder of what a terrible mother Ellis was. Bailey says a big fat ‘Nope’ to the lamb in the bag. We all concur. Meredith and DeLuca’s interactions at the beginning of the episode imply that Meredith and DeLuca briefly break up and are now getting back together. Ugh I wish they would stay broken up!
Meredith gives him a coffee as a peace offering implying that she was wrong to agree with Carina and raise the alarm about his Dad’s project. Meredith wasn’t wrong. Just because DeLuca’s Dad might be right about this project doesn’t change what he did. Ugh. I already hate this storyline.
The interns/residents are cutting into fish. Yuck. That was an awful transition. Parker’s back though! I like him. Are they interns or residents? They keep flipping back and forth with the terminology. I love Schmitt’s line, “We’re making fish people!” Haha! It turns out the fish skin is for a burn patient. It's a really cool and inexpensive procedure.
Maggie is invited to a Morning Show to talk about the scandal. I predicted this was going to be a shit show and I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t. Jackson is wonderfully supportive! Bailey goes and talks to Alex about DeLuca’s Dad’s project. She raises the questions we’ve all been asking. Helm comes and tells them they need to go the lab. Alex and Bailey show up to find the DeLuca’s arguing in Italian. This can’t be good.
It turns out one of the lambs died and it throws the viability of the project into doubt. Alex tells them to stop arguing and tells Carina and Andrew to figure out what happened and write a report and give it to him so he can make a decision. Carina stresses once more that their father is not well and this project is not a good idea. DeLuca ignores her. Carina’s right. DeLuca’s being a blind fool.
One thing that caught my attention when DeLuca and Carina were arguing in front of Alex is that Alex approved their father’s project even though he knew he was mentally ill, did not have a diagnosis, and is not receiving treatment. Why wasn’t DeLuca’s Dad seeing a psychiatrist and getting a diagnosis a condition of him doing the project here? It seems to me that would have cleared a lot of things up and been a lot more realistic.
We then cut to Teddy and Owen talking in the ambulance bay as they wait for an incoming trauma. As usual Owen is a complete asshole. He’s passive aggressive and disrespectful to Teddy like he is to all of the women in his life. Teddy should not have to put up with his crap.
Owen then decides to have a conversation with himself and Teddy says nothing, but he keeps acting like she is. He needs to see a therapist about this. Stat.
The patients in this episode are a married couple that are involved in a car wreck. The man has less serious injuries that can be easily treated. The woman is a different story. Her injuries are more severe and she’s 5 months pregnant. My heart really hurt for this poor couple. Teddy and Owen are assigned to the case. Teddy brings Carina in to help with the pregnant woman.
Carina tells her the baby is fine, but then Teddy asks to speak with her outside. It turns out Teddy has to give the patient bad news and Carina didn’t realize. They might have to do an operation which would result in the removal of her uterus which means the fetus/baby would have to be taken out. It’s too early in the pregnancy for the baby to survive and the fact that Carina told her the baby would be fine makes it so much harder for Teddy to tell her and for the patient to hear the news.
Amelia goes to a conference about alternative pain relief. Also she cut her hair! She looks gorgeous! Link also cut his hair. They’re accidentally at the conference together. Hilarity ensues. They have some great awkward scenes together. Amelia and Link keep running into each other awkwardly and it’s a joy to watch. They go to this weird sound bath and it makes Amelia literally dizzy. She wants to sit down and Link says they should find somewhere to sit, but Amelia decides to sit on the floor in the hallway of their hotel because she’s real like that.
Amelia confides in him about how much she misses Betty and how doesn’t know if she’s okay. Everything feels unfinished as Cristina would say. She thinks she sounds like a mess, but Link says she sounds like a parent. He’s also hilarious and they almost kiss or go back to one of their rooms, but Amelia pulls back and declines. She realizes it’s too soon to get into a new relationship and Link’s into it but not if she isn’t. Amelia does not know what to do with herself. It is very confusing for Link.
It turns out Link’s talk is about opioids in medicine. He talks about a young patient he had and what he prescribed him and what happened. It ended badly and then he says he would prescribe the opioids again. Amelia walks out. This is why Link did not want her to come to his talk. This episode is painful in so many ways.
Jo’s gotten her DNA test results back. She’s nervous and wants Maggie to help her open them because as someone who is adopted she’s gone through a similar thing. They do this in the tech room while Parker is looking at some scans. In real life they would not be doing this with Parker present. Jo’s negative for most of the scary stuff ie. Alzheimer’s and Parkinsons. I love Jo’s line, “It says here I’m mostly British!” Haha! This joke is so meta it works! Jo’s the best!
Jo finds out she has a first cousin whose also done the DNA test. Now she’s curious. Parker offers to help find her. She’s conflicted. Later, Maggie does the Morning Show at the hospital. It’s actually goes pretty well. Jo comes to talk to her and winds up talking to Jackson. She gets no answers on whether or not to look up her birth mother.
Meanwhile Webber comes to talk to Jackson and finds out why they are using the fish skin. Webber asks what they did with the rest of the fish and Jackson says it’s medical waste now which makes literally no sense. Why is Jackson wasting perfectly good fish when he was eating fish on a boat last season? His character makes no sense sometimes.
Bailey and Helen met in the cafeteria. It’s very cute. Helen wants to go home but she’s scared to make the journey. She doesn’t know how to tell Alex. She’s knitting a very long thing. Owen spends most of the episode being a worry wart and Teddy’s got no time for it. Like a badass.
Teddy falls asleep while watching over her patient. The patient goes into distress but she’s so tired with the pregnancy that she sleeps through it. Teddy wakes up and realizes her patient needs to be operated on.
DeLuca and his Dad are in the lab. His Dad says that Carina’s turned on him. DeLuca calls him on his BS. He finds out that Carina has a patient whose baby won’t survive. Next we find out that he went behind Carina and Teddy’s backs to talk to the patient and her husband. That’s a big no no! The procedure has only been barely tested on lambs, not people.
Meredith comes to check out Jackson’s cool new procedure. They chat. Jackson references DeLuca as her boyfriend. To which Meredith responds, “He’s not my boyfriend.” Yeaaah! Music to my ears! I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again I feel like to Meredith, DeLuca is a hot date and someone she’s having fun with. To DeLuca, Meredith is the love of his life. Jackson says that Maggie and Richard think DeLuca is her boyfriend, but Meredith doesn’t see it that way. Very telling. I love Meredith’s line, “Hey! Can he breathe underwater?” Haha!
Bailey and Alex have some truth talk about mental illness, prejudice, and the necessity of treatment. DeLuca finally sees Carina’s point about their Dad. We see DeLuca’s Dad breaking things. This is what Carina was trying to tell everybody. He promised the patient something they can’t deliver and now they have to tell her they can’t. This is heartbreaking to watch.
This part had me tearing up. This one hits close to home for me. It makes me grateful that I’m alive and my Mom is alive and that our medical team was able to save us 26 years ago. Not everyone gets lucky.
After Teddy and Alex have to tell the patient and her husband the terrible news Teddy leaves because she needs a minute. Owen follows her and asks if she’s okay. What kind of stupid question is that? Is she okay? Owen in what universe would Teddy be okay right now? Teddy breaks down and collapses in Owen’s arms. He comforts her. At which point Tom comes down the hallway and sees them. He cut his trip short to come see her and that’s what he finds. Great. Now he’s got the wrong idea.
This is just unnecessary drama. Alex pulls DeLuca’s Dad’s funding for obvious reasons. He argues and blames everyone. Carina has had enough. She’s out. It’s a good think Alex is used to this kind of thing. Other people might crack under the pressure or the shock. After him and Carina leave Alex looks at DeLuca. Alex’s face is all ‘Really bitch?’.
Webber’s does a fish fry on the roof with the tilapia! Aw Helen made Bailey a hat! Alex talked to his Mom and Bailey was right. He’s going to fly back with his Mom to Iowa. Back at the conference Amelia is packing up when Link comes to her door and says she missed the best part. We get more of Link’s back story. His young patient Jason died in a car wreck under the influence after Link prescribed him opioids for his pain. After Jason died he quick medicine and went to work in a bike shop. He eventually got mad at a system that wasn’t working and got back into medicine.
Amelia gets it now. He says that maybe they can fight to change the system together. Him for Jason. Her for Betty. He was going to say they could be Batman and Robin, but then he realizes they’re both Batman. So he says Batman and Batman. I dig it. She tells him she’s in a weird place. He says, “I can roll with weird.” I love him!
He asks her to dinner. She says yes then decides screw it and kisses him instead. Link is very sweet. He takes a step back and says he feels like he’s taking advantage of her because she’s in a weird place and he finds her insanely pretty. Amelia decides to go for it anyway because she wants to and Link’s into it. As she says, “The feeling is mutual.”
Amelia makes it clear this is a one night stand. He’s cool with that. But we all know that the people who have one night stands on this show wind up married so ... Get it Amelia! Yeah! Cut to the hospital. Jackson made a merman today so him and Maggie are getting it on! Helen says goodbye to Jo and her and Alex head out for their flight. This hug between Jo and Helen is everything!
Meredith comes to see DeLuca. She knows the project isn’t going well, but doesn’t know its been scrapped. They were supposed to go have sex at his place so that’s why she’s there. DeLuca is extremely immature and stupid as usual. He tells her to go ahead and say ‘I told you so’. Because apparently he thinks Meredith is the kind of person to say I told you so in a situation like this. She calls him on the fact that she’s not and it bothers her that he thinks she would.
Just another example of how he doesn’t know her at all and how wrong for each other they are. He’s so immature! Also Derek did this a lot and Cristina frequently called him out on it. Meredith does NOT need more of that BS in her life. We also find out that DeLuca’s Dad is going back to Italy. That was fast! There’s a nice shot of all of the former and current Chiefs of Surgery. Jo’s made a decision. She asks Parker to find her birth mother. It turns out Parker already did. Her name is Vicki Rudin. She lives in Pittsburg. Jo was not expecting that!
Well that was interesting! It was a darker episode for sure. Now onto next week’s promo! Next week is all about tension! DeLuca and Meredith are awkward and avoiding each other. Yes!!!!! Please break up! Bailey, Maggie, Quadri, and Schmitt are some kind of badass dream team! Amelia says she and Link should avoid each other for a while. He says okay in a very sexy way. My guess is they hook up before the end of the episode! Owen is being a jerk and wants to get back together with Teddy now that Amelia’s out of the picture. Sigh. He never learns. I hope Teddy doesn’t take him back. She deserves better.
Tom lays down the law!!! He tells Owen if he’s going to make a play for Teddy he should rethink that because he’s going to fight for her! Yes! Go Tom! He previously told Amelia that letting his wife walked out his life into the arms of another man after they lost their son was one of his biggest regrets in life. He’s not going to make the same mistake twice.
That’s all folks! Until next time.
Au revoir!
#grey's anatomy#Meredith Grey#and dream of sheep#15X17#season 15#review#thoughts#critique#mental illness#mental health#maternal care#fetal medicine#grateful#pediatric care
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One That Got Away - Chapter 3
Steve Rogers x OFC Ariadne Bellamy
Chapter 3: Fool Me Once...
Universe: Marvel Canon
Rating: M for Mature (Language, Sexual tones eventual)
“You had what!?”
If one was listening really hard, beyond the sound of low chatter and laughter, the sound of glasses tinkling as they were refreshed with new beverages, they could hear the distinct voice of Nel Descarte before he took a sip out of his own glass of champagne, hand mid grab from the shrimp roll he was about to snatch from a waiters tray.
Nel was handsome in the kind of elite, New York gay art curator way one would suspect. His dark sage suit clung to his copper toned body perfectly, his sinewy frame built out in the fabric. His dark, lustrous hair was gelled back perfectly, his eyebrows trimmed and his hands manicured accentuated by the expensive watch on his wrist. It was Friday night and Sotheby’s Annual Newcomer Gallery had kicked off for the season and Nel, an art curator, had pressed that Ellie and I join him.
He was an old friend of ours, Nel. We had met at NYU our freshman year and the three of us had been as thick as thieves ever since. Ellie had jumped on the opportunity of attending despite her blasé attitude about art - I had been out most of the week and she was getting a bit stir crazy from being at home alone. Ellie, the natural homebody, had taken the opportunity to throw on a simple black sweater dress to compliment the natural curves of her plush body, matching heeled boots to set off the lock. Her wavy brown and gold hair sparkled in the light and like everything else Ellie did, her makeup was immaculate. She giggles into her own glass, her long eyelashes tickling her cheeks as her eyes jump between Nel and I.
“Steve Rogers, the actual Captain America, was making it all but apparent that he was into her and this one over here closed him down.”
Nel looks at me, again, shaking his head and tsking.
“You wasted all of that great potential on what? Principal? Lady love – you don’t allow fate to step in to just push it away.”
I shift my eyes to the portrait we had walked to before, tightening the red shawl that I had loosely thrown around my shoulders closer to me. It was in that moment I wished I had kept my blazer to cover the thin straps of my ivory blouse, to cover up the low v-line of the silk shirt but I had come over to meet the pair straight from work and didn’t want to look business professional. It was bad enough I was stuck with my pencil skirt. So I opted for the shawl that Ellie had brought with her and used it as coverage from my friends judging eyes.
In all reality, I didn’t want to think about Steve Rogers. The whole meeting had gotten underneath my skin more than I cared to acknowledge. The fact of the matter was, Steve was an interesting man. Beyond his obvious handsome features and kind eyes, he had an allure of mystery behind him, this inquisitive knowledge that I wanted to dive into and get to know more and I didn’t know why. Perhaps because of his boldness.
There was something about a man that knew what he wanted and went for it that always got under my skin. Especially if I was the object of that affection.
Which was why, hours later, I had been pissed to realize I let a good thing like that walk out of my life. Having Ellie, and now Nel, remind me of it wasn’t going to help my self-loathing.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” I mumble underneath my breath, taking a long sip of champagne, keeping my eyes focused on the art piece in front of us.
“You don’t want to talk about? Well tough titty honey,” Nel swipes two new glasses just as I’m throwing back the rest of the one I was sipping, exchanging my empty glass for a full one, “You can’t have someone as fine and respective as Steve Rogers hit on you and not expect me to pry.”
I chuckle underneath my breath, shaking my head as I turn to him
“Ellie said it all,” another sip. “Apparently Captain America was hitting on me and I froze up like a goddamn Popsicle.”
Nel watches me speculatively as we move on to a new painting. Its complete trash – literally – it's things that people have thrown away in trash cans glued onto a canvas and then painted over. Ellie squints at it, puckering her red lips before deciding to chug the rest of her champagne and look for another glass and I try to ignore the piercing gaze from Nel. Because I know exactly what he’s thinking.
I never freeze. Not when it comes to a man – an attractive man I am highly attracted to. I was the queen of being a heartbreaker. Not the other way around.
Not usually.
