Rotates swap au Wickerbottom in my head. Gotta love old women trapped in self imposed cycles of pain and regret

19 through 25? :0

19. Is there something you always find yourself repeating in your writing? (favourite verb, something you describe ‘too often’, trope you can’t get enough of?)

Hmmmm.... Honestly, not that I can think of? I mean characters in my head sometimes walk up and inform me they’ve committed incest again, but that doesn’t usually make it to AO3. (Shoutout to Rhada for informing me of a whole lot of shit he did with Sisyphus, who is related to him in Mirrorverse on a fucking technicality, jfc. But also Rhada’s been committing incest by way of sleeping with Gordon, aka Minos’ son, since the bronze age so.) 

I mean, I probably overuse Toby quotes, but tbh I actually can’t think of something I overuse too much. Huh.

20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

I’ve already done this a lot (I’m actually answering this last because I’m trying to think of my favourite here), and. Hmmm. Honestly, I’m gonna go with IKM Minos, because while I have rambled about him before, only in DMs, and I haven’t talked about IKM much yet.

The thing is, I know as much about him as y’all who follow the series do. He’s very quiet in my headspace, and only ever comes out when I sit down and write him. But he’s four things. Four things, completely at odds with each other, and yet completely in harmony. He’s a griffon, he’s a Spectre, he’s noble, he’s feral. And everything he is can be summed up in those four traits.

He’s a griffon, to start. Half cat, half bird. All the casual arrogance of cats, all the flock behaviour of a bird, all the loyalty, all the insistence to guard. That’s what griffons do. They guard. And that’s his fundamental beginning: he’s a griffon, once you strip everything else away from him.

On top of that, he’s a Spectre. He’s casually cruel and vicious, very traumatized (how, I don’t know, he won’t tell me), he’s a strategist, he prioritizes his own survival but looks out for the others in his division, and he’s very very choosy about who he trusts to not hurt him, who he trusts he won’t hurt on purpose.

Then, his demon star, Nobility. This comes from the Age of Myth. He’s at ease with humans, can interact well with them, can slip around their social etiquette with grace, despite being nothing like them. He’s a little bit chivalrous, has honour enough, tries not to get too messy, actually does have a moral compass of sorts.

Lastly, he’s feral. Wild. Untethered and unforgiving and free. This is the opposite of his demon star, yes. But it is what he is, and he has no issues stripping free of his fancy clothes and running naked through the mud with nothing but fur to cover him and howling at the moon as he rips through prey with his teeth. 

Seems contrary, and indeed, he’s a very contrary person. The real joy in how those go together.

A griffon Spectre means he’ll guard his division. He doesn’t need to love them to have no option but to guard and protect them. He’s the leader of the flock, and he’ll do what needs doing. He’s cruel, he’s responsible, and he does what he needs to. This ties in well with Nobility, his star, because he has enough of a moral compass to know when he has to sacrifice someone, and how to feel bad about it, while his Spectreness allows him to not feel as bad about it as he could.

Naturally, most of the time, he’s noble, a bit fussy and imperious, likes his poetry as a way of speaking. But the more he’s hurt, the angrier he is, the more upset he is, that stripes away into his feral nature. His nobility is a mask and a shield for his true nature: simply a wild griffon, untethered by any rules and unforgiving to any that meet him. I’ll explore this part a bit further later on as this is the part of him that Alba really falls in love with, but this is where his personality begins to really shine. That duality between his noble, imperious nature and his honest, wild self.

He’s a hard as fuck character to write. But oh, I love the results. 

21. What other medium do you think your story would work well as? (film, webcomic, animated series?)

As answered previously, I Have No Fucking Idea But Probably Anime.

22. Do you reread your old works? How do you feel about them?

As also answered previously, yes, because I have no other choice if I want to see my damn rarepairs most of the time, and I enjoy doing so because I like most of my fics. 

23. What’s the story idea you’ve had in your head for the longest?

I answered last time as Rose’s story, but I checked my spreadsheet for what I’d forgotten and gold star me, I forgot about one I really do want to talk about: the TLC version of Seanan McGuire’s Every Heart a Doorway as a long fic! Harry Potter AUs are out. Wayward Children AUs are in as fuck.

What I know is that Aiolos and Aiolia run a school like Eleanor does. It may be located not far from Sagiverse’s Saint Shion’s University, probably Academia Terrestria. Most of the cast is TLC, Golds and Spectres mostly. It follows the adventures of one young Sasha, kicked out of her world by Hades himself after going mostly all the way through the plot of TLC itself, as she deals with coming back without her brother - a possibility she’d already made peace with - but with him still in Sanctum Greece, out and committing mass murder - the part she isn’t cool with.

She walks in during the first few chapters to meet Aiolia just as Minos - from a high Nonsense, high Wicked world where everything is the theatre and the rules make you think it’s Logic and it’s not - bolts across the room, swings a grappling hook around the chandelier, and scales the wall in the nick of time before Pandora throws her trident at him. They’re roommates. Pandora’s from Prism, Kade’s world, as the Goblin Princess so she is understandably wanting Minos dead here.

Sasha blinks, immediately goes on the defensive because hello, two Spectres, but neither know who the hell she is. Lia takes her with him as he negotiates getting Minos into the tower room with Albafica, from the Moors where he and his dad fend off vampires with a strain of woody rose poison they put into their blood, and then puts Sasha in with Pandora, who helps her figure out that just because she knows all of these faces and names doesn’t make them the same people. (This is after watching her freak out over Minos and Alba sharing a room, because she watched them kill each other.)

And then like two weeks later Alone shows up, immediately throws himself at the Dragon Prince Rhadamanthys, who is sixteen and doesn’t know how to handle a small child without a tail and shares the attic with Aiacos, who lived in a world of fire and brimstone and light and wind, moderate Virtue, moderate Logic. Sasha freaks out, Pandora sits on her, and it is discovered not that long later that Alone brought Hades with him.

I have no idea what the plot is past that point. I figure I’ll be asking Zander or another system how I should best write Alone and Hades, which is a standard possession that I want to be thinly-veiled multiplicity, because really those two things are the damn same from where I’m standing and that would be cool.

I’ll write it when I’ve got a plot. Gah.

24. Would you say your writing has changed over time?

Oh abso-goddamn-lutely. I finally figured out how to show and not tell so much, and how to vaguely fix my biggest problem that I had forever: expanding individual threads so I didn’t rush everything. Now that I’ve figured out how to do that, I’m pretty sure I could redline for another writer struggling with the same thing. One of the bits of advice someone said that really fixed my writing was the idea of one, ‘always name at least two sensory details in every paragraph’, and two, ‘for the next six months never write ‘they saw that’ ‘they felt like’ ‘they wanted to’ etc etc, and find a way to say that without saying that, take no shortcuts and never say it outright’. Once you understand why they’re telling you to do that, you can go do it again and avoid the purple prose, but it teaches you how to expand things.

Instead of just going ‘he was sad’, if you can’t say that, then what ends up happening is that you quietly restate he was sad by referencing it in his every action. Body language. Tone of voice. Show don’t tell is advice that works great with examples. Take out every ‘they were’ ‘they saw’ ‘they felt’ and you have no choice but to show it without telling it. And it makes your writing so much stronger.

Another thing I learned was that a Mary Sue isn’t a level one character, they’re a level twenty in a level-three-recommended story. Their backstory is their plotline. This one I learned from Betsy Lee, with No Evil versus Brother Swan- specifically, Ozma Angeline. Look at her child form. Now look at her adult. Her adult is the perfect idea of an edgy Mary Sue. But it’s clear the moment you see her child form, that her every adornment was gained after she first appeared. She wasn’t born that way. Every mark she has is a part of her story. I first met Angel in NE, and I got to know her. Then I saw her in BS and I was like “is that fucking Angel???” and suddenly everything made sense. That’s a well-written character. Sure, we see fuckall of her arc, but that’s when I finally understood how to write a powerful character without making them a Mary Sue. Because nothing stands in the way of a Mary Sue, they never struggle. You set the Mary Sue as their endgame, twenty years after the series ends, and you’re golden.

The last thing I really learned that helped me so much owes itself to Seanan McGuire, of course the Toby books. Specifically: Luna Torquill. This is where I learned that allies become enemies offscreen if they want to, and how to give your side characters a true arc without ever giving them the spotlight. Toby characters don’t feel like they’re just waiting for Toby herself to check in with them. They go do their own stuff when she’s not there, and actively get more development offscreen without ever feeling out of character. Luna is the most obvious example, but Sylvester, Antigone, Tybalt, and Cass all do it too. Actually, the only one who didn’t was Connor and he died and I didn’t like him anyway. Luna really showed me how to bring my side characters to life, and in that understanding helped me really get how to write a character arc.

25. What part of writing is the most fun?

Sneaking in metaphors and foreshadowing and recurring motifs and parallels, and doing so accidentally because I’m just that good. /lh No really, I love having parallels and shit in my writing that make me look smarter than I am, because most all of them are accidental and I only notice after someone points it out. I look like a genius. I’m bullshitting it the entire way. But when I do actively do it, and it works out, I like it even more. I love hiding little things that reinforce the storyline and atmosphere and add a deeper meaning to my work.