I couldn’t explain to him how it felt different looking into Steve’s baby blues. He had a quiet fierceness to them, a timely knowledge that I felt stripped me to my bare existence. There was more to him than a chiseled face and a need to save the world. More than that shy, golden boy charm that made others swoon. There was something else, I couldn’t put my finger on it and I didn’t like that I couldn’t.
He might actually be a fair match to me.
“You sure it wasn’t all those muscles on top of muscles that got you all tongue tied?” Nel finally asks, his eyes still unwavering and I scoff, looking over at him.
“What do we think of this piece?” I opt to redirect his attention but he doesn’t fall for it. Instead he looks over at it, mimics my earlier scoff, and then returns his attention to me.
“I tire of fake modern artist trying to re-invent modern art.”
“Why? Because it’s not an 18th century French scenic landscape?” I counter and he narrows his eyes at me, shaking his head.
“Don’t come at a champion when you’re still a trainee baby girl.”
“C’mon Ariadne, you know Nel got over that French phase the minute he stopped fucking French boys.” Ellie chimes in, reading the tension and trying to dispel it. I can’t help the laughter that escapes my lips as I wink and nod at her, ignoring the dramatic way Nel cover his heart as he looks between the both of us.
“Don’t make this about me. I’m still grieving Pierre.”
“It’s been three days.” Ellie says pointedly and I nod.
“Three long days….” I echo and he rolls his eyes.
“Don’t make this about me Ariadne. Don’t shift the subject because you were the one too afraid to give the Captain your digits.”
I sigh and move on to the next painting, ignoring the way Nel’s voice trails out after me though he doesn’t follow. He was right of course. So was Ellie. Maybe I was a bit mournful and thus dramatic that I had been a spaz but it didn’t matter. Things always moved in the universe with good reason. I was a year ripe out of my last relationship. Travelled a lot for work. Was trying to help plan my brother and his bride to be’s wedding. The last thing I thought I needed was to get involved with an international celebrity and defender of our planet.
I walk toward the bar, because even though the champagne’s expensive it’s not hitting the spot like I’d want it too. I needed something smooth and bitter…..grey goose vodka with a spritz of lemon and an olive for that extra bite. Ellie had spent the week teasing me about the love story that I could have had and more importantly, the love story she could have had with the Captain’s best friend. Not Sam she made a point to say, Sam was more Nel’s type whatever the fuck that meant. She was bitter I didn’t get closer to Steve to hook her up with Bucky.
Which anyone else might find selfish but I couldn’t hate her for. If the tables were turned, and I wasn’t a closed up clam, I’d probably be the same about Steve.
I’m so lost in thought though, placing my empty glass on the counter that I almost miss him.
He doesn’t miss me.
“Ariadne, right?”
Sam’s voice is smooth like the chocolate skin that covers his body, his irises just a few shades deeper. He has kind eyes, eyes that’s seen too much of the world but refuses to be let down by it. From the little I picked up at breakfast he was light hearted, funny, but knew how to pull out wisdom from humor and I could see why Steve and him were so close.
He was a good compliment to his fairer friend.
“Sam ‘the Falcon’ Wilson…..who would’ve guessed it.”
I lean in for a hug though I don’t know why – we weren’t longtime friends – but Sam doesn’t care and hugs me back earnestly.
“What are you getting?”
I smile as I lean into the bar,
“Extra dry slightly dirty martini.”
“Classy woman,” he signals for the waiter before returning his attention back to me. “What brings you out to such an elite event tonight? You don’t strike me as an art show kind of girl.”
I give a mock scoff though I can’t help the laugh that bubbles out, shaking my head and biting my lip.
“First, I’m a woman – not a girl,” the low oooee that escapes his mouth attracts a little attention as I turn, leaning against the bar and watching my friends who have already forgotten about me, “And secondly, just because I can easily write out the best predictions for next week’s football games – and will probably be 80% right – doesn’t mean I’m not also refined and enjoy on reflecting about nice pieces of art.”
I don’t mean to come off cocky but I knew the things I was good at in life and I hated when men in particular didn’t think I could balance like sports and….being a woman? I don’t know but it’s a trigger, Sam gives an interesting look my way before saying,
“My bad I meant no harm in it.”
We stare each other down, not wavering until Sam cracks a smile, causing the dam of laughter to escape from the both of us.
“I see, I see, you’re pushing your personal biases onto me. I get it. Getting judged as a black female sports writer isn’t what I experience every day of my life.”
“Of course I am. Isn’t that what the man teaches us to do, to deflect our insecurities onto others?” He grabs the bartender’s attention, again, waving them over and quickly ordering before returning his attention back to me.
“I guess they do. Really though, what brings you here? Not to be rude but you don’t strike me as the artist and gallery hopping type.”
He chuckles underneath his breath, nodding before saying,
“Touché. Honestly a friend. I come to support the art and in return I get free drinks,” our drinks arrive just on cue and he careful hands me mine before grabbing his beer, “I have no idea what’s going on most of the time. Or what art I’m looking at.”
I nod as I take a sip, drink in his attire.
“Well you look superb. That’s half of the journey at places like this,” another chuckle out of him, “But to be fair this isn’t that kind of gallery. Occasionally Sotheby’s will host these amateur nights….opportunities for art curators to check out fresh new talent. See if it’s anything they’d be interested in. If so, both parties gain something, a new partnership and new art. If not, there’s always next month.”
Sam eyes glint with something akin to understanding, that flicker when things start to come together as his mouth shapes into an O.
“Oooooo that makes sooo much sense. I’ve been wondering why I get dragged to these things so often.”
He takes a sip out of his beer, furrowing his eyebrows,
“So you might know a thing or two about art?”
I give a nonchalant shrug, grabbing my drink.
“Maybe a thing or two.”
He nods his head, raising his brows as he looks over at me,
“So… you mind teaching me a thing or two? It would be nice to impress my friend for once; he thinks I never pay attention to these things.”
“Because you don’t.” I counter and he laughs.
“C’mon. I’m trying to pay attention now.”
I give a deep sigh, looking back over at Ellie and Nel who were looking at another painting, un-phased by my disappearing act.
“Why not. I’m a bit over my friends as it is for the moment.”
He offers his arm and smiles at me,
“Perfect.”
Sam Wilson was probably one of the funniest people I have met in a long time. While I tried to talk him through technique, stroke styles (that phrase I regretted every time it escaped my mouth) and influence he made light of the subject matter, always asking what I would be willing to pay for it. Despite his banter, he was also picking up on some things, and it’s through my second martini that he moves beyond pricing points and more about the themes of the paintings. His interests grow more and more so that by the time we make it to the last painting in the section we are in, we both do so in agreed silence, trying to read the piece.
It’s a painting of a couple leaning into each other, backs to the audience in a tight embrace. They are looking out into the city – a Central Park Manhattan view, with the landscape of skyscrapers evolving through time. Some older, dirtier, industrial influenced carried until a modern time, airplanes flying in the sky and the clean gleam of skyscrapers with current, modern businesses embroidered into the buildings. I can’t see the couples faces but there’s something about it, something that makes me feel…
“Melancholic.” The words pepper out of me as I walk forward to it, drinking in the strokes of the drawing, the careful way each line has been crafted, oil spread. It’s a large painting, about the width of your standard bookcase almost the height of a door but the size just helps lends to the effect of the scene. Dark, gritty with the precipice of hope at its helm. I tell as much to Sam and he nods slowly, his dark eyes looking at me curiously as he asks,
“What else?”
“It makes me sad initially but also hopeful. That there’s greatness in the things that are lost in time and the couple willing to be embraced by it and it makes me wonder what they think. Why are they stuck in time, unchanging, unmoved, forced to watch time change and unable to change with it. The only security is not being alone….it’s beautiful. Really. A really talented artist must have invested a lot of time into it.”
“Oh he did…”
Sam chuckles as I snap my head to him and ask,
“You know who drew this?”
“Yea of course I do. It’s my buddy who keeps entering these things….”
I raise an eyebrow, moving back to look at him.
“He’s entered pieces like this and no one hasn’t asked him to create more….this is top of the line. Far better than a lot of the things here that are just asking and begging to be selected, to scream that they are not alone, to show that they are original. You telling me that he’s rejected big shot names just to continue to submit paintings?”
Sam laughs, taking a long sip of his beer.
“Yeah.”
I watch him, before returning my eyes back at the drawing. Trying to understand the artist by trying to understand the art. The way the hand of the man clutches the woman, almost squeezing her as it appears her hand falls lightly on his. The way she leans into him gently and I can imagine her calming him, assuring him it’s okay. Women adapted a lot better than men, they must, they carry life and it’s the only way to guarantee that life will move on. It’s all here, in this frame, fear and uncertainty and insecurity that is hidden behind confidence, ease.
“Your friend must want to be heard. To share what he’s unable to say then. Not a starving artist by choice, but a selective artist because he wants to breath truth. But for who…it’s hard to say.”
Sam leans in a bit.
“What do you mean?” he’s looking at the painting again, deeply like me and I take another sip.
“I can’t tell if the artist is trying to unveil some truth about human experience for other humans, or trying to unpack their experiences, trying to grapple with what were all trying to understand I’m being human. I don’t know…seems complicated this piece. Is the artist complicated?”
“Like a goddamn rubix cube,” Sam mutters but now his eyes are drinking it in. “I just thought it was about the loss of things.”
“Sure it’s about loss. But there’s something deeper. There’s not sorrow over this loss or change. There’s fear and maybe a sprinkle of sadness but not sorrow. There’s an understanding that things flow differently – they change and you can’t fight it. And the artist is trying to understand what that means for the world. What it means for them. Its complex…..it makes you question things. It’s making me question things. Which is why it’s melancholic. But what do I know…I just get trashed helping my friend select painting I think would be good for his gallery.”
I shrug as I take another sip stepping backwards. So focused on the painting that I hadn’t realized that someone has walked up behind me, until my backs pressed into their chest and I lean my head back, resting my head against the defined muscles as my eyes fall into ocean blue orbs.
Oh.
Steve Rogers was dangerous in his star spangled uniform. Was even more achingly attractive in street clothes.
Nothing could have warned me for this man in a suit.
It’s not even a full suit, nice pressed pants. A nice, crisp dark blue shirt that did wonders for his eyes. A simple black tie.
It’s enough to make my breath hitch, to cause me to squeeze my thighs together so I’m not unloading a gallon of my attraction onto the gallery floor. I’m flustered as he captures me easily, steadying me and the arm that holds my martini as his other hand finds my hip. The vodka is strong, it allows his cologne to overwhelm my senses and to allow myself to relax under his touch, to fall back onto him with ease as my eyes drink in his chiseled jawline and his pulse point from beating against his neck. I wanted to mark him, to claim him for my own and the thought jostles me.
“Oh! I’m sorry…I didn’t mean to….”
I’m at a loss for words, again, as I blink up at him stupidly but he simply smiles back at me gently, eyes unwavering as his hand that isn’t on my hips slowly trails up my arm, causing goosebumps in its wake.
Shit. Too much vodka. I had too much fucking vodka and champagne in my system for this kind of intimate touch.
“Don’t worry about it. Not every day I get to run into a beautiful woman twice in one week.”
His voice is low and light, humorous and gravely and I bite my lip subconsciously, causing his eyes to flicker down to it before they are returning to my own.
I’m sure I had fuck me eyes all over my face and the realization makes me blush, embarrassed out of my goddamn mind. Drunk flirting with Steve Rogers wasn’t going to make my self-pity cause any better.
“I’m really not this high maintenance. I was just admiring this.” my eyes flash back toward the painting.
He smiles, his eyes breaking from mine and looking over at the painting and nods.
“I heard.”
“Y…you did?” I force myself to push my forehead off his chest, from the confines of his arms. Away from him and though I still feel like I’m swimming I’m able to steady my mind, trying to push the smell of his cologne from my memory and clear my throat.
“Super soldier hearing.” Sam says, rolling his eyes though he smiles at me and I narrow my eyes at him. He knew. He fucking knew the whole damn time that Steve was lurking.
This was a goddamn set up.
“You have an artist eye. You sure you aren’t a curator. Or a secret artist?”
Steve is still too close to me, his arms brushing against my own and I shrug, shaking my head.
“No, no, not even if I tried. But I have this good friend of mine, and he works for the Met and he really knows his shit and you know he’s taught me a thing or two.”
“Just a thing or two?” he raises a speculative eye before another deeper voice booms across the space.
“Steve! Sam! There you are.”
The man that strolls over is tall, about as tall as Steve and Sam. In this space, with its suits and nice dresses, he stands out with the dark Henley he’s rolled up to his elbows, dark jeans to match. His hair is longer than Steve’s, brushing against his neckline and his beard is in a scruff, cool blue eyes dancing between our group. I would be lying if i didn’t say that James “Bucky” Barnes wasn’t attractive. He was the kind of charming bad boy that i wanted to get under your skin for a few months and then let each other loose for both your sanity.
I could see easily why Ellie was attracted to him.
“Well, well, well, who do we have here?” his voice is huskier than Steve’s, smoother and has a twist of charming wickedness as he smiles down at me. It makes my heart palpitate for a few seconds, makes my breath hitch a second.
This man would destroy Ellie.
….I needed their pairing to happen.
“Steve, you didn’t tell me you were going to leave to go flirt with some cute dame.”
“Oh brother.” Sam snorts, finishing his beer and rolling his eyes as I extend my hand out,
“You must be the famous Winter Soldier.”
He flinches from the words, but doesn’t skip a beat to grab my hand, his lips skimming against the sensitive flesh as a smile stays on his face,
“Must be. And who are you?”
I take a sip out of my martini, finishing the last drip as I pull my hand away,
“Wouldn’t you like to know.”
He raises an eyebrow, looking over at Steve who is watching curiously.
“She’s a fireball.” He says, amused and Steve nods in agreement,
“She’s something.”
“And she’s also still standing in front of you. Now you’re boring me and I’m out of a drink. So maybe work on that game of yours while I go and get another.”
I walk away, aware that they are both staring at me, trying my best to keep up my most confident stride despite the alcohol swimming in my body.
How did I go from no prospects in my morning to three handsome men in the evening?
The universe had a funny way with playing with my heart.
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Jdate Reddit
Back in the day, Farrah Abraham was a nice Christian high school girl from Council Bluffs, Iowa. Like any 16 year old, she had hopes and aspirations – her plan was to go into modeling after graduation. All those dreams came crashing down when she found herself pregnant. And it got even better when the baby’s father Derek Underwood died in a tragic car crash two months before she gave birth. So much drama right? Just perfect for the voyeuristic shlockmeisters at MTV Networks who found a perfect cast member for their new “Reality” show – 16 and Pregnant – which followed the stories of pregnant teenage girls in high school dealing with the hardships of teenage pregnancy. Duh. That appearance provided Farrah with her next gig, another MTV waste of life titled Teen Mom – which followed the lives of Farrah and three other girls from the first season of 16 and Pregnant as they navigated their first years of motherhood.