Like, for example. In Aeternum, specifically As We Watch The Hourglass, Tsuko pointed out that the state of the boiler room perfectly represents Minos’ mental state. She’s fine, she’s fixing things, and then outside circumstances causes her to fall apart and Alba just attempts to patch it up enough that it’s vaguely safe enough to work with, but still very very fragile and prone to collapsing at any second. Add in that she’s an engineer and this is her specialty and biggest talent, and it seems like a super cool parallel to do, especially since I really like reflecting my characters in the world around them.

It was completely accidental. I wanted to show that her sadism that canon Minos has is in there, that she isn’t totally OOC and just hasn’t yet become more like her canon form (he’s more traumatized and has gone down a path she’s only inching onto at the moment), but I also wanted them to get a damn bath so Alba could bitch about his hair, while showing that Minos is actually surprisingly useful. In order to do that, I needed the boiler room, I needed to show her fragility, and then I needed to show what was underneath that. And then I needed the threat gone so they could do other shit. In order to make that realistic, I forced her to not panic about it even though she really wanted to, and Alba did a shoddy job because we gave him like an hour and he’s running on little food and less sleep. That was it, that was my entire thought process. And on the page, there’s symbolism that makes me look smart.

When I go to rewrite Aeternum, I’ll be showing more of their early relationship, so she actually is useless onscreen for a bit, so the scene has more oomph when surprise, she has talents after all. (Later those talents will prove very important, but I haven’t written that part yet and won’t for a while.)

So yeah. Accidental symbolism. I love doing that shit. 

POI - Strange Magic

A few days ago, doing our weekly trip to Disney, @colonelcupquake and I discussed a few things about our d&d kids, and about all the ways in which their growing relationship is...growing. This is what spawned from me thinking too much about what that meant.

Set in current game time, while the idiots are helping our resident monk through house arrest. 2,200 words.

If asked, Val wouldn’t have been able to count high enough to number all of the moments that made her miss her parents most.

There had been plenty in the early years - after selling the wagon, and then the horses, every time she had made her own coffee, Gavaar’s heavy silence on a long travel road - but the newer ones didn’t seem to dig any less deeply. Dandelions still made her sigh; the sight of Amon bent over his alchemist’s kit still made her heart clench just a little too hard.

And she knew, so bitterly that it hurt, that at least her father would have known exactly what to do with Rona Greenbottle.

He had left her some notion of it, of course. His telling - and frequent retellings, at a younger Val’s incessent requests - of how he had met her mother carried the notes of romance so thickly that even she couldn’t have missed them. But Cairon Hillcrest had also been one of the lucky sort who hadn’t made himself the company of his lady love for the better part of a year, who didn’t spend a harrowingly frequent amount of that time dragging her into danger, and who had at least had the fucking decency to know more about her than her name, and her strength, and the bright, sunshine sweetness that had captured his attention in the first place.

Val glaced up over the top of the book she was not reading to where Rona was settled on the floor of their collective room, pawing through the pile of satchels around her with the keen slowness of someone who knew exactly what she was looking for. She pulled a tough looking stalk as thick as two fingers from one, and Val watched, enthralled, as she deftly slashed it open and stuffed a coffee bean inside.

Her staring must have been the weighty sort, because after a moment, Rona’s mouth curled into a smile.

“Yes?” she said without looking up. Val instinctively tucked back into her book, feeling a rush of heat up her neck.

“Nothing,” she said automatically. She stole a glance around her book’s edge and found Rona looking back out of the corner of her eye, grinning. The heat on her neck grew warmer. “I just, ah...I was just wondering what you were doing.”

“Just that?” Rona asked, with a pointed raise of an eyebrow. Val huffed.

“Well, I won’t say that I terribly mind the view either.”

Rona hummed in acknowledgment and turned back to her work, but Val noticed with a tiny thrill of delight that her cheeks had a much rosier tinge.

“They’re for spells,” Rona said at least. Her fingers worked carefully, now winding a thin piece of twine studded with apple seeds around a length of thorny vine. “You’ve seen me using them before, haven’t you?”

“Here and again,” said Val, as she set her book aside. No use hiding behind it now; and besides, she had only caught as much of Rona’s casting as the corner of her eye allowed. With her own recent foray into magic, it seemed of dire importance that she actually try to listen.

Not to mention that Rona seemed rather pleased at the attention; she straightened as Val leaned forward, and shifted to face her.

“I decided that I should start prepping some of my components early,” she said, nodding towards the vine clipping that she was turning over in her hands. “I used to do most of these on the fly, but I figure now that I’ve got to try to keep up with you, and Tara, and Amon…”

“Mostly him, I'm sure,” Val said with a wry smile. “I’ve just taken to making sure the red blur is still moving instead of trying to keep track of him.”

“Well, I'd still rather be fast enough that I don’t catch him in this.”

With one swift motion, Rona suddenly wrenched a hand sideways and tugged the vine taught around her palm, so tightly that Val could see the thorns digging little dents into the meat of it. A soft green glow began to pulse from between her fingers, coiling down the length of the vine, and before she could blink, Val suddenly found herself in the center of a mass of woody tendrils creeping over the edge of the bed towards her.

“Don't worry,” said Rona when Val instinctively scrambled back. She waved a hand, and the vines suddenly curled away like a receding wave, and then crumbled to dust. “I don't use those on people I like if I can help it. You know, unless they want me to.”

She winked at that, and grinned, and the heat that had started to fade on Val’s neck suddenly came roaring back to life. She managed to keep her face carefully neutral as she tucked that particular thought away for later perusal.

“So, that’s, uh, that’s how your magic works, is it?” she said after a moment, coughing delicately to disguise the hitch in her voice. “You just sort of stick things together and - ”

“Not quite.” The little laugh in Rona's voice staggered as she cut Val off, just a touch too sharply to be casual. “It’s a little more involved than that, actually.”

Frowning, Val stole a glance down, and the peculiar tightness at the corners of Rona’s smile suddenly brought the memory of the conversation in the mine - with Sarula’s arms still wrapped around Rona’s weary shoulders and a too-casual shrug from Ianry - screaming back like a train car.

“Oh, Rona,” she said softly. Rona didn’t look up, just pursed her lips and stared fixedly at the floor. “Rona, love, you know I don’t think that’s all you do, right? Look, I might be an idiot, but even I know it takes work to pull miracles out of your ass on a regular basis. I just don’t understand the shape of it, hey? And I...” She hesitated. “And I would like to, if you can stand a few more stupid questions.”

Rona said nothing for a long moment, turning the vine absently in one hand. Then she sighed, and wilted like a breath suddenly exhaled.

“I know,” she said softly. “Sorry. Here, come sit with me.”

Val thanked Fharlanghn later for the distinct lack of witnesses to the way she nearly fell over herself getting off of the bed, and Rona, for her part, kindly avoided snickering.

“It’s not miracles so much as knowing what you’re trying to do,” she said once Val had settled across from her, hands folded in her lap like an attentive school child. She twirled the vine in her hand so it arched over her knuckles and held it out, gesturing to the tiny auburn seeds still tangled in twine around its surface. “Seeds are a plant’s life: they’re the first thing it needs to grow. So if I want vines to suddenly start growing out of the ground, and to wrap themselves around someone...”

She slowly threaded the vine back around her palm and made a big show of pulling it taught. Val hummed.

“It’s like a tether, then,” she said, with tentative understanding. “It sort of...makes a path from you to what you’re trying to control, yeah?”

“Exactly,” said Rona, and Val warmed at the brightness in her smile. “The components of a spell are just the vessel that you pour your intent into. That’s what makes magic happen. Not just ‘sticking things together.’”

She shot Val a pointed look, and nudged her playfully with a toe when she winced.

“Well, how was I supposed to know?” Val grumbled, making a big show of huffing and folding her arms. “I don’t even know what I’m doing, much less anyone else. I wasn’t born with magic.”

“I wasn’t either,” said Rona. Val raised an eyebrow. “What? Most people aren’t. Some of us give up everything just to learn.”

The current of heat burning under the last few words was difficult to miss, as was the way Rona’s eyes strayed to the door that Ianry had left through barely ten minutes prior. Val said nothing for a long moment, then slowly shifted closer.

“Everything, huh?” she asked. Rona’s shoulders sagged.

“My family didn’t exactly approve of the whole ‘running off to go play with magic plants’ business,” she said quietly. “And once I decided to go after my mentor…”

She trailed off, shrugging, and Val found that she could only nod. The few words of comfort she had suddenly felt achingly hollow in her ears; how could she even pretend that she understood losing a family that way, which left behind a looming shadow of unknowns that only grew with distance? She thought of her father, and all of the moments she had spent missing him, and she held them tighter still.

Eventually though, after a long muster of silence, Val rolled onto her knees, pushed some of the satchels aside, and shuffled over to where Rona was leaned against the wall. She only hesitated a moment before pressing an arm against hers.