After spending so much time in the spotlight – Teen Mom regularly pulled upward of 3-5 million viewers an episode – Farrah’s life and career took a standard trajectory – She tried to pitch her own spin-off reality series to follow her journey after culinary school as an aspiring chef, but the show never really made it to production. Farrah also launched her own brand of pasta sauce called Mom & Me Premium Italian Hot Pepper Sauce, wrote a book My Teenage Dream Ended and released several music singles. etc. But I guess it still wasn’t enough. Still missing from her life was that special someone, a partner who could keep up with the successful single parent media machine that was Farrah. So what’s a girl to do? Go on JDate of course, where one can find successful single men of the mosaic persuasion known to take good care of their women. Her JDate profile read:
On JDate, however, the lowest monthly cost you can get is $29.99 ( if you subscribe for six full months with a single payment of $179.94). There is also an in-between, three-month subscription plan that comes at $44.99/month and is billed in a single payment of $134.97. Users can pay over mobile phones, PayPal, and of course, a credit card. Click/tap Yes to confirm. To unblock a member: Click/tap on your small Profile Photo at the top of the page, or the horizontal menu lines ( ☰) if using the app. Select Account Settings, and then Block List. Click/tap on the Display Name for the desired member. Click/tap Yes to confirm. If you’ve received inappropriate. Founded in 1997, Jdate is part of Spark Networks. According to the developers, it was the first dating site for single and unmarried Jews. Using it, people create families and seek serious relationships. This app has been the undisputed leader in the number of. JDate is available for smartphones thanks to a downloadable app that effectively scales down the interface for touchscreen, while also preserving all important features. Signing up with JDate is entirely cost-free, but in order to send messages a monthly, quarterly or semi-annual subscription to gold membership is a must.
I’m looking for a man to be my partner in crime, who is successful like me, and has style. If you can give a woman everything she deserves and you want the same in exchange, message me. You won’t regret it. I’m looking for a man that is top of the line; I guess I’m picky. I want a man who is happy, supportive, works hard, is successful, can stay in but can also go out, is active, outgoing, easygoing, likes children and dogs, can be serious, but knows when to have fun and is a romantic.
This was reported in September of 2011. By early December of that year, Farrah had snagged herself a handsome and well to do Jewish man 14 years her senior – 34 year old Marcel Kaminstein, a jewelry entrepreneur. Things were looking good, initial reports were rosy and Kaminstein was getting along well with Farrah’s daughter. So now we know the secret to success on JDate! Be an ambitious 20 year old hot single Mom willing to date an older man! Lack of Jewishness not a problem, fatties needn’t apply.
Sadly by New years, 2012 the relationship had gone south and Kaminstein and Abraham had called it quits – amicably. Now what!? There were a couple of options on the table – but none had the potential for fame that she enjoyed during Teen Mom. Until Farrah met another Jewish man, one James Deen, an adult video entertainer who had starred in over 1,300 porn flicks. Did she meet the HEEB 100 member on JDate? We don’t know. Did they really date or was he merely a hired gun for Farrah’s next publicity stunt? Well, that relationship did not last long either amid allegations that Deen mistreated Farrah and had a small wiener. Yes that relationship ended acrimoniously but not before Deen and Farrah filmed a sex tape. Farrah claimed she shot the professionally produced tape as a keepsake – like a wedding video – for her own use: “I wanted my own personal video made and photos taken for myself, when I am older I will have my best year to look back on. I’m happy to see my 21st year be done. I’ve learned a lot.”
Then Farrah claimed that the tape had been leaked and that she had no choice but to start shopping it around. She finally made a deal with adult film juggernaut Vivid Videos. The movie, “Farrah Superstar: Backdoor Teen Mom,” will be released in mid May and Farrah got nearly $1 million for the rights. Just to be clear, the “backdoor” reference does not refer to an actual door. And also the whole lost sex tape thing was a ruse. Deen’s mistreatment was merely him spilling the beans on the whole “story” because he claimed he cannot lie. The plan was always to release the sex tape as a play for further fame and fortune à la Kim Kardashian. Shocker. The sex tape can now be viewed all over the internet, just like the Kardashian tape.
And what have we learned from all of this boys and girls? If you can’t find ultimate happiness on JDate, like so many others before you, uhm, you can always release a sex tape. Also everything about this post is total and complete trash. I’m sorry. But that’s just life in the big city. Best of luck to Farrah and her daughter. As for James Deen, he is costarring with Lindsay Lohan in the upcoming film “The Canyons” directed by Paul Schrader and written by Brett Easton-Ellis.
AuthorRecent Postswendy in fursI live and blog anonymously from New York. If my boss knew this was me, I'd be fired in a nano-second. Ha ha! Screw you boss man!Latest posts by wendy in furs (see all)
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4.0 ★★★★☆
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Jdate is celebrating its 20th anniversary being online and connecting Jewish people in the USA. The platform was created to bring together like-minded people for all kinds of relationships like friendship or casual dating. Still, most of all, Jdate is focusing on serious relationships comparing with any other sex apps.
Also, Jdate seems to be responsible for half marriages in the Jewish community, and all of those are successful. These statistics got our attention, and we wanted to see in our own experience if it works that well.
Affordability
★★★☆☆
As much as we would like to have free plans to use at the Jdate website, there are none. They offer little promotions from time to time, like 20 free messages for users over the weekend, but that is usually a short period, and 20 messages are not quite enough, as we all know.
Free service
Jdate offers to create an account and search through the members to see what’s out there. Although, that’s about it. You won’t be able to do anything more unless you get an upgrade to the paid subscription.
Paid service
Jdate offers one VIP membership for 1, 3, or 6 months. Price is quite over the average for dating app usage. Although the membership gives you a fair amount of features to use once you purchase it.
Since you have an account at Jdate and can search for members with a free version, after the membership upgrade, you gain access to other members’ photos, see who liked your profile or viewed it. You can also turn off your online status so other users won’t see you and browse all possible accounts anonymously. You would get access to send and receive messages together with receipts of reading ones.
There is also a “Messaging+” feature. It allows sending messages to all registered users with the option to reply to that. Meaning, even a random user who does have a profile but haven’t upgraded to the Premium subscription can receive and respond to your messages.
Audience quality
★★★★★☆
Jdate is probably one of those dating applications where the number of females is in real usage experience is higher than the percentage of males. Also, even though the platform was created as a dating scene for Jewish people, it does not forbid other people to use it. You can join the website regarding your faith or beliefs, but you should be interested in finding Jewish partners.
The website does welcome all kinds of relationships, so you don’t need to be looking for a serious and committed relationship. Searching for a casual thing and friends is also welcomed.
Age distribution
You can register at the platform if you are 18 years old and older. Yet the majority of users are in their mid-30s and 40s, but you still can find younger generations who are looking for new people to connect on different aspects of life.
Fakes and scammers
Since there are no free accounts and mostly Jewish circles of people, it is hard to find any scammers. The registration process also does all possible to illuminate such users. There might be a few bots to engage new users to upgrade to a paid membership, but that would happen anyway.
There also could be old accounts that are no longer being used, but that’s about it, which also happens a lot with free dating sites no sign-up.
Interface
★★★★☆
We did enjoy the website from the moment we saw it. It is easy to navigate and leads you straight to the registration. The smooth design makes you want to find out what is waiting for you behind the sign-up wall.
Although this website collects most of its users to look for serious relationships, it also has a few fun features that would appear entertaining to everyone.
A Special admire feature was created for shy people. You can mark a profile of a user that you like, and Jdate will find out if that person feels the same way towards you. Jdate has a section with profiles section where other users can like suggested people or mark it as a cross if that’s a no.
Another feature that Jdate is offering is “Kibitz Corner.” This is also an entertaining function that helps initiate a conversation. You can post daily questions to see later what people have been answering — an easy way to start getting to know someone through such small talk.
Jdate has two more features called “Jdate Events” and “JLife.” “Jdate Events” were created to gather like-minded strangers together but for an actual offline meetup. “JLife” is a blog where you can seek advice, read tips for successful dating, and get inspired by happy stories from real married couples that got together thanks to Jdate.
Signing up
To create an account, you would need to spend around 5-7 minutes. You can choose to register through your already existing account on Facebook or by using an email address.
You would need to share your information, like your first and last name, your gender, full birth date, and Zip Code to narrow down your location to help connect you with singles only in your area. Then you would need to agree with the Terms of Service and Privacy Statement to continue.
The next step will follow you to filling your account. You would start by adding your photos: you have to add at least one picture and then add up to 6, if you want to. Jdate would suggest you choose a photo with a clear face, and preferably where you are by yourself to avoid confusion. Of course, moderators will take down all kinds of photos with offensive or inappropriate content.
Once you are done with that, there will be one more step left — to add more personal information like your height, religion, occupation, kids, level of education, and college. You can skip all of those, but it is required to add your religion and education right away. Otherwise, you won’t be able to go any further.
Now you need to verify your account, log in to the platform, and begin your search.
Profile
As you can see from the registration form, the profiles are quite detailed, which helps to narrow your search down in the best compatible way. The more details you add about yourself, the better it is for your future matches to find you. You can change any of your details later on.
Your profile photo will be visible for every registered user regarding the subscription plan. If you detect any profiles that seem odd to you, don’t hesitate and forward it directly to the moderators for further suspension if it will eventually be a fake profile.
Searching
As a free member of the Jdate, you can scroll through the members who are in your area. But only VIP members can use advanced filters to search for other users.
Chat
Private chat is available for members who upgraded their membership to VIP status. Otherwise, you will be able only to search for an account without any possibility of contacting others. Yet there is a chance to communicate with others even with a free account.
There is a feature available for VIP members. As a paid user, you can find someone who interests you and send them a message. If they are using a free account, for now, they still will be able to respond only to your messages.
Mobile app
The Jdate has both apps available to download for free at iOS and Android stores. The interface of the app is catchy and designed well. Easy to navigate and find yourself dates without typical swiping. You can see all of the profile details that are well highlighted.
Security and privacy
★★★★☆
The Jdate takes security measures seriously. Thanks to full registration, it helps to narrow down and illuminate any fake profiles and scammers who are trying to become a part of the inside community.
We also like Facebook registration as an option. That helps to avoid fake accounts and ease the registration. In case there is any odd or offensive account, you can report them to the moderators team, who will suspend the account if the profile appears to be fake.
Odds of success
★★★★☆
The chances to meet someone are high due to the tight circle. Also, the website itself encourages people to seek a serious relationship by posting happily married couples on the virtual pages of their magazine. You can be open here as much as you want and find new people to meet.
Friendship and casual dating are also popular on the platform. In our opinion, Jdate Events are also important to the community. That gives you a real chance to meet someone offline.
Matching algorithm
The advanced search feature is available only to VIP members. It will connect you through your location and by the main criteria that can be added to the profile.
What others say
We always try to reflect on other opinions to see how the app is working out for different people. Same reason we collected a few reviews from users who also tried Jdate.
I like it
★★★★★
Coming from someone who’s tried pretty much every worthy Jewish dating site out there (Jmatch, JWed, Jewish Cafe — many of which look rusty), I like Jdate by far the most. Modern and easy to use the website, and the same quality is reflected in the user base.
Jenny G.
I’ve given it a second try
★★☆☆☆
I hate admitting it, but I rejoined Jdate due to a special promotion they were doing over the 4th of July, where a 6-month membership was $75, which IMO is pretty good. They seem to run promotions like this around every major US and Jewish holiday. I’ve tried Backpage alternatives too.
Although, I’ve been back on Jdate for a few now and haven’t had any dates lined up. On average, I get messages from guys who live out of state (probably want me to send them dirty pictures), local guys who are ugly, or local guys who are either much younger or much older than me.
Out of every paid online dating website, IMO Jdate is the trickiest to cancel.
J.J.
My personal experience
★★☆☆☆
Reluctant to try JDATE, I was first a non-paying subscriber, I could see the ladies but not contact them. To my utter surprise, the lady I felt was the best looking of all, sent me a message, but I could not see it until I became a paying subscriber, which I did. She was legit! We communicated & then met. I met one other nice lady also in my first week.
Well, no fault of JDATE, the ladies were real & attractive, & in my age group (60). However, I was one & done with these ladies for different reasons. Maybe I was one of many trying to meet them & they both got “better offers.” I will never actually know what happened. So to take my mind off of the 2 ladies, I reached out by carefully written, decent messages to about 12-15 more ladies. Only 2 responded with aloof responses that were a bit polite that they responded but not encouraging.
That’s it! Not one lady has looked at my profile in 3-4 weeks unless I count one who looked and lived 2k miles away. From Denver, the pickings on JDATE are very slim. There are photos & profiles of ladies who haven’t logged on in 4 months or longer. What does that tell me? Unless I enjoy more rejection, I am not messaging someone who isn’t logging on. Probably they don’t even know their photo remains on JDATE.
Bottom line: the 2 ladies I did meet were quality. They have many men to choose from & I am apparently not their choice. Most ladies, for one reason or another, do not even respond, & seemingly my profile & photos are not being looked at. I regret joining, as it is wasteful with very little chance of success regardless of my time & efforts.
I only give it 2 stars as someone, I guess, is dating those 2 ladies I did meet. They are real but probably have much to choose from & their self-esteem must be sky-high. I have 5 months remaining, already paid for, but expect that zero will come from it. If you are male, especially, good luck, it is difficult & I would steer you away from JDATE. See a few nice photos of ladies? Well, most are no longer active on the site. The few that are real and active on this site will be extremely choosy, with only their ideals of perfection gaining their attention.
Bottom line
Overall, we would rate Jdate as an above medium but the fair application to meet Jewish people in your area that is worth trying. The website is on the top for 20 years, which makes us confident that there are a lot of great and medium experiences that could have happened throughout the years. Besides, the security is also top-notch here as well as the support system.
5.0 ★★★★★
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FAQ
What is Jdate?
Jdate is the app that was created for Jewish people to meet each other for friendship, casual dating, and serious relationships.
Can I use Jdate for free?
There are only browsing members that are available for you as a free user. To get to all other features, you would need to upgrade your membership to the VIP.
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Why was there $1 charged from me?
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JLife is an online magazine where you can learn more about Jewish dating and learn the main tips. Also, you can read and get inspired by success stories from couples that have met and got married after meeting through the Jdate.
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Congratulations SNOW, you have been accepted as CORVUS, THE RAVEN with the faceclaim of PARK HYUN SIK and the PUSHING ability!
Notes from the Admins: Ellie and Tasha:
Your portrayal of Corvus was spot on and gets very much to the point and heart (or perhaps lack thereof) of who he is. I (Tasha) actually love the lack of information he gives on certain subjects, especially when it comes to the people who raised him. Sometimes less is so much more, and your responses are a perfect example of that. I also love your headcanon with the older woman who took him in. I (Ellie) agree wholeheartedly with Tasha. Your writing is amazing and you really brought him to life for us, in my opinion.
We also would like to formally accept your request for a name alteration to Lee Dae-Young. We also love the story behind it.
You have 48 hours to send in your blog. If you haven’t already joined the group discord then you may do so now (if that’s your wish) [x]. Once you have turned in your blog, you will be given a role that will allow you access to the private channels regarding plots/characters. Please remember to do everything on the checklist, and also we just want to thank you for joining this roleplay. We hope your time with us will be a fun and memorable one!