“I don’t think Ianry meant any harm by what he said,” she said finally, “but it wasn’t fair anyway. You’re...you’re amazing Rona, in a hundred more ways than just what you can do with some thread and vines, but because of that, too. You’ve clearly worked your ass off to be as good as you are. You know, occasional misdirected ice knives aside.”

That earned her a chuckle, small but genuine, and Val felt her heart quicken as Rona slid sideways along the wall and rested a shoulder back against hers.

“That probably won’t happen again,” she said, with a thin smile. Val grinned.

“Wouldn’t matter even if it did, love. Accidents happen to all of us. But that doesn’t change the fact that you could set the ground around me on fire, and I’d trust that you’d put it out before anyone got hurt. You’re a damn fine druid Rona, but I admire your dedication to doing right even more.”

“Me?” Rona sat forward with the reddening cheeks and sudden, righteous indignation of someone whose only response to a compliment was to return it. “What about you? I've spent the last few months watching you fling yourself between us and every kind of monster that Cinderfells can dream up. I expect that I’ll spend the next few months doing the same thing. You want to talk to me about dedication? Protecting people is so natural to you, a god came down to help you do it!” She huffed and folded her arms over her chest. “No one has ever thought to ask why I like you, Val. You know why? It's because they haven’t needed to. Knowing you makes the reason plain enough.”

This time, the heat surging upwards bypassed Val’s neck completely and shot straight to her ears, which felt suddenly like they matched Amon’s in their shade.

“Well,” she said, when sense and her full grasp of Common finally returned, “now that’s hardly fair. See, I was under the distinct impression that I was complimenting you.”

Rona’s lips curled into a wry smile, her cheeks their own delightful shade of rose. “Funny how a conversation works, huh?”

They both buckled into a laugh, and whatever coy hesitation had been putting distance between them suddenly vanished like a mist in morning sun. Rona sank further against Val’s arm once she had collected herself, and leaned her head onto her shoulder.

“I should clean all of this up,” she said after a moment, gesturing to the piled satchels around them. “With any luck, we’re not going to be needing to burn a bunch of spells in the next few days anyway.”

“Don’t be so sure,” said Val, grinning. “We have a rather permanent history of getting ourselves into all manner of trouble. In fact, you might even need a whole other bag of…” She paused and grabbed the nearest satchel. “Acorns?”

Rona giggled. “I use those more for making friends with squirrels than for magic, if I’m honest.”

“Of course,” said Val, with a good-natured roll of her eyes as she let the satchel fall. “What I mean is, I still have plenty more stupid questions about magic, and I’m not so terrible at finding useful things in the woods. Mostly Sendran woods, to be fair, and mostly in the south, but I haven’t almost eaten poisonous berries since I was eight, which isn’t horrible when you think about it -”

“I was actually planning on gathering some things to bring Rosie back today,” Rona cut in, pulling away to grin up at her. “If you wanted to come along…?”

Val practically jumped to her feet, snatching her shield from where it was leaned against the bedside and slinging it onto her back. “Please. I’m already sick of this room, this inn and this whole bloody city. Let’s let it fend for itself for a little while, hey?”

“A date, then,” Rona agreed, grinning as she stood and then leaning forward to nudge Val with an elbow. “And maybe I’ll even let you hold the basket.”

Not Pictured

So this is going to be weird going into an episode where I’m pretty damned certain of the outcome. I think the only thing I haven’t figured out is the “Cliff’s Briefcase” thread. It was stolen by a prostitute hired by a guy that kind of looks like someone that Aaron Echolls once shared a jail cell with. I don’t see how that ties back to anything unless it was something I missed last episode when I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to the courtroom scenes?

Anyway, on with the finale!

Mr Manning is offering the reward for Woody? The child abuser wants the child molester found that badly? I guess this falls under the heading of Even Evil Has Standards. Also, shouldn’t the state of California be the one offering? Maybe this is just preemptive. The state’s reward will take too long to process so Manning is getting the jump on it now before the trail goes cold.

HAHAHAHA! Oh, Vinnie! Please never change! Please be in the movie ten years later every bit the actual worst person ever!

Woody had Chlamydia? So on top of all the other horrible shit he did, Beaver also raped Veronica.

Oh and we’re back in Veronica’s Dreamland. At least she’s not on the bus anymore. That was really long and seemingly pointless, other than an excuse to bring back Duncan and Lilly one more time. Also, the idea of Veronica and Wallace not being friends makes me incredibly sad.

Mr Underhill? How dare you besmirch the name of Frodo Baggins by associating your disgusting self with him.

“I don’t know if I like the idea of you running around a place full of armed, drunk businessmen.” “That’s why I rarely go to Texas.”

I’ve heard at least three writers names called out during this ceremony.

So this is yet another example of Sheriff Shithead being a dickbag, right? Like they’ve known Weevil did it for, what, days now and they wait until the middle of graduation to come drag him out in handcuffs? They could have arrested him anytime but Lamb wants to humiliate him as publicly as possible.

Little Dick isn’t in Veronica and Logan’s class? Or he just can’t walk at graduation because he has to take too many summer school classes? I mean, I remember him failing physics but were there more? Because most of the time if you’re just one class short the school will still let you walk and just hold off on your diploma until you make up the class you failed.

“A PONY?!”

It seems weird seeing Veronica in a dress outside of like Prom. Correct me if I’m wrong but that’s the only time we’ve ever seen her in a dress, dances and other formal wear occasions, of which graduation is not one?

Wallace is just going to track down Jackie? In Paris? A city of like 12 million people or whatever? Wallace, I know you’ve watched Veronica work a lot and you have picked up some not inconsiderable skills along the way, but with this, I think you’ve overshot your potential.

And apparently, Jackie’s in Brooklyn, not Paris… and when she said she learned the birds and the bees the hard way… not only was she pregnant but she’s a teen mom? How is that in any way in keeping with the character we were introduced to at the beginning of the season? And does Terrence think she’s actually in Paris? Or is that just the “official story” that they’re telling everyone?

I don’t think that’s how legal emancipation works, Aaron. Once you’re out, you’re out. Also, Logan is almost certainly eighteen by now. He has his own money left to him by his mother. I mean, he may need to move out of the Neptune Grand and into something a little more permanent and less costly, like an apartment, but then again, so do you as you undoubtedly have a mountain of legal bills forthcoming and no career left to speak of.

A deer’s head, Woody? Just be caught already.

Yep, okay, called it. Like I said, I was 99% sure but confirmation is always good.

Hart Hanson is another producer’s name… I think it’s also the name of the kid who taped Lynn’s suicide, who mysteriously turned back up last episode. In which case, he’s a sophomore and almost certainly is not listed with the phone company.

Cassidy BEAVER, you son of a bitch, on top of everything else, you do not get to shoot… fucking anyone, not Mac, not Veronica, not even fucking Dick! (Also, what did I say about him having plans to put one in Dick’s head at graduation?)

Um, just over halfway through the episode and we’re already up to the big climactic showdown with the bad guy?

“A better place”? You piece of shit! All that girl did was love you!

Oh yeah, I didn’t think about the fact that Beaver would have to have killed Curly.

Um, how long has this bomb been on Woody’s plane? Because those things get inspected regularly, whether they get used or not.

First of all, that plane wouldn’t be visible in the Neptune skyline yet. Secondly, WHAT THE ACTUAL EVERLOVING FUCK?!

Beaver, if you want her to jump, you’re going to have to stop tasing her, genius.

Good riddance, Shit Bird!

Okay, so Mac is alive! Thank God for that! Although Beaver has almost certainly passed along his sex-associate psychological trauma to Mac, so he’s just the fucking gift that keeps on giving after he’s a stain on the fucking sidewalk.

And speaking of sex-associated psychological trauma, this show has forced me to endure seeing with my own eyes Kendall and Aaron together, which I could have gone my whole life (and several more besides) without.

Oh, damn! Well good riddance to that pile of shit, too!

CW? As in The CW? The network that aired Season Three? “It’s a done deal.” Was this an announcement? (I mean, I know CW, Clarence Wiedman, but I can’t think of another good reason for them to phrase it that way.)

I have some pretty serious issues with the idea of Duncan ordering Aaron’s murder. Kidnapping your child to keep her out of the hands of monsters and living on the run from the law is one thing…

Yeah, none of that makes Jackie’s characterization from the beginning of the season make any more sense.

KEITH! HALLELUJAH!

“And pepper spray, in case we run into that Trump character.” GOOD CALL, VERONICA!

Keith, you are not standing Veronica up for something to do with Kendall Goddamn Casablancas! What the hell, my dude?

Okay, so there were a few surprises after all. I didn’t expect Aaron to get clipped. Once they dragged him into this season of the show, I figured he would become an on-going menace in Veronica’s life, but I guess not. I also didn’t expect a resolution to Veronica’s rape. I thought that would spill over into next season where I’m still assuming that the Hearst Rapist is still an on-going problem, maybe there was an upperclassman at Neptune that graduated when Veronica was a sophomore and went to college at Hearst or something and he could be a suspect.