ALIAS & PRONOUNS: Snow. She/her
AGE: 19
TIMEZONE, ACTIVITY LEVEL, & RP EXPERIENCE: -5 GMT. I have pretty busy schedule two out of four weeks a month, basically i will have a normal activity one week and the next I will barely be there. I’ve been roleplaying about four years, however I have just started roleplaying in English recently, as my native language is Spanish. I hope you don’t mind.
TRIGGERS: none.
REFERRAL: I saw a promo-ask from an indie rp but I’m don’t remember exactly which one.
APPLICATION PASSWORD: Slim Shady
BASIC IC INFORMATION
SKELETON: Corvus, the Raven
FACECLAIM: Koo Jun-hoe, Song Joong Ki (has younger, HQ resources available), Park Hyung Sik, Seo Kang Joon.
AGE: 26
ORIENTATION: undecided.
ORIGIN: Born in Korea, kidnapped and was moved to America.
NOVA TYPE: Mentis
ABILITY: Pushing. Illusion Manipulation,
THE INTERVIEW:
Instead of a traditional biography, this roleplay has an “interview” to understand the character’s past but also who they are as a person. The goal here is for you to answer the questions from the character’s point of view (third person) as if they were being asked by The Imperium’s artificial intelligence, E.R.I.S.. Think of it as a background check meant to explore who the character is more in-depth than a bio. They do not have to vocally answer the question nor do they have to tell the truth. However, you must give some understanding of what the truth is through their internal monologue/thoughts.
TW: Inferred Abuse, suicide/murder mention.
So, tell me a little bit about growing up. What was your childhood like?
Was that thing serious? Was this some kind of twisted joke? Whatever, Axel was just not in the mood to venture down that path ⏤not now, not ever⏤ so he did what he does best: lie his way out.
“Oh, nothing out of the ordinary. I was a very sheltered kid, didn’t get to play outside much, always locked inside, being taught by them. My parents,” he clarified to the hologram, flicking his wrist “you see, they were strict and wanted me to be the perfect son.” Oh, they wanted him to be something, alright, Axel was just never sure what.
“Not a very remarkable childhood, it was always predictable, unsurprising. I like my life better, now, no nostalgia.”
What about your relationship with your family?
“Oh, my parents? I don’t talk to them anymore. No love lost between us, like I said, they were very strict and sometimes… Sometimes they just stepped over the line” his voice grew dark, his gaze lost somewhere over E.R.I.S’ shoulder for just a few seconds. He was seven again and he could smell cigarettes and weed, his knees hurt where he had scrapped them earlier after he was pushed down… And then he was back, with a smile firm into place and a relaxed posture, no trace of the storm in his eyes “But they made me who I am and I don’t really miss them, although the must miss me terribly. Maybe someday I will pay them a visit.”
Are you the only Nova in your family? Or were your parents Novas too? What about any siblings?
Axel blinked. Once, twice. His face went blank, his mouth parted slightly as the nothingness ate away at his insides.
“Those are really good questions, I’ll give you that.” His voice was dead, his heartbeat steady as he tried and failed to grasp even a single memory from before. “Really, don’t know, I was adopted and it was a closed adoption… So I can’t really answer that.” The blank expression was painted over by joy, small wrinkles formed in the corners of his eyes as he smiled, a twisted mark of the cracks he sported on his soul. It didn’t stop him from keeping his voice light and playful to answer “Raincheck?”
What’s your ability like? Is it easy to control or harder? Do you even like it?
What even were these questions? Why did this stupid machine need them? Axel was starting to get tired of it, but he couldn’t just trick it into letting go. He couldn’t convince it he had answered everything and walk away. The smile on his face didn’t waver as he shrugged.
“It’s not very useful in a fight, if you know what I mean. I hardly use it, as the occasion never arises but I like it. I’m really bad with it, I never use it so I haven’t had the chance to master it” Lies, lies and more lies were spilling out of his lips, his heartbeat steady as he kept eye contact with the hologram. Who knew who could be watching? The charade had to keep going. “It’s hard to use, it rarely ever works and I have to focus a lot to push something into someone’s mind. Could you imagine if i jokingly said ‘jump off a cliff’ and my ability suddenly decided to work and they did it? Gosh, I guess I have to be very careful with it.”
How would you describe your personality?
“Charming, charismatic, easy-going” Ah, now he didn’t have to lie… Only a little bit. He was all those things 24/7 around here, that’s what he wanted them to believe. If he was just the jokester, the nice guy that everyone liked but no one really paid much thought to… He had the power. “I like to mess around, make people happy, hear them laugh. I’m a people-person.”
What do you think your greatest strengths and weaknesses are?
“My greatest weakness is my greatest strength: I’m devastatingly handsome.” A laugh was artfully added at the end of the sentence when Axel shrugged, his fingernails scratching an itch behind his ear as he looked up at the hologram. “It’s hard for me to takes things seriously, sometimes. I guess that’s both.”
That was the truth, the truth disguised as a joke, as a comment with no weight behind it. Of course it was to take things seriously; feelings and people, with their dumb, delicate minds always there, tempting him to break them, were not really people to him. In his eyes, they were mere toys to play with and discard when they broke.
Where and what were you doing the day the Nova Protection Act was enacted?
“I was somewhere in Vegas, having fun. It really put a grey cloud over my head, having to go on the run…” Or it would have, if he actually had had to do it. a whispered ‘tell your superiors all’s clear’ here and a ‘you didn’t find any Novas on this floor’ there were more than enough to keep Axel out of the radar for as long as it did. Normal people would gladly offer their homes after a smile and a soft ‘offer me to stay at your place’ and a offhand ‘don’t tell anyone I’m staying here’ and in special occasions ‘I’m your best friend from high school, silly.’
Did you immediately run? Or did you try to obey the law and report to the Anti-Nova Force?
“I’m a nice kid but… I heard the stories. I ran and I didn’t look back” Or more like walked peacefully without looking over his shoulder.
How have you survived this last year and a half or so? Did you have any help or were you all alone? How did you find Yalena’s Sanctuary?
“There are good people out there. Some gave me shelter and food, broke the law to protect them… I’m grateful to them” Axel smiled, grateful for them but not to them; had he not stumbled into them, well, he would’ve been caught faster. After all, those people hadn’t offered out of their kindness of their hearts, except that one old woman. A soft, almost imperceptible smile grazed his lips as he remembered the old halmeonin that had caught him mid Push and smacked him in the back of the head; she had done it out of the goodness of her heart, offered him the attic of her two-story house in the suburbs of Chicago and in the few months he was with her, the woman had taught him a little of the culture he had been ripped away from, she had treated him like the grandson she had lost… Until the Wardens had taken her way from him. “I got caught, though. [The Dove] saved my ass and brought me with her to Yalena’s sanctuary” his voice grew serious, his eyes void of that fake mirth he like to sport “I owe her my life.”
What were you doing when the raid happened? How did you respond to the flood of Wardens? How quickly did you go through Yalena’s portal?
“I was enjoying a bit of sunshine when they came in. No, I’m lying, I don’t know, I was probably just joking around with on of the others when they came in, shooting first and asking questions later. I’m gonna be honest, I ran the other way…” Axel closed his mouth, intertwining his hands until his knuckles turned white, breathing hard. He wished this was all an act, but the truth was the wardens storming into the sanctuary had brought memories that he had buried deep down: the screaming and the chaos, the thought of ‘get away, get away’ being the only thing in his mind, feeling his legs give out under him and just cowering in a corner like a scared little boy. That day, with the sound of boots and the smell of blood in the air, Axel was eight years old again and hiding from the monsters. “I ran until I found [The Dove] and I only went through that portal after she did.”
What has living in The Imperium been like for you? Do you feel safer than before? Is it better or worse than on the run, or Yalena’s Sanctuary?
Axel tried his best not to let it show, but really, he failed. He clenched his teeth, his hands had they not been intertwined would be formed into fists and his face was without a mask: he looked pissed and nothing like the happy-go-lucky boy he acted as.
“I hate being caged. I hate it and just… Being on the run was better, at least I was free, in danger but free. Yalena’s wasn’t as good as being on the run but at least it was above ground, ya’ feel? Just… If I could stay on the surface’s run down building, I would.” Wouldn’t be much different to my entire childhood, he added to himself, looking at the floor and trying to get his breathing under control.
The last question. If war broke out between Novas and the humans, which side will you be on?
No one’s, is the honest answer. If anything, he would let them destroy each other and walk over the ashes of the losing side, hands in his pockets and whistling the same melody the monster used to hum when they made his life hell.
“Whichever side [The Dove] chooses, but let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, yeah?”
CONNECTIONS:
I love the idea of Corvus helping Columba begrudgingly. Life debts are my favorite plots because are they being loyal to that person? Are they being loyal to themselves? What exactly will it take for him to betray or turn his back on her? I want to explore that, see where it leads.
I want him to interact with Centaurus. If Centaurus personality is to give and Corvus’ is to take by force… I can’t wait for him to meet someone so willing to give themselves away without a thought.
HEADCANONS:
He can cook. He can cook and he can clean and he can do house chores better than any maid. Why? Because not doing it right in his childhood meant a trip to ‘The Dark Room.’ And Axel would do anything not to end there.
Lee Hong-Im was the name of the grandma that caught him using his ability. She gave him something he never had before: a home. She would treat him like a child and he didn’t care because for the first time, someone was caring for him. She gave him a Korean name, from a drama she loved: Daeyoung, because he ‘liked to act as if he didn’t have feeling when he felt too much’. And for a while, he was Lee Dae-Young, Lee Hong-Im’s grandson, and he was less of a monster. The Wardens, however, got a tip of his location and came down on the house; Lee Hong-Im tried to stall them to give Daeyoung time to run, only to be shot and killed. That’s how he got captured.
He introduced himself as Lee Dae-Young to the other Novas. That’s the name he goes by now and it helps him to get into character. Lee Daeyoung is a happy-go-lucky, easily distracted guy, he’s social and sympathetic, although a little useless in the ability department. Lee DaeYoung
CHANGES:
The name. If accepted, Axel would still be called Axel outside the Imperium but to the Novas he would be Daeyoung and his real name would be a secret.
DETAILED IC INFORMATION
(OPTIONAL STUFF; THIS IS ALL MERELY SUGGESTIONS, NONE OF IT IS REQUIRED)
Headcanon: After he was rescued, Axel was put in foster care, but soon got tired of it all and walked away. He lived in penthouses without paying rent, boarded planes without a ticket, walked out of stores wearing new clothes and simply lived the best life without worrying about anything. How? By abusing his power. Really, not even the cops could hold him down for more than a few minutes.
It Amused Me: Axel does things to amuse himself, because he can, because it’s fun and satisfying. Usually, they aren’t nice things, to put it mildly.
Raised by Orcs: Well, he was raised by monsters and turned into something completely different than what he should’ve been.
The Sociopath & Conditioned to Accept Horror: I feel this applies only partly, but it was his upbringing and his surroundings what killed him inside, and now, ‘horrifying’ isn’t exactly a word in his vocabulary.
Dark and Troubled Past: is being abducted and abused all his childhood considered D&TP? I think so.
The Charmer: he did, after all, manage to join the Novas under the pretense of being a nice, charming guy, right?
Faux Affably Evil: this is the one I think fits him completely. He is, overall, a charming guy that lacks a conscience and a little empathy.
Soft-spoken Sadist: when he’s not being all up-beat and energetic to keep the facade, I picture Axel with this soft, deep voice that sends chills down his victim’s spines. He has learn to be like that to make his ability usage less obvious, almost always managing to get away with it.
I want to see if he’s still “human” deep down, I wanna know if someone has what it takes to earn his real loyalty.
https://co.pinterest.com/stcrmynight/ch-corvus/
ANYTHING ELSE?
I’m really happy about this Roleplay, I love that it is so inclusive and everyone seems very nice. Thank you for making it!
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ABCs for the Dwarphen
I’ll answer these for her as she will appear in EoE
A: Aptitude
1. what are your oc’s natural abilities, things they’ve been doing since young?
She’s always been a fairly good runner, and when she first was taken in by Xo, she took her mother’s bow from her home. So she’s been doing that since around four or so.
2. what activities have they participated in?
Professional archery in a sense, helping Xo run their brewery business, and now in her job as a bounty hunter.
3. what abilities do they have that they’ve worked for?
When she was a little kid still travelling with Xo, she had trouble distinguishing which forest berries or plants were safe to eat, and up until her job now she has people watching her telling what to eat and what’s safe. She’s had to learn how to learn recognizes which foods are safe to eat and which ones are poisonous.
4. what things are they bad at?
*Xo voice* Eating any fucking green food. But in all seriousness, she’s bad at keeping track of time. She could think she’s running around town for just three hours until Xo is coming after her in tears because she actually been gone for ten.
5. what is their most impressive talent?
Archery by far. She made a name for herself in her skills years ago, which is how they were able to reunite with Xo.
B: Basics
1. what is their hair color?
Dark brown, very close to black.
2. what is their eye color?
Dark brown.
3. how tall are they?
3′5
4. how old are they?
13
5. how much do they weigh?
130 lbs
C: Comfort
1. how do they sit in a chair?
Criss cross, or with one leg cross over the other.
2. in what position do they sleep?
She’s used to sleeping either straight up and down to conserve space or in fetal position.
3. what is their ideal comfort day?
Dressing in just pajama pants and shorts and falling asleep to the sound of rain while listening to music play. She doesn’t get a ton of those.
4. what is their major comfort food? why?
Chile con Queso. She remembers her birth mom giving it to her when she was a baby and it’s the only thing she has left to connect with her birth family.
5. who is the best at comforting them when down?
Xochitl by far. There’s a lot of thing she has to thank them for, but helping her through her trauma is definitely the biggest. They’ll just hold her and braid her hair and sing to her.
D: Decoration
1. how would they decorate a house if they had one under their name?
First of all, she’d choose to live in a tree house that sprawled across the tree tops, but if she had to live in a normal house, she would still choose one close to nature with lots of house plants and little critters running about.
2. how would they decorate their child’s room?
Listen, Yaretzi is a 13 year old girl. Do you really think she’s not going to want to give her kids the coolest room ever where your room is a treehouse and the floor looks like grass? On top of that she would give all her kids stuffed animals of woodland creatures because she’s that dedicated to theme.
3. how do they decorate their own room?
She just recently got her own room (though she still sleeps in Xo’s bed a lot) but it’s fairly small and has her bed in one corner with a sad attempt at a canopy by Xo, a small shelf that has all of her dolls and book, and small desk that has a little notebook that Xo bought her for her birthday.
4. what type of clothes and accessories do they wear?
At home she wears a similar shirt to Xo (off the shoulder white peasant blouse) and a long flowy skirt, but in the field she wears dark trousers, her blouse, a thick overcoat, and a bandana of some kind to keep her hair out of her face.
5. do they like makeup/nail/beauty trends?
She likes painting her nail, but putting on makeup reminds her of being forced to wear makeup for her slave family.
E: External Personality
1. does the way they do things portray their internal personality?
Pretty much. She’s usually very honest with her personality, which means that you will know firsthand whether she likes you or not.
2. do they do things that conform to the norm?
She did it as a slave to stay safe and not cause waves, but Yaya has a free spirit that doesn’t really care if people think she’s out there.
3. do they follow trends or do their own thing?
She’s like her mom and simply doesn’t give a fuck what others think and does her own thing. She only follows trends if her life’s in danger.
4. are they up-to-date on the internet fads?
Nah, she’s more likely to run outside and play in literal mud than go on the internet, if it existed.
5. do they portray their personality intentionally or let people figure it outon their own?
Usually what you see is what you get, so the personality she displays is how she really is.
F: Fun
1. what do they do for fun?
Run in the woods barefoot and try to climb the tallest tree. But if she is confined to the city, she actually really loves pulling pranks on her family and friends. It helps when your best friend is a bear.
2. what is their ideal party?
Everyone in their pajamas playing charades or Never Have I Ever/Truth or Dare. She is a fan of party games.
3. who would they have the most fun with?
Xo, her Uncle Tarel, and Auntie Ellie.
4. can they have fun while conforming to rules?
Yeah. Most of what she does for fun is legal and it’s only her job that’s technically illegal. She’s more willing to follow rules than Xo is.
5. do they go out a lot?
Out to party, no, but she definitely leaves the house just to wander around the woods.
G: Gorgeous
1. what is their most attractive external feature?
She has the most beautiful curly hair you’ve ever seen. Both she and Xo like brushing it out.
2. what is the most attractive part of their personality?
She has the cutest, innocent laugh and laughs with her entire body just because she’s so openly, honestly her. If she likes you, she will let you know and love you til the end.
3. what benefits come with being their friend?
She is that little sister you always wanted to have and will strive to protect you as long as she lives.
4. what parts of them do they like and dislike?
There’s not really a part of her she dislikes physically, except maybe be a little taller because no one takes her seriously as a 3′0 dwarf.
5. what parts of others do they envy?
She does wish she was a little older like her family because they allowed to do whatever they want without supervision, and although she loves Xochitl more than life itself, she wishes she could go her own path without worrying about giving Xo a heart attack every time she falls from a tree.
H: Heat
1. do they rather a hot or cold room?
Cold. She likes being a blanket burrito and cuddling next to either her mom or a bear.
2. do they prefer summer or winter?
Summer. It’s when more people are out shopping and usually it’s the season where she gets more offers at her job. And since it’s festival season, Xo usually has to pay more attention to their customers than her.
3. do they like the snow?
She didn’t get to experience it a lot since a lot of her childhood was spent down south, but the few times she did experienced it, she loved it. There was once a particularly bad snowstorm in her current town and she and Xo made snowpeople and had a snowball fight. Of course Xo let her win the snowball fight even though against anyone else they are ruthless.
4. do they have a favorite summer activity?
Running in the forest for hours barefoot or climbing trees. She likes feeling tall.
5. do they have a favorite winter activity?
Drinking spiced hot chocolate.
I: In-the-closet
1. what is their sexuality?
Bisexual
2. have they ever questioned their sexuality?
No, she never really thought about it and just thought she’d get a crush when she was ready.
3. have they ever questioned their gender?
No, she’s always been comfortable in her gender.
4. would/was their family be okay with them being LGBT?
Absolutely. Their mom is a nonbinary pansexual dwarf, and honestly there is little she could do that Xo would be mad at her for.
5. how long would/did it take for them to come out?
She didn’t come out in the traditional sense. She asked Xo about who they liked and when they said they liked all kinds of people, Yaretzi nodded and said that she does to. Xo was very accepting of her daughter and her relationships, on the one stipulations that she doesn’t date a fucking bard. Because her experience with Arzan was enough to scar them for life.
J: Joy
1. what makes them happy?
Being in the woods, archery, and listening to her family’s stories.
2. who makes them happy?
Xochitl, Buttons, and her friends at her last job.
3. are there any songs that bring them joy?
If modern music existed, it would be ‘Whatever it Takes’ by Imagine Dragons, and ‘Renegades’ by X Ambassadors.
4. are they happy often?
Yeah, for the most part. She’s a bit saltier than she should be at that age, but she’s not flat out sad.
5. what brings them the most joy in the world?
Archery and being out in the wilderness.
K: Kill
1. have they ever thought about suicide?
Nope, if she did it would have been right after she was kidnapped, but she was too young to think about death.
2. have they ever thought about homicide?
Only in passing, but the thought always left her mind before she could really think about murder.
3. if they could kill anyone without punishment, would they? who?
The slavers who kidnapped her, (she technically did kill her owner without punishment), and anyone who ever upsets her mom.
4. who would miss them if they died?
It has been proven that Xo would be broken beyond repair, and Yaretzi knows that Xo’s friends would probably be sad too.
5. who would be happy they died, anyone?
Honestly, probably the family that she used to serve as a slave under.
L: Lemons
1. what is their favorite fruit?
Blueberries. Once she got sick by eating too many blueberries.
2. what is their least favorite fruit?
Kiwis. They make her mouth hurt.
3. are there any foods they hate?
Pretty much any and all vegetables, especially mushrooms.
4. do they have any food intolerances?
Tree nuts. Which in her line of work, sucks.
5. what is their favorite food?
Chile Con Queso, and pretty much anything spicy.
M: Maternal
1. would they want a daughter or a son?
She’s too young to think about having children, but she wouldn’t mind raising a kid when she’s much, much older, and wouldn’t mind either gender.
2. how many children do they want?
Depending if she had someone to help, max four.
3. would they be a good parent?
Yeah, she’d try her best to find the medium between strict and laidback, kinda like Xo has done (Xo honestly is a great parent, Yaya just can’t be contained).
4. what would they name a son? what would they name a daughter?
She’d definitely name her sons after the two men who helped her most in her life: Teodulo, her father, or Revan, the man that helped her escape slavery (and possibly Tarel). For daughters, she’d name after her mom, Valentina, her little sister, Pacifica, her current mom Xo, or even her Auntie Ellie.
5. would they adopt?
It’s how she was able to find Xo, so absolutely.
N: Never Have I Ever
1. what would they never do?
Actively betray her mom. There was nothing you could offer her that would make her go against Xo.
2. what have they never done that they want to do?
She wants to befriend a panther or another big cat. She’d probably die, but she’d die happy.
3. is there anything they absolutely can’t believe people do?
Keep slaves obviously, and also dislike animals. What’s to hate about animals? They’re perfection in tiny furry bodies.
4. what is the most embarrassing thing they’ve done?
When she was at her first job as a free person, she was riding a horse while standing and trying to shoot at a target, and the horse got spooked and bucked, her, making her dive head first into horse shit. She was seven years old.
5. have they done anything they thought they’d never do?
Kill people.
O: Optimism
1. are they optimistic or pessimistic?
She’s usually optimistic, even if it’s hidden under a snarky tone. Despite the trauma that Yaya’s faced, she finds the future hopeful.
2. are they openly optimistic, throwing it on others?
Nah, she keeps her optimism to herself unless someone asks for it. She’s all for people following their own philosophy.
3. are they good at giving advice?
She tries her best, but she’s 13 and all the people in her life are at least in their late 30s at best and at worst like mid 100s. But because she’s pragmatic, the advice tends to be sound.
4. is there anyone in their life that throws optimism on them?
Probably Auntie Breda. She agreed with Xo when they said that Breda was one of the most optimistic people that Xo had ever met. And she is glad for it, since the rest of Xo’s friends tend to be on the angstier side.
5. were they always optimistic?
Yeah, it’s been her personal philosophy since childhood with her birth parents that there is always something better in the future, so it’s important not to lose hope. While that has helped her look on the bright side of things, it kinda worked backwards because now Yaretzi is never content and that is the biggest reason why she tries to work for something more.
P: Personality
1. what is their best personality trait?
It actually probably would be her youthful attitude and optimism because god knows that Xo isn’t optimistic.
2. what is their worst personality trait?
Brutal honesty. If she doesn’t like you, she will let you know and you will know it in an instant.
3. what of their personality do others love?
Xo loves her endless energy and optimism, and of course her cheekiness and sass.
4. what of their personality do others envy?
Xo envies their daughter’s ability to be honest and love herself completely (though they wouldn’t have it any other way).
5. do they hate anything about their personality/about other’s personalities?
She dislikes people who hide their true feelings and put up a front just to get people to like them.
Q: Questions
1. do they ask for help?
Yeah, mainly from Xochitl or any of her other family. She usually only asks for help from someone she trusts.
2. do they ask questions in class?
Yes, just so she can do her tasks perfectly and not get in trouble. She was very dedicated to not making mistakes so no one would yell at her or punish her.
3. do they answer questions that make them a little uncomfortable?
She will just because she thinks she doesn’t have anything to hide, but she won’t want to answer it.
4. do they ask weird questions?
Yeah. When she was little and just met Arzan and Mae, she asked them if they know where their earholes go because they don’t have earlobes. She also asked Tarel why he doesn’t have hair on one half of his head (Xo answered that it was because Buttons’ mom at the other half)
5. are they curious?
Yeah, it’s about 90% of why she gets in trouble with Xo. Xo of course understands that kids should be able to run around and get dirty, but they’re still dealing with the trauma of losing Yaretzi twice when she was a little kid.
R: Rules
1. do they follow rules?
She tries to. When she was a slave she followed the rules as close as she could so she wouldn’t get punished, and now she wants to be as good as a child as she can for Xochitl, but she does lies in order to do her job.
2. would they be a strict or laid-back parent?
Given how Xo struggles to keep the line between letting their child live her life and keeping a close eye so she doesn’t go missing again, Yaretzi thinks she’d be a laid back parent but still be open in case her child wants to talk to her about stuff that’s bothering them.
3. have they ever been consequenced for breaking a rule?
Only once, when she snuck out of the house to try to go to a festival that was happening a town over. She knew that Xo wouldn’t let her go because it was winter and there was storm coming that would be brutal, but she had enough faith for herself to go. Of course, she got caught in the storm and Xo barged in like an angry mother to come save her and Yaya had seen that rage at those who tried to harm her, but had never seen it directed at her. Of course, Yaya got sick and wasn’t allowed to leave the house for three weeks.
4. have they broken any rules they now regret breaking?
She regrets breaking the above because she feels extremely guilty about using Xo’s trust in her against them.
5. do they find any rules they/others follow absolutely ridiculous?
She hated the work she had to do as a slave. As far as roles went, it was all menial work and the other slaves made sure she didn’t get anything that would pout her in danger, but she can’t just understand why slavery is a thing.
S: Streets
1. are they street-smart?
One of the many Xo’s taught her is that the world is full of both very bad and very good people, but you never know who is which when you meet them. So always be wary.
2. would they give money to someone on the streets?
Every time she goes out, she tries to. She keeps most if it so she and Xo can feed themselves, but at least 10% of her money she tries to give out.
3. have they ever gotten in a fight on the streets?
No, she’s always been a good runner and a smart girl that if she senses danger, she will run the other way.
4. has anything happened to them on the streets?
No, she’s always had people to look out for her, unless you count when she was kidnapped and sold into slavery.
5. are they cautious when out?
Absolutely. It’s one of the few rules Xo has for her along with ‘Always be back before sundown’, ‘Never go with anyone no matter what they say they have’, and ‘Always beat Tarel at anything involving accuracy just so I can tease him later’.
T: Truth
1. are they honest?
She’s usually brutally honest, unless she’s lying to save someone (or lying to Xo about what she really does all day). But for the most part she will say exactly what’s on her mind whether that’s good or bad.
2. can they tell if someone is lying?
Oh yeah. Girl was taught to be kind, but wary of everyone, so she has a +6 to insight. If she thinks you’re bullshitting her, she will find out.
3. is it obvious when they’re lying?
Not really. Probably to people who are naturally distrusting she would be found out quick, but in the case of lying to Xo, she knows that her mom cares so much about her that they’d believe just about anything she told them just because they believe she has never done anything wrong in her life, ever.
4. have they lied about anything they regret lying about?
She doesn’t necessarily regret lying to Xo about her job, but she does feel incredibly guilty about it because if her mom knew how her little Yaya was getting them bills, they’d probably have a heart attack.
5. have they told truths that have been spread against their will?
Not really. She’s been lucky that most stuff about her life has been kept secret. Xo wants the both of them to live in as much anonymity as possible, and so far that hasn’t been an issue.
U: Underdog
1. have they been bullied?
Definitely, especially in both the places where she was forced to work as a slave.
2. have they bullied anyone?
Nah, Yaya knows how detrimental bullying can be and vows not to do it to anyone. Except possibly Uncle Tarel because she’s just that niece.
3. have they been physically attacked by a bully?
When she was kidnapped by the slavers, she got tackled to the ground and nearly choked out.
4. have they ever been doubted?
When she worked for her first slave family and escaped, the people she left with just planned on having her work in organizational work but then saw how stellar she was at archery.
5. have they surprised people with being good at something?
She surprised almost everyone at being and archer prodigy. Also being good at murder?
V: Vomit
1. do they vomit often?
Nah, she’s got a stomach of steel. She’s worked with enough animals and their shit to keep any food down.
2. do they get lots of stomach aches?
Nope. The only type of sicknesses Yaretzi gets usually is sniffles and head colds.
3. are they good at comforting someone ill?
She’s decent at it. She tried comforting her sister when she had the plague that eventually killed Yaya’s entire family, but since then she’s usually been the youngest everywhere she went, so never really had the practice.
4. what do they like as far as comfort goes?
When she gets head colds, she really likes Xo making her soup or cider and just being tucked in and hugged.
5. do they burp, cough, or hiccup most when nauseous? when vomiting?
She usually does little burps when vomiting. She hates it.
W: Water
1. do they drink enough water?
Xo makes sure that she does, and when she was living with her past caretakers before she and Xo were reunited, they all took her under their wing and made sure she drank enough water.
2. have they learned to swim?
When she was with her previous job, when there was a free day, the people she worked with would teach her how to swim in the nearby stream.
3. do they like to swim?
She likes swimming in the ponds and lakes in the forest, but she really only does it to bathe because she doesn’t like swimming alone.
4. can they dive?
Nah, she’s got the fear of what if she gets stuck upside down.
5. can they swim without holding their nose?
She can, just not for long.
X: Xylophone
1. what is their favorite genre of music?
R&B and anything with a strong bass guitar.
2. do they have a favorite song?
“Rude Boy’ by Rihanna.
3. do they have a favorite band/artist/singer?
If modern music existed, Destiny’s Child or Rihanna.
4. can they sing well?
Her birth mom was a great singer and passed that talent along to Yaya. She doesn’t show it off that much, but it’s enough that one of the things Xo always praises her about (besides everything) is her singing.
5. can they rap?
Girl loves R&B, you bet your ass that the baby dwarphan can rap.