So… this episode was good but felt kind of lacking to me after my epiphany last episode, and then Veronica got the message to go up to the roof and the whole thing kind of came apart for me. There’s no good reason why Veronica would go up there. She did it because the script needed her to have a private menacing conversation with Aaron and then needed her to be in danger of being killed by Beaver. It’s yet another example of Veronica doing something she’s smart enough to know better because the script needs her to be in peril. It’s happened a lot this season and doing it in random, middle-of-the-season episodes is one thing, but in the season finale? No, sorry.

Then she gets to the roof and there’s no good reason why Beaver doesn’t just shoot her in the head. He doesn’t need to know what she knows about him. She’s not explaining it to him, she’s explaining it to the audience and that’s just bad writing.

Beaver’s plan doesn’t really make a ton of sense, either. If he’s so scared that Marcos and Peter are going to spill his secret, why does he wait to kill them? Why do they wait to be killed? Why he wait until Woody’s on his way back to Neptune to blow up the plane instead of on the way to his hideout? Why does let Woody live in the first place? Incorporation/Phoenix Land Trust came way later. Why set-up Woody (or anyone, for that matter) for the bus crash when a criminal investigation of Woody would be exponentially more likely to reveal Woody’s paedophilia than just letting an incompetent sheriff bumble his way through a pile of circumstantial evidence for the next couple of years?

Full thoughts on Season Two will be forthcoming.

The story with no name :-)

So it's my first post....as a writer.hope you like it. Part 1 Curled up in a corner you are in a world of your own, Pain threading itself through every muscle and vein. It was a hard battle but you have won. Its been weeks of training for this final meeting with the one that can end it all. But you won…Or did you? Then just before you pass out you see a blur of colours coming towards you and you can feel yourself floating off the ground. You feel heavy and you know that you have just become as vulnerable as you can be, albeit not willingly.   Several hours later although it feels like you have been sleeping for days you wake up. You can hear a noise from another room and then you suddenly take a look around. The room is a deep shade of green, some may say an almost British Racing Green, and its bare but homely. There’s a soft blanket thrown over you and you notice you don’t have your boots on…. or socks. You slowly pull yourself up so you’re sitting and have a better look. You can feel a throbbing in your head so you decide to make your way towards the noise. Your bare feet make a pat, pat, pat sound on the floor as you walk towards the noise. It sounds like 2 or more people are talking. One has a raised voice and the other is trying to calm him down. At first you don’t recognise the voice and then it clicks…. The brothers and Castiel. ‘She almost died out there Sammy!!’ You hear and then a response. ‘I know Dean but that wasn’t suppose to happen’ Sam answers back sounding exasperated ‘She wasn’t meant to get hurt’   You look down and realise your shirt is open and you have a blood soaked bandage round your waist. It looks like the bleeding has stopped so you walk in to the room. The room the guys are in is what look to be a library of sorts. Its walls are lined with shelves and shelves of books on lore and spells, on some shelves are scary looking weapons and the occasional box with a symbol or writing on it. You suddenly realise you have three sets of eyes staring at you as Dean calmly walks over and Sam gives you a look that could make puppy dogs cry. Cas is standing a little behind the other two looking concerned with his blue tie hanging off his neck like its been pulled in stress and his hair is sticking up all over. ‘How’re you feeling sweetheart?’ Dean asks ‘Thought we were going to loose you. I found you just as you passed out and bought you back here’ He informs you. ‘Look, I’m real sorry you got hurt’ Says Sam warily after a look that could kill from Dean prompting him ‘How’s the wound?’ Cas then walks over and takes your arm walking you over to a big comfortable seat and tells you to lie back as much as you can ‘Now you have recovered and I have my grace back I can try to heal what’s left of the damage’ He informs you. ‘We thought that you were going to die’ He says in his all too blunt Cas kind of way. He removes the bandage and you can see a rather red, raw looking bullet wound and you feel a bit sick. Cas passes his hand over your stomach and a blue glow radiates from the wound. You look again and your stomach is back to its normal, too pale colour with a splash of dried blood. ‘Thanks’ You say to Cas with a smile ‘Now I feel much better’ Cas gives you a shy smile and walks out the room saying something about ‘a glass of water’   ‘Cas!’ Says Dean looking at his back ‘What he means is it was a very close call considering you weren’t meant to get hurt at all’ After throwing another glare at Sam, he calms down. He puts his hand on your shoulder and helps you up from the chair.     It’s a few hours later and you finally managed to wash the dried blood left over from the wound away along with most of the memories of the day before. Your towel drying your hair and you hear a subtle knock at your bedroom door. ‘Ok if I come in?’ You hear Dean ask from the other side as he slowly opens the door  ‘Of course, its your bunker not mine, although now I have my own room complete with hairdryer I’m tempted to stay!’ You giggle and Dean smiles a kind of wistful smile, his eyes crinkling at the edges. ‘Your welcome to stay as long as you want kid, your always welcome’  He walks over and gives you a body crushing hug and you breathe in his scent, smelling a woody, clean kind of scent.  ‘You finally showered then?’ You ask ‘you stank!’ You inform him with a smirk.  ‘Hey I can throw you out as quickly as I can invite you to stay kiddo, don’t forget that’ You know he’s only kidding from the look in his eyes and your glad things seemed to have settled with him now he knows your feeling back to your old self, after the healing from Cas has done its job. ‘Look, Don’t blame Sammy ok?’ You tell him with a serious glint in your eyes ‘I should have stayed in the Impala; it was my own fault for thinking I could actually be any help. You two are like my big brothers, I hate you fighting’ Deans green eyes flash as he gets a short lecture from you but he looks down at his feet and then through his eyelashes he answers ‘I know but you weren’t even meant to come, we almost lost you and I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if you got killed on our watch’ You see his eyes are a little watery as he looks up and you know how deeply he cares for you. ‘Dean, Its ok, I’m fine. Look, no wound even…. thanks to Cas.’ You lift your shirt and show your blood free stomach to him. Dean runs his finger over where the wound was as if to make sure it had gone and you pull your shirt back down. ‘Honestly I’m fine’ You look at Dean and he smiles ‘Cas was really worried about you, He was worried he wouldn’t be able to save you and he was in pieces. He really cares about you’ He adds with a wink. What’s that supposed to mean? Suddenly you hear a rumble and you look down at your stomach ‘Dean, I need feeding like now or I’m going to go nuts. I could use a beer too. You know, to calm my nerves’ You grin. Deans laughs and answers back ‘Sounds like a plan, lets get Sammy and Cas and hit the diner I saw back down the road, Its Tuesday, imma have me some Pig in a Poke ‘ You walk out your room tying your hair in a ponytail as you go. Grab your jacket from the back of the desk chair and follow Dean down the corridor. ‘When we’re back I want a full on tour of this place, its freaking amazing’ You exclaim. ‘Deal’ Says Dean as you enter the kitchen to find Sam waiting. You give Sam a big grin and hug him. He’s much taller and a slimmer build to hug but he smells just like Dean with an added hint of citrus. It takes a moment for him to realise you walked over for a hug not anything else and he wraps his arms round you kissing your forehead and whispering ‘I’m so glad your ok’   Cas comes wandering into the kitchen just as you walk out of Sam’s embrace and you see a flash of something in his eyes. ‘Everything ok Cas?’ You ask concerned. ‘Yes, I am just looking forward to going to the Diner’ He answers in a very emotionless voice. ‘Ill meet you all in the garage’ and he walks out of the kitchen and turns left. You look at Dean and Sam and they just shrug. ‘Did he not want to fix me with his grace?’ You ask worried. ‘I just think he may be feeling left out of the hugathon’ Replied a smirking Dean. ‘Lets go get some food, I’m hungry’ ’you’re always hungry Dean’ Said Sam laughing at his big brother. ‘Damn right Sammy’   The drive to the Diner was a little awkward with sitting next to Cas in the backseat of Baby and not knowing what you’ve done wrong. But when you grabbed his hand and gave it a squeeze to let him know you were grateful for him saving your life, he finally smiled at you and squeezed it back. A feeling of warmth spread over you when he did and you felt a little hot under the collar. Where was that coming from? You’ve never been like this round Castiel before….   You get to the diner and as your shown to a booth Dean pushes you down so your sat next to Cas. But he pushes you so hard that as you fall Cas catches you and you blush. ‘So sorry Cas’ You stutter. ‘I don’t mind catching you when you fall’ Cas says as he stands you back up on your feet. How have you never noticed how blue his eyes are and how long his eyelashes are? Have they always looked like that? And the small freckles just dusting the bridge of his nose. Dammit what is going on?   After the weirdness at the diner you all return back to the bunker and Dean does the tour. Your pleased to find he has allocated you a bathroom to yourself ‘so you can leave girl stuff lying around and have privacy in the shower’ which makes you laugh…girl stuff! You head back to your room to find a bag of gummy bears on your bed and a note from Cas saying ‘I thought you may enjoy these. I hear after a traumatic time humans like sugar. Sam informed me of this and suggested they would be a perfect gift’ Typical Cas you think and your stomach does a small flutter. You realise that all through dinner Sam and Dean were making comments about you and Cas being all weird around each other but obviously in the subtle Winchester way they are so good at. Yeah right! You hate this feeling of the unknown and after Cas reciprocating the hand thing in the back of the impala you decide you need to speak to him. After another beer…. Just to keep your nerves at bay and a little Dutch courage never does anyone any harm right?   You head back to the kitchen to find Sam taking a bowl of Popcorn from the microwave and he tells you that Cas and Dean are waiting in the ‘family room’ for a movie night. You grab a few beers and walk with Sam down to the room. As you walk in you see Dean with a huge grin on his face as he moves off the 2 seater sofa and into a single chair. Sam almost runs into the other single chair leaving the only space empty on the sofa next to Cas. He pats the seat next to him and you hand dean and Sam a beer as you drop to the sofa curling your legs underneath you. You twist open the beer and throw the lid at Dean slowly catching on that they did this seating arrangement on purpose. He winks back at you and presses play on the remote. The movie starts and it was obviously one that Dean picked as its all about guns, some form of Japanese martial art and boobs. After about half an hour you feel Cas stretch out and lay his arm behind you on the back of the sofa. You look to Sam and he smiles at you then turns back to the film. Castiel moves around on the sofa and makes himself more comfortable but in doing so ends up with his hand on your hand in between the two of you on the sofa. You curl your fingers around his and subtly lean against him a little. He manoeuvres so you are leaning into the crook of his arm and you snuggle down into the smell of Cas, which incase your wondering is like cinnamon rolls that have just come out of the oven, You’ve never felt like this before but suddenly he’s not just Cas he’s Cas…Your Cas. You wake up and find the room is quiet and its just you and Cas snuggled on the sofa. Sam and Dean have gone and the TV is on a vetinary programme, currently showing a wee tabby kitten with huge ears and beautiful green eyes. Cas looks down at you and says in the Cas way he does ‘I like cats, I find them very cute and the fur is so soft, plus they have amazing stories to tell’ You laugh softly and Cas looks down at you his piercing blue eyes looking into yours and he says very quietly, almost nervous like ‘I like you, not just like a sister’. Your heart leaps.