Y: You
1. how old were you when you created them?
18. She was made at the same time as Xochitl.
2. what inspired you to create them?
I wanted Xo to have a “Lee and Clementine” relationship, and thus the dwarfin was born.
3. were they different when they were first created?
I mean, in the sense that she developed as a person as she grew up, but how I intended her to be, not really. I wanted her to be more idealistic as a small child and be more realist and hardened as she grew up. She’s still definitely more idealistic than Xo is, but she’s a salted caramel.
4. do you enjoy writing them more than other characters?
I haven’t really done much with Yaya, but I do love her as a character. I really like playing with child characters because they’re not super mature but they can be major ass kickers.
5. what’s your favorite thing about them?
She just wants her mom to be happy and not have to worry about her. But by striving to fix that, she ends up making Xo worry about her more because of how dangerous Yaretzi’s job is.
Z: Zebra
1. what’s their favorite animal?
Deer. She likes watching them in the forest when she’s working.
2. do they like animals?
She loves animals. Her mom’s a druid and at a lot of her previous jobs she had to work with animals.
3. cats or dogs?
Doggos. She loves big animals and like Xo, feels at peace when surrounded by animals.
4. what’s their dream pet?
She’s not going to lie, she thinks it’d be rad to have a tiger as a pet. At her old just they had a couple tigers and she loved spending time with them and feeding them.
5. do they have any pets at the moment?
She has Buttons the direbear (no longer a cub anymore), but Xo insists on Yaretzi calling Buttons her sister.
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NOVL Excerpt: The Unlikelies
I spent two months assembling care packages for my friends. It was my way of thanking them for being awesome. Nobody had ever seen such a tight senior class, united by over a decade of friendship and compulsive thrill seeking, and a chemistry my own dysfunctional junior class would never have. The inseparable seniors were about to disband, bound for summer camp jobs and sports clinics and European vacations—and then college.
I wanted to do something special before they left.
The boxes, lined up in neat rows on my window seat, were all the same size and shape. I had scoured the shops and flea markets in town, adding online items that reflected the recipients and what they meant to me. The care packages cost me all my birthday money, but as I tucked in the notes, wrapped each small box with brown paper, and tied it with gold-flecked garden twine, it felt right.
I passed out the boxes at the Night of a Thousand Good-byes, held every year after all the graduation parties and drawn-out family dinners.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you, Sadie,” Ellie said as we sat on the log and she took out the contents of the box: A snowflake-shaped cookie cutter to represent Ellie’s annual cookie exchange. An elephant figurine carved out of a giant nut to represent Ellie’s love of elephants. A miniature bobblehead of our assistant principal to represent her strange crush on Mr. Wilson. I had gotten a little obsessed with the custom bobblehead site.
“I will cherish these,” Ellie said, “like forever.” Ellie only had a few more hours of freedom before her family volunteer trip to Mongolia.
Parker was one of the only ones not leaving right away, but I gave her a care package anyway: A tiny plastic Wonder Woman figurine because Parker was the spitting image of Wonder Woman on Halloween. A box of Thin Mints, her favorite cookie since our Girl Scout days. A temporary tattoo collection to help her finally decide if she wanted a real one.
Parker hugged me so hard I thought I might bleed internally.
The care packages were a big hit. I even made Seth a care package, because he had been a damn good boyfriend while it lasted. I saved his for last, which was probably a mistake, because he was drunk by then and very handsy.
“Sadie Cakes, come here,” he said, pulling me toward him and leaning down to kiss me. Our original breakup had happened via text during spring break, in the middle of his trip to Cabo. We had mutually decided it was impossible to sustain a relationship when he would be spending the summer at his dad’s in Israel, then going to college in North Carolina. But mutual and amicable didn’t mean fast or easy. It was easier to hook up than not hook up. It was easier to go to a movie with Seth than stay home and watch HGTV with Mom. It was easier to go to senior prom together than to mess up the whole plan.
The first breakup never sticks anyway, so it was good we’d started in March.
“Stop, we’re broken up,” I said unconvincingly. “Here, I made you a care package.”
“Aww. You’re the best ex-girlfriend ever.” He laid his hand on the small of my back. I didn’t move away, but I didn’t move any closer to Seth’s lips either.
I was going to miss Seth and all our history and our chair, the chair we sat in at every Shawn Flynn party, the chair in the middle of it all. And I would miss the bonfires and the football games and the movie nights in Seth’s basement. But I had to stay strong.
Seth tore open his box. He took out each item and studied it. A bobblehead of my deceased cat, Lucy, Seth’s favorite pet. A bag of hand-cut potato chips, Seth’s favorite snack. And a printout of the first text Seth ever sent me, Do you like sushi? rolled up in a tiny scroll.
He was quiet.
I hadn’t wanted to get too sentimental. As much as I had loved being Seth’s girlfriend, we both knew there wasn’t enough between us to transcend time and space.
“You suck,” he said, rubbing his eyes. I hadn’t planned to make him cry.
I left him standing there, holding the care package. One last hookup wouldn’t be good for either one of us.
Between the care package distributions and handing out Woody’s Ice Cream hats to everybody, compliments of Dad, who always gave out hats to his graduating customers, I barely talked to Shay. When it was time to go, I pried the fine-tipped Sharpie out of her yearbook-signing hand and waited on the edge of the sob-fest for her drawn-out good-byes.
Shay and I took one last best-friend drive home in Mom’s Prius, which I had basically taken over, forcing Mom to use Grandma Hosseini’s Buick. Shay had to leave for California the next morning to teach at a tennis camp before starting college at Pepperdine. I dug into a bag of tortilla chips and listened to Shay go over her packing checklist one more time.
“Should I just wait until I get there and see what shoes California people are wearing?”
“Yes. It’s humanly impossible to fit another pair of shoes into that suitcase.”
Shay turned to me. “Is this happening?” she said. “Because it feels like a normal night.”
“It is a normal night.” I reached over and squeezed her hand.
Shay was a steaming hotbed of emotion. If she started reminiscing about all the things we’d been through together and how awesome our friendship was, she would blow. I wanted her to remember her graduation night as fun and happy.
We pulled into Shay’s driveway and I turned off the car.
“I have a little something for you,” I said, reaching behind the seat.
“A Sadie care package?”
I grabbed my last Woody hat and set it on her head. Shay adjusted it and said, “I’m going to miss him. If it weren’t for the Woodster, there’d be no Shay and Sadie. Isn’t that crazy to think about?”
When I’d met Shay we had just moved to the East End from Queens and Dad wanted to take me out on the maiden voyage of Woody’s Ice Cream truck. Shay chased us down the street barefoot and, after ordering her Nutty Buddy, promptly invited me to the birthday party she was having that afternoon.
“Should I open it now or wait?” Shay said, taking the care package.
“Open it now.”
She carefully untied the gold-flecked twine and pulled off the paper and the box lid, revealing:
A tin of peppermint drops in honor of the fourteen-act play we’d written, acted, and directed called Peppermint Drop City: The Fairies Take Over.
A berry fusion lip tint and a berry nice lip shimmer (because I always stole hers).
A purple condom (because…college).
A framed photo of Shay and me taken the day we met, when I actually showed up at her tenth birthday party that afternoon.
Twin bobbleheads of Shay and me holding hands. (I had treated myself to a matching set of Bobblehead Shay with the long blond hair and bulging blue eyes and Bobblehead Sadie with the thick wavy black hair and the sharp nose).
“Wow, my bobblehead has a huge rack,” Shay said, running her fingers over the bobblehead’s plastic chest.
“I thought you’d appreciate that.”
“There’s nothing I can say to do justice to this care package, so I’m just going to hug you,” Shay said, leaning over to pull me in. I hugged my best friend and pressed my face into her wild blond mermaid hair. She smelled of the lavender essential oil she rubbed on her temples when she was stressed.
We let go at the same time and said what we said on any normal night.
“Later, Shay-Shay.”
“Later, Sader.”
The next morning I woke at six, still on school time, and reached for my phone to text Shay. It took me a few seconds to remember it was over, that she was probably already on her way to the airport.
I hugged Flopper, my stuffed harp seal, and tried to go back to sleep, but Mom’s kitchen clanging and television sounds put an end to that.
“What are you doing up?” Mom looked up from her perch at the kitchen island, where she sat sipping tea and reading the headlines as the Hamptons forecast blared from the TV above the sink.
“My brain thinks it’s a school day.” I foraged through the fridge. “Can you make pancakes?”
“Chocolate chip?”
I nodded, then sat at the counter, hands folded, waiting for my pancakes.
“What’s on the agenda?” Mom asked, setting a glass of milk in front of me.
I stared up at her and then reality set in.
“I have no idea.”
Thanks for reading this sneak peek into Carrie Firestone’s hilarious irreverent and unflinchingly honest new novel about how one good deed could change everything. Learn more about The Unlikelies here >>
#the unlikelies#carrie firestone#NOVL excerpt#excerpt#preview#sneak peek#book preview#books#booklr#featured
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Yes, Uncle Sam, love does exist.
One evening last December, my husband and a friend quizzed each other on U.S. citizenship questions. I sat in the living room with them, listening as I worked on my husband’s Christmas quilt. They were studying for the final step of the U.S. citizenship application process, where 10 questions out of a pool of 100 are administered orally by an immigration official.
Questions range from as easy as #28 (“What is the name of the President of the United States now?”) to as difficult as navigating the subtleties between the rights and responsibilities of citizens versus residents as bestowed by the Constitution (#49 “What is one responsibility that is only for United States citizens?” and #51 “What are two rights of everyone living in the United States?”).
Over a decade ago, I passed my high school A.P. U.S. History exam. Immediately thereafter I replaced most of the memorized facts with post-high-school-worries and summertime shenanigans. Bearing witness to the study session unfolding in my living room was an excellent refresher course in U.S. history and, much like my husband, I began internalizing the 100 items the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) deem most important for new citizens to know. We hold our new citizens to high standards.
Occasionally, self-quizzes pop into my online periphery, touting citizenship questions and daring me, “Could you pass?” I’ve seen cringe-worthy videos of random victims fumbling through incorrect answers to the same questions naturalized citizens are required to answer correctly. Most of the questions I knew vaguely, but the USCIS only accepts a highly specific set of answers.
Off the top of your head, and without help from Alexa or Google:
- Do you know the answer to Question #70? (“Who was President during World War I”)
- How about Question #23? (“Name your U.S. Representative”)
- Can you differentiate between a responsibility granted by the Constitution for U.S. Citizens (Question #49, mentioned previously) and a right of everyone living in the United States, citizen or not (Question #51, see above)?
- Couldn’t we ALL benefit from a cozy living room refresher course?
Let’s back up: My husband and I have spent the last half-decade wading through the U.S. immigration system together, petitioning for visas, requesting permissions, demonstrating evidence, and spending large chunks of our savings on the aforementioned. What began with a petition for an interview at a U.S. embassy in South America turned into a whirlwind visa approval with strict time limits on his entry to the U.S. and just 90 days to legally marry on U.S. soil, morphing into formal requests for permissions to work and travel, then a temporary conditional residency, resulting in our filing for permanent residency and, most recently, applying to become a naturalized U.S. citizen. Phew.
I recognize that my socio-economic and race privileges, paired with good will and support from family and friends, made any of the above possible. This has been an exhausting and humbling and privacy-invading process for us, and I’m disturbed to think how exponentially more difficult it would have been under different circumstances: if I were not white; if my family could not have helped us prove financial solvency; if ours wasn’t a heterosexual relationship.
Almost every step of our immigration process mandated we show evidence of our continued genuine relationship, and we not only sent the required formal documents (marriage certificates, joint leases, bank accounts, and tax returns), but we also attempted to show the humanity of our relationship, that which black-&-white documents simply cannot convey, in hopes that humans on the receiving end of our application would see us as real people.
We included the receipt for our wedding rings, bought as soon as we learned we were granted an embassy interview and marking the exact moment we allowed ourselves to believe our dream might become reality; we included ticket stubs from flights taken together throughout his native country and the ominous one-way ticket from his country to mine; we included photos of our impromptu marriage ceremony in a U.S. county government office, when our 9-year-old niece boldly stepped into the role of Maid of Honor with a beautiful reading – in two languages, no less! – as follows:
Today I am marrying my best friend,
The one I laugh with,
The one I live for,
The one I dream with,
And the one I love.
(These very words are now stitched into my husband’s Christmas quilt)
We were stuck for almost 18 months at the “permanent residency” step of our immigration process due to unprecedented backlogs in the USCIS system. It was during this time the defining phrase “a nation of immigrants” conspicuously disappeared from the USCIS mission statement.
A nation of immigrants: I am as proud of my husband’s South American heritage as I am of my own immigrant ancestry. I am just two generations removed from the brave Jampolsky family that anglicized their Eastern-European surname to the American-sounding “Jay.” Question #67 of the civics exam states: “The Federalist Papers supported the passage of the U.S. Constitution. Name one of the writers.” One of the accepted answers is John Jay, a founding father of the USA.
While my family shares John Jay’s name today, our “Jay” comes from immigrant tailors taking a purposeful measure to avoid implicit bias when 20th-century New Yorkers purchased their garments. My family’s original surname is etched on the wall at Ellis Island, meaning the Statue of Liberty was our beacon of hope, as it was for so many others. For more on Lady Liberty, see citizenship Question #95.
A few weeks before citizenship questions ricocheted around our living room, we received an “RFE” from the USCIS regarding my husband’s residency petition: the dreaded Request For Evidence. After sending bank letters, joint health insurance policies, utility bills, photos from our first years of marriage, and affidavits from family members, we now had a hard deadline to provide even more proof of our relationship, and failure to comply risked deportation. Was there still room to doubt the existence of our love?
We pulled out all the stops. We slogged through every single document containing our two names, and we spent over $100 at the copy store making a veritable tower of papers. We are products of our tech- and texting-savvy generation, and it dawned on us we had no idea how to send via snail-mail a stack of documents too thick for paperclips, staples, or envelopes.
We ultimately tied the giant bundle together with ribbon leftover from tethering our garden vines, and after placing everything in an over-sized box we filled the extra space with plastic bags blown up like balloons. Our previous attempts to prove our humanity with photos and anecdotes obviously hadn’t worked, as shown by this Request For Evidence, but perhaps this MacGyvered packing method would do the trick?
After a few anxious weeks, my husband’s permanent residency was approved. In rapid turnaround, he soon applied for U.S. citizenship – I’ll save the conversation surrounding one’s willingness to pledge loyalty to the U.S. in today’s xenophobic environment for another time. We are back to playing the waiting game, but at least this time we have a solid method of distraction by way of studying for the citizenship exam.
Let’s shift gears to this Christmas quilt: When you’ve just spent upwards of a thousand dollars on applications, copy fees, and postage (and when a thousand dollars is still a considerable sum of money), what helps pass the time while your husband works evenings, without increasing the credit card balance? A quilt. What will be unequivocally better than any gift found on Amazon? A quilt. What can I give to the person who opened my eyes to the beauty of a new culture, who walks with me through international bureaucracy barriers, and who continues to be the best thing to happen to me each day? This quilt.
I grew up accompanying my mother to Quilt Guild meetings and falling asleep under a patchwork made by her and her friends. I marveled at the Gee’s Bend quilts and devoured children’s books about the Underground Railroad, with illustrations depicting specific quilt blocks that signaled safe houses. I showed up at college with an extra-long quilt for my dorm room’s Twin XL mattress, and I myself have made T-shirt quilts for friends when beloved tees from high school athletic teams and drama clubs became too threadbare to continue wearing and washing.
Quilt symbolism fascinates me, so I carefully chose representative blocks for this foray into heirloom quilt making: the “Log Cabin” block, with its square hearth in the middle wrapped in outward radiating strips, for the homes we’ve made on two continents; my mother’s favorite “Flying Geese” flock around the centerpiece, for although geese migrate long distances, they always find their way home; “Storm at Sea” for my husband’s love of the ocean and recognition that life’s storms are better weathered together.
Quilting purists will notice my Storm at Sea block contains one too many diamond-and-triangle rows, the result of a novice attempt to make things fit after flipping the square centerpiece on its corner – let’s chalk that up to the Amish quilting tradition of purposefully including an imperfection in each piece, or in my case, a fair few imperfections.
I was, perhaps, a little overzealous trying to hand-quilt the entire piece before Christmas, which is why basting stitches are still visible (though I might argue the basting stitches reflect our life together as a work in progress). Leaves and curling tendrils will eventually replace the basting stitches, embodying the fruit vines my husband so carefully tends, and ruefully reminding us of the string used to bundle our Request for Evidence papers.
Quilts need stitches every few inches to anchor their layers, and I needed something to anchor me in the tumultuous close of 2018. Hand quilting is meditative: making uniform, even stitches means rocking the needle up and down, over and over again. Placing the needle perpendicular to the fabric, find the tip of the needle from underneath and use the thimble you filched from your mother’s sewing room decades ago to push the needle through, then begin the process anew. I recommend playing an audio book and losing yourself in someone else’s world and in a rhythm of stitches.
I was like the millennial Betsy Ross stitching into the night, trying to finish before the holiday, and my husband the modern-day immigrant Francis Scott Key, finding his own quilted Star-Spangled Banner* on Christmas morning after having survived the bombardment of plagues that the year 2018 hurled at our family.
*For anyone keeping score, “the Star-Spangled Banner” is the correct response to Question #98: “What is the name of the National Anthem?”
The living room study session paused: “What the *bleep* does ‘Spangled’ mean?”
Follow-up observation: “Spangled” is not an English vocabulary word I’d had occasion to translate into Spanish, nor is it easy to do so. Despite not having a direct translation, I got the point across with “estrellada,” and “cubierto de estrellas.”
At one point, I showed process shots of the quilt to a friend (also an immigrant and someone who has selflessly adopted me and my husband on numerous holidays). While swiping through photos she mused, “Making quilts is something typically American, isn’t it?”
A little context: I spent the better part of six years living in South America, struggling all the while to put my finger on the U.S. equivalent of the traditional dishes, the typical costumes and dances, and the ingrained cultural customs I witnessed. Everyone in my new country inherently knew they must greet each person individually when entering a room, and everyone expected that pork belly and freeze-dried potatoes be served at weddings (usually well after midnight), just like everyone assumed fast-food hamburgers were wholly representative of the U.S. Sigh.
Thanks to my immigrant friend’s nonchalant observation, I discovered that quilting was the very evidence I sought: a cultural link, a generational continuum, a method of telling stories and connecting families. Quilting is an American tradition. Quilting is MY American tradition.
Returning to the pre-Christmas study session, quilt on my lap, Question #55: “What are two ways that Americans can participate in their democracy?” Easy answers include voting and running for office. Farther down the list of USCIS-approved ways we can participate in our democracy is “write to a newspaper.” At the raised eyebrows I saw appear over my quilt, I explained Letters to the Editor and Op-Eds.
“So … Anyone can write?” “Yes.”
“… And does anyone actually write?” “Well …”
Apparently, not all answers to the USCIS questions have contemporary resonance (seeing as writing to a newspaper certainly pre-dates 160-character limits), and it seems not all South American countries encourage writing to newspapers, thus the question I just fielded. Once I’d gotten past the shock that writing to a newspaper is now a somewhat archaic concept, I used the classic example of “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” to show that anyone can indeed write to a newspaper. It was Christmastime, after all.
To jog your memory, in 1897 a young girl named Virginia wrote to the New York Sun doubting if Santa Claus was real, and the editor’s response is a timeless explanation that “often the most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see.” You’ll notice there was no implication that at age seven, “It’s marginal, right?”
When all is said and done, it’s important to note my husband and I are grateful. Although I aim to remind the USCIS that this will always be a nation of immigrants, its systems have allowed me and my husband to live, be free, and pursue our happiness on U.S. soil.
So, in the Christmas spirit (albeit belatedly), with help from Virginia and the editor at the New York Sun, and with renewed inspiration to contribute to my democracy as Question #55 of the citizenship exam suggests, I conclude with this:
Yes, Uncle Sam, love does exist.
Our relationship exists “as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist,” and this gives our “life its highest beauty and joy.”
And yes, Uncle Sam, we are a nation of immigrants.
As neither of these two statements has been clear from the stacks upon stacks of papers and documents and signatures and petitions and forms and photos we dutifully provided, I invite you to come lay under my husband’s Christmas quilt, painstakingly stitched with generations-old traditions and infused with an entire nation’s dreams. For without these dreams, “there would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence.”
I invite you to wrap yourself, as our future children will, in the warmth of this labor of love, and to dream with us our American dream.
#citizenship test#democracy#nation of immigrants#uscis#uncle sam#stitch by stitch#quilt#quilted with love#handmade with love#immigration#america#citizenship
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Barbara Bush Biography and Profile
New Post has been published on https://www.politicoscope.com/barbara-bush-biography-and-profile/
Barbara Bush Biography and Profile
Former first lady Barbara Bush, wife of President George H.W. Bush and mother of President George W. Bush, founded the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy. Barbara Bush — the only woman besides Abigail Adams to be both a wife and a mother to a president of the United States — was born in New York City on June 8, 1925.
In 1945 she married George H.W. Bush, who became vice president in 1981 and president in 1989, the same year she started the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy.
In 2001 her son George W. Bush was inaugurated president. The former first lady passed away at her home in Houston, Texas, on April 17, 2018.
Barbara Bush Full Biography and Profile
Barbara Bush was born Barbara Pierce on June 8, 1925, in New York City. Her mother, Pauline Pierce, was the daughter of an Ohio Supreme Court justice and dedicated to conservation efforts as a chairwoman of the Garden Club of America.
Barbara Bush’s Father
Her father, Marvin Pierce, was a distant descendant of 14th President of the United States Franklin Pierce and president of the McCall Corporation, which published the well-known magazines McCall’s and Redbook. Growing up in an Episcopalian family in the bedroom community of Rye, New York, Bush was an athletic and witty child who loved — above all things — to read. She received her primary education at Rye’s Milton Public School and Rye Country Day School before going off to Ashley Hall, a boarding school in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1940.
George H.W. Bush & Family
In 1941 while at home from boarding school on Christmas break, 16-year-old Barbara met her future husband, George H.W. Bush, a 17-year-old senior at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, at a dance. The pair saw little of each other as George finished high school and then served as the U.S. Navy’s youngest combat pilot in World War II, but they wrote faithfully. “Bar,” as her friends and family had taken to calling her, dropped out of Smith College in 1944 following her freshman year. After a long-distance relationship and George’s brush with death after his plane was hit during a bombing run in the Pacific, the couple married in January 1945.
After the end of World War II, the newlyweds moved to New Haven, Connecticut, where George enrolled as a freshman at Yale University. The couple’s first child, the future President George Walker Bush, was born in 1946. George entered the oil business after his graduation from Yale in 1948 and moved the family to Texas and California. In September 1949, Barbara’s parents were involved in a car accident in which her mother was instantly killed. Since she was pregnant, Barbara was advised not to travel from California to the funeral, and the event left a lasting scar. Three months later, the couple welcomed a second child, a daughter named Pauline Robinson Bush in honor of Barbara’s late mother. In October 1953, the child, nicknamed “Robin,” died of leukemia, leaving Barbara and her husband devastated. It was during this traumatic time that Barbara’s reddish-brown hair turned prematurely white.
The couple’s third child, John Ellis “Jeb” Bush, had been born just prior to Robin’s diagnosis. Barbara went on to have two more sons — Neil Mallon Bush in 1955 and Marvin Pierce Bush in 1956 — before giving birth to another daughter, Dorothy “Doro” Bush (named for George’s mother), in August 1959. She spent the next two decades primarily dedicating her time to being a wife and mother, while volunteering for organizations such as the YMCA and United Way on the side. The couple eventually settled in Midland, Texas, where George found success in the petroleum industry. Barbara also helped her husband’s budding career in Republican politics by participating in his campaigns. In 1966 her husband was elected to Congress for the first time, and the following year the Bush family moved to Washington, D.C.
Political Wife
In 1970 President Richard Nixon asked George H.W. Bush to give up his seat in the House of Representatives and run for the U.S. Senate in Texas, where he lost to Lloyd Bentsen. After George successfully lobbied Nixon to appoint him U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, the family moved into New York City’s famous Waldorf Astoria Hotel. There, Barbara’s social ease and skill at entertaining made her popular with foreign dignitaries.
In 1973 as the Watergate scandal gripped the country, Nixon asked George to leave his U.N. post and take over the Republican National Committee. Barbara grew concerned that defending the administration could damage her husband’s career. In August 1974, Nixon resigned in disgrace, and Gerald Ford took the reins as president. Given the pick of several diplomatic posts, George chose a position as chief of the U.S. Liaison Office in the People’s Republic of China. Barbara traveled abroad for the first time when she joined her husband at his new post. In China, she immersed herself in the culture and studied the language, but the family’s stay there didn’t last long. In 1975 President Ford asked George to return and become director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which had been under fire for its involvement in Watergate and the Vietnam War. Barbara again grew concerned the position could hamper her husband’s future in politics.
During George’s stint in the CIA, and with her children away at school, Barbara fell into a depression. She kept her condition to herself and did not seek medical care. However, the experience gave her a greater understanding and compassion for mental health issues. When George decided to make a run for the White House in 1979, Barbara was back on the campaign trail engaging with voters. In the end, the Bush camp couldn’t overtake the momentum gained by Ronald Reagan, but the nominee chose George as his vice-presidential running mate on the Republican ticket that won a landslide victory in 1980.
First Lady and Beyond
After rising through the political ranks, Barbara’s husband became vice president under Ronald Reagan in January 1981. As wife of the vice president, Barbara logged hundreds of thousands of miles representing United States interests abroad, and she forged lasting friendships with foreign heads of state. Her popularity rose during this time, and, motivated in part by her son Neil’s dyslexia, she dedicated herself to supporting a cause that had always been near and dear to her heart: literacy. She set about educating herself on the issues of child and adult illiteracy, and became actively involved with several organizations advocating for the cause.
After serving two terms as Reagan’s vice president, George H.W. Bush embarked on a second run for the presidency. He ran a tough campaign, eventually defeating his Democratic opponent Michael Dukakis. In January 1989, he was sworn in as the 41st president of the United States. As first lady, Barbara placed less emphasis on fashion than her predecessor, Nancy Reagan, even purchasing a pair of $29 shoes to wear to her husband’s inaugural ball. Known for wearing multiple strands of faux beads around her neck, the first lady turned to noted fashion designer Arnold Scaasi for much of her official wardrobe because he understood her practical style.
Adopting the traditional role of a first lady, Barbara stayed out of White House policy decisions and kept her political views private. “I don’t fool around with his office,” she said of her husband, “and he doesn’t fool around with my household.”
The same year she moved into the White House, the first lady was diagnosed with Graves’ disease, a malfunction of the thyroid gland that made her eyes red and puffy. She went through radiation treatment to lessen the effects of the condition, but Barbara’s diagnosis failed to deter her commitment to public service. The first lady started her own literacy organization, the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, which supports organizations across the United States that teach reading skills to both parents and children. She authored Millie’s Book: As Dictated to Barbara Bush, a portrait of the White House as seen from her springer spaniel Millie’s point of view that raised nearly $1 million for literacy programs.
The Bush years in the White House would see triumphant change in the world with the end of the Cold War, as well as ongoing international turmoil. In 1989 the United States invaded Panama and arrested dictator Manuel Noriega. In August 1990, the president launched Operation Desert Shield and began to assemble a coalition of 34 countries to confront Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait. In November 1990, Barbara and George spent Thanksgiving in Saudi Arabia to visit the thousands of American troops serving in the operation.
The Gulf War, launched in January 1991, was hailed as a victory for allied forces and the Bush administration. Barbara had seen her husband’s popularity and prospects for a second term soar as the troops came home to a warm welcome. In 1992, however, the country suffered an economic slump, and support for the Bush administration plummeted. Meanwhile a young Bill Clinton seemed to have captured the imagination of voters and momentum in the polls. That November, Clinton defeated the incumbent, and in January 1993, George and Barbara said goodbye to Washington and returned to Texas.
After her White House years, Barbara redoubled her dedication to public service. She continued her commitment to literacy projects, raising millions of dollars for the cause, but she was also able to spend more time with her family, which made a major political comeback in 1998 as George W. won his second term as governor of Texas and Jeb was elected governor of Florida.
Family Legacy
In 2000 George W. Bush followed in his father’s footsteps and was elected president. In 2004, he was re-elected for a second term. Barbara also provided support for Mitt Romney during his 2012 presidential campaign and for son Jeb Bush who announced a bid for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. Residing with her husband in Houston, Texas, and at their summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine, the former first lady remained active in the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy while serving as an ambassador-at-large for AmeriCares.
Grandchildren
Barbara Bush had 17 grandchildren, including twins Barbara and Jenna (from George W. and Laura Bush); George, Noelle and John Ellis (from Jeb Bush); and Lauren (from Neil Bush).
Net Worth
Barbara Bush has an estimated net worth of $25 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth.
Later Years and Death
On January 14, 2017, Bush’s husband, the former president, was hospitalized, suffering from “an acute respiratory problem stemming from pneumonia,” according to a statement. Barbara was hospitalized just days later on January 18, after experiencing “fatigue and coughing, and was released on January 23. Her husband was discharged from the hospital a week later on January 30. Just days later, the resilient couple attended Super Bowl LI at NRG Stadium in their hometown of Houston. They were cheered on by the crowd when the former president performed the coin toss before the start of the game.
In the following months, Bush persisted through her battles with congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, but on April 15, 2018, her husband’s office issued a statement that said she would no longer undergo medical treatment and instead remain at home with family to “focus on comfort care.”
“It will not surprise those who know her that Barbara Bush has been a rock in the face of her failing health, worrying not for herself — thanks to her abiding faith — but for others,” the statement said. “She is surrounded by a family she adores, and appreciates the many kind messages and especially the prayers she is receiving.”