The Antoine and Bunnie Retrospective - 131

“Hero to Zero In No Time At All” Sink or Spin I - Sonic the Hedgehog #150

Great, now I got that song from Hercules stuck in my head. 

Today’s story involves Sonic taking a sudden interest in the ladies. Only it’s not really Sonic, it’s Scourge the Anti-Sonic. He hits on a bunch of the women of Knothole, including Bunnie. 

I see Bunnie’s self esteem issues popping up again.

 Also, why do you care Tails? What does “Sonic” and Bunnie dating have to do with you? Do you secretly have a crush on Sonic as well? Or are you just a hard core Buntoine shipper? 

Now, logically you would think Bunnie would call things off here insisting “Sonic” go talk with Tails. But nope. 

Now there’s a pretty popular interpretation of this scene, suggesting Bunnie and Scourge had sex during the time skip. It’s an interpretation that I fully reject for several reasons and here’s why. 

I don’t give two shits what Penders’ original intent was, what he said after the fact, and/or weather or not he failed to deny this headcannon. At the end of the day I’m the one reading this. At the end of the day it’s my head cannon that counts when I’m reading. Not the one someone else came up with. And at some point you have to separate the author/artist from the work itself. 

If sex was the original intent it’s very poorly presented. Like, I was a full grown adult when I first read this scene and it didn’t occur to me that that was what the writer was trying to convey, and I highly doubt any little kids reading at the time would have considered it as well. 

I mean Bunnie’s not an idiot. Sure she makes knee-jerk decisions at times but sex on the first date seems pretty off. Especially when she was just berating “Sonic” for trying to make out after Tails got upset. What kind of sense does that make? Also, I’m no expert, but I don’t see any articles of clothing removed or mussed up hair or any of that messy stuff that comes with sex. It just seems like a leap in logic to me to automatically assume they did it, is what I’m saying. 

We’re not even sure if Bunnie can have sex. Like we do find out later she is physically intimate with her husband, but in what way or to what extant is still left in the air. This is in part due to comic’s target audience being children and also because Bunnie’s robotics have never been clearly defined in how they work. And granted there is an interesting discussion to be had about her cybernetics and how they effect her love life but I’m saving that for a future review when its more appropriate.  

This is still a kid’s comic! If Scourge did have sex with Bunnie it would qualify as rape because of false pretenses. Rape has no place in children’s media. Now I fully realize that Penders is oblivious to that fact and can’t tell his ass from his elbow, but the rest us know better. Why make yourselves more miserable then you have too by insisting this a thing that happened? The comic by no means shoves this interpretation down you’re throat, nor does it make any claims to be edgier than it is. If you see something that isn’t actually there than that’s all on you. 

Now a head cannon is still a head cannon, and you’re allowed to keep which ever ones you want. Even if it flummoxes me personally as to why you would keep this particular one. However for myself, personally, I just see it as Bunnie and Scourge making out and nothing more. Sure it’s still sleazy on Scourge’s part and it’s still a stupid decision on Bunnie’s end, but at least it’s something everyone can walk away from with some amount of dignity.  

Anyways now that that’s out of way, let’s get down to the real reason why we’re here. No doubt, if you haven’t figured it out yet, Ken Penders is today’s author and we finally get the reveal that “Antione” has been Patch all along. 

Also pretty convenient that you shaved off his goatee with that sonic spin as well.

Now this is where I was getting at when I said you have to separate the creator from the work sometimes. I’ve noticed a growing trend where people let what an artist did or say in real life retroactively ruin a piece of art that they once enjoyed. Does that mean we should give creators a free pass when they do awful shit? Of course not! By all means continue calling Penders out on his bullshit, don’t let anyone forget that Woody Allen is a pedophile and a rapist, and always let the Chris Brown apologists know they are in the wrong. But that doesn’t mean you have to stop watching Annie Hall if you like it, or that you can no longer sing loudly to "No Air". (Note: I hate Annie Hall and I enjoy “No Air” but I don’t really listen to Chris Brown regularly. I’m just providing examples) 

Nor does it mean you have to rip to shred every single thing Penders writes. I don’t care if Penders made a sexiest comment about Lupe once, I still think  "Lupe: Family" is a decent story. I don’t give a damn if he claimed Rotor is gay, I’m still going to headcannon him as ace anyways. And I will always defend Ken’s decision to retcon Evil-Antoine into Anti-Antoine. Even if the way he went about it was extremely douchey. 

Ya see, Penders didn’t “win out” because he had the best idea, he won because he went behind Bollers’ back and published this story before Bollers could even start on his original plans. Like, is that not the epitome of dickbaggery you’ve ever heard of? Hell yeah! Does that mean I wish Bollers got fair chance to tell his story? Hell no! 

I’ve discussed in length back in issue 137 why Bollers plans for Antoine were crap, but the long and short of it is; if Bollers had his way Antoine’s character would have been assassinated beyond repair. Years of character development down the drain all for the sake of cheap, forced drama. But with Penders idea, not only does it keep Antoine’s development intact but actually builds upon it; adding new backstory to potentially explore and new hardships for Twan to overcome and grow from. 

There’s also the added bonus of creating a new and very effective villain in Patch, while simultaneously giving Ant an arch nemesis. The fact that this all can be traced back to Scourge seeking revenge on Antoine for his embarrassment in #122 is just icing on the cake. 

Now that doesn’t mean this story is without flaws. I’ve already talked about Tails’ weird freak out and that poorly laid out scene involving Bunnie and Scourge, but there’s also an icky romance between Rouge and Locke (eww) made even worse by later writers trying to pair her with Knuckles, and a confusing lack of continuity. Like with Sally suddenly having short hair or this scene.....

Umm...Antoine was trapped in Anti-Mobuis for at least 6 months or more and Scrouge only just now got the idea to come over to Mobius and take Sonic’s place. It also took Patch several months to earn King Max’s favor. Why would Twan just randomly be in Scourge’s room spying on Patch? Shouldn’t the scene with Patch receiving the promotion from King Max be after the whole threatening Ant scene? Doesn’t that flow better? Or is Scourge just torturing poor Antoine by forcing him to helplessly watch Patch ruin his life. Yeah you know, I wouldn’t put it past him to do that. 

Oh man, does this mean Scourge has been forcing Twan to keep the disguise on this whole time? Like I just thought he did it as a way to keep the Suppression Squad from killing him out right, but nope apparently Scourge has been threatening him all for his own personal amusement. I guess that explains why he didn’t just run away or try to receive help from the good Doctor. That’s kind of horrifying, especially considering that he would have been forced to join in on the Suppression Squad’s escapades. And considering that they’re villains, well you can imagine that their idea of fun involves lots of violence.  

That’s sadly why we’ll never see Antoine’s time in Anti-Mobius fully explored. To do so would get very dark and disturbing very quickly. But still, my poor baby! 

The second story this issue is the second half of “The Chosen One” arc. The whole Tails is the Chosen One thing started way back in the Tails mini-series. Penders and company thought it would be a good idea to wrap up the sixth milestone by concluding this dangling plot thread and tying up the loose ends of the Zone Wars series. Not a bad idea in of itself, but it falls apart when the whole thing turns into a retread of “Night of a Thousand Sonics”. 

I can fully understand why someone would hate this story, but for me it’s one of those “so bad it’s entertaining” type tales.   

I mean just look at this! That is a thing of beauty right there! You couldn’t ask for a more shitposting meme worthy image even if you tried! 

Next week will do the usual 25 recap and then continue on with the Sink or Swim arc after that.  

Cynics in the Dark, Ch. 3 - Dark Bars (Bianca/Violet) - by BeautifulMistake

Full summary: They were both too cynical to let it go anywhere. But he made her laugh. And she made him sweat. An alternate universe romance fic with some genderfuck elements. Featuring Bianca Del Rio/Roy Haylock as a non-drag comedian and Violet Chachki as a transwoman from a powerful society family in New York. Rated T for now, but eventually M.

Chapter summary: Roy and Violet hang out for the first time. Getting to know her, he finds for a lot of reasons she’s sticking in his mind.

Chapter 3 - Dark Bars

The first time he heard it that night, he thought he imagined it. He was doing a set at one of his regular club gigs downtown, and he knew his head hadn’t been as in the game as much as usual. He’d been thinking about her since that night working the party, for no reason he could name, so when he first thought he heard her weird bird voice among the laughter out in the dark of the audience, he kicked himself for being ridiculous. But when he heard it a second time, a laugh like nobody else’s, his stomach fluttered as he realized. Shit. She was here.

He shifted from absurdly pleased at the notion– had she gone out of her way to look up when he’d be performing again? –to suddenly thrown. He was too much of a professional to let it show in his performance, but in his head it brought up all kinds of rookie shit, like second-guessing his whole goddamn routine in the middle of things; she’d probably dig the social media stuff, but the race jokes would be a bridge too far.

Inwardly he side-eyed himself. Since when did he care that somebody didn’t like his material? Since when was he ever, when he engaged the audience in the act, torn between hoping not to see somebody and hoping to catch a glimpse?

Still, he couldn’t stop tracking her reaction. She wasn’t consistent, so every time she dropped out he was sure he lost her. Sure enough, she didn’t laugh through much of the racial stuff– lot of white girls didn’t know how –but she didn’t walk out, either, because eventually he’d hear her again.

When the set was over, he packed up his shit in record time in hopes that he’d catch her, surprised at his own eagerness. Feeling absurdly high school about the whole thing, he threaded his way through the lobby, trying not to make it too obvious he was looking.

Shit. He should have known. Of course he wouldn’t have to look hard. Her height and her heels stuck her way above the crowd, plus she had a knack for finding just the right light. Even in the dark club, of course he’d just have to look for the one bare bulb in the place that would emphasize her cheekbones.

“Excuse me, miss, but the Narc Anon meeting’s down the block.”

She turned her eyes to him but not her body. “You know you’re pretty fucking racist.”

“You’d know, white girl.” Christ, he was grinning like an idiot. “What are you doing here?”

“Wanted to see what you did when you were off the leash. Guess that was it.”

“Come on, I heard you laughing, bitch.”

She eyed him. “You heard me?”

He felt self-conscious suddenly, but tried to play it off. “You have kind of a– distinctive laugh.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Like goddamned Woody the Woodpecker.”

He jumped to reassure her, a little too quickly. “Nah, it’s nice!” He walked it back a little. “I mean, give me anything but those hipsters who think nodding shows that you thought something was funny.”

She shifted against the wall she was leaning on to face him. “Well, lucky for you I’m desperately avoiding going home.”

Okay, between that and her crying in the closet at Prisca, now he was curious. What the hell, he thought. “Well, long as you got nowhere to be… you want to get a drink?”

She eyed him a moment, and he half-expected she was going to laugh in his face. But at last she tossed him a grin. “My sponsor will kill me. Let’s go.”

They hit up a different dark bar just a few blocks away. Violet suggested it; he was amused to find she already seemed to know the area, like she was a regular. He laughed to himself; of course rich bitch liked to slum it. As they settled in and ordered, Roy considered what to say to her. He could tell this girl had a hell of a story, and he had to admit he was curious about it. He had a way of getting people talking; he prided himself on being able to chat with anybody, and judgmental as he was, he had a knack for the kind of ribbing that put people at ease. But It turned out he didn’t have to bother. Miz Violet Dardo had come out ready to put on a show, and girl didn’t just have a telenovela; hers was a nighttime soap written by a sexual sadist.

The poor-little-rich-girl stuff was par for the course, involving a distant, pilled-out mother and a rich corporate daddy who may or may not murder brown hookers in his spare time. But Violet herself was trans, as it turned out, which explained her ridiculous height. She’d been stone cold certain since she was six years old, and had waged a full-on war with her parents until they ponied up for the transition. That deal might have been a mess in any old family, but for the Dardos there was some crazy rich-people shit going on, too– battling for control of inheritances, child advocate attorneys, abusing loopholes in trust fund terms. Threats were made on both sides of the aisle, ranging from reeducation camps to good old fashioned blackmail. But in the end, Violet got what she wanted, a complete physical overhaul into the woman she was meant to be. All for the low, low price of a move to Manhattan where no one knew them, an NDA with her own goddamn parents, and the constant ambient hostility of everyone involved.

Roy listened, mostly without comment. He wasn’t easily rattled, and had certainly heard some sick stories in his time, but something about the cold, corporatized way it had all gone down made his skin crawl. He was no stranger to family strife, but it was supposed to be yelling and crying, not legal actions and hush money.

“Jesus,” he said when she was through. “And here I thought my creepy uncle fucked me up.”

“Oh, I got three of those. Except now I’m safe because they’re all disgusted by me.”

“Well, I’m glad the situation’s improved.”

“I guess. You’d think if none of them could stand to look at me, I’d get a lot less shit.”

“If it’s that bad, why do you stick around?”

“Because they’ll get to keep my trust fund if I leave.”

He stared at her with his best bitch, please. But she stared back, unabashedly. “It’s eleven point three million. You’d stay too.”

He whistled. “Yeah, for that much, Daddy can saddle me up and ride me around the room. In fact, let me know if there are any job openings.” She trill-laughed at that, which made him bolder. “Better rich and miserable than poor and miserable. Baby likes her shoes, I see.”

“And her HRT.”

“Fair. A body like that can’t come cheap.”

“Lamborghinis never do.”

He snorted. “That good, huh?”

“I wasn’t playing around.”

“Must not have been, to get that much done under the hood. How’s it drive?”

She glared at him. “Bitch, it’s fucking perfect.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “According to whom?”

“Ask around.” She downed her cocktail, set aside the glass, and signaled for another all without breaking eye contact. “So are you joking to cover that you’re freaked out?”

That was more direct than he expected. Freaked out wasn’t the word for it. Sure, it was fucked up, her multi-million-dollar psychodrama. But most of all, it was sad, achingly sad in a way he didn’t usually like to think about; now that she finally felt like a human being, everyone who really knew her saw her as a monster. Cold heartless bastards like him didn’t like to dwell on that sort of thing. But he was pretty damn sure she didn’t want his pity.

True to form, though, he didn’t need more than a moment to come back. “I always lead with the asshole thing. I like folks to know what they’re in for upfront.”

Her lips quirked. “Me too. If they’re going to be scared off, better get it out of the way quick.” Her tone was joking, but even to him the words were all too real.

They chatted a bit longer after that, of lighter things than defense mechanisms and the state of her messed-up life. Eventually her phone buzzed, apparently with a text, and after checking it she stretched and began collecting her things.

“Curfew calling?” he asked.

“Yeah, my P.O. gets on my ass if I’m out too late.” She stood to go, then looked back at him over her shoulder. “Thanks for all the laughs.”

He grinned. “Least I could do. You paid for the drinks.”

Roy went home that night with their conversation running through his mind. And when he jerked himself before he fell asleep and couldn’t quite get there, calling up the memory of that cowl neckline skimming over her breasts made him splatter all over his stomach.

Ronan Farrow overcame spies and intimidation to break some of the biggest stories of the #MeToo era

Investigative reporter Ronan Farrow, author “Catch and Kill,” earlier this week in New York. His new book delves into the Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer cases, among others. (Mary Inhea Kang/for The Washington Post)

Investigative reporter Ronan Farrow, author “Catch and Kill,” earlier this week in New York. His new book delves into the Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer cases, among others. (Mary Inhea Kang/for The Washington Post)

By

Paul Farhi

Oct. 10, 2019 at 1:44 p.m. PDT

Unlike most journalists — most human beings — Ronan Farrow can tell you what it’s like to be tailed, surveilled and tracked by people with possibly sinister motives. It is, he attests, kind of stressful.

“I don’t want this to sound like woe is me, but I’ll be honest,” Farrow says. “It’s really hard when you’re in those moments . . . when you wonder if you’re being followed, and it turns out you are, it’s frightening.”

For a few months in 2017, he nervously eyed suspicious-looking vehicles, spent nights in friends’ apartments and took evasive maneuvers, such as walking against traffic to foil anyone following him in a car.

A friend advised him: Get a gun.