Two days later, on April 17, 2018, it was confirmed that Bush had died that evening, at age 92. Her son George W. followed with a statement:
“Barbara Bush was a fabulous First Lady and a woman unlike any other who brought levity, love, and literacy to millions. To us, she was so much more. Mom kept us on our toes and kept us laughing until the end. I’m a lucky man that Barbara Bush was my mother. Our family will miss her dearly, and we thank you all for your prayers and good wishes.”
Barbara Bush Biography and Profile (Biography)
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Entertainment: Beauty is in the eye of these beholders
LOS ANGELES — Thousands of cat-eyed, contoured-cheeked, glitter-doused women — and more than a few painted men.
Nearly all the bathrooms at the convention center had been converted to gender-neutral. Staff throughout the floor wore T-shirts with a welcome list on the back that read:
“All races, all genders, all ages, all countries of origin, all sexual orientations, all religions” as well as “all glamazons, all natural beauties, all unicorns.”
Clad in crop tops, Janelle Tejan and Phoenix Alden, both 22 and models from Colorado, were jittery with excitement an hour into the first day.
“I held Laura Lee’s hand, she told me she loved my look,” gushed Tejan, of Colorado Springs, delighted that Lee, a makeup artist with nearly 5 million YouTube subscribers, had taken the time to speak briefly to her. Tejan stroked her ombre gray bobbed wig.
She beamed when asked about the silver stars around her eyes, affixed with tweezers and eyelash glue. “I want to be a successful YouTuber some day,” she said.
“I came for Drew Barrymore,” interjected Alden, of Denver, her eyes ringed in pink and orange, the only pop of color standing out against her black suspenders holding up her black miniskirt, a black fedora perched on her head. Alden, who is in the Air Force, had just taken a selfie with the actress on her way to the booth for Barrymore’s 6-year-old Flower Beauty brand. Tejan nodded in agreement: “My grandmother loves Drew Barrymore.”
As she participated in a meet-and-greet with fans, Barrymore said events like this were a particularly useful way to reach out to beauty shoppers. These consumers demand a personal touch — often literally, in the form of a hug or selfie. The question, she said, is: “How are you paying attention to me as a loud, confident individual?”
A record 23,300 of those loud, confident individuals attended Beautycon LA, an event that is equal parts competitive shopping scene, feel-good festival and marketing bonanza. Described as Sephora meets Coachella, Beautycon is not unlike a theme park, with hourslong lines, expensive food and the occasional chance to scream. Tickets range from $50 for a single-day pass to $1,000 for two days of skip-the-lines VIP treatment.
Beauty brands spend anywhere from $5,000 to more than $1 million on their Beautycon build-outs. From these temporary havens, companies test and sell products, hand out samples, gather email addresses and host appearances with digital influencers.
“Consumers are now discovering and experiencing brands in ways that were unimaginable just a few years ago,” said Gustavo Andriani, senior vice president and general manager at MAC North America, a division of Estée Lauder Cos. An ad in a magazine or a presence on social media is not enough, he added. “We need to physically be where they are.”
Both brands and attendees come with a #picsoritdidnthappen mentality. Shoppers are after social media bragging rights and companies see those same posts as a chance to spread their marketing dollars beyond the convention center’s walls. Dressed-up corporate photo bait filled the hall, including a dozen pink carpets, complete with flattering lighting and a Beautycon backdrop. Swings at Target, Aveda and Rimmel London and shirtless men almost everywhere — wielding lipstick-tipped power drills at MAC, covered in metallic body paint at Masque Bar — were the quick pic gimmicks du jour.
‘The Next Gen of QVC’
“You don’t need lipstick. Lipstick needs you,” one of Beautycon’s hallmark sayings, was stripped in pink block text across the wall behind a pink sofa in the pink-carpeted enclave of Moj Mahdara, chief executive officer of Beautycon. Clad in a black T-shirt and Nike Air Max 1/97 sneakers, Mahdara slipped into this relatively quiet space backstage, her 4-month-old son, Neev, leaning against her shoulder.
A 40-year-old, gay Persian-American, Mahdara was born in Lexington, Kentucky, and grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania. She moved to Orange County, California, in 1998, then to Los Angeles two years laterin search of a way into the music industry. Instead, she found a more viable path as a digital strategist, helping consumer and entertainment brands develop online campaigns with celebrities like Pharrell Williams and Gwen Stefani. She built and sold a digital agency, and worked with a number of large, consumer-facing brands, including HTC and Lacoste.
After briefly toying with the idea of getting an MBA, Mahdara decided instead to take that money and invest it in direct-to-consumer brands like Outdoor Voices and Harry’s razors. In 2013, as she was growing her new digital consulting agency, Mahdara’s lawyer told her about an upcoming gathering of beauty YouTubers, a group of digital personalities gathering in Los Angeles (IRL, as the kids would say). Although she says, “I’m not a beauty person” — she does not wear makeup — Mahdara was then looking to start her own digital influencer management company, on the hunt for what she said was “the next gen of QVC.”
Mahdara, who had given a somewhat rambling TEDx Talk that year titled “Everyone is a Media Company,” saw the potential to open the YouTuber meet-up to the fans. Six weeks later, she helped put together the first Beautycon to be open to the public, investing roughly $250,000 of her own money. Brands like NYX Professional Makeup and bareMinerals signed on and 6,000 people showed up to the free event, forming a line around a block in Hollywood. By the next year, Mahdara had bought out the majority of the shares of the event’s original organizer and became Beautycon’s CEO.
Mahdara envisioned a new experiential retail model. “There’s a lot of stuff for music and a lot of stuff for gaming and a lot of stuff for sports,” Mahdara said. “What became abundantly clear to me is that there was nothing for young women and people in general who were interested in beauty but not sure how they fit into that world.” Her goal was not just an offline experience but a marketplace, one that would translate into sales for participating beauty companies.
In 2014, Beautycon added New York to its lineup; by 2015, Dallas and London joined the list. (London is still in the mix; Dallas is not.) In 2016, the Los Angeles event was big enough to move into the convention center and last year it expanded from one day to two. This year has been a tipping point of sorts, starting with the two-day New York show warranting space in the sprawling Javits Center, and big brands like MAC and Target coming on board.
Traditional celebrities signed on, too, and their appearances on the main stage have drawn headlines and more publicity for Beautycon. The keynote by “Black-ish” actress Tracee Ellis Ross in Los Angeles last year about expanding the definition of beauty — “I’m inviting you to let your ‘you’ flag fly,” she said — became fodder for a later appearance on Conan O’Brien.
“Moj and her team recognize that beauty is about more than just slick advertising,” Debra Perelman, chief executive of Revlon, said in an email. They “realized early that in the digital age you can’t just talk to women, but instead need to build a deep, personal relationship with them.”
‘This is the Future of Beauty’
Beautycon is a festival, yes, but it’s also a data-gathering machine. Two hundred beacons sprinkled throughout the floor in Los Angeles allowed organizers to heat-map the crowds, showing where the largest groups of attendees were congregating. Beautycon held eight focus groups each day that weekend, talking to 320 consumers about their shopping habits and attitudes on health and wellness. Each wristband was equipped with radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology, allowing the organizers to monitor the path people took, how long they lingered, and if they visited a booth multiple times.
Coupled with registration information, Beautycon can paint a detailed picture of these shoppers. “We know what she wants, we know what she’s missing, we know what she needs,” said Richelieu Dennis, founder of SheaMoisture products, owner of Essence magazine and a Beautycon investor.
Beautycon’s connection to customers, paired with the combination of content and commerce, has helped Mahdara raise $20 million from investors. The most recent round of financing raised $6 million, led by the New Voices Fund, a $100 million fund that invests in businesses owned or managed by women of color and run by Dennis. “This is the future of beauty — this is the future of business,” he said of Beautycon.
In Los Angeles, about 60 percent of brands offered attendees a chance to shop on site, either at full price or a discount. Companies at Beautycon also keep close tabs on the e-commerce lift afterward, using special discount codes and tracking conversion rates from follow-up emails. The festival’s implied revenue per square foot, meaning both the dollars spent on site and the resulting online sales, was $4,288 last year, Mahdara said. (Apple, for comparison, saw sales per square foot upward of $5,100 last year in its average store, according to eMarketer.) At this point, Beautycon does not take a cut of on-site sales, but organizers say they may revisit that option in the future.
Beautycon is expanding, both in the brands it attracts (B-Well, its push toward health and wellness, drew the likes of Kind snacks, Quip toothbrushes and West Elm furniture) and its locations (international dates and cities, beyond London, are in the works).
Mahdara was tight-lipped on a new “experiential commerce” concept coming this fall, which she said was a “really exciting new format both digitally and experientially.”
The secrecy is tied, in no small part, to the new competition Beautycon now faces. Beauty retail behemoth Sephora, owned by LVMH, is starting its own festival in downtown Los Angeles this fall, dubbed Sephoria. Tickets range from $99 to $449; each level includes a bag of giveaways (Beautycon attendees needed to spend $199 for the “Hauler” package to receive such a thing). The overlap in participating brands is minimal. Sephora appears to be using its considerable clout in the industry to attract some of the most popular prestige names, ones that were not at Beautycon in Los Angeles, such as Pat McGrath Labs and Fenty Beauty by Rihanna (Fenty is produced by Kendo, another division of LVMH).
Mahdara says Beautycon had been in talks with Sephora for a year, presenting a similar idea, and that she was surprised at their decision to stage such an event themselves. “Our audience knows that beauty is not just about products,” Mahdara says. “They can throw a party as they wish.”
A Sephora spokeswoman described its relationship with Beautycon as “complementary” and said “the concept for Sephoria was developed internally long before we shared anything with potential partners.” Beautycon was part of the proposal process, she added, but Sephora “decided to go with a different partner.”
Instagram-Ready Experiences
Instead of singing for their supper, Beautycon-goers selfie for their samples. At the recent gathering, staffers in the CoverGirl booth scanned phone after phone to make sure attendees who waited in line to take a photo in front of its branded backdrop (with its new slogan, “I am what I makeup,” in neon lights) also followed the brand on Instagram before they would hand over a full-size mascara sample.
The exchange was surprising to watch, if only for how normal it appeared to be for both sides. This younger generation of shoppers knows that to get something, you have to give something.
An email address is the bare minimum. Amorepacific, a South Korean beauty conglomerate of 28 brands, wove attendees through a multistationed testing tour, with a representative explaining the benefits of products at each brand stop. At the end, shoppers received a tote bag with five single-use samples. Those who shared their emails were given an additional travel-size sample.
The goal of the booth, which cost “multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars,” according to Jessica Hanson, president of Amorepacific US, was to introduce its family of brands to more shoppers. To that end, perhaps more popular than the samples were the headbands Amorepacific gave away: white, flashing branded crowns, which attendees then wore, voluntarily and enthusiastically, throughout the convention hall as a kind of walking advertisement for the company.
On its maiden Beautycon voyage, Aveda, a division of Estée Lauder, lured attendees to its booth with a towering paper cherry tree next to a swing for photographs. The prop was a popular gathering spot over the weekend, providing ample backdrop for a logo and solving the eternal what-do-I-do-with-my-hands posing question.
As people waited in line, Aveda staffers chatted with them about the Cherry Almond collection, which the company introduced the week of Beautycon, handing out scent sticks and samples. The collection was designed to appeal to women with long hair — 73 percent of millennials have hair that is shoulder length or longer, the brand says — with promises of “touchably soft” tresses. It comes in bright-pink packaging and has a sweet scent.
Aveda also handed out coupons for 15 percent off a shopper’s first online order if placed by the end of the month and offered 20 percent off all purchases on site, a rarity for the brand. “We don’t discount very often at all,” said Cydney Strommen, director of marketing communications for Aveda-North America. Unlike the fashion world, which has been plagued by pricing pressure and rampant discounting, beauty brands very rarely go on sale.
Nearly three-quarters of Beautycon’s target audience — Gen Z-ers and younger millennials that Mahdara calls “pivotals” — say they are influenced more by “content creators” than traditional celebrities, according to Beautycon’s research. Many of the digital stars that were the original draw have catapulted into massive, and massively profitable, operations, some boasting major sponsorship packages with five-figure appearance deals.
“For regular people, you are like, ‘Who are these people?'” said Ukonwa Ojo, chief marketing officer for consumer beauty at Coty, which had booths for CoverGirl, Rimmel London and Sally Hansen at Beautycon in New York and Los Angeles this year. But beauty junkies “know them and they love them,” she said.
Coty sees Beautycon as a rare chance for consumers to experiment with its products. The three showcased at Beautycon are primarily sold in drugstores and big box chains without a testing option. “For a lot of people it’s the first time they ever been to a place where they could try all of our products before,” Ojo said.
These beauty-obsessed consumers are particularly valuable resources for companies, she added, as they are more open to fashion-forward looks and willing to experiment with new products that have yet to go to a wide market.
In Los Angeles, Rimmel London introduced 14 new shades of its Stay Matte Liquid Lip Colour, as well as the Wonder’Fully Real Mascara. “If they love it, you’ve won an advocate,” Ojo said. And winning an advocate, she added, means that shopper will share it with his or her followers, who may then want to try it themselves. Every one, after all, is an influencer.
‘I Feel So Amazing Here’
From his perch in a hall conference room, one floor up and overlooking the mazelike scene below, Beautycon’s executive vice president, Tripp Mahan, smiled. He considers himself the event’s “conductor,” with the stated goal of “curated chaos.”
“It has to be a very amped-up atmosphere,” he said.
How does one turn a light-filled, cement-floored, 347,000-square-foot hall into a party before noon? With a thumping DJ booth at the entrance and a series of choreographed mobs. Instead of escorting the talent to the booths quickly and discreetly in a golf cart, Mahan prefers to parade them through the show floor with security detail.
The resulting swarm leads to what Beautycon calls “fandomonium.” Kardashian West was a notable exception; the Beautycon team went to great lengths to remove people from the backstage area where she entered.
“If Meryl Streep walked up to you and me, we would just act cool and move on,” Mahan said. But the fan-influencer relationship is much more intimate and intense. “Stars are just obligated to do a selfie,” Mahan said.
Michael David Magaraci, a 20-year-old from Long Island who trekked to Beautycon by himself, walked into the hall and straight to the main stage, where he snagged a seat in the front row and waited for hours to see Kardashian West, who was promoting her KKW Beauty line.
“Growing up, I was always taught, ‘You don’t wear makeup, you’re a boy,'” he said. He was wearing no fewer than six of Kardashian West’s products on his face, including lip gloss and concealer, his thick brows groomed and filled in, and KKW’s blue eye shadow artfully swiped across his lids. “Beautycon is celebrating diversity, and through that diversity comes confidence,” he added. “I feel so amazing here.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Elizabeth Holmes © 2018 The New York Times
source http://www.newssplashy.com/2018/07/entertainment-beauty-is-in-eye-of-these_29.html
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