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There are a number of these moments threaded through “Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators,” Farrow’s chronicle/memoir of his pursuit of allegations of sexual predation against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. As Farrow recounts, Weinstein arrayed not just some big legal guns to thwart him and other reporters, but a host of black-ops characters: former Mossad agents, Ukrainian surveillance pros, European undercover operatives. Their mission was to monitor Farrow and other journalists who were closing in on Weinstein. One of Weinstein’s sub rosa retainers was an Israeli intelligence company called — no joke, Mr. Bond — Black Cube.

Farrow pierced this legal and quasi-espionage veil to land a devastating story about Weinstein, published by the New Yorker exactly two years ago Thursday. The story, which followed by five days a separate series of revelations about Weinstein in the New York Times, earned Farrow and Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey the Pulitzer Prize. More important, their exposés touched off a cultural avalanche. Within weeks, other powerful men saw their walls of privilege and protection come tumbling down amid the march of the #MeToo movement.

(Weinstein, who eventually was charged with sex crimes, including rape, faces trial in New York in January. He has pleaded not guilty.)

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Hollywood's greatest betrayal: How sexual predators operate in plain sight

This is the story of how Hollywood's unique power structure enabled sexual harassment to remain the entertainment industry's open secret. (Video: Nicki DeMarco, Erin Patrick O'Connor/Photo: Sarah Hashemi/The Washington Post)

In the wake of his landmark Weinstein story, Farrow, 31, went on to expose other powerful men and institutions, becoming the go-to journalist of the movement and the moment.

The immediate follow-up to his Weinstein reporting was his disclosure of the “catch and kill” tactics employed by American Media Inc., parent of the National Enquirer, to suppress stories it sometimes later used to blackmail celebrities (the phrase refers to paying sources for exclusive rights to their information and then withholding, or killing, the story). Among the beneficiaries of the tactic: President Trump. Former Playboy model Karen McDougal had told the Enquirer about her alleged affair with Trump, but her story was caught and killed by AMI during the 2016 campaign.

Farrow’s subsequent reporting brought down CBS boss Leslie Moonves and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (the latter piece co-written with Jane Mayer). Most recently, he revealed that an elite think tank at MIT had a secret funding source: the late billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. The story prompted the abrupt resignation of its director.

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Farrow, of course, is no ordinary reporter. Aside from his background as an intellectual prodigy, his mother is actress Mia Farrow and his father is Woody Allen, although both his parents have suggested at times that his real father is Frank Sinatra (to which Ronan Farrow quips: “We’re all possibly Frank Sinatra’s son. I’ll leave it at that”). His family issues have been tabloid fodder ever since Farrow’s sister, Dylan, accused Allen of molesting her when she was 7 in 1992.

Allen, who has denied the allegation and was never charged with a crime, later married their sister, Soon-Yi Previn, making the director both Ronan’s father and his brother-in-law. He is long estranged from Mia Farrow and the Farrow siblings.

Dylan Farrow is both the muse and moral center of “Catch and Kill” as Farrow, as an investigative reporter for NBC News in early 2017, sets about investigating vague allegations against Weinstein. She appears repeatedly throughout his narrative to spur him on as his reporting runs into obstructive forces, including, he writes, his bosses at NBC News. (In his desperation to shake Farrow, Weinstein at one point tried to lean on Woody Allen to persuade Farrow to back off; his representatives later argued that Farrow’s family history was a disqualifying conflict of interest.)

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Dylan Farrow’s experience, and Allen’s long-running efforts to suppress and undermine her account, were a kind of foreground story for the book, Farrow says. But he adds, “This isn’t a story in which I’m the hero of her narrative.” Long before the #MeToo era, he confesses, he’d sometimes ask his sister to “shut up” about her accusations.

“I felt I had to be nakedly honest and vulnerable about that” in writing his account, he says. In tribute to his sister, Farrow included some of her illustrations in the book.

Befitting a Farrow story, “Catch and Kill” is chocka­block with scoops and revelations. The most headline-grabbing is an allegation by a “Today” show producer, Brooke Nevils, that she was raped by Matt Lauer, the program’s co-host, when they were covering the Winter Olympics in 2014. Lauer — who was fired shortly after Nevils went to NBC’s management in late 2017 — vehemently denied Nevils’s account in a lengthy statement Wednesday.

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Much of Farrow’s book seeks to answer a question that hovered in the background of his celebrated New Yorker article about Weinstein: Why did the story wind up in the New Yorker when Farrow spent months investigating him for NBC News?

In Farrow’s telling, Lauer is the key to that question. His thesis is that Weinstein pressured NBC News and its executives by using AMI’s accumulated dirt on Lauer to slow down and eventually stop Farrow’s reporting on Weinstein. Farrow writes that NBC covered up multiple allegations against Lauer stretching back years by paying his accusers and ensuring their silence through nondisclosure agreements (NDAs). He also writes about several instances of workplace misconduct by NBC News Chairman Andrew Lack, and MSNBC’s president, Phil Griffin, making them vulnerable to exposure by Weinstein.

In response, NBC News defended its record of covering harassment stories, citing its coverage of Bill Cosby, Jeffrey Epstein and others.

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It was, Farrow says, “a corporate coverup.”

Farrow writes that NBC even had a corporate euphemism for its settlements — “enhanced severance” — that enabled it to plausibly deny that the payments were hush money.

Needless to say, this has touched off a battle royal with NBC. The network has vigorously disputed Farrow’s premise and his reporting about it. Lack said on Wednesday that NBC was unaware of any issues involving Lauer until Nevils stepped forward, reiterating NBC’s statement on the matter since the story first exploded.

Further, an executive familiar with the network’s legal affairs said in an interview with The Washington Post that Lauer was the subject of four employee complaints — but three of them came in after he was fired following Nevils’s allegations. Contrary to Farrow’s assertions, “there is no evidence of a pattern” of earlier claims, said the executive, who spoke with NBC’s approval but would not be identified.

In the days leading up to the book’s publication next Tuesday, the network has launched a furious public relations counterattack against Farrow. NBC News President Noah Oppenheim has visited seven news organizations, including The Post, to present an elaborate rebuttal, complete with binders containing timelines, interview transcripts, expense logs and contemporaneous text messages and emails to and from Farrow and his editors documenting his progress on the Weinstein story.

Matt Lauer was fired as co-host of the NBC "Today"show over allegations of sexual predation, which he disputes. (Richard Drew/AP)

Matt Lauer was fired as co-host of the NBC "Today"show over allegations of sexual predation, which he disputes. (Richard Drew/AP)

The short version of Oppenheim's presentation is that Farrow's reporting wasn't ready, that he didn't have any of Weinstein's accusers on the record at the time he walked away in frustration in August 2017. "There was a wide circle of people [at NBC News], and there was unanimity at the time and there is now, that we made the only decision we could that [Farrow's reporting] hadn't met our standards for air," Oppenheim said.

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But Farrow and his producer at the time, Rich McHugh, say they had several women on the record at the time, and commitments from others to follow suit. They also had a damning audio recording of a police sting in which Weinstein admits to assault.

NBC’s “actions were a massive breach of journalistic integrity,” said McHugh, who left NBC in 2018. “They can do all the verbal gymnastics they want, but at the end of the day, they ordered us to stop reporting.”

Farrow’s editor at the New Yorker, David Remnick, also said the reporting was well advanced, though not yet ready for publication, when Farrow initially walked into the magazine. It was published within seven weeks.

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Interestingly, NBC doesn’t dispute one of Farrow’s scoops, a minor one but telling nonetheless. In the wake of the Weinstein imbroglio, he writes, the network hired a “Wikipedia whitewasher” to scrub references to the episode from some of its pages, a curious decision for a news organization dedicated to transparency. To this day, there’s no reference to the Weinstein affair under Oppenheim’s Wikipedia entry, and only a fleeting one in Lack’s.

Whatever the merits of NBC’s full-court press against “Catch and Kill,” the network’s campaign seems more likely to boost the book’s sales than to diminish it, and to raise the author’s already ascendant — some would say amazing — profile.

The short version of Farrow’s prodigious résumé:

He started college at the age of 11, and graduated at 15, whereupon he was immediately accepted into Yale Law School. He delayed entry at Yale to work as a speechwriter for Richard Holbrooke, the famed diplomat. He also became a spokesman for UNICEF in Sudan, Angola and Nigeria.

While still a teenager, he began publishing op-ed columns in the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and other newspapers. His commentaries focused on issues involving Africa, such as the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan.

After finishing Yale Law at 21, he spent two years at the State Department during the Obama administration, running U.S. relations with nongovernmental organizations in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He also served as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s adviser for youth issues.

He then received a Rhodes Scholarship to study abroad at Oxford University.

NBC signed him to a contract at 25, handing him his own daytime MSNBC program, “Ronan Farrow Daily.” The show lasted a year before being canceled because of low ratings, but the network kept Farrow on as an investigative correspondent.

Soon enough, in one of the many overlapping elements and crisscrossing personalities that show up in “Catch and Kill,” Lauer was introducing Farrow’s reports on the “Today” show.

Along the way, Farrow wrote a best-selling book about the history of American diplomacy, “War on Peace,” published last year.

Earlier this year, he earned a PhD in international relations from Oxford. The subtitle of his 89,000-word thesis: “Political Representation and Strategic Reality in America’s Proxy Wars.” Farrow describes it as an examination of America’s collaborations with foreign militaries and militias.

Aside from Farrow’s formidable intellectual heft, Remnick, the New Yorker’s editor, said he saw something else in the young journalist during his reporting of the Weinstein story: empathy.

Producer Harvey Weinstein exits court after an arraignment over a new indictment for sexual assault on August 26, 2019, in New York. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Producer Harvey Weinstein exits court after an arraignment over a new indictment for sexual assault on August 26, 2019, in New York. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

“I’ve seen a lot of investigative reporters, but I’ve never seen a situation where so much empathy was required,” Remnick says. “I saw his doggedness and the endless hours he put in, but I also had the opportunity to see him [interact] with the women who were treated so horribly by Weinstein, and it was quite something. There was sincerity. There was patience. It was empathy.”

Remnick doesn’t know whether Farrow was ever in real danger during this period (“I think the surveillance stuff was mostly designed to intimidate and scare him. I don’t think he was about to get a Luger in the back”), but he also said he never saw Farrow sweat under the pressure. “He was very, very cool,” he said.

While the cinematic elements of “Catch and Kill” make it likely bait for a movie or TV adaptation, Farrow says he hasn’t actively considered offers for the book, though there’s been interest in it since it was first announced last year. (Farrow himself is developing a series of documentaries for HBO about “the abuse of power by individuals and institutions”).

“I wanted to put the book first,” he says, “so I’ve kicked that decision [about selling the rights] down the road.” And then Dr. Farrow gives a gentle laugh, adding: “Not that I’m opposed to it.”

83) And the winner almost certainly isn’t .....

In about three hours - as I write - the 2018 Oscars will be announced. And having made a determined effort to see all nine of the ‘outstanding motion picture nominees’, I feel the necessity to get my retaliation in first, and give my verdict on which should win and which most certainly should not.

But before I get to the films, a brief note.

Woody Allen famously refused to be present at the ceremony to collect  his Oscar for ‘Annie Hall’, preferring to play clarinet in his jazz band in New York, and by so doing, showing his contempt for the whole Oscar farrago.

He was dead right. The Oscars and all such awards, from the Nobel Prize for Literature onwards and down,  are always, inevitably, a committee vote, and, as we all know, committees very, very rarely vote for the best and the bravest. The members of the Academy, the people who vote for the Oscars, are, effectively, just a very large committee.

Moreover, any award for something which can not be objectively measured - like a running race or a  football match - involves comparing apples with pears, oranges, cauliflower and kale, and is self evidently meaningless in any sense beyond its commercial value.

All that said, I still can’t bring myself to ignore the Oscars - I might even stay up to watch - and I shall be extremely miffed if my choices don’t turn out to be the names in the envelopes. Bricks might - probably will - be metaphorically chucked at my telly.

But why should I care? Pathetically, I suppose, it’s just my insecurity.  It comforts me if  my opinions are endorsed by others who are supposed to know what they are talking about even if I rarely agree with  professional critics,  and by the awarding of Oscars even if, as I have said, I hold the whole system in contempt. In my private battle between insecurity and reason, it seems reason loses.

So to the nominees:

‘Darkest Hour’. 

A Brexiteer’s wet dream. A nostalgic  look back at good old Winnie’s finest hour. Lots of risible dialogue and one utterly ludicrously improbable (and entirely fictitious) scene of the Conservative (but ex-Liberal and almost leader of the Kings Party) Prime Minister taking a trip on the Tube where he met some luvverly, salt of the earth types who knuckled their proletarian foreheads in appropriate awe of the great man. Gary Oldman’s make-up and prosthetics were seamless though and  Kazuhiro Tsuji ,who was responsible, thoroughly deserves to win the Make Up prize.

‘Phantom Thread’.

I hated previous Paul Thomas Anderson films, ‘There Will Be Blood’ (about an oil tycoon) and ‘The Master’ (about the leader of a fanatical religious movement)  which both seemed to me to be wildly over ‘actored’ and just risible attempts to remake ‘Citizen Kane’ ( about a press baron, as you may recall.) From the blurb I had read, I thought ‘Phantom Thread’ would be another of these - this time about a great fashion designer. But I was wrong. It is a very unusual, exquisitely made  love story about a man who makes exquisite clothes.

‘Dunkirk’. 

Another thrill-a-minute joyride  for Brexiteers; a look back at the heroic retreat across the channel in 1940 with Mark Rylance reprising his barely-moving-a-muscle, never-raising-his-voice performance as Thomas Cromwell in ‘Wolf Hall’ but this time playing a stoic civilian with the misfortune to own a small boat which he then feels obliged to take to Dunkirk as part of the rescue fleet. The stiffness of his upper lip is something to behold, and the lower quivers almost as infrequently.

Meanwhile Kenneth Branagh  gives a passable imitation of Kenneth More as a high ranking naval officer striding up and down a jetty in a  French port for a reason I can’t remember, and saying things like ‘I say!’ and ‘Good show!’ (Or maybe not exactly those words but they might just as well have been.)

‘Get Out’

This is a kind of horror film with a message which I’ve now forgotten because it’s so long since I saw it. But in a nutshell it’s a kind of ‘Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner’ with a horror twist - or several of them. I remember thinking it was quite brave and very different. but at the time I certainly didn’t think it was Oscar nominee material. Which just goes to show how wrong I can be.

‘Ladybird’

A rite of passage movie  about a teenage girl who hails - in her own words, and as it turns out, literally - from the wrong side of the tracks in Sacramento. (I never thought Sacramento sounded like the kind of place that had a wrong side of the tracks, but it seems California is not always as sunny as I’d imagined.)

The heroine, Christine,  or Ladybird as she has retitled herself, cannot wait to escape from her hyper critical and unforgiving mother and go to college as far away as she can get. It is apparently the sort-of-life story of Greta Gerwig, the writer director and has the delightful Saoirse (pronounced Sorsha I think) Ronan in the title role complete with make-up-free teenage  skin blemishes which she apparently got for the first time in her life in the year before shooting - despite, in real life, being twenty three.

Apart from the rather feeble end, Ladybird makes for a very pleasant couple of hours in the cinema. But is ‘very pleasant’ enough to deserve an Oscar?  

‘The Post’

Owing to the fact that I hate trailers - because they give so much away - I always try to time my entrance into the cinema just before the main feature. Unfortunately I cocked it up in the case of ‘The Post’, was about  ten minutes late,  and can’t discount the possibility that I missed something crucial.

Even so I got the general drift and wasn’t excited enough by the remainder to pay good money to see the bit I missed.

‘The Post’ is a piece of safe, solid Spielberg film making about the pre-Watergate scandal involving the stealing of the Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg - a cause celebre at the time. The film centres on the dilemma of  the Post’s woman owner, Katherine Graham, as to whether she should publish and be damned or follow the cautious advice she receives from her male flunkies. The theme is certainly  au courant  in that it is all about a woman being determined to exercise her power in a man’s world, but, paradoxically, the movie felt a tad old fashioned to me.

‘Call Me By Your Name’ 

…is a story of a New Yorker in his late twenties (a guess) who, in the summer of ’83 comes to assist an American professor of antiquities (or something like that) at his idyllic home in Italy where he lives with his wife and seventeen year old musical prodigy son. The visitor and the son (both of whom are Jewish though this seems entirely incidental to the story) then embark on a gay affair with the apparent  encouragement of the uber-liberal parents. The certificate at the front says it contains ‘strong sex’ but apart from a scene in which the boy attempts to fornicate with a peach, not much seemed  to go on. I  fell asleep two or three times and didn’t seem to miss much. Timothee Chalamet who plays the boy is astonishingly good and certainly deserves something for his troubles. The peach might pick up an award too if they decide to give a special Oscar for best supporting piece of fruit.

‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri’ 

Having already swept the board at the BAFTAS and receiving so much publicity,  there can barely be a person alive who doesn’t know that Frances McDormand gives a bravura performance as the mother of a daughter who was raped and murdered and is so crazed with grief that she will stop at nothing to force the police to do their jobs and find the culprit. Doesn’t sound like a comedy does it? And that was my problem. The film doesn’t have a consistent tone of voice - one minute it is the bleakest tragedy, the next it is played for laughs - and although I found much to admire in it, I just didn’t quite understand what the director was trying to say. 

And so  to ‘The Shape of Water’. And if that isn’t the name in the winner’s envelope, I shall be screaming “Fix!”  (and a lot worse) at the telly. 

I absolutely loved this film. It’s basically an old fashioned  B movie sci-fi story about a mute girl who falls in love with a creature from the deep,  which asks you to believe, in the face of all probability, that, for its two hours in on the screen, such a  world is possible. And it is so captivatingly done, that you do. Or at least, I did. For me ‘The Shape of Water’ is pure movie magic - stunning performances, sumptuous   styling, luscious music, and a truly moving love story.

And on top of all that, the best narrator’s voice - Richard Jenkins - that I can ever remember hearing. If you want an American V/O for a commercial, he’s your man